Player Housing

[Faille]

What are people's opinions on how best to implement Player Housing?

Personally I think the EQ2 system is the best one to try and emulate, though it needs some improvement. Admittedly I quit EQ2 in the first year so I'm not sure how much they've changed or improved things.

My biggest complaints at the time were that the higher levels of player housing weren't as good to have since most of the necessities like market, tradeskills etc were close to the lowest level of housing.

Also, the housing was a little too obtainable, I would prefer to see the type of newbie housing you got in EQ2 to be more something a guildhall would provide.


Also, I think it would be best to having the housing located in lobby world, distinct from any of the specific worlds. This opens up the possibility of using non instanced housing, though I think instanced might be better. Perhaps a mix of the two, instanced personal housing and non instanced guild halls and mansions maybe?

What are other people's thoughts on how to implement housing?

[findar]

describe how they implemented eq2's. ive never heard any clear response on this.

[Zuuljin]

Basically there are houses in each city, be it a small one room apartment, to a 3 story house. You click the door, which opens an instance of your, or anyone elses house. So each house basically holds many instances of that house.

This is really IMO the only way player housing can be done. Having 3000 non-instanced houses would be rediculous and take up way to much land.

[cockles]

I hate the idea of instanced housing - but at the same time, I hate the idea of running forever just to find someone else's house.

Instanced housing kills immersion. Static housing is a pain in the ass.

For this, I'd probably go instanced =\

[Faille]

Originally Posted by cockles

I hate the idea of instanced housing - but at the same time, I hate the idea of running forever just to find someone else's house.

Instanced housing kills immersion. Static housing is a pain in the ass.

For this, I'd probably go instanced =\

Yeah, pretty much why I would want a mix. Have the really big stuff like guild halls non instanced.

Also, placing it in lobbyworld means that we have unlimited space to use without infringing on the playing world, but still have to maintain some logistics of not having to run too far etc.

[Mist]

Do we even know what type of game this is going to be yet? Are we going to have housing, or more like production facilities or something?

[Khorum]

Tangible, non-instanced player equity is where it's at imo. Non-instanced property in the form of stores, farms, factories, training facilities and barracks are something I've been thinking about for my mmog idea. After playing Shadowbane and EVE it's hard to see any value in 'cosmetic' player equity.

I'd avoid instancing altogether but instead apply a scaling build-cost to newer buildings, where as a city grows, the price of 'new' real-estate space to build upon gets more and more prohibitive; becoming an upper limit to the actual size of the city. It would have to be scaled to a comfortable area though, so that it behaves more like a 'softcap' where although you can still build your new bordello for example, to build it at a reasonable cost it would have to be outside the city walls, etc.

The city owners can ADD to the build costs, so as to have a hand in the direction of their city's growth; but the base cost algorithm would remain the same to limit the maximum city sizes. The base cost is only directly affected by developer discretion and by the food production of surrounding farms.

Obviously the concept doesn't apply to every mmog concept, but the idea I've been toying with is more of a necromunda/DOTA meets shadowbane mmorpg, and player owned cities would be central to it, where you can go recruit new troops, train them, house them and produce weapons/armor for them.

[Vinen]

Personally, I prefer non-instanced housing. I dont know about others but I kinda like a way to leave my mark on the world.

[Skurd]

I liked the SWG way of handling this :
- few terrains are really prone to having "cities" (not enough "flat" constructible flagged fields)
- limitations of X houses per terrain zone (or continent, whatever)
- first come, first serve
- promotes tradeskill importance (need to create plans and submit them to your local mayor in order to get acceptance, or something)
- could be destroyed via PvP (ressource fighting mostly)

[Vatoreus]

gonna throw my name in the hat for my liking of uninstanced housing. For this project however, it might prove difficult.

[Khorum]

Originally Posted by Vatoreus

gonna throw my name in the hat for my liking of uninstanced housing. For this project however, it might prove difficult.

How so? Is it a multiverse limitation? Would suck if it was but persistent property would be an easier job than say, rolling your own AI or state machine. I haven't looked into multiverse much at all, I admit.

[...]

Instanced housing can work if done propperly. EQ2's problem is that the instance door is literaly a room door. inside that one door is 50 people's one room shanty hut.

In phantasy start universe there is instanced housing, but rather than going to a single door that everyone uses, you go to the main elevator/door thing to a huge housing complex. ie you go to the entrance to the massive housing sector of the space station and then get wisked to instance. it's a tad more immersive than every troll living in the same one bedroom shanty.

[Faille]

The current version of LobbyWorld I'm working on should have enough room for 300 house buildings unless my maths is what off, with plenty of room for expansion. Some of those I hope to allocate to other buildings within the housing areas, like blackmarket basements etc. Even though I think envision using instancing, hopefully having that sort of spread of house buildings will still allow for enough emersion.

[James]

I always wondered what the fuck the point of player housing was. Seems to me like a dead concept, and one that is not exactly easily implemented. Guild housing, sure, I can see a need for that -- complete with guild bank, guild supplies, etc, etc. Waiting for an MMO to get THAT one right. But player housing seems kinda pointless and stupid. Who wants to play an MMO with some dipshit concerned about the color of the polka dotted curtains in his or her made up fantasy house.

So long as my dude looks cool and has a bank to store shit in, I'm happy. Give me anything more than that, and then require me to have it, and I'll start calling people names. For instance, mounts. Fuck mounts, and the limp wrist who decided they'd be an awesome idea.

[findar]

Originally Posted by James

I always wondered what the fuck the point of player housing was. Seems to me like a dead concept, and one that is not exactly easily implemented. Guild housing, sure, I can see a need for that -- complete with guild bank, guild supplies, etc, etc. Waiting for an MMO to get THAT one right. But player housing seems kinda pointless and stupid. Who wants to play an MMO with some dipshit concerned about the color of the polka dotted curtains in his or her made up fantasy house.

So long as my dude looks cool and has a bank to store shit in, I'm happy. Give me anything more than that, and then require me to have it, and I'll start calling people names. For instance, mounts. Fuck mounts, and the limp wrist who decided they'd be an awesome idea.

its from the UO era. it wasnt uncommon for people to setup vendor houses, guild houses, etc etc. removes the artificialness of the auction house and brings back more player driven communities.