Ok, so I'm gonna ask a question here, and I'm not trolling, I really wanna know. What is housing good for? I've been playing MMOs for almost a decade now, and none of them had player housing. The closest thing I've seen was Warhammer's guild area that was in-accessible unless you were in a guild. But I have never wished I had a house, or a room or whatever. So I don't get why people want housing so much. If anything, it seems to me like housing would hurt the game. You'd have less people in the city, less people PvPing, just... less people. So, what's the attraction there? I remember once me and some friends were saying it would be fun if our guild could own a guild-hall of sorts that was instanced, would be accessible only to guild-members, could issue temporary invites to non-guildies, and had a dueling area. Then we can make an invite-only event and advertise it for a certain day and time, where we'd run a dueling tournament. And also gamble on the winners and whatnot. This sounds like fun. But this is also PvP (the dueling part), and it has interactions with other player in an in-game atmosphere. Not just sitting around drinking tea and talking about our day. So would a feature like this be considered good by those of you that want player-housing? Or is player housing in your minds only a personal private space that you can fully customize?
Imagine going over a hill and finding an entirely player made city with player merchants, player farms and workshops, player designed quests (get 10 pieces of wood), and player activites (some sort of festival). And then you can decide to go attack everyone and kill them all and burn the city down. Or build your own house and contribute to the city. And then people come from around the world to trade or visit you. Thats the attraction. You have PVP, PVE, economic activity, time sink, money fountains, just generally player made production.
hey Jon i agree whit you on the tutorial thing, i played a bit on eveonline tutorial and i find it quite good but again i already played the game four years
Very good article! The only one I disagreed with is the one I think hurts more mmos than it helps and that's housing. While giving someone a small plot of land and some things to do with it definitely help to draw that player into that world, it hurts the community. Every player that is spending time in housing is spending time in an MMO away from everyone else playing. The housing in DAOC wrecked the cities because it gave the players in that game every reason to not go the main cities. They went so far as to give bonuses to crafting to people that stayed in housing. When the game was young the cities were full of people. Need something crafted and dozens of people were there to help. Baddies invading your lands? jump into a few locations and /yell and have an entire army ready to go in a few minutes. After housing went live a large % of the population disappeared from nearly every area in the game and it felt empty. When a new player comes along and a game feels empty or they have a problem and noone is around to help, they move on. If the game devs put enough time into giving players things to do as part of a community there shouldn't be any time for housing anyway.
This really depends on implementation. The problem with your example is that the devs gave players an incentive to leave the active community and made housing an unsocial feature. That's just a bad implementation.
Housing shouldn't be a private place to do things that can be done elsewhere, like crafting, it should really be a means of furthering the customisation of your character and expressing yourself (as well as showing off your accomplishments).
I remember in EQ2 they made interesting use of the feature through the broker system. If you went to a player's house to buy an item off them it would be 20% cheaper than if you bought it through the broker. This made it a bit more social since I'd often be going around and seeing what other people have done with their houses whilst I was shopping. It doesn't solve the problem you're describing but it's a step in the right direction.
I remember my huge collection of books as well, all lined up neatly on my shelves... every single one was a complete book that could be opened and read, many of them obtained via quests or creature mastery and developing the lore of the game world. I didn't read all of them, but just knowing that they were there and could be read really made the world feel that much deeper.
The key, as with all MMO features, is to integrate it into other systems. Crafting always feels 'tacked on' unless it's integrated into the economy properly. It's the same with housing, it won't work unless they work it into the social systems of the game, giving players reasons to visit other players' houses and involving it with other aspects of gameplay.
I was about to reply to hogscraper on this as well. However, after reading your response, Alberel, I no longer feel the need to. You pretty much made the point I was thinking. Well done!
I find housing connects players with their world in a 'deeper' sense that their alone character (Avatar). There is something to be said about displaying your items, showing your style. In many ways, I find housing is what makes me feel more 'at home' in the game.
Part of what made SWG so much fun for me at the start was POB player ships... ships you can walk around in, decorate, and even fight with. So not only did you have planetery housing, there was(is) ship-based housing.
Now I know the uber-PvP hard-core 24x7 only-going-to-fight crowd really only needs a bank/storage terminal for stims and such, but part of the social aspect of being a MMO is having an impact on your environment.
Plopping a house down.. making your own town.. or being mayor of a city is definately making an impact on your environment and are probably one of the strongest reasons to have them in the game.. it promotes community.
STO has the 'possiblity' of ship interior customization. Its a start, but I hope they don't just leave it like that and never touch the possiblity of crew quarters, ship boarding, etc.
Ideally, a 'housing' system should appeal to both the player-based city... as well as the NPC-city based housing.. like instanced apartments/condo's. I don't see a reason why both couldn't exist with right controls. There are some characters I'd prefer live in a metro/NPC/city.. and others I'd like to put in shack in the back-woods... and others with their own estate.
Guild-based 'team' storage is ok.. convenient for shared storage.. but there is still something more personal about having your own 'home'... be that a building, a condo (instance), or a ship.
Interesting article, I was wondering how much you got form UO & SWG Pre-CU vets
Before anything else there was too much griefiing in UO, for the casual gamer, and SWG was bit tedious, especially grinding crafting professions and managing all the resources gathering, more like an unpaid second work.
i respectfully disagree
i found swg's crafting system very easy to get used to ounce you put in 1 or 2 hrs of work to figure it out
it even got fun
swg had one of the greatest crafting systems out there if not the greatest witch i believe it was and most people i talk to who like crafting tend to agree
just because you dont like crafting doesn't mean people who do like crafting didnt like swg's crafting system
iv playd many mmo's in my time and none of the crafting systems compare to swg's
Sorry, I think you miss understood me. I really like crafting and I can say I had my share of it in SWG. Although there were a few issues with it.
It was a click fest, so much that some players used 3rd party macro software to level it, even before the holo-grind
Once there was a "master in town" most lower level items became useless, meaning others leveling crafter would craft then delete items
Managing all the resources was a pain, no wonder players asked for an ability to combine resources, better inventory management and storage facilities. Remember the houses filled with backpacks full of resources? Most crafters had many houses for just for this. Managing harvester was a real job. No surprise players asked for a way to at least check remotely the status of the harvesters, or even to be able to maintain them with droids. Not the least the harvester UI was poorly done, thus making crafter use self made macro to tend them.
