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Best housing system?
Well since my "business" thread bombed and there really is no mmo you can hop on and do economy/own a business/land, I was wondering what is the best housing system and which MMO has it? Mostly I am curious, out of the games I have tried LoTRO had the best but tends to be pointless at a certain point. You can decorate it a bit, and even have yard items, but no one ever see's your house in the 12 instances of a random neighborhood so what's the point? Next closest I have seen is Darkfall, since you can have a vendor and a personal bank/garden. But to get these things + the house deed is near impossible for the average joe. Anyways, thanks for any input 
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-Currently playing FFXIV, and BDO.
Comments
SWG probably. Lots of decorations. Not instanced.
EQII has a housing system where you start out with a room in an inn. Those are generic instanced type things. As you get higher level you can own your own house represented by a building in a city. I don't really know more than that however.
A lot of people claim LotRO.
Dawntide is looking to have a great housing system, but it's waaaaayyyyy early in open development phases.
Pernica has a system where players around for so long could have a house of any kind personally made for them by the development team. They made a friggin hobbit hole for one player. =D However, the pop is more than lackluster right now.
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Runes of Magic- can have mansion where clan-member craft, talk, and stuff.
Vanguard has housing as well. Not familiar with it enough. But it has a site where you can stand and see their house in open field.
Kain_Dale
While I would vouch for SWG, I have to say Wurm does it pretty good as well. You build each segment of walls, make floors out of stone or wood (houses too), and then deco with whatever else can be crafted. There's definitely not as much going for it in terms of deco, especially when it comes to the choice of items, but with terraforming in mind you can make some epic mock castles and whatnot.
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Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Ultima Online - Before they made it so everything u put into a chest inside your house was automatically "locked down"
Standing outside peoples houses so u could sneak in and steal everything they owned was great fun.
And you could place them anywhere (as long as there was enough open space) and decorate them and all that jazz
Shadowbane - Because they could be used as weapons :P
Either EQ2 or Vanguard. EQ2s houses are instanced but I own a shop, people go in there to buy my stuff (buying it from the broker cost a lot more so at least some people see it). You also have a guildhouse there which you can decorate in the same way.
In Vanguard can you actually build your own house, it wont be instanced. I never did that, only played like 15 levels of that (compared to 3 years EQ2) so other people will know the mechanics better than me.
So I would say those 2 games delivers at least as good as LOTRO, and the idea that you can steal someones house deed and move into their house disqualifies DFO (No, that is not logical. Nobles could more or less legally steal your stuff but if a robber just took it would the city guard give him a hard time). And it isn't fun to have something yyou spent so much work on stolen, screw the armor and weapon but a house is a different thing.
Or at least I heard you could steal someones house in DFO, I could be misinformed.
Asheron's call has housing as well. Its located on skirt of town, or 100 miles away from any towns. Its pretty cool~ Though you can only decorate, put stuff in chest.
Kain_Dale
Star Wars Galaxies has the best housing system. But as we all know the state of the game unfortunately.
Then after that, it's EverQuest 2 hands down!
The options and possibilities you have with the houses and what you can do with it is unrivaled and unmatched.
We can all together think and say a lot about SOE. But when it comes to housing. Their games are the best in it so far.
Just check out this forum: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/forums/show.m?forum_id=2487
It's amazing what some people managed to do in there. From personal house till amazing guild halls.
Cheers
I have played both LOTR and SWG , SWG has a far more extensive housing system. There are thousands of items that can be placed anywhere you want in your house. There is a city system, but houses can be built in a lot of areas so there can be building clutter. They have found people will spend money on the chance of getting unique houses or items in the trading card game so there is a lot of things being added. For instance you can live in a broken down AT AT. If you like Star Wars at all it is worth a try.
I'd say Ultima Online. Features include:
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
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Ok, now that's pretty damn cool.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
UO!!
Place a tent, house, tower, castle whatever then decorate it. Defend it! Pawn it! Nothing compares.
Instances.... *rolls eyes*
Play a role! Shadowclan
I might get beaten for white knighting wurm too much, but..
Of all games, wurm probably stands out as the only game which is, in essence, all about building your house. It's a housing game, so to say. Heck, one of the first things you're encouraged to do is to drop a small house for yourself as you learn the game.
However it also highlights in what terrible state housing in most games is. If such a horrible little game does housing so much better than other games..
Istaria (aka Horizons) had the best housing system I have seen as far as the level of customisation. Housing had the following features:
* user could specify where items were built and which direction they faced within the housing plot
* you could chose what items were built
* you could build superior crafting facilities that gave crafting bonuses
* you could also build banks and vendors
* you could build lots of different yard decorations
* all housing was in the open world.
