Player Housing

[LordArtemis]

I will be giddy if I can make my starship my home SWG style. That will be more than enough for me.

[Genocidalx]

I couldn't agree with this more Catharde. I have thoroughly enjoyed player housing in other games including SWG, DAOC, and Wizard101. It's not at the top of my wish list but it's definitely up there. As others have said on the thread it's not in the near term set of updates but it still remains a tantalizing possibility for sometime in the future.

 

And I love Darth Moonshadow's responses.B

 

I bet if you guys took a moment to think about all the ways you could exploit your players with the Cartel Market in relation to player housing it would shoot up to the top of your list. Scum.

[Darth_Moonshadow]

I bet if you guys took a moment to think about all the ways you could exploit your players with the Cartel Market in relation to player housing it would shoot up to the top of your list. Scum.

 

Then go back to WoW then. I guarantee you, the grass is dead and salted on every side of the fence.

[Knockerz]

In pso2 you have player instance housing. It's not as popular as you may think. The items that sell the most are the player cosmetics like weapons, cloths, and so forth. If they do add in player housing I recommend swtor implement in this way:

 

Player housing requires an upkeep of cartel coins per hour.

[Knockerz]

As long as player housing is instanced (Doesn't have to be an instance per house, but could be a village/town area of Coruscant that's instanced off, for example. or Nar Shaddaa, with 32 players assigned to it maybe.). The housing system was great in SWG but driving out of Mos Eisley and seeing houses scattered all over the deserted wasn't that great

 

It was great when there was a lot of activity since it was like an extension of Mos Eisley, but seeing ghost towns after a few months post launch was not. Speaking of housing very early in the game you could have place a house in Dathomir.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Knockerz

[Xeperi]

A ton of great ideas here, and I don't see why player housing couldn't be implemented. Ship customization should probably be near the top of the list. Areas of the ship where no custscenes take place are a good start, or even being ad to add modules to your ship that ARE fully customizable would be great.

 

Ideally, you would be able to buy and sell and fully customize entire ships, and would not be stuck with just the one you get. I don't see this ever really happening but it would be nice.

 

I don't see a problem with off-ship homes and think there could be some creative solutions to ghost towns. Like your home could be scavenged for crafting materials if unused for a certain amount of time. The natural parasites (and I mean that in a nice way) of swtor would happily dismantle discarded houses and clean up planets, just for the easily obtained crafting materials. On pvp planets, maybe inhabited homes could be scavenged, with the option to buy and upgrade NPC's on the CM to protect your house.

[NwahsNirom]

Very high on my list of desires. Seems easy to do, just create a new little map of an existing planet, like they did with the Black Hole. Perhaps multiple planets. It could be completely instanced to help with populations like it was done in LOTRO, but LOTRO kind of stunk too because neighborhoods always felt empty. Maybe some compromise between SWG and LOTRO would be perfect.

[nbdiggity]

I have always enjoyed player housing in other mmo's. They are a great place to craft/store and customize during downtime from pve/pvp. The housing I enjoyed the most was from DAOC. Having the trophy system made you go out and collect adding another page to the game. I think any instanced housing zone would be great. I am not sure why ship customization was not added at launch?

 

-Add instanced housing zones for multiple planets. (ex: underground housing for tatooine )

-Allow different tiers of housing with more places to add npc's and customization with upgrades ( like DAOC ).

-Allow interior and exterior customization.

-Add a trophy system to display your conquests.

-Add guild logo/icons for homes. (how about a tabard system)

-Add a landing pad central to that housing instance for ease of return.

 

I am not that big a fan of the CM, but they could also add so much fluff to the cartel market for these customization that it would be another cash cow.

[Genocidalx]

Then go back to WoW then. I guarantee you, the grass is dead and salted on every side of the fence.

 

What? How dumb can you be? Your reply doesn't have anything to do with anything. I don't play wow.

[Darth_Moonshadow]

What? How dumb can you be? Your reply doesn't have anything to do with anything. I don't play wow.

 

Then go outside then. There is no MMO game out there that doesn't exploit you in one way or the other. So you might as well leave altogether.

[LordArtemis]

I would actually center housing and a host of other changes to our personal starships.....

 

1) Closing doors

Simple. Doors should be hatches that open and close like on the ships in flashpoints. At the very least the door should close on my personal quarters.

2) Cargo bay (legacy)

Add storage access in my quarters for all the characters in my Legacy, single tab, unlocked through the legacy interface.

