is this a gut feeling, a statement intended to provoke, or do you have some proof beyond the subs for WoW?
All these anti- housing Dbags are just here to provoke the rest of us by using their latent machismo to claim we are wearing dresses and playing house all day.
None of them likely played any game between 96' and 04', prior to playing WoW, and choose to be self-rightous about the style of games they walked in on when they first started playing. This whole convo is basically old-timers vs nooblins.
Not that you are wearing dress .. but that you are making all wrong assumptions.
I started playing pre-cursor of MMOs BEFORE UO .. and found that UO and EQ are bad games, compared to the modern MMOs. Pretty much shattered your illusion that all old timers like the old stuff.
You are basically putting our head in the sand (how quaint) and ignore progress.
Well I played UO as well and I think it was a better game than modern mmos.
So?
You just having an opinion, like me and opinions are like asses everybody have one.
Unless you want to actually talk about it and talk about certain game features instead just flaming and imposing your opinion as 'only truthful'.
So the statement "This whole convo is basically old-timers vs nooblins." is wrong.
Just that fact that you and I do not agree is evidence that the statement is wrong.
agree, so the converse could be true as well. If a game came out with great graphics, great play, and had housing, there could potentially be more players who would use it. Especially if it had some purpose other than cosmetics.
The question though, isn't could housing be cool or fun, but is it a feature that gains the developers more money than a similar game without housing?
Take two games that, to use your description, have great graphics and great play, but one has housing and one doesn't. Make them functionally identical, except for those elements that housing advocates insist need to be different to facilitate housing. Is there any way to suggest that the game with housing will be more popular, have more subscribers, etc. than the game without housing?
People need to deal with the reality that games exist solely to make money for the developers. So where is the impetus to put housing into a game if it cannot be demonstrated, or even suggested, that there's an actual market that will play a game with housing and not play that same game if housing is absent?
agree, so the converse could be true as well. If a game came out with great graphics, great play, and had housing, there could potentially be more players who would use it. Especially if it had some purpose other than cosmetics.
It could be true but there is no evidence that it *is* true. If you are a dev, will you bet money on it?
Well I played UO as well and I think it was a better game than modern mmos.
So?
You just having an opinion, like me and opinions are like asses everybody have one.
Unless you want to actually talk about it and talk about certain game features instead just flaming and imposing your opinion as 'only truthful'.
Good for you. Back when I was playing UO, I thought it was a great game too. Times change. Most people who ever played UO have moved on to other things. Clearly, if they all shared your opinion, they'd be playing UO too, assuming they're still playing MMOs at all today.
They're not.
You like the features of UO and that's fine, you're welcome to your opinion. Many others do not like them. Myself, my views have changed over the years, to the point that I'd no longer enjoy playing UO as it originally was. That's just not my playstyle anymore.
Good for you. Back when I was playing UO, I thought it was a great game too. Times change. Most people who ever played UO have moved on to other things. Clearly, if they all shared your opinion, they'd be playing UO too, assuming they're still playing MMOs at all today.
They're not.
You like the features of UO and that's fine, you're welcome to your opinion. Many others do not like them. Myself, my views have changed over the years, to the point that I'd no longer enjoy playing UO as it originally was. That's just not my playstyle anymore.
Sure nothing wrong with that.
Still "they'd be still playing UO" - sorry they would not - game has 15 years old. Most people will be burned out on any game after peroid like that. No matter if it is themepark or sandbox.
You're partially right though - many of them don't actively play mmorpg's anymore. Quite a few of them still lurk some forums / sites waiting for some more VR game.
Few of them buy some new mmo once in a year, but stop playing after 3 weeks and all I am hering "too limited, don't have staying power".
There certainly are enough players who'd play a game without a combat focus.
But then "kitchen sink game design" (trying to do too many things and doing none of them well) reduces the number.
And gameplay without direction reduces the number further. (Although it's less about giving players overt direction and more about not hiding the fun. I never had direction in Puzzle Pirates yet the game made it easy to find fun things to do. But a lot of sandbox games make it ridiculously hard to find something fun to do.)
