Dev Blog: Let's Brainstorm about Housing

[Citan]

(This started out as a forum post but got too big and became a blog post. The Fairy race blog post is about a week away, I expect.)

Let's Brainstorm About Housing
We're deep in the middle of coding the playable Fairy race, and after that we've got a new dungeon lined up, and after that there's a major city to add! So why talk about housing now? Because that city, Statehelm, is also where we'll introduce housing later in the year. Now is the time to brainstorm housing, to let the wild ideas percolate, to figure out what might be fun.

And if you're thinking "housing isn't fun", then that's exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not adding housing to check off a feature list. I'm adding it because I think it can be amazing!


Landscape vs. Instanced? Already Settled
First, let's get the landscaped-vs-instanced question out of the way: we won't be using landscape housing. That's when the houses exist in the regular, non-instanced world, and each house can be bought and owned by one player. This design seems the most immersive at first. Who wouldn't want to own part of your favorite game city? But in practice, landscape housing is always terrible. (Except in pure PvP games, where landscape housing has a different function and can work well... but this isn't a PvP game!)

The most immediate problem with landscape housing is that it doesn't scale. We'd start by adding hundreds of homes to the game, filling every nook and cranny of the existing world with houses... but that wouldn't even come CLOSE to letting every player have a house! It would only let the richest players buy one.

What about the thousands of other players? Well, everyone who plays must eventually be able to have a home, so we'd obviously need thousands more homes. We'd need to add new areas to the game just to have a place to stick their houses. You may have seen areas like that in other MMOs: for practical reasons, they're not very fleshed out. They're just places to stick houses. At that point, the houses might as well be instanced. It's not like their home is in the "real" game world anyway!

The second problem is that landscape housing eventually creates barren, empty game areas. At first, there's a decent chance that some of the homeowners will be in their houses while you log in, so the place might seem bustling and active. But after a year or two, that's never true. Players who own those homes will eventually stop playing... but they won't give up their homes. They'll log in just long enough to pay the upkeep costs of their house, then leave again. This creates ghost towns.

The only way to fix this is to force players to lose their homes if they don't keep playing - for example, by having arduous rental requirements or minimum play times. But that feels kind of like blackmail to me: "Keep playing every month or we'll take your pretend house away." This really isn't a great long-term retention strategy, either, because MMO players tend to take breaks from their favorite game before returning a year or two later. They'll log in to see what's new... but if they realize that their beloved house is gone, they're likely to just log back out again. I want returning players to feel welcome.

(Old-school MMO companies generally LIKED this design, because it meant homeowners had to keep paying a monthly subscription fee forever. But we don't have a monthly subscription fee. We'll eventually have an optional VIP plan, but I want it to feel truly optional, not something you'd need to own a house!)

The third problem of landscape housing is that it "locks in" parts of the game world. As these games mature and housing areas slowly feel more and more empty (due to all the homeowners who never log in), why don't game developers take steps to fix it? Because that would upset those homeowners!

Even adding monster-spawns to quiet areas will piss people off. If someone bought a landscape house because of its safety, they're going to feel betrayed if it stops feeling safe! There are a few other things that can be added, but for developers, it's mostly just too much work with too little reward. Instead of pissing off homeowners, devs are much more likely to create new areas instead. Those old barren areas are left to rot forever.


Instanced Housing Doesn't Have to Be Boring
We can side-step all of those problems by using instanced housing. Instanced housing is where the door to your home is in town, but when you go through that door, you appear in a private mini-area. Lots of players can use the same door in town, and each enters their own "instance" of the interior area.

Lots of games implement instanced housing, mostly just to tick off boxes on their feature list. They add the expected features: some storage, some decorations, maybe a crafting table. In other words, they're pretty boring, so you're forgiven for thinking instanced housing HAS to be boring. But it doesn't! In fact, this is a fertile area for new MMO designs, and I want to try some out.

I want housing to be integrated into the game's systems at a deeper level, so it can be a jumping-off point for high-level player adventures and goals. There are opportunities here for gameplay that wouldn't make sense otherwise. Here's some ideas:


Meet the Neighbors
Just because your house is instanced doesn't mean you can't have player neighbors. Quite the opposite! We can avoid the big barren areas of non-instanced housing by using the reality-bending power of instancing. For example, in an instanced neighborhood we could dynamically group players based on who's online.

Suppose that when you go out the door of your instanced apartment, it leads to a hallway with a bunch of other doors -- each one dynamically assigned to be the doors of other people who are in their homes right now. You can knock on any door and say hi, and maybe come in to visit and look around. Or maybe you can slip a note under the door. Or sneak into their homes...

Or maybe that hallway leads to players that have been online recently, and who have left their houses in "open" security mode, so you can wander in and visit.

Or maybe the hallway leads to other active members of your guild, so your neighbors are always guildmates.

Or maybe we organize housing based on skill choices, so if you move into Explosion Heights with the other wizards, you can expect to encounter wizards... and wizard-related problems.

Because instanced houses aren't on the 'real' landscape, we can hook them together in ways that aren't constrained by real physics -- ways that create new gameplay. For example...


The Front Door
Every house has a door, and we can use this to let adventures come to you. Imagine you come home just in time to hear a knock on your door. It's your neighbor: he asks you to deal with the foul odor coming from your basement. What odor? "The movers brought in those coffins yesterday, so I assume that's the stench!" What movers? What basement?! (Okay, discovering that you have a secret basement may be too far. Or maybe not... the basement door could teleport you to a different mini-dungeon depending on what quest is going on.)

Or perhaps your apartment in the Statehelm slums is plagued by a mob of rat-men. They knock incessantly, demanding payment in cheese... do you dare answer? What happens if you don't? Do they try to set your house on fire? Or maybe they let pests into your vents. Or maybe they just sneak in and subtly move the furniture to enrage you... "Notice anything different? This wouldn't have happened if you'd left Roquefort on the mantle!"

Or maybe the visitor is your old friend Rita from Serbule. She's in town to do some shopping and wants to fill you in on the latest gossip. She says Sir Coth has started talking about "invisible intruders" again; maybe you should visit Serbule and see what's up?

Or perhaps the visitor at your door is just a salesman with a magic mirror to sell. "It shows serene pictures of nature when you're trying to go to sleep!" says the merchant. But after you buy it, something else happens...


Marriage
One of the big benefits of instancing is that NPCs can be instanced too, and they can behave differently inside your home than they do outside. This means you can marry an NPC and unlock all sorts of new behaviors. We've seen the beginnings of fun marriage systems in games like Skyrim, but they're rarely very deep.

Marriage has actually been part of Gorgon's rough design plan since the beginning -- for instance, the internal Favor Level above "Soul Mates" is called "Married" -- But that doesn't mean I've figured out how everything will work. It'll take experimentation to learn what sorts of mechanics are fun and scalable.

Right now, the exact game mechanics are completely open. Marriage could have its own Marriage Mood Meter, and different moods could trigger all sorts of behaviors depending on the NPC you married. Tantrums, fights, sulking, subterfuge... or lovely gifts, cozying by the fireplace, making you a delicious meal...

Or your spouse may have their friends over for parties... which might lead to jealousy later if you paid too much attention to their friends...

Or maybe one of their friends has gotten into serious trouble. There's a mystery to figure out, and your spouse has stakes in the outcome.

Or maybe their friends bring over an exotic housewarming gift with some unusual properties...

I think different NPCs would have very different marriage experiences. Some would crave cozy domesticity; others might have freaky demands for new sex toys every week; some might suffer from depression and need extra support, while others keep inviting their friends over every night and insist that you to keep the icebox stocked!

Rakshasa have only had non-arranged marriages for a few decades, so they may have a lot of trouble settling down. And surely some elves have difficulty marrying a non-elf... knowing that they're going to outlive their spouse by hundreds of years might make it hard to have real emotional bonding. And if you marry a mage, are they going to feel jealous of your skill when you inevitably out-level them? What are the repercussions?


Fertile Grounds for Fun Ideas
None of these ideas are especially well thought out, obviously. This is brainstorming! But I'm excited about the possibilities, and I'd like to hear what ideas interest you.

Of course, housing will also be an opportunity to decorate, to craft, to store items, all the usual stuff. But one of my goals with this game is to dig deeper than most MMOs do, and find the fun ideas that they don't reach. So what sounds fun to you? What outlandish thing do you want to do in your imaginary home?


PS - Most of these design ideas could apply to guild halls too! We plan to eventually add instanced Guild Halls, so that every guild can have a meeting spot. (A handful of the most expensive Guild Halls will also have non-instanced lobbies or exteriors, where the guild could set up vendors or signposts or things like that... but the majority of the place will be instanced.)