One thing I liked in SWG was the ability to customize and colorize the item names
Originally posted by Jairoe03
It's time for developers to look at these games from a more social angle and start catering to that end of the spectrum as well
Yes yes yes! Absolutely agree on the list, especially#1. I refer to that Strictly Social dynamic as "Putterability" or "Retention Gameplay"--how one can putter about and just be in the world. That is so important to keeping people involved, content and immersed within the whole of a gameworld (which directly translates to: customers retained), and that dynamic is so woefully neglected by developers.
Interesting article, I was wondering how much you got form UO & SWG Pre-CU vets
Before anything else there was too much griefiing in UO, for the casual gamer, and SWG was bit tedious, especially grinding crafting professions and managing all the resources gathering, more like an unpaid second work.
i respectfully disagree
i found swg's crafting system very easy to get used to ounce you put in 1 or 2 hrs of work to figure it out
it even got fun
swg had one of the greatest crafting systems out there if not the greatest witch i believe it was and most people i talk to who like crafting tend to agree
just because you dont like crafting doesn't mean people who do like crafting didnt like swg's crafting system
iv playd many mmo's in my time and none of the crafting systems compare to swg's
Sorry, I think you miss understood me. I really like crafting and I can say I had my share of it in SWG. Although there were a few issues with it.
It was a click fest, so much that some players used 3rd party macro software to level it, even before the holo-grind
Once there was a "master in town" most lower level items became useless, meaning others leveling crafter would craft then delete items
Managing all the resources was a pain, no wonder players asked for an ability to combine resources, better inventory management and storage facilities. Remember the houses filled with backpacks full of resources? Most crafters had many houses for just for this. Managing harvester was a real job. No surprise players asked for a way to at least check remotely the structure of the harvesters, of not even be able to maintain them with droids. Not the least the harvester UI was poorly done, thus making crafter use self made macro to tend them.
One thing I liked in SWG was the ability to customize and colorize the item names
Originally posted by Jairoe03
It's time for developers to look at these games from a more social angle and start catering to that end of the spectrum as well
QFE
perhaps i did misunderstand i thought you were trying to say you hated the swg crafting system
theres so many people today that don't know what the hell there talking about that bash swg for the sake of bashing it
it gets hard to recognize someone who is talking from actual experience
and for that i apologize
i actually looked forward to going to my harvesters every other day and never used droids to do it but then again its the intricacies that thrill me in an mmo
as for using backpacks to sort mats i had cabinets lol
running 2 crafting classes and CH was great with the cabinets that is :P
as for not making lower level stuff i usually made anything and everything i could especially after becoming master in both of my crafting professions but then again i have the toy maker play style (i understand thats kind of rare)
and after all you had to be certified to use something before it was truly use full so people dont stick to just the high end stuff because it was next to worthless till they could use it :P
so no mater the level most stuff was always in demand
there really wasn't anything i didnt like about swg crafting
hell even mat obtaining always kept me on the look out for the better mats
as for the 3rd party crap ya i was aware of it and wanted to personally go and kill any one who used it cause in my mind that's cheating
as for using houses for just crafting storage i never did that
i had a guild hall i used as a crafting hub for my town and it was well decorated and furnished
and my large house i used to display things and hang trophies and other weird thing i found throughout the game
in the end before the NGE apocalypse hit i was one of the more sought out architect/ droid engineers on my server
and had ties to many of my customers who kept coming back to buy from me or my fellow guild and/or city members
man i miss it sorry about suddenly reminiscing there lol :P
any who glad to meat a fellow crafter
and i still say out of all the games i have played i have yet to find one with a crafting system as good and as relevant as swg's
It seems like I've written posts on different forums many times in the last couple years specifically about your 1,3 & 5 (I think it was)... Social, Housing and Crafting. I've been mainly thinking the same things. Social: definately need fun stuff that isn't all about killing stuff - especially after playing the game for several months. Housing: always question why it's left out time and time again when it's always made very clear by the interested playerbases that it's highly desired. Crafting: dear Lord, somebody come up with a crafting system that isn't completely boring, useless, or a major chore -- and one that doesn't just make players go kill yet more mobs. We're already killing mobs for every other part of the game so can it just be a little bit more independent?
I have never understood player housing. I think only girls want to play house. Or, maybe because it is so limited. If we had to dig the basement out, put up the drywall, or pour the concrete I'd probably get it. COH/COV has base building. Someone said AoC took this idea an improved on it. I've never played the pvp part where they come shoot it up or burn it down. That could suck after spending all that time building it, but maybe if you get points everytime the enemy destroys each chair, lamp, or couch, people would go for it. Maybe if there was a reason for housing, like...player need to go to the bathroom #2 NOW! EQ2 uses guild halls where you can use portals to travel places faster, but it's probably not worth the gold they have to pay for it. Maybe steal some ideas from the SIMS. idk, I've never played that either. But that's kind'a a girl's game too. Houses attract girl gamers?? It's just marketing? Nah, girls aren't stupid. Guys are easy to trick. Look at Wow. Flash some bright lights maybe some cleavage and they are glued to the screen for years. I don't think girls are falling for that, no good evil marketers. Am I wrong?
With housing, it does add another layer of persistence for the players and it's a place they can refer to as various things like a "keep" or a "hideout". I don't think housing for players is entirely necessary, but a guild hall would be nice, probably easy to implement via instancing (yeah yeah, I know that'll hurt the "immersion" for some of the pacifists) to avoid people from having to compete for "lots" like in UO and SWG.
Overall, it's something else a player can work on and do while experiencing a fantasy world since the major selling point behind MMORPG's was always about persistence and it shouldn't just be limited to character and gear progression. This goes back to focusing on the social side of the MMORPG rather than the combat/rewards side, after all, the major advantage that MMORPG's have above all other genre's is its social side.
Well they are indeed too underrated. But it is not enough to just have them, they also must be corelated. I formulated my ideas as a sort of reply in my own article, here:
I have never understood player housing. I think only girls want to play house. Or, maybe because it is so limited. If we had to dig the basement out, put up the drywall, or pour the concrete I'd probably get it. COH/COV has base building. Someone said AoC took this idea an improved on it. I've never played the pvp part where they come shoot it up or burn it down. That could suck after spending all that time building it, but maybe if you get points everytime the enemy destroys each chair, lamp, or couch, people would go for it. Maybe if there was a reason for housing, like...player need to go to the bathroom #2 NOW! EQ2 uses guild halls where you can use portals to travel places faster, but it's probably not worth the gold they have to pay for it. Maybe steal some ideas from the SIMS. idk, I've never played that either. But that's kind'a a girl's game too. Houses attract girl gamers?? It's just marketing? Nah, girls aren't stupid. Guys are easy to trick. Look at Wow. Flash some bright lights maybe some cleavage and they are glued to the screen for years. I don't think girls are falling for that, no good evil marketers. Am I wrong?
