Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Housing - is it planned to be a major part of the game?

    • 2752 posts
    October 10, 2018 2:37 PM PDT

    Naunet said:

    None of the things you need to interact with daily and regularly are on housing plots. And the housing community - and the RP community - have flourished quite well making use of the housing system. There are dozens of RP hubs that get regular use (well, they got more before the game was announced closing T_T); there are also people who construct entire housing plots to play out a given story.

    Except for fast travel portals, mailbox, bank, crafting tables, vendor access, and resource nodes...

     

    Those things sound a lot like taking away from or otherwise escaping the world of Terminus, not adding to/enhancing the world. It's a substantial asking of development resources for something purely cosmetic or for roleplaying purposes. 

    • 1019 posts
    October 10, 2018 2:57 PM PDT

    philo said:My issue with housing is that I have never played a game where I would consider it very useful.  Displaying some trophies or decorations seems like the only real benefit is to stroke the ego of the designer. 

    It's part of the game within the game.  I alone probably spent 2 or 3 days of total time messing with housing/guildhalls in EQ2.

    I think EQ2 did a wonderful job with their housing system.  

    Allowing people to enter a door of a pre-built building within the city made it feel real.  Just like an apartment inside a real city.  Someone actually lived there and it was an amazing thought.

    I know people who played EQ2 for the houseing and that was about it.  They fell in love with it and whenever I saw them online, they were doing house stuff.  She loved it.  I also have other friends who spent not just days, but I'm sure they've amassed weeks of combined play time, designing and decorating their house.  It's a great mini game.

    • 1860 posts
    October 10, 2018 3:02 PM PDT

    @Kittik

    Ya, that seems to fit better in an Minecraft/Landmark/Second Life type of game than in Pantheon.  It doesn't seem like the target demographic here.  It makes more sense in EQ2 to me at least.

    • 97 posts
    October 10, 2018 4:41 PM PDT

    I'm in favor of player housing but only if it's non-instanced to support VR's philosophy on grouping and player interaction. Imagine an entire pre-built city with plots to purchase...sweeping hills and mountains and waterfalls with mansions and nestled castles in cliff faces. Outdoor customization could be minimal and negligble to the outward appearance...but the inside could be freedom. 

    And to make it interesting, what if the Perception system played a role where the more you become a Lorekeeper, the more access to items you have available to play with. The Perception system could be directly related to new customizations, causing you to explore other houses and perhaps leaving a note on their door as to how they got it. =) 

    • 97 posts
    October 10, 2018 4:57 PM PDT

    Also, what if each door allowed you to pull up a window that showed the interior of the structure (so you're not just barging into people's homes like Zelda lol)...like a mini 3D version that could spin and rotate to view different angles. You could leave notes directly on the 3D structure and save it for the owner to see.

     

    • 844 posts
    October 10, 2018 6:06 PM PDT

    Kittik said:

    philo said:My issue with housing is that I have never played a game where I would consider it very useful.  Displaying some trophies or decorations seems like the only real benefit is to stroke the ego of the designer. 

    It's part of the game within the game.  I alone probably spent 2 or 3 days of total time messing with housing/guildhalls in EQ2.

    I think EQ2 did a wonderful job with their housing system.  

    Allowing people to enter a door of a pre-built building within the city made it feel real.  Just like an apartment inside a real city.  Someone actually lived there and it was an amazing thought.

    I know people who played EQ2 for the houseing and that was about it.  They fell in love with it and whenever I saw them online, they were doing house stuff.  She loved it.  I also have other friends who spent not just days, but I'm sure they've amassed weeks of combined play time, designing and decorating their house.  It's a great mini game.

    EQ2 did do a great job with their housing. But EQ2 was from the very start a 100% instanced game. Pantheon is not.

    • 363 posts
    October 10, 2018 7:30 PM PDT

    zewtastic said:

    EQ2 did do a great job with their housing. But EQ2 was from the very start a 100% instanced game. Pantheon is not.

