housing got decoration hooks :((

[ikinai]

Catchy jingle...I like it!

 

But...something about that jingle makes me think Bandaid® brand bandages might have an issue with it...just throwin it out there...

 

They can take it up with the Dark Council.

[TUXs]

They can take it up with the Dark Council.

The Dark Council will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away forever. The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of Johnson & Johnson.

 

Besides...who do you think makes most of the galactic implants you see all the Dark Lords sporting these days?

[Twin]

Easy is not the term you are looking for. The term you should be using is "things I wanted to happen but didn't so I am going to complain about it since I can't put a vase on the ceiling."

 

Easy implies something is EASY to do (there isn't a difficulty barrier large enough to deter people). FREE PLACEMENT isn't "hard". Its not hard at all. A free placement system would let me dump a giant pile in the middle of my house since there are no rules. There is nothing HARD about that.

 

So not only is your term usage completely incorrect but you fail to THINK about why this system might be in place. Free placement forces the server to constantly report locational data to EVERY SINGLE object. That is a serious technical issue. One which can create a ton of lag and network abuse on the backend. It is much simpler to use lookup data and draw objects based on lookups. It also much more efficient,

 

Yeah, because i firmly stated that it's extremely hard to drop all your items in a pile in a house with a Free Placement system?

 

It is in all senses of the word <<Easier>> to decorate your house to it's (In your eyes) max potential with "hooks", rather then customizing your house to it's max potential with a Free Placement system.

 

And hearing the devs say they decided against Free Placement because players more or less wouldn't be able to live up to BW's view of what looks estethically good, felt like nothing short of an insult.

 

They didn't say a word about this decision being based upon technical issues (Unless i missed it?), so until they do that i refuse to accept that as a valid argument against Free Placement.

Edited July 7, 2014 by Twin

[Arkerus]

Yeah, because i firmly stated that it's extremely hard to drop all your items in a pile in a house with a Free Placement system?

 

It is in all senses of the word <<Easier>> to decorate your house to it's (In your eyes) max potential with "hooks", rather then customizing your house to it's max potential with a Free Placement system.

 

And hearing the devs say they decided against Free Placement because players more or less wouldn't be able to live up to BW's view of what looks estethically good, felt like nothing short of an insult.

 

They didn't say a word about this decision being based upon technical issues (Unless i missed it?), so until they do that i refuse to accept that as a valid argument against Free Placement.

 

Trying to define POTENTIAL is absurd. Bioware has a design laid out and there is potential within that system. That's it. Defining potential outside of that is pointless because I can say ANYTHING has limitless potential as long as I don't live within the rules.

 

Just because ABC happened to some game in the past does not mean Bioware does it here. There are dozens of reasons from a design standpoint to not do a free point system. And from what we have seen from this engine, I don't blame them.

 

What reason, besides putting a hat on a vase, do we really have need for an open system?

Edited July 7, 2014 by Arkerus

[ScarletBlaze]

Twin;7521610They didn't say a word about this decision being based upon technical issues (Unless i missed it?), so until they do that i refuse to accept that as a valid argument against Free Placement.

 

They talked about their reasons from 1.05-2.00 on the stream. They explained some of their reasons for not doing free placements.

 

One of the reasons was based on things not being able to line up right in places like Nar Shadda or Tattoine because of some nuances.

 

Another thing is that they wanted something easy for everyone and this would be easy for those that have never played an MMO.

 

Whether this is what you want or not I have no idea but they did talk about some of their reasons.

Edited July 7, 2014 by ScarletBlaze

[Deewe]

Games I am familiar with: STO, LotRO, SWG, EQ2.

 

There is so little customization of ship internals in STO that it barely qualifies as housing, some would probably say it doesn't count. LotRO has a very minimal hook system, very few hooks and very limited in how you can use them, some rotation and you can place smaller items in hooks that will take large items. You do have some customization of wallpaper though. A step up from STO but overall a poor system.

 

At the other end of the scale you have SWG as was and EQ2. SWG was very flexible, almost every item in the game could be dropped in a house, but you had to use / commands to manipulate all the items so it had a poor UI. People did get used to that and there were several macros writen to help folks and some players did very creative work. EQ2 is similar and now it has quite a good UI for manipulating items. Both SWG and EQ2 did not have all their abilities straight out of the box, they were/are constantly being improved and worked on.

