This may sound counterintuitive but .....
I was reading a thread about farming and loved the idea that the persistent world goes on and if you don't farm the crops they die and you miss them.
That got me thinking about players "stealing" someone else's crops.
I hope Pantheon has some risky secrecy. Remember dropping an item on the ground, logging out, logging in an alt and picking up the item. It was in the persistyent world and someone might have come along and picked it up. I remember hiding stuff in the forge in shadowhaven.
Yes it was risky but it reinforced the feeling that the world persisted and went on with or without me.
When that went away, the world became a place just for me - and it felt more ALONE because others couldn't interact with my experience in the world.
That was a bad side effect of caving in to player complaints and whining to make things safer and more convenient. But it had the side effect of removing the persistent feel of the world.
I hope there are things in the world that are not found or tracked but if one finds them while exploring, only they need know about them.
The best way to look at this is, perhaps, from the view of Brad and the Team's 'vision'.
I guess it could be summed up:
This is the world of Terminus. You live here now; make of it what you will.
To that end:
... the world is to be completely open - having instances only where absolutely necessary,
... the world is to be expansive - having travel 'convenience' only where absolutely necessary,
... the world is to be alive - having players part of the community
in much the same vein as Everquest and Vanguard did.
Much of their success in creating a living, breathing world was the way the community worked around problems they encountered; making the most of the few tools that were provided for them.
This player innovation, deemed 'emergent behaviour', is the lifeblood which making worlds come alive.
or to put it classically:
Necessity is the mother of invention.
While Quality of life (QoL) features may help with engagement, they are not a 'de facto' answer for all things!
Evoras, knew which huts in Freeport could safely be used to transfer items using 'logout' methods...
One thing that would be interesting to see, from a "log out transfer" perspective is if all of your characters would have acces sto the same housing. What I mean by that is if your main character purchases and outfits an apartment/house/mansion/whatever, will all of your alts be able to access it too? If so, that will facilitate that sort of thing "safely".
One thing we don't know is howw player housing will interact wiith/be interacted by the rest of the world. For example, can other player characters or NPCs break into your house or is it protected from them? Can your house sustain damage? That sort of thing. I do know that, as of one of the previous streams, they still hadn't decided if housing would be persistent or instanced.
Back onto the subject at hand, there were several places that I used to stash things to transfer between my toons. Behind the waterfall near The Tiger's Roar in Highhold Pass was one of my favorites. Mostly because I sort of naturally gravitated towards using that place as my "base of operations" as it were. I know that sounds silly given that anyone could walk intop it at any time, but there it is.
fazool said:I hope housing doesn't exist.
It was awful in EQ and ruined much of the game. It basically separated people and made them have their own little private world.
Just because you had a bad experience with one game's implementation of a feature, doesn't mean that the concept is automatically toxic. You could say the same thing about raiding, crafting, classes, markets/auction houses, or any other game system you care to name... depending what game you want to reference. There's been plenty of games that did housing poorly. There's also been several that did housing really well - instanced, or not.
That said - it's been implied in a few posts by Brad that housing is more likely to be an expansion feature for Pantheon, just because if they're going to do it, they want to do it right. As someone who would really like to see housing in game, I'm ok with that. Because the last thing any of us want is a housing system that divides players or feels meaningless. :)
Housing should be the last thing they should worry about. Personally, I feel it would be a waste of the team's resources if it was pursued within the first year of launch.
If it was instanced housing it would take people out of the world, but persistent housing would gobble up land, hence my apathy.
Guild halls I could see happening with far more success, if persistent. Hopefully, by a quest and guild requirements (member numbers and such) which gave the opportunity to buy a hall, importantly a hall that requires paid upkeep for the land (a big enough cost that guild members had to contribute). Upkeep/rent would ensure that there were not vast swathes of land swallowed by halls.
But again this should be way after release, IMO.
Jazznblues said:Housing should be the last thing they should worry about. Personally, I feel it would be a waste of the team's resources if it was pursued within the first year of launch.
If it was instanced housing it would take people out of the world, but persistent housing would gobble up land, hence my apathy.
Guild halls I could see happening with far more success, if persistent. Hopefully, by a quest and guild requirements (member numbers and such) which gave the opportunity to buy a hall, importantly a hall that requires paid upkeep for the land (a big enough cost that guild members had to contribute). Upkeep/rent would ensure that there were not vast swathes of land swallowed by halls.
But again this should be way after release, IMO.
It wouldn't be a waste of resources, and here is why.
There are two different teams. One team is responsible for updates/bug fixees/etc for existing content. That same team could effectively do housing, either instanced or not instanced. There is a second team who is doing new content/expansions.
Housing gobbling up land, in a virtual world, is not an issue. It is trivial to add space in a virtual world, comparitively.