But if you didn't kitchen sink and you didn't hide the fun, I think there's actually quite a few players interested in non-combat gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Still "they'd be still playing UO" - sorry they would not - game has 15 years old. Most people will be burned out on any game after peroid like that. No matter if it is themepark or sandbox.
You're partially right though - many of them don't actively play mmorpg's anymore. Quite a few of them still lurk some forums / sites waiting for some more VR game.
Few of them buy some new mmo once in a year, but stop playing after 3 weeks and all I am hering "too limited, don't have staying power".
I don't know about that, I once played an online text-based game constantly for 16 years. If It hadn't shut down, I'd probably still be playing it today. Of course, that's not the same kind of game as an MMO and you're right, once you run out of content, there isn't a lot to do in most games, but it's not just time that drives people away.
My point about most of them not playing MMOs wasn't that the games drove them away, but that they grew up, got lives and found other things to do with their lives. Most people who started playing MMOs with Meridian 59 or UO have gotten married, had kids, have careers, just don't have time to sit around and play a game, especially not a game that consumes your life like a lot of the early games did.
That's why a lot of the people who did remain gamers moved to more casual games. They wanted to be able to play a game an hour at a time because they just didn't have time to do anything else. That's what I do. I couldn't sit down and play a game for 8 hours at a stretch if I wanted to. I'm too busy. I want a game I can jump into, get something meaningful done and log out. I will agree, there's a lot of really bad games out there which don't give me the experience I want but it has nothing to do with being too limited and a lot to do with not being geared toward my limited time.
I think that's pretty consistent though, lots of people are in my shoes, they can play an hour here and an hour there, but no more. These are people who have plenty of money to spend on the games, being financially stable, they can also spend money in the cash shop, which I think is why you see so many of them. They pay to get ahead because they can afford it and because they just don't have the time to stay "competitive" otherwise.
It's just not the same world as it was with EQ and UO. That world is gone forever.
Because today it's not the cool thing. Everyone wants instant rewards and lots of them. They don't want a house they can go chill out in with thier friends...I say they, but I love player housing.
People who argue there is no market for decent player housing are mongs. There obviously is judging from this thread alone. So pipe down.
Should the game be dictated by it? Hell no. Should players be compelled to use housing? Nope. Should there be the option? OBVIOUSLY. Its really about choice and about variety of play. Personally I like options. Others dont appear to. We can discuss the worthwhileness of their time on this planet some other time.
I've always liked the idea of housing but the way it's usually implemented leaves a lot to be desired. The houses are generally useless. Only in very few cases do you get any half decent options to decorate the place let alone change the structure to suit yourself. What usually ends up happening is that people get houses to act as travel hubs or for storage space and otherwise ignore them. Developers obviously don't see it was something worth spending a lot of time on.
I think most high end developers will now leave a lot of content out of their games and do the WAIT n SEE.if they can retain high profit numbers they wil ladd content but only in xpacs,don't expect complete games on release.
Archeage is giving us more content than most any developer ever has,the housing is not done as well as it could but at least it is there.
I think the devs will have to consider Archeage's approach to housing.It is in it's own zone separate from the game world.However the ydo add a few features like gardens and tree planting and storage and totems or whatever those owls are.
I beleive we might see quite an elaborate housing system come EQ3,but i would say it is 100% a guarantee SOE will devise a system based all on Cash shop.So yo uwant a nice cool house?SOE will make you pay a couple hundred bucks and then more for the cool furniture.I highly doubt SOE will encorporate gardens or treees/environement stuff,no cash shop in that.
I feel that as long as competition remains and few deliver complete games,there will always be a developer that takes advatange of the obvious game selling ideas.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Aion housing is pretty well done for a themepark. It basically does the following for the game:
-Gives another vanity aspect the players can control
-A entirely new profession to craft furniture
-Serves as extra storage space (need crafted furniture)
-Gigantic gold sink. Everyone gets an instanced studio, but there's non-instanced house/mansion/estate/palace. Suffice to say the latter 2 types are very few in number and cost so much to buy/maintain that less than 1% of the player base could afford it.
-NCSoft makes more money from selling special furniture in the cash shop
The housing system seems well recieved enough in Korea that the next update will expand upon it.