I'm with ya here, I played a couple that had housing and just used as storage, looked like my office after a while. Last time I played coh/v the base raids were never available, are they even live yet? The comment about having to use the bathroom made me laugh. Now if the housing does attract more females hell ya im all for that. As far as the virtual female eyecandy in mmo's, First thing I check out is how realistic and perfect the parts are. They are getting better and better, some breath. Lotro was last male char I made, all male since eq, ao, swg on. For me mmo's are entertainement like movies only interactive. I would rather watch Tomb Raider or any Female then Conan or James Bond in the same action scenerios.
This post is intentionally written as to not make any sense what so ever. Thank You Very Much.
I have never understood player housing. I think only girls want to play house. Or, maybe because it is so limited. If we had to dig the basement out, put up the drywall, or pour the concrete I'd probably get it. COH/COV has base building. Someone said AoC took this idea an improved on it. I've never played the pvp part where they come shoot it up or burn it down. That could suck after spending all that time building it, but maybe if you get points everytime the enemy destroys each chair, lamp, or couch, people would go for it. Maybe if there was a reason for housing, like...player need to go to the bathroom #2 NOW! EQ2 uses guild halls where you can use portals to travel places faster, but it's probably not worth the gold they have to pay for it. Maybe steal some ideas from the SIMS. idk, I've never played that either. But that's kind'a a girl's game too. Houses attract girl gamers?? It's just marketing? Nah, girls aren't stupid. Guys are easy to trick. Look at Wow. Flash some bright lights maybe some cleavage and they are glued to the screen for years. I don't think girls are falling for that, no good evil marketers. Am I wrong?
I'm with ya here, I played a couple that had housing and just used as storage, looked like my office after a while. Last time I played coh/v the base raids were never available, are they even live yet? The comment about having to use the bathroom made me laugh. Now if the housing does attract more females hell ya im all for that. As far as the virtual female eyecandy in mmo's, First thing I check out is how realistic and perfect the parts are. They are getting better and better, some breath. Lotro was last male char I made, all male since eq, ao, swg on. For me mmo's are entertainement like movies only interactive. I would rather watch Tomb Raider or any Female then Conan or James Bond in the same action scenerios.
The simple ability to purchase a room or stall in a city to store your stuff or display your wares would be all thats needed. More substational is the abilit for groups of players to build housing where they can meet, craft, store things, and be safe. It makes sense more in some games (eve) than others (AOC).
With housing, it does add another layer of persistence for the players and it's a place they can refer to as various things like a "keep" or a "hideout". I don't think housing for players is entirely necessary, but a guild hall would be nice, probably easy to implement via instancing (yeah yeah, I know that'll hurt the "immersion" for some of the pacifists) to avoid people from having to compete for "lots" like in UO and SWG. Overall, it's something else a player can work on and do while experiencing a fantasy world since the major selling point behind MMORPG's was always about persistence and it shouldn't just be limited to character and gear progression. This goes back to focusing on the social side of the MMORPG rather than the combat/rewards side, after all, the major advantage that MMORPG's have above all other genre's is its social side.
actually you didnt have to compete for lots in SWG you could pretty much put down any ware on the map as long as it was atleast 10k away from the nearest city or poi
as for static housing iv always hated it i never used my FFXI or EQ2 housing for anything more then storage because people couldn't randomly come to see it and it servers no other real in game purpose
i much prefer being able to put down a physical building then to have a static apartment like housing
Interesting article, I was wondering how much you got form UO & SWG Pre-CU vets
Before anything else there was too much griefiing in UO, for the casual gamer, and SWG was bit tedious, especially grinding crafting professions and managing all the resources gathering, more like an unpaid second work.
i respectfully disagree
i found swg's crafting system very easy to get used to ounce you put in 1 or 2 hrs of work to figure it out
it even got fun
swg had one of the greatest crafting systems out there if not the greatest witch i believe it was and most people i talk to who like crafting tend to agree
just because you dont like crafting doesn't mean people who do like crafting didnt like swg's crafting system
iv playd many mmo's in my time and none of the crafting systems compare to swg's
Sorry, I think you miss understood me. I really like crafting and I can say I had my share of it in SWG. Although there were a few issues with it.
It was a click fest, so much that some players used 3rd party macro software to level it, even before the holo-grind
Once there was a "master in town" most lower level items became useless, meaning others leveling crafter would craft then delete items
Managing all the resources was a pain, no wonder players asked for an ability to combine resources, better inventory management and storage facilities. Remember the houses filled with backpacks full of resources? Most crafters had many houses for just for this. Managing harvester was a real job. No surprise players asked for a way to at least check remotely the structure of the harvesters, of not even be able to maintain them with droids. Not the least the harvester UI was poorly done, thus making crafter use self made macro to tend them.
One thing I liked in SWG was the ability to customize and colorize the item names
Originally posted by Jairoe03
It's time for developers to look at these games from a more social angle and start catering to that end of the spectrum as well
QFE
perhaps i did misunderstand i thought you were trying to say you hated the swg crafting system
theres so many people today that don't know what the hell there talking about that bash swg for the sake of bashing it
it gets hard to recognize someone who is talking from actual experience
and for that i apologize
i actually looked forward to going to my harvesters every other day and never used droids to do it but then again its the intricacies that thrill me in an mmo
as for using backpacks to sort mats i had cabinets lol
running 2 crafting classes and CH was great with the cabinets that is :P
as for not making lower level stuff i usually made anything and everything i could especially after becoming master in both of my crafting professions but then again i have the toy maker play style (i understand thats kind of rare)
and after all you had to be certified to use something before it was truly use full so people dont stick to just the high end stuff because it was next to worthless till they could use it :P
so no mater the level most stuff was always in demand
there really wasn't anything i didnt like about swg crafting
hell even mat obtaining always kept me on the look out for the better mats
as for the 3rd party crap ya i was aware of it and wanted to personally go and kill any one who used it cause in my mind that's cheating
as for using houses for just crafting storage i never did that
i had a guild hall i used as a crafting hub for my town and it was well decorated and furnished
and my large house i used to display things and hang trophies and other weird thing i found throughout the game
in the end before the NGE apocalypse hit i was one of the more sought out architect/ droid engineers on my server
and had ties to many of my customers who kept coming back to buy from me or my fellow guild and/or city members
man i miss it sorry about suddenly reminiscing there lol :P
any who glad to meat a fellow crafter
and i still say out of all the games i have played i have yet to find one with a crafting system as good and as relevant as swg's
Memories sometimes hurts.
