I really like the point about player owned structures. In SWG I got to visit player run shopping malls, small shops, a zoo that charged admission, player run hospitals, an art gallery, guild cities with mission terminals and shuttles, harvesters, etc etc.
Players run stores are highly inefficient compared to AH. Can you imagine the outcry for a MMO without a AH and have to rely on player owned store. Imagine the horror of having to sort through 1000 stores to find a good deal.
And if there is a AH, there is no need for a player own store.
I really like the point about player owned structures. In SWG I got to visit player run shopping malls, small shops, a zoo that charged admission, player run hospitals, an art gallery, guild cities with mission terminals and shuttles, harvesters, etc etc.
Players run stores are highly inefficient compared to AH. Can you imagine the outcry for a MMO without a AH and have to rely on player owned store. Imagine the horror of having to sort through 1000 stores to find a good deal.
And if there is a AH, there is no need for a player own store.
There is no need for mmorpgs, this forum or anything else you do for fun. That is the point of it. It's obvious you never played SWG because there really wasn't anything all that inefficient about it..at all. Hell from my house i could look at my vendor terminal, find the item I wanted and go get it from the other players shop.How is that difficult?
The amusing part is that you guys think that people who want housing are apparently a very small population, combined with this idea of crappy housing you all have in mind, which makes you have this opinion in the first place. Yeah, people who are into housing are likely something of a minority, but there are more than enough to support the idea financially in games.
So exactly how many people will a game gain by including player housing that they wouldn't have playing otherwise? How many people will they lose that they would have kept if they had player housing? That's what it takes to be financially viable. If you're going to play anyhow, whether they have it or not, they already have your sub for the month.
I really like the point about player owned structures. In SWG I got to visit player run shopping malls, small shops, a zoo that charged admission, player run hospitals, an art gallery, guild cities with mission terminals and shuttles, harvesters, etc etc.
Players run stores are highly inefficient compared to AH. Can you imagine the outcry for a MMO without a AH and have to rely on player owned store. Imagine the horror of having to sort through 1000 stores to find a good deal.
And if there is a AH, there is no need for a player own store.
Absolutely not. SWG had AH terminals in every city (Bizarres) and also had plenty of player run shops. Since crafting quality wasn't static, you could often find items with way better stats at a player shop rather than the AH.
I remember taking a 20 minute trip (each way) to visit a player shop that had awesome weapons and it was always worth the trip cause I knew I was getting some of the best possible stats on the stuff I bought there.
I really like the point about player owned structures. In SWG I got to visit player run shopping malls, small shops, a zoo that charged admission, player run hospitals, an art gallery, guild cities with mission terminals and shuttles, harvesters, etc etc.
Players run stores are highly inefficient compared to AH. Can you imagine the outcry for a MMO without a AH and have to rely on player owned store. Imagine the horror of having to sort through 1000 stores to find a good deal.
And if there is a AH, there is no need for a player own store.
There is no need for mmorpgs, this forum or anything else you do for fun. That is the point of it. It's obvious you never played SWG because there really wasn't anything all that inefficient about it..at all. Hell from my house i could look at my vendor terminal, find the item I wanted and go get it from the other players shop.How is that difficult?
Not difficult ... inefficient. Will it be FASTER if the item is mailed to you, right after you buy it off AH?
It is a game. Things do not need to be difficult to turn people off. Making people jump through hoops they don't find fun will do that.
And whether there is a "need" for MMOs .. i think the size of the market speaks for itself. It is something people find fun enough to pay money to .. and enough people do that to spark investments.
I really like the point about player owned structures. In SWG I got to visit player run shopping malls, small shops, a zoo that charged admission, player run hospitals, an art gallery, guild cities with mission terminals and shuttles, harvesters, etc etc.
Players run stores are highly inefficient compared to AH. Can you imagine the outcry for a MMO without a AH and have to rely on player owned store. Imagine the horror of having to sort through 1000 stores to find a good deal.
And if there is a AH, there is no need for a player own store.
Absolutely not. SWG had AH terminals in every city (Bizarres) and also had plenty of player run shops. Since crafting quality wasn't static, you could often find items with way better stats at a player shop rather than the AH.