[Citan]

(I guess actually it's both a forum post AND a blog post. Going to route comments from the blog to this forum thread.)

[Rojjin]

Hey there Citan, long time no see.

I feel one of the major things missing from housing over the decades has been something rather simple... Responsibility.

Now yes, we play games to escape reality. But even a virtual house can get dirty, infested, You need to maintain your garden, Collect your mail. things beyond just paying rent. I doubt maids and butlers are included in that fee.

linked instances open up the possibilities for things like: community gardens, art exhibits, parks, farms, pets (menagerie instead of having your pets stabled all the damn time), hell, even geocaching and all of those could be built and maintained by a group, unaffiliated players can have their "online at the time" neighbors, and guild groupings are all well and good, but the ability to establish a housing neighborhood by choice beyond simply grouping skills together. allows players to bond and establish alliances between their guilds and as individuals.

Group has a discussion and establishes a project. players within the group can use their skills and resources to create say a garden. we survey for viable land, we stake our claim and fence it in with carpentry, till the land and prep the soil via gardening and geology. perhaps uncover a cache of minerals in the land and are rewarded with that bounty. And then the crops begin, giving more depth to gardening than simply planting, watering, fertilizing.. we establish crops, rotating through a harvest to keep nutrients at viable levels. and throughout a given season, everyone can collect from that crop at set rates (think fruit tree timers).

art exhibits have long standing statues and such, again utilizing many players, resources and skills to fabricate a space and maintain them. effort begets reward, every player within the group can dip back to their house for a refresh of buffs.

there are massive possibilities but unfortunately that also comes with a commitment from your team to create them, balance them. and then it's on players to create, maintain, and reap the rewards.

[Ranperre]

Well first and foremost, I want a slave. Someone to take care of any "responsibilities" that home ownership might entail. I mean what's a domicile without unpaid labor?

Second, it would be nice if crafting was heavily involved. Let's say I wanted to add another room and 80 storage slots to my house, I'd like to have a flat cost (like 5000 spruce) and then be able to work on building that addition by logging off or giving orders to my slave. High level gadgeteering could also allow people to make their own tanning racks and cotton gins. Tons of crafting based housing additions would be nice. Maybe give us a 5% chance to make high quality cotton gins and tanning racks? Not sure you want to go down that road though.

Third, and this might be the most important: Where do you want people doing their crafting? Right now, Rahu-Casino is BY FAR the most convenient crafting place. You've got several hundred "anything" storage slots and tons of gem storage, not to mention guild storage and proximity to some work order boards. Is the plan for a personal house to be able to outdo this? Do you want people to just sit in their house all the time and craft?

Lastly, at least for now, do you have any plan to give us a third/fourth teleportation bind? I say fourth because you can use heart's home for a third atm. Adding another city means one of: Kur, Rahu, and Serb would need to go, and even if you're doing three 50-man guild quests a week, that might not keep up Rahu requirements. Could just be a "me" problem though.

House slaves please. Or at least a dog/Alharth equivalent.

[Delfofthebla]

Looks like you've already got the bones of the discussion sorted out Citan, and I tend to agree with you on all fronts here.

But the real question is, why should I own a house? Why do I want one? What does it grant me and why should I ever be in it instead of where I reside now?

As a Spider player, I 'live' in the Red Wing Casino. I do this because this is where all my storage and vendors are. This is where players show up to do dailies and work orders. This is where I place all my most commonly used items. This is the 'hub' that can allow me to access every other part of the world quickly and efficiently. This is where I garden. This is where I cook. This is where I tailor. This is where I sell my dungeon findings. The Red Wing Casino is my "City" and the ease of access with vast capabilities is what makes it my "Home".

I know there is an animal town meant for my kind, but due to it lacking in many of the above features, it is completely worthless as a home. I'm going to guess that you don't necessarily like this situation, either because the animal town is rarely trafficked or because the red wing casino is "too good", but I like how it works right now. Sure I'd like the animal town to be better and I'd love even more storage & vendors in the casino, but the teleporter to Rahu bridges the gap well enough for me.

The real question is, how are you going to make me 'move' without creating frustration or cheapening my current experience? Will this house be a better home than the one I have here? Can it be? As it stands, I can see people moving about the area all the time, and I have access to everything I need. It's a good MMO feeling to see people doing stuff while you are in a comfortably efficient hub.

When I think of player housing in games (instanced or not) I think "Useless prop that is supposed to provide immersion, but actually just worsens the experience."

I'd be curious if you've thought about the following:
1) Will I be able to access large amounts (or other city's) storage from inside my home?
2) Will I be able to access vendors from inside my home?
3) Will I be able to teleport directly to my home?
4) Will I have access to crafting devices and gardening?
5) Will I be able to see players moving about in the halls and between vendors?
6) If we do have access to crafting devices, will this create isolation inside of a closed room (A big con for Gardening for sure!)
7) Assuming I still have access to all of this, will I be forced into (one of the many) 1-2 minute long loading screens just to access these features? (This is already a partial issue with Red Wing Casino and Rahu. Loading screens in project gorgon can range from relatively painless to beyond awful.)

I worry more for what player housing will take away from me than I do for what it could grant me. Storage is one of the most contentious topics in Gorgon, and for good reason. If this has the potential to make my storage situation worse, I'd prefer to stay away from it entirely.

I'm sure we'd all prefer to talk about all the cool features player housing could bring with quests and neighbors, but I feel like that's all secondary to the aforementioned perks. If I don't "live" in my house, then it's not my god damn home now is it?

[Rockdelver]

By all means do instanced housing for those that want it but, based on my experiences with player housing, the sole and only reason I would use it is for extra storage of items. I first encountered player housing way, way back in Anarchy Online, then in Lord of the Rings Online, Archeage and latterly Elder Scrolls Online. I find owning a home in a game utterly uninteresting to me. Inevitably, player housing is just a time- and gold-sink. I'm not going to waste time and game currency in furnishing it, I see no point in socialising with randomly-assigned "neighbours" and I'm not interested in visiting other player homes either. If I was inclined to do socialise - which is rare - there's always Serbule to spend a few spare moments in. I'd far rather see the new races added and more playable zone content to be honest. Housing should be way down the list.

[ProfessorCat]

I've always daydreamed about having a friend or guild mate over to my home in game. Perhaps a little terrain, because I'd like to have a small plot of land, with a modest house.

In this daydream, I have 3 pet loading golems that visitors have to fight if they want my company. I'd even be okay if these golems attack me too. I want to say I'd settle for pets less than a loading golem, but that wouldn't be true to my heart's desires.

Perhaps we can have the opportunity to purchase a plot of instanced land with a stream or river in it, and the soil is fertile enough to have a small garden plot that one or two players to use.

I remember reading about NPC marriage a long time ago, and I was hopeful for the discussion when I first saw this blog title! I think it'd be fun for "in-laws" of married NPCs, and the fun dialogue that can come with it.

The married NPC can have a happiness meter based on interaction, or if you log out or do a "hang out" with your spouse. The effects could be a post-coital buff when you log in.

It'd be fun to see weekend buff-related events for housing (maybe this is when the in-laws visit) - They have meal prefferences, and their own mini-favor program for a weekend, and if you come out ahead, you get a bonus chance for that Post Coital buff that lasts until the next in-law weekend.

Perhaps a very happy marriage can yeild offspring. Along with that a title - Worlds's Greatest Mother/Father

Housing will be a great "money sink", but I'd like to see the money options go beyond just the physical house. Decoration tiers, or rare scroll drops for a forge/tanning rack. A stable to rest your mounts at, and maybe get a happiness buff from that.

I know not every idea will be possible, and I'm certain whatever comes of the housing release will be a great addition to the game.

If we could only choose one suggestion to make it in game, though, It'd be the opportunity to have mob-pets that you can kill/farm (maybe a 15 minute spawn time?) But really I just want 3 giant golems to harass me and everyone else with their lock-out rage attack.

[Syndriax]

First of all, i think being able to see your pets walk around in your house (realm/domain) would be awesome.

Other than that it would be nice if we as players could customize our house, not just furniture but if it is for example; wooden house (in a winter landscape, maybe?), old stone house (deep in the woods lightly lighten by the light that escape through the crown of the trees, that is slowly swaying in the wind, just enough to illuminate the surroundings. like a magical curtain of light revealing an, old and humble yet homely and warm, stone house with light overgrows at the side of one outer stone wall giving it a untouched feeling), underground dungeon with hidden rooms or just plain out in the open.
if possible i would be nice if we could have a little landscape with it like a personal realm (like were described by the 'Pulsing Crystal') to give more immersion like i have tried to describe in the () and give a more personalized feeling so we can show of to each other

at last, would be to make it so crafting skills can be used to make things in the house like: furniture, room designs, art, garden and special stuff like a crafting stations.