I didn't play all MMO but since SWG I didn't see any one that had such a good system: good resources gathering, crafting experimentation system and resources stats, ability to choose and colorize the name of the end product, name of the creator automatically added to the item, looted top end components and not the least player made economy, from dedicated crafter to dedicated merchants through dedicated resources gatherers.
As many others I would bite for a simple carbon copy of SWG system, but I would enhance it with a few features:
Consumables: ammunitions, clothe dyes, batteries for shield generators, armors layers....
Miner (or farmer) profession, that among others things has the ability to mix/experiment resources of the same kind
Better harverster UI
Better resources sorting, add tabs and filters
Ability to fully repair anything, with a (huge?) money sink and crafter made repair kits.
Ability to put stacks of items for sale with a per unit price and choice of the buyer to get how much he wants.
Originally posted by inle Originally posted by Jairoe03 With housing, it does add another layer of persistence for the players and it's a place they can refer to as various things like a "keep" or a "hideout". I don't think housing for players is entirely necessary, but a guild hall would be nice, probably easy to implement via instancing (yeah yeah, I know that'll hurt the "immersion" for some of the pacifists) to avoid people from having to compete for "lots" like in UO and SWG. Overall, it's something else a player can work on and do while experiencing a fantasy world since the major selling point behind MMORPG's was always about persistence and it shouldn't just be limited to character and gear progression. This goes back to focusing on the social side of the MMORPG rather than the combat/rewards side, after all, the major advantage that MMORPG's have above all other genre's is its social side.
actually you didnt have to compete for lots in SWG you could pretty much put down any ware on the map as long as it was atleast 10k away from the nearest city or poi
as for static housing iv always hated it i never used my FFXI or EQ2 housing for anything more then storage because people couldn't randomly come to see it and it servers no other real in game purpose i much prefer being able to put down a physical building then to have a static apartment like housing
As for the lots inside the city which is always in the most convenient of places. Yes, you had to compete. I suppose you weren't a Master Weaponsmith looking for an ideal spot to sell your wares though -_- Anything with limited amounts of "physical space" even within a virtual environment is going to lead to some form of competition for "lots" or space. Just like in UO, it occurred in SWG. Shoot, I had a whole player paid off just so I can have his lots to use to farm ideal resource spots. I'm pretty damn sure there was some form of competing for lots in there especially as a crafter.
I find it ironic that the first thing that came to my mind when reading this article was City of Eternals. Sure, it's casual and it's browser based, but hell, it has more of these features than most MMOs do.
Reading the posts in this articles really shows the affect WoW has had on this genre. There are a startling number of people who have never played a sandbox and have never experienced player housing, open worlds, GvG, basically everything the genre once stood for. I think a sandbox game that captures the brilliance of games like UO and SWG(Before sony changed it, of course) is set up to do very well in the market right now.
I wouldn't see much of a game if you remove all of the above there. Levels AND Talents/Skills? The game would just be pure role-playing without any quantitative measuring stick to gauge any sort of character progression. A type of game without any listed above will be very niche and arguably too niche to even become self-sustainable (obviously based off speculation).
---
Let's speculate a bit:
What if games kept track of actual game experience in the form of how many times you swung various kinds of weapons, how often you cast a spell, or how often you performed a skill? Then, without ever asigning an experience point value to your character, without ever asigning a level to your character, simply allowed you to get better. This would be somewhat similar to real life.
You might be hot stuff with a short sword but when it comes to swinging a battle axe, you might very much resemble a newb.
Instead of having a character class, you might have a long list of skills you can choose to learn from. You might go into a town and find a man who is good at that skill, and apprentice yourself. You might spend some time in classes learning that skill. Then, when you went out into the world you could practice the skill by doing it, and get better at it.
Why do we need arbitrarilly designated experience points and levels to play these games? Seems to me that you can do away with it fairly easily.
I was hoping that Champions Online might bite the bullet and try to implement a system similar to Champions Face to Face by ignoring levels and character classes. They didn't. Sigh. When will devs break out of the basic experience grind/level grind thought pattern? I think the players are ready for it, even if the devs don't think we can handle it.
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What might be the results in game of such a departure from the norm?
Instead of being The Warrior, The Tanker, The Fighter, The Magician, The Necromancer, you would all be Yourselves.
You might enter a group by saying, "Hey, I'm James, I swing a mean broadsword and can cast a few combat spells that enhance our ability to defeat some types of monsters like werewolves. I can also use a Composit Recurve Bow, and I'm good at finding food and other things in wilderness situations, and I can sneak around pretty well."
OK, it's a lot easier to say "Hey, I'm James, L6 Ranger". The thing is, it's a lot more fun to say the former, and very emersion detrimental to say the latter.
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You might search for members for a group by listing what skills you think you might need, and having the search tool list the available players in terms of best skill to least skill in those areas. You might send out a few feelers to those who you think would want to team with you and check it out. Maybe the very best wouldn't want to go with you, but you would not want to choose from the lowest available yourself. Maybe you could add an additional search perameter of "those with skills near my own skills".
What I'm getting at is Levels and experience points is old school. Let's see something new.