I remember taking a 20 minute trip (each way) to visit a player shop that had awesome weapons and it was always worth the trip cause I knew I was getting some of the best possible stats on the stuff I bought there.
It will take LONGER for people to search for such items in player's shop. It would be MUCH simpler to put such items on AH (whether the item is static or not .. is irrelevant to whether one can sell it on AH).
Diablo 3 has totally random stats on items and the AH is doing just fine.
Not difficult ... inefficient. Will it be FASTER if the item is mailed to you, right after you buy it off AH?
It is a game. Things do not need to be difficult to turn people off. Making people jump through hoops they don't find fun will do that.
And whether there is a "need" for MMOs .. i think the size of the market speaks for itself. It is something people find fun enough to pay money to .. and enough people do that to spark investments.
There is no need. Will you die without an MMO? I just don't get what you are in such a hurry about. Man those 5 minutes it will take you to go buy an item could have been better spent doing what? Running the same instance over and over again? Maybe waiting for a que for a BG that you have fought in 1000s of times? What are you doing in game that is so important that you are tracking your efficiency? You sound like a damn robot.
It is this mentality that has turned this genre in to what it is today. The lazy generation of "give it to me now". Im suprised people like you dont complain about actually walking to the mailbox. Thats not very efficient. Sounds more like jumping through hoops. The item should just appear in your inventory. Huge waste of time walking to the mailbox.
People make it sound like if housing was implemented they would be losing out on some amazing feature. What amazing features have there been in years? Where is the huge breakthrough that has been gained by taking housing out of games? All I have seen for years are failed attempts at making another WoW that end up as F2P. The genre has gained nothing by removing housing or any of the other features (like real crafting) from modern games. Why anyone would be against more options even if they dont like them is beyond me. This is why we will have yet another 8 years of WoW domination.
oh no! non instant gratification! narius you are right the world will end if i don't get my new item in 5 seconds instead of 10 minutes. because the gameplay created by localized markets is totally not going to justify a 5 or 10 minute trip to a player owned store.
maybe i just need to get into slaughtering weak and pathetic monsters to grind to level 85 to jump on the gear treadmill like you. oh wait, thats boring and overdone. shit why not just jump into a game of hon and avoid leveling altogether. i don't even have to pay a box price or a sub fee for that and the combat is far more interesting than some silly raid ai scripted boss battle.
i was gonna write a longer post but you have been spewing the same tired argument for years now. i pretty much crushed all your arguments in two paragraphs anyways.
you always jump to convenience but then never justify why if we accept that as a valid argument we shouldn't just jump to the logical conclusion of just starting on the raid grind right away. or playing a MOBA.
try and impress me. whats the point of an MMO at all if its all about getting top tier gear in the smallest amount of time so you can go raid? just make an ORG, online raiding game.
I really like the point about player owned structures. In SWG I got to visit player run shopping malls, small shops, a zoo that charged admission, player run hospitals, an art gallery, guild cities with mission terminals and shuttles, harvesters, etc etc.
Players run stores are highly inefficient compared to AH. Can you imagine the outcry for a MMO without a AH and have to rely on player owned store. Imagine the horror of having to sort through 1000 stores to find a good deal.
And if there is a AH, there is no need for a player own store.
Absolutely not. SWG had AH terminals in every city (Bizarres) and also had plenty of player run shops. Since crafting quality wasn't static, you could often find items with way better stats at a player shop rather than the AH.
I remember taking a 20 minute trip (each way) to visit a player shop that had awesome weapons and it was always worth the trip cause I knew I was getting some of the best possible stats on the stuff I bought there.
It will take LONGER for people to search for such items in player's shop. It would be MUCH simpler to put such items on AH (whether the item is static or not .. is irrelevant to whether one can sell it on AH).
Diablo 3 has totally random stats on items and the AH is doing just fine.
Some of the fun in SWG was looking on the Bazzar for something and then taking a trip to a players shop to get it. You never know what might happen (mob encounter) or who you might meet. I was also fun to look around other players houses/cities.
I never once thought of it as inefficient or a burden.
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)
Player housing is one of the least important features for me in an MMO. The MMO's I've played that had it, DAOC and EQ2, I actually thought it was a bad thing and the games would be better off without it. I'm more interested in functional things. Player owned boats... or farms (which WoW is adding in Pandaria!).
