Aradune said:Hopefully that makes at least some sense -- let me know.
thanks,
Yep, makes sense.
I've seen the issues in EQ and read about the ones with Vanguard. To be honest, although I will post random ideas here in the forums, I have 0 expectation of my ideas being implemented or of a fast timeline. What I DO expect, at last, after all these years and all these games, is a complete game being released. Yeah, there will be bugs upon release. That's just the nature of programming. But I want that level of finish in the graphics (on a technical level - EQ took a lot of shortcuts in the graphics department in the early years), in the content, and in the infrastructure. If the team can do that, I will not be disappointed.
I am well aware that my opinion will likely be weighed less heavily than those who have contributed more financially. I'm hella poor (and would be a literal starving artist if not for my generous family). My usual yearly budget for frivolous luxuries is about a hundred bucks. (I blew it this year and for the next six years on a new computer rig.) Half of that has gone to Pantheon. For me, that's a pretty strong show of faith. That money could've gone to ice cream, you know! :P
I know there have been some good indie games made via crowdfunding, but those are generally standalone RPG games rather than MMOs, which require more longterm funding to sustain. So, in its own way, the entire concept of VR, the company, as well as Pantheon is an experiment for the MMO gaming industry. It's an MMO game that is developed on its own timeline by a studio under its own direction. We've set you guys free, Brad. Go and do what thou wilt.
With that said...regarding housing and housing instances, I'm thinking about what would happen should you bring instances into the open world. If you allow players to decorate, that's a lot of items to load into a zone. I think a partially open world, partially instanced concept might work to keep load times or lag down. Example: At an outpost, you have some tents that belong to individual players. These tents would be private instances, but the outpost itself, while arranged by players, would be fully public.
Now, with the goal of incorporating housing into cooperative play, I would think that tradeskills could be modified so carpenters can do more than create furniture, which is how it seems to be in at least a few MMOs. I did have a silly idea, though...what if there's a chance, when you camp out in an unsafe area, that you come back to the message that you've died during the night to some hungry predator? People would have to find an outpost to camp at for safety. If the outpost moves, you'd still log in safe, but you'd have to camp out elsewhere next time.
Nephele said:Aradune said:But that does mean we have to keep ourselves in check. It does mean that we need to make sure what we launch with is a complete game in the sense that there aren't missing gaps, or something cool on the surface but when you dig deeper there's simply no depth to, where potential is limited because we didn't think it through.
Hopefully that makes at least some sense -- let me know.
thanks,
It totally makes sense to me. I'll admit, when you described Outposts, my thought was - "sounds interesting, but I don't know that it really goes far enough to satisfy me long term". I think for me, as long as the team doesn't just do Outposts and stop there, forever, I'll be ok. But Outposts are a good way to start and I agree with the goals that the team is pushing for to try and make sure housing is relevant to gameplay, and not just its own thing. I just ultimately want something outpost-like with a bit more permanence to it, maybe once we're 2-3 years into the game.
Yes thank you Brad, for your explanation, I guess I'll just go into hoard mode until something develops down the line after release and a few expacs. lol And my opinion is the same as Neph's. In my own view, I tend to think of Outposts as something that guilds own (DAOC) so please forgive me if that's not correct. So does that mean that crafting will once again be centralized in a city somewhere, where we have to compete over crafting stations and lag (Vanguard)...with some characters parked there 24/7 (possible bots?) hopefully that is being taken into account.
Cana
Hunk said: Sort, your opinion matters just as much as mine does. I'm one of the VIP guys. Being reasonable and being able to articulate your suggestions and expectations already puts you at the top of the game. Your input is valued, just wanted to stress that.
Exactly!!
One more thing, crafters will bring lots of items into the world...so there's that. Hopefully that is also taken into account. And those items will remain in the world after sales.
Aradune,
I love your lucid late night posts! First off let me apologize to you personally, and then the whole team at VR working hard on Pantheon for talking out of both sides of my mouth at times. I have been slightly frustrated in the lack of what I feel has been a lack of transparancy at times especially amongst those who have shelled out 1k for PA, your post really touched on a lot of my own personal frustrations or areas of concern. Sometimes in life... okay most often in life when I'm passionate about something it consumes my thoughts and desires, and when that passion is directed towards a game in early development it can be hard to accept certain things. Things like money constraints, development timelines or delays, game mechanic decisions, why features talked about never come to fruition, its never easy to accept I am not in control, it's scary at times. There have been times where I've felt I may have gambled away a lot of money in support of Pantheon, and as cheesy as this might sound, to support you Brad and your Vision for High Fantasy MMOs, and the MMORPG genre in general but that is just the immature part of me, the impatient part of me, and maybe even the slightly jaded part of my from vanguard.