To work really well, housing needs to be designed into the game from day 1. The devs at The Repopulation have the right idea - the housing, player structures/player cities are an integral part of the game itself. That's probably the only decent way of doing things without it feeling like a afterthought with little value.
Housing worked great in UO, and it served many different functions, for all kinds of people.
1. Crafters - If you crafted, you placed a house near a mine, good wood area, etc... Raw materials were heavy and you were better off being close to the house for that reason and for pks. You could unload more often and quicker. Plus have all of your crafting equipment.
2. Vendors - A lot of houses near heavily used cities were good for vendors, since their was no central auction facility. If you had a good spot, you could sell tons of goods. People would drop recall runes to get people to visit their shop that had a bad location, but some people liked to make runes in bad spots of dungeons there for a while, was not fun to recall into a dragon heh. Also outside of dungeons where people would often die, it was good to sell kits that people could buy to help them go get their body back.
3. Dungeon adventurers - If you had a favorite dungeon, it was nice to be close to it, or a land spawning point for something you liked to farm.
4. PKs - Their were many different advantages for PKs, to have houses placed for them and their non-pk alts. Usually had to do with their hunting area, good refuge, and switch out point...
5. Guilds - pooling together to get a nice castle/keep/tower in a nice spot for the guild to moon gate or recall off of a rune together to a hunting spot or anything else they were doing....Lots of people role played and made towns, held events and such also.
Housing was popular in UO, and I can't think of anyone I played with that did not own a house, and it was a neccesity for them, despite having banks, boats (they could store stuff), and alts banks. I do not know if themepark and housing will ever have that neccesity. I liked my house in Vanguard, but it was more extended bank space than dwelling, even though I had fun with all the xmas stuff they gave out and made it pretty crazy looking. I really dislike instanced housing, and would be fine with just more bank space, if thats the option.
On a side note, if they relaunched an official classic UO server and kept with the original theme of doing expansion type stuff, I would be back and be good....I dislike the new skill systems and such...2D client is fine by me.... I know its never happening, so I gotta hope EQ3 will bring back some of what original EQ was like (before LDoN and instance fests), but i am not too hopeful.
Very nice post. I wouldn't go back to a reset UO but I would go back to a reset Horizons. Not only did you have housing and crafting buildings, but world construction projects. You couldn't get to an island without building the bridge. You could build lamp posts in your town and even statues which gave house owners buffs.
Originally posted by monarc333
Well, frankly, I dont know the answer to this. But, its not all as bad as you may think. GW2, will have "districts", sorta like personal housing. Rifts will have "slivers" in their new expac coming this year. We still have EQ2 (which has the best implementation of housing imho). There's also Vanguard with their terrific housing. And, theres SWTOR, with their "ship is a house" philosophy.
I really think WoW missed the boat on housing. Its just one of those things people have to take up there time at max lvl. Never understood WoW's thought process on that, even when they explained it.
Dunno, seems like we have housing. Just not in every game.
If the housing is instanced, it detracts from the point of housing. Even vanguard, with houses out in the open, it's an instance to enter it. This removes the ability to look through the window as you walk past, or to pop open the door and peak in. If you have to load in then load out again, most people won't bother. Decorating a house or building a fancy yard isn't as interesting if nobody is ever going to see it. I used to love walking around Horizons looking at how creative people were in building yards, gardens and fences.
Originally posted by nariusseldon
Well, play farmville. No adventure. No dragons. No demons. Lots of farming stuff. Perfect for you.
I would love a non-instanced MMO farmville. Where people actually depended on each other for prosperity. An animal farmer having to buy grain from the wheat farmer.
Originally posted by nariusseldon
Hmm in which MMORPG you can own a FARM and raise crops? (I suppose it will be WOW after MOP).
Runescape premium has farming. I'm not sure what it's like as it was added after I quit.
When people suggest to go play the sims, to leave their adventure game alone, they miss the point. Having a place to display the trophy from killing, or building a crafting center closer to the resources is part of what makes it fun. It's the combination of games. Having one part augment the others. I don't want adventurers to be forced to use a crafter to get the best item, or be forced to build a house to store his gear, but I also don't want the house and the crafter to be useless tacked on fluff.
