One of the main reasons why it isn't looked at is because it requires huge server power. Think of millions of people being able to build things in the game world. I am talking about real time housing. Alot of games have housing but most of it is instanced.
Ultima Online had real time housing. I think Vanguard and SWG had or has it. I think with cloud technology they will be able to pull it off.
"Cloud" technology has been around in the server fields for decades. Do you really think any MMO runs one machine per server? One rack box usually has anywhere from 10-20 server computers in it. With decent programming, I doubt server hardware limitations have had much effect on MMOs in years. Bandwith, Routers and Storage are where companies need to spend more than they have been.
Every mmorpg that has ever had housing has screwed it up and back again. When player housing makes me feel like I am playing Sims 2 instead of an online game I'll support that game with all my heart.
When WOW was in its prime time, imagine all those thousands of players being able to build whatever they want wherever they want on a server. SWG and WOW back then, and also UO, were not resource intensive as games are in this time. The company can spend tons of money on hardware, but if you have the players being able to put game assets in the world, I don't care what anyone says, it will lead to the game being taken down for maintenance alot.
EDIT*
And UO was not a 3D game, so it is obviously not as resource intensive. And we cannot speak of SWG, mainly because it shut down. If the game were still alive i'm sure housing would be fun like it was in UO.
I remember in the late 90s when i played UO, it was so fun to gank someone and get into their house. Take all there stuff. I think because the game allowed players to build houses wherever they want made it so fun. One thing that sucked is the way the game looked after. The landscape looked ruined. Now imagine that in an MMO nowadays. It would look kinda like fallen earth. Messy.
I was so excited to see housing again in Aion. I chose the craft furniture making. I discovered you can buy cheap elegant furniture from an npc. If you craft furniture for days spending a LOT of money you get these crappy looking crate colored furnishings. I left Aion disappointed.
Everything in that vid is either player-crafted, some kind of reward, or gotten from a mob. Then placed, by hand, using an amazing system to put anything, anywhere.
Man that video makes me sad I never really played much SWG for one reason or another .
Because I'm a themepark guy of the XYZ generation. Playing themepark first and then sandbox games...I didn't find the total freedom that great. Player housing, so what, its a boring feature. Fishing...thats dumb feature to me. Cutting trees and mining ores, thats an uneeded feature. It be great if GW2 got rid of player based economy, lol.
It isnt that they had a new way to contact and pitch to a new playerbase, they actually "farmed" up a totaly new playerbase.
Something that every other company in the industy wishes they could manage one tenth as well. Yas indeed.
But most of the worst social fallout effect lies in what it's done to player's expectations.
"Before WoW, all MMOs were "niche"."--and before WoW, 250k was plenty of subs. Now its considered a failure, not worth anyone's time to even try.
We don't expect a feature list similar to WoW's opening day, we expect a feature list of a WoW-right-now mature game. Several times larger game, bug free, orders of magnitude more polished, and for the same cost. Anything less, failure.
And of course, we expect our new games to contain every feature we've ever dreamed of, or some other game fifteen years ago had once.
The problem is not that it is a failure per se, it is all about investor perspective, games in general are a very very bad investment, if I had money to invest, I would never invest in games, and I am a games programmer for a living and would love to own a company to make things "my own way" and"just for fun" but would never expect it to be my main investment, it is just a bad investment, WoW proved these investors wrong, being an anomaly in the gaming world or not, it showed investors that there were big bucks to be made out of online worlds with high constant revenue stream.
This has attracted the big investors and equity firms to actually take a gamble, these people pumping millions of pounds into a project are not interested, in a return where they have 250k subscriber base, because they can probably get their money and put it elsewhere and have a much better return, they are only interested in putting money into the system if they can get the same sort of return that WoW had.
The MMO genre for the most part has been pretty badly funded pre-wow, it was always a sort of indie scene with companies picking up revenue stream from other products ( UO with the ultima series for instance ) or funded by people who were already in the industry but could provide financial backing, the funding you see today that has allowed so many developers to attempt to replicate WoWs success comes from investment funds that have been given certain return expectations, expectations that cannot be met most of the time ( as we have seen time and time again ).
