Infernixx Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 They want decorating to have "variety" while still "making sense" That free placement is "easy to make difficult" or to "Know where to put things that make sense". Otherwise it can "get out of control" He is basically saying the entire TOR community are a bunch of idiots that don't know how to handle free placement. They want you to design within their own limited scope and imagination...And Symmetry is super important for some reason. A free placement system shouldn't be difficult to implement on top of the already established hook system. All they have to do is allow you to drop an item wherever you are currently standing and allow free movement of that item within the already built UI. It's not really a matter of "pleasing everyone", it's a matter of EA constantly developing inferior products and expecting us to like it. I hate to have to compare SWTOR to SWG but it just has to be done. I want to mess around with a new housing system that looks, and feels better than the old system. I don't want to wish I could have the old system over the new. SWG's system is just flat out superior to this one. Every house you visited was unique. A hook system inherently restricts creative possibility...and it's just not necessary. The objects seem to behave in a free placement system...but where you place them is restricted by hooks. No, you're just reading what you want to read and hearing what you want to hear. You want an excuse to be angry, so you'll take a perfectly rational and reasonable explanation and translate it into something insulting because that allows you to be angry. Which is typical and completely within the norm for some posters in every MMO forum. Some people just want to be angry and hate on the game that they pay to play. Strange, but true. Just don't expect anyone to take you seriously, nor should you get angry when you're dismissed out of hand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScarletBlaze Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 If someone is still pondering the "why the hooks" question, listen to last twitch stream, starting at roughly 37 minutes, lead designer on strongholds, Jack, explains it. I listened and unlike a lot of posters here I did not come away that he was insulting anyone. I understood what they were trying to do. Yes some people think free placement is easy because we have used it before but there are those that would find free placement very difficult to use, (whether you want to admit it or not). I played SWG and there were people I knew that found it difficult to use. They eventually learned the system but after a few times coming to me and being frustrated by it. So regardless of how easy it is for some of us to use there could be some that it would be difficult for and you can deny it all you want and you probably will. From what I have seen it looks like a very good system and my guild is looking forward to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infernixx Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 The 'only' thing I wish that they would allow would be to have the ability to give someone a Golden Key that would let them decorate your Stronghold for you. I can see people making a living by being decor geniuses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth_Wicked Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 The 'only' thing I wish that they would allow would be to have the ability to give someone a Golden Key that would let them decorate your Stronghold for you. I can see people making a living by being decor geniuses. Gold Decorators instead of Gold Sellers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infernixx Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 Gold Decorators instead of Gold Sellers? There's going to be a lot of poor souls with no idea how to decorate. Eric demonstrated that quite efficiently. Why not give people the option of letting someone else do it for them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScarletBlaze Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 The 'only' thing I wish that they would allow would be to have the ability to give someone a Golden Key that would let them decorate your Stronghold for you. I can see people making a living by being decor geniuses. I started a suggestion for them to allow us one extra gold key to give to someone. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=751258 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth_Wicked Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 There's going to be a lot of poor souls with no idea how to decorate. Eric demonstrated that quite efficiently. Why not give people the option of letting someone else do it for them? I LOL'ed. Regardless, I could see people making a killing in-game by being hired(?) to decorate other people's Strongholds. Sounds lovely in theory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctor_atomic Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 This why hook placement fails (like it did in LotRO). You can put a desk down, and it will be the same desk that everyone else had, exactly the same. In EQ2, RIFT, or WS, you can put a desk down, then put papers, books, coffee mugs, a lamp, or other clutter and make it YOUR desk. You can take an item and resize it to use it in different ways. The hook system kills creativity in favour of presenting a dumbed down system because it was easy and the devs were too lazy to do it right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sith-Viscera Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 I don't really care so much about that what annoys me is that we have to buy access to the legacy storage from the CM that will probably be over priced or from the GTN that most definitely will be overpriced. What really Annoys me is the fact i said that, live mounts and Mainly pets and companions will be stuck standing in one place in one area all the time. No walking around and intermingling with one another and doing stuff about the place. Pets never playing around each other. They all will be like living statues, animated and stationary statues. Yeah, wow, ground breaking technology. Its almost like on your ship but a little more eye candy and shiny things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daekarus Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 What really Annoys me is the fact i said that, live mounts and Mainly pets and companions will be stuck standing in one place in one area all the time. No walking around and intermingling with one another and doing stuff about the place. Pets never playing around each other. They all will be like living statues, animated and stationary statues. Yeah, wow, ground breaking technology. Its almost like on your ship but a little more eye candy and shiny things. Lol, you don't want much, do you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infernixx Posted July 11, 2014 Share Posted July 11, 2014 What really Annoys me is the fact i said that, live mounts and Mainly pets and companions will be stuck standing in one place in one area all the time. No walking around and intermingling with one another and doing stuff about the place. Pets never playing around each other. They all will be like living statues, animated and stationary statues. Yeah, wow, ground breaking technology. Its almost like on your ship but a little more eye candy and shiny things. Personally, I'm really annoyed by the fact that I can't set up speeder races with my companions to do while I lay around and be entertained by my free-roaming alt's companions. Further, why can't I invade other peoples' Strongholds? This is breaking my immersion! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deewe Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 (edited) He does, and I find the "devs know best, players are morons" answer (paraphrased) quite insulting. It they had wanted to make a free placement system easier to use they could have had an optional 'snap-to-grid' system like many graphical programs. In any case while that may have been part of the motivation, I think a large portion is the desire of the devs to limit just how much we can change the look and feel of the game. That was hinted at in the first stream (I don't have a time reference, sorry). But hooks are here to stay and we'll have to like it or lump it, it is far too late to change it now. Something that we may influence is the requirement for the owner to be online before a player can visit a publicly listed stronghold. What is the point of a public listing if players cannot visit at any time? Guess it was not the devs intention but it sounded indeed a bit condescending. Pretty sure the devs intention was to make the system easy for most while trying to avoid messy environments. However a snap-to-grid, or similar, system would have done the trick. The trade off for controlling and limiting players possibilities is alienating the specific population of players looking forward such feature and somehow delivering a system that will be outdated @launch, by games lives and even games that launched 11 years ago. That is quite puzzling to he honest. What's annoying and sad is with few tweaking the actual system could be really improved. Edited July 12, 2014 by Deewe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vinak Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 (edited) No, you're just reading what you want to read and hearing what you want to hear. You want an excuse to be angry, so you'll take a perfectly rational and reasonable explanation and translate it into something insulting because that allows you to be angry. Which is typical and completely within the norm for some posters in every MMO forum. Some people just want to be angry and hate on the game that they pay to play. Strange, but true. Just don't expect anyone to take you seriously, nor should you get angry when you're dismissed out of hand. ...And this is called shilling. Typical of fanboys blind to everything. Not that hard to turn your "logic" (or lack thereof) against you. English is not that complicated. I listened to what he said on stream four times to confirm and took notes. I flat out paraphrased him. He quite clearly insinuates that we are all stupid. Whether he meant to confide that or not. He claims to have played other housing systems with free placement and acknowledges that people like it, but They're not going to develop it because....??? They need to hold our hand, that's why. No free creativity allowed. Edited July 12, 2014 by Vinak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sith-Viscera Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 Lol, you don't want much, do you? Well hell they moved about the ship in 1 and 2 of Kotor why the hell not here? It isn't like Some NPCs already move about it wouldn't be that much more to do that for Companion NPC and at least pets. Just jack up prices on the CM that would pay for it and them some.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctor_atomic Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 Lol, you don't want much, do you? In EQ2 your pets wandered freely around the house. How old is that game? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reno_Tarshil Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 I'd rather have housing with hooks than no housing at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aries_cz Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 ...And this is called shilling. Typical of fanboys blind to everything. Not that hard to turn your "logic" (or lack thereof) against you. English is not that complicated. I listened to what he said on stream four times to confirm and took notes. I flat out paraphrased him. He quite clearly insinuates that we are all stupid. Whether he meant to confide that or not. He claims to have played other housing systems with free placement and acknowledges that people like it, but They're not going to develop it because....??? They need to hold our hand, that's why. No free creativity allowed. Nope that is just your interpretation. We wanted to give people as much variety as possible, while still making sense, while still making decorating Strongholds... helping it to make sense. So because there are so many, as you can see, ridges and pieces of the environment that if we went kinda the free placement route it'd be very easy to make it very difficult to decorate. I know some people are going like "I don't care, it's not that hard, I can do whatever I wanna do", for the average person we wanted to give them as much leeway and as much flexibility and still make it easy and create symmetry and to know where to put things that made sense. Otherwise, it can get out of control really easily. So, I am still sure that answer is not going to please everyone, sure, there is no way to please every single person out there. I get it, I've done lots of decorating in other games and I know what i am talking about, but I can promise you after spending lot of time with this, being able to swap layouts and change things around it is a lot of variety and you guys will not be disappointed I might agree he sounded a bit "whiny", when he mimicked the "I don't care, it will not be that difficult" line. He said that SOME people might like the free placement, but for AVERAGE player it could get extremely complicated and frustrating. And he once again said that with the options to swap layouts and move the offsets a bit you avoid most of the problems with regular hook system, while still preserving its advantages for average person. To see how free placement might be awful for average person, just look at Eric trying his hand at decorating. What he build has pretty bad, but it still had some sort of structure. Now imagine that scene if the free placement existed... I will concede that placing hooks on tables is the only thing that this system might be lacking (from what we have seen), but I am still willing to give it the benefit of doubt until I actually play with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aries_cz Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 Well hell they moved about the ship in 1 and 2 of Kotor why the hell not here? It isn't like Some NPCs already move about it wouldn't be that much more to do that for Companion NPC and at least