Player Housing and Cities Planet

[VJade]

it would have to be designed right but in theory I also support the idea.

 

There would have to be something in place so that it wouldnt get silly EG as mentioned ghost towns etc with streets owned by players that never log on etc etc .

 

and I know we alraedy have our ships whic his kinda like whats being asked but the idea of having a city penthouse or a castle built into a rock face etc would be interesting...

[Rikus]

Yeah I am not sure player cities and housing is a good idea unless it is instanced. I would like a mesh between Lotro, EQII and SWG personally. I would like the neighborhood system like in LOTRO. Instanced housing Like EQ II but the freedom within the home to hang and place whatever items you want. I would be fine with an idea of doing Apartment housing on capital ships if they don't want to do planet side but either way we need housing and the ability to expand crafting to support the feature. I love the combat in TOR but personally I am tired of rolling alts and fighting all the time. Crafting has been boring. I need a place to hang my helmet/trophies like a rancor head or a sith hilt from a battle. something cool please.

 

Hey if Rift and Aion can implement housing than I think TOR (The king of instances) can definitely do it.

[Hambunctious]

No, no instanced housing. If I want to have 40 guildies over for a meeting, then I should be able to do so. If I want to have an open museum house, I should be able to do that as well. You can't do that with instanced housing.

 

A full blown player city complete with conveniences, GTN, shuttle port, rest area cantina when you level your city up, etc, and maybe even a way to declare your city as a pvp area with destroyable defenses would suit me just fine.

[Jakarn]

Please no, maybe a seperate planet for houses I would not ever go there but I understand that some like it. This was the reason I quit SWG (there was other reasons, but this was the straw that broke the camels back as they say). Traveling through Tatoine desert and all of suden someones house is right there.

 

The best idea is the ship, being able to decorate it, the ship is basically a flash point anyway they could alow you to take your group on board your ship. I also read that they a introducing guild ships so you can hold bigger meetings on those.

[KFCTatertot]

Maybe not the best idead to prefill the world with houses... Maybe something like a world with a republic outpost only and its filled with monsters and other things and you have to clear them to build your house. You dont need any specific skill so that you dont have to lose all of your hard earned crew skill points, but it does take a while to build it. The monsters that remain will be good neighbors and stay away from the invisible property line. Also the best pieces of land will be guarded by higher lvl "World Boss" type enemies and you can have a bigger house than the easier ones. Higher the lvl bugger the house, vice versa. And as you lvl you can sell/buy houses so youre not stuck at lvl 50 with a lvl 10 house or something. The further you go from the Repub. outpost the higher lvl the enemies get. Feel free to spice up/correct me if i got anything wrong or missed some cool things to add...

[Glowrod]

Interesting idea. The real problem with any type of housing outside of your ship, though, is that they don't remotely fit into this game. Travel time to and from would be so much of a hastle that it would almost certainly guarantee that the place would be deserted. Also, you have to consider how much dev time would be wasted on housing that could and should be spent on things that actually affect game play.

 

However, a possible solution would be to have the people that want this to pay real world money for a virtual house deed. If everyone that wanted a house payed $49.99 for a deed, that would finance some programmers to work on it. When you think about it, having a house is like a different game since it doesn't really have anything at all to do with the actual game. Might as well charge it like it's a game.

[misterbeefy]

I want any sort of player housing; instanced, open landscape (I'd prefer open landscape, but I'll gladly take instanced if it means we get housing), preferably with the option of displaying trophies and armor/weapons, like in SWG. I understand it'd be ridiculously hard and time-consuming to give everything a model like in SWG, but I can dream, right?

[Kynesis]

For those of us who think player housing is a complete waste of time and utterly without purpose - please tell us what value they bring to the game other than being tedious little show rooms for the trophies you (and everybody else in the game) have.

 

If you get all that you're asking for, surely the normal 'social' areas on the fleets and planets would lose their vitality as people instead gather in tiny groups in their 'houses' or just hang out alone in their little custom areas... and then complain that the game isn't social enough.

