Housing is ruining the game

Yarnevk says
The solution is obvious for the good of the game, remove housing from NPC towns. Replace them with shop stalls in markets that are only customizable by signage to nerf the outcry from those who bought for the NPC town market.

@yarnevk ummm I don't think people who stayed up all night to get their special places in prime NPC town locations would appreciated being booted out though lol but I like your spirit

Also if people don't like the deco people do go to a town with deco rules, there are indeed some, but to force it on the average person just enjoying their property isn't going to happen and has been stated that it will not happen. Some rules were enforced in the design aspect so some items could not be piled as high as some would like, and outside deco of housing took a hit to enforce this. So not necessarily saying this to you, but everyone, be careful what you wish for, it could affect your creative design as well.

 

The keyword here is 'prime' means market, not housing. Many of the NPC town housing locations are not that great and being used for their market vendor, players would have had a better prime housing locations in a PRT/POT town. So compensate the change to NPC town housing being converted to a market stall in the NPC town, and then give them a deed upgrade in a PRT/POT as compensation.

This would be a much better solution than the workaround we have that stories and now sieges are of no consequence because the scene cannot ever change due to player housing. We are not getting a RG game this way because of selfishness.

It is not about how gaudy the decorations are cluttering the town, it is about them being there forcing writers hands that no meaningful story can ever be told. Players could still have decorations, they would just have to be inside.

 

Leave POTs out of the mix.

They are optional and a player should be able to do everything this game has to offer without ever entering a POT.

 

If they want to stay in the non-optional world they can have housing in a PRT - which is a town run by the game with non-story NPCs so that your decorations do not interfere with creating a consequential story. They can still have a merchant in the NPC towns for their prime market. But only the POT lets them completely customize their town if they want, so while it is optional, if players want that flexibility they have to go there - this is already the case.

This entitlement that players should be able to do everything they want everywhere has ruined the story of the game already, NPCs cannot have consequential story and now towns themselves are not being attacked, solely for the sake of yard decorations and custom houses in NPC story towns.

 

Well perhaps you are new and the POT subject is touchy to say the least at times since they got added in later. I love them but at this time not everyone does. This game does not have to be all about story, some do not even want to go there. They just want to have fun. So many options are important for all types of players. It is too late to just create a story/rpg game, it now needs to be all things for all types of players, and as much as some wish that were not the case, that is totally the case.

edited oops now mind you I am talking about the Multiplayer aspects of the game not the offline version of the game.

 

Try as I may, I fail to find any logic in that statement....
Sorry.

 

I am just going to say that my experience with Sota has been one of great value and learning. I was also critical of housing from the start, critical of zoning, critical of the various play modes, and strongly critical of COTO's and the unregulated gold selling. But l have come to appreciate, while I may not agree, the possibilities that could come of it all. It is not "my" game, but life it too short to stress over it. In many ways, it is probably better than my game anyway.

 

It is a very logical statement and it is not one I am making up, it is one stated by the devs.

Game technology prevents changing the state of NPC towns so that players see different things based on their actions.

Therefore the writers are unable to write a consequential story in town, there cannot be any raids that destroy a town for rebuilding, no NPC can go to jail, die, or move.

These things are given as the design of the game by Richard in the pitch video.

These things cannot be in the game, because housing and decorations was put into NPC towns.

This may not seem logical to you, but it is very logical statement to make because it is a design flaw that the engine coders did not enable the design goals of the game.

If players want the consequential stories and raids that was pitched in the video, then they have to give up NPC town housing and decorations. They can still have merchants in NPC towns. They can still have PRT/POT housing and decorations.

If players do not want it fixed, then they are prioritizing their houses over the story. Fine if this is Richard Garriots Garage Sale online (which BTW was essentially Portalariums prior game!) rather than a crowd funded successor to Ultimas which are most notable as being storied RPG.

 

Housing is building the game.

/thread

 

I am not new I am a benefactor who just missed the kickstarter and have been lurking here and watching all the monthly videos from the start. I was simply not commenting on something I was not playing. I had no intention of playing a RPG game until the story was finished, which is what August release was supposed to be. Turns out it was not, the game nor the story is not finished, and when released it will be lacking the story consequence in the KS pitch. Not sure what my tenure with the game has anything to do or not with my ability to post about the current state of the game.

It is not about housing vs. story one or the other, it is about finding finding a compromise. Put the decorated houses behind a fence instance - now the town can have all the consequential story that people expect. People can still play house. Housing in Skyrim is very fun despite story and engine limits.

 

ahhh I didnt mean it to offend. So sorry. I wasn't even arguing with you, just bringing up history about the pots. Please forgive me.

 

I agree with OP. I'd actually be quite excited if some skeletons would attack my POT and start burning the houses... People would finally get in game and try to protect their property, otherwise, people decorate their homes and disappear for weeks. I am not a big exception, I log in almost daily, but I don't do much of anything because I am not in mood. If I was forced to protect my town or my house that I paid $$$ for - I'd be more responsible for my property, but since nothing really much happens - I don't care much either... So yeah, I am all for making gameplay and life in towns more interesting.

For example, those raids, if people miss to log in into game for a long time, those raids would gradually damage their houses. The balancing fact in this is - give players and property owners an opportunity to repair their damaged by raids property, or somehow notify players about the beginning of the raid in advance. But Port won't do anything like this, since they are small team and blah blah and they don't plan anything in this season blah blah. So I'll just continue to lazily ZZzzzzzzz in game, since nothing is gonna happen anyway. And a lot of people would rage against something like this because they paid $$$ for their houses and they will say some big BLAH BLAH they will say... so I'll just go and continue to ZZZzzzzz and be lazy in a lazy game. There was a question about sieges and they don't plan to add sieges to POTs... so I'll just go and ZZzzzz in my POT. Bye.