Problems caused by housing included:
* housing communities were widely scattered all over the map as all housing was in the open world
* long travel times to many housing plots
* massive lag when running through a heavily built area
* space was limited on individual plots so you needed different plot owners to build different facilities so that the local community (village) had access to a full range of facilities.
* the local community could be left without important facilities such as banks (and crafting facilities) if the person who had the plot with the bank quit the game or sold their plot to someone who did not want a bank
* the new owner of a plot may decide to deny access to important facilities such as a bank
UO with a sims 3 system of house building, lots of decorations and your house can be your shop where yous ell your wares too.
UO
I have never found a better housing system since.
I miss this game!
Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Horizens, Vanguard all have very interesting housing systems. Non instanced real world houses that have various levels of function and customization.
I'm not a big fan of instanced housing or 500 people all living behind the same door. It may have a neat living space behind it, but it doesn't really connect with the world in any way or have much for immersion factor. There is just something about an actual house in the actual game world that just isn't delivered by a clicking on something and loading into an instance. It is more like clicking a button to completely remove a player from the game world.
Of all the MMOs I've played LOTRO by far has one of the worst... Turbine still hasn't done anything with their pointless housing system? lol
EQ2 is far better then LOTRO but in 2010-2011 Aion will own the rest.
"I play Tera for the gameplay"
Many of the houses in LOTRO have been foreclosed upon in the economic downturn. I passed a Dwarf holding a sign that read, "Will Smoke And Dance Emote For Hares". Things are rough all over.
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Thanks for the replies everyone, out of all those listed it seems EQ2/Vanguard/SWG/UO are the contenders. Looking at the rest of those games though and deciding which to play is hard for me(been trying to figure it out the last few days as my DFO sub ended). I downloaded the trial for EQ2, but just couldn't get into it for some reason. Plus the fact that the game is 6+ years old will make it very hard on a new player(hard to find groups/guilds that will help/etc). Same goes for UO I would assume, plus I have read the population is pretty low in UO. SWG is not my cup of tea, I tried it for a month a while back and I got bored pretty fast.
Basically at this point I am considering Vanguard, but have heard this game has a lot of issues and the population is dwindling fast right now. Or I may just end up back in Eve or LoTRO, sigh.
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-Currently playing FFXIV, and BDO.
Either EQ2 or Vanguard. EQ2s houses are instanced but I own a shop, people go in there to buy my stuff (buying it from the broker cost a lot more so at least some people see it). You also have a guildhouse there which you can decorate in the same way.
In Vanguard can you actually build your own house, it wont be instanced. I never did that, only played like 15 levels of that (compared to 3 years EQ2) so other people will know the mechanics better than me.
So I would say those 2 games delivers at least as good as LOTRO, and the idea that you can steal someones house deed and move into their house disqualifies DFO (No, that is not logical. Nobles could more or less legally steal your stuff but if a robber just took it would the city guard give him a hard time). And it isn't fun to have something yyou spent so much work on stolen, screw the armor and weapon but a house is a different thing.
Or at least I heard you could steal someones house in DFO, I could be misinformed.
Yeah, back when I was waiting for Vanguard to come out I watched a video on their housing and how you could run a shop out of it and all that stuff...though I dont know if it ever made it into the game but it seemed like the best way to go. If I were you I would just google it and see if you can find any info on it. Hope this helps.
I have to agree. Horizons/ istaria has the best Housing system and possibly the best crafting of any MMO by a good margin. But I should define it as best housing plot/landscaping system. The inside decorations for Horizons was not there when I quit a few years ago. But it had by far the best plot design of any MMO. I would spend hours designing my plot with crafting stations and landscaping then mopnths building it up. EQ2 had the best inside of a housing system. FF11 had gardening and some interesting features. Vanguard had the most potential. the best crafting mechanics and the best world for building player made towns. But unfortunately the game has been abandoned by SOE and not developed. If crafting, housing, and player towns was actually finished Vanguard would be the best. But its incomplete and pointless.
Playing all of those games to a decent extent, I'd have to say Ultima Online is the king of housing not only in how/where you place buildings, but also in that you are able to build one from scratch using their tools and not just use a premade house.
In addition the fact that the crafting system was one of the best ever seen back in the day, you are also able to place anything in your house anywhere you want it. They all even stack upon each other. Even gold -- you're able to have an entire room full of gold like a treasury, diamons and gems stacked unto of each other, etc. Indeed, I've seven seen people cut up cloth, dye them, and place them on top of each other to look like an aquiarium and place actual fish on top of the blue areas.