However, I couldn't be more wrong, and honestly it just comes down to ignorance on my behalf of the interworkings of game development and not seeing the magic behind the curtain to the extent that I want. When you stated in an interview about not wanting to just make games, but worlds... it gave me goosebumps because a lot of people think MMOs are going the route of the dodo, especially those of the mold pantheon is being crafted in. Pantheon has reawoken my passion for gaming, and mmorpg's in general not just because it will be an amazing game, but its really special because of the visionarys at the helm, and the dedication to quality immersive entertainment. Sorry for ranting but again your post seemed to touch on things I was letting damper my sunshine, obscuring the big picture I was focusing too much on what wasn't there or what I wanted to be there, and not what was already there in terms of information on the game.
I would be absolutely shocked if opinions were wieghed based on level of pledge.
Well worded opinions that set forth the reasons for the opinion will be valued from anyone - maybe not agreed with but valued. Poorly worded opinions attacking other posters - and sadly we see some of those - will not be valued.
dorotea said:I would be absolutely shocked if opinions were wieghed based on level of pledge.
Well worded opinions that set forth the reasons for the opinion will be valued from anyone - maybe not agreed with but valued. Poorly worded opinions attacking other posters - and sadly we see some of those - will not be valued.
Well said.
Aradune said:Duffy said:Yeah, I didn't get that housing in FFXIV was so extremely expensive in the beginning. Then the houses were so super small, which was strange because it was instanced anyway. For me not the acquisition of housing land is the goal (as it seemed to be in FFXIV), only the means of it. For me it's the furnishing. The arranging and rearranging of all the little things. I can waste hours and hours in my EQ2 guild hall just to tile one small room in it - which needs precise placement so they won't overlap or ugly spaces can be seen.
So in Pantheon housing will very likely be open world, and I hope that it will be still affordable even for a non 24/7 player :) and while I am hoping, I do hope that land will be big enough to not have only 1-room-houses, but even if thats the case I am deadly determined to make the most out of it! :D
If housing isn't in at launch, perfectly fine. Haste makes waste!
You and other posters are exactly correct -- while instanced, cosmetic housing can be added onto the game almost peripherally, doing non-instanced housing that actually impacts the game and has game mechanics associated with it (essentially, making having a house/outpost/ship/etc. have real in-game impact) is NOT something that can be just band-aided on. It requires a lot of forethought and planning. We don't want a land rush situation like you saw in other games, or any of the other problems. So we are determined to do it (I absolutely love housing done right, again having an impact and having real reasons to have these structures), it is indeed part of the Grand Vision behind Pantheon, but it will be a signfiicant endeavor. It's something we 'almost' got to and implemented correctly in Vangaurd, but like ships and other significant systems, we just ran out of time and money, so what you saw in Vanguard wasn't a true realization of the Grand Vision. Wiith Pantheon, it must be done right.
If you haven't read my post a couple weeks back about horizontal expansion, please do -- housing, etc. is a perfect example of adding systems to the game that allow other means to progress through the game, to build yourself and your possessions up, and to partake in gameplay that is meaningful but not directly part of the vertical core game that we will launch with. So it most likely will be something we do post-launch depending on when funding comes in, etc.
I know we 'could' do it the easy way -- make instanced areas, allow little neighborhoods to pop up, allow you to cosmetically design and decorate your house, but quite honestly, we're just not interested in that appraoch and question the 'bang for our and your buck'. The effort into adding such a system to me just doesn't result in the lasting and meaningful gameplay I'd like to see associated with and part of a real MMO housing system.
So yes, housing will be a major part of the game, and because it will be major, at least according to the development plan we have now, it most likely will not be present at lauch but rather a signficant, meaningful, and truly impactful and fun system that we add post-launch.
Housing that has impact on gameplay is a great idea but also one that comes with an assortment of problems you have to keep in mind. A lot of games have fallen victim to the same sort of issues. Bots scooping up the good land is just one of them.