 

The decorating game is a popular one in EQ2 and many items in their cash shop are related to it. The Player Studio system allows players to create items and sell them in the cash shop (money split between SOE and the players) and many of those items are for decorating. EQ Landmark, which I have not played, really expands on this idea and is virtually all about decorating with a lot of freedom given to players.

 

Then we have the Stronghold system here. It is a hook system, though from what we have seen it is a far superior one to the LotRO implementation with many more hooks. In addition at hook sites we have the choice of several hook arrangments, allowing the placement of a few larger objects or several smaller ones. Also there is some flexibility in the placement of items within each hook.

 

However it falls far short of the flexibility of SWG or EQ2, no items on items (sole exception being floor rugs), only able to place items within predefined limits and only able to place items of a certain type on a particular hook. It seems to me that this was done partly to make the system simple to use, but mostly to limit the creativity of players in just how much we can affect the overall look and feel. The devs seem to want to preserve this at all costs.

 

I am sure the system will be used - attaching the Legacy storage to it will ensure that - but it will not attract the kind of player who really likes to decorate and is prepared to put up real $$ to do so. I suspect that most stongholds will have the Legacy storage and other active nodes like GTN terminals and maybe a few items spread sound that players get as rewards and the obligatory speeder display, but very litte creativity. The lack of freedom will stifle that from the outset. If I could get a legacy storage terminal for my ship, I'd probably ignore it completely.

 

On a 10 scale if STO is 1, LotRO would be 2, SWG and EQ2 8 or 9 (no system is perfect after all ), I would rate this as a 4 or 5, bearing in mind that all I have to go on is the blog and the twitch TV video.

 

Of course I am quite open to being proven wrong and maybe some creative players will be able to do spectacular things with it, but I am not hopeful.

Where to start...?

 

An honest and objective view on the subject.

Also a good review of some others MMO housing features, although adding Rift in the equation would have been nice. But can't play every MMO that comes out, can you?

 

Back to SWTOR: housing was, even before beta, one of the most discussed topic along space sim.

 

We all know they blew the space sim twice, first with the tunnel shooter then with its PvP counterpart.

 

SWTOR way of doing housing comes along the same way of mostly everything in SWTOR.

The main idea is to make it big, epic, designed for the masses and restricted to fit a narrow view.

 

Thing is, as with too many features in this game, focusing on the epicness (in this case huge palaces/strongholds) or being for supposedly the masses (here by using hooks) hinders the feature in the same way it did with things like companions, legacy, gear and character customization, space sim, PvP and so on.

 

In the end the feature while looking good in micro cinematics, being fun (at first), becomes dull very fast as too limited and not as good as what you can find in others MMO and sadly more cumbersome to use.

 

All in all a waste of $$$ as making it simpler and maybe less epic would have better answered the needs of the player base and would have cost way less to implement for something that will be seldom used but for the recall home and eventually the legacy storage provided it's well designed.

 

And as mentioned above it won't certainly appeal the players interested in that feature which tastes a lot like the space sim...

Edited July 7, 2014 by Deewe

[Projawa]

It's BW's design philosophy. They want to give you some degree of freedom but within a framework that they define. Same thing with the UI.

 

UI: adjustable but not freeform in terms of addons like WoW/WS

GSH: adjustable but not freeform

Edited July 7, 2014 by Projawa

[Deewe]

It's BW's design philosophy. They want to give you some degree of freedom but within a framework that they define. Same thing with the UI.

 

UI: adjustable but not freeform in terms of addons like WoW/WS

GSH: adjustable but not freeform

 

I don't care either way. Some people are ok with it, others are deeply disappointed. Just take it for what it is and either use it or don't.

And add one more reason not to keep playing/subbed.

 

Pretty sure the suits love your way of thinking.

[Arkerus]

And add one more reason not to keep playing/subbed.

 

Pretty sure the suits love your way of thinking.

 

And guess what? You can't fly your spaceship in endless amounts of useless space. OH WELL. Get over it.

[ScarletBlaze]

When I was re-examining the video again and paying more attention to the hooks. There seems to be quite a few hooks and I got to looking at when they placed a desk. They rotated the desk but I was thinking with the way it looks like you can rotate why couldn't you if you wanted:

 

Put one desk on one of the hooks and another one and have a two desks back to back or if you can rotate them the long way put two desks that way and make one long desk.

