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Thread: Game Director’s Letter – May 2013

  1. #51

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    Quote Originally Posted by Daynan View Post
    *snip for brevity*
    Well done, man, well done!
    Kentegern - Conqueror
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    Ziezin - Demonologist
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    "Grammar is the difference between knowing your **** and knowing you're ****."

  2. #52

  3. #53

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jovana View Post
    Excitement, achievement, ownership, and belonging, these are a few feelings that I get when I think of player housing in MMORPGs.
    As it may get lost (along with other awesome posts I've made over time ) I'll copy my previous two responses on this here. They sum up pretty much everything I have to say on the matter.

    Quote Originally Posted by Buffarse
    I am not a roleplayer

    Now that is out of the way this little waste of resources is brought up every 6 months or so and it's always the same thing.

    WHAT is the point of designing, developing, implementing and debugging a new game feature that is going to firstly be used by a relatively small subset of the population and then almost completely ignored by everyone after 12 months?

    I played Anarchy Online for 4 years, that had player housing with huge amounts of ornaments and furniture available for it. I had normal and luxury ones through free offers on subs. I never once even visited my luxury one. In all the guilds I was in and in all the time I spent in game I went into one persons apartment once. Anecdotal for sure but if it was a feature that was used extensively or even regularly you'd expect someone who played over 600 days played time to have gone to more than one. It is a gross waste of resources and time used by a very limited (but vocal) minority in any game.

    The ONLY POSSIBLE way you can make it viable and actually get use would be to do as I've seen in some text based MMO's. Allow players to make arbitrary portals to any location (with some limits so no porting direct to Thoth) in the game from their housing (up to a limit of 4 exits). Allow players to purchase shopkeepers, veteran vendors, crafting vendors etc. for their home. Make it a complete mini hubq so that players actually WANT to go there all the time.

    Providing a bare room with some sad furniture is going to appeal to only the tiny minority of RP'ers while everyone else will just ignore it after the first week novelty factor. Even player cities, that have a number of these hub type things are unused - why would anyone in their right mind ever use player housing with even less?

    All that said, player housing when the amount of investment in game development is so low would be a gross waste of resources. There are so many other far more important things that need fixing, let alone new content that needs adding that this can't be a sensible use of time. IF they had the time and effort to REALLY make it attractive and useful then maybe it would be a good move. But based on all the other "good ideas" they've had and either only half implemented or put in broken and never fixed you can't help but say they'd never ever do it right.

    Buff
    and

    Quote Originally Posted by Kurt777

    Because it adresses not a small subset of population, but almost everyone. Player housing is part of the character design and presentation. The only people this might not appeal to are those who just select class from recent OP rumours and use random appearance and no vanity slots. But even the most hardcore trolls and sociopaths can be vain (or are per definition).

    And the point should be obvious: money, revenue, income, longterm goals, happy players

    Quote Originally Posted by Buffarse
    This is a simple one to respond to. There is a WORLD of difference between something being APPLICABLE to people and being of INTEREST to people. I agree, this would be directly applicable to everyone. What I hugely contend would be how much it would interest them. This is VASTLY different to vanity armour slots.

    Fact is they have (very) limited resources to do anything with. Player housing is one of those things people say "yeh it's great" use it for a few weeks then forget about it just like they did with cities and the vast majority of other social type things. Unless they make a REALLY good job of it (and we both know they won't because they never have yet) it will be another sparsely implemented, poorly realised idea. In a perfect world, properly implemented with a rich feature set and a number of the items listed in this thread implemented it would be great.

    Just add it to the pile of good ideas Funcom has either failed to implement or couldn't implement properly if their life depended on it...

    Buff

  4. #54

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    Housing is something great for everyplayer. Star War galaxies had a nice housing system, and this was 10 years ago.

    You could give a real sense to the architect.

  5. #55

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    Even in Skyrim I would spend 1% of my time in my house and 99% out exploring and playing the game.

    Just give me an extra storage locker in the guild city and I'll call it home.

  6. #56

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    Quote Originally Posted by Daynan View Post
    Even in Skyrim I would spend 1% of my time in my house and 99% out exploring and playing the game.

    Just give me an extra storage locker in the guild city and I'll call it home.
    I used my house in skyrim to stash the annoying follower.
    I parked her in an empty wooden house, told her to stay and never saw her again.