Not that fighting for player housing on a forum site will do one iota of good, but it's a topic I feel strongly about, so I feel a need to "chime in." My favorite MMORPG that I've played is probably EQ2 and the reason for that was many many varied things, but not the least of which was player housing. Player housing gave me a place in the world that felt like it was MINE. I decorated it, designed it, and crafted most of what was in it....for several characters....each house having a different theme. It was fun, it was creatively challenging, and it was competitive. There were large groups of people that showcased their houses on forums and websites and competed, in a sense, with other designers. It was pure fun. It was ONE of the best parts of the game.
Every game that doesn't have housing....gets less of my gamer's heart. If you, as a developer, don't see fit to give me my own space in your world.....why would I want to "live" there?
EDIT
EDIT
Both good responses. I appreciate both, thank you. However, I DID spend a good deal of time in my house. I did crafting in my house too and in EQ2 you actually (well...used to anyway, I'm not sure about now, I've been gone over 6 mths) can make a "living" in the game via your crafting. My cook made a small fortune because of the need for raid foods and drinks.
Anyway....no one can change my mind about housing being important for ME. I know most young kids playing games now don't care at all about it, which is fine. I go with the flow to keep gaming, BUT....I will never be as committed to a game that does not give me my own personal space to grow and build. That's just me, but it's 100 PERCENT me. Housing in a game makes the game more robust to me and makes me more apt to continue to be a part of said game as well.
I miss my EQ2 house and time spent there.. The biggest bonus to me about housing as it was a place to showcase QUEST rewards and personal space to customize like my character.. One thing games do is reward you with gear with each quest, the problem tho for me is that you outgrow that gear and eventually toss your rewards to the "destroy" bucket.. I would prefer that devs got back to character progression instead of gear progression.. It was great to go into someones house in EQ2 and see something nifty and ask them, "where did you get it".. It was like a trophy.. It didnt' make you anymore powerful or wearker, it was just something fun to have.. Much like the custom books people used to make in EQ2.. I miss the one book about "The making of cheese".. It was so awesome.. Darn it.. I might have to resub to EQ2 again.. I have a small 3 bedroom? place in Halas that needs my attention.. I would actually like to work on getting that 5 room place..
Player housing is one of the least important features for me in an MMO. The MMO's I've played that had it, DAOC and EQ2, I actually thought it was a bad thing and the games would be better off without it. I'm more interested in functional things. Player owned boats... or farms (which WoW is adding in Pandaria!).
if the farms in WoW are done as half as good as Archaeology, WoW will never die.
I want to be honest here, I know I've been really critical of player housing, mostly becase it adds very little to the actual game. Now keep in mind, I've been around since UO and I've done the SWG housing thing, etc. There's really very little functional that these houses do and it's very limited what most people actually do with their houses.
Granted, the housing in Anarchy Online is really, really rudimentary but very few people ever really did anything with their houses. They were places to fall asleep and since houses are not open to the "public", you have to take people into your house, it's not like you can even wander around and see what people are doing. I think I went into a couple of dozen houses or so in my years there and virtually all of them were empty, or used to drop seasonal crap, etc.
I'd be much more interested in player housing if you could really do amazing things with them. Most of the videos you see, including the one earlier in this thread, are like a morgue. They're a museum and worse yet, they're usually a dickwaving museum, a monument to "look at all my cool stuff!" I have no interest in that. Next, they're just storefronts and honestly, if you're going to stick a bot somewhere, I'd much rather just have a "Hall of Shopbots" somewhere that you can walk from one to the next to the next and buy things. You don't need a house for that.
See, way, way back in the day of text-based games, there were games where you could really build. And I mean really, really build. Want to build a 200-room working medieval castle? I did. I built one, complete with functional jousting mini-games and the like. It took me more than a year. After that I built a 500-room space cruiser. Granted, these were all text-based, it's easy to be as complex as you want when you just have to describe the room, although you could also build all the furnishings and program them to work in specific ways, etc. Both of those "houses" were open to the public, linked to the world map and anyone who wanted to go into them could do so at any time. That kind of housing I would support, where you can actually do something but a money-making mausoleum, something that you can share with the world and make actual game content, or just a really cool place to hang out.