 

Of course I am not sure this can be done until I get into there and see it. But if this can be done you can still be very creative with the hook system.

 

The problem we don't know what it can do until we get in there and work with it ourselves.

[Deewe]

And guess what? You can't fly your spaceship in endless amounts of useless space. OH WELL. Get over it.

It's sad to see some people don't get how alienating players instead of trying to bring them in hurts the game as makes it less successfull and well gives the producers way less $$$ to improve it.

 

 

Oh and I see you opened a thread on the following:

I like to build two sets of gear. One set is PvP gear and the other is normally a PvE set.

 

Right now we have to dig through our bags and put swap each piece individually. It can be time consuming and confusing, especially when you have to swap every piece.

 

An equipment manager that "saves" each set would be a vast improvement to game. A player should be able to save an equipment set and swap to it when they are out of combat.

Would you like all non PvPers say to you "OH WELL. Get over it."

 

Or how about a note from the producers saying they'd love to but they can't because they don't have the money as focusing on things that are more important?

Edited July 8, 2014 by Deewe

[Deewe]

When I was re-examining the video again and paying more attention to the hooks. There seems to be quite a few hooks and I got to looking at when they placed a desk. They rotated the desk but I was thinking with the way it looks like you can rotate why couldn't you if you wanted:

 

Put one desk on one of the hooks and another one and have a two desks back to back or if you can rotate them the long way put two desks that way and make one long desk.

 

Of course I am not sure this can be done until I get into there and see it. But if this can be done you can still be very creative with the hook system.

 

The problem we don't know what it can do until we get in there and work with it ourselves.

What we know is mostly:

 

• You can slightly tweak items relative position along 2 axis either X,Y (floor) or X,Z (walls)
  
• You can rotate items
  
• You can't drop an item on top of another
  
• You can't tilt items
  
• You can't scale items
  
• Hooks have categories like don't expect to drop a space ship in your bedroom nor a bed on the balcony
  
• You can't paint walls/floor/ceilings
  
• Changing a hook layout set dismiss all items already dropped in an area
  
• No on off switch for the lights
  

Edited July 8, 2014 by Deewe

[casirabit]

What we know is mostly:

 

• You can slightly tweak items relative position along 2 axis either X,Y (floor) or X,Z (walls)
  
• You can rotate items
  
• You can't drop an item on top of another
  
• You can't tilt items
  
• You can't scale items
  
• Hooks have categories like don't expect to drop a space ship in your bedroom nor a bed on the balcony
  
• You can't paint walls/floor/ceilings
  
• Changing a hook layout set dismiss all items already dropped in an area
  
• No on off switch for the lights
  

 

So you can focus on the negative if you wish. I prefer to wait and see and focus on the positive.

[Arkerus]

It's sad to see some people don't get how alienating players instead of trying to bring them in hurts the game as makes it less successfull and well gives the producers way less $$$ to improve it.

 

 

Oh and I see you opened a thread on the following:

 

Would you like all non PvPers say to you "OH WELL. Get over it."

 

Or how about a note from the producers saying they'd love to but they can't because they don't have the money as focusing on things that are more important?

 

Quality of life versus major game changes in a game not designed to DO SO. (Never ever will be a sandbox game. Know the role.)

 

You have to understand NO ONE is against reasonable, neat, interesting, fun, suggestions.

 

But is entirely pointless to argue for SOME things because the developers have constantly designed this as a themepark game and while we will get new features from time to time...you have to expect to work within the boundaries of the design philosophy. This is generally a casual game. Bioware is going to implement features that play well with short and long term players alike. They also have to work within their engine. They also HAVE THEIR OWN IDEAS and don't really care all that much about YOUR ideas (even though they say they do). Sandbox placement isn't on their radar nor will it ever be.

 

and lets be freakin reasonable. It looks like Bioware put a ton of development time into this housing feature. The "hooks" are hardly hooks at all. There appears to be a ton of freedom in the system. And no, I don't really care that I can't hang a space couch on a ceiling. I am well satisfied with what I have seen so far. If you don't like...there is nothing more to say except "too bad".

