Housing: What do you wish to see?

[Eburk]

Housing was always something that I thought MMO’s could use some work on. I mean, if done right, they could prove to be extremely fun and a very valuable place for players to relax, store items, and use for other miscellaneous things. If done wrong, it’s nothing more than a very large backpack that you can’t carry with you and costs a mortgage. Often times I wonder what exactly certain games could do to improve upon housing. Why so often is it simply thrown aside as being unnecessary or just a waste of space? Hell it could even be just some content to hold off on so you have more things to pack into an expansion. It should be implemented straight away so that it gives us players a sense of belonging :)

Star Wars Galaxies had the most immersion via housing I’ve seen in any game. You could place your house virtually anywhere, and even eventually make your own little communities by creating Med Centers and places like that. Unfortunately, there was a lot of lag spawned this way and a few other annoying details (such as overcrowding and being forced to be placed far from a city.) Also, however, one could decorate the inside of his or her house in many ways. That was what one of my close friends enjoyed doing. After a hard day of crafting/adventuring, he would go to his house and personalize it. It seems like a great way to express yourself outside of the simple avatar of your character. Unfortunately, most games don’t give this option.

I have comprised a short list of things I hope to see in Vanguard’s housing system:

- Friends able to access (rooming with others)
- A place to rest and regain mana &health at an accelerated rate (think EQ guild halls)
- Large amount of customization
- Placing crafting areas within house

In closing, I want Vanguard houses to be meaningful and not just unnecessary content. I want it to be something that players can strive for as a way to protect themselves. Maybe they could even sell tents (similar to rangers or whatever in Galaxies) as a home away from home. They’d cost a good deal of money (the good ones, anyway), obviously, but they’d at least give a place to rest and regain mana & health a little faster. I’d make the tents have a limited use, but the houses stick around until you no longer pay the bills. And make them some decent bills, less often. I hated how frequently Galaxies would charge you, but I guess it made sense with the overpopulating.

Okay, I’m done. Your turn!

[Sergo]

I think it's tough to make houses truly meaningful, although the crafting sphere adds more of a chance to do that. (Your own workshop, store, etc.) If I was a game dev and couldn't make housing truly meaningful, I would give a long look at having players buy housing with something OTHER than money. Fame points, or whatever. That way, a player doesn't have to decide between buying something useful (a sword) or useless fluff (a couch cushion.) I'd like the player to have the sword AND enjoy the fluff.

[hallower]

My thoughts: http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=5877

[Eburk]

Hallower, I gotta say your ideas are AWESOME! If houses were like that in Vanguard, I'd definately invest :)

[Loampounder]

It's a game, so I don't worry too much about "meaningful". I liked SWG's houses also, especially how towns and such grew up. I do think Sigil's ideas behind zoning sound interesting, but only if they do not place so many constrictions that we do not see houses around the landscape around towns. Craft stations, storage, and merchant placement are all good uses, but I would not want to see advantages beyond safe camping from the game. If houses became health/mana batteries, I think it would lead to exploitation.

Keep it simple and keep it creative.

[Eternalus Woemancer]

My self personally, I never really found a use for a house. I always thought of my character adventuring the unknown in far away places, way too far away to make any use of a house. His "house" would always be the camp fire, or an inn if he was lucky. But as an adventuring in searching of artifacts and knowledge, never really had any use for property. (Until of course his adventuring days we're over.)

Just my 2 Coppers on the subject.

[Skarlath]

SWG's housing was fun. Decorating it was great (I was a bio-engineer, I had quite a menagerie) but for the most part, housing was fairly redundant.

I would deck out my medium housing, but had to pretty much drag people to come and see it. (Ok, exageration, but I had to say 'Come see my house!' Or make up an excuse for them to visit. On the whole, there wasn't any reason to hang around in housing.

For a while I was roleplaying a fair bit with a few new friends (I stumbled across some die-hard roleplayers) and spent a fair amount of time in their houses. One of them had made an absolutely AMAZING hot-tub by piecing various rubbish together. It was fantastic!

But there just isn't much pull to spend time in housing, or incentive to spend time in other people's housing. Whats the good in decorating if its rarely seen.

So how can this solved? Well I think group housing is a HUGE part of this. Make the construction and maintenance of housing quite pricey, so that (to begin with at least) people have to share. Or make construction quite time intensive, whilst at the same time make housing fairly vital. Make it so that players need SOMEWHERE to store all their resources. Make houses a good place to do crafting.

If people are sharing a house, whilst continuously moving in and out, stowing resources, crafting, decorating, then social interaction relating to housing will rocket up!

I think Mini-games, as Hallower suggested, are another good idea. Just to get people spending time with one another inside their houses.

And of course, last but by no means least, make people proud! Allow high customizability of the house's structure and decoration so that players are proud to call their house their home.

:)

Thoughts on making housing more important are quite interesting, because recently I have been commiting to paper a few thoughts on a slightly different take on the MMORPG theme. This new take would be a very community centric one, which would require players to spend a lot more time with one another, around their houses and particular in a village they would be attached to.