     I hope it is eventually instanced. Depending on how they handle it, it should also be password protected so that you can invite people into your instanced home. :D

    • 219 posts
    October 10, 2018 8:11 PM PDT

    I personally think doing some hybrid of Fable 2/FFXIV would be kind of neat.  There are a lot of buildings in many MMOs that are basically unused background scenery to make cities look bigger, but that serve no purpose and don't actually exist except as a facad in the game space.  It would be cool to me if buildings periodically went on the market and could be rented by guilds or the like.  I think it would be neat if this system worked to give physical presence to things in the game world.  For example, suppose your guild bank was a series of chests/boxes in your guild house rather than an extra bank you accessed at any banker anywhere in the world?  So if you wanted to retreive something from your guild bank, you wouldn't just go to a random bank hundreds of miles away in a different capital city, you'd actually need to go back to your guild house itself to get the items.  This would also mean where you choose to rent your guild house (which capital city) would have an impact on what you can do more or less easily in the world.  And when it comes to factions/city alignment, this would also be an important consideration - do you place it in one of the "evil" cities, where it's closer to content you do, but where your "good" character players can't come until they've farmed rep with that city?  Interesting choices like that are sometimes/often good things in games.

    Real estate gets to be an issue (which is why even with instancing, FFXIV has to periodically add new housing instances to open up more housing spaces), but this can be gotten around somewhat by limiting the housing more to organizations/guilds (of which there are far less than there are individual players) or something, as well as having smaller shanties or shacks that could be bought, and a system where when people don't pay the rent, their property gets repoed and can be rented out to a new group who aren't deadbeats.  :p

    Some people love having personal housing, though, but that does tend to lead to real estate issues more.  I, personally, just like having an in-game physical place for the guild to meet, to log out, buy/sell stuff, have meetings, etc.  I'll let other people do the decorating.  :p

    EDIT:

    MauvaisOeil said:

    As I stated, this is a more global problem than solely wildstar. I summed up the negatives of four games in my post and they all shared the same weakness on this point. On the opposite scale, games with no instanced housing (or even no housing at all) have public areas and meeting places crowded. Cities are flowing with players on a constant base, and again this is a fact from my gaming experience.

    Housing tend to be even worse if they make crafting station avaliable (Guild halls in EQ2, no reason to get out of them at all) in them.



    Oh, saw this post (and the convo right before it).  I would like to contest this some.  WoW, for example, had no public housing...and the game was already a glorified game lobby due to all the LFG/LFR ques.  It's the quing in games that separates the players, not the housing.  WoW added their Garrisons, which is probably the worst implementation of "player housing" I've ever seen.  Then in Legion, they put in Class Halls, which was not nearly as bad, since at least then you were sharing the hall with other people of your class.  FFXIV has player and guild housing (same system, you can just buy/rent a plot as a guild OR an individual player), AND has quing systems, but generally the towns are still pretty full and you semi-regularly run into people out in the world because there are things out in the world to do (hunts and FATES, etc) that people do to pass the time.

    I would say you're looking at an "Some A have B, therefore A->B" situation.  Many games without housing DO NOT have public areas and meeting places crowded, while many games with housing DO have public areas and meeting places crowded.  There are other causes that cause SOME games with housing to not have crowded public spaces and some games without housing to have crowded ones, but from my experience, this cannot definitively be blamed on the housing itself.  Normally it's other things in the game world/systems that account for that.

    I understand your concerns (and appreciate your mathematical analysis), but I don't think the situation is as cut and dry as you make it out to be.  Correlation does not equal causation.  Again, pre-Warlords WoW did not have any form of housing at all, but the world was empty because there was no point to go into it and everyone sat in cities waiting on their LFG/LFR ques to pop.


    This post was edited by Renathras at October 10, 2018 8:31 PM PDT
    • 844 posts
    October 10, 2018 9:33 PM PDT

    Bronsun said:

    zewtastic said:

    EQ2 did do a great job with their housing. But EQ2 was from the very start a 100% instanced game. Pantheon is not.

     I hope it is eventually instanced. Depending on how they handle it, it should also be password protected so that you can invite people into your instanced home. :D

    You don't need instancing for PW protection. that existed in Vanguard.

