Jan 27 2009
Little House on the Internet: What You Want from MMO Housing
I have no idea why this feature is being ignored by the current crop of MMORPGs, but I am going to talk about it anyway because I think it is an important and extremely fun feature. Housing presents one of the best opportunities for players to express their own imagination and it gives them a “piece of the world” to call their own. Further, it provides the developer with many opportunities to make content more exciting if it involves a way for players to bring home a trophy they can display, or some other type of house oriented loot - carpets, furniture, cool artifacts, etc. I am going to focus this post on questions, rather than opinions, so the readers can give their own take on player owned housing without any bias or prompting.
What Player Owned Housing Features Do You Like?
I am going to create some basic categories of housing features, and you can pick and choose the ones you like - or add your own. I encourage you to be specific!
1) Ownership Options - What levels of ownership and permissions are needed? Generally, one person is the absolute owner of the property, and can then give various permissions to other people. Sometimes the highest permission is almost equal to ownership, without the ability to sell the property.
2) Preset rooms configuration, or player determined. Threshold’s housing system lets you lay out your rooms however you want. Everquest 2 and Dark Age of Camelot’s system sold houses where the rooms were already laid out, and you decorated them. Graphical games tend to require preset, whereas text games can be more flexible.
3) Furnishings.
4) Trophies.
5) Functional features - storage vaults, crafting tables, mirrors that teleport you places, fireplaces, swimming pools, and more.
6) Functional rooms - kitchens, gardens that grow, offices, lookout towers, and whatever else you can come up with!
7) …
So, let your mind run wild here. Tell me what you’d like to see in a robust housing system. Some of the above? All of the above? Specifically what types of things from the above categories?
Ultima Online already had a quite sophisticated housing system, and various private servers even expanded it. So some examples are basically taken directly from Ultima Online. Also a rather important point, housing space, that you did not ask for.
1.) a.) Owner. Can build/change the house and sell the “deed” for the area it occupies. b.) Master level. I had the “Master Key” that allowed me to “lock down” items in my house. E.g. visitors could not carry away my chairs or trophies or open my chests. b.) flat mate/guild friend Level. Can unlock the main door and have his own private chest, but cannot lock down or move house items. c.) visitor level, can unlock the main door.
2.) Ultima Online offered different house styles and preset room layouts, very popular was the sandstone patio or the small tower. They have two/three levels and allowed for a lot of storage room. Later, the system was expanded: People bought an area, and then they could buy foundations, bricks, and basically build a house LEGO-style. You could also buy…
3. + 4.) Furnishing and make your own trophies. Only on some servers. Kill a troll, chop off his head and go to a crafter to get a troll trophy for your wall.
5+6.) There were forges, anvils, fireplaces - you could buy them and place them wherever you want. So the item defined the room, there were no fixed rooms for sale, you had to fit the stuff in your house design wherever you found enough place.
7.) Designated housing areas are necessary. In UO you could place a house almost everywhere. Result: Britannia was overcrowded like Tokio, there was a little bit of wilderness between the houses. Later “facets” (worlds, world areas) allowed no housing or had designated areas for housing.
While the LEGO approach was great, it can put some strain on the server: The fixed house types caused less traffic, and often they were better designed. For one really outstanding player design, you found 4-5 total letdowns of the east bloc architecture style or worse. Sometimes things go horribly wrong if people can express their creativity without restrictions… or common sense.
The open world approach to place a house in the game world can cause problems. Instanced housing could be the solution, but then you could feel a bit disconnected from the world if your house only exists on the map as “house” symbol in the upper left besides the map, but does not seem to exist in your game world at all.
I doubt it is possible to create a fortress town or settlement like on my old Ultima Online Freeshard in a commercial game for everyone. The sheer mass of players and GMs that are told to appease customers and NEVER tell them not to do this or that would destroy such an idea right from the start. This is almost like trying to experience roleplaying on a WoW roleplaying server, do not even bother to try.
The reasons why we do not have housing in modern MMOs is simple: Most MMOs today are DIKUs, EQ/WoW style, simple combat simulators, all following imported pen&paper traditions of dice throwing and levelling, gearing up and so on.
The idea of roleplaying, having a house, interaction with the environment that is not only a colorful background simply do not exist in such a setting.
But if you want to have a virtual world, houses are important. We can even go so far that crafters can create the parts needed for your house or at least trophies, furniture and so on.