Edit:
on a related side note; i have been thinking about the social aspect and who can inter the house. of course there is already mentioned that guild could see and i suspect that we will be able to add names for the ones we like to see and don't, maybe even friends can see the house. But i'm thinking if it would be possible to add options like all druid or lycanthrope can inter? maybe even all with a title that the player them self own? like the player title. depending on the functions of the house maybe even allow chosen players to only see, interact with the house and manage it, like the guild system give people ranks in what they can and cannot do.

[Dibbuk]

When I think of housing, i think of storage. Somewhere to keep my stuff. One thing I would look for in housing was a bookcase that would access ALL storage. Housing would be the ONE place you sit down and arrange and consolidate all the items you have scattered all over the various zones.

[Reikiko]

I remember recently reading a story set in an MMO that handled player housing as instanced, but mostly in large apartment buildings to preserve the illusion of having your own house - it's not strange for another player to walk up to 'your' house and enter it since the instances use the same door if it's a multi-level building; they just live in a different apartment. Are you thinking of something like different floors of a building like that for some of the housing communities?

[Dagimir]

Lets be honest, player housing is a meh idea and waste of dev time. It is such a niche crowd that you would be catering to. If instead of player housing I offer you a counter idea, player made dungeons. Player's could create their own dungeon, drop in monsters, traps, and then set a reward at the end. The player whos dungeon it is would be able to set an entrance fee, level rec (scaled based on monsters used), and treasure for completion. Now you have exponentially increased gameplay by way of new dungeons and by allowing players to tailor those dungeons.

[Sasho]

Marriage sounds great. Let's get divorce ready too for when I start smoozing Ufkar to make Kohan jealous :)

Crafting in homes sounds a little too easy. I also like that because gardens/cotton gins/etc are outside it brings people together with Flower Displays and music. I like the idea of instance housing. In other MMO's I generally see it as a way for pseudo travel because I could fast port to my home. What I'd like is if each account could choose 1 portal to have in their home that isn't associated to a teleportation pad. Like someone could have a Winter Nexus portal because they prefer that dungeon. Even if the portals have a "must have teleportation level X" to use so these aren't completely abused, it would still be a unique feature to the home.

Decorating the house could be more than hanging up a painting. Decorating could require both a skill and quest for each hook to unlock. For example, if you want to hang a painting then go do a quest with Jesina and also have art appreciation level 35. Perhaps to open the doors can be a task too. If you want to open your doors to your guild then we first buy that ability with guild credits. Even getting a doormat made of grimalkin fir could require a special favor only granted through a looted scroll off a grimalkin. This way the house becomes it's own "mini-town" with a variety of options.

I've heard it mentioned that we may eventually solidify our character to 2 specific skills as our main abilities. Maybe our homes could reflect the skill we choose to specialize in.

With all homes too, we need the community recycle bins where we can dump all of our unwanted loot, and the items can linger in the recycle can for 24 hours before disappearing. In the meantime anyone else can rummage through the dumpster and grab the items we've thrown away if they find them useful.


also...
Isn't Druid Premonition just a fancy way of saying Neighborhood watch?
i dont know where I'm going with that


As far as housing being for the "rich." Maybe you could spoil the rich by yes, offering a storage shelf, BUT it comes a a stupid high upkeep of 50k or 100k a week for the privilege of accessing your entire world storage from your home. I'd pay it just saying.

A cool housing fixture would be potted plants so we could grow small amounts of peaches/dill/lemons. Maybe we unlock this fixture by having gardening at level X, and sacrificing a stack of lemons off the cliffs of Vormir.

Great stuff! Exciting stuff! I'm looking forward to what's coming :)

[alleryn]

I think it would be interesting to integrate housing with an expansion to the hangout idea.

The notion would be that your home is a place where you could devote a long time to an extended project where you could focus in near- or total- isolation.

These hangouts could play out like choose-your-own-adventures with mini-quests. So for example:

You decide to summon a demon (~12 days = 288 hours of offline time total. Next decision point in 12 hours.):
So you start reading books on demon summoning and drawing the pentagram. After 12 hours offline have passed the player is given a summary of what s/he has learned in their studies (the amount of information provided to the player could depend on how much they've upgraded their home's library) and presented with a few options:

Reinforce the pentagram with salt (Requires x amount of salt, you can continue the hangout when you've filled the quest requirement)
Find someone to help with incantation protections (Find an npc with whom you have enough favor who will help you with the ritual -- maybe this is such a personal commitment that it costs favor points with the npc)

Then whichever choice is made starts a new section of hangout. Say "You decide to reinforce the pentagram with salt (8 hours) ~272 hours remaining. At the end of that, the player gets a new selection of options on how to proceed.

etc, etc

[Glythe]

But the real question is, why should I own a house? Why do I want one? What does it grant me and why should I ever be in it instead of where I reside now?

I worry more for what player housing will take away from me than I do for what it could grant me. Storage is one of the most contentious topics in Gorgon, and for good reason. If this has the potential to make my storage situation worse, I'd prefer to stay away from it entirely.


This is a huge area of importance to me. What does a house do for me? Is it just a pretty place to hang out? If so then I will skip it. Give me a place that has some advantage over storage other places.



When I think of housing, i think of storage. Somewhere to keep my stuff. One thing I would look for in housing was a bookcase that would access ALL storage. Housing would be the ONE place you sit down and arrange and consolidate all the items you have scattered all over the various zones.

One of the most tedious elements of project gorgon is inventory management. I have 3 active characters who are functional; the fourth was minimally developed and was always planned to be a fairy. Most people have storage mules but mine can actually do things. Two of them are 70 or 80 in "perfect rolled gear". I often character swap 20+ times in under five minutes to move things around via transfer chests.

My suggestion here is that a player house for your character family comes in various tiers. If we designed based on : shack (shoddy) , house, nice house, mansion (quality house) I think there is a solution to part of the inventory/design element problem.

If houses are 5 tiers then let every tier above the first have a special element slot. Maybe this could be for a forge or at the player's choice an inventory access hub. You would need multiple hub access points - for example you could build a "serbule bookcase" for your house. If you had a tier three house you would have 2 slot so you might build for a kur table and a serbule bookcase. If you had four slots you might build for a rahu table - but maybe Ranperre would rather have a cotten gin in that slot if he wanted. My suggestion with zone linking bookcases is that you need a "key". If you have it built in your house then you have a key to use that book case. This prevents people from subverting generous storage access.

Please allow the player to build an improved transfer chest which only works for their characters in their house (this would eliminate letting people borrow your super transfer chest - something houses in games sometimes subvert). Each tier - requiring one more slot would cost councils and possibly rare items. Let it build up to maybe ~20 items so you can transfer the entire contents of 2 work orders from characters without switching.

The current process is : load up 8 items, swap. pick up 8 items. load up last 2 items and the work order itself +6 items from the next work order. /repeat. If everyone did character swapping as often as I did I suspect it would cause issues. I have been doing this method for years so I am used to it; this is a suggestion to help the server people logging in/out often.


Marriage sounds great.

Marriage sounds really annoying. Please add new elements to the game that are focused on a positive experience. If I buy a house and bother to have a spouse we should have hang out sex all the time.

Whomever you choose to marry should be equally viable to another npc. There should be variances for sure - if you marry a more difficult faction npc then that should be more rewarding than someone you can give 500 skins/skulls to and max them out.

My suggestion on the "partner" mini game is to have it kind of like Ashk looking at your future. You go visit them and enter a marriage thing and it can be either positive or negative RNG event with minimal game. You should be able to go home and if you sleep in your bed for an hour you wake up with <3 buff.

Slight Spoiler alert for this clip anyone under the age of 30:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQOF05eD5_I

Logging out in your house should be a fun thing you do every night when you have time. You won't be having a marathon session so you can still hang out with various npcs during the sex downtime (read as you hang out with npcs as normal but wake up with 10% combat xp).

My suggestion here is to let players be able to "invite" certain npcs over for sex based on faction. Got a mid tier bouquet of flowers? You can invite Rita over once per week for sex. Maybe rita gives a 10% crafting xp buff when you've had her over for sex. The bouquet must be level 30+ from flower arrangement.

You can do this for various npcs.... Maybe the crossbow chick from Gaz could be invited over to "look at a new crossbow" (requires level 50+ crossbow worth over 600 councils).


I assume it is one house per real world person. I assume you get 1 bedroom.... maybe you need to have a bigger house with more bedrooms to give each character from your "family" a place where they can have their mate.

