Game Director’s Letter – May 2013

[tman1991]

• A way to record and show achievements.
• A spot to put services you actually care about: travel, vendors, etc.
• Perhaps some extra bonuses per tier, like guild cities have, or that benefit all your characters regardless of guild/etc.

It's a way to give content and recognition to serious players without unbalancing the game like just more gear does.

Hmm..

Show achievements to whom? more e-peening it sounds like.

And your guild city has vendors etc. Still missing the point of this.

Sounds like horse racing V2?

[-tomhet-]

It's not that player housing is bad per-se. It's badly realised, poorly implemented, poorly developed and poorly supported player housing thats bad. Sadly, thats what you're going to get with Funcom as thats pretty much EVERYTHING you've had from Funcom in the past 3.5 years.

Buff

your point being what?
dont do things that might increase profit margin from aoc because it might take some work accomplishing it?

to be honest everything for player housing is already in game just needing a few tweaks to make it real and integrated in aoc via systems to make it work.

hub cities player homes just take code for the armory instances and use same tech/code you have to player bound instances, adjust code from guild cities construction nodes to have a few decoration nodes inside them.
hell why not in some building have appartments/instances like the ones existing in serpents head.

guild city homes, as easy as you build a tavern or any other building just add nodes to build player homes cultural based themed wich already exist everywhere in open world and hub cities, opened to all having a simple lock like that tortage building wich like i pointed out could be used to add thivery in aoc wich would add to the lack of open world/guild vs guild system

[Jaedelyia]

Show achievements to whom? more e-peening it sounds like.

That's exactly how works all game achievements, titles, K/D ratios, PVP stats, etc. (With some exception for the PVP stat)

Personally I don't give a damn about trophy/achievement. Simply because when I beat a game/achieve something, I do it for me, not for the neighborhood. But I do like the idea of personalization/customization with a little side of sandbox. That might sound as a "See that ? It's mine" kind of thing, but it is the way it goes. People love vanity tab because they can create the look they want, the same way as AoC was praised for it's great character creation tool.

And history shows us that people love that kind of stuff and they spend money for it, as silly as it might sound.

Also, a mini-personal-hub with like 2 ou 3 teleport and stuff would be nice.

[-tomhet-]

Hmm..

Show achievements to whom? more e-peening it sounds like.

And your guild city has vendors etc. Still missing the point of this.

Sounds like horse racing V2?

race tracking was never asked, neither was those silly guild games for that matter.

player housing has been asked for years.

but its obvious it will only work if they provided something to the players buying them or building them else its pure fail.

for my part i hope they provided more pvp content/stealing as i have posted

[tman1991]

race tracking was never asked, neither was those silly guild games for that matter.

player housing has been asked for years.

but its obvious it will only work if they provided something to the players buying them or building them else its pure fail.

for my part i hope they provided more pvp content/stealing as i have posted

But freeze tag is the bestest most awesomest thing I've NEVER played!

[Geldour]

need more mini maps including 3v3 premade maps
need kd back, along with mini wins
need player housing
wouldnt hurt to have 3 more classes after 5 years

gear-

PVE gear should have only 75% or so of its power vs pvp
pvp 11-20 should be unlocked, all gear unlocked after pvp 10 should ahve the same stats as pvp 10 but look different ( vanity ) but this gives players somthing to achieve.

give the pvers more raids an stuff but make sur ethe best pve gear is not way better then pvp gear because that is stupid...................

give the rpers more gear sets an that junk they like

[barbaricwildcat2]

joel, that was simply a well written letter through and through

[Buffarse]

your point being what?
dont do things that might increase profit margin from aoc because it might take some work accomplishing it?

to be honest everything for player housing is already in game just needing a few tweaks to make it real and integrated in aoc via systems to make it work.

hub cities player homes just take code for the armory instances and use same tech/code you have to player bound instances, adjust code from guild cities construction nodes to have a few decoration nodes inside them.
hell why not in some building have appartments/instances like the ones existing in serpents head.

guild city homes, as easy as you build a tavern or any other building just add nodes to build player homes cultural based themed wich already exist everywhere in open world and hub cities, opened to all having a simple lock like that tortage building wich like i pointed out could be used to add thivery in aoc wich would add to the lack of open world/guild vs guild system

I think you're being deliberately disingenuous. I'm saying (or at least I thought I was) that it will only make money if it's implemented properly and extensively. If you don't implement it well it's going to make no money. As it's likely to be a non-trivial bit of development I suggested the following. In line with all and every other major bit of development done by Funcom in the past 3.5 years they will neither do it properly or extensively. Because of that, it is going to be a waste of time and resources and doomed to be another failure.

I also feel you're grossly trivialising the development required. There are some elements that could possibly be used again I'm sure, but I'm just not convinced it's a small job.

To take issue with some of your suggestions. If you're going to use the code from the armorys these "houses" are going to be single rooms that only you can enter? If you're going to use city construction nodes you're going to limit furniture placement to very specific locations so every house will have the exact same layout? Chair there, table there, fire there. Then you have to either make new models with all the items or you have to mass modify every model you take from elsewhere. Then you have to check for clipping and placement issues with EVERY one. Then you have to track and store every single apartment uniquely (armorys are not tracked - they are a single exactly duplicated instance every single person gets and dynamically generated).

Guild city housing? So now you're mandating being a member of a guild to get housing? What happens in guild with 100 players, or 1000? Where you going to house all those? You want to allow thievery to happen with your guild mates? Or you want to now open up cities to every player? Or you want it built in the surrounding land? What happens when no one is in the instance? Currently guild cities de-spawn. You want these houses NEVER to despawn? Or is what you're suggesting a single building "Player house" that when you zone in goes to your specific instance which only you can get to?

I do admire your passion but right now thats pretty much all you have got because your ideas don't have any real substance behind them and don't stand up to close scrutiny. Player housing would be a waste of resources. Funcom could better spend their time on other things which are FAR less risky and FAR more likely to make money and not end up on the compost heap in 12 months time.

Buff

[Petridish]

I agree with what Buff said about player housing, at the moment seems totally unreasonable to ask for it knowing the priority this game has, player housing would be a total waste of resources and time.

Agreed completely. What a waste of development effort to cater to a substantially small subset of the population. There is a reason why so few MMOs have 'player housing' ... especially if they are not viewed from a flat, fixed perspective (hi Ultima Online). It would incredibly hard to implement well, and for what?

[di85ll]

I doubt Funcom has the resources to do this good. It would be nice, but this just can't be a priority imo considering the position Funcom is in. People saying that it would pay for itself. Well history shows it will pay for TSW, if anything.