The online fantasy games generally played are not really Role-Playing games. They're just online Hack and Slash games with fantasy graphics and a chat system. To me, other players are just NPCs with reasonable AI (sometimes not even THAT much!) that I can chat with should I wish to - there's no incentive to role-play, no system that encourages or even rewards it. They all boil down to grinding the mobs and questing endlessly for better gear by getting daft items like 6 Pristine Bat Wings or killing 20 Wolves. With cookie-cutter races, classes, spells, abilities and equipment there is no real scope for Role-Playing. Even on RP servers, if you blink, you'll miss it, because for every 1 person that would like to Role Play, another 20 couldn't care less.
These games pass the time well enough, and I like them to varying degrees, but let's not kid ourselves they are actually Role-Playing games.
Alot of people don't really care about player housing. Not that its not cool. But they have to cater to the larger crowd and player housing isn't it at least not at this time.
The line of thinking in MMO-Land now is that, any feature not directly related to combat/quests/phat loot is only fluff. The funny part is, all of those fluff features are what made MMOs unique in the first place and with out them the genre is just a half-assed imitation of other genres.
Combat? Pfft. MMO combat has always been weak and that hasn't changed. Quests? Running the quest train in one of these MMOs is only slightly more interactive than watching a movie. It's hilarious to think of that as quality gaming. Every single player goes through every one of those freakin quests with the exact same outcome. A retarded lab monkey could fumble his way through an instanced quest. Loot? Come on. In most of these loot centric games every one basically ends up with the same shit any way, so what the hell is the point?
That said, I agree that you need non-instanced housing. Put some sort of restriction on where and how the players can build their houses, just don't push them off to some isolated, detached zone.
Why is there an assumption that older players would tend to want player housing? I'd think that if there was a discrepancy at all, players with more gaming experience would be less likely to be seduced by fluff. Why would you need an in-game house if you have a real one, anyway?
Instanced housing is kind of pointless. You can go home, but you live in the same place as everyone else, or at least a lot of other players. Isn't it kind of jarring to see some stranger go in the front door of what is supposed to be your house?
As for non-instanced housing, the problem is that there are too many players. In A Tale in the Desert, you had to be a good 5 minutes from the nearest interesting location if you didn't want someone else to come drop a camp on top of yours. And that's in a game that topped out at about 2000 subscribers, spread out on an enormous map, in a game where the game mechanics largely discourage alts, and players can take the resources of those who have quit by destroying their camp.
If you were to instead start with a game where a server can have a couple thousand players online concurrently, players have a lot of alts, and there isn't strong reason to destroy housing of players who have quit, you could easily end up with hundreds of thousands of houses. That's enough to blanket the map in some games. If the game's scenery isn't meant to be covered with houses that hardly anyone ever visits, that will look really dumb. ATITD's game world managed to seem rather deserted even though players would spend a large fraction of their time standing in their camp.
If you only allow as many players to have a house as looks decent on the map, that may satisfy a tiny fraction of hardcore players, but "content" that only a miniscule fraction of players will ever get access to isn't really content.
The issue isn't that player housing is worse than having nothing at all. It's that player housing is worse than other uses for the development time it takes to implement it.
What happened to player housing is it never stopped sucking.
It flat out doesn't work in most games because the game world is actually very small, and the sense of distance and travel are carefully crafted illusions. Housing screws up this illusion, and any payoff from it is negated by the damage it does to cites and other trade hubs.
Games have tried various solutions to this, but they are all half-assed, and the players just do not like them.
One minute you're having a pretty convincing fight with a robot made out of wood; the next minute you're in your home which has no windows and can be reached only through a transdimensional portal. By some miracle of quantum superposition it occupies the exact same spot as 300 other people's homes.
Your next door neighbor disappeared without a trace a couple of months ago, yet none of the other neighbors noticed. In fact, oddly enough, you don't even know who your neighbors are. You never even see them come and go. Perhaps because your house has no windows, although the square of ground glass super glued to your wall certainly makes a lovely substitute for natural light.
That's just as well, because you'd like to have that house for yourself! This one will make a nice office. Perhaps his house will be auctioned off soon? No, it will be his forever. Not even an NPC will be permitted to so much as sublet. Nor will you ever be allowed to own two homes anyway, even if you appeal to the homeowners' association, city council, or regional court system - all of which do not exist for the same reason housing should not.
einexile the meek Vacuos, Winterlong, Vaciante, Eicosapenta Atlantean, Tyranny, Malton
I agree with the post above me, but I must also throw in that i LOVE player housing. Really its all about immersion. I am more likely to play a game that gives me a reason to play, like I belong there. This may be why I keep coming back to UO...As old, and dated as it is, and as shitty as the PvP is the housing is amazing, with the new housing tool, you are only stifled by your own creativity (well and some things being pre-defined, like size) and making a roof is nearly impossible . However, I have not seen any game match UO in this respect.
If anyone knows of any MMO's that match, or beat UO player housing, please do let me know
Comments
Player housing is about immersion which is about RP. And sadly thats just not a major feature in a lot of games today.
