Should player housing be allowed in the new Star Wars MMO? That’s going to be a question asked a lot over the next few months or years until we get a definitive answer from Bioware. What do you think? If you’ve played other games that allowed player’s to own a little piece of the game world, you know the joys and sorrows that accompany player housing.
In Star Wars Galaxies, the housing system had pro’s and con’s associated with it. The pro’s of course were you had a place to call your own. A place to hang your hat, display your trophies and loot and a built-in bank system to store items you don’t want to carry with you everywhere you go. It was a nice way to build a community by allowing players to band houses together to make cities and communities.
Pro’s were that players could place these things just about anywhere on planets that allowed it. The only hitch was you had to have a flat piece of terrain and be a certain, short distance away from cities, both player and permanent cities. So you had little towns popping up all over the place cluttering the terrain. In the early days, traveling on foot through the Dune Sea of Tattooine really felt like you were in a remote, desolate area. By the end of my SWG tenure it felt like driving through a metropolis.
Different Ways to Have Housing and Make it Work
Banding Houses Together
If housing is allowed in some fashion, there are ways to make it both attractive and effective – a win, win by both the developer and the player. One such way is to make only certain areas of each planet buildable. This will basically pre-designate areas where players can build cities, towns or stand-alone dwellings yet keep the majority of the country side looking clean. Another option along those lines is to include maintenance fees for housing and have it cheaper to build near other homes, encouraging players to build in already populated areas.
Ships As Houses
This is assuming they do not allow players to own land in the game and that they are going to put in space based content. Being able to customize the interior of your personal starship would be a good solution to allow players to have housing of sorts. Of course, this would be preferred to be an option along with ground housing as well but it’s a good alternative if nothing else.
Ships are a big part of Star Wars, I mean who’s never heard of the Millenium Falcon or Slave I? These are icons and have a story all their own. If Bioware is all about the story, a ship as part of your overall story makes for some good campfire discussions. Speaking of campfires…
Camps
Another way of giving players at the very least a temporary means of housing, this is really more for a little R&R time while still allowing them to show off some trophies in a customizable camp site. Basically it would work similar to camps currently in SWG but with the option to customize or decorate the camp site to the player’s tastes. When the camp site is stored for future use in the backpack, the customizations and item layout would be stored as well. As long as the player still had those same items in his backpack the next time he setup camp – the items and customizations would show up just how he left them.
Got any ideas of your own for how Bioware could throw us a bone on player housing? Would you like to see any or all of my ideas implemented? Got some changes you’d like to see from what I wrote? Think I’m just off my rocker? Whatever the case may be, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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10 comments so far
I was a 3-yr vet of SWG, and the player housing/cities were one of the main things that kept me coming back.
I sure hope they implement something similar in TOR!
The lack of this kind of system is what has kept me away from the other mmo’s on the market.
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I know there are other games out there with housing, but the lack of it in most titles really blows my mind. It’s such a popular feature. SWG could have done it better as well, but it did pretty well. I miss it.
November 22nd, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I actually played as a city manager most often, and did more things with the social aspect of the game. I ran my own business just by using the player-driven economy, being hired as a home decorator, and acting as an “acquirer of rare antiquities” for various clients.
Having a home base and a living city enables players to do things like this, and really expand the game’s possibilities.
I have yet to find a game that does this system as well. Most games don’t even attempt it! I remain hopeful, though…
November 24th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
I just sent you an email but figured I’d post it here as well. Anyone who was a fan of SWG before the combat upgrade or so-called ‘new game enhancements’ were implemented may find this to their liking:
http://gamezig.com/mmorpg/star-wars-galaxies-emulator-needs-you
November 24th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Yeah, I was just reading about that…could be pretty awesome. I’ll check it out.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Hello,
I played SWG from launch unit NGE. Player housing, particularly the ability to turn your home into a shop with vendors, was one of the key attractions to my long stay in SWG.
SWG was about diversity, expression and complexity. If Bioware could institute player housing in some fashion that allows use for 1- personal expression, 2- meeting with friends, and 3- economic activity (vendors, etc) then i think that would be a cornerstone of their attractiveness to SWG vets.
One way they might institute this is:
Make housing grids. Make it so houses could be placed in designated areas on the planets, but placed in perhaps a pre-arranged manner, maybe there could be a dozen grids to choose from. What i mean by this is arrangements of the individual strutures to form within a city pattern, without forcing one person or two people to be responsible for each city. (in my opinion, this led to alot of nonsense in SWG, having the “politician” class which was beyond useless except for city placement).
So, you could have residentially-zoned areas on the planet, maybe 60% of the planet. and then each respective area could have arrangements of buildings in only 1 of 12 ways..all facing same direction, forming squares, street patterns, etc.
December 14th, 2008 at 4:29 am
That would be nice but I think that kind of zoning should only be in effect for building placement if it’s within a cities boundary. That way the guild owning the city could control the look and feel of their area.
If you are just placing your houses out in the wild areas, outside the borders of any establishment, you should be able to place it how you like. I loved finding off the beaten path areas in SWG to build. I’ve had houses near some of the most beautiful areas in SWG because I explored to find them and build. Of course there should only be certain areas that are buildable, but in SWG that wasn’t so much the case. I liked finding the remote areas with a nice view to call home. Before the advent of mounts and then later vehicles it was a pain, but oh so worth it.
December 14th, 2008 at 9:28 am
yea SWG’s housing/shops and the economy were fun as hell. i could go shopping for hours, checking out the inside of everyone’s house, see how differently people would decorate or see cool trophies i had yet to acquire.
everytime SWG gives me a free month of play time i’ll go check and see how my bunnker is doing, and maybe do a lil decorating hehe. thats about it, the rest of the game BLOWS, well except for some of the dungeons i guess.
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:14 am
I highly doubt Bioware will allow buildable houses in-game, outside of towns, or anywhere on the planets. However, KOTOR certainly had “apartments”. I imagine SWTOR will most likely take this sort of approach. Entering an apartment complex and then loading an inner-apartment. Remember, Bioware is focusing on the game’s story. Like it or not, this will most likely mean that SWTOR does not have player housing. I loved how SWG gave players the option of owning real-estate and truly making it feel like a home away from home. But Bioware is making this MMO less of our story and more of their story. Plus, they most likely want to stray away from anything related to SWG. SWTOR will most likely be an entirely different experience (sadly, but perhaps for the better).
January 7th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Sad but true…their story can be fun. But I like mine so much better. Why oh why did they have to go destroy SWG?!
January 7th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
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