Housing is ruining the game

No it is not, it is set for consumer release originally end of year, now they say maybe deeper into winter. The major quest writing , nor the database changed needed to do phasing is not even remotely possible to do in this time frame. That comment had relevance years ago, it no longer applies.

Booting houses into instances just like nested PRT or basements was already done is entirely possible. Booting quests into their own instances just like Solace Bridge is also entirely possible. It requires discussion of which is worst booting quests out of town, or booting their house leaving their merchants. But that cannot happen if players just say wait it will all be good in the end. Rather we all need to be thinking of ways to quick fix things to get us out of sinkhole of housing causing unconsequential limited stories, because a RG game is supposed to be all about the story.

 

I think that the plan, at this point, misses having any long lasting real impact. The siege is just an extra loading screen with a few mobs that you can run past and then go into the town, more or less. If the siege isn't broken by the players, the attacking forces just wander off for no apparent reason. I understand that this isn't the finalized version. I see a lot of potential in this system that can really make SotA stand out.

I understand that. I have a house and wouldn't like not being able to access it because of an ongoing siege, or having to rebuild the town because we failed to protect the city. But that sort of thing would drive a lot of global activity. It would bring people from all over together, guildmates, folks in other guilds, neighbors, and do-gooders who just want to keep the towns intact. I think that benefit, the cooperative social elemental, would outweigh the negatives associated with it. A compromise solution could be that the NPC buildings need to get repaired but player owned houses somehow never get damaged in the siege. This is the exact sort of thing that the OP was worried about, lost potential because of the game's focus on housing. Having sieges is really cool, unless they're reduced to just an annoying loading screen with no impact.

 

Or worse yet...Raistlin becomes evil only in your game, but is still good in my game because we both chose different ways to complete a quest.

Systems can be put into place to give us that story feel while having multiple players in the game. Each UO server had a different story, each city as well. Not because of quests but because of how the players interacted with each other, creating a lot of great content entirely from conflict and cooperation.

 

Yep true it was out of order and now we deal with it. The scope of this game started as small and the interest of this game by many has made it grow beyond imagination. The growing pains are painful and disjointed truly. I stillI believe we can make it work though and even better in the long run. It is not there yet and I know people hate the excuses and mantras and yes we have POTS. Believe me, I was not a supporter at all for us to have POTS, no way. I worried about them. I do now see that they have their place and will provide extra housing, community events, plays, music events, role-playing opportunities for those people who want that aspect, with themed towns. I see that now. I so want more than that to this game though, much more. I believe it will take things happening that people will kick and scream and yell about .

 

In all games with siege type mechanics (Tabula Rasa/RIFT/Defiance/others with war mechanics/etc) I've found people all storm them when it's first released, then eventually people stop going...the devs then have to lure them back with better drops and so on and even then people are bored with the whole grind of it.

What happens then is a few people are horribly inconvenienced by not being able to access something like a town/resurrect spot/npcs/bank/etc and the rest of the server ignores the whole thing, which is a pretty crap situation.

These things seem really awesome at the start, but like everything most people on the server quickly tire of the mechanics, that's just how people are in games.

 

Agree completely.

I loved the mob invasions in UO, all open world, no instances and real panic in towns . That's something we all want but is not possible this time.

I'm agree that I was expecting something more "near" to that old dynamic experience, and less "a new instanced scene only for sieges" without any relation with the real town scene.

 

I disagree that kicking housing is the only solution, but you highlight very well the impact of this limitation.

 

No. It's not a technical limitation, is a team and resource limitation. The instancing system you see in ESO is not tied to the engine or any tech regard. Even if you use Unit, UE or CryEngine, you can create something identical or similar to this, but it's not the best solution for all teams and budgets

 

well, no, not really.

We have had final wipe. Economy is live. People are paying taxes so they don't lose the lot they acquired during the one and only land rush.


Sorry, but that is neither "early stages" nor "alpha", no matter how hard you try and spin it.

 

Nobody would lose a house they paid for nor would any one lose a merchant location they stayed up all night for. So lets not make it sound like they are with the fix I propose. Kicking housing means kicking it to an instance.

Row houses already do not have a yard, and they can very easily converted to instances just like the basement is without any change at all.

Any larger house could easily be fenced in and the yard gate be the entrance instance.

There are entire sections of town that could be replaced with a section gate (and big towns already are this way) because the NPCs are in the center of town away from the housing, just like Oblivion did with dividing the main town into sections.

Obviously they need to fix instance loading times, no reason a basement should take as long as a town to load.

Just like DragonReach in Skyrim, you can still look out of your tower without realizing it is a scenery copy that is not containing all the town details.

Not only would people still get to play house, all of the decoration limits could be lifted because they will impact nobody in town. Be a crazy cat lady like you cannot be when your house was part of the town load, because you can collect all that cats you want it when it will impact nothing but the size of your database that gets loaded. It would be good for Portalarium because they already aware that selling more yard decorations is just going to clog towns even worse.