I am sure having a house will also make you play a bit more reasonable, less like a random idiot that gives a damn about the consequences. I had dead sheep corpses in front of my house for weeks for killing another player in a sparring fight. Two friends and me suddenly used axes while training unarmed combat with bare breast in shorts…^^
Having a mailbox in front of your house would also be cool.
One thing I want out of a house is *control*. I’ve played two MUDs in which it’s possible to own a house; on one of them, it was something I really wanted, but on the other, I never bothered to fork over the money (real money, or a HUUUUUUUGE amount of a special in-game currency that would equate to many many hours of work). On the first, players who own houses are in direct control. You can edit your house’s layout, description, etc, using in-game commands. On the second, you have no control whatsoever. The owner writes a note to one of the imms saying “Please do this”, and they do it. Even if you have an incredibly active (and large) team of authorized imms, it’s still going to result in delays, which are incredibly effective at killing inspiration.
On Threshold, your house is created by the administration with a standard set of rooms. What you do with those rooms is then completely up to you. (Yes, this means that some people will do really stupid things. It’s no different from writing or emoting stupid things, and can be dealt with afterwards.) If something breaks, the admins sometimes have to fix you up, but for the most part, you can edit away to your heart’s content without bothering anyone else. To the extent that this is possible (obviously it’s harder to give complete control in a graphical game, so there might be some things there that would require administrative action), I think this freedom should be given to the players. It may require a lot more work initially (having to design your house code such that it can indeed be edited), but I dread to think how much work the imms have done over the years, adding house objects, rearranging things, etc, that could have been done directly by the players.
I really love the idea of having my own piece of world that I can change. Oddly enough, this is not in the least dampened by the fact that I so seldom actually exercise that freedom!
I would settle for a choice of floorplans, a decent amount of customization in decoration, the ability to use the space provided for in-game projects, and the ability to obtain items or options in the overall gameworld and arrange them however I like.
This last seems like it would be particularly important. I think you could tie the housing issue into Rule D of Raph’s first law of game design, as described by Razakius: “Ideally, make your game not have a sense of running out of significant milestones.” Customizable housing would allow a player to create more milestones, giving them the figurative equivalent of a few more rungs on the ladder. And I don’t know about most of the population, but I find it at least as much fun to follow my own goals as to follow the goals I’m given. I’m not sure I’d have near as much fun with design for design’s own sake–at least, not after the first two weeks or so–but a little bit of it, and incorporation of the ability to show off a little, could probably keep me engaged for quite a while.
“I have to wonder what would have happened if SWG had been a better game overall, and had been the type of success it was predicted to be. SWG was a more complete virtual world, and if it had been WOW before WoW was WoW, the entire MMO industry might be different.”
Indeed. It was victory of addiction and manageable simplicity over more complex and susceptible systems. IMO, in the long run better systems.
SWG is a nice example how designers reacted: simplification and reduction to make the game more accessible to the masses. Is really only Blizzard capable of polishing products and proper PR? Sigh.
Captcha phrase: MARKET please. Oh, the irony.
I’m a fan of number 5 functional storage facility.. Fishing Gear, Teleportation.
I’m with Rosuav, in that control is a pretty important thing when it comes to player housing. If you can’t really customize a place and make it your own, it’s more like an apartment than a house. May as well rent a room at an inn or something similar.
Functional features are part of making the place your own. Storage and teleportation are both really great features, but the importance and potential unbalancing effect varies widely from game to game. Mini-games, or other diversions that might not qualify as mini-games, can spice things up a bit. Something pretty silly like a dart board can give people something to do in a house, something that makes it seem more real and provides a purpose for lazing around.
Most housing implementations I’ve seen have some form of security which allows you to permit/prevent all or some people from accessing the house. Not all have the ability to grant security selectively (people can go to -this room- but not -that room-), but that’s more of a nice-to-have than a must-have to me. On a MUD like Threshold, that sort of security is very useful for holding public events. In a non-RP environment it might not be as big of a deal.
The question is if ownership rights/abilities will be tied to an item like a key on a keyring and how you grant/remove those rights.
I suggest a hardcoded room layout for the houses, if people want more, they need to work towards a bigger house.
But there should be a variety of furniture and items with a function that players can use in their house:
1.) Mailbox, if the game supports a mail system
2.) Fireplace for cooking
3.) Alchemy Lab
4.) Forge (Smithing)
… and maybe access to the bank account as well? This is up to debate, I have heard good arguments for and against this, it also depends on the game.
Plus: Extras like vases, flowers, chairs, tables, chaiselongues, storage chests., paintings… whatever people have in their house.