Originally posted by Beggly I wouldn't see much of a game if you remove all of the above there. Levels AND Talents/Skills? The game would just be pure role-playing without any quantitative measuring stick to gauge any sort of character progression. A type of game without any listed above will be very niche and arguably too niche to even become self-sustainable (obviously based off speculation). --- Let's speculate a bit: What if games kept track of actual game experience in the form of how many times you swung various kinds of weapons, how often you cast a spell, or how often you performed a skill? Then, without ever asigning an experience point value to your character, without ever asigning a level to your character, simply allowed you to get better. This would be somewhat similar to real life. You might be hot stuff with a short sword but when it comes to swinging a battle axe, you might very much resemble a newb. Instead of having a character class, you might have a long list of skills you can choose to learn from. You might go into a town and find a man who is good at that skill, and apprentice yourself. You might spend some time in classes learning that skill. Then, when you went out into the world you could practice the skill by doing it, and get better at it. Why do we need arbitrarilly designated experience points and levels to play these games? Seems to me that you can do away with it fairly easily. I was hoping that Champions Online might bite the bullet and try to implement a system similar to Champions Face to Face by ignoring levels and character classes. They didn't. Sigh. When will devs break out of the basic experience grind/level grind thought pattern? I think the players are ready for it, even if the devs don't think we can handle it. --- What might be the results in game of such a departure from the norm? Instead of being The Warrior, The Tanker, The Fighter, The Magician, The Necromancer, you would all be Yourselves. You might enter a group by saying, "Hey, I'm James, I swing a mean broadsword and can cast a few combat spells that enhance our ability to defeat some types of monsters like werewolves. I can also use a Composit Recurve Bow, and I'm good at finding food and other things in wilderness situations, and I can sneak around pretty well." OK, it's a lot easier to say "Hey, I'm James, L6 Ranger". The thing is, it's a lot more fun to say the former, and very emersion detrimental to say the latter. --- You might search for members for a group by listing what skills you think you might need, and having the search tool list the available players in terms of best skill to least skill in those areas. You might send out a few feelers to those who you think would want to team with you and check it out. Maybe the very best wouldn't want to go with you, but you would not want to choose from the lowest available yourself. Maybe you could add an additional search perameter of "those with skills near my own skills". What I'm getting at is Levels and experience points is old school. Let's see something new.
I pointed out Leveling AND Skills. I was merely saying you need some quantitative way to measure a character's progression or most people will have a hard time finding a direction to take. Look at all the popular MMO's and see that every single one has a way to measure some form of progression. Even EVE has skills that measures your abilities. I think you emphasized the fact that I was pointing out the removal of levels, but forgotten about the simultaneous removal of skills. It simply cannot be done AND expected to profit. Let's face it, the average MMO player needs the game to help point them in directions and to an extent, I don't blame them. Taking out character progression will just turn the game into another Second Life or Love or something similar.
I think a game could have no levels and no skills, and still be interesting.
I just think you gotta separate in-combat progression tracking from out-of-combat tracking. If you measure progression out of combat, then really there's no need to also then measure it in-combat. Which is essentially what levels are. They measure your progress, then when you do fight, you don't have to worry about individual skills. But even that's not necessary.
Take a look for example at WoW's arena. Forget that it sucks for a moment, I think the core idea is good. It has a ranking system where if you win, you get points, and if you lose, you lose points. So your character's progression could be measured by how much you've increased your ranking over a certain amount of time. So what's the point of also measuring a character's level on top of that? Or skill with a weapon/spell? It's just not needed.
Another great example is the economy. Which that, coupled with social stuff like housing, was the point of this article. But that's already measured perfectly! It's how much gold you have, and what you can buy with it. If all a player cares about is the social/economic aspects of the game, then why is it important that he's also level67? It just doesn't matter. His progression is gold. He started out at level0 and now he's at level 100k gold.
So really, if you have a little system to track progression like that for every aspect of the game, there's no need to have levels, skills or classes at all.
With housing, it does add another layer of persistence for the players and it's a place they can refer to as various things like a "keep" or a "hideout". I don't think housing for players is entirely necessary, but a guild hall would be nice, probably easy to implement via instancing (yeah yeah, I know that'll hurt the "immersion" for some of the pacifists) to avoid people from having to compete for "lots" like in UO and SWG.
Overall, it's something else a player can work on and do while experiencing a fantasy world since the major selling point behind MMORPG's was always about persistence and it shouldn't just be limited to character and gear progression. This goes back to focusing on the social side of the MMORPG rather than the combat/rewards side, after all, the major advantage that MMORPG's have above all other genre's is its social side.
actually you didnt have to compete for lots in SWG you could pretty much put down any ware on the map as long as it was atleast 10k away from the nearest city or poi
as for static housing iv always hated it i never used my FFXI or EQ2 housing for anything more then storage because people couldn't randomly come to see it and it servers no other real in game purpose
i much prefer being able to put down a physical building then to have a static apartment like housing
As for the lots inside the city which is always in the most convenient of places. Yes, you had to compete. I suppose you weren't a Master Weaponsmith looking for an ideal spot to sell your wares though -_- Anything with limited amounts of "physical space" even within a virtual environment is going to lead to some form of competition for "lots" or space. Just like in UO, it occurred in SWG. Shoot, I had a whole player paid off just so I can have his lots to use to farm ideal resource spots. I'm pretty damn sure there was some form of competing for lots in there especially as a crafter.
nope not a weapon smith
but an architect / droid enginear :P
now i never played uo and i may of bean missing your meaning when i responded i did think you were talking about a system like in vanguard ware the spots for houses were pre designated
i was on ahazi (at least i think that was the server name) and there was always room to put down then again i didnt stick around the main city on tatooween but bestine
i did move several times when ever i updated my housing and it really didnt seem to mater how close i came to the city or how far people still came to buy my stuff and eventually i ended up running a city not to far from bestine
maybe i just got lucky which is a definite possibility but it didnt seem that bad to me
Comments
I wish you would send this to Turbine since they seem to forget these points more and more.
Imagine going over a hill and finding an entirely player made city with player merchants, player farms and workshops, player designed quests (get 10 pieces of wood), and player activites (some sort of festival). And then you can decide to go attack everyone and kill them all and burn the city down. Or build your own house and contribute to the city. And then people come from around the world to trade or visit you. Thats the attraction. You have PVP, PVE, economic activity, time sink, money fountains, just generally player made production.
hey Jon i agree whit you on the tutorial thing, i played a bit on eveonline tutorial and i find it quite good but again i already played the game four years
BestSigEver :P
This really depends on implementation. The problem with your example is that the devs gave players an incentive to leave the active community and made housing an unsocial feature. That's just a bad implementation.
Housing shouldn't be a private place to do things that can be done elsewhere, like crafting, it should really be a means of furthering the customisation of your character and expressing yourself (as well as showing off your accomplishments).