But that's not what most player housing is and with what most of it is, it just doesn't add anything all that interesting to a game. I'd rather have more content than a throwaway addition like housing.
The long answer: Developers these days shy away from anything they deem "niche". This is why hardcore raids are gone, because only a niche playerbase like hardcore raids. This is why harsh FFA PvP + loot are gone, because they deemed it niche. This is why hard, complex tradeskills are gone, because they also deem that only a niche playerbase like complicated, long, hard crafting. Housing is the same, the devs today deem housing niche because they feel it's a niche feature. So most developers will shy away from it *until* their games are on the downturn and they need to throw out everything they have to keep customers.
When games are losing subscribers, that's when you'll finally see some of these niche featuers implemented. Sadly, usually by that time, these features are never given a fair shake and fair utilization.
Of course it's pragmatic, this is business. They have X number of programmer hours to spend on development, they have to decide how best to utilize those hours to make the best, most cost effective game that will bring them the biggest ROI for their investors. The question is solely, where do we put these programmers that will bring us the most bang for our buck? Player housing, no matter how much some people might want it, just isn't a dealbreaker for most players, whereas many other things absolutely are.
I don't think some of the gamers around here care to think about it.
That's the problem, lots of gamers just aren't realistic. They want what they want and who cares if what they want is ridiculous, they still want it. They don't understand that there are limits and tradeoffs and that developers are in business to make money.
As to the OP's thread title. Housing might not have been a "priority" but rather the devs throwing out number of different things in a new gaming style and seeing what sticks. Had housing clearly demonstrated housing as a sales imperative there is no doubt that housing would be here today.
The amusing part is that you guys think that people who want housing are apparently a very small population, combined with this idea of crappy housing you all have in mind, which makes you have this opinion in the first place. Yeah, people who are into housing are likely something of a minority, but there are more than enough to support the idea financially in games.
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 want to be honest here, I know I've been really critical of player housing, mostly becase it adds very little to the actual game. Now keep in mind, I've been around since UO and I've done the SWG housing thing, etc. There's really very little functional that these houses do and it's very limited what most people actually do with their houses.
Granted, the housing in Anarchy Online is really, really rudimentary but very few people ever really did anything with their houses. They were places to fall asleep and since houses are not open to the "public", you have to take people into your house, it's not like you can even wander around and see what people are doing. I think I went into a couple of dozen houses or so in my years there and virtually all of them were empty, or used to drop seasonal crap, etc.
I'd be much more interested in player housing if you could really do amazing things with them. Most of the videos you see, including the one earlier in this thread, are like a morgue. They're a museum and worse yet, they're usually a dickwaving museum, a monument to "look at all my cool stuff!" I have no interest in that. Next, they're just storefronts and honestly, if you're going to stick a bot somewhere, I'd much rather just have a "Hall of Shopbots" somewhere that you can walk from one to the next to the next and buy things. You don't need a house for that.
See, way, way back in the day of text-based games, there were games where you could really build. And I mean really, really build. Want to build a 200-room working medieval castle? I did. I built one, complete with functional jousting mini-games and the like. It took me more than a year. After that I built a 500-room space cruiser. Granted, these were all text-based, it's easy to be as complex as you want when you just have to describe the room, although you could also build all the furnishings and program them to work in specific ways, etc. Both of those "houses" were open to the public, linked to the world map and anyone who wanted to go into them could do so at any time. That kind of housing I would support, where you can actually do something but a money-making mausoleum, something that you can share with the world and make actual game content, or just a really cool place to hang out.
But that's not what most player housing is and with what most of it is, it just doesn't add anything all that interesting to a game. I'd rather have more content than a throwaway addition like housing.
Before you can make anything that you would consider useful with player housing you actually have to have player housing. We can not even get that far these days. Player housing, cities and the like have to have meaning. I will agree with you on that. Just tacking it on to a game that has no reason to have it and does not use it properly is pointless.
Tell me the truth though do you really believe that by adding housing even pointless useless housing would some how deprive you of meaningful content? I ask because as I said in another post we have no housing and we have no meaningful content. We have gear grinds. Thats all we have. I have not seen what the genre has gotten in return for losing housing.