[SwettyPalm]

Maybe city events could play into what "neighborhood" a player's home is instanced from, assuming there will be several different instanced housing areas
examples: (contain references to places and events found in Simon R. Green's "Hawk and Fisher" series of books)

1) A prison break has left a tunnel in a player's cellar, the player (and/or friends/NPC guards) must capture/kill escaping prisoners and collapse the tunnel before the city is overrun

2) A necromancer's pet Succubus is running loose in the Devil's Hook neighborhood and must be put down before it can create a portal that brings all of hell's minions to the city streets

3) A powerful magic user has gone insane in the Mages Court neighborhood and is sniping everyone that comes close to his residence , players that have their homes instanced in the neighborhood would work together to take out the mad mage.

4) Poor working conditions at the docks have brought the dock workers to strike. The dock owners have purchased a zombie control device that allows zombie labor to replace the dock workers. Things were working fine (for the owners) until the creator of the device triggers a hidden spell and the zombies start attacking everyone in sight. It is up to the player residents to find the creator and end his attack on the mostly peaceful community

[Mbaums]

One unintended problem guild halls had on EQ2 was how cities became vacant. What use was a public-hub when every crafting /storage need is satisfied by a guild hall? I imagine you are going to have a non-instanced courtyard to let people meet their neighbors. One of the best parts of Serbule right now is seeing whoever either pass on through or just play music/dance with people and it would be a shame for that to go away, but it could just be moved to this super-courtyard instead.

In the context this game, I am going on the record as being pro a slavery mechanism. It feels dirty typing that and I get that there is so much ugly history with slavery that you probably couldn’t add it without coming off as offensive (and rightfully so). However—creating indentured servants, is effectively the same thing with extra steps. You get an NPC to work for you and you sell them food+rent along with pay, but the pay is below the food+rent cost and they keep on working to pay it off, as they get deeper in debt.

I kind of enjoy the vendor-stall fight for an A-slot situation. I think if house numbers/addresses are a sellable commodity independent of the home could make for an interesting market. Maybe a player-elf is willing to drop major council on owning the address 69 Explosion Cir, or people try and sell Ranperre the 420 address for his inevitable plantation.

I think players being able to send junk mail to sell directly to players online and in their homes might be fun. I really don’t imagine PG’s population being so big that it becomes burdensome. I think of it as you have a mail box that green particle effects come out of when you have mail, and the junk-mail can only pop-up while the sender is online and it lets the sender directly sell a product to a player.

The marriage mechanism kind of shocked me. I heard about it via some OLD reviews of the game thinking they misunderstood soul mates. I think having NPCs have unique marriage experiences is the way to go and an independent marriage-favor level would be great too. As long as there is a divorce option for players I welcome this commitment. Let’s be real, living with Mushroom Jack is going to be harder than hanging out with him.

Having to deal with rat-men might be annoying, but I imagine players can just move into those snooty gated communities to avoid them. I think it would be fun to have a home packed with non-hostile animals that I just lock into a room, for no reason other it’s possible. Home owners associations are the bane of everyone’s existence, minus the board members who have strict landscaping opinions. If there is one neighborhood where ~15% of members can be HOA board members and institute sadistic rules, it might be entertaining. But I have no idea what those rules/regulations could be in a PG, maybe they dictate visitor hours or outdoor furniture?

[drivendawn]

I like the idea of when leaving your house you are asked, exit here or where you are bound. You could even make it something you have to learn or complete a quest to get. :)

[AgentBbrian]

Let's Brainstorm About Housing
Is that the todo list?

Mounts? movement overhaul? :(
blood magic? vampires? voodoo?
fishing? combat pets?


Landscape vs. Instanced? Already Settled
The world is too small to not be instanced.
People can be homeless with tents? camping?
Instanced Island to build multiple things around the land within the instance? (Albion Online // game)
Static house to do home making stuff. (Shadow of the Avatar // game)


Instanced Housing Doesn't Have to Be Boring
Pets, breeding, parties, pools etc.


Meet the Neighbors
dynamically grouping online players?
Guilds ? Friends list ? privacy ? open to all ?

The rest of this part doesn't sound like housing, it sounds like a small hotel hallway with other peoples rooms // apartments // flats with teleport doors.


The Front Door
NPC's visiting with quests/dailies to give sounds good.
Like the casino dayly etc.


Marriage
This all sounded like something i wouldn't bother with, i mean yay skyrim.. but nah.
Just wanna be friends.
I would let Marna chill on my couch with the tv remote for as long as she wants though.
I'd like to ask Therese to water my garden and feed my fish when im away.


Fertile Grounds for Fun Ideas
Houses in Ultima Online where they were one of the games to do it with housing in the world, no instanced stuff, they would sometimes have houses dedicated to runes, or rune library's they would call them, they had runes which looked like a big rock with viking symbols, they would have them in books and on shelves, runes were used to mark locations in the world and then you could cast a recall spell on it which was like a teleport to the location the rune was marked.
I guess allow a unique form of travel from the islands instead of the current using the 1 way recall gem pad things.
Stargate travel.


House Hearth stones, recall to the house teleport.
Path of Exiles personal zone with teleport maps/portals/dungeoning.
Is a house really a house without the land around it that you can plant a garden or have pets to roam around "beware of dog" signs by the mailbox, or else it's just another loading screen to get access to storage and no heart and soul like a studio apartment with a door.
Marriage to an NPC just sounds like ownership over another npc or player that unlocks eventually needed abilities to invite people or host a party to get the benefit of the things exclusively limited to marrying someone off like a girl in the mid-eval times.
People who rush into marriage without being able to support a pet dog or cat surely will end up in divorce and the NPC taking half your stuff.
How shallow an npc will be to be Married when basically being bought with favvor level before they are romanced enough with shiny gifts like some smeagol like significant other.
Can i have a driveway for parking my mount?
Can i give out spare keys to my place for friends?
Can i ban/block people from my place?
If i ignore someone in chat can they be auto blocked from my house instance and be removed if they are already in it?
Can i just hangout with visiting friends and do some gardening outside behind my fence at my place?
Can i have a butler instead? batman
Can i mow the lawn?
Can i put the bins out?
Can i decorate the outside of my house with flashing lights and evil statues for Halloween?
Will i need to put mouse traps down?
Can i have a shower or bath that will let npc's talk to me if im dirty?
Can i have a "Player Work Order Board" at my place? mailbox?
Can i have a shed?
Can i rent out rooms?
Can i have a basement?
Can my mailbox collect mail?
I could go on with stuff like this forever..
Im against anything that involves needing to have a house, if i want to live out of my car or tent or cardboard box, it should be doable, aim for fun without weird benefits or restrictions.

[Silence]

I just want to add that Ultima Online did landscaped housing, and it was the most awesome thing ever to exist in any MMO.
I am always amazed that we "go back", and not forward in adding these awesome immersive features, this is not a bash towards PG, but in general.

But Ultima Online had an insanely large open world - Which is another thing... why could THEY make an immersive open world 20 years ago, but every single game we get these days are almost always instanced in one way or another... it is just sad :/

[Zephyon]

I have to admit I didn't think housing was going to appeal to me until I read Citan's blog. Just the possibilities he tossed around are intriguing enough to get me watching this development with anticipation. I've only played one MMO with housing and it was actually in another "dimension". About the only thing I used it for was dumping off decorative loot. I have no ideas or requests. I'm sure whatever the Devs and Community come up with will be amazing!

(Crossposted to Steam discussion)

[Ibn]

It would be very much like the instanced apartments in Asheron's Call.

[Greenberg]

Sounds bloody awesome but I can imagine driving your spouse insane if you come back to them as a different animal each day of the week and could lead to strange situations like "Welcome home honey were having pork for....wait you're a fucking pig!?".

[Toe_Jam]

an issue for me is misplacing or mixing up completed armor sets between multiple storage chests.. I'll throw this up and see if any of it sticks...
create display manikins for each housing unit.
manikins would wear completed armor/weapon sets keeping pieces safely together as a unit until pulled for use or update...
perhaps house guests could review stats of the manikin display, giving owner ability to show off the display..
manikins might also serve as a build planner of sorts..

[Celler]

Yep being a player that plays many skills , iId like manikins too, or at least some way to have many separate individual storage's I could label.

Some real cool Ideas here both from dev and the in game crowd.

If as I imagine the cost of housing will be high, would it perhaps not best be done post wipe, or will all homes be added to the list of things wiped.

I'd kind of like to be able to have tasks completed over time a bit like hangouts, allowing a few new recipes etc. But it will of course depend on if are homes will have multiple npcs etc.

I do want something that can be improved , either more work or cash/items over time improving the place. Not just decor but extra land and rooms.