The online fantasy games generally played are not really Role-Playing games. They're just online Hack and Slash games with fantasy graphics and a chat system. To me, other players are just NPCs with reasonable AI (sometimes not even THAT much!) that I can chat with should I wish to - there's no incentive to role-play, no system that encourages or even rewards it. They all boil down to grinding the mobs and questing endlessly for better gear by getting daft items like 6 Pristine Bat Wings or killing 20 Wolves. With cookie-cutter races, classes, spells, abilities and equipment there is no real scope for Role-Playing. Even on RP servers, if you blink, you'll miss it, because for every 1 person that would like to Role Play, another 20 couldn't care less.
These games pass the time well enough, and I like them to varying degrees, but let's not kid ourselves they are actually Role-Playing games.
Alot of people don't really care about player housing. Not that its not cool. But they have to cater to the larger crowd and player housing isn't it at least not at this time.
The line of thinking in MMO-Land now is that, any feature not directly related to combat/quests/phat loot is only fluff. The funny part is, all of those fluff features are what made MMOs unique in the first place and with out them the genre is just a half-assed imitation of other genres.
Combat? Pfft. MMO combat has always been weak and that hasn't changed. Quests? Running the quest train in one of these MMOs is only slightly more interactive than watching a movie. It's hilarious to think of that as quality gaming. Every single player goes through every one of those freakin quests with the exact same outcome. A retarded lab monkey could fumble his way through an instanced quest. Loot? Come on. In most of these loot centric games every one basically ends up with the same shit any way, so what the hell is the point?
That said, I agree that you need non-instanced housing. Put some sort of restriction on where and how the players can build their houses, just don't push them off to some isolated, detached zone.
Why is there an assumption that older players would tend to want player housing? I'd think that if there was a discrepancy at all, players with more gaming experience would be less likely to be seduced by fluff. Why would you need an in-game house if you have a real one, anyway?
Instanced housing is kind of pointless. You can go home, but you live in the same place as everyone else, or at least a lot of other players. Isn't it kind of jarring to see some stranger go in the front door of what is supposed to be your house?
As for non-instanced housing, the problem is that there are too many players. In A Tale in the Desert, you had to be a good 5 minutes from the nearest interesting location if you didn't want someone else to come drop a camp on top of yours. And that's in a game that topped out at about 2000 subscribers, spread out on an enormous map, in a game where the game mechanics largely discourage alts, and players can take the resources of those who have quit by destroying their camp.
If you were to instead start with a game where a server can have a couple thousand players online concurrently, players have a lot of alts, and there isn't strong reason to destroy housing of players who have quit, you could easily end up with hundreds of thousands of houses. That's enough to blanket the map in some games. If the game's scenery isn't meant to be covered with houses that hardly anyone ever visits, that will look really dumb. ATITD's game world managed to seem rather deserted even though players would spend a large fraction of their time standing in their camp.
If you only allow as many players to have a house as looks decent on the map, that may satisfy a tiny fraction of hardcore players, but "content" that only a miniscule fraction of players will ever get access to isn't really content.
The issue isn't that player housing is worse than having nothing at all. It's that player housing is worse than other uses for the development time it takes to implement it.
Housing never went away. If you'd stop playing WoW and try a different MMO, you'd see that for yourself.
The Credit Crunch hit us and no one could afford their monthly silver coin mortgage payments any more.
Housing has its place but only in so far as it develops in game community, if it does not do that its just another hobby like fishing.
What happened to player housing is it never stopped sucking.
It flat out doesn't work in most games because the game world is actually very small, and the sense of distance and travel are carefully crafted illusions. Housing screws up this illusion, and any payoff from it is negated by the damage it does to cites and other trade hubs.
Games have tried various solutions to this, but they are all half-assed, and the players just do not like them.
One minute you're having a pretty convincing fight with a robot made out of wood; the next minute you're in your home which has no windows and can be reached only through a transdimensional portal. By some miracle of quantum superposition it occupies the exact same spot as 300 other people's homes.
Your next door neighbor disappeared without a trace a couple of months ago, yet none of the other neighbors noticed. In fact, oddly enough, you don't even know who your neighbors are. You never even see them come and go. Perhaps because your house has no windows, although the square of ground glass super glued to your wall certainly makes a lovely substitute for natural light.
That's just as well, because you'd like to have that house for yourself! This one will make a nice office. Perhaps his house will be auctioned off soon? No, it will be his forever. Not even an NPC will be permitted to so much as sublet. Nor will you ever be allowed to own two homes anyway, even if you appeal to the homeowners' association, city council, or regional court system - all of which do not exist for the same reason housing should not.
einexile the meek
Vacuos, Winterlong, Vaciante, Eicosapenta
Atlantean, Tyranny, Malton
I agree with the post above me, but I must also throw in that i LOVE player housing. Really its all about immersion. I am more likely to play a game that gives me a reason to play, like I belong there. This may be why I keep coming back to UO...As old, and dated as it is, and as shitty as the PvP is the housing is amazing, with the new housing tool, you are only stifled by your own creativity (well and some things being pre-defined, like size) and making a roof is nearly impossible
. However, I have not seen any game match UO in this respect.
If anyone knows of any MMO's that match, or beat UO player housing, please do let me know
UO Housing Rocks !!!
Horizons / Istaria got it right, shame the rest of the game was a bit dodgy.
****************************
Playing : Uncharted Waters Online
****************************
Horizons did have awesome housing, though the game was generally unfinished, so, blah.
My blog is a continuing story of what MMO's should be like.