Pros and Cons of Player Housing - Page 3

Naurki · 11-02-2006, 07:48 PM

from the video I watched today I learned that there will be some islands that you can build on, I thought that was kewl.

Mobius · 11-02-2006, 08:08 PM

1. I hope I can break into your house
2. I hope i can pilfer goods from your house
3. I hope I can assassinate you in your house
4. I hope I can burn your house to the ground.
5. With the monies invested from killing you and your neighbors, I hope to build my house with extra guards over the ashes of your once prized home.

Rogues always true to thine self.

Taronn Anvilmarr · 11-03-2006, 11:52 PM

OMG think of the maintenance fees...

not just for your house / castle / mansion

but for the guards too!!!! lol

FEDS-91 · 12-05-2006, 10:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taronn Anvilmarr

The ghosttowns of swg and the annoying, sometimes deadly obstructions that housing became in uo will hopefully not come about.

"shuddering in remembrance"

Personally, outside of the fact that people were jumping ship fairly fast in SWG. It seemed to me was they allowed to many cities per planet. They should have reduced the number of allowable cities on each planet to like 6 or 7. Couple that with an auto packup thing that apparently they added later, would have gone a heck of a ways towards resolving the ghost town issue. Probably wouldn't have cured it, but definitely improved the situation by quite a bit.

DivineCT · 12-07-2006, 07:32 AM

From what i've read and heard, I'm envisioning that housing won't be such a cumbersome process as it were in other games. Granted I liked SWG style housing. From my understanding setting up shop near a dungeon your working on at a particular level seems like a cool idea. Selling it after your all done might be kinda difficult though. I've still yet to see any info on how it will actually be worth having a house near the dungeon. (Would need npc merchants to sell loot back and buy supplies)

Regardless it will be interesting to see how they implement housing.

Cyrus · 12-07-2006, 02:08 PM

I also think housing is a necessity, specially for me since i LOVE ROLE PLAYING

not only does it have benefits in the market arena "selling your own stuff" but its great for getting inot charecter. Yeah definately looking forward to hous creation.

Slash · 12-10-2006, 01:10 AM

Definitely a good idea... i do see some cons but mostly pros if VG can work it out. I'm pretty sure VG wont put player houses in the game and make it horrible and just leave us hanging... i think they will do a decent job with it only gettin better through updates.

SpudWebb · 12-10-2006, 04:38 AM

I wonder how customizable the houses will be. Can I paint the inside of my house? Maybe outside? Can I put bars on my windows?

How many different types of houses will there be? I know I read about residential and what not, but i mean will there be just 1 style of housing? Can I have a 2 story rambler? Could I upload a picture of myself, buy a frame and put it over my fire place? lol that'd be cool.

magicalfirebird · 12-10-2006, 04:00 PM

5000 what? Houses or Players?
Assuming it's Houses, SGO would have to assume every player wants his/her own house anyway. That would mean just basing server count off of the number of people on the OVF (currently about 153k) they would need 31 servers. EQ1 had about 25 at its peak i believe? I'm pretty sure it would be quite a few more people/houses per server than that. Yes, not everyone will want their own home, but that probably wont be true on every server.

Personally i'm looking forward to owning my own home in VG. I'm not sure about colors (paint etc) but we're supposed to be able to put things where we want to inside our own homes. I belive Jansan said (at VGCrafters) that Houses will be portalized. Meaning that you can see their outsides, it is only one home (not instanced with 100 people using the same door). This means that while you cant see inside through a window (we're still speculating over there if you will be able to see out them either). You will be able to see in the door when its open to the house inside. I believe they are trying to prevent some of the PVP issues that happened in other MMOs (believe it was UO where PVPers would put 5k forks in their house and wait for some one to lag-stop outside their window...).

Cant wait to see how they work out some of these issues (sprawl, sights thru windows, etc) but all in all it should be pretty good. I believe they said (albeit much earlier on) that anyone willing to pay the upkeep can hire guards etc. and the upkeep costs on homes will help. Also, if i remember correctly a Dev stated (i dont remember where but either here, VGCrafters, or OVF) that if/when your house is attacked, as with Ships, it will leave a corpse, which can be fixed. Perhaps they will just do something like this with a corpse decay timer of Somuch Time, and if you dont pay your upkeep before then the "corpse" disappears.

We'll see.

Greydog · 12-28-2006, 02:13 PM

As SWG is the only mmo I have played I am quite familiar with its pro's and con's so my opinions are based upon that line.

I think one of the main reasons behind the ghost towns (apart from shafting their player base. Thus creating many disgruntled players who didn't care if they screwed their fellow players by leaving their housing standing) was the fact that they don't enforce the few rules they do have in place for fear of further irritating those vets that may wish to come back.

What should have been done from the start is develop a way for unused characters along with their housing and items to be packed to a storage server so they may be re-dropped at a later date. Rules should have been made that istituted this the moment the cancel button is hit or after a reasonable amout of time with the account having lapsed. This would also have made server transfers much easier. These rules should be strictly enforced!

One thing a developer should always keep in mind is that customers want choices. The option to stay ..the option to move etc should be brought into account when developing things such as player housing.

SWG's basic housing system is a good one IMO but the item limit restrictions per structure has forced folks to place multiple structures just for storage purposes and that has also contributed to sprawl. This an area where instanced interiors may actually be beneficial as it will not effect the outside environment and if a person wants to lag out visitors to their humble abode it is their choice.

Other area's where choice is beneficial is in housing styles and assorted other structures. Just giving the option to lay down a house is good but somewhat limited. Other ideas would be to allow player cities, Forts, Castles, Etc.. In these there could be the option of a merchant opening up an Inn of sorts where rooms could be rented. castles and Forts could have private rooms and bunkhouses with just a bunk and a chest for the player. Also not all races would reside above ground. In these instances maybe a cave network would be in order. So as you can see there are many ways to provide choices for the player and still control sprawl.

In the area of assorted structures I'd like to see profession specific shops from which the crafter or other merchant can work from like Blacksmiths shops, Shipyards, Stables, Greenhouses etc..

Finally ..the option to be able to tear down and either rebuild or move is essential. Some may not want to but then some may. If the option is instituted from the start then it is much easier to do and will also give mayors and guild leaders the chance to make changes to the layout of their areas, provided the players effected are willing.

Sorry if this rambles a bit