Like most I guess I'd like at least a simple teleport to home and a teleport to at least one place in game. I don't really want to have to go to same place every time I wish to return home.
Would like some variety too, so for example not everyone's house is entered from certain spot. Perhaps just giving folks a simple choice of 1 of 4 different entrance spots would spread folks around a little.

Would also perhaps like the option of a house that is account bound rather than for 1 character.

[Sasho]

I think it would be interesting to integrate housing with an expansion to the hangout idea.

The notion would be that your home is a place where you could devote a long time to an extended project where you could focus in near- or total- isolation.

These hangouts could play out like choose-your-own-adventures with mini-quests. So for example:

You decide to summon a demon (~12 days = 288 hours of offline time total. Next decision point in 12 hours.):
So you start reading books on demon summoning and drawing the pentagram. After 12 hours offline have passed the player is given a summary of what s/he has learned in their studies (the amount of information provided to the player could depend on how much they've upgraded their home's library) and presented with a few options:

Reinforce the pentagram with salt (Requires x amount of salt, you can continue the hangout when you've filled the quest requirement)
Find someone to help with incantation protections (Find an npc with whom you have enough favor who will help you with the ritual -- maybe this is such a personal commitment that it costs favor points with the npc)

Then whichever choice is made starts a new section of hangout. Say "You decide to reinforce the pentagram with salt (8 hours) ~272 hours remaining. At the end of that, the player gets a new selection of options on how to proceed.

etc, etc

I love this idea. I don't know if you're thinking of player-created hang outs but I think that would be awesome. If our homes provided a hang-out template us players could easily program (similar to how to set-up our market vendors), that could be very unique to PG.
I'd be very interested in this. Write/Create a hangout, then have it give out a reserved reward to anyone who finished the story. I'm not sure how difficult it would be to do but it would add a nice signature to owning a home.

[Niph]

Since devs seem more interested in brainstorming how house can bring fun to the game, I'll give my own opinion about it. I think fun can come from two aspects in this game and I've got some suggestions about each of them.


A) A solo activity that rewards with the feeling of achieving progress.


When playing solo, for me the game is fun if there is something to achieve, and it means my character is making progress. So there could be a new skill for building a house, and as you level in it you can make better and better houses. However, the concept of crafting has been quite thoroughly explored, and we probably want something different. Like mini-games in the Red Wing Casino are different, but we want something different again. So I've got two suggestions:


1. Action game. I'm using the term game in a rather generic way, because I don't have any specific implementation in mind. It could be reusing the 3D world of Unity, or be a 2D mini-game. Anyway, the difference between adventuring and casino games is that you would not go your way out to kill things, and you would not play some step-by-step stuff. Instead, it'd be a real-time action game where you're trying to build your house. More level in the skill would make the build process easier (for instance, being able to carry two blocks of concrete instead of one from your stock to the basement), and higher-level houses would be harder to build and require more resources. You'd start with what you have foraged/crafted, and you'd fight some obstacles when building the house:
. Time-limited.
. Pests could ruin your wooden resource if you don't kick them out.
. Kobold thieves could steal your stuff.
. Some parts could crumble randomly, forcing you to repeat a step.
And so on. The idea is that it would be real-time, starting with what you bring to the table. Like M&M you'd get XP depending on your progress, but success would mean you have a house to your name!


2. Strategic game. This is a completely different idea: you'd receive some randomly-generated house blueprint, and you'd drop your ressource at strategic positions on the blueprint. For example, it could have conveyor belts, saws, wheelbarrows, whatever. Once ready, you'd press 'build' and if done well, everything would fall into place, or crumble apart...
(This is obviously a game that programmers would like more, guess what my job is?)


B) A social activity that rewards with the feeling of being part of a community.


For this idea to work, the game needs some tech and devs to be ready to invest some time in art and design. If it's possible, then it'd work as follow.
Rather than an instanced house, there would be a few instanced 'places'. For instance, a one-house instance, a 20-houses 'village' instance and a 50-houses 'city' instance. People (with a house) would always be in one of those, so the server would in practice be split between villagers and citizens (you would not see other people in the one-house instance, obviously).
When you enter the village, or the city, you'd see other people going to their own house, and once you reach and enter your house, you'd just see the interior, and only you in it.
So, what's the difference between that and just a few different doors in Statehelm? The idea is that you could create your own 'copy' of the village/city instance, where everyone see other people the same, but houses look different. Similarly to guilds, as you create your own copy others could join it, until all houses are taken. And as people build or acquire their house, your view of the village/city would reflect what your neighbors have decided to buy/build.
The main difference with guilds is that you wouldn't be able to choose your neighbors, and also that you could move from one copy to the other, bringing your house with you (possibly with a penalty).

For example, say the player that creates a copy is the Mayor:
. They would be responsible for the well-being of the village/city, choosing between different types of weekly maintenance to do when the copy is created. Note that neighbors can help, if the task is to hunt rats or craft cheese as tribute to keep them quiet.
. They would choose a theme, a free-text manifesto of how they envision the village/city (lots of flowers? statues? wooden only?) and a community of neighbors that want to live in this kind of place would build up. This is where availability of art is critical, since what distinguishes a copy from another must be clearly visible. There must be variety.
. Villages are not guild. To repeat: anyone could join a copy as long as there is room (guild halls can fill the niche of restricted access). Social dynamic would sort it out. Would trolling be a problem? I think it can be avoided, since everyone can just move.


The hard part for me is to figure out what kind of differences would be attractive. I gave as exemple villages decorated with flowers vs decorated with statues, or wooden houses vs stone houses. But is it this that would build a sense of community? I guess only an experienced game designer can do it successfully.

[Kryndar]

I have played just about every single MMO out there. This is my legacy:

Gemstone 3: 2 years
Ultima Online: 1 Year, if Asheron's Call wasn't found, may have been different
Asheron's Call: 17 Years
Asheron's Call 2: The water was awesome is all I can say
Dark Age of Camelot: 7 Years
Eve Online: 1 Year
Lord of the Rings Online: 1 Year
Neverwinter: 5 Years
Star Trek Online: 5 Years
Forsaken World: 2 Years
Runescape: 1 Year
Guild Wars: 1 Year
Archeage: 1 year
Project: Gorgon: 1 Month so far

+ a dozen others and a few decent ones not listed that I didn't play for very long because they just didn't have what it takes. This equals 21+ years of MMO experience and if the game hasn't shut down the accounts are still usable.

Now, please do not take my words as criticism. They may seem harsh, but that's just me speaking the truth as I see it. And also keep in mind I only have a character at level 25 and I haven't been able to reach or explore the high-end areas yet...

Well, I would have to say it's a bad choice. Do you people think littering the landscape with houses will be housing? Wrong. There are 11 zones by wiki. 7 technically feasible for housing. Think realistically, there won't be thousands playing a pure PVE game of this caliber. I think you are forgetting today's lazy society. If it's not handed to them with little effort, they won't do it. Yes, I know that it's early this and early that and not quite finished and blah blah blah, but that's not the point. The point is realistically speaking no single server will have more than a thousand playing. If we are to be brutally honest, the game isn't even playable with what is normally online now, about 230ish average daily use at any one time, without adjusting settings to practically nil and assuming they are all in one place. If we are to be more honest, half of any number you choose as a player base won't want housing period because of past MMOs. The best hope that you could wish for is a 75% player base wanting housing, if it was done right. If it was really done right every single player would want one. I for one don't want something that is considered my door to my house and see someone else using it to enter their house. Not really considered "mine" if someone else is allowed to use it. Even if you do small scale neighbor instances, it still won't feel like part of the world because of the instancing. Another problem is the zones themselves. They don't even seem like they are remotely tied to each other and I have yet to see a full map of what Alharth even looks like. This itself presents another problem of "becoming" your character in a world with no overall picture. The way the zones are created you can't really even say that they are tied to each other physically due to the drastic change of biome. This is the hardest thing for me to overcome in this game. I constantly feel like I'm trapped in a sandbox or more specifically a cage to hold and entertain me. That is the essence of instancing and zones. As another player said, 20 years ago we had worlds that felt like it took an eternity to cross and never had to load unless we went into dungeons or special places, why can't we have that now? The processing and memory capacity of those games could essentially be run on a modern cell phone. Scaling also seems to be an issue in certain areas. A prime example would be the bridge near Eltibule keep. Since it's not properly positioned, on the right side my character's chest to head area hits the boards. The bridge itself looks like they are oversized and not long enough from the get go, which in turn created the oversize. It all boils down to design and implementation.

