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Dear Game Developers, this is what I would like to see in a 'building' game.
Tarindil
Member UncommonPosts: 31
I play several different 'building' games. If I could take all of them, combine, I would be content. However, they each are lacking in an area.
Rift. Pros: Great models, awesome freedom to build anything from your imagination. Tons of lighting, fog, etc you can place to set a mood in your build. You can buy models from their store & also craft some. Cons: You can't modify the landscape ( voxel ). While the models are great, they are game specific.
Medieval Engineers: Awesome medieval building. Freedom to manipulate the landscape ( voxel ). Grow crops. Build animated devices. Awesome modelers that bring in hi res models into the game. Craft models. Cons: No water in the game. While there are lovely tree's in the game, there are no tree models to place around except an apple tree.
Note: ME will be the game to beat if they can get water, tree models you can place, into the game.
Rising World: Lovely game. Can manipulate the landscape, grow crops. Water, tree's plants you can place. Craft models. Cons: Lack of lighting, fog models to set a mood. Buildings look 'washed out'. Low res models.
Note: This will also be a game to beat if they can fix the 'washed out' look. Bring in some hi res models.
EQ: Pros: Lovely models, you can decorate the inside of a building to your heart's content. Cons: You can not custom 'build' a house. No outside building.
ESO: Pros: Awesome new housing. Great models. Craft models. Cons: Limited slots in housing to 'place' models. You can not custom build your house.
Lotro: Pros: Ok housing. Good models. Limited model crafting. Cons: Limited slots in housing to place models. You can not custom build your house.
Sims: Pros: Custom housing. Lots of models. Extra model packs you can purchase. Cons: You can not walk around in the game. No real time experience, lighting, mood.
So developers here is my personal list of what kind of game I would continually pay out $$$ for.
A beautiful graphics game engine (example Unreal engine) where my character can literally walk around in the game & explore.
Water, tree, models a must.
Housing: Piece models, which means I need many wall/roof/floor etc options. I also want pre-made buildings.
Rich, high res models to use in my houses, buildings.
Animals I can tame, breed, kill for hides/trophies/food.
Horse I can ride.
Crops I can grow.
NPC's to use in a store/crafting area, farming etc.
Ability to play in 'creative' offline mode or 'survival' (see above: Medieval Engineers)
Be able to farm some mats. I do not want to have to craft every single model, but do not mind crafting a few.
Model Expansions I can buy. Different era's: Medieval, Gothic, Modern, etc, the list is endless. Example of one expansion pack: Medieval living room furniture. You could make so much $$$ (see Sims)by breaking up packs and selling the additional furnishings by per room pack, same for outside models. I would shell out the cash for them.
My ideal game would look somewhat like ESO/Skyrim landscape/experience in an empty world.
Sims has made a ton of $$$ over the years because there are a lot of us gamers out there who just love building. If I want combat, there are hundreds of other types of games for this.
Look at Minecraft. We are out there...thousands of us, who just want a better building world & are willing to pay for it, are you willing to build it?
Thank you for reading
Rift. Pros: Great models, awesome freedom to build anything from your imagination. Tons of lighting, fog, etc you can place to set a mood in your build. You can buy models from their store & also craft some. Cons: You can't modify the landscape ( voxel ). While the models are great, they are game specific.
Medieval Engineers: Awesome medieval building. Freedom to manipulate the landscape ( voxel ). Grow crops. Build animated devices. Awesome modelers that bring in hi res models into the game. Craft models. Cons: No water in the game. While there are lovely tree's in the game, there are no tree models to place around except an apple tree.
Note: ME will be the game to beat if they can get water, tree models you can place, into the game.
Rising World: Lovely game. Can manipulate the landscape, grow crops. Water, tree's plants you can place. Craft models. Cons: Lack of lighting, fog models to set a mood. Buildings look 'washed out'. Low res models.
Note: This will also be a game to beat if they can fix the 'washed out' look. Bring in some hi res models.
EQ: Pros: Lovely models, you can decorate the inside of a building to your heart's content. Cons: You can not custom 'build' a house. No outside building.
ESO: Pros: Awesome new housing. Great models. Craft models. Cons: Limited slots in housing to 'place' models. You can not custom build your house.
Lotro: Pros: Ok housing. Good models. Limited model crafting. Cons: Limited slots in housing to place models. You can not custom build your house.
Sims: Pros: Custom housing. Lots of models. Extra model packs you can purchase. Cons: You can not walk around in the game. No real time experience, lighting, mood.
So developers here is my personal list of what kind of game I would continually pay out $$$ for.
A beautiful graphics game engine (example Unreal engine) where my character can literally walk around in the game & explore.
Water, tree, models a must.
Housing: Piece models, which means I need many wall/roof/floor etc options. I also want pre-made buildings.
Rich, high res models to use in my houses, buildings.
Animals I can tame, breed, kill for hides/trophies/food.
Horse I can ride.
Crops I can grow.
NPC's to use in a store/crafting area, farming etc.
Ability to play in 'creative' offline mode or 'survival' (see above: Medieval Engineers)
Be able to farm some mats. I do not want to have to craft every single model, but do not mind crafting a few.
Model Expansions I can buy. Different era's: Medieval, Gothic, Modern, etc, the list is endless. Example of one expansion pack: Medieval living room furniture. You could make so much $$$ (see Sims)by breaking up packs and selling the additional furnishings by per room pack, same for outside models. I would shell out the cash for them.