The crafting system also has tinkering and woodcrafting in which to make beds, stands, armoires, anvils, ovens, forges, etc... Pretty much unlimited and not subject to invalid placing as they are able to be placed anywhere and on top of anything.
They made a new tutorial for new players, but overall it may be hard to get into due to the fact it is so old. I played back in the old days when it was still owned by origin, and I hear the community has been deminishing as of late. Still, I guess that means there are more plots of land available where ever you want -- Next to a road, mountain for mining, ocean to place a boat next to, pond, in the artic... Whatever floats your boat.
Even though you are able to build the house of your dreams, as big as you virtually want it, with how many stories you want... along with a garden in the front or back with a fountain and gates/guards or whatever you imagination wants... I've even seen people open up player made restaurants, taverns, libraries, museums... etc. Though there are still premade buildings if you're not into spending days or weeks in crafting your abode... like a huge castle for your guild or just yourself instance. It still costs more gold for each square of land you want from what I hear. So you'd be spending some time mining/hunting/lumberjacking/fishing/etc in which to earn the gold if you're new and expecting to get right into it. I'm not sure about nowadays, but it used to be a good source for new players to make a miner and mine ore/ingots for GM blacksmith who were too lazy to do it themselves -- The price used to be something like 10,000 gold for 1,000 iron ingots.
All in all it's a game that tried to become what its not with it's new chat system in Kingdom Reborn; was fun just to only talk to guild members or whisper friends -- or just in /say to whoever was on your screen. Now I think there is a world chat. Meh.
I have to agree. Horizons/ istaria has the best Housing system and possibly the best crafting of any MMO by a good margin. But I should define it as best housing plot/landscaping system. The inside decorations for Horizons was not there when I quit a few years ago. But it had by far the best plot design of any MMO. I would spend hours designing my plot with crafting stations and landscaping then mopnths building it up. EQ2 had the best inside of a housing system. FF11 had gardening and some interesting features. Vanguard had the most potential. the best crafting mechanics and the best world for building player made towns. But unfortunately the game has been abandoned by SOE and not developed. If crafting, housing, and player towns was actually finished Vanguard would be the best. But its incomplete and pointless.
Horizons did have a good system and a very nice community -- though your stated problems were pretty much dead on. What was fun is that it took so long in which to build and you got a sense of a realistic world. What I'd prefer between the Ultima Online Building tool and that one I can't say, as ultimate online was more of a instant gratification thing and implemented under player request as it used to be only premade buildings. Still, I've seen some amazing stuff out of it without the aforementioned problems in Horizons.
EQ2 I'd have to disagree in terms of in-house placement mechanics as I felt somewhat detached from the world as a whole whenever I was in it due to obvious problems when matching up with Ultima Online. Final Fantasy XI was kind've a joke, but the moogle was there so it's all good. XD; Though everything was so expensive and took months and millions of gil to level up a craft to get any of it if you wanted to make them yourself. In addition it was limited in space as to where you wanted to place things. The gardening took a little too long for my tastes and I would often forget about them due to just wanting to level/do missions/help friends etc. I spent a lot of time power leveling people with my level 75s until the level synch system came and I was able to level up even more classes until I pretty much had nothing left to do besides walk around in Jeuno or Sandy idlely -- maybe fishing or just traveling around see if people need help with something.
Vanguard I actually have yet to play with any depth -- Though I typically don't play games made by EA or SoE when it comes to monthly fees unless I was already hooked before they bought whatever company or game out.
The future games of Tera Online, Final Fantasy XIV, Continent of the Ninth, Blade and Soul, Global Agenda, Prius Online, Guild Wars 2, Mabinogi: Heroes, Star Wars, Berkanix, N.E.D, Ever Planet and Lands of Chaos don't seem too promising on these featuers, either... Mainly because half of them were made by traditionally grinding-happy communities; I still have some hope with FFXIV in that light, in that they at least had some implementation of housing and may expand upon it, but I'm not too hopeful.
They're all following a new path of "next generation innovation" via action fighting in MMORPGs -- Not that some of them don't look darn nice. But it's more emphasis on the quick fighting now than on sandbox or livlihood systems. Thanks blizzard.
I'm not ripping on fast past fighting systems -- my jaws dropped when I watched the new videos of Blade of Soul showing off the new classes and the fact that it will actually have PvE content and story telling via "Blade & Soul Class Introduction (Part 2)" on youtube... Though something just seems ominous about the future of MMOs in general.