 

3) Landing on planets

Put a button in the gui when sitting in the pilots seat to land on a planet when I arrive. It is silly for me to have to WALK out of my exit hatch just to land.

4) Minigames to improve ship performance/buffs

Remember the override/slicing minigames in ME? I think it would be good to be able to go to my engine room, or on my bridge at certain stations, certain control stations on the ship and activate small minigames where I can boost power output (faster shield regeneration, more powerful weapons), reenforce systems (makes the ship resist damage) or improve engine efficiency (lower travel cost). A successful minigame outcome would provide a temp buff to that system. Ties in to multiplayer options below.

5) Ability to enter our ship without taking off

You would need to design limited backdrops for when we look out of our bridge window, or you can just have blast shields down over the windows. In other words we can stay on planet without launching our ship. Ties in to on-ship missions below.

 

6) Gun turrets

Add gun turret stations for all spaceships, different locations based on ship design, at least two would be best.

 

7) Ability to direct companions to repair damaged system when in space combat

Add a button to command companions to repair your ship.

 

 

More in depth changes for the future....

1) Missions on and around our ship

Missions that trigger when we approach our ship or leave it, or when traveling through space. Getting attacked, repel borders, fix systems that are malfunctioning to escape, etc.

 

2) Ability for players to join you on your ship and play along when you go into space combat

They can man turrets, play minigames to fix ship damage or lengthen buffs, etc.

 

3) Players can join you in their starships for your space combat mission

Players will group up with you, go to their ship, you choose your space combat mission, they can join you in their ship, so you fly the pipe together. Friendly fire should be enabled.

4) Mission to go on attack run, then land and invade a ship

Allowing group play in the space mission would allow for this kind of mission to be authored. Could be set up as a flashpoint. You fight your way to a point, knock out a ships shields, land and fight on foot as usual.

 

5) Ability to customize both the exterior (color, markings, etc) and interior (SWG style interior decorating system, NO HOOKS)

Add decorations and awards/trophies to the game to quest for. Could be tied into an achievement system.

 

6) Ability to sit in every chair on our ship, and lay down on our bed.

Edited June 18, 2013 by LordArtemis

[Zorrion]

"can you make sword in box light sword so sword come out when opened? then if sword is back after sword, use light saber on box, and saber will be boxed after sword is out."

 

I suggest we think outside the box, the box in this case being our ship or a house in the middle of Tatooine. The Star Wars universe has thousands of inhabitable planets. A world set up for player occupation would be very straightforward and require little in the way of new coding if it borrowed elements from other already existing digital artwork. Don't want to have to drive around buildings on your way to complete a class quest? Put them on a planet that hasn't existed before.

An even simpler way to introduce housing in a short coding time would be to offer apartments on the fleet station, our homeworlds, or Nar Shadda. They are already literally coated in apartment blocks for billions of nameless inhabitants. Coding would be shuttle stops, elevators, hallways, and front doors. I seem to recall seeing a few of those already in the SWTOR palate. Inside the apartment would be Cartel Coin heaven, or maybe simply crafted pieces from synthweavers (drapes, rugs, wall hangings, plush furniture, etc.). Cybers can make the electronic toys, Armorsmiths can make the hard furniture, Crystal crafters the lighting, etc.

So you are only into hardcore pvp and raids? NP, no need to drop by, but for the tens of thousands of subscribers who get home late from work or finally get the small ones to bed and just have half an hour to putter for the night, jumping into a pug TfB raid is just not practical. When one honestly looks at who makes up the majority of paid subscribers, they are more mature folks looking to have some quiet escapist fun inbetween saving the galaxy (again). The endgame folks need a reason to keep logging in beyond grinding for ever better loot. BioWare's acceptance that their market base includes a significant number of folks who will pay for appearance items, different colored mounts, clothing dyes, pets, and saber crystals, also want a place to publically show them off. Front door access can be controlled by the same friend/guild/ignore lists that your ship or other places are.

Far more lucrative and long term suscriber retaining than any new flashpoint, player housing (or apartments) needs to move up the priority list. TfB and S&V have amazing graphics, mechanics, and gameplay, but cost a fortune to code, test, and release. In-between the hard-core threaten to fold or flee at any moment. Not wanting to slow the rate at which their demands can be met and knowing they would pour hot oil on anyone who slows their progress, I suggest the player apartment idea could be addressed by the Cartel Coin/art side of the house with minimal disruption to the rate at which new content is released.