[Lorica]

If they do add housing planets, here's how it would work.

 

1. Park your ship in an orbital station

2. walk across a huge hangar to an elevator

3. down the elevator

4. run clear across the station again in a deserted hallway

5. get on a shuttle to the surface

6. run clear across the space port

7. run half way across the space port town to a taxi service

8. take a taxi to your neighborhood

9. run all the way across your neighborhood to your housing district/zone

10. Enter the zone and run across the district to your house.

 

Total travel time estimate: 30 minutes each way. I think I'd rather have a customizable ship.

 

Err, no, you choose your instance housing, planet, whatever on your map and it warps you to your landing bay with animation (I like the animation) but still faster than traveling to most planets with orbital stations.

 

The reason for instance housing is to take the resources off the main world and place it on a server with available resources to handle everyone in their house without lag.

[Warrgames]

So if player house and player city are a way to save SWTOR. Adding any SWG feature will help too. Why did SWG die? Why is WoW doing so well without ever having it?

 

Yes player housing and player city would bring in some more people that would play a lot longer. But the more you are playing with your house the less you are PvPing or doing flashpoint or OP. The more time they spend working on a player city planet the less time they spend on creating new content. New content is what keeps people playing.

 

What you want is a major expansion not some quick little thing. Have to add so much new stuff just put in your house. Not counting creating a planet. Different house looks.

 

I’m SWG vet and it was the best mmo I’ve played. FOR THE LOVE OF SWG LET IT R.I.P.

[Benets]

I am making a suggestion about it, but for Guild's HQ where others can siege. Wait and i'll post it later. Meanwhile some of my ideas:

 

Space Instance/Operation

Denova (Rep vs. Imp PvP planet)

World Pvp My Ilum Map

Modifications Drops vs. Item Drops

Guild's Quests/Story

Missions with different paths and endings

Inheritance

Legacy Library Database

 

 

I've made my guild's HQ post and my idea for guilds, check it below:

Patch 1.x Guilds

Guild HQs

Edited July 17, 2012 by Benets

[Kaisernick]

i prefer the idea of crew quaters on guild ships.

theres nothing stopping you from inviting firend who arnt in the guild there to see your pretty things.

 

but in the end for housing or anything like that to work they need to add items into the game that can be placed there (ie furnature trophies armor racks ect)

[Zackius]