You say that most housing is used as "a dickwaving museum". The dickwaving did not end with the lack of player housing. Now instead of a person having a place to brag they sit in major cities to show off their gear, mount or title. The need to show off will never end. It is part of online gaming. Taking away housing changed nothing.
With WoW adding farms I wouldn't be suprised to see them at some point add housing or guild halls. Everything old becomes new again at some point and it would be brand new content for a lot of people who never played anything but WoW. WoW will never be a sandbox game and i'm sure that whatever kind of housing they added wouldn't be very complex but it would be a step in the right direction.
Before you can make anything that you would consider useful with player housing you actually have to have player housing. We can not even get that far these days. Player housing, cities and the like have to have meaning. I will agree with you on that. Just tacking it on to a game that has no reason to have it and does not use it properly is pointless.
But having it half-ass isn't anything that would interest me and to be honest, I don't see any game putting the kind of time and effort into it to make it as expansive as it would really need to be to be worthwhile. I also really don't see it possible to make a game that would be popular and financially successful if you had to build in all of those things. Player cities and the like just aren't important to people today. It's one of those things that, if you were fantasizing, it would be nice to have. We just don't live in a fantasy world though.
Tell me the truth though do you really believe that by adding housing even pointless useless housing would some how deprive you of meaningful content? I ask because as I said in another post we have no housing and we have no meaningful content. We have gear grinds. Thats all we have. I have not seen what the genre has gotten in return for losing housing.
I never said it would deprive me of anything, I said that developers only have so much time and money to spend on things. If they spend that time on housing, they have to spend less time on something else. That's reality. Like it or not, gear grinds sell. They make money. Player housing doesn't.
You say that most housing is used as "a dickwaving museum". The dickwaving did not end with the lack of player housing. Now instead of a person having a place to brag they sit in major cities to show off their gear, mount or title. The need to show off will never end. It is part of online gaming. Taking away housing changed nothing.
No, it didn't and I have no respect for people who have to dickwave, sorry. Just because people do it doesn't mean I have to like it.
Because MMORPG's are less about being an MMORPG now and more about being an MMOG.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
It's the anti-social content.You don't want to give excuses for people to not stay in populated areas.
Why is it anti-social? I mean, I get the perception that people leave a city and therefore must not be in a social setting (perhaps an extreme interpretation), but on the other hand, a guild of players could set up a city which is social interaction and teamwork. I could place all my vendors in my house which people would come and purchase from if I had what they wanted so that wasn't anti-social and exposed people to more of hte game world. Just a couple scenarios that I can recall from time spent in SWG. The main point being, there is no reason it has to be "anti-social content" and that is really just short-sighted thinking. On the same token, taking five or ten people out of a city and and putting them in a dungeon/raid instance is antisocial. People questing in "low level" zones of aged MMOs is anti-social since not many other people are typically there right?
I get people that don't care for housing. It's not for everyone and that's to be expected. What I find appealing are some of the ideas people put forth to 'make housing work'. A previous idea about housing plots in major NPC cities would be pretty cool. It sounds like it would accomodate a wide range of expectations depending on its functionality.
Another comment made previously was about the decline of RP in MMOs. To a decent extent, I imagine the two go hand-in-hand and, as a result, most games shooting for the masses won't see value in including this feature. That's just a hunch though. I'd love to be proven wrong
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers. Do something wrong, no one forgets" -from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
I really don't care about housing in a game. Glad they don't really focus on it because that would be less people on the dev team focusing on the actual game if you have to have a barbie's dream house division, which a small percentage of the players will actually only use.
Its kinda of weird if your sitting in your room already to log into a game to sit in a room.
Housing is like small useless pets to me, I use neither so I don't care about it. I don't care about your ultra rare only drops in a little cave once in a year little frog pet so put it away. I would like it if you could kill little pets for fun or at least punt them.
Well as you can see I don't care about housing or little pets.
Player Housing IS possible. It just is not a priority. If people do not like the game or if they do not find the game fun, they will not build a house.