Well, play farmville. No adventure. No dragons. No demons. Lots of farming stuff. Perfect for you.
I would love a non-instanced MMO farmville. Where people actually depended on each other for prosperity. An animal farmer having to buy grain from the wheat farmer.
Go play A Tale in the Desert. Not focus on farming but at least it is crafting centric.
Originally posted by nariusseldon
Hmm in which MMORPG you can own a FARM and raise crops? (I suppose it will be WOW after MOP).
Runescape premium has farming. I'm not sure what it's like as it was added after I quit.
When people suggest to go play the sims, to leave their adventure game alone, they miss the point. Having a place to display the trophy from killing, or building a crafting center closer to the resources is part of what makes it fun. It's the combination of games. Having one part augment the others. I don't want adventurers to be forced to use a crafter to get the best item, or be forced to build a house to store his gear, but I also don't want the house and the crafter to be useless tacked on fluff.
Displaying trophy is MUCH MORE DIRECT when you can wear it on your toon. That is why tier gear looks different. Very few is going to go visit your house so you can brag.
Displaying trophy is MUCH MORE DIRECT when you can wear it on your toon. That is why tier gear looks different. Very few is going to go visit your house so you can brag.
When you have to zone 3 or 4 times or go out of your way to visit someone's house, nobody will visit. But when it's fairly local and no zoning, people do look around and look inside. It's not about bragging, it's about being creative (without spending real money to decorate your real house). The more variety the dev offers, the better. EQ1 now has housing and contests on who has the best decorated house/guild hall. They are partially instanced so I don't see alot of wanderers, but I do look at the houses in my neighborhood. In WoW you get an achievement for 50 and 100 mini pets...in EQ2 they wander your house (although 100 might get crowded). Lotro has a taxadermist to make trophies from rare drops(not always rare mobs) from around the world.
I think the main reason player housing has gone away or poorly executed is it does not fit with the typical mmo design we now see. The mmo experience today has a beginning and end and anything that is not relevant to that progress is extraneous and thus irrelevant.
A lot of people don't understand player housing and it's inclusion makes no sense what so ever. They need defined carefully developed and driven content. Anything open ended is foriegn to their mindset.
I don't think it's really generational, but certain things appeal to certain types of people. When I was a kid, I was not one of those people saying, "There's nothing for kids to do around here." I invented activities to keep me occupied and entertained. Now days everyone has so many forms of entertainment to choose from, so the idea of creating your own entertainment is a foriegn concept to many people. I think we have become to a great extent passive consumers of others creativity, so when a developer says here's some tools, do with it what you will, a lot of people scratch their heads and say 'huh'?
Also, for a lot of people gaming is ego. They want to be the best. They want fame or infamy among their peers. Decorating your house doesn't really equate with that mindset most of the time. It's seen more as a side activity which is basically wasted energy toward acheiving superiority.
Those are some of the reasons I can think of.
I have a friend who has been in the game industry since the 80s, who play UO, EQ and SWG back in the day. He certainly can't be a new generation out of touch with it player and he thinks housing is a waste.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I think the main reason player housing has gone away or poorly executed is it does not fit with the typical mmo design we now see. The mmo experience today has a beginning and end and anything that is not relevant to that progress is extraneous and thus irrelevant.
A lot of people don't understand player housing and it's inclusion makes no sense what so ever. They need defined carefully developed and driven content. Anything open ended is foriegn to their mindset.
I don't think it's really generational, but certain things appeal to certain types of people. When I was a kid, I was not one of those people saying, "There's nothing for kids to do around here." I invented activities to keep me occupied and entertained. Now days everyone has so many forms of entertainment to choose from, so the idea of creating your own entertainment is a foriegn concept to many people. I think we have become to a great extent passive consumers of others creativity, so when a developer says here's some tools, do with it what you will, a lot of people scratch their heads and say 'huh'?
Also, for a lot of people gaming is ego. They want to be the best. They want fame or infamy among their peers. Decorating your house doesn't really equate with that mindset most of the time. It's seen more as a side activity which is basically wasted energy toward acheiving superiority.
Those are some of the reasons I can think of.