Now it does mean that nobody can see your yard sale unless you invite them in, but I would suspect more would say that has an upside than a downside.

 

Imagine what the starter town would look like if a bunch of chaotic murders decided to put the refugees out of their misery rather than help them. Bunch of like minds together in the same instance, pursing the same chaotic version of the love story. Imagine the glee from open world PVP advocates in every town because they are instances with those that chose that lifestyle. The game has to make instances of towns already for performance reasons that it cannot handle massive players per scene. Take that all the way and make it a multiverse, and people will be buying more accounts so they experience all that the various verses have to offer.

That is just one reason ESO has survived is the multiverse that you can replay the game story from the other side. Just need much easier methods to travel amongst the multiverse where the world is different than the choices that you made, ESO initally made that mistake of saying you cannot go there because of your choices. Now they are opening it all up with One Tramiel.

I am replaying Skryim for the first time in many years, and I was always Blue but this time I decided to be Red with the play restriction until I capture a camp or am on a Imperial mission I will not enter enemy territory. Makes the game very different.

 

Didn't mean to misrepresent your idea.

 

Nothing brings together neighbors like disaster. This is just as true in an MMO just as it is in the real world. The problem with RIFT, Defiance and the other things that use this group mechanic to defeat the invading baddies, is they do not have any sense of community at risk. So it just became another raid that was dynamic rather than static.

Of course nobody should lose anything they bought on the store, the game already has mechanics for that even if they fail to pay their rent and they get evicted.

 

Just got to say that I would gladly give up my lots in NPC towns if it meant getting stories, quests, and sieges of consequence. Full disclosure though: I'm not a player depending upon player traffic to notice my commission-free vendor (because I haven't placed a vendor and am not selling anything at the moment), but I like the look of my house in a desert scene, so it's just about the deco for me. If given the choice of moving to a POT for the sake of a compelling game, then I'd do it. I think if many players were willing to do that, it would be great for the community because it will bring more attention to POTs as housing communities and give us more of a reason to group up with our neighbors to do stuff in NPC towns where interesting, dynamic, and consequential things are happening.

I think the focus of rares should be events, achievements, friendships, alliances, rivalries, and memories, not items. True, the promise of limited digital fluff is what is helping fund the game, but really, what good is it if you got a bank or yard full of crap if it is used to showcase a bland, half-baked environment with features that makes Ultima VII look modern in terms of scheduling, quests, and story? It's time to take back the game from those players that just want to take advantage of where their lots are in relation to the entrance of a town and push for the vision that RG tried to promote in KS.

 

Put your manners in. Especially when you've misinterpreted what I said in the first place. The little work I'm referring to is in relation to the creation of housing, not the creation of the entire game, like you're jumping on.

In other words, it's little work, relatively, to make a house model then sell it over and over and over and over and over, for big money in many cases. That was my point. It's valid. You didn't get it. Life moves on.

 

Ok, lets focus your point into the housing.

Creating art assets and selling them over and over? seriously? thousands of games did the same in past ten years with assets and more content, and in years to come (even your lovely CoE is ready for that fyi). Lets go talk about how all those games are selling stuff with little work...where is the point? they are bad games for that? good games for that? there is no connection between the topic and your point talking about "little work".

 

What do you mean there's no connection to the topic? Re-wind to where I made the comment. It's all there. A forum user wrote, "The money the game is making now is mostly from players buying anything related to housing..."

So my response, talking about the money being made from housing, and the way in which it's easy money because of the "design once, sell forever" system, was all in relation to that. It's perfectly understandable in that context.

Pixels don't cost anything. I think people lost sight of that when they start thinking digital assets have real value. They don't have any value at all. The only value they have is what someone will pay you for them. No more, no less.

 

Pixels has real value in the moment that someone is willing to pay for it. Sometimes happens, sometimes not.

It's fine, I get your point but disagree about a non existent issue for me.

 

The word "instance" means different things sometimes, depending on context. If you enter a town in multiplayer, and I enter the same town in single player online, we are both in the same town, but in different instances. We will see the same houses, decorations, etc. but we won't see each other.

It would be possible to expand that so that when in single player online we load one of a number of scenes, depending on quest flags. Different scenes could show us different NPCs or other non-player assets. To do that would require programming effort, and would only work in single player mode. It would prevent people with different quest flags from being in the same multiplayer instance, since each unique combination of quest flags gets its own instance. For that reason, as well as the amount of programming work required, it may be considered not worth doing.

 

Ah, there is nothing more atmospheric than seeing a snowman family, big presents and a Christmas tree when an undead army is threating to destroy all life in the world...

And of course now I understand why this is more important than real choices and consequences in scenes and real town sieges... NOT!