[Bomyne]

It was great when there was a lot of activity since it was like an extension of Mos Eisley, but seeing ghost towns after a few months post launch was not. Speaking of housing very early in the game you could have place a house in Dathomir.

 

I still think it should be instanced. SWG was designed for that kind of thing. There were massive open areas all over SWG's planets. TOR planets are not designed for that. Tatooine probably the only world you'd find enough room for a house.

 

Having instanced locations that match a planets theme (apartment block on coruscant or nar shadda, village on Tatooine or Alderaan, etc) would be the best idea in my opinion. That way, they can control how large each instance is in terms of players and stuff.

 

Does anyone remember the massive freeze ups in SWG when entering a player city with a couple of fully decorated guild halls?

[Nythain]

I love the idea of player housing. And I love that the system is already in place to make it happen. I agree whole heartedly that our ships should definitely serve as any "house".

 

I would personally love to see more to them.

A. Expansion. Allow us to buy extensions. Throw in a door here or there (you've already got escape hatches in place) that we can "unlock" to add on to our ship for more design room.

B. Placeables. To avoid conflict with story triggers and event locations, make them only placeable in the "expansion" area(s). Furnature, lighting, various other decorations or objects.

C. Showcases. Give us wall mounts, pedestals, various other things we can purchase and use to show off trophies or gear.

D. Paint Jobs. We already have a "Ship" tab in our character screen for equipping various weapons and shields, add a slot similar to companion customization slot allowing us to change the paint job. Nothing that will change the mesh/model, but a simple texture change.

 

I'm not a programmer, so I can't say for certain that all of those options would be easy enough to implement, but I do feel with my minimal programming and game development knowledge and experience that it could be done. Most of those features would be more than enough to satiate most of the player housing community's desires for the personalization and customization we hope to eventually see.

Edited June 18, 2013 by Nythain

[Lord_Karsk]

Want housing ? best housing ever made, so they say http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=satOugouG1c

[Nythain]

Want housing ? best housing ever made, so they say http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=satOugouG1c

 

Wild Star has been brought up in more than a few threads regarding player housing, and more generalized threads regarding things other MMOs are doing that SWTOR isn't or won't.

 

I'm actually anticipating it's release so I can see if the game merits the hype it's been receiving lately. I know their trailer department deserves "Most awesome trailers made for a game" of the year award though.

[magi_melcior]

Maybe this has already been mentioned elsewhere, perhaps even in this thread (sorry I don't have time to read 10+ pages atm) but what about making the players ship their house. At the moment the ships are fairly generic with no customization at all, the fact that both Jedi Classes and both Sith classes have the same ship reduces the variety even more. So why not let us customize our ships into flying homes from home, here are some of the things you could do, they could be purchased with comms (different items from different vendors for different types of comm), Cartel Coins or credits, super rare ones could drop as extra loot from Operation, FP and World Bosses.

 

1. Ships Paint Job

Seriously can't we get a new paint job, let us customize the look of our ships exterior, if a Bounty Hunter wants their ship Black with orange flame decals let them. If a Sith want to terrify the galaxy in a bright pink Fury why not sell them the paint.

 

2. Ships Name

I'm sure many people would love to give their ships cool sounding names rather than just the generic Jedi Defender or Sith Fury.

 

3. Interior decoration

As with the outside, what would be wrong with letting players change the interior decoration of their ship. If they want to have more subdued lighting or bright neon that should be their choice. Heck if they want wood paneled walls and thick carpets that should be fine too.

 

4. Furniture, ornamentation and Art.

Lets us by new chairs, tables, beds, cupboard, statues and even paintings to adorn the ship with. Obviously you'd have to control where players could set items. Have click-able patches on the floor or walls that when a player clicks they can choose to place an item from their inventory there.

 

5. Show pets on-board ship

How about when you board your ship you find all the pets you currently have are roaming around the ship.

 

6. Achievement Trophies

When you beat an important boss or finish a particular mission you are rewarded with a trophy you can hang on your ships wall. So when my JK beats the end of chapter 1 boss I get his weapon as a trophy. Or when you beat Thrasher in S&V you get a holo statue of the war beast

[TravelersWay]

Would it change your mind if we were allowed to break into abandoned houses and take stuff?

 

No, it would not.

 

MMO's solved this problem years ago by making player housing into instanced areas that you either accessed by a common door (EQ2) or just via teleporting to your house (CoH, CO).

 

Kind of like how they also fixed the problem of outlevelling your friends via sidekicking/mentoring.

