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Housing Systems in Games...
Neoklis
Member Posts: 42
Anyone who played UO and had a house knows what i'll mean when i say that UO is the best game in that aspect. I was in HZ beta but i didnt have enought time to test out the housing system for myself but I helped other ppl build their own houses and to be honest it's not up to my UO housing standards.
Besides being able to build the house sandstone brick by sandstone brick (which is fun tbh) there's very very little customization. Will no other game ever come even close to what UO's housing system is????? Is it because of how UO is designed (the overhead view etc) that makes housing so unique?
If another company reinvented UO with that kind of housing system, vet rewards, character customization (not one character in UO looks the same 
) etc it would be the most prized game on the market, why is that so hard to grasp by those developers??
I'll stop writting now 
.
Comments
UO's housing system was also a blight on the lanscape. Houses everywhere...walking from one end of a field to another was like walking through a shanty town. Don't get me wrong, I really loved owning a house in UO...but I do agree it was a bit chaotic.
2D graphics give you a LOT more options in terms of subtle differences. 2D isometric especially, since there's only one way the house will ever be seen. I really prefer playing 3D games for the immersion factor, so having a house in 3D is a must. I haven't been able to see the housing system in Horizons yet, but if they can do it well I'll be very happy.
I know a game that gives u a house from the start.
The Sims Online.
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Peter : "Why did all the dinosaurs become extinct?"
Teacher: "Because you touch yourself at night."
ToA has a lot of interesting ideas, and after following that game for years I dont doubt the team has the dedication to pull it off.
Its a great game, if your curious ehres a littel info about housing and stuff surrounding it.
Inorder to understadn housing you hafta understand settlements.
In ToA the game basically revovles around your settlement.
Wehen you start you chose a settlement, the settment has it own set of rules, laws and ways of enforcing them.
THere is no "world map" and the world is very large, you can starve, and exploring can get dangerous.
Travel is very hard, so only people who know the routes will attempt it, or brave exploreres. So towns usually have a closed economy (IE if there are many weaponsmiths in town A, swords would be cheap as compaired to town B wich has one blacksmith, driving up the price of swords.)
This opens up the game to merchants and businessmen, as well as traveling caravans or guides.
Now in hte settlement you will work like a small town, you will work together to help feed the setltment residents, build houses and protect it.
Its a lot of teamwork, and some may chose to live as hermits, but that style of live will be very hard.
As for housing, you put up walls (structure) and then laboureres who can preform the skills will buid it up, including hte roof, then you must desidng the inside using meterials and such.
They emphasize on Seceret doors and such because in this game anything can be destroyed, even banks (with GREAT EFFORT (note that if you store somthing in one bank, it is in that bank and no other)) so expect to sotre your valuables in your house bhind a seceret door, with many traps.
Its a very interesting game and I have nly scrateched the surface here.. Im hoping maybe I tweeked sombdies interest and they go check it out, casue its a great game, and it needs all the fans it can get.
after 6 or so years, I had to change it a little...
I really do not see the point of houses at all. Yer it's part of rp'ing in games but really how much use are they?......nothing really.
Having thought about it the only reasons to have a house are. 1)to store stuff 2)a meeting place 3)as a time killer, spent building the thing. There are two types of buildings which i think should be the only allowable types. 1)The guild house(whatever u want to call it) now for that the significance of a meeting place and item storage and a mark on the land is x100 that of a house owned by a single player. I think this had been a major thing the developers of mmorpg's on the market have left out.
All the time in advertisements for mmorpg's, u see something like "incredible graphics, 10 player races, custom appearances and PLAYER HOUSING!!!!!!" every time i see that n laugh, because i automatically think it's a crap game if player housing is in there top5 things that stand out of the game. The solution is to only allow guild's to own houses, or better yet castles and forts, why!? well because think of how much it would add to a games PvP value.
Taking DAOC for an example, the PvP (with the exception of the mass zerg's) was excellent, and a large part of that was seige warfare on the castles. now this worked because of the 3 realm system, but for games that don't have that, DAOC still had a solution, in the servers (forgotten the names now) where u could travel between realms, and this is where the PvP in terms of guild owned castles became very interesting. I think other game developers should work guild housing more into the game this way, other than just as some weak social fulfilment of having a virtual house, after all THEY R ONLY PIXELS!!!!!