First let me start off by saying the only reason people cannot stop comparing TOR to SWG is because we are in 2012 and this game is like a nub game in comparison to the "extensive" options that we all encountered there. Also lets not forget, if we dont have anything to compare this game to, then how do we know if its good or not? I would like to add the game did not die, SOE's contract with LA came to an end with no option to re-sign, mostly due to a fight for subs for the new TOR. Last time I checked before SWG shutting down had many many more server's up and running unlike most of your older MMO's today with only 2 or 3, exception WoW. Also just to note, 8 years for a MMO is outstanding, so lets all be honest, it couldn't of been that dead ( dead game = no money = company shuts it down). Let's not forget as well, SWG was before WoW and set the pace for most MMO's today. If you dont believe me, look up the dates when the games came out. OK, now to the housing issue. In a 90% PVE game such as this, it should have WAY WAY more options. If your a die hard SW fan or just getting started we all know the love we have for it. With that said here is what player housing entailed: The ability to place your house just about anywhere on most planets. The ability to pack your house at the touch of a button. The ability to place a REAL guild hall that people could actually walk into and sit at tables (also placed by the owner) for high council meetings. The ability to make a city to your likings, meaning, statues (that you could name after real players), water fountains, shuttles, parks, vendors, banks, if you could think it, it had it. Also a side note for all the people on "How would we get people to see your homes", if you played SWG you would already know this, but I will tell you anyway. You had a vendor that was linked to the Market, so when you were crafting, or you just ran a dungeon, you just put your items on your vendor and it was in the Market (Galactic Market in TOR). Now if they wanted to buy something, they travel to your house and poof, all your Deco madness was not for nothing, simple really, thus while also giving players new area's they have probably never even seen. This was my experience many times throughout my years playing. Now for all you pvp'ers that say its just "Suzy Cue Deco Party", in my opinion there is nothing like seeing a player with actual ingame items sitting there looking pretty on your wall of accomplishments while im visiting your vendor for some cool items to buy. Do you know what your accomplishments mean in this game? I couldn't tell you, because im sure along with about 99,9 % of players never even inspect another person's rap sheet, because it all sits on a stupid text page in the back of your codex, kind of a joke if you ask me. Now to all you instanced vs Walk in housing, this is for you. Once you have walk in housing, the rest is just being cheap and lazy while developing a game. To me instanced housing feels like, oh great another commercial when I really really want to see this damn movie. If you have never experienced walk in housing, then your not to blame, but I have yet to meet hardly anyone that would go back to instanced, its just backward gaming and shows the non technical status of your current MMO. So I hear, well Zackius it would be a ghost town, well guess what, SOE took care of that too by labeling any building that a player account was connected with as abandoned ( if I remember right, people that no longer had a sub) and you were able to destroy their homes at the click of a button. The incentive was an achievement and you received something for it, sorry I cant remember its been a while. But if your following me, it didn't take but about a couple of weeks (atleast on my server) for almost every city to be packed back up in the players data pad, never to be seen again. It was kind of sad though, seeing some of the first cities on my server being torn apart and eventually poofed out of existence, but it did the job, case solved. I can tell you over and over how SOE solved the problems, but it would just take toooo long to type. So back to why housing is so important. Lets all be honest, we would not all be here if we didnt find some connection to this game, for me its the more realistic approach as in, light sabers, gunboats, laser guns, hover crafts, and future housing. Those things are real possibilities in the future at some point. So that makes me feel more connected to this game, unlike Trolls, flying dragons, you get my point. So what this means to you, there is something in this game that you can relate to whether you are the hard core pvp'er or the hard core pve'er or the inbetween and let's all agree, in the end, well all want to accomplish something or why would we be playing. Now the question is, where would you like that displayed? On a text sheet or having a real graphic item on your display in your nicely furnished house? Of course it would be the house, because you can connect with that better because of real life, hence making the game even a better experience. Ok so Zackius I dont care about showing my accomplishments, well why are you spending hours upon hours to complete something? Why not just play xbox 360 and run around in Halo and kill each other over and over again? This is why, because your looking for a bigger and better and longer lasting experience, welcome to SW. So to sum this up. I can not understand for the life of me, how it is now 2012 way more tech available and a company with endless amounts of resources can make a game with limited options (to me very very basic) than a company with a hand full of devs and limited resources made a game that set a gaming standard and could beat any, I mean ANY MMO to this day with that amount of options ingame. If anyone thinks they have an MMO that can beat the amount of options you had in SWG, please please post, I could give you an encyclopedia full of information that you probably never even knew existed in MMO's. If your reading this TOR, please take out that TRON rail shooter for space missions, ugh, talk about old technology, LOL. There is nothing like logging out in my hand crafted chair, while overlooking the cliffside onto my private lake in my city. I miss you SWG. So just one more time, if anyone can contest that another MMO has better options, other than character traits at toon creation, hehe, I can pretty much beat or come pretty damn close to your options with SWG. Lets not forget, SWG has been around way before most of these MMO's today, so I would just say they probably copied most of their stuff from it anyway. Feel free to fire up the posts woot!!! Semper Fi baby!

[Tiek]

eq2 style housing id be all for. no swg style ghost towns.

[Zackius]

eq2 style housing id be all for. no swg style ghost towns.

 

Hey someone had to start something new and others profited off their idea's

[AstralProjection]

I second this idea.

 

The biggest thing this game needs is instanced maps where players can freely develop, including placing houses and guild/faction bases.

 

It would take your game from boring to fun in the blink of an eye.