The reasons make sense though. You could create the best housing feature-set we have ever seen in a game but if nobody enjoys the game to that point, they will not stick around just to have a cool house.?
Seem as if developers now days see no importance in this feature known as player housing. The quote has a point. If Developers put too much resources into Housing over other features, than players may not be interested in the game and wont build houses regardless of how detailed that feature is.but why has this feature been tossed under the bus over the last few years?seem like this feature has become very unpopular in the developers offices lately.Player Housing seem like a dynamic feature that gives players something to do when raiding/leveling/other grinds come to a end. Seem like a win win feature from a consumer point of view, but not from a developer.What turn of events causes this?
Edit .. wrong post
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Because nobody, except the owner, cares about other people's virtual house.
Even though you worded your argument completely wrong, I'm going to assume you mean that people only care about their own homes.
Putting whether or not thats true completely aside - why is that a bad thing? If players have something that they care about for their character / in the world, its irrelevant whether or not other people care about it. It gives players enjoyment and attatchment, I cant see how that could possibly be a bad thing. Its like vanity pets, or customising your armor/appearance, or dozens of other features and elements to the game that only you care about your own personal things - which is completely understandable - but that doesnt, in the least, make them bad.
Comments
Players run stores are highly inefficient compared to AH. Can you imagine the outcry for a MMO without a AH and have to rely on player owned store. Imagine the horror of having to sort through 1000 stores to find a good deal.
And if there is a AH, there is no need for a player own store.
There is no need for mmorpgs, this forum or anything else you do for fun. That is the point of it. It's obvious you never played SWG because there really wasn't anything all that inefficient about it..at all. Hell from my house i could look at my vendor terminal, find the item I wanted and go get it from the other players shop.How is that difficult?
So exactly how many people will a game gain by including player housing that they wouldn't have playing otherwise? How many people will they lose that they would have kept if they had player housing? That's what it takes to be financially viable. If you're going to play anyhow, whether they have it or not, they already have your sub for the month.
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Absolutely not. SWG had AH terminals in every city (Bizarres) and also had plenty of player run shops. Since crafting quality wasn't static, you could often find items with way better stats at a player shop rather than the AH.
I remember taking a 20 minute trip (each way) to visit a player shop that had awesome weapons and it was always worth the trip cause I knew I was getting some of the best possible stats on the stuff I bought there.
Not difficult ... inefficient. Will it be FASTER if the item is mailed to you, right after you buy it off AH?
It is a game. Things do not need to be difficult to turn people off. Making people jump through hoops they don't find fun will do that.
And whether there is a "need" for MMOs .. i think the size of the market speaks for itself. It is something people find fun enough to pay money to .. and enough people do that to spark investments.
It will take LONGER for people to search for such items in player's shop. It would be MUCH simpler to put such items on AH (whether the item is static or not .. is irrelevant to whether one can sell it on AH).
Diablo 3 has totally random stats on items and the AH is doing just fine.
There is no need. Will you die without an MMO? I just don't get what you are in such a hurry about. Man those 5 minutes it will take you to go buy an item could have been better spent doing what? Running the same instance over and over again? Maybe waiting for a que for a BG that you have fought in 1000s of times? What are you doing in game that is so important that you are tracking your efficiency? You sound like a damn robot.
It is this mentality that has turned this genre in to what it is today. The lazy generation of "give it to me now". Im suprised people like you dont complain about actually walking to the mailbox. Thats not very efficient. Sounds more like jumping through hoops. The item should just appear in your inventory. Huge waste of time walking to the mailbox.
People make it sound like if housing was implemented they would be losing out on some amazing feature. What amazing features have there been in years? Where is the huge breakthrough that has been gained by taking housing out of games? All I have seen for years are failed attempts at making another WoW that end up as F2P. The genre has gained nothing by removing housing or any of the other features (like real crafting) from modern games. Why anyone would be against more options even if they dont like them is beyond me. This is why we will have yet another 8 years of WoW domination.
oh no! non instant gratification! narius you are right the world will end if i don't get my new item in 5 seconds instead of 10 minutes. because the gameplay created by localized markets is totally not going to justify a 5 or 10 minute trip to a player owned store.