The consequences of this, are products being left dead in the water for the most part, I have yet to see an MMORPG that has been released after WoW that has the same content development cycles that WoW has, you can just tell that companies have lost big funding and that they are no longer actively trying to improve the game as much, even if they want to. After that it's a slippery slope.
"Player housing" is a bit of a catch all term that could include modular building, creating player cities and castles, creating unique defensive structures and the like. For some reason the majority of developers and a large swathe of players simply think it only means dumping a house and decorating it. When in fact it can be an important gameplay driving mechanism over and above "decorating".
I guess it's because mmorpgs are not about longevity anymore, it is about setting up ladder tournaments until the next mmorpg with a shinier ladder tournament comes out in the summer. "Player housing" requires the players to actually want to stick around in a game for more than five days and have some ability to take a longer view. That simply is not what the genre, or the players, are about for the main part these days.
Fantastic.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
When WOW was in its prime time, imagine all those thousands of players being able to build whatever they want wherever they want on a server. SWG and WOW back then, and also UO, were not resource intensive as games are in this time. The company can spend tons of money on hardware, but if you have the players being able to put game assets in the world, I don't care what anyone says, it will lead to the game being taken down for maintenance alot.
EDIT*
And UO was not a 3D game, so it is obviously not as resource intensive. And we cannot speak of SWG, mainly because it shut down. If the game were still alive i'm sure housing would be fun like it was in UO.
I remember in the late 90s when i played UO, it was so fun to gank someone and get into their house. Take all there stuff. I think because the game allowed players to build houses wherever they want made it so fun. One thing that sucked is the way the game looked after. The landscape looked ruined. Now imagine that in an MMO nowadays. It would look kinda like fallen earth. Messy.
Eh, it has almost nothing to do with maintenence and if done right it won't even have a massive client impact.
It's not an impossible problem to solve, it's just expensive. And games have to weigh that cost vs. what housing adds to their game (because it often just doesn't fit that well.) And that's pretty much the end of the decisionmaking process: any capable developer can do it, it's just a matter of whether they should do it.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
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)
He saw it as glorified bank space without additional gameplay benefits that couldn't be otherwise added to the game.
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 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)
He saw it as glorified bank space without additional gameplay benefits that couldn't be otherwise added to the game.
Then your friend has a very limited and shallow viewpoint of what housing in an MMO can be
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT Playing: Skyrim Following: The Repopulation I want a Virtual World, not just a Game. ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
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)
He saw it as glorified bank space without additional gameplay benefits that couldn't be otherwise added to the game.
Then your friend has a very limited and shallow viewpoint of what housing in an MMO can be
reread it. You might have missed a little subtle bit. You could reply demonstrating you understand that point.
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 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)
He saw it as glorified bank space without additional gameplay benefits that couldn't be otherwise added to the game.
Then your friend has a very limited and shallow viewpoint of what housing in an MMO can be
"can be" is irrelevant.
If there is a good housing system that is fun, show it to me, and i will consider it. Vague blue sky discussion does not make a game feature.
Comments
"Cloud" technology has been around in the server fields for decades. Do you really think any MMO runs one machine per server? One rack box usually has anywhere from 10-20 server computers in it. With decent programming, I doubt server hardware limitations have had much effect on MMOs in years. Bandwith, Routers and Storage are where companies need to spend more than they have been.
Every mmorpg that has ever had housing has screwed it up and back again. When player housing makes me feel like I am playing Sims 2 instead of an online game I'll support that game with all my heart.
When WOW was in its prime time, imagine all those thousands of players being able to build whatever they want wherever they want on a server. SWG and WOW back then, and also UO, were not resource intensive as games are in this time. The company can spend tons of money on hardware, but if you have the players being able to put game assets in the world, I don't care what anyone says, it will lead to the game being taken down for maintenance alot.