I have a friend who has been in the game industry since the 80s, who play UO, EQ and SWG back in the day. He certainly can't be a new generation out of touch with it player and he thinks housing is a waste.
I have a friend who has been in the game industry since the 80s, who play UO, EQ and SWG back in the day. He certainly can't be a new generation out of touch with it player and he thinks housing is a waste.
Ever ask him why?
Or is he the type who hides his G.I. Joe in his dresser and talks out of his ass 90% of the time?
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4 Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
I have a friend who has been in the game industry since the 80s, who play UO, EQ and SWG back in the day. He certainly can't be a new generation out of touch with it player and he thinks housing is a waste.
Ever ask him why?
Or is he the type who hides his G.I. Joe in his dresser and talks out of his ass 90% of the time?
I have a friend who has been in the game industry since the 80s, who play UO, EQ and SWG back in the day. He certainly can't be a new generation out of touch with it player and he thinks housing is a waste.
Ever ask him why?
Or is he the type who hides his G.I. Joe in his dresser and talks out of his ass 90% of the time?
who cares why lol.
Well, there is a difference between a guy with a solid argument that "it takes a lot of resources to make, and only X amount of people seem to use it, or even care" (which I would like to see proof of, btw, and using SWG or VG as an example, not a half-assed system like LotRO - which *I* don't even give a shit about).
VS
"LOL U IS BABBY, PLAY FARMVILLE" (followed by sputtering noises and stroking his no-no bits)
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as far as the developers needing incentive to make money off of it....
take EQ2 for example, very good housing system and a huge chunk of their real money marketplace is housing items. chairs, tables, pets, etc etc, they even sell full sets like a "bedroom set". they keep making new stuff for the market so they are making enough money from it to warrant paying designers to make it.
they even tweaked the basic housing code a bit to make a create your own dungeon system. its a little lacking in options atm but has huge replayability potential if a solid system was in place. housing can also add a bit of a collection feel to a game, either through quest rewards, seasonal events, trophies from rare/hard encounters. and probably the biggest aspect of housing, guild housing.
to me housing is not a HUGE must be at launch priority, but it is something that would add quite a bit of longevity to a game.
Comments
So the statement "This whole convo is basically old-timers vs nooblins." is wrong.
Just that fact that you and I do not agree is evidence that the statement is wrong.
The question though, isn't could housing be cool or fun, but is it a feature that gains the developers more money than a similar game without housing?
Take two games that, to use your description, have great graphics and great play, but one has housing and one doesn't. Make them functionally identical, except for those elements that housing advocates insist need to be different to facilitate housing. Is there any way to suggest that the game with housing will be more popular, have more subscribers, etc. than the game without housing?
People need to deal with the reality that games exist solely to make money for the developers. So where is the impetus to put housing into a game if it cannot be demonstrated, or even suggested, that there's an actual market that will play a game with housing and not play that same game if housing is absent?
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
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It could be true but there is no evidence that it *is* true. If you are a dev, will you bet money on it?
Good for you. Back when I was playing UO, I thought it was a great game too. Times change. Most people who ever played UO have moved on to other things. Clearly, if they all shared your opinion, they'd be playing UO too, assuming they're still playing MMOs at all today.
They're not.
You like the features of UO and that's fine, you're welcome to your opinion. Many others do not like them. Myself, my views have changed over the years, to the point that I'd no longer enjoy playing UO as it originally was. That's just not my playstyle anymore.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Sure it is wrong. I never said otherwise.
I knew people that played UO with me for whom WoW was hundreds times better and I knew people for whom WoW was awful.
It was always like that.
Still you're as much pushy and 'elitist' as guys who say "lobby co-op games are trash".
You do same thing by saying "VR are boring. Go play farmville".
There is audience for both of those kind of games. One is obviously bigger I give you that.
Still second one is getting neglected for like 8 years now.
I am not surprised that industry don't want to take risks and invest big bucks into second let's call it VR audience.
I am also and you should also be not surprised that they are more and more visible and vocal.
If I had to bet I would say that topics like that will spawn even more often (they do spawn more often now than 5 years ago) it's kinda logical.
Sure nothing wrong with that.