That said, Horizons, now Istaria, at its launch had what sounded to be a great system for housing that was never fully realized as it tied into the war with the blight and undead in the game. Players would have to fight back the blight and clear housing regions in order to claim land that could then be developed into houses/towns, and then they would have to defend that land as the undead and blight would try to move back over and consume the region. Sadly, Horizons was another MMO at the time that never fully realized its full potential with some promising features, that was just one of them.
How well open world (non-instanced) housing works is impacted by how many houses are available, how clearly some areas are better than others, whether we will buy plots and add houses rather than buying houses already pre-built on plots, what the cost of houses is, and how it is determined who gets what spot when each is absolutely unique but only one player can get it. Plus, is it one house per account per server or can each character get a house?
I have seen real world housing in more than one or two MMOs. Where the number of houses made available was significantly less than the number of players that wanted and could afford them it could get very unpleasant. Likewise if some areas were clearly better than others (closer to amenities or transportation or just prettier).
Most of us would not enjoy spending 12 hours camping a lot to try and get that house when it opened up. And I've seen people spend more time than that. Not to mention the justified rage when someone else comes over at the last minute and clicks on the for sale sign faster and buys it - rude but probably not a violation of the ToS.
An alternative to the queue system with non-instanced (meaning limited supply) housing is the bidding war. Highest bidder gets it. It avoids endless camping but do we want to incent people to focus more on speed-leveling and grinding for cash rather than stopping to sniff the roses, help others and spend time with guildmates. Some people will do that of course but do we want to encourage it by giving them all the best houses? And should someone who plays 12 hours a day get the house over someone that plays less but pays the same subscription?
Perhaps houses will not be so limited? There is no reason VR can't create hundreds of housing zones equally close to amenities (teleports from starting areas to housing zones do NOT undercut the core concept of slow travel and limited or no means of bypassing content when going from one place to another - not really). But this does undercut the ideal of having houses near each other with real communities - if you have 20,000 islands each with a house on it they might as well be instanced.
Personally I prefer real world to instanced housing but not enough to want the good houses to all go to the richest players or those with enough time to camp housing plots endlessly before a landrush.
I think the key concept to making non-instanced housing work is that you need lots, and lots, and lots of world space to support it. Things *need* to be really spread out, both so that there are enough housing plots to go around, and so that you don't end up with suburban sprawl everywhere you look. The freehold concept i've been pushing would actually take advantage of that fact, to set player towns up as actual towns on the map - waystations that you might travel through on your way throughout the world. However, the big prerequisite for it is that the world needs be big enough to support it.
Land rushes are definitely no fun though. So if VR does implement non-instanced housing, I'd say they need to look at what their target realm population is (total) and insure they can have housing plots for the vast majority of those players. Otherwise... only the people who get to it early are going to enjoy it.
What might help with the "land crunch" with regards to housing is flats/apartments/whatever you choose to call them. Not everyone wants, or needs, a giant ten room house in the game. Some people just want a place to "hang their hat". One multi-story large building could house, potentially, a dozen or more people. I'm not talking high rise buildings here (which would look silly in the context of the game), just something with three or four floors.
Edited to add:
Maybe the apartments could be instanced to save space vs actual buildings for houses.
Kalok - apartments are a good idea if needed to reduce the amount of space taken up by housing. As long as houses are available to most of us. We don't want (and you do not suggest) a system where only the richest can get houses or there are only enough houses for a few people and VR justifies it by saying "but everyone can get housing there are many vacant apartments".
As to instancing - two types of it come readily to mind from past experience. One is where entire neighborhoods are instanced - if 12 Shady Lane is taken in one neighborhood you just go to another and buy it there. Another is where the houses or apartments are in the real world but each "owner" or "tenant" has his or her own instance to enter by clicking on the door. Your suggestion by edit is the second type, of course. It would be undesirable for houses (one house sitting by itself is hardly a neighborhood and there would be no way for anyone to personalize the appearance of either the house's outsides or the property around it.) Which is exactly why you make the suggestion only for apartments.
Assuming that VR jumps on the idea of apartments, I agree. I see no downside to instancing them. There could still be a variety of apartments with different looks in each neighborhood but they could be kept smaller and less obtrusive if a 500 person apartment didn't need to be 50 floors high or stretch across many acres.
dorotea said:Kalok - apartments are a good idea if needed to reduce the amount of space taken up by housing. As long as houses are available to most of us. We don't want (and you do not suggest) a system where only the richest can get houses or there are only enough houses for a few people and VR justifies it by saying "but everyone can get housing there are many vacant apartments".