    • 646 posts
    October 11, 2018 7:25 AM PDT

    Iksar said:Except for fast travel portals, mailbox, bank, crafting tables, vendor access, and resource nodes...

     

    Those things sound a lot like taking away from or otherwise escaping the world of Terminus, not adding to/enhancing the world. It's a substantial asking of development resources for something purely cosmetic or for roleplaying purposes.

    Then don't include any of those in Pantheon housing? But believe me when I say none of those things made a significant dent. The main cities had so much of what you needed - that you couldn't get from housing - that most folk still gathered there. The plant-gather FABkit required you to go out and harvest nodes in the open world in order to gather seeds to plant back home, and the others (mining, relic nodes, survival FABkits) didn't provide enough to be your sole supply of material (not to mention they only provide a single tier of mats). The only fast travel portals people make regular use of on housing plots in WildStar are those to Datascape and RMT - and with the former, it's no different than having your Transmat set to the town just outside Datascape, which pretty much everyone in the game did. Not to mention, you'd only be going to your housing plot when you wanted to use that particular portal.

    The folk who spend 99% of their time working on housing builds really don't affect your gameplay experience. If they couldn't do what they do, then they wouldn't even be playing the game, because what they enjoy the most is creating housing projects.

    Cosmetic "fluff" content DESERVES development resources. The game will get super boring, extremely fast if there is nothing to do outside the standard of grinding mobs and working on crafting. Being able to sink time and energy into housing gives people another avenue of play, and that will go a long way in both attracting and keeping players.

    • 3852 posts
    October 11, 2018 8:27 AM PDT

    I agree with Naunet.

    There are ways to encourage people to congregate in housing areas if they are not instanced. Housing neighborhoods are just as much a part of Terminus as anywhere else and visiting them is *not* escaping from the game world. 

    I would argue (somewhat tongue in cheek) that dingeons should be removed from the game. Once you zone in to a dungeon you have  left the world more thoroughly than if you walk into a housing neighborhood that probably won't even requiring zoning to get to. Plus you are too busy fighting or competing for mobs to talk and socialize as people will in a housing nbeighborhood. Housing, I would argue, is the heart and soul of Pantheon whereas dungeons are fluff for the hardcore anti-social people that would rather kill than talk.

    How to you get people out there seeing eachother? Have crafting stations outside the houses - don't let people craft indoors. Give a bonus for crafting at those stations - they will become quite popular. If there are "task" type of quests allow task turn-ins in the neighborhood.

    Here is a suggestion that will raise eyebrows. Please instance houses. Why? Good question - I am not generally a fan of instances other than for specific limited purposes.

    If housing is totally non-instanced as in Vanguard it will be spread all over the world. No village of maybe 100 homes will ever have many people there at one time. Those that say housing areas will be dead and lacking in socialization have an excellent point.

    If housing is totally instanced as in EQ2 and other games anyone zoning into a house or even housing neighborhood will indeed be leaving the world. The not-fans have an excellent point.

    But  let us assume a housing neighborhood non-instanced out in the real world. Once you enter your personal house it is instanced. Instead of 100 houses in a village you can have thousands- so the non-instanced community hub with crafting, a bank, a regional broker, merchants etc. will be quite busy. With people of all levels mingling together - one of Pantheon's objectives.

    Is there a downside to having the personal house instanced? Yes - people out in the "real world" of Terminus won't be able to see what the outside looks like or your beautiful yard decorations. But most of us spend more time focusing on the inside which people couldn't see from the outside anyway. And the personal instance can include the outside space not just interior rooms so you and your guests will be able to see it all.

    • 2752 posts
    October 11, 2018 2:45 PM PDT

    Naunet said:

    The folk who spend 99% of their time working on housing builds really don't affect your gameplay experience. If they couldn't do what they do, then they wouldn't even be playing the game, because what they enjoy the most is creating housing projects.

    Cosmetic "fluff" content DESERVES development resources. The game will get super boring, extremely fast if there is nothing to do outside the standard of grinding mobs and working on crafting. Being able to sink time and energy into housing gives people another avenue of play, and that will go a long way in both attracting and keeping players.