Now that the hard truth is out of the way, of these 7 feasible zones, only 4 would be viable from what I have seen. That would be Serbule, Serbule Hills, Eltibule, and Sun Vale. Kur Mountains and Ilmari could also be used but would require different tech/options, which are already made, to make it work like the others. Now let's just say that the future player base would be about 800 constant. 75% of that is 600, more realistically 50% which would be 400. Divide that by the available zones and that makes needing about 100 housing per zone based on 4 zones or about 66 for 6 zones. This figure also doesn't include any new zones that can be created with housing in mind. Again the world isn't quite big enough for it. The only plus side I can say is that the way the zones were created should give the ability to create a neighbor terrain that can be added onto the original terrain while keeping the same biome. This terrain doesn't have to be as big as the main terrain. It just needs to be big enough to hold the number of houses and could be triggered to load in the background when the player hits a certain distance from it. The other way to reduce the needed terrain for houses would be something kind of similar to the way AC did the apartments. I still couldn't use them though because they still seemed more like cages. If I can't see the outside AND inside of what is considered my home, then why bother? But there are some who would thoroughly enjoy them which would reduce the needed housing in the zones. The biggest problem would be creating something that every single player would want to take advantage of and that would throw all of these calculations off. Then we would be back to needing 200 housing per zone based on 4 usable zones. This doesn't mean that each zone has to have a full count to compensate for the player base. You could create "privileged" housing in these zones. Housing that not every single player will be able to have and maybe only 1 or 2 settlements in each of these zones. Each settlement being maybe 5-8 houses? The only way you are going to get everyone wanting housing, can't be done in this game without massive rewrites. You could also create apartment settlements. Settlements with just one building and tons of doors on it for each player's apartment.

Now that some of the problems are addressed we need to look at mechanics and skills. Are they going to be buildable? If so, then we need to consider skills. We already have carpentry, but we will need some type of masonry or stone construction skill and the nodes to harvest them. Will they be able to be seen under construction? If so, then animations need to be created and time frames on construction completion. Tons of options for hangouts and favors. From helping to make your house better, like gear mannequins, storage, potions cabinets, etc. to helping you on your adventure with food, gear, money, etc. Are we going to have templates of just a few styles or will there be multiple pieces which will allow you to make your "own" style of housing. Giving a choice over styles vs creation, creation will always win. In another words, a player could choose from various floor plans, type of building material (wood, stone, combo), type of roof, etc. You would just need a few various options that in the end would equal numerous possible ways to build.

The biggest problem with all of this is, is that previous MMOs have given us very little when it comes to housing and most housing systems destroy the original social hubs of the game. This is where the problem of massive rewrites comes into play with almost every single MMO I have played. They don't think of it from the beginning but as an afterthought. To properly create housing would entail all of the social hubs to be rebuilt. Almost all cities are created without the player base in mind. Why not create cities that the players actually make, run, and live in. And no I am not talking like it has already been done in a few before. In this situation, buildings could already be constructed and players just need to make payments in order to purchase, own, and keep and in this game the proper Industry. Players would essentially become the NPCs. Either logged in or logged out. Logged in they can watch transactions and people coming and going. If that character leaves to go adventuring, then the shop "closes" and a sign displayed saying will return in "whenever". Logged out, they can adventure with another character while still having their store running. This would also create more area specifically in Serbule because you wouldn't need the massive area for player stalls. This would also help with needing only ONE character because technically that is all that is needed in this game. With the individual character having no limitation and being able to be whatever whenever doesn't create the desire to make another character. Even creating another character with different everything doesn't feel like a different character because no limitations are imposed. The only technical difference is appearance and name. What do you do with the old NPCs? Simple, incorporate them into the housing favor and hangouts or possibly an assistant in the store for favors and hangouts through them which would give the store upgrades or as "placeholders" until a player occupies it? Example: A player with a "high end" store could have multiple stalls for other "low end" players to use via a rent platform or freely, which would reduce overall needed buildings. Kind of like how Marna's shop is set up but based on limitations set by the owner as far as what can be sold and bought. In other words, gear, food, resources, etc. Similar to how the merchants work now, you can't just buy and sell whatever you want in all the shops. When you enter the shop you can expect all the merchants to be selling the same type of items, not necessarily the same items. These shops are also technically a player's home, just needs a 2nd floor for "home". Pricing could become a problem if not standardized within each of the shops or set by the owner?

I guess I'll stop there for now because, in the end, the possibilities are limitless. It all depends on what the team is willing to tackle, overcome, and achieve to set a new standard by which all future MMOs will be based. Will Project: Gorgon be the one? Only time will tell...

If you really think about it, all MMOs are based on what only maybe 2 or 3 have achieved. The rest just try to mimic them the best they can and add new functions, but usually fail in the end. Show me one single MMO that has survived as long as Asheron's Call did. You can't because it hasn't been reproduced in 20 years...

[Mr. SEv3N]

This is a really really great idea. Players will be much more invested with this.

[Rockdelver]

Some very interesting ideas here, but all are probably way too complex and time-consuming to implement. There will never be individual houses scattered over the zones because the zones are a bit too small for that kind of thing and because of lag the housing would induce in popular areas. Instanced housing for those that want to bother with it would be OK, accessed by a common entrance such as one of the houses in Serbule that have no current function. There's one with a counter that has a few plants on it and an empty room adjoining it. That one would be ideal to use to enter the housing instance. Something similar could be placed in Eltibule Keep and maybe also next to the landing jetty in Sun Vale.

It seems an ideal compromise. Minimal impact on the zones, people get somewhere to play house if they are that way inclined and everyone hopefully gets to use it as extra storage. To be honest, the ONLY thing I want player housing for is more storage, hopefully shared between alts.

[Silvane]

The most awesome housing I ever saw in an MMO was Wildstar. It is no longer online but I am sure there can be videos found on youtube of player houses there.
I never use my house on lotro. I was at my house in Wildstar a lot. Logging out there gave more rested XP so that was a plus, but also I liked decorating and playing there. I also often visited other players houses, because they had build parcours to jump around or mazes or just pretty stuff to look at.
I really liked the little crafting nodes you could have and the garden.
So please please devs check out how Wildstar did housing, because they did soo many things right.

[razgon]

Housing - This is really a big one for me. I have two areas of concern that is of interest to me

LIFE: Most often, housing is devoid of life. While it looks nice, it has zero life! This can be avoided in a few different ways, but two most interesting are 1) Allow npcs to be hired, and do stuff around the house.
2) Let me look OUT! This simply little thing, letting me look out a window and see other players running past my building would mean the world! It would make my instanced housing a real part of the world.

I´d also love some open space outside to be a part of the house, instead of just the single room or what have we. If sounds from the place you inhabit could filter into the house as well, it would make everything come more alive.
Last edited by razgon; 2 minutes ago

[djorm]

Since this is a brainstorming, I'll just throw some ideas:

It would be cool if housing was also related to current races or skills, for example bats or spiders could have a cave instead of a regular wooden house, and necromancers could have their own graveyard or basement where they may store their army of death.

There could be some civic pride xp for doing neighborhood tasks, like making watch or protect a neighbor from a robbery.

Also it would be awesome if there where some nice bonus stats for building furniture. For example, a forge could give a bonus to fire dmg.

Red wing casino should start changing the portal location from time to time... maybe they got tired of the sand entering their hall.

Adding the option to create your own underground expansion (dungeon) would be a nice end game content, maybe you can reuse current dungeon floors (like labrynth floors) and have a selection of possible enemies to populate with. Of course this dungeon would only be rendered when someone is going to use it and pay for it. Then have a currency or ranking based on each monster killed on it and also player deaths.

[Ells0430]

Some of the ideas sound amazing. I admit housing worries me a lot. I remember when AC added housing, it was very exciting but in very little time it made the world feel much emptier. One of my favorite things about this game is seeing the towns so busy with music and gathering. I'm actually not super talkative in general chat but I love the party feel lol. I would hate to think of everyone gardening in their own gardens and never seeing a party in the garden again, I don't actually worry much about this happening as you have put a lot of work into making it worthwhile to group up for different activities and I can see how much thought is going into housing.

For me something that would be really great is if the guild hall/housing could somehow be combined. What if instead of/or along with housing you could rent rooms in your guild hall. There could be an outside area where the guild could set who was welcome. An indoor area for guild members only and then guild member housing rooms. I picture some guild halls in each "town" that guilds can save up to own. Then maybe doing a special guild quest for your town could earn members civic pride xp. And maybe work to earn your name on the town sign...Rahu home to: list of guilds...or what not.

Also I would love to see housing add some cool things but not necessarily replace what we already have. So it would be great if crafting stayed in the cities but houses added different incentives to buy. Something like that, useful but not to the point of replacing the important gather areas. Lots of really cool thoughts in this thread. Thank you for the discussion all :)

Oh one more thought for nomads/those that don't guild they could rent their rooms from the Inn or from NPC shops. Just a thought.

