Haxer wrote: »

I would say that it isn't about difficulty per say. It's about creating a world for players to live in, and do things. There is nothing to do in ESO besides hop on and go to work at the quest mill. And don't get me wrong, that's a very important thing to have, and they did a great job with it. (particularly with quests actually revolving around important and interesting things going on, rather than "kill 8 boars and bring me their toenails"). BUT the point is that alone is not enough. Where is the social function, guild function, reasons to group, reasons to do anything.

This is a key point. The quest mill will only provide so much entertainment, and people will tune out after that, having "finished" the game. Quests should never be the only goal in the game, and good MMOs have a multitude of goals that complement as well as augment each other.

Housing is one of those things that can play a pivotal role, supporting various playstyles. Housing, with a design and decorate function, doesn't just let you stash your stuff and socialize or roleplay with others, but also has appeal to crafters, designers, shopkeepers of all stripes. There's vanity appeal and creative outlets. Hunts for decorative rares. And grinds or quests to get the gold for your house, or a zoning permit for an extension. You can even tie it into PvP if you really wanted. You name it.

Housing as an outlet of creativity touches on another aspect of MMOs that I find ostendibly missing from many modern MMOs: the ability to make your mark upon the word. In UO (especially at the start), it took 9 months or more to grind to GM, and as a result such crafters were rare; you knew these guys by name. Some people made a name for themselves doing interior decoration; at some point I started a website to show some of the better ones, and I was surprised at the traffic it generated. In SWG, an online friend did nothing but craft and run a tailor shop (roleplaying all the time as well); she was fairly well known and a fair few guilds asked her to design their guild uniform. An MMO needs many degrees of freedom, the tools to create your own content (houses, but also variety in craftable and lootable apparel, dyes, etc, ect), a sense of permanence (houses, player-run shops) as well as a sense of presence (being *in* the world, not in some tucked away ghost town like LOTROs suburbs, or the instanced guild cities in AoC (which at least still see the occasional foreign traffic).

Many MMos fall short in creativity, permanence, and the opportunity to stand out, and especially ESO falls short here. Housing, even in a very basic form at the start, would be a great foundation to expand these aspects upon. It will also greatly aid the community building aspect, as pointed out before. As it stands, we have a nasty trade system that actually segments the community into pointless guilds. What we need is an open market and player run shops, then close that horrible mistake that is the guild shops.

Wow, ESO looks way better than that game ! Housing sounds great but if a horse costs 42,000 + imagine what a freakin house would cost... hopefully tents or gypsy carts will be available too....

Sadly the housing system "done right" would have to include most systems in game prior to it. This means that it is pointless to have housing prior to the Thieves, DB guilds and justice system are added. The real complaint then is how long it will be before those systems are added.

hk11 wrote: »

born2beagator wrote: »

I want to thank this thread for one thing: confirming my choice not to try wildstar.

particularly, I want to LOL at the bunny earred girl with purple hair. What a stupid, childish looking game

Those are just the looks. No children are going to play it for any length of time. It's the least casual friendly game I've seen in ages.

another reason not to buy

Here is the thing a lot of people don't seem to understand. Endgame content is not just raids or PvP. For a lot of people, more than many of you might suspect, a huge portion of endgame is social or light RP (I think heavy RP is not too common). A good crafting system and a good housing system can keep people playing a game with lack of other non-raid pve content for a LONG time. I subbed to EQ2 for at least 6 months and probably more like 8 past when I'd reached max level and explored all the zones just to collect pets, decorate my 8 room, 3 story house, build furniture and harvest and make food to fund my idea of fun.

SWG was similar. Long past the time I would have been bored grinding out careers to unlock Jedi (pre-NGE obvisously), I continued to harvest, craft, and play with my house which was part of a thriving city that I helped to build and maintain. those are just 2 examples.

On the other hand we have TSW, for instance, I would have continued to play much, much longer if they had better crafting and some sort of housing, as I loved the game, quests, atmosphere, clothing, etc.

TL;DR: This kind of thing can keep a lot of players around at "endgame", which in turn keeps the economy healthy and the game alive for the PvPers and hard core raiders.

You guys need us (and we need things like housing and meaningful crafting)....whether you like it or not.

Edited for spelling.

Haxer wrote: »

Audigy wrote: »

ZoS: WHY ISN'T ESO LIKE THIS ^^^^ I want it to be

WS has two strengths no doubt,

1. Housing
2. Difficulty

It does take someone 6 months to skill a char, think about that. 6 Months of gaming, while grinding dungeons or quest´s. Besides that the 40 men raid must be unlocked and even inside that raid you unlock specific quest lines for gear that you then have to grind.
If you like that, WS is a fun game - but the majority of the Gamers on PC is too old for that. (no offence)

The investment for a few pixels just doesn't value the outcome in their eyes. Same applies to WoW btw. to raid for many months to get a full set - is something not many find fun these days, especially now in summer. That's why you have a raid attendance of 5-10% only at so many MMO´s.

What you said about the world bosses, well while they are fun now they will be impossible once nobody levels. We saw this at SWTOR, there were many world bosses too - but no players! In the long run those world bosses were just ignored

Therefore I think the world bosses at ESO are good, but they should scale with the amount of players fighting them. Warhammer had such a system if I recall.

As for housing, I agree they did invest a lot there in the past months - but this wasn't like that always. Before they actually improved housing it was nothing else than a map with buildings that had no functions A lot currently in housing came from Alpha and Beta feedback.