I remember in EQ2 they made interesting use of the feature through the broker system. If you went to a player's house to buy an item off them it would be 20% cheaper than if you bought it through the broker. This made it a bit more social since I'd often be going around and seeing what other people have done with their houses whilst I was shopping. It doesn't solve the problem you're describing but it's a step in the right direction.
I remember my huge collection of books as well, all lined up neatly on my shelves... every single one was a complete book that could be opened and read, many of them obtained via quests or creature mastery and developing the lore of the game world. I didn't read all of them, but just knowing that they were there and could be read really made the world feel that much deeper.
The key, as with all MMO features, is to integrate it into other systems. Crafting always feels 'tacked on' unless it's integrated into the economy properly. It's the same with housing, it won't work unless they work it into the social systems of the game, giving players reasons to visit other players' houses and involving it with other aspects of gameplay.
I was about to reply to hogscraper on this as well. However, after reading your response, Alberel, I no longer feel the need to. You pretty much made the point I was thinking. Well done!
Your fail comment, failed.
RE: Housing
I find housing connects players with their world in a 'deeper' sense that their alone character (Avatar). There is something to be said about displaying your items, showing your style. In many ways, I find housing is what makes me feel more 'at home' in the game.
Part of what made SWG so much fun for me at the start was POB player ships... ships you can walk around in, decorate, and even fight with. So not only did you have planetery housing, there was(is) ship-based housing.
Now I know the uber-PvP hard-core 24x7 only-going-to-fight crowd really only needs a bank/storage terminal for stims and such, but part of the social aspect of being a MMO is having an impact on your environment.
Plopping a house down.. making your own town.. or being mayor of a city is definately making an impact on your environment and are probably one of the strongest reasons to have them in the game.. it promotes community.
STO has the 'possiblity' of ship interior customization. Its a start, but I hope they don't just leave it like that and never touch the possiblity of crew quarters, ship boarding, etc.
Ideally, a 'housing' system should appeal to both the player-based city... as well as the NPC-city based housing.. like instanced apartments/condo's. I don't see a reason why both couldn't exist with right controls. There are some characters I'd prefer live in a metro/NPC/city.. and others I'd like to put in shack in the back-woods... and others with their own estate.
Guild-based 'team' storage is ok.. convenient for shared storage.. but there is still something more personal about having your own 'home'... be that a building, a condo (instance), or a ship.
SWG/STO/(SWTOR)
Sorry, I think you miss understood me. I really like crafting and I can say I had my share of it in SWG. Although there were a few issues with it.
One thing I liked in SWG was the ability to customize and colorize the item names
QFE
Yes yes yes! Absolutely agree on the list, especially #1. I refer to that Strictly Social dynamic as "Putterability" or "Retention Gameplay"--how one can putter about and just be in the world. That is so important to keeping people involved, content and immersed within the whole of a gameworld (which directly translates to: customers retained), and that dynamic is so woefully neglected by developers.
i found swg's crafting system very easy to get used to ounce you put in 1 or 2 hrs of work to figure it out
it even got fun
swg had one of the greatest crafting systems out there if not the greatest witch i believe it was and most people i talk to who like crafting tend to agree
just because you dont like crafting doesn't mean people who do like crafting didnt like swg's crafting system
iv playd many mmo's in my time and none of the crafting systems compare to swg's
Sorry, I think you miss understood me. I really like crafting and I can say I had my share of it in SWG. Although there were a few issues with it.
One thing I liked in SWG was the ability to customize and colorize the item names
QFE
perhaps i did misunderstand i thought you were trying to say you hated the swg crafting system
theres so many people today that don't know what the hell there talking about that bash swg for the sake of bashing it
it gets hard to recognize someone who is talking from actual experience
and for that i apologize
i actually looked forward to going to my harvesters every other day and never used droids to do it but then again its the intricacies that thrill me in an mmo
as for using backpacks to sort mats i had cabinets lol
running 2 crafting classes and CH was great with the cabinets that is :P
as for not making lower level stuff i usually made anything and everything i could especially after becoming master in both of my crafting professions but then again i have the toy maker play style (i understand thats kind of rare)
and after all you had to be certified to use something before it was truly use full so people dont stick to just the high end stuff because it was next to worthless till they could use it :P
so no mater the level most stuff was always in demand
there really wasn't anything i didnt like about swg crafting
hell even mat obtaining always kept me on the look out for the better mats
as for the 3rd party crap ya i was aware of it and wanted to personally go and kill any one who used it cause in my mind that's cheating
as for using houses for just crafting storage i never did that
i had a guild hall i used as a crafting hub for my town and it was well decorated and furnished
and my large house i used to display things and hang trophies and other weird thing i found throughout the game
in the end before the NGE apocalypse hit i was one of the more sought out architect/ droid engineers on my server
and had ties to many of my customers who kept coming back to buy from me or my fellow guild and/or city members
man i miss it sorry about suddenly reminiscing there lol :P
any who glad to meat a fellow crafter
and i still say out of all the games i have played i have yet to find one with a crafting system as good and as relevant as swg's
Good list in the article.
It seems like I've written posts on different forums many times in the last couple years specifically about your 1,3 & 5 (I think it was)... Social, Housing and Crafting. I've been mainly thinking the same things. Social: definately need fun stuff that isn't all about killing stuff - especially after playing the game for several months. Housing: always question why it's left out time and time again when it's always made very clear by the interested playerbases that it's highly desired. Crafting: dear Lord, somebody come up with a crafting system that isn't completely boring, useless, or a major chore -- and one that doesn't just make players go kill yet more mobs. We're already killing mobs for every other part of the game so can it just be a little bit more independent?
Perfect list! Finaly someone who understand what MMO are at the core.
-------------------------------------
Before: developers loved games and made money.
Now: developers love money and make games.
I have never understood player housing. I think only girls want to play house. Or, maybe because it is so limited. If we had to dig the basement out, put up the drywall, or pour the concrete I'd probably get it. COH/COV has base building. Someone said AoC took this idea an improved on it. I've never played the pvp part where they come shoot it up or burn it down. That could suck after spending all that time building it, but maybe if you get points everytime the enemy destroys each chair, lamp, or couch, people would go for it. Maybe if there was a reason for housing, like...player need to go to the bathroom #2 NOW! EQ2 uses guild halls where you can use portals to travel places faster, but it's probably not worth the gold they have to pay for it. Maybe steal some ideas from the SIMS. idk, I've never played that either. But that's kind'a a girl's game too. Houses attract girl gamers?? It's just marketing? Nah, girls aren't stupid. Guys are easy to trick. Look at Wow. Flash some bright lights maybe some cleavage and they are glued to the screen for years. I don't think girls are falling for that, no good evil marketers. Am I wrong?