  7. #57

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    Quote Originally Posted by Buffarse View Post
    As it may get lost (along with other awesome posts I've made over time ) I'll copy my previous two responses on this here. They sum up pretty much everything I have to say on the matter.



    and
    Agree 100%.

    And for the record, I have been playing RPGs since the late 1980s. But I do not see any correlation between RP and player housing. Player housing would appear to appeal to players who like to do stuff on their own - basically, the same subset of the MMO population which focuses on crafting. This is no doubt a legitimate playstyle, and one which a MMO should cater to if it intends to appeal to a broader audience than competitive PvEers / PvPers.

    But there is one major difference between player housing and crafting. Crafting, done right, allows crafting-focused players to interact with the rest of the community. They grind mats which are available in the open world, purchase other mats (in particular, such available only in dungeons / raids, or through pvp) on the trader, process them, and then sell the resulting item.

    By contrast, player housing is content where grinding is its own reward. It provides for very limited interaction with the rest of the community, except the occasional showing off of your house to friends. In short, it is content for solo players who don't really care all that much about the "MM" part in MMOs.

    Personally I think that AoC does a relatively poor job at catering to solo players. However, I also think that at this stage it is unlikely that any system changes (crafting) or additional systems (player housing) will bring in zillions of new casuals who focus on these game elements. With a view to this, there seems to be little point in spending a lot of FC's limited resources on these systems. Yet if FC decide to do something for solo players, resources are better invested in content which ties in with the rest of the game (crafting, which ofc they did decide to revamp) than on content which has very little bearing on the rest of the game, like player housing.
    Rathothis|Tempest of Set || Tigrathes|Dark Templar || Isitnofret|Herald of Xotli
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    Sudatorius|Noob barb on Rage

  8. #58

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hoxa View Post
    I used my house in skyrim to stash the annoying follower.
    I parked her in an empty wooden house, told her to stay and never saw her again.
    thats a good use! thx

  9. #59

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rathothis View Post
    Agree 100%.

    And for the record, I have been playing RPGs since the late 1980s. But I do not see any correlation between RP and player housing. Player housing would appear to appeal to players who like to do stuff on their own - basically, the same subset of the MMO population which focuses on crafting. This is no doubt a legitimate playstyle, and one which a MMO should cater to if it intends to appeal to a broader audience than competitive PvEers / PvPers.

    But there is one major difference between player housing and crafting. Crafting, done right, allows crafting-focused players to interact with the rest of the community. They grind mats which are available in the open world, purchase other mats (in particular, such available only in dungeons / raids, or through pvp) on the trader, process them, and then sell the resulting item.

    By contrast, player housing is content where grinding is its own reward. It provides for very limited interaction with the rest of the community, except the occasional showing off of your house to friends. In short, it is content for solo players who don't really care all that much about the "MM" part in MMOs.

    Personally I think that AoC does a relatively poor job at catering to solo players. However, I also think that at this stage it is unlikely that any system changes (crafting) or additional systems (player housing) will bring in zillions of new casuals who focus on these game elements. With a view to this, there seems to be little point in spending a lot of FC's limited resources on these systems. Yet if FC decide to do something for solo players, resources are better invested in content which ties in with the rest of the game (crafting, which ofc they did decide to revamp) than on content which has very little bearing on the rest of the game, like player housing.
    It does not have to be this way. With the same argumentation you could get rid of guild cities, since they have little bearing on the rest of the game.
    Sure, it can be done in a way of showing the achievements (if there ever will be some). But it also can be done in a way, where what you said, must not be true and housing has a link to the rest of the game and can be a good resource for rp (bad implementation: high grind effort not linked to other content, like gathering 1000000 basalt. good implementation: link the options to what is done ingame and allow for players visit and trade with each other).
    Imo, player customized content will add a LOT to the longevity of any game.

  10. #60

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    I don't RP. I don't need to play SimHouse. I want player housing for two reasons:
    • Achievement system: the more accomplishments, the fancier the house. I don't care if it's customizable (except maybe a few flavors for zone or class); I'd almost rather be surprised by how it grows. Private by default, but put the top 50 on display.
    • Utility: travel shortcuts, bank tab, vendors, etc.

    Upkeep required to maintain all features, otherwise starts to decay back to starting tiers.
    Current HoX: Sandspice (Set) | Heralds of Xotli: LEVELING GUIDE | AA Guide | Faction Guide | Pekka's Gear List | Tafale's Raid Guide
    Always up for grouping with other HoXes: grinding, quest assistance, new HoXes, etc.

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