Still "they'd be still playing UO" - sorry they would not - game has 15 years old. Most people will be burned out on any game after peroid like that. No matter if it is themepark or sandbox.
You're partially right though - many of them don't actively play mmorpg's anymore. Quite a few of them still lurk some forums / sites waiting for some more VR game.
Few of them buy some new mmo once in a year, but stop playing after 3 weeks and all I am hering "too limited, don't have staying power".
Well, sort of.
There certainly are enough players who'd play a game without a combat focus.
But then "kitchen sink game design" (trying to do too many things and doing none of them well) reduces the number.
And gameplay without direction reduces the number further. (Although it's less about giving players overt direction and more about not hiding the fun. I never had direction in Puzzle Pirates yet the game made it easy to find fun things to do. But a lot of sandbox games make it ridiculously hard to find something fun to do.)
But if you didn't kitchen sink and you didn't hide the fun, I think there's actually quite a few players interested in non-combat gameplay.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I don't know about that, I once played an online text-based game constantly for 16 years. If It hadn't shut down, I'd probably still be playing it today. Of course, that's not the same kind of game as an MMO and you're right, once you run out of content, there isn't a lot to do in most games, but it's not just time that drives people away.
My point about most of them not playing MMOs wasn't that the games drove them away, but that they grew up, got lives and found other things to do with their lives. Most people who started playing MMOs with Meridian 59 or UO have gotten married, had kids, have careers, just don't have time to sit around and play a game, especially not a game that consumes your life like a lot of the early games did.
That's why a lot of the people who did remain gamers moved to more casual games. They wanted to be able to play a game an hour at a time because they just didn't have time to do anything else. That's what I do. I couldn't sit down and play a game for 8 hours at a stretch if I wanted to. I'm too busy. I want a game I can jump into, get something meaningful done and log out. I will agree, there's a lot of really bad games out there which don't give me the experience I want but it has nothing to do with being too limited and a lot to do with not being geared toward my limited time.
I think that's pretty consistent though, lots of people are in my shoes, they can play an hour here and an hour there, but no more. These are people who have plenty of money to spend on the games, being financially stable, they can also spend money in the cash shop, which I think is why you see so many of them. They pay to get ahead because they can afford it and because they just don't have the time to stay "competitive" otherwise.
It's just not the same world as it was with EQ and UO. That world is gone forever.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Because today it's not the cool thing. Everyone wants instant rewards and lots of them. They don't want a house they can go chill out in with thier friends...I say they, but I love player housing.
People who argue there is no market for decent player housing are mongs. There obviously is judging from this thread alone. So pipe down.
Should the game be dictated by it? Hell no. Should players be compelled to use housing? Nope. Should there be the option? OBVIOUSLY. Its really about choice and about variety of play. Personally I like options. Others dont appear to. We can discuss the worthwhileness of their time on this planet some other time.
I've always liked the idea of housing but the way it's usually implemented leaves a lot to be desired. The houses are generally useless. Only in very few cases do you get any half decent options to decorate the place let alone change the structure to suit yourself. What usually ends up happening is that people get houses to act as travel hubs or for storage space and otherwise ignore them. Developers obviously don't see it was something worth spending a lot of time on.
I think most high end developers will now leave a lot of content out of their games and do the WAIT n SEE.if they can retain high profit numbers they wil ladd content but only in xpacs,don't expect complete games on release.
Archeage is giving us more content than most any developer ever has,the housing is not done as well as it could but at least it is there.
I think the devs will have to consider Archeage's approach to housing.It is in it's own zone separate from the game world.However the ydo add a few features like gardens and tree planting and storage and totems or whatever those owls are.
I beleive we might see quite an elaborate housing system come EQ3,but i would say it is 100% a guarantee SOE will devise a system based all on Cash shop.So yo uwant a nice cool house?SOE will make you pay a couple hundred bucks and then more for the cool furniture.I highly doubt SOE will encorporate gardens or treees/environement stuff,no cash shop in that.