    That's not true at all, the resources/money/dev time takes from things they could add to enhance the focus of the game which is PvE and engaging with the world and other players which in turn affects my long term gameplay experience. Adding and continually supporting (instanced) housing with the myriad of items/art assets/features and all the systems behind it is tons of work, ongoing work that takes away from what could have been other content that directly supports the focus of the game. 

     

    If someone gets bored of the various core systems of the game then perhaps they should consider logging out and playing something else for a while? If the game fails because of lack of housing then the core game experience was poor, likewise if the game clings to life only due to housing then the overall game experience must be poor. Personally I think the director of FFXIV has the right mindset when it comes to playing or not playing if feeling bored:

     

    "Hey YoshiP, I love FFXIV, but it's hard to keep playing your game (because of the lack of content) and now I'm taking a break here. Sorry for asking this but is there a way or a reason to keep playing? or anything that can you teach me how to keep my motivation for playing your game?" - Player asking Yoshida during Gamescom

     

    "It's alright not to play it everyday. Since it's just a game, you can stop forcing yourself if it's hard on you to keep that up. Rather, it'll just pile up unnecessary stress if you limit yourself into playing just that one game since there are so many other games out there. So, do come back and play it to your heart's content when the major patch kicks in, then stop it to play other games before you got burnt out, and then come back for another major patch. This will actually make me happier, and in the end, I think this is the best solution I can answer for keeping your motivation up for the game." - Yoshida

     

    If you know what you are getting into from the start, a cooperative/teamwork focused combat/PvE game world, then why would you demand something else entirely? If I go into Overwatch or League of Legends or Rocket League or any other game I know what I am getting into/the focus of the game and I don't demand they add entirely different systems/modes/gameplay that don't support the core focus of the games. Why should it be different for a MMO? Some "fluff" here and there that support the core gameplay is fine, but instanced housing is far from a simple thing to implement and is a permanent tax on development resources for something entirely cosmetic or "fluff."

    • 696 posts
    October 11, 2018 3:02 PM PDT

    Yea, I agree with Iksar. Knowing how much resources go into instanced housing is a pain. Even open world housing has been more negative than positive in my experience and from what I hear from the majority of others. I think guild halls/houses/headquarters, w/e you want to call them, are the extent i want to go. I also don't like how instances housing makes a huge population be mostly in their instanced home and not interacting with the world. 

    It's kind of like the onion design in game design when you have the core design of the game and then you add on layers only if they complement the core of the game. The core of the game is cooperative game play with other people in a hostile PVE world filled with many difficult challenges to over come. The whole housing thing is very far away in the layers of the core onion design.

    Also, way too much resources to go into something that will probably not make the game better.


    This post was edited by Watemper at October 11, 2018 3:04 PM PDT
    • 3237 posts
    October 11, 2018 3:08 PM PDT

    zewtastic said:

    EQ2 did do a great job with their housing. But EQ2 was from the very start a 100% instanced game. Pantheon is not.

    This isn't true at all.  The vast majority of content was open-world when EQ2 first came out.  This includes dungeons and raid content.  Instancing is something that crept into the game more and more as it aged but it was definitely the exception rather than the rule early on.

    I would rather see open-world outposts than instanced housing any day of the week.  I agree with Iksar in saying that the primary focus of the game is PVE.  I'd like to see the housing/outpost experience play into that.  It would be nice if we can collect/craft items that can be used to decorate/enhance the structures we build.  Instancing in general is the exact opposite of what I am looking for in my MMO experience.  If players can build open-world structures with access codes for entry I would be all for that.


    This post was edited by oneADseven at October 11, 2018 3:17 PM PDT
    • 844 posts
    October 11, 2018 4:30 PM PDT

    oneADseven said:

    zewtastic said:

    EQ2 did do a great job with their housing. But EQ2 was from the very start a 100% instanced game. Pantheon is not.

    This isn't true at all.  The vast majority of content was open-world when EQ2 first came out.  This includes dungeons and raid content.  Instancing is something that crept into the game more and more as it aged but it was definitely the exception rather than the rule early on.