Kalok said:Jazznblues said:Housing should be the last thing they should worry about. Personally, I feel it would be a waste of the team's resources if it was pursued within the first year of launch.
If it was instanced housing it would take people out of the world, but persistent housing would gobble up land, hence my apathy.
Guild halls I could see happening with far more success, if persistent. Hopefully, by a quest and guild requirements (member numbers and such) which gave the opportunity to buy a hall, importantly a hall that requires paid upkeep for the land (a big enough cost that guild members had to contribute). Upkeep/rent would ensure that there were not vast swathes of land swallowed by halls.
But again this should be way after release, IMO.
It wouldn't be a waste of resources, and here is why.
There are two different teams. One team is responsible for updates/bug fixees/etc for existing content. That same team could effectively do housing, either instanced or not instanced. There is a second team who is doing new content/expansions.
Housing gobbling up land, in a virtual world, is not an issue. It is trivial to add space in a virtual world, comparitively.
How immersive would that be an infinite amount of space for housing! Yes, I know it would be trivial from a tech standpoint but not from a lore one.
I still stand by it would be a waste of resources. Pantheon is going to be a hugely complex world, to even use 10% of the team away from debugging and or real content would be a waste IMO if this was a focus in the year after launch. It will happen eventually but let's not drain people from areas which are significantly more important. What's more attractive a solid streamlined play experience or a house where you can retreat to away from Terminus.
I have encountered housing over several MMOs and on the whole, it is novelty which only a few (percent wise) clamour for over a bug-free environment.
Like I said though I think it's a moot point the team have said that housing will probably not be available at launch. I would rather see Bards and Necromancers than housing. 8)
Jazznblues said:Kalok said:Jazznblues said:Housing should be the last thing they should worry about. Personally, I feel it would be a waste of the team's resources if it was pursued within the first year of launch.
If it was instanced housing it would take people out of the world, but persistent housing would gobble up land, hence my apathy.
Guild halls I could see happening with far more success, if persistent. Hopefully, by a quest and guild requirements (member numbers and such) which gave the opportunity to buy a hall, importantly a hall that requires paid upkeep for the land (a big enough cost that guild members had to contribute). Upkeep/rent would ensure that there were not vast swathes of land swallowed by halls.
But again this should be way after release, IMO.
It wouldn't be a waste of resources, and here is why.
There are two different teams. One team is responsible for updates/bug fixees/etc for existing content. That same team could effectively do housing, either instanced or not instanced. There is a second team who is doing new content/expansions.
Housing gobbling up land, in a virtual world, is not an issue. It is trivial to add space in a virtual world, comparitively.
How immersive would that be an infinite amount of space for housing! Yes, I know it would be trivial from a tech standpoint but not from a lore one.
I still stand by it would be a waste of resources. Pantheon is going to be a hugely complex world, to even use 10% of the team away from debugging and or real content would be a waste IMO if this was a focus in the year after launch. It will happen eventually but let's not drain people from areas which are significantly more important. What's more attractive a solid streamlined play experience or a house where you can retreat to away from Terminus.
I have encountered housing over several MMOs and on the whole, it is novelty which only a few (percent wise) clamour for over a bug-free environment.
Like I said though I think it's a moot point the team have said that housing will probably not be available at launch. I would rather see Bards and Necromancers than housing. 8)
It doesn't have to be an "infinite amount of space". Not everyone is going to want a house in the same areas. Housing space can still be limited and provide adequate locations. They are not mutually exclusive. Instanced housing is just one means to accomplish that.
I do, however, agree that guild halls should come before player housing.
Something that just came to me as an interesting, and potentiaally cool, idea for hosing is underground housing below the cities as a possible "expansion" to a housing crunch within cities themselves. In places like Chicago, San Francisco, and throughout Europe, it's not unusual to find underground "buildings" where people lived and worked. Usually it was the poorer of the populace, but wouldn't necessarily have to be depending on how it was done. Although getting lost on yourr way to your underground house would suck....ROFL
I'd feel very upset if I came home to my housy I build in some woods and a nasty band of orcs had set up camp inside, roasting my pet dragon in the fireplace...
That said.. I'd call my friends for phat lewt and a sweet revenge. Not to whine about safety cos I forgot to bolt and protect my housy or placed it on orc holy ground.
Rydan said:I'd feel very upset if I came home to my housy I build in some woods and a nasty band of orcs had set up camp inside, roasting my pet dragon in the fireplace...
That said.. I'd call my friends for phat lewt and a sweet revenge. Not to whine about safety cos I forgot to bolt and protect my housy or placed it on orc holy ground.
This could be very interesting. I can see both upsides and downsides.
One of the things that it would encourage, through this mechanic, is for people to build their homes near each other, making settlements, in the interest of self-preservation, which goers hand in hand with the whole "social" aspect of this game.