maybe i just need to get into slaughtering weak and pathetic monsters to grind to level 85 to jump on the gear treadmill like you. oh wait, thats boring and overdone. shit why not just jump into a game of hon and avoid leveling altogether. i don't even have to pay a box price or a sub fee for that and the combat is far more interesting than some silly raid ai scripted boss battle.
i was gonna write a longer post but you have been spewing the same tired argument for years now. i pretty much crushed all your arguments in two paragraphs anyways.
you always jump to convenience but then never justify why if we accept that as a valid argument we shouldn't just jump to the logical conclusion of just starting on the raid grind right away. or playing a MOBA.
try and impress me. whats the point of an MMO at all if its all about getting top tier gear in the smallest amount of time so you can go raid? just make an ORG, online raiding game.
Some of the fun in SWG was looking on the Bazzar for something and then taking a trip to a players shop to get it. You never know what might happen (mob encounter) or who you might meet. I was also fun to look around other players houses/cities.
I never once thought of it as inefficient or a burden.
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Player housing is one of the least important features for me in an MMO. The MMO's I've played that had it, DAOC and EQ2, I actually thought it was a bad thing and the games would be better off without it. I'm more interested in functional things. Player owned boats... or farms (which WoW is adding in Pandaria!).
I miss my EQ2 house and time spent there.. The biggest bonus to me about housing as it was a place to showcase QUEST rewards and personal space to customize like my character.. One thing games do is reward you with gear with each quest, the problem tho for me is that you outgrow that gear and eventually toss your rewards to the "destroy" bucket.. I would prefer that devs got back to character progression instead of gear progression.. It was great to go into someones house in EQ2 and see something nifty and ask them, "where did you get it".. It was like a trophy.. It didnt' make you anymore powerful or wearker, it was just something fun to have.. Much like the custom books people used to make in EQ2.. I miss the one book about "The making of cheese".. It was so awesome.. Darn it.. I might have to resub to EQ2 again.. I have a small 3 bedroom? place in Halas that needs my attention.. I would actually like to work on getting that 5 room place..
Maybe one day I"ll get back there..
if the farms in WoW are done as half as good as Archaeology, WoW will never die.
I want to be honest here, I know I've been really critical of player housing, mostly becase it adds very little to the actual game. Now keep in mind, I've been around since UO and I've done the SWG housing thing, etc. There's really very little functional that these houses do and it's very limited what most people actually do with their houses.
Granted, the housing in Anarchy Online is really, really rudimentary but very few people ever really did anything with their houses. They were places to fall asleep and since houses are not open to the "public", you have to take people into your house, it's not like you can even wander around and see what people are doing. I think I went into a couple of dozen houses or so in my years there and virtually all of them were empty, or used to drop seasonal crap, etc.
I'd be much more interested in player housing if you could really do amazing things with them. Most of the videos you see, including the one earlier in this thread, are like a morgue. They're a museum and worse yet, they're usually a dickwaving museum, a monument to "look at all my cool stuff!" I have no interest in that. Next, they're just storefronts and honestly, if you're going to stick a bot somewhere, I'd much rather just have a "Hall of Shopbots" somewhere that you can walk from one to the next to the next and buy things. You don't need a house for that.
See, way, way back in the day of text-based games, there were games where you could really build. And I mean really, really build. Want to build a 200-room working medieval castle? I did. I built one, complete with functional jousting mini-games and the like. It took me more than a year. After that I built a 500-room space cruiser. Granted, these were all text-based, it's easy to be as complex as you want when you just have to describe the room, although you could also build all the furnishings and program them to work in specific ways, etc. Both of those "houses" were open to the public, linked to the world map and anyone who wanted to go into them could do so at any time. That kind of housing I would support, where you can actually do something but a money-making mausoleum, something that you can share with the world and make actual game content, or just a really cool place to hang out.
But that's not what most player housing is and with what most of it is, it just doesn't add anything all that interesting to a game. I'd rather have more content than a throwaway addition like housing.
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The short answer: Developers are lazy these days
The long answer: Developers these days shy away from anything they deem "niche". This is why hardcore raids are gone, because only a niche playerbase like hardcore raids. This is why harsh FFA PvP + loot are gone, because they deemed it niche. This is why hard, complex tradeskills are gone, because they also deem that only a niche playerbase like complicated, long, hard crafting. Housing is the same, the devs today deem housing niche because they feel it's a niche feature. So most developers will shy away from it *until* their games are on the downturn and they need to throw out everything they have to keep customers.