Housing for me at an TES but any MMO is a must have feature, more important than any raid content.
That said, ZO seems to not know yet how housing should look like. They don't want to rush it, but it still would be great to hear more about their plans for it.

Great feedback. I would say that it isn't about difficulty per say. It's about creating a world for players to live in, and do things. There is nothing to do in ESO besides hop on and go to work at the quest mill. And don't get me wrong, that's a very important thing to have, and they did a great job with it. (particularly with quests actually revolving around important and interesting things going on, rather than "kill 8 boars and bring me their toenails"). BUT the point is that alone is not enough. Where is the social function, guild function, reasons to group, reasons to do anything. Housing is just one way of providing people something to do together when they need a break from the quest mill. Right now you can't even complete a quest together if you try, because two people will make different dialogue choices and end up in different phases. One invisible fighting a boss the other can't help with. Heck, it's like the play testers never grouped at all. How did they never once run into that in pre-release? It is a single player game masquerading as an MMO. And that's not enough for some.

Oh believe me, there's nothing...NOTHING that's been mentioned on these forums that wasn't voiced as concern in the Beta forums.
Even the bugs some are now finding, we already found over a year ago.

It really does seem in this game they just don't listen to the players and all walk around with headphones and blinkers on in that office.

Sendarya wrote: »

Here is the thing a lot of people don't seem to understand. Endgame content is not just raids or PvP. For a lot of people, more than many of you might suspect, a huge portion of endgame is social or light RP (I think heavy RP is not too common). A good crafting system and a good housing system can keep people playing a game with lack of other non-raid pve content for a LONG time. I subbed to EQ2 for at least 6 months and probably more like 8 past when I'd reached max level and explored all the zones just to collect pets, decorate my 8 room, 3 story house, build furniture and harvest and make food to fund my idea of fun.

SWG was similar. Long past the time I would have been bored grinding out careers to unlock Jedi (pre-NGE obvisously), I continued to harvest, craft, and play with my house which was part of a thriving city that I helped to build and maintain. those are just 2 examples.

On the other hand we have TSW, for instance, I would have continued to play much, much longer if they had better crafting and some sort of housing, as I loved the game, quests, atmosphere, clothing, etc.

TL;DR: This kind of thing can keep a lot of players around at "endgame", which in turn keeps the economy healthy and the game alive for the PvPers and hard core raiders.

You guys need us (and we need things like housing and meaningful crafting)....whether you like it or not.

Edited for spelling.

You said it, couldn't agree more !

:agree:

Mablung wrote: »

I had so many houses in SWG that I decorated. I truly miss that game. Pre CU/NGE of course.

Also saw mention of EQ2 which had excellent housing as well. A lot of people get tons of enjoyment out of the what some see as little things; collectibles, rare pets, decorations etc.

Agreed. I loved how Skyrim implemented the trophy/statue thing. You had to go out and kill the things you wanted to have as a decoration.., brilliant !
Kind of made you feel like a real hunter !

Amsel_McKay wrote: »

Phantax wrote: »

Well Zenimax has already said its likely to be after the 2nd anniversary before we see player housing (personally I think that's way too late). I've just watched a video of the player housing in Wildstar and OMG ! All I can say is ESO's player housing had better be good if this is the standards other MMO's are setting. (RIFT did it great, Wildstar now better)

(not sure if I can post the link here or not)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jLc0esD1fc

Well Zenimax, you got 2 years to sort out player housing and it'd better be AAA rating quality. I'm talking Skyrim epic levels of housing. The gauntlet has been thrown down, zeni... don't let us down ! ! !

WTF is that... that has to be the worst looking game in history of games... Looks like I would be playing Sponge Bob's world... a color palette neon puke and neon poo would make my head explode after 1 min on play...

Looks like browser games. xD

born2beagator wrote: »

I want to thank this thread for one thing: confirming my choice not to try wildstar.

particularly, I want to LOL at the bunny earred girl with purple hair. What a stupid, childish looking game

Agree. I never stopped wondering why games go to that kind of art direction. In that sense I am put off by EQN as well as they also feature the cartoony look wow has championed

Why cant we have more stuff like Lineage (which I still think has some of the best art direction a game could have) ?

I have to agree that something Star game that was referenced looks childish and way too cartoony, reminds me of WoW, Yuck, (threw up in my mouth a little) And to be fair ESO sometimes looks childish also, specially when you're in a town and the place is littered with pets and there's like a hundred people running and jumping around on their flaming dino-tigers or standing in line at all of the crafting benches like it were a theme park, to me it feels like a Medieval Costume party in the middle of a petting Zoo at Disneyland.

But back to the point...the housing system concept on that star game looks promising, ESO could get some really good ideas off that. I think WoW did something similar with Garrisons and I'm sure many other games have as well. (instanced zone housing) is the term I hear is being thrown around.

Add that and the ability to start a private invite session only and you have yourself a keeper.

Wildstar FTP this fall.... I know I'm going to be trying it out!

Sendarya wrote: »

You guys need us (and we need things like housing and meaningful crafting)....whether you like it or not.

What you all need is a reintroduction to how we did things in the old school days when housing was not around, when people actually congregated in cities and did this thing called socialize.

We didn't have special colors, we didn't have housing, we didn't have every little fluff feature out there, what we did have is each other and a good world, specially in Asherons Call.

A city was a social hub and it had something for everyone, the problem with players today is that they think they are deserving of so much. Players make the bulk of the experience and the new school shows a lack of.

Just my two cents.

PS4 EU


What is Wildstar???