My ideal game would look somewhat like ESO/Skyrim landscape/experience in an empty world.
Sims has made a ton of $$$ over the years because there are a lot of us gamers out there who just love building. If I want combat, there are hundreds of other types of games for this.
Look at Minecraft. We are out there...thousands of us, who just want a better building world & are willing to pay for it, are you willing to build it?
Thank you for reading
Comments
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
First the "Beautiful Graphics" are created by the textures and by artists, not the engine and programmers. The Engine simply PUTS the textures on screen, The most the programmer & engine can do is balance the putting, with loading from hard drive into memory. With bad art see Rising World & Minecraft.
Voxel takes memory space. Textures, models, animations, sounds, music, and game features all take memory space. The larger the open voxel world, the larger the 3d array that defines it will be. There has to be a trade off, to achieve balance.
Some one has to pay for all these features, all these models, all this art. Today it's not the customers that will pay, they want EVERY thing for free. So why would someone spend money on Different era's and endless lists. If customers won't spend money.
I'm not saying it can't or wont. Hope for the full list of game mechanics, and a limited model and texture selection at first. If money is made, then more art is sure to follow.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
I miss the mention of Wildstar, with its last added community housing it should definitely have a place on your list.
Maybe even AoC, the guild city building is pretty nice (but admittedly that's not where the game's focus is).
Ideal building game was already here, and went away too... which is sad, it even had circles!
At first the direction was great - they even ditched the 'EverQuest' from the title - but later they still went back to that and tried to turn it into something which it wasn't (adding combat and all that bullcrap), which made it into a ghost town, so at the end they simply cancelled it.
I have tried Wurm, did not care for it at all for various reasons so it did not make my list
I also bought & played Landmark, did not mention it since it had been canceled. It too had the washed out look & not a full robust 3d lighting, feeling, etc.
I did work for an online game. I textured models, did the landscaping, towns etc. The programmer/owner was a good friend of mine. I do know the high cost of things like animation etc. There are a few game engines out there someone could start a game with. They even include animation etc. Modelers can be hired. Once you have a good base of models, it is very easy to swap out textures for new looks, I do that all the time in 3d software
I mentioned games that have housing options in them that are pretty good. Rift can't be beat for the building part of the game. ME could rival the building part but it is a ways off in development.
I also did not mention Space Engineers (made by the same folks behind ME) since I do not enjoy space games
I want to see a Sims game on steroids basically. Where you can manipulate the landscape, walk around in a rich 3d environment.
There are quite a few games that each have good elements. If they were all combined, it would make one great game
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
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If you can destry built stuff all you built will be a ruin next time you log in. If you can't the game will be overgrown with stuff leaving no space left for building after a few months.
Games trying to do something like that will soon be dead.
You could instance the building of course but that kinda takes away the point of a MMORPG, you might as well play a singleplayer game instead that will work far better for building stuff.
Guildcities for instance is a very cool idea but I never really seen it pan out, at least not longer then a couple of weeks. AoC did a fine try but the lack of customization and the fact that almost all cities were constantly instanced made it rather unpopular. While you could build a city for your guild not much was going on there and you couldn't open up your own shop there or customize your own house.
Some MMOs have done acceptable work with built player owned homes or guildowned halls/castles but I don't think anyone made it really good yet. My point is that there are many things you need to solve to pull it off.
You could for instance have player built structures needing maintanence fairly often and turn into ruins after a few weeks without that and be totally gone a while after that to solve the issue of not turning the PvEers off without having the problem that your PvE server would be full of old buildings and have little space for new ones.
There is certainly other ways to solve the issue as well but most "building" MMOs so far have become rather empty fast after a bunch of players go like locusts and destroy anything in game, usually at odd hours where few players are online to try to stop them. Builder players tend to be upset when people constantly tear down their crap.
Chi puo dir com'egli arde é in picciol fuoco.
He who can describe the flame does not burn.
Petrarch
This is obviously not a priority for MMO developers. I remember when housing as a MMO staple started to disappear from new releases, only some MMOs adding it later. From what you say Rift shows what can be done if the developers think it Is worth doing. The problem is supposedly you are playing a MMO, not a building game because you want to play a MMO, well that's what the publishers would think anyway.
But there is great scope, if you could get builder types interested in a MMO with building that's two player bases right there. Some might say Minecraft is already doing trying to do this?
BTW, C.E. does release 8 May 2018.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Check out Medieval Engineers. It is exactly that. Just not quite there yet, close tho.
The good news is that CUBE will start seeing development again with the new investment. It's been on the backburner for over 2 years so housing looks should pick up quickly through beta stages.
You get all this and roaming hordes pillaging to your lands too!
You stay sassy!
I like what I build to be destroyable by other players/npcs and for it to be open world. I guess I'm in a minority in this. I like to mix my building with combat, survival and exploring. In any MMO I usually play PvP servers.
I have the same passion as you do for a sandbox world though... but, sadly, the generic player would have no interest in such a MMO, so it's not sellable to the public by a studio large enough to pull it off on a grand scale. They would never even make a fraction of their money back.
Speaking of minecraft, this is random but I encountered the idea of Xianxia Minecraft the other day, where the main character was a crafting-specialized cultivator, lol.