[AstralProjection]

So if player house and player city are a way to save SWTOR. Adding any SWG feature will help too. Why did SWG die? Why is WoW doing so well without ever having it?

 

Yes player housing and player city would bring in some more people that would play a lot longer. But the more you are playing with your house the less you are PvPing or doing flashpoint or OP. The more time they spend working on a player city planet the less time they spend on creating new content. New content is what keeps people playing.

 

What you want is a major expansion not some quick little thing. Have to add so much new stuff just put in your house. Not counting creating a planet. Different house looks.

 

I’m SWG vet and it was the best mmo I’ve played. FOR THE LOVE OF SWG LET IT R.I.P.

 

SWG Died because it had horrible combat, and it was forcibly shut down. If SWG had combat the quality of TOR's, it never would've declined at all.

 

The problem with your idea is that people get utterly sick of running flashpoints and ops, and just leave the game. I've been one of the most die hard fans of this game since day one, and I'm very casual, only can play for a little time each day, and don't play every day. I've still got fully augmented war hero gear, have done all the ops, and don't care to endlessly run them for no reason. After the first time operations aren't interesting. After the first kill they aren't challenging.

 

They spend months developing a single op and warzone, when they could be making content that perpetuates itself. Every time I see a single new operation announced, I die a little inside, because I know it will keep most players busy no more than a month or two, and that's not a month of steadily logging in. That's a month of showing up just to run your raids.

 

Eventually players wisen up and stop paying the sub or logging in, when they realize they have no other reason to log in other than to do their daily chores or run a raid.

 

Housing/bases are player generated content and potentially PVP, and that will stay fresh far longer than any one map.

 

Those months of development time squandered on ops and warzones that just lead to an eventual level cap raise are poor design.

 

I can't answer you why people still play WoW, other than that they invested so much time in it while it was the major player in the market. There's zero substance to the game. It's a hamster wheel, and at this rate, that's all TOR will ever be. A hamster wheel with expensive voice acting.

[Jiminison]

I love the enthusiasm people had for SWG. I do. That said, this is a different game. Just because something was good in an old game does not make it good here. SWG was a sandbox, and had an entirely different style of play. The housing and crafting elements fit that style. This game, for better or worse, is not a sandbox. And as many other games have shown, many sandbox features do not fit with this style of game. I have nothing against sandboxes in general and SWG specifically. I enjoyed it in it's time, like many. But this game is not SWG. It is SW:TOR. Let it be it's own game, instead of a re-hash of another title.

 

I personally would prefer options more in line with the character of this game. As our ships are supposed to be our "home base" I would love to be able to customize my ship. Even if it's just paint, furniture, equipment, and maybe some trophies on the wall. I think it would fit nicely. It may not be exactly what you had in another MMO, but isn't that kind of the point, being that this is a different game?

 

Let me add too this when ever we have guild ships, if we ever do these ships could have living quarters we can make our own which we can add things to decoration etc. But I agree if not housing or the fancy apartment style living quarters like on the movies. Ships should be ours to decorate as we please.

[Jiminison]

planet housing would get people on the planets promoting more world pvp!

[Shingara]

I think player housing is coming in, with some of the rewards for the f2p model to me looks like decoration.

[jorill]

For me, decorating my ship would be the best of both worlds. It would require a lot less work development wise and it makes sense since we are planet hopping. I think it would please a lot of people. I also would like crafters to be able to make certain items for housing with trophies as well from flashpoints and ops. Maybe you can trade in comms from pvp also for certain items.

[osteim]

how about this idea. Each guild is assigned an apartment block on a specific planet. in order to qualify for a house you must of logged in the game for at least 10 days if not you dont qualify for a house. the fun part is you share a house with your guild member. 2 people to a house your roomate is randomly picked for you and your allowed just 1 rejection so it can be anyone in your guild. one planet is assigned for imps and 1 for rebel players. if your dont log into the game for 10 days then you lose your house and have to wait 30 days to aquire a new one. this should prevent ghost towns, also in the apartment complex you have many vendors, the galactic market guild meeting rooms a place to land the guild ship ect. the housing complex can be accessed by the guild ships there will also be a place for your companions too in the apartment.