    I would rather see open-world outposts than instanced housing any day of the week.  I agree with Iksar in saying that the primary focus of the game is PVE.  I'd like to see the housing/outpost experience play into that.  It would be nice if we can collect/craft items that can be used to decorate/enhance the structures we build.  Instancing in general is the exact opposite of what I am looking for in my MMO experience.  If players can build open-world structures with access codes for entry I would be all for that.

    I played EQ2 from it's inception. It's 100% instanced, you just do not realize it. As the game player base died the numbers got so low that they stopped having to instance zones.

    On initial release when there were actually lots of players some of the newbie zones had 5-10 or more instances they were so crowded.


    This post was edited by zewtastic at October 11, 2018 4:33 PM PDT
    • 646 posts
    October 11, 2018 7:47 PM PDT

    Iksar said:That's not true at all, the resources/money/dev time takes from things they could add to enhance the focus of the game which is PvE and engaging with the world and other players which in turn affects my long term gameplay experience. Adding and continually supporting (instanced) housing with the myriad of items/art assets/features and all the systems behind it is tons of work, ongoing work that takes away from what could have been other content that directly supports the focus of the game.

    If VR wants this to be a game that holds onto players for the long haul, it needs to offer more than just group grinding mobs and crafting. That's simply the truth.

    To me, housing is worth the effort, as it is something I very much enjoy but also something that I don't see done right in most MMOs (with the sole exceptions of Rift and WildStar, and one of those will soon no longer be with us).


    This post was edited by Naunet at October 11, 2018 7:47 PM PDT
    • 1860 posts
    October 11, 2018 10:17 PM PDT

    zewtastic said:

    On initial release when there were actually lots of players some of the newbie zones had 5-10 or more instances they were so crowded.

    This is where we have to be careful with the wording.  I consider mirrored zones, or shards, or picks etc ( whatever you want to call them)  instances as well but some people consider instancing a separate area that is created privately for a single group of players.

    • 393 posts
    October 11, 2018 10:21 PM PDT

    Sevens said:

    My take is...I could care less if housing is in or not, if its instanced or not

    The only thing...and this is a real fear of mine coming from EQ2...

    is not to have the housing destroy or replace the need for the cities. In EQ2 once guild halls came out and you could do EVERYTHING...from selling junk to a merchant to every single last trade skill, inside the guild halls. You could even use the druid circles to port around the world! The once vibrant and lively cities suddenly became ghost towns. I want to see the cities been needed, to be vibrant 10 years down the line...not dead ghost towns 2 weeks after housing is introduced

    I started to play EQ II late and this was my experience as a new player. The towns, low level zones, all dead and bereft of the vitality of an active player-base. Needless to say, I didn't play it very long. Not even the somewhat cool Player Housing was enough to keep me interested.

    • 151 posts
    October 12, 2018 6:21 AM PDT
    Only thing I'd like to see with housing is that's its a display case for your rewards ect...a vault for shared items is the only advantage I would want to see. No sales auction boards, crafting stations or teleport pads. Just basicly storage beyond your bank slots.
    • 646 posts
    October 12, 2018 8:27 AM PDT

    Hyperium said: Only thing I'd like to see with housing is that's its a display case for your rewards ect...a vault for shared items is the only advantage I would want to see. No sales auction boards, crafting stations or teleport pads. Just basicly storage beyond your bank slots.

    That's another reason to go down the "housing as largely a creative feature" route. Housing doesn't need to have all sorts of functional features in order to provide countless hours of fun for a community. We just need a basic UI to manipulate assets (XYZ, rotation, and resizing) and access to assets. VR already likely has most if not all of the assets that would be useful for housing - just in game zone pieces. That's how WildStar devs did it, at least (and the controls were a slightly modified/trimmed down version of what the devs use when populating the game world with art assets). Here's a set of images showing the UI.

    Then you decide what the base plot should look like. WildStar's a goofy science-fantasy game, so they went with skyplots, but something like Rift's Dimensions might work better for this game, where you start out with a piece of land that is literally just a piece of one of the zones with some barriers setting space limits (they could then offer a variety of location options, from beach front to pine forest to desert to snowy mountainside, etc). Determine what decor load the instances can handle. It should be significant, as you don't have to worry about loading anybody else's house (WildStar has a max of 2500 exterior and 2500 interior; Rift decor limit depends on the Dimension but last I checked can be upwards of 2,800 items).