Housing can be a large part of the social infrastructure in MMORPGs, it just needs to be done right. :)

[Fynn]

I mostly liked the "toys" aspect of EQ2's housing. The talking statue was interesting, as well as quest trophies you could mount on your wall. I enjoyed seeing folks houses that had totally gone for it too.

Hundreds of unique guild halls created from a huge palette of customizable features would be ideal, giving a guild the opportunity to add it's own bit of culture to the game world through it's public, private, and invitation only area's of it's guild hall.

[Skarlath]

I mostly liked the "toys" aspect of EQ2's housing. The talking statue was interesting, as well as quest trophies you could mount on your wall. I enjoyed seeing folks houses that had totally gone for it too.

If you wanted quest trophies then you should have played AC1! :)

Guild mansions were kitted out with all the best trophies. The olthoi queen's head, row upon row of legendary weapons. Great stuff :)

[Xhar Moondi]

*cough, a trip down memory lane*
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=game_guides&message.id=136217
Nope kids, we didn't have the movement commands for items back then (had to drop them on stairs and move them that way), and losing a third of your items to the inside walls and lost space of your house was commonplace. The funniest thing back then was the award symbol for the forums. It used to be a nice little girly ribbon, now it's much cooler.

SWG...best housing system eva! One of the keys I think was making almost every item dropable in a home.

[Skarlath]

*cough, a trip down memory lane*
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=game_guides&message.id=136217
Nope kids, we didn't have the movement commands for items back then (had to drop them on stairs and move them that way), and losing a third of your items to the inside walls and lost space of your house was commonplace. The funniest thing back then was the award symbol for the forums. It used to be a nice little girly ribbon, now it's much cooler.

SWG...best housing system eva! One of the keys I think was making almost every item dropable in a home.

It was nice, but floating items? That just can't do. Im inclined to think that AC1's hook system might have been a better system for mounting items on walls. So, I propose:

Items can be placed on the floor without a problem. Each section of wall will contain a wall hook, and each square of ceiling will contain a ceiling hook. Items will be flagged as being hookable by either type of hook (e.g. paintings and swords should be hookable on wall hooks, but not beds).

This will avoid needing to give players 'movement commands' to allow them to lift items into the air. Movement commands for sliding items along floor would still be a good idea though.

:)

[Xhar Moondi]

bah, yes...floating items! Sometimes breaking immersion is ok for the sake of pure fun and potential creativity :p I know that I'd like to keep my sword on my bed!

[Fynn]

No hooks. Let folks put stuff wherever they want it.

Almost forgot. I generic plantype that would bring nature indoors, like an atrium or patio would be great for the nature loving folks/guilds that I typically frequent. Which would mean the toy bag should include trees and the like.

Or...let player housing be outdoors, or with cave entrances or something so we can really get creative :)

[Xhar Moondi]

The problem with any housing exposed to the outside, is that players probably wouldn't be able to place any items because of the load. Say you are just walking by someones home, and out on a deck they have a bunch of loot items, all those items have to be loaded which does cause some congestion. However, I guess you could limit the number of items outside on something like a deck to very few numbers.

[Kalyper]

Well the way they did it in SWG is the items wouldn't load until you stepped through the door of the home. It would cause lag issues though because alot of times the first room was really decked out and the system had alot to load at once. I myself like the idea of having the homes outside and available like in SWG. All doors in SWG were automated too, for the Star Wars lore I guess. I am guessing we will ahve to click the doors in Vanguard to open them. Maybe then the it will give the system the extra few seconds it needs to load the first room?

[Skarlath]

Well the way they did it in SWG is the items wouldn't load until you stepped through the door of the home. It would cause lag issues though because alot of times the first room was really decked out and the system had alot to load at once. I myself like the idea of having the homes outside and available like in SWG. All doors in SWG were automated too, for the Star Wars lore I guess. I am guessing we will ahve to click the doors in Vanguard to open them. Maybe then the it will give the system the extra few seconds it needs to load the first room?

Hehe, doors will open reeeeally slowly, and the Glip will write it into the lore that Telon suffered a great WD40 glut in the years leading up to player inhabitence. :)

No hooks. Let folks put stuff wherever they want it.

They still pretty much could. As I said, they could place things anywhere on the floor.

Hopefully Sigil hasn't scrapped the idea of letting players build their own interior walls. Either way, walls will be made up of short sections of wall all lined up. For each short section there could be a hook that could even be toggled to be one or two different heights perhaps. The ceiling would be similar, a hook for every tile.

I can't see how this would limit customizability of homes, and removes the need for commands that allow items to float.

I know that I'd like to keep my sword on my bed!

Yeah, there is that. Lets just hope for interactive furniture that have 'surface inventory' into which you can place items which will then appear on the surface (and even be moved by the movement commands?)

I doubt it, but it's nice to dream.

[hallower]

All I ask for is a small patch of lawn so I can tell people to keep off. =P