[Glowrod]

I think player housing is coming in, with some of the rewards for the f2p model to me looks like decoration.

 

What is the source of this belief? Did you see something official or are you just wishfully thinking?

 

planet housing would get people on the planets promoting more world pvp!

 

I don't think it would. Most people couldn't care about housing, houses don't fit into this game at all so there would be no point in having one, and the travel time to and from a housing planet itself would keep people away.

 

For me, decorating my ship would be the best of both worlds. It would require a lot less work development wise and it makes sense since we are planet hopping. I think it would please a lot of people. I also would like crafters to be able to make certain items for housing with trophies as well from flashpoints and ops. Maybe you can trade in comms from pvp also for certain items.

 

This is very sensible. Using our ship as our house fits perfectly into this game. We are always on the move getting to our quests, ops, dailies, etc. A fixed house in this game would be like a square peg in a round hole. We are always in our ships; they already have everything a house needs (i.e. a bed, entertainment, seating/hangout areas). All they would have to do is make it so that we can decorate it and it's done.

 

how about this idea. Each guild is assigned an apartment block on a specific planet. in order to qualify for a house you must of logged in the game for at least 10 days if not you dont qualify for a house. the fun part is you share a house with your guild member. 2 people to a house your roomate is randomly picked for you and your allowed just 1 rejection so it can be anyone in your guild. one planet is assigned for imps and 1 for rebel players. if your dont log into the game for 10 days then you lose your house and have to wait 30 days to aquire a new one. this should prevent ghost towns, also in the apartment complex you have many vendors, the galactic market guild meeting rooms a place to land the guild ship ect. the housing complex can be accessed by the guild ships there will also be a place for your companions too in the apartment.

 

The problems with this:

 

1. What happens when a guild dies because people stop logging in?

2. What happens if your assigned bunkmate cancels their account and everyone else is assigned? Or they don't log in for 10 days?

3. Puting emps and reps on seperate planets kills a lot of opportunity for PvP

4. I don't think you will ever avoid ghost towns with fixed housing in a game like this. If you are playing the game, you are not in your house. There is just no other way to look at this. This game is about being on the move.

 

I've only once ever seen housing sort of work. That was back in Ultima Online. It worked because there was no auction house. In order to sell your stuff, you had to place vendors in your house. You also needed tools for crafting, like forge and anvil, loom, etc. Houses were required to place these. The only downside was that they had houses all over the world. Everywhere that you went to quest, you were tripping over a house.

 

With modern MMO's, the Auction Houses (GTN) elimitates half of that, and not having fixed crafting tools eliminates the other half of the need for housing. No one ever went door to door checking out people's trophies and decorations.

 

Fixed housing in this game would be absolutely pointless. Our ships are our houses. And BW has stated as much on several occatioins, so these threads are a bit pointless.

[AstralProjection]

What is the source of this belief? Did you see something official or are you just wishfully thinking?

 

 

 

I don't think it would. Most people couldn't care about housing, houses don't fit into this game at all so there would be no point in having one, and the travel time to and from a housing planet itself would keep people away.

 

 

 

This is very sensible. Using our ship as our house fits perfectly into this game. We are always on the move getting to our quests, ops, dailies, etc. A fixed house in this game would be like a square peg in a round hole. We are always in our ships; they already have everything a house needs (i.e. a bed, entertainment, seating/hangout areas). All they would have to do is make it so that we can decorate it and it's done.

 

 

 

The problems with this:

 

1. What happens when a guild dies because people stop logging in?

2. What happens if your assigned bunkmate cancels their account and everyone else is assigned? Or they don't log in for 10 days?

3. Puting emps and reps on seperate planets kills a lot of opportunity for PvP

4. I don't think you will ever avoid ghost towns with fixed housing in a game like this. If you are playing the game, you are not in your house. There is just no other way to look at this. This game is about being on the move.