    A cool feature Rift has that I always wanted in WildStar was the ability to change the entry point. Rift has a decor item you can place that sets the placed location as the point of entry you'll spawn into when you enter the Dimension. Those kinds of tweaks are things that can easily be added on a later date, though.

    Anyway, I totally understand VR saving this kind of thing for later. But I think they should seriously reconsider the ideas they've previously stated for housing and go for a more free-form approach. There are a lot of people who love that kind of housing system and are soon to be out of a home, and even more you could lure in besides, and who would be happily dedicated to this game because of it.

    • 168 posts
    October 12, 2018 9:04 AM PDT

    Iksar said:

     

    That's not true at all, the resources/money/dev time takes from things they could add to enhance the focus of the game which is PvE and engaging with the world and other players which in turn affects my long term gameplay experience. Adding and continually supporting (instanced) housing with the myriad of items/art assets/features and all the systems behind it is tons of work, ongoing work that takes away from what could have been other content that directly supports the focus of the game.

     

    If someone gets bored of the various core systems of the game then perhaps they should consider logging out and playing something else for a while? If the game fails because of lack of housing then the core game experience was poor, likewise if the game clings to life only due to housing then the overall game experience must be poor. Personally I think the director of FFXIV has the right mindset when it comes to playing or not playing if feeling bored:

     

     

    I wish to mildly disagree with just a few things here. First, If I am subscribed for $15/mo in an MMO, I will not be playing any other game. Maybe that's what you do but it is not what I do. 100% of my gaming time is spent in that one MMORPG and not diluted.

    Second, you have stated what your gameplay experiences consist of.  I especially desire an in-depth crafting system. I consider crafting to not be part of PvE or PvP but its own robust leg of an MMO 3 legged stool. According to you, crafting should also not be implemented at all because it takes focus away from the PvE. I disagree with your premise completely and utterly. A great MMO is designed to have a  myriad of activities and things to do not just hack and slay. The non-combat related activities are just as much (if not more) of a draw to an MMO than...mob killing. I haven't gone out and stated that because I like crafting so much, I feel that everyone should be required to do it, nor should you (PvE statement). Not to mention that housing can easily be very much a part of that E if done well.

     

    (Really need more coffee, too many typos)


    This post was edited by Dashed at October 12, 2018 9:16 AM PDT
    • 1860 posts
    October 12, 2018 11:22 AM PDT

    Reading some of these posts, and knowing how long development has taken so far in general, I can't help but think that housing would be a major detriment to the progress of the game. 

    Because of the small team, it seems like it might be all VR can do to simply put out standard updates that focus on the core of the game in a timely fashion.  I can't imagine them spending time on extra features like housing when the main content takes so long to develop. 

    Choosing between developing core content vs extra content such as housing, if time constraints are a concern, is not a choice at all.

     

    • 696 posts
    October 12, 2018 11:26 AM PDT

    ^ agreed. Housing is soo far away from the core of the game that it's just extra fluff right now. Open world guild halls would be cool imo, but only to the extent that it is doable and implemented fairly well.

    • 523 posts
    October 12, 2018 2:48 PM PDT

    Just copy EQ2 housing, update the graphics, and throw in a few new ideas.  EQ2's housing system was flawless and absolute perfection for an MMO.  Don't make this harder than it needs to be.  If some other game somewhere along the way nailed a gameplay system, just copy it and make improvements.  Not everything needs to be unique and new.  This is all really simple.  EQ1 gameplay and non-instanced world/Dungeons.  Vanguard crafting.  EQ2 housing.  WoW 40 man raid instancing along with open world raid mobs.  Rift's collection system.  Done.  Now you have the greatest and deepest MMO ever.

    • 1019 posts
    October 12, 2018 4:28 PM PDT

    Deleted post....


    This post was edited by Kittik at October 13, 2018 6:21 AM PDT