Edited July 8, 2014 by Arkerus

[Deewe]

So you can focus on the negative if you wish. I prefer to wait and see and focus on the positive.

And I was trying to be positive, oh well.

[Daekarus]

Hmmmm... 40+ pages and we still have hooks. Have you ever considered asking BW to make changes within the framework they've chosen rather than asking them to scrap their entire design vision?

 

Want to put items on items? Add hooks on top of shelves, tables, etc.

Want more freedom of placement to achieve clipping construction? Increase the maximum XY offsets for each item from its hook.

Want to show off armor sets? Ask for mannequins.

 

I imagine that a considerable percentage of what the SWG crowd wants can be achieved in the existing system if it can be demonstrated that most players actually care enough to make it worth it. I don't see the most extreme things happening, but many of the requested features might be considered if they are framed in the context of the system the devs carefully chose to suit the majority of the player base.

[Twin]

Trying to define POTENTIAL is absurd. Bioware has a design laid out and there is potential within that system. That's it. Defining potential outside of that is pointless because I can say ANYTHING has limitless potential as long as I don't live within the rules.

 

Just because ABC happened to some game in the past does not mean Bioware does it here. There are dozens of reasons from a design standpoint to not do a free point system. And from what we have seen from this engine, I don't blame them.

 

What reason, besides putting a hat on a vase, do we really have need for an open system?

 

I wasn't trying to "define" potential, rather then stating that everyone has a view on their house's potential, and that view would obviously be much more open for creativity and imagination with a free system.

 

There is a point when you will feel that your house is "done" and nothing more can be done to "perfect" the layout, besides waiting for new items to be added to the CM. Thats the "max potential" im talking about. Each players individual oppinion on when not much more can be done to a house, and i don't see how that's absurd.

 

And reaching that point would obviously be harder with a free placement system, but you could still reach the max potential of a "hook system" without any further difficulty. Ie: It wouldn't be any harder to simply decorate your house normally - the challange is when you use your creativity and imagination and try to make that happen in game by arranging and combining, experimenting with new ways and items to make your "vision" reality in game.

 

And i agree you can say anything has limitless potential as long as you don't live within the rules - and the other side of that coin is ofc that if you have to follow rules, you no longer have limitless potential. With BW's deco system, you will live within the rules...

 

And again: They never said a word about the engine being even part of the reason why they chose "Hooks" over free placement - they only stated that things might not look symetric if players were allowed to freeplace. I really dont understand what they meant with that, if not that players aren't capable of placing items symetric unless BW holds our hand. They said that they thought about it long and hard, which seems unlikely if the engine simply can't handle it.

 

Place a hat on a vase? Well, what reason do we have for a deco system at all, besides placing items in a house?

 

With an open system we can make our houses look exactly like we want, instead of chosing between (admittingly, what seems to be) a wide array of predetermined layouts.

 

If i want my house to look like Guns'N'Roses had a 100-man coke party in it, why not? Let me tilt my table on edge and put my sword through it, let me turn my bed upsidedown and stick a vase halfway through the TV i built by combining a "painting" with a small "table" that just happened to look alot like a tv-frame when flipped over. Etc.

[Twin]

They talked about their reasons from 1.05-2.00 on the stream. They explained some of their reasons for not doing free placements.

 

One of the reasons was based on things not being able to line up right in places like Nar Shadda or Tattoine because of some nuances.

 

Another thing is that they wanted something easy for everyone and this would be easy for those that have never played an MMO.

 

Whether this is what you want or not I have no idea but they did talk about some of their reasons.

 

I never said they didn't explain. I did say that what they said felt like an insult towards anyone who likes the deco-minigame. They didn't say players would be "unable" to line up stuff, they said it might be too hard to get it to look good.

 

Thats the only reasons i heard: Players might find it hard to arrange in symetry, and we wanted to make this as easy as possible.

 

Thats the essence of the 2 biggest problems with SWTOR imo - no trust for the playerbase and god forbid something is a bit hard.

[Arkerus]

I never said they didn't explain. I did say that what they said felt like an insult towards anyone who likes the deco-minigame. They didn't say players would be "unable" to line up stuff, they said it might be too hard to get it to look good.

 

Thats the only reasons i heard: Players might find it hard to arrange in symetry, and we wanted to make this as easy as possible.