I have seen very convincing torture chambers in Ultima Online. I did not have the imagination for creating a really magnificent one, but I once stored 255 different player heads in my head hunter chest. I will be content with ears in future…
I thought about this topic recently while playing Fable 2. In that game, sleeping in houses gives you certain buffs based on the house. In some MUDs that I’ve played, you can augment your house so that it gives you buffs or protects you from some type of harm (something like scry resistance while you’re in your house).
Buffs and protection are interesting to me, because they’re very useful but also different from the normal storage/teleport/fun-type bonuses. Surely something has to give though, it should be impossible (or at least very difficult) to have an unlimited capacity for utility -and- buffs.
It occurred to me that houses can be sort of like gear in this regard. Many games have the concept of unique or special items, which are difficult to obtain and offer interesting benefits. Many of these games also have custom/crafted items, which can be quite good and offer a lot of flexibility. I wonder if a similar situation would work for housing. What if, as a player, you had a choice:
- A special (artifact/unique/whatever) house with intrinsic benefits, but little capacity for customization.
OR
- A do-it-yourself abode with fun a la carte features but no intrinsic buffs/protection.
Is it possible to have both? Does having both options present a problem, or does the dichotomy help to create variety without making everyone overpowered? Would the achievement-type aspect of owning an artifact home be alluring to people? Systems like this very likely already exist. I’m not very well-traveled in the recent MMO world, and this is admittedly something that I tossed out without fleshing it out a whole lot :P.
Houses need games? A reason to laze around as Talsek put it. Maybe allow players to build dungeons, raids, player-made games(using programmable rulesets, cards and dice, etc), or whatever using their property.
Or they need a reason to go to them? A smithy, an alchemists’s lab, a workshop, an exclusive cave, fishing pond, hunting ground, or a farm, etc.
Houses require people to see them or furnishing achievements don’t matter, except to sim-style homemakers. How about a condominium way of doing things? That encourages gaming, crafting, and chitchat in the central area, and especially friend making. This might even enable instanced housing as condo-mates may be encouraged to explore eachother’s houses. Guildhouse-embedded player homes would give guildmates something to do.
Sorry about the double post but I saw Tesh’s post…
I wanna make my own area of the Warp in Warhammer 40,000 MMORPG! Furnish it with my mind! W0o0o0o0o0oo0oo. Probably lots of wrong-sized objects because of the shrooms.
Or make a really really evil looking area. Then make a ton of traps, quicktimes, puzzles, working cause-and-effect environments with a prize at the end that I put up with my own evil money. Then get people to “come one, and come all,” but if they fail it sucks some of their life and I get experience for myself ehehehe. But the developers would be too focused on making the Warp a visceral environment without such silliness; despite the fact that my place would be visceral alright muahahahaa-cough-choke-hack-blech…
How about pets for the house? A Raven, a black cat… or a poodle. I would also support a pet breeding system. Imagine crossing spiders and snakes using dark magics!
… pet breeding minigame? SCNR…
I have no use for the MMO/MUD “standard” player housing. It’s a tacked on artificial mechanic and this really shows. I think for a start, player housing needs to be destroyable/conquerable by other players. This leads to a far more “organic” feel of having a corner of the world you actually need to defend.
Housing should be functional as well, insofar as storage, possibly a forge or the like goes. Dont’ see asthetics mattering half as much, would be nice but in practice customizable housing is a huge waste of programming resources in return for what it adds to the game.
DAOC had the keeps, WAR has them, too, a bit different but they are there. Age of Conan has pvp buildings, too.
But they are not much more than that, combat oriented pvp buildings. Destroyable player housing would be very combat focused and kill creativity. You cannot build the Garden of Eden or a nice small parlor, whatever, if every day players can destroy it. MMO rule, if people can destroy something, they will. If players have chances to grief other players, heck, they will! We already have plenty enough MMOs that are 99,9% combat focused, we do not need to strengthen and emphasize this aspect even more.
About pet breeding, is it an interactive minigame… oh noes. I need to focus on work now, laters…^^
You can’t ignore the need for functionality and accessibilty for player housing though. The housing appeal will become similar to the appeal of the online trading card game for the game if the houses are:
1. never seen by others
2. never visited by you because it’s out of the way
3. HAS functionality (crafting stations etc.) but the other crafting stations in the world are closer
I wrote a long post here when you were playing with the UI last night Cambios. I should have waited!
Or I just managed to find my way to your new page last night and I didn’t notice ’til now.