 

I've only once ever seen housing sort of work. That was back in Ultima Online. It worked because there was no auction house. In order to sell your stuff, you had to place vendors in your house. You also needed tools for crafting, like forge and anvil, loom, etc. Houses were required to place these. The only downside was that they had houses all over the world. Everywhere that you went to quest, you were tripping over a house.

 

With modern MMO's, the Auction Houses (GTN) elimitates half of that, and not having fixed crafting tools eliminates the other half of the need for housing. No one ever went door to door checking out people's trophies and decorations.

 

Fixed housing in this game would be absolutely pointless. Our ships are our houses. And BW has stated as much on several occatioins, so these threads are a bit pointless.

 

Housing could easily fit into this game, or any game. Jedi have meditation chambers, Troopers have hidden supply caches, Smugglers have safehouses, etc. etc. It would make great sense on a ship as well because of the "Adventurous" feel of the storyline, but that dies at level 50, and probably won't continue on much except for a week or so every year or two when they expand the class stories, if that ever happens. Once you reach 50, you're not on the move, you basically live on the fleet or a couple daily quest areas. The fleets are boring, ugly, and impersonal, and feel less star-warsy that individual housing would. The unique living spaces depicted in Star Wars are some of what makes the universe so vibrant. To take that away you're left with a few generic, metallic bunker style structures like we have now, which are tedious and repetitive after 20 levels of questing, which is a drop in the bucket of the actual game.

 

To answer your questions:

 

1) Everything is instanced. It doesn't matter if a guild dies. Open a new instance if you run out of space. Easier to solve those old UO problems now with instances and sharding. Buildings could also be guild/factional related, giving you something to attack and defend. Potentially, let the buildings be destroyed by the other faction. Leads to greater meaning for the structure.

 

2) Not sure what you're driving at here? Permissions lists and things like that have solved inactivity issues for a while. See above as well, they can be deleted after x amount of time, new shards can be created, or they can be destroyed through a combat system. Keeps defunct structures cleaned up. In CoH you chose a window your base was vulnerable when your supergroup had a base upgrade that made it vulnerable to attack. If you weren't on to defend during that time people could storm your base and do damage to it or destroy it.

 

3) They don't have to be on Separate planets. In fact, some development areas could be for building bases, encouraging PVP conflict between the factions. Right now, everyone's on a Separate fleet, and rarely leaves. How is that encouraging PVP? Oh, right, it isn't. This system could be designed to account for that in a way current development hasn't been.

 

4) Ghost towns are a result of a defunct game or a poor housing system. If it's implemented right, like in the days SWG thrived, that's not really an issue. Towns will wax and wane, some will disappear, others will rise to prominence, just like in real life. Not sure what the issue is there. Not sure what the allure to a crowded fleet is either, there's no need to be afraid everyone will stop logging in suddenly. Personally I'd rather not read the general chat spam or adjust my filters.

 

The whole point of this is to give players the opportunity to build something meaningful as a group in the Star Wars Universe, to create a personal bunker or a guild run fortress to protect your faction's interest on a particular planet. There are numerous ways this could promote PVP and factional interaction. The more guilds/players develop a particular instance on a planet, the more their faction could gain control over that planet. A mechanism for damaging those structures could allow the balance of power to be turned. That would make this galaxy feel like it was at war far more than a few more lame giant boss battles that will be old after one kill.

 

This forum is for suggestions to make the game better. BW has said a lot of things that haven't been true, I see no reason why they couldn't realize they made a mistake and bring some version of this into being. Shooting it down and saying it will never happen defeats the purpose of suggestions forum. Housing worked best in UO and SWG, but the existence of a GTN does not exclude it from working here if the system is designed to take the war in the galaxy into account.

[ShelvanUberwan]

I fully support this idea. More SWG features added to this game would be awesome.

 

I 2nd this motion. It has been voted. SWG features will be put into the game.

 

Thank you come again