When games are losing subscribers, that's when you'll finally see some of these niche featuers implemented. Sadly, usually by that time, these features are never given a fair shake and fair utilization.
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It's the anti-social content.You don't want to give excuses for people to not stay in populated areas.
You should go back and reread it.
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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."
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Before you can make anything that you would consider useful with player housing you actually have to have player housing. We can not even get that far these days. Player housing, cities and the like have to have meaning. I will agree with you on that. Just tacking it on to a game that has no reason to have it and does not use it properly is pointless.
Tell me the truth though do you really believe that by adding housing even pointless useless housing would some how deprive you of meaningful content? I ask because as I said in another post we have no housing and we have no meaningful content. We have gear grinds. Thats all we have. I have not seen what the genre has gotten in return for losing housing.
You say that most housing is used as "a dickwaving museum". The dickwaving did not end with the lack of player housing. Now instead of a person having a place to brag they sit in major cities to show off their gear, mount or title. The need to show off will never end. It is part of online gaming. Taking away housing changed nothing.
With WoW adding farms I wouldn't be suprised to see them at some point add housing or guild halls. Everything old becomes new again at some point and it would be brand new content for a lot of people who never played anything but WoW. WoW will never be a sandbox game and i'm sure that whatever kind of housing they added wouldn't be very complex but it would be a step in the right direction.
"Player Housing - Why has this feature gone from a priority to a feature most developers couldnt care about?"
Because nobody, except the owner, cares about other people's virtual house.
***** Before hitting that reply button, please READ the WHOLE thread you're about to post in *****
This sentence makes no sense. Try again. The owner is the only one who cares about other people's houses?
Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop.
Subscription = Actual content updates!
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Because MMORPG's are less about being an MMORPG now and more about being an MMOG.
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Why is it anti-social? I mean, I get the perception that people leave a city and therefore must not be in a social setting (perhaps an extreme interpretation), but on the other hand, a guild of players could set up a city which is social interaction and teamwork. I could place all my vendors in my house which people would come and purchase from if I had what they wanted so that wasn't anti-social and exposed people to more of hte game world. Just a couple scenarios that I can recall from time spent in SWG. The main point being, there is no reason it has to be "anti-social content" and that is really just short-sighted thinking. On the same token, taking five or ten people out of a city and and putting them in a dungeon/raid instance is antisocial. People questing in "low level" zones of aged MMOs is anti-social since not many other people are typically there right?
I get people that don't care for housing. It's not for everyone and that's to be expected. What I find appealing are some of the ideas people put forth to 'make housing work'. A previous idea about housing plots in major NPC cities would be pretty cool. It sounds like it would accomodate a wide range of expectations depending on its functionality.
Another comment made previously was about the decline of RP in MMOs. To a decent extent, I imagine the two go hand-in-hand and, as a result, most games shooting for the masses won't see value in including this feature. That's just a hunch though. I'd love to be proven wrong
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I really don't care about housing in a game. Glad they don't really focus on it because that would be less people on the dev team focusing on the actual game if you have to have a barbie's dream house division, which a small percentage of the players will actually only use.
Its kinda of weird if your sitting in your room already to log into a game to sit in a room.
Housing is like small useless pets to me, I use neither so I don't care about it. I don't care about your ultra rare only drops in a little cave once in a year little frog pet so put it away. I would like it if you could kill little pets for fun or at least punt them.
Well as you can see I don't care about housing or little pets.
Edit .. wrong post
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Even though you worded your argument completely wrong, I'm going to assume you mean that people only care about their own homes.
Putting whether or not thats true completely aside - why is that a bad thing? If players have something that they care about for their character / in the world, its irrelevant whether or not other people care about it. It gives players enjoyment and attatchment, I cant see how that could possibly be a bad thing. Its like vanity pets, or customising your armor/appearance, or dozens of other features and elements to the game that only you care about your own personal things - which is completely understandable - but that doesnt, in the least, make them bad.