As to instancing - two types of it come readily to mind from past experience. One is where entire neighborhoods are instanced - if 12 Shady Lane is taken in one neighborhood you just go to another and buy it there. Another is where the houses or apartments are in the real world but each "owner" or "tenant" has his or her own instance to enter by clicking on the door. Your suggestion by edit is the second type, of course. It would be undesirable for houses (one house sitting by itself is hardly a neighborhood and there would be no way for anyone to personalize the appearance of either the house's outsides or the property around it.) Which is exactly why you make the suggestion only for apartments.
Assuming that VR jumps on the idea of apartments, I agree. I see no downside to instancing them. There could still be a variety of apartments with different looks in each neighborhood but they could be kept smaller and less obtrusive if a 500 person apartment didn't need to be 50 floors high or stretch across many acres.
This is exactly what I am talking about by my "iinstancing" of apartments. Apartments have always been "housing that the masses can afford". Even when I was making $30k a year raising two kids by myself, I could afford an apartment. It wasn't much, but it was my home.
Different floorplans, and sizes, would be great. Have line a studio,m one bedroom, two bedroom, and three bedroom with different layouts costing different amounts of money. It wwas either Everqueest 2 or Vanguard that had this. It was neat and tidy.
Nephele said:I definitely don't disagree with the idea of instanced apartments in addition to non-instanced housing, or even as a first step. Like outposts, I just wouldn't want to see them be the end-all, be-all of housing, if that makes sense.
I agree. They should be "low-cost" housing for those who don't want a non-instanced house.
To take it a step further, if you want to move your "home" to another city, you should relinquish your apartment and get a new one in the new location. Instanced apartment buildings should not be linked across cities.
Regarding the "Outpost" topic, I wrote this idea originally for a different game back in 2013, but I've re-written it for Pantheon and adjusted it for the realities of large open world zones.
In any case, the PDF is here (3 pages).
So, that's the original theorycrafting idea & implementation. A typical walkthrough of how this would work would be:
A large guild wants to build an outpost.
They gather all the materials required through crafting & adventuring & whatever other loops (diplomacy, faction, questing, perception, etc).
They place the plot. This makes some people happy, some people not happy. Imposing a structure anywhere in any persistent world should have consequences.
They start construction. The construction area requires defense. Once complete, the construction provides rewards for that guild.
Over time, the outpost is constantly under attack, both by Players who spawn NPCs, and by NPC's directly (opposing factions, guilds, races, kingdoms, gods, whatever) Player spawned NPC attacks are in addition to this base threat.
This requires the outpost defenses (interior/exterior, aerial, ground, underground) to be restocked continually. Anyway, read or ignore, as you wish. :)
vjek said:In any case, the PDF is here (3 pages).
Dude, that was crazy long, very detailed and something that would be super neat.
One of you're earlier points and this pretains to any type of housing made. Guilds should be able to grow in their power. People crafter, adventure, level up and get stronger, how can we do that for guilds too. So I like that point.
I also wholeheartedly agree that Outposts (as VR is planning on doing) or your Fortress' should provide some buffage to the owners. Your idea was great and it should give some type of significant advantage to the guild owners that other guild will actively be trying to tear it down. Which brings me to my next point. If other players are going to be able to spawn NPC mobs that would constatnly attack, this ability to spawn mobs needs to cost the people spawning them something. You shouldn't be able to just stand there and click a banner over and over and over. Gold, resouces or something.
Anyway, bringing this back to Pantheon, it still doesn't do anything for Joe Blow, Mary Jane, or Thomas Eddison who all just want to run around in Thornefast and have a little place they can call their own. I'm not going to speak for anyone other than myself, but I also know I'm not that different than many many other people, and I can already tell you, I'm not going to enjoy this Outpost idea. I enjoy going "home" a permanate residence, even if it's instanced "fake" room in the inn. I liked the permance of it. I took a break from EQ2 for a few years. Know what was still exactly like I left it years ago? My Inn room in South Qeynos and I loved that.
Agreed on both points. The ability to spawn NPC's requires consuming a consumable. To get the consumable in the first place would require one of or a combination of: sacrifice, time, effort, gold, loot, crafting, etc. Something valuable so the entire exercise is a time/resource sink. It also seems reasonable that such a thing would have a common shared cooldown with many other consumables of the same type, to prevent spamming them.