 

Thats the essence of the 2 biggest problems with SWTOR imo - no trust for the playerbase and god forbid something is a bit hard.

 

I think you have to accept their reasoning and get over it. Otherwise, move on. You don't really have an argument here. I get your reasonings above but this isn't the type of game you want it to be. And I knew clipping was a reason. They stated that before.

[LordArtemis]

Devs play games folks. There are devs that are from 4 different major companies that regularly participate on this forum, as well as two smaller companies that I know of.

 

Devs are not aliens. They put on their pants just like you do.....and some of those folks that have been berated for giving opinions in threads here and there....well, some of them do work in the industry.

 

Don't be so quick to assume that everyone here lives in their mothers basement and develops games from their armchair.

 

As far as the reason they chose hooks, they were not exactly clear, but they generally indicated the reasons in the feed....it seems their were "issues" with some worlds, problems with placing objects, and also a desire to make the system easy to use and visually appealing to all....which I translated to mean they wanted to control what you could do and how the decorations would look.

 

I think the last part is the main reason why we have hooks. The current designer decided he wanted to have control over the creative process.

Edited July 8, 2014 by LordArtemis

[AlaricSevGirl]

Pity. Because I see a system that offers up flexibility that's equal to a free-placement system. But, then you can't please some folk.

 

Actually no. Wildstar has free placement. Wildstar allows you to either use their pre-mades or build your own and you can put stuff anywhere you want.

 

This looks interesting but certainly not allowing as much freedom as it should.

[AlaricSevGirl]

Devs play games folks. There are devs that are from 4 different major companies that regularly participate on this forum, as well as two smaller companies that I know of.

 

Devs are not aliens. They put on their pants just like you do.....and some of those folks that have been berated for giving opinions in threads here and there....well, some of them do work in the industry.

 

Don't be so quick to assume that everyone here lives in their mothers basement and develops games from their armchair.

 

As far as the reason they chose hooks, they were not exactly clear, but they generally indicated the reasons in the feed....it seems their were "issues" with some worlds, problems with placing objects, and also a desire to make the system easy to use and visually appealing to all....which I translated to mean they wanted to control what you could do and how the decorations would look.

 

I think the last part is the main reason why we have hooks. The current designer decided he wanted to have control over the creative process.

 

/signed

[LordArtemis]

Based on the VERY limited information on hand at the moment, I would say that I think the system is NOT comparable to a free placement system, but for a hooks system it is the most flexible I have seen.

 

That is based completely on visual evidence, which is NOT conclusive IMO. It could be worse...it might be even MORE flexible. I feel like no one will really know until we knuckle in.

[Arkerus]

Devs play games folks. There are devs that are from 4 different major companies that regularly participate on this forum, as well as two smaller companies that I know of.

 

Devs are not aliens. They put on their pants just like you do.....and some of those folks that have been berated for giving opinions in threads here and there....well, some of them do work in the industry.

 

Don't be so quick to assume that everyone here lives in their mothers basement and develops games from their armchair.

 

As far as the reason they chose hooks, they were not exactly clear, but they generally indicated the reasons in the feed....it seems their were "issues" with some worlds, problems with placing objects, and also a desire to make the system easy to use and visually appealing to all....which I translated to mean they wanted to control what you could do and how the decorations would look.

 

I think the last part is the main reason why we have hooks. The current designer decided he wanted to have control over the creative process.

 

On the RARE occasion someone presents their credentials and put forth an argument, it is almost always met with welcoming arms.

 

Unfortunately, most people do not work with engines, video games, or even in the industry (or even have the most basic of project management skills or understand the most pedestrian business acumen).

 

The reality is that the loudest and most obvious complainers are often typical armchair analysts who know nothing about the process as a whole. Its just complaining to complain often matched with unreasonable demands.

[Vinak]

I wouldn't call wanting a free placement system unreasonable.

 

Being angry with Bioware for choosing a perceived inferior system is perfectly reasonable considering free placement is relatively ancient tech.

 

DAOC has free placement housing and used a lot system that allowed you to easily see and visit other people's homes without cluttering the existing world. This housing expansion came out in 2003. 11 years ago. Admittedly before EA acquired Mythic Entertainment...

 

Lets not even bother getting into how Mythic and Bioware were merged together...

Edited July 8, 2014 by Vinak