[Oxlazr]

I'm usually apathetic when it comes to housing, especially if it's instanced. The only housing system I've enjoyed was Archeage, insofar as you could trade homes and search for premium spots in the over-world with in-game benefits (such as an easy storage location for a trade run), coupled with the customisation options available (you can import custom images) made it a worthy feature.

Anyway, NPC marriages seem a little.. so-so as well, to me at least, when you're playing a MMO you're generally looking for player based experiences and interactions, and anything contrary to that doesn't really add to the game for me.

Regardless, I know many folks appreciate just having their own space within a game world and I'm optimistic that you'll be able to pull off something to set instanced housing apart from other games.

My only concern is will housing be beneficial to the progression of your character? I don't want to feel obligated to get into housing to remain competitive in terms of character progression - it's the sort of thing, to me anyway, that should be entirely optional.

[Mbaums]

More ideas:

new idea 1) Would be neat to host a dinner party with multiple NPCs. I would invite all of the racist NPCs and watch them chit-chat about why I invited half of animal town.

new idea 2) Multi-family homes / Roommates are something I don't believe any MMO does. 2 people who share a home and have independent rent would be such a PITA but it would be kind of humorous. The idea of people would arguing over discord about who needs to pay the rent or whatever bill sounds entertaining to me. But it would allow for poorer players to enter the housing market!

[Clip]

I think one great thing about PG is the creative freedom you've taken in putting your own spin on gaming ideas. Player housing is definitely another place where you can put your own magical twist on the idea, especially if the nonstandard / magical aspect of it helps to explain the instancing in the context of an otherwise non-instanced game. I think I'm most excited to see how you break the mold a bit with it. (For example, even though War Caches aren't really instanced, they were a highlight of the game so far for me, with their shifting locations and one-player-at-a-time entrance mechanism.)

I need to think more before posting a litany of game mechanic ideas, but here's one creative/thematic one!

"Player House City in a Bottle / Honey I Shrunk Myself"

A wandering mummy merchant has found a mystical city in a bottle and is selling effectively limitless residences within it. BUT, since the city is tiny, the player must shrink themselves down to microscopic size to fit there. The world works differently inside this space, and all your other mystical non-euclidean, this-is-an-instanced pillars of player homes connected by rope sky-bridges, can be part of the setting. This is a place where you could have players leap from spire to spire because tiny things aren't hurt by falling, or run sideways on Escher-like staircases, etc. The point is to justify a creative playground for players to collaborate in moving things around, building little areas for others to explore, grouping together to build larger areas, etc.

From inside the bottle, the sky is a strangely distorted view of the various zones in Project Gorgon as the merchant wanders the world, and when the player leaves the magical city, they come out somewhere else from where they entered.

(Of course the wandering mummy is Phil, last mummy of Ormorek (http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/%22Title:_%27Unwanted_Child_of_Ormorek%27%22), who cowardly, but sensibly, ran away when he realized that dwarves and Arisetsu's priests were setting all the other mummies on fire. Phil started out as a stomach salesman before he learned the hard way that stomachs are very difficult to gather after you've sold your own and those of your mummy friends, then spent a while trying not to be mistaken as a roll of toilet paper by Trolls in Sun Vale, and now wanders the world as a highly questionable realtor.)

[Celerity]

People have already covered most of what I wanted to say, personally I only really want housing to be my own little place I can customise, show off trophies/pets and store stuff. Some functionality on top of this would be nice, I liked the idea of advanced npc hangouts and some unique quests could definitely be interesting. I also like the idea of npc marriage, although I feel like that will be difficult to get right, I have a feeling it will probably end up either too tedious or just too easy and not interactive enough.

I don't think crafting, especially gardening should be brought to instanced houses either. It reduces the social element and the world will feel less alive if you can't see other people running around. Gardening would especially be an issue, since I feel like there's some easy abuse opportunities there when you eliminate the factor of other people's plants and there's nobody else around to observe your activity. It would also just take away from the community spirit of a group of people all playing music and growing their plants together.

[SwettyPalm]

Looking back, most of my experience with housing in other MMO's has been a disappointment, it seems that there were only 4 main functions.

1) a place to store gear
2) a place to hang trophies
3) a place to run a player vendor
4) a mechanism to drain currency from the game or from your wallet (gold,credits,gil, etc. or micro cash store)

the home would serve no other real purpose which always ended up as boring in my opinion.

Do the Red Wing Mantises have a competing faction setting up rogue gambling rings in player homes?

If Joeh from Serbule were to throw a Leather Party at your home, would other players be allowed the option to "Hang Out" during their log off time?

Will there be a "Fight Club" run out of the basements of Player housing?

Since the Mantises are having a hard time breeding intelligent pigeons, can animal handlers use their home as an experimental lab?

Would player traffic into your humble abode bring about any unwanted attention by the council of five?

Would logging out at a writing table in player housing grant a chance for the player to discover a missing recipe?

Would logging out at a bed in player housing grant a chance for Rita to jump your bones until they rattle?

I agree with some of the previous posts that household crafting stations have a tendency to break up the community feel and personally would favor a neighborhood crafting center close to the housing area (similar to Rahu craft area). Both private and public crafting stations could be possible with a slight bonus added to the public stations. Quests similar to the guild 50-man could be used to add boons to the garden, forge, stove, cotton gin, or tanning rack for a housing area craft center. Some of the boons could be

a small chance of looting a seed or herb when harvesting in the garden
a small chance of crafted equipment to be generated one tier higher than normal
a small chance of a bonus meal created for all recipes, those recipes that already have a bonus (super fishy surprise) would gain an extra chance

[Lyramis]

I am repeating what others have said and adding some new ideas based on the premise from the devs that housing will be expensive.


NPC marriage in P:G would be weird. Can't think of a single NPC that I would want to marry, but I do really enjoy them in-game. If, however, NPCs at soul mates randomly showed up in my house asking for items, telling stories, bringing gifts, having parties, and exterminating my rats, or even writing letters, I would find that very entertaining.


Wish list:

A cellar to place cheese, casks, and mushrooms.

An outdoor area to breed and keep cows, chickens, sheep, pigs, and horses (mounts). Breeding will be in-game anyways for AH. I enjoyed breeding animals in Wurm. Traits could be passed down from the parents to the offspring and sometimes the animals weren't "in the mood" which was always funny.

A stream? Yes, please. Perhaps even irrigation to go along with the next thing on my wish list.

An outdoor area to grow specific crops, not items that can already be grown in the game. For example, wheat to ground into flour for the new baking skill, or hay to produce feed for the animals, or an orchard for crazy hybrid fruits. The crops would be left in the ground for many hours/days before they can be harvested. Although, I would love to grow hops up the side of my house like in Wurm.

Access to NPC storage. More storage is not so necessary, but access to storage already gained would be so convenient. Crafting stations in the house only make sense if there is access to NPC storage.

Special crafting stations and systems, perhaps only high-end. As an alternative to moving crafting stations into the home and NPC storage into the home, create new stations for specific crafts. The crafts would use only mats obtained via the housing system (crops grown there, animal products produced there). Baking/Roasting would be perfect. Leave the roast in the oven for several hours, come back and collect it. Anything that takes time to craft would work here. Allow beef cattle in the breeding system for the meat, etc.

Rent a room to an apprentice to the benefit of both players. The apprentice receives benefits in the form of XP boosts, or rested XP, or running speed boosts, access to storage (if its NPC storage), and access to crafting stations. The owner also might get XP boosts, or rested XP, obtain more rooms quicker, or get help with gathering mats for additional rooms.

Account-wide access to the house with a chest for alts.

Events. Especially if each day has a variety of 3 or so for the player to choose at any time. The ability to invite a group up to six to complete the events would be even better. I can imagine spending an entire evening with people finishing everyone's home events together, especially if the events are similar to dungeons and help to level up housing related things.

A meal table. If foods are eaten at a meal table, the food buff timer is lengthened for everyone participating in the meal, even with booze and flowers. What's a meal without vases of lovely flowers on the table, alcohol to wash down the food, and good company? The apprentice could benefit in a special way from the meal table. Maybe the apprentice is a newbie with a low gourmand level. Make it possible to taste any food too high for them at the meal table, without gaining gourmand XP, but instead, gaining a small percent of the benefits from the items in the table. It doesn't help the apprentice level, but allows the owner to buff them in some small but helpful way. To be clear, in tasting, the food isn't used up, just tasted, and can only be tasted at a meal with others having the meal at the table. The owner, after all participants are seated, starts the meal, at which point the items in the table are consumed by the participants and the apprentice receives the special buff.