With housing, it does add another layer of persistence for the players and it's a place they can refer to as various things like a "keep" or a "hideout". I don't think housing for players is entirely necessary, but a guild hall would be nice, probably easy to implement via instancing (yeah yeah, I know that'll hurt the "immersion" for some of the pacifists) to avoid people from having to compete for "lots" like in UO and SWG.
Overall, it's something else a player can work on and do while experiencing a fantasy world since the major selling point behind MMORPG's was always about persistence and it shouldn't just be limited to character and gear progression. This goes back to focusing on the social side of the MMORPG rather than the combat/rewards side, after all, the major advantage that MMORPG's have above all other genre's is its social side.
Well they are indeed too underrated. But it is not enough to just have them, they also must be corelated. I formulated my ideas as a sort of reply in my own article, here:
www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3400534/thread/269972#3400534
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I'm with ya here, I played a couple that had housing and just used as storage, looked like my office after a while. Last time I played coh/v the base raids were never available, are they even live yet? The comment about having to use the bathroom made me laugh. Now if the housing does attract more females hell ya im all for that. As far as the virtual female eyecandy in mmo's, First thing I check out is how realistic and perfect the parts are. They are getting better and better, some breath. Lotro was last male char I made, all male since eq, ao, swg on. For me mmo's are entertainement like movies only interactive. I would rather watch Tomb Raider or any Female then Conan or James Bond in the same action scenerios.
This post is intentionally written as to not make any sense what so ever. Thank You Very Much.
I'm with ya here, I played a couple that had housing and just used as storage, looked like my office after a while. Last time I played coh/v the base raids were never available, are they even live yet? The comment about having to use the bathroom made me laugh. Now if the housing does attract more females hell ya im all for that. As far as the virtual female eyecandy in mmo's, First thing I check out is how realistic and perfect the parts are. They are getting better and better, some breath. Lotro was last male char I made, all male since eq, ao, swg on. For me mmo's are entertainement like movies only interactive. I would rather watch Tomb Raider or any Female then Conan or James Bond in the same action scenerios.
The simple ability to purchase a room or stall in a city to store your stuff or display your wares would be all thats needed. More substational is the abilit for groups of players to build housing where they can meet, craft, store things, and be safe. It makes sense more in some games (eve) than others (AOC).
actually you didnt have to compete for lots in SWG you could pretty much put down any ware on the map as long as it was atleast 10k away from the nearest city or poi
as for static housing iv always hated it i never used my FFXI or EQ2 housing for anything more then storage because people couldn't randomly come to see it and it servers no other real in game purpose
i much prefer being able to put down a physical building then to have a static apartment like housing
i found swg's crafting system very easy to get used to ounce you put in 1 or 2 hrs of work to figure it out
it even got fun
swg had one of the greatest crafting systems out there if not the greatest witch i believe it was and most people i talk to who like crafting tend to agree
just because you dont like crafting doesn't mean people who do like crafting didnt like swg's crafting system
iv playd many mmo's in my time and none of the crafting systems compare to swg's
Sorry, I think you miss understood me. I really like crafting and I can say I had my share of it in SWG. Although there were a few issues with it.
One thing I liked in SWG was the ability to customize and colorize the item names
QFE
perhaps i did misunderstand i thought you were trying to say you hated the swg crafting system
theres so many people today that don't know what the hell there talking about that bash swg for the sake of bashing it
it gets hard to recognize someone who is talking from actual experience
and for that i apologize
i actually looked forward to going to my harvesters every other day and never used droids to do it but then again its the intricacies that thrill me in an mmo
as for using backpacks to sort mats i had cabinets lol
running 2 crafting classes and CH was great with the cabinets that is :P
as for not making lower level stuff i usually made anything and everything i could especially after becoming master in both of my crafting professions but then again i have the toy maker play style (i understand thats kind of rare)
and after all you had to be certified to use something before it was truly use full so people dont stick to just the high end stuff because it was next to worthless till they could use it :P
so no mater the level most stuff was always in demand
there really wasn't anything i didnt like about swg crafting
hell even mat obtaining always kept me on the look out for the better mats
as for the 3rd party crap ya i was aware of it and wanted to personally go and kill any one who used it cause in my mind that's cheating
as for using houses for just crafting storage i never did that
i had a guild hall i used as a crafting hub for my town and it was well decorated and furnished
and my large house i used to display things and hang trophies and other weird thing i found throughout the game
in the end before the NGE apocalypse hit i was one of the more sought out architect/ droid engineers on my server
and had ties to many of my customers who kept coming back to buy from me or my fellow guild and/or city members
man i miss it sorry about suddenly reminiscing there lol :P
any who glad to meat a fellow crafter
and i still say out of all the games i have played i have yet to find one with a crafting system as good and as relevant as swg's
Memories sometimes hurts.
I didn't play all MMO but since SWG I didn't see any one that had such a good system: good resources gathering, crafting experimentation system and resources stats, ability to choose and colorize the name of the end product, name of the creator automatically added to the item, looted top end components and not the least player made economy, from dedicated crafter to dedicated merchants through dedicated resources gatherers.
As many others I would bite for a simple carbon copy of SWG system, but I would enhance it with a few features:
actually you didnt have to compete for lots in SWG you could pretty much put down any ware on the map as long as it was atleast 10k away from the nearest city or poi
as for static housing iv always hated it i never used my FFXI or EQ2 housing for anything more then storage because people couldn't randomly come to see it and it servers no other real in game purpose
i much prefer being able to put down a physical building then to have a static apartment like housing
As for the lots inside the city which is always in the most convenient of places. Yes, you had to compete. I suppose you weren't a Master Weaponsmith looking for an ideal spot to sell your wares though -_- Anything with limited amounts of "physical space" even within a virtual environment is going to lead to some form of competition for "lots" or space. Just like in UO, it occurred in SWG. Shoot, I had a whole player paid off just so I can have his lots to use to farm ideal resource spots. I'm pretty damn sure there was some form of competing for lots in there especially as a crafter.