I feel that as long as competition remains and few deliver complete games,there will always be a developer that takes advatange of the obvious game selling ideas.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Aion housing is pretty well done for a themepark. It basically does the following for the game:
-Gives another vanity aspect the players can control
-A entirely new profession to craft furniture
-Serves as extra storage space (need crafted furniture)
-Gigantic gold sink. Everyone gets an instanced studio, but there's non-instanced house/mansion/estate/palace. Suffice to say the latter 2 types are very few in number and cost so much to buy/maintain that less than 1% of the player base could afford it.
-NCSoft makes more money from selling special furniture in the cash shop
The housing system seems well recieved enough in Korea that the next update will expand upon it.
To work really well, housing needs to be designed into the game from day 1. The devs at The Repopulation have the right idea - the housing, player structures/player cities are an integral part of the game itself. That's probably the only decent way of doing things without it feeling like a afterthought with little value.
Very nice post. I wouldn't go back to a reset UO but I would go back to a reset Horizons. Not only did you have housing and crafting buildings, but world construction projects. You couldn't get to an island without building the bridge. You could build lamp posts in your town and even statues which gave house owners buffs.
If the housing is instanced, it detracts from the point of housing. Even vanguard, with houses out in the open, it's an instance to enter it. This removes the ability to look through the window as you walk past, or to pop open the door and peak in. If you have to load in then load out again, most people won't bother. Decorating a house or building a fancy yard isn't as interesting if nobody is ever going to see it. I used to love walking around Horizons looking at how creative people were in building yards, gardens and fences.
I would love a non-instanced MMO farmville. Where people actually depended on each other for prosperity. An animal farmer having to buy grain from the wheat farmer.
Runescape premium has farming. I'm not sure what it's like as it was added after I quit.
When people suggest to go play the sims, to leave their adventure game alone, they miss the point. Having a place to display the trophy from killing, or building a crafting center closer to the resources is part of what makes it fun. It's the combination of games. Having one part augment the others. I don't want adventurers to be forced to use a crafter to get the best item, or be forced to build a house to store his gear, but I also don't want the house and the crafter to be useless tacked on fluff.
When you have to zone 3 or 4 times or go out of your way to visit someone's house, nobody will visit. But when it's fairly local and no zoning, people do look around and look inside. It's not about bragging, it's about being creative (without spending real money to decorate your real house). The more variety the dev offers, the better. EQ1 now has housing and contests on who has the best decorated house/guild hall. They are partially instanced so I don't see alot of wanderers, but I do look at the houses in my neighborhood. In WoW you get an achievement for 50 and 100 mini pets...in EQ2 they wander your house (although 100 might get crowded). Lotro has a taxadermist to make trophies from rare drops(not always rare mobs) from around the world.
It is just another gold sink in the game. I don't care about it. All I care about is good storage space.
It couldn't be something as simple as it's easier to give players a bank, instead of housing, could it?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I have a friend who has been in the game industry since the 80s, who play UO, EQ and SWG back in the day. He certainly can't be a new generation out of touch with it player and he thinks housing is a waste.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
well that's a nice anecdote.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Ever ask him why?
Or is he the type who hides his G.I. Joe in his dresser and talks out of his ass 90% of the time?
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
who cares why lol.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Well, there is a difference between a guy with a solid argument that "it takes a lot of resources to make, and only X amount of people seem to use it, or even care" (which I would like to see proof of, btw, and using SWG or VG as an example, not a half-assed system like LotRO - which *I* don't even give a shit about).
VS
"LOL U IS BABBY, PLAY FARMVILLE" (followed by sputtering noises and stroking his no-no bits)
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
as far as the developers needing incentive to make money off of it....
take EQ2 for example, very good housing system and a huge chunk of their real money marketplace is housing items. chairs, tables, pets, etc etc, they even sell full sets like a "bedroom set". they keep making new stuff for the market so they are making enough money from it to warrant paying designers to make it.
they even tweaked the basic housing code a bit to make a create your own dungeon system. its a little lacking in options atm but has huge replayability potential if a solid system was in place. housing can also add a bit of a collection feel to a game, either through quest rewards, seasonal events, trophies from rare/hard encounters. and probably the biggest aspect of housing, guild housing.
to me housing is not a HUGE must be at launch priority, but it is something that would add quite a bit of longevity to a game.