 

You know whats bad? That POTs right now are nothing else, but the virtual property neighborhoods. We have pretty much zero tools, other than ONE item that can ONLY be purchased in store for some ridiculous amount of 30$ - the public cache chest. I want to be able to make my own quests, spawn monsters, allow town residents have FUN... But it seems that fun is not prescribed by SOTA devs to the players. We are prescribed to buy more items from the store and place them in our POTs... Nothing else much happens in life of SOTA, but new store items. I can't express this in a more sarcastic way... it's just pathetic, how devs keep making these store items, while completely disregarding people, who already invested thousands. Instead of providing us with more gameplay features and tools, they keep creating more virtual items to sell.

 

I think you misunderstand what I'm saying. Portalarium should be developing features and functionality for the game, without considering POTs into the mix. If what they build works for POTs, then so be it, but they shouldn't be changing design or feature sets to accommodate POTs. They are optional and should not be required to play the game.

I said nothing about letting people do anything, anywhere.

BTW, I agree that non-POT locations should have more things like what you suggest. POTs can be playhouses and I couldn't care less. They are of no interest to me.

 

I would love this too. The thought of having to take back an NPC town or a POT sounds really good to me. The current system would basically spawn siege scenes for every party or individual player until someone takes down the siege boss or the siege reaches it's time limit.

I bet that once I get sneak through the siege and get to Owl's head - everything will appear to be normal. That's a bit disapointing

 

The incentives for players who are not interested in housing are diminished. People who don't care about housing will only see the negative effect this system has on everything else in the game. SotA already is a niche game and this makes this niche even smaller.

When I read about SotA that "Players will adventure through over 40 hours of story in an interactive world where their choices during ethical paradoxes have consequences" then I don't want those choices and consequences to be just an afterthought because of housing...

 

Well, I still think that housing does not have such a huge impact on this. I would suspect that it is more related to multipalyer as you cannot really have different scenes so people can play together. There are soem singleplayer scenes which might work better for the story, but I am not convinced that the housing is really the root of the trouble here.

 

There a lot's of game mechanics that lower immersion and don't make sense from the standpoint of interactive story telling. Like monster spawning. You heroically clear out a mine full of monsters only to have them reappear right in front of you for no reason at all. It's a terrible mechanic for immersion, but I have no idea what the alternative is.

For housing and NPC towns, I remember when I first heard about sieges and I fully expected that one day I'd log in and there would be enemies at the gate, or that a siege had taken place and my house would be damaged and I'd have to fix it somehow. I always assumed sieges would be a result of the actions of many players rather than a single player (unless you're in single player offline, then the NPCs contribute). Like, a bandit camp was tired of avatars raiding them, so they came to raid us right back. I don't think it makes sense that an individual would frequently be confronted with a decision that led to a siege. If the consequences are a result of overall player action, then you don't need instancing, the world should change the same for everyone. I would be surprised if individual interactions with NPC's couldn't be individualized within the same instance (like because of your interaction an NPC really likes you but hates your friend). I'm sure there would be limitations, like not being able to kill off certain NPCs, but I bet there's a lot you could do with it (and I'm expecting them to). I actually think that some RPGs come off as being a little obtuse to suggest that every single major world event in the game is a result of the actions of a single player.

 

I"d like town sieges to eventually work like this :

1. Blockade - as it will work this year but with a twist. If the siege isn't broken by day X then.....
2. Invasion - NPC besiegers invade the town. NPC guards, cats, chickens and NPC merchants of all types either driven into hiding or killed. Player owned merchants aren't touched but go into "cower" emote and refuse to conduct any business. NPC invaders don't burn or destroy any buildings but any player caught outside his/her home is attacked on sight.
3. Relief - NPC besiegers pull out after day Y. If other players mount a successful counterattack then the invaders are driven off earlier.

This way no player assets or town infrastructure is touched but things are definitely *not* normal. Zero trade, no quests available - just bloody street fighting until it's over.

 

You are very wrong, the devs are the ones that said housing is the root of the troubles. To implement consequential actions NPCs need to die, leave town or be imprisoned. Houses need to burn - just like in the Solace Bridge scene. The technology exists to swap scenes and NPCs, but they cannot do it if the scene has player housing and decorations. Essentially that means players would need to have two or more of everything, one copy of each of their houses and decorations for each variant scene, and their server database cannot handle that.

It is a fundamental limitation of the technology developed for the game, not a limitation of Unity the game engine. The game already has limits on number of players per scene, so you already may not get to play with your friends. It was not because they was afraid people would not be able to play together if they was out of phase that they are not doing it. Elder Scrolls Online already has such phasing so that their story can have town and NPC consequences.

It has everything to do with multiplayer, but the problem is not only in MPO mode. FPO is multiplayer with your friends, SPO is multiplayer in that you see everything that is in MPO - the houses, the decorations, the NPCs the merchants, so this issue impacts all the online modes.

Currently Single Player Offline is just the multiplayer game in design, there is nothing single player about it. You are just locally running an empty game server. ARK Survival Evolved's single player is the same way, people only use that mode for testing as a result.

If they was planning to write a single player RPG offline story that is different than the online RPG story with the addition of consequences, that effort should have started years ago. The single player story is the same as the online player story. The best they can do is balance encounters , crafting and economies to be soloed, but they have not even announced they will do a balance pass, and never even responded to the requests to update the status of offline single player for many months.

Feel free to put your head into the sand on this issue, but the only consequence the story can have is on your virtues, it cannot have world consequences and it IS because of housing.