This article really drives the point home:
Sandboxes rule and themeparks drool.
Tried: EvE, DnD Online, LotRO, WAR, AoC,
Played: UO, SWG(pre-cu), GuildWars, FFXI, WoW
Liked: UO, SWG, GuildWars
Disliked: WoW, FFXI
I find it ironic that the first thing that came to my mind when reading this article was City of Eternals. Sure, it's casual and it's browser based, but hell, it has more of these features than most MMOs do.
Check out the MUD I'm making!
Reading the posts in this articles really shows the affect WoW has had on this genre. There are a startling number of people who have never played a sandbox and have never experienced player housing, open worlds, GvG, basically everything the genre once stood for. I think a sandbox game that captures the brilliance of games like UO and SWG(Before sony changed it, of course) is set up to do very well in the market right now.
Tried: EvE, DnD Online, LotRO, WAR, AoC,
Played: UO, SWG(pre-cu), GuildWars, FFXI, WoW
Liked: UO, SWG, GuildWars
Disliked: WoW, FFXI
I wouldn't see much of a game if you remove all of the above there. Levels AND Talents/Skills? The game would just be pure role-playing without any quantitative measuring stick to gauge any sort of character progression. A type of game without any listed above will be very niche and arguably too niche to even become self-sustainable (obviously based off speculation).
---
Let's speculate a bit:
What if games kept track of actual game experience in the form of how many times you swung various kinds of weapons, how often you cast a spell, or how often you performed a skill? Then, without ever asigning an experience point value to your character, without ever asigning a level to your character, simply allowed you to get better. This would be somewhat similar to real life.
You might be hot stuff with a short sword but when it comes to swinging a battle axe, you might very much resemble a newb.
Instead of having a character class, you might have a long list of skills you can choose to learn from. You might go into a town and find a man who is good at that skill, and apprentice yourself. You might spend some time in classes learning that skill. Then, when you went out into the world you could practice the skill by doing it, and get better at it.
Why do we need arbitrarilly designated experience points and levels to play these games? Seems to me that you can do away with it fairly easily.
I was hoping that Champions Online might bite the bullet and try to implement a system similar to Champions Face to Face by ignoring levels and character classes. They didn't. Sigh. When will devs break out of the basic experience grind/level grind thought pattern? I think the players are ready for it, even if the devs don't think we can handle it.
---
What might be the results in game of such a departure from the norm?
Instead of being The Warrior, The Tanker, The Fighter, The Magician, The Necromancer, you would all be Yourselves.
You might enter a group by saying, "Hey, I'm James, I swing a mean broadsword and can cast a few combat spells that enhance our ability to defeat some types of monsters like werewolves. I can also use a Composit Recurve Bow, and I'm good at finding food and other things in wilderness situations, and I can sneak around pretty well."
OK, it's a lot easier to say "Hey, I'm James, L6 Ranger". The thing is, it's a lot more fun to say the former, and very emersion detrimental to say the latter.
---
You might search for members for a group by listing what skills you think you might need, and having the search tool list the available players in terms of best skill to least skill in those areas. You might send out a few feelers to those who you think would want to team with you and check it out. Maybe the very best wouldn't want to go with you, but you would not want to choose from the lowest available yourself. Maybe you could add an additional search perameter of "those with skills near my own skills".
What I'm getting at is Levels and experience points is old school. Let's see something new.
I pointed out Leveling AND Skills. I was merely saying you need some quantitative way to measure a character's progression or most people will have a hard time finding a direction to take. Look at all the popular MMO's and see that every single one has a way to measure some form of progression. Even EVE has skills that measures your abilities. I think you emphasized the fact that I was pointing out the removal of levels, but forgotten about the simultaneous removal of skills. It simply cannot be done AND expected to profit. Let's face it, the average MMO player needs the game to help point them in directions and to an extent, I don't blame them. Taking out character progression will just turn the game into another Second Life or Love or something similar.
I think a game could have no levels and no skills, and still be interesting.
I just think you gotta separate in-combat progression tracking from out-of-combat tracking. If you measure progression out of combat, then really there's no need to also then measure it in-combat. Which is essentially what levels are. They measure your progress, then when you do fight, you don't have to worry about individual skills. But even that's not necessary.
Take a look for example at WoW's arena. Forget that it sucks for a moment, I think the core idea is good. It has a ranking system where if you win, you get points, and if you lose, you lose points. So your character's progression could be measured by how much you've increased your ranking over a certain amount of time. So what's the point of also measuring a character's level on top of that? Or skill with a weapon/spell? It's just not needed.
Another great example is the economy. Which that, coupled with social stuff like housing, was the point of this article. But that's already measured perfectly! It's how much gold you have, and what you can buy with it. If all a player cares about is the social/economic aspects of the game, then why is it important that he's also level67? It just doesn't matter. His progression is gold. He started out at level0 and now he's at level 100k gold.
So really, if you have a little system to track progression like that for every aspect of the game, there's no need to have levels, skills or classes at all.
My opinion anyways. Cheers.
actually you didnt have to compete for lots in SWG you could pretty much put down any ware on the map as long as it was atleast 10k away from the nearest city or poi
as for static housing iv always hated it i never used my FFXI or EQ2 housing for anything more then storage because people couldn't randomly come to see it and it servers no other real in game purpose
i much prefer being able to put down a physical building then to have a static apartment like housing
As for the lots inside the city which is always in the most convenient of places. Yes, you had to compete. I suppose you weren't a Master Weaponsmith looking for an ideal spot to sell your wares though -_- Anything with limited amounts of "physical space" even within a virtual environment is going to lead to some form of competition for "lots" or space. Just like in UO, it occurred in SWG. Shoot, I had a whole player paid off just so I can have his lots to use to farm ideal resource spots. I'm pretty damn sure there was some form of competing for lots in there especially as a crafter.
nope not a weapon smith
but an architect / droid enginear :P
now i never played uo and i may of bean missing your meaning when i responded i did think you were talking about a system like in vanguard ware the spots for houses were pre designated
i was on ahazi (at least i think that was the server name) and there was always room to put down then again i didnt stick around the main city on tatooween but bestine
i did move several times when ever i updated my housing and it really didnt seem to mater how close i came to the city or how far people still came to buy my stuff and eventually i ended up running a city not to far from bestine
maybe i just got lucky which is a definite possibility but it didnt seem that bad to me