pets. Just jack up prices on the CM that would pay for it and them some.... IIRC, companion did not move around the ships in KOTOR outside of conversations, or maybe very little around a single small room. However, I agree that giving companions and pets some basic "move around" AI routine would be great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth_Wicked Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 IIRC, companion did not move around the ships in KOTOR outside of conversations, or maybe very little around a single small room. However, I agree that giving companions and pets some basic "move around" AI routine would be great. Outside cutscenes, other than T3-M4 in the second installment, I don't remember seeing companions walking around. Hell, you could actually extort(!) T3 to stand still in case it got aggravating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordArtemis Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 Are there people really arguing whether or not he intended to call SWTOR players stupid? I am going to make an attempt at being fair here. So that hopefully means I say something that both sides dislike. The designer obviously feels that in general players work better with getting their hands held. This is not something that is new to the game or to a themepark model after all....I don't necessarily see this as a direct insult, no more than the design of the entire game is an insult. I do, however, see it as a rather myopic view that refuses to accept the modern MMO market and the general sophistication of the players. Or, better yet, it is a SAFE position to take. I am an advocate of the current system with a few small open decoration options that folks could choose not to use.....like a few free movement hooks in each room. My guess would be that regardless of feedback what we see is what is going to be provided. That is their track record, they have made their decision most likely in absence of feedback and will likely ignore that feedback for the most part. Just my view. As I said before, I hope I am in the minority when it comes to disappointment with this design. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sambril Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 Guess it was not the devs intention but it sounded indeed a bit condescending. Pretty sure the devs intention was to make the system easy for most while trying to avoid messy environments. However a snap-to-grid, or similar, system would have done the trick. The trade off for controlling and limiting players possibilities is alienating the specific population of players looking forward such feature and somehow delivering a system that will be outdated @launch, by games lives and even games that launched 11 years ago. That is quite puzzling to he honest. What's annoying and sad is with few tweaking the actual system could be really improved. I accept that it was not his intention and my previous response was too strong, but comes from a sense of frustration and disappointment. The designer obviously feels that in general players work better with getting their hands held. This is not something that is new to the game or to a themepark model after all....I don't necessarily see this as a direct insult, no more than the design of the entire game is an insult. I do, however, see it as a rather myopic view that refuses to accept the modern MMO market and the general sophistication of the players. Or, better yet, it is a SAFE position to take. I also accept that the stronghold system as presented is in keeping with the design philosphy of this game. Like you I think there is nothing wrong with having a little depth and complexity in a game, especially in something as niche as housing. It always will be a limited interest thing, not everyone even wants to decorate. I suspect most will just use the strongholds to access legacy storage and whatever other active terminals they want, and as a kind of travel hub - I was actually pleased to see the many options for destinations on exit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brutall Posted July 12, 2014 Author Share Posted July 12, 2014 Just like to note that last week's stream had someone asking if we could duel in our Strongholds. The dev looked unsure at each other and said "we'll get back to you on that." This week, it was asked again and we got a solid "Yes, you can duel in your Strongholds." The streams and threads like these are very much a part of their development process. They're 'still' deciding what stuff is going to go into them, so be vocal and be clear and be constructive. Give them stuff that they can use and isn't outrageous and you'd be surprised what we can get out of this. Y thats nice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordArtemis Posted July 12, 2014 Share Posted July 12, 2014 I Like you I think there is nothing wrong with having a little depth and complexity in a game, especially in something as niche as housing. It always will be a limited interest thing, not everyone even wants to decorate. I suspect most will just use the strongholds to access legacy storage and whatever other active terminals they want, and as a kind of travel hub - I was actually pleased to see the many options for destinations on exit. I actually hope the contention that housing will be used as a travel hub by most folks and not as a decoration minigame (I think that was what you were indicating, correct me if I am wrong) is wrong. If that is in fact the case, I would feel that a large amount of development capital was spent for little to no gain....and I would blame the hook system as the culprit. If this turns out like the way I believe GSF turns out I will be very disappointed to learn I am in a majority of the playerbase....one that is disappointed by the lack of ability for Bioware to understand what their players desire. I still hold on to hope that I am in a minority and this feature finally draws in and keeps some players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sith-Viscera Posted July 13, 2014 Share Posted July 13, 2014 IIRC, companion did not move around the ships in KOTOR outside of conversations, or maybe very little around a single small room. However, I agree that giving companions and pets some basic "move around" AI routine would be great. I recall the little droid moving about the ship fixing things and a zabrak (i think its called) man that had the little floating droid moving around the haul welding stuff. No they all didnt move but point is some did, so why the hell not make all in TOR do the same, it would make it all more realistic and Immerse you into the game that much more as they, being BW wants us to be immersed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arkerus Posted July 13, 2014 Share Posted July 13, 2014 Personally, I'm really annoyed by the fact that I can't set up speeder races with my companions to do while I lay around and be entertained by my free-roaming alt's companions. Further, why can't I invade other peoples' Strongholds? This is breaking my immersion! Your posts rock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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