And I agree, instanced apartments, (or their equivalent) would be just fine, in parallel with something like this, for single players. I know some people hate instances, but in this case, they solve the problem elegantly and can exist at the same time as open world player-owned structures.
EQ2 was the game with instanced housing where the size and to some extent layout determined the price.
I still remember EQ2 as the game with the best housing system in terms of interior placement of items and how the houses looked. Well some of them, I was never too fond of living in an acorn, but they did give a choice.
Vanguard had an excellent system where you crafted your own house or had it crafted - on a lot you bought. That part of it was better than EQ2 but the inside of a Vanguard house and ability to customize decoration was not up there with EQ2.
I have opinions on housing, but since VR has said all we will get at first is Outposts, I wonder how customizable they will be in terms of appearance and layout
Ideally, there would be tiers of Outposts in terms of size and features available, with any Outpost being able to be "re-skinned" to change the look and feel of the structures and walls as well as laid out on a master template to place the structures and walls where ever the owner wanted
I would hope that the skins available were not tied to upgrading, such as level one walls are constructed with logs and level three looks like stone walls, but rather stone 1,2,3... and log 1,2,3...
Hopefully, there would be a large variety of structures to choose from including inhabitable, large enough for groups of people, suitable for NPC shops, crafting structures, defensive structures and gates, all placeable and moveable on the template
I hope the defensive structures would have a ton of variety so I could build a proper fortress that could withstand a full-on attack from an organized group of mobs, and I dream of zone announcements that such and such outpost is under attack by such a force so everyone around could rush to defend it
I would like to be able to collect/trade for and then donate the supplies and materials necessary to rebuild and maintain a particular Outpost, for which I could earn general Outpost rep that I could use to unlock structures, skins and tiers for my own Outpost someday
I would like to be able to gain rep for my Outpost as well to either decrease the frequency of attacks or maybe call in aid from NPCs in the event of an attack
I would love for ownership and maintenance of an Outpost to be a rich experience that would require me to stockpile appropriate resources and materials and make arrangements for regular re-supply with the local city
I'd like to monitor my Outpost while not actually logged in and playing to some degree, so I would know if my investment was in danger, but I'd be OK with a placeable that someone could use in game to at least e-mail me and tell me my Outpost was a smoking pile of rubble and all my NPCs were dead so even if I couldn't get on immediately, I could ask some friends to help get reconstruction started
I would like to be able to choose the NPCs that I hire to fill posts in my Outpost and have them get better over time at their jobs and possibly have occaisional problems or quit, and I would like to be able to hire mercenaries and groups of mercenaries with different skillsets and levels of experience to permanently defend my Outpost, but I'd also like to work rep deals with people in the cities to supply me with guards and soldiers because I have done things for them and they owe me
It would be fun do Outpost quests where, say, a mysterious ranger showed up for medical treatment and when I talked to him it opened up an opportunity to aid his roving band of rangers with some problem they were having in trade for their promise to come to my aid if the need arose
I would also like to meet a few NPCs via quests that offer to come set up shop or work in my Outpost because during that quest their house burned down, or they came to the realization that it was no longer safe to stay in that region on their own
This all sounds like a lot of fun!
vjek said:Regarding the "Outpost" topic, I wrote this idea originally for a different game back in 2013, but I've re-written it for Pantheon and adjusted it for the realities of large open world zones.
In any case, the PDF is here (3 pages).
So, that's the original theorycrafting idea & implementation. A typical walkthrough of how this would work would be:
A large guild wants to build an outpost.
They gather all the materials required through crafting & adventuring & whatever other loops (diplomacy, faction, questing, perception, etc).
They place the plot. This makes some people happy, some people not happy. Imposing a structure anywhere in any persistent world should have consequences.
They start construction. The construction area requires defense. Once complete, the construction provides rewards for that guild.
Over time, the outpost is constantly under attack, both by Players who spawn NPCs, and by NPC's directly (opposing factions, guilds, races, kingdoms, gods, whatever) Player spawned NPC attacks are in addition to this base threat.
This requires the outpost defenses (interior/exterior, aerial, ground, underground) to be restocked continually. Anyway, read or ignore, as you wish. :)
The only issue that I see with this is the PvP aspect. Most servers are going to be PvE, so player characters should not be able to attack outposts. Other than that, it's a pretty great idea.