2)other than that i beleive, for a more effective in game economy and crafting system high level crafters should be able to open small houses/shops in a small area to sell their products, it also allows buyers to shop around to find the best prices, more real if u ask me.
well thats my 2 cents, bassiccly i don't like player housing... and as for those worried about the abilitys u are given to design houses in games, i think in future games it will become more limited, with the exception of a few games who will put ALOT of effort into making you ppl happy
*Notice: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author... got sick of holding backspace.
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ParaTrooper, That guy that used to mod the MMORPG.com forums.
what houses add to a game:
in the start it was only about bing the biggest and the stronges
this is still true to many but,
housing gives you more stuff to build up and have fun with, if you dont like housing then do't get a house but for many players (incouding me) i like to get and build a house
it is true that housing dont have much to add to a game for RvR value or stat value ( it is not like you become a better fighter becorse you have a house)
but i still like to see that crafters work. and enjoy a good crafter build a big house. personaly i thing you well see more housing in mmorpgs and you well see more possibality with em, player citys came to be all ready in OU, in the future you well see guilds that are build around citys and making them run.
so i am a addict .. i can live with it
can you ?
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So i am a addict. i can live with it
can you ?
Yer i do agree with you that they are a fun thing to have. You know they should do, Take THE SIMS ONLINE, make all the houses into castles, give all the lil people some armour, a sword and a shield, and let them do the rest
. A game based around construction of buildings can't go wrong with it's building system... can it? not a bad idea acctually 
, but the thing is, there are so many game types and different content aspects, that it would take a lifetime to turn it all into a game(then again thats the game of life... unfortunatly i'd be laughed at walking around the city in plate mail....) But it's fun just being able to sit back n dream of the perfect mmorpg..... we should all be game designers 
really the only major problem i have with housing is location.... places get to overcrowded, daoc made a whole new area for houses! wrong wrong wrong.... it was too isolated. It either needs to be spread out over the whole game world, or for example if in DAOC if they took out even just one town for example, Mag Mell(Hibbies) Humberton(albions) and Mularn(Midgard) and replaced them with a area specifically designed for a player housing community, with of course a few npc service building(blacksmith, trainers and a few merchants). Or even better if they put them into the frontiers, and made those keeps giant castles protecting the guild houses within their walls which thinking about it would have been a damn good idea, the problem occured that no1 cared at times for their realm as a whole n didn't care if otheres were doing relic or keep raids, but if players had something to lose from the loss of castles, bet they'd be there asap to defend their house.
Bassiccly housing would be good if it took a more active role in the games such as the idea in the previous paragraph as a part of PvP, if they had that, DAOC would have been completely stand out (not that it isnt at the moment) for PvP combat, it would be simply amazing the huge wars you would then see, not to mention the ammount of lag, Lancelot server players would know all about that one.
*Notice: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author... got sick of holding backspace.
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ParaTrooper, That guy that used to mod the MMORPG.com forums.
IMHO for housing to be worthwhile you need to be able to burn down other peoples houses. The once in always in (unless you can't pay rent) isn't a fun system.
There are allot of ways to implament this system well, but I'll go into that some other time.
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"EQ was once a great game. I wont deny it, but so was Asteroids. And just like Pong, EQ is obsolete by newer game standards."
A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50%
Games and players have a type. What type are you? click here
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Achievers realise that killers as a concept are necessary in order to make achievement meaningful and worthwhile (there being no way to "lose" the game if any fool can "win" just by plodding slowly unchallenged). -bartle
Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.
My l33t speak is lacking.
ToA = trials of Atlantis, the new exp pack for DAoC.
You can burn others houses in SB, the real need for the system is a means of house removal. I have about 1500 words on the topic I'll save up for a post later.
-=-=-=-=-
"EQ was once a great game. I wont deny it, but so was Asteroids. And just like Pong, EQ is obsolete by newer game standards."
A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50%
Games and players have a type. What type are you? click here
-=-=-=-=-
Achievers realise that killers as a concept are necessary in order to make achievement meaningful and worthwhile (there being no way to "lose" the game if any fool can "win" just by plodding slowly unchallenged). -bartle
Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.