 

... and customization by separating your gear (stats) from its look.

 

... and server over/under crowding by using single servers with multiple instances.

 

... and difficulty by allowing you to set how hard you wanted your missions to be.

 

... and forced grouping/forced solo'ing by scaling missions to group sizes.

 

... and a lot of other lessons learned that BW ignored.

 

And the thing that sandbox players requesting this continually ignore is the development resources/cost. Like I said - I pay money to go to a themepark to be entertained by the attractions. I expect that money I paid to go into improving the current attractions and adding more attractions. I do not expect that money and time to be put into things that would allow people to make an eyesore out of the parking lot. Dedicating a team to design player housing outside of making the ships more customizable takes away development time, resources, and money from making a new mission, Operation, Flashpoint, or explorable zone.

Edited June 24, 2013 by TravelersWay

[JetAten]

Get The Sims if you feel like playing house. I want more quests.

[curtkram]

Get The Sims if you feel like playing house. I want more quests.

 

get warcraft if you want more quests. swtor has missions

 

[Zilik]

1. Ships Paint Job

2. Ships Name

3. Interior decoration

4. Furniture, ornamentation and Art.

5. Show pets on-board ship

6. Achievement Trophies

 

1, 2, 3 &4... I think would be nice, but as things are now no one except you can see your ship, so for them to expend the effort into doing this just so I alone can see it, i don't think it will be done anytime soon. Down the line if they add group space combat or finally allow other people into your hanger/ship, then yes I'm all for it.

 

5... no way, my main has only a small percent of the pets in game and yet its upwards of a couple dozen. Now let me pick a few to have roam about, ok sure.

 

6... I would love, Skyrim had armor and weapon stands where you could collect cool items you found in game and display, and beyond that i just collected cool things and scattered them around my home. I would love for SWTOR to have this, to collect all the Jedi sabers from my kills, to collect some "heads in jars" from my powerful enemies, etc. This sort of thing would be huge in guild "housing" as well, for guilds to show off special trophies from important raid kills and world achievements.

 

BUT again, i just can't see them doing anything with housing until they fix/add a way for other people to see and interact with this stuff. The work hours of coding and all that it would take could be used to address other things over adding something so new, sadly i just don't think it'll happen for a long long time if ever.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Zilik

[Jandi]

Get The Sims if you feel like playing house. I want more quests.

 

Now that EA has the rights, expect The Sims: Star Wars to come out soon.

[CosmicKat]

No, it would not.

 

 

 

And the thing that sandbox players requesting this continually ignore is the development resources/cost. Like I said - I pay money to go to a themepark to be entertained by the attractions. I expect that money I paid to go into improving the current attractions and adding more attractions. I do not expect that money and time to be put into things that would allow people to make an eyesore out of the parking lot. Dedicating a team to design player housing outside of making the ships more customizable takes away development time, resources, and money from making a new mission, Operation, Flashpoint, or explorable zone.

 

TOR has some of the most bland and vanilla PvE combat mechanics in the history of MMO design. The world design is pure eye-candy as it has no bearing whatsoever on mob behaviour or combat mechanics.

 

If TOR is a themepark they wasted all their money making it look like Disneyworld and were only left with $19.98 to design the rides.

[TravelersWay]

1, 2, 3 &4... I think would be nice, but as things are now no one except you can see your ship, so for them to expend the effort into doing this just so I alone can see it, i don't think it will be done anytime soon. Down the line if they add group space combat or finally allow other people into your hanger/ship, then yes I'm all for it.

 

Anyone you are grouped up with can enter your hanger and ship. I hitch rides with a guildie all the time.

 

TOR has some of the most bland and vanilla PvE combat mechanics in the history of MMO design. The world design is pure eye-candy as it has no bearing whatsoever on mob behaviour or combat mechanics.

 

If TOR is a themepark they wasted all their money making it look like Disneyworld and were only left with $19.98 to design the rides.

 

Which suits me just fine. The new operations, flashpoints, and warzone have improved with each release. Huttball is considered one of the most fun and unique PvP maps in an MMO (I personally don't care for it). If that is bland and vanilla ... well, it will keep me playing for the next seven years just as Guild Wars 1 has kept me playing (which is even more themepark and linear than SWTOR). Player housing, day/night cycles, and weather effects need not apply, thank you very much.

Edited July 1, 2013 by TravelersWay

[Darth_Moonshadow]

Now that EA has the rights, expect The Sims: Star Wars to come out soon.

 

.....

 

I would actually buy that.