EDIT*
And UO was not a 3D game, so it is obviously not as resource intensive. And we cannot speak of SWG, mainly because it shut down. If the game were still alive i'm sure housing would be fun like it was in UO.
I remember in the late 90s when i played UO, it was so fun to gank someone and get into their house. Take all there stuff. I think because the game allowed players to build houses wherever they want made it so fun. One thing that sucked is the way the game looked after. The landscape looked ruined. Now imagine that in an MMO nowadays. It would look kinda like fallen earth. Messy.
I was so excited to see housing again in Aion. I chose the craft furniture making. I discovered you can buy cheap elegant furniture from an npc. If you craft furniture for days spending a LOT of money you get these crappy looking crate colored furnishings. I left Aion disappointed.
Man that video makes me sad I never really played much SWG for one reason or another
.
Because I'm a themepark guy of the XYZ generation. Playing themepark first and then sandbox games...I didn't find the total freedom that great. Player housing, so what, its a boring feature. Fishing...thats dumb feature to me. Cutting trees and mining ores, thats an uneeded feature. It be great if GW2 got rid of player based economy, lol.
The problem is not that it is a failure per se, it is all about investor perspective, games in general are a very very bad investment, if I had money to invest, I would never invest in games, and I am a games programmer for a living and would love to own a company to make things "my own way" and"just for fun" but would never expect it to be my main investment, it is just a bad investment, WoW proved these investors wrong, being an anomaly in the gaming world or not, it showed investors that there were big bucks to be made out of online worlds with high constant revenue stream.
This has attracted the big investors and equity firms to actually take a gamble, these people pumping millions of pounds into a project are not interested, in a return where they have 250k subscriber base, because they can probably get their money and put it elsewhere and have a much better return, they are only interested in putting money into the system if they can get the same sort of return that WoW had.
The MMO genre for the most part has been pretty badly funded pre-wow, it was always a sort of indie scene with companies picking up revenue stream from other products ( UO with the ultima series for instance ) or funded by people who were already in the industry but could provide financial backing, the funding you see today that has allowed so many developers to attempt to replicate WoWs success comes from investment funds that have been given certain return expectations, expectations that cannot be met most of the time ( as we have seen time and time again ).
The consequences of this, are products being left dead in the water for the most part, I have yet to see an MMORPG that has been released after WoW that has the same content development cycles that WoW has, you can just tell that companies have lost big funding and that they are no longer actively trying to improve the game as much, even if they want to. After that it's a slippery slope.
"Player housing" is a bit of a catch all term that could include modular building, creating player cities and castles, creating unique defensive structures and the like. For some reason the majority of developers and a large swathe of players simply think it only means dumping a house and decorating it. When in fact it can be an important gameplay driving mechanism over and above "decorating".
I guess it's because mmorpgs are not about longevity anymore, it is about setting up ladder tournaments until the next mmorpg with a shinier ladder tournament comes out in the summer. "Player housing" requires the players to actually want to stick around in a game for more than five days and have some ability to take a longer view. That simply is not what the genre, or the players, are about for the main part these days.
Fantastic.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Eh, it has almost nothing to do with maintenence and if done right it won't even have a massive client impact.
It's not an impossible problem to solve, it's just expensive. And games have to weigh that cost vs. what housing adds to their game (because it often just doesn't fit that well.) And that's pretty much the end of the decisionmaking process: any capable developer can do it, it's just a matter of whether they should do it.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I like player housing. So I think there should have player housing in MMORPGs.
He saw it as glorified bank space without additional gameplay benefits that couldn't be otherwise added to the game.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
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?"
Then your friend has a very limited and shallow viewpoint of what housing in an MMO can be
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
reread it. You might have missed a little subtle bit. You could reply demonstrating you understand that point.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
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?"
Subtlety and sarcasm do not convey in text without explanation or at least context.
"can be" is irrelevant.
If there is a good housing system that is fun, show it to me, and i will consider it. Vague blue sky discussion does not make a game feature.