NPC crafting. Add items that can only be crafted by an NPC (soul mates) at the house. Maybe only Bendith can make a certain kind of amazing cheese. The player leaves all the mats in the work station and waits for her to show up and craft the cheese.

Polish armor/wash clothing. Not sure where I am going with that one, but laundry! Clothesline!

Keep a dungeon. As a helpful way to test certain builds and as a good challenge, the player may keep a copy of each and every boss (already defeated by the player) in his own dungeon cell. Bosses can be let out and fought solo by the player, but if they lose the battle, the boss is set free and must be defeated again in its original place in the game. No loot. It also serves as a trophy.

Vanity station. Use a skill, similar to how hopology works, to memorize each and every piece of gear you have picked up. Use the vanity station to make your present gear have the skin of any gear you have memorized and be able to dye it. My toon is always in cloth, would love to see her wearing something else.

Housing upgrades. More rooms, larger rooms, specific types of rooms for the different areas of a house. Craft the decor.

[Aionlasting]

I honestly don't think you should be dumping your limited resources into content that is not really a shared player experience as this is an MMORPG with emphasis on the multiplayer portion.

You have a new animation system you continue to fail to release. You have dated visuals and continued place holder visuals. Many of your spells share the same visual effect which is lazy or have poor visual effects.

You have zones that need reworking. You have end game content to continue to develop. You have new classes, skills, itemization , etc.. to balance. I mean.. there is so much here to do than focus on housing. Look at world of warcraft, they never bothered with it because it didn't make sense despite having originally planned for it and they continue to be one of the top contenders among MMO's. In fact, all mmo's that have incorperated housing that I can think of off the top of my head are not the least bit succesful.

So perhaps your limited resources are best spent on continuing to developing other content.

My favorite game of all time, Ac2 , had zero housing, and it was amazing. World of warcraft, especially classic, which I am enjoy now, has no housing, and its one of the top mmo's ive played.

I think even mounts should take precedence and updating your visuals and place holders and animation system...

Well my two cents. I'm sure it means nothing but I had the time to type away.

[Helmholz]

I actually prefer the idea of instanced housing over landscape for a lot of the same reasons mentioned in the OP. When popularity in MMOs fluctuates, what you end up with in landscape games are ghost towns. Worse yet, when a game spikes in popularity you end up with vastly overbuilt or overdeveloped areas that do not aesthetically mesh with the rest of the environment. A good example of this would be the recently released Archeage: Unchained. After launch week, the devs unlocked housing and it was a total gold rush to place buildings in the best possible spots. Real estate becomes a meta market that finds a third-party platform to operate off of, and it usually results in foreign game currency hoarding groups moving in and ruining the experience for legitimate players.

I know that no matter what Gorgon's devs end up doing with housing, it's going to be better than most other games because they'll have implemented their creative take on a traditional RPG to it. I'm going to enjoy this either way, because I enjoy Gorgon for what it is at its core.

[INXS]

No to a hallway with a bunch of doors, don't care about showing/seeing other 'apartments'. TThat's a big no thanks.
How about a Zone for just houses slap 500 or a 1000 homes in it make it if you need to expand for more homes you can.
No idea this is possible but how about take the old Sun Vale remove all the critters and place homes all over it its got charming scenery and this way it will never have to worry about ghost town.

[Feyth]

How about a community garden type of thing that all players home connect to, crafting gardening vendor. This area would be accessible by any player through a gate wether they own a home or not

[Mcnasty]

A small private garden out back,Build you'r own boat or guild boats have been an idea sent several times by me.I love the idea of housing but to be honest I hear more questions about Mount's than anything else. That said I would do them first and that gives more time to figure out what works with housing.

[Shaz]

one of the things i loved about asherons call was the dungeon fountains, i wanted to expand it, make it a pond, i so wanted to put fish in them, fish i caught, fish i had to feed
even use those ratakin pipes to connect my fish pond to my neighbors, and maybe breed them. i also loved visiting other players houses to see how they were decorated.
i love the ideas that are in this thread, not just storage and hang a few things up, but making housing part of game play.
be sure that i will try everything you put into housing.

[SwettyPalm]

The most awesome housing I ever saw in an MMO was Wildstar. It is no longer online but I am sure there can be videos found on youtube of player houses there.


I looked it up and yes, at a glance it seems to be the best MMO housing system implemented. Actually sorry I missed out although it was too cartooned for my taste

For other readers that don't want to bother looking, it was a instanced plot of land with a fixed number of "improvement" zones that could be a garden, bbq pit, "challenge" area, resource mining, etc. A player selected their "style" of house (think the differing architecture between humans, elves, fairies, dwarves) which was placed at the center of the plot and I believe the interior of the house was set up as it's own instance for decoration purposes. Decorations and improvements were allowed for the interior and exterior of the house and the decor itself was scalable. Players could host public events on their plot.

So for an example, instead of holding the poetry jam at the Serbule keep, the jam could be hosted on a player's (or guild's) front lawn. The host of the event could receive civic pride experience which would unlock more options for types of decor or challenge events as the player/guild leveled. Or the host could opt for a currency like drevas, red wing coin, or guild credits to purchase new public events, temporary boons for their plot, or new decor to be placed in the home or outside the home.

Another example. A player is hosting an event to fend off a Crone Hegemony air assault on Statehelm (the player's home city) and has set up defensive towers for Archers and fire/ice mages to knock the Crones out of the sky so ground troops can butcher them while grounded. Any player that would wish to join the event would only need to enter the closest housing instance to reach the event. When the event was over the player would return to the place of entry.

I would suggest a peek at the youtube videos available for Wildstar housing for a better idea of what I am trying to convey and the amount of customization that was available. Not sure what the legal restrictions would be for intellectual property and concept design, or the number of carpel tunnel cases that would be inflicted on the coders to reinvent that wheel.

[SwettyPalm]

On further thought, I'm not sure it's possible, if player property were instanced, Would it be possible for the guild Keep plus all the member properties to be combined in one instance and placement/ organization of member properties be controlled by the Guild leader or individuals of sufficient rank for strategic guild events?

[cr00cy]

Ok, I'll be honest - in most games I played, I never cared much about housing. Unless it was required because it gave a gameplay benefits that couldn't be overlooked (and I don't think its a good way to make it revelant). Hoever, there is one think that housing could add to PG that I think would be very welcome change - give use reason to have multiple characters. I have 4 characters now, and I play only one of them, my 'main'. Because we can learn every skill on one charcter, there is little reason to make more, safe for storage, making more cash (I can make enough for my needs with my main), or gathering time-gated resources (my 3 alts just sit in Serbule, gathering milk when I need it).

It would be nice if housing would allow us soomther interaction/managment of our characters. Like more shared storage, or maybe ability to assing task to our alts, or option to select task to perform when we log out (like resource gathering, or maning our private shop, etc.). It would be nice if it had some portals to importan locations (Serbule and Casino come sto mind.)

It could be done by giving us option to expand/upgrade our house, with additional features, but with limited space to do so. So we could chosoe to build portal to selected location, or garden, or workshop, etc, but we wouldn't have enough space to build everything.

[Aionlasting]

Honestly I hope citan doesn't waste his time right now with housing. This game could use many more zones for different level ranges, one zone per 10 level ranges is not appropriate at all. We could use more dungeons for every zone including new zones added. There should be new items added to the game, what about unique items with unique effects? Items players can hunt for either to wield or use for augmentation by stealing the spell and adding it to their own crafted gear? What about fishing? Can't fishing be a proper fishing mini game instead of like every other profession in the game that involves gathering? Does it really need to be us picking up fish like we do stones, wood, fruits, flowers, items? What about fixing up the user interface some more so we can see what stats a target player has? Or what debuffs a current monster has with the time remaining so dots and debuffs can be tracked? What about making combat more engaging , more fluid? Can we please fix the party interface too so healers can heal appropriately? Can we show the heat indicator outside of it just being attached to the player frame? What if i want to use the orbs but now I can't see my heat level? What about a proper weapon smithing profession? The combat system itself still has a whole host of issues regarding pacing and how rage works , solo vs group monsters, etc.. I mean there is so much here that could be worked on before adding housing... housing should be a near end of the production feature IF time allows... the game will be no better for it and delay of other more important content for it is really inappropriate.

[Vish]

Rita new Hang Out: Group sex with Rita and all her other husbands (and wifes because shes elf)
after finishing u get massage:
You participate in group sex together with (list of players that do it at same time) Rita.
Rita fell dispirited because she have hope for more her husbands fave fun together.
:P

[Wemedge]

What about a roommate situation? I mean, you share the same house for your whole account. Then maybe have it where you can access your other chars storage, or at least maybe the main bank stash or something, for easy transferring of stuff without having to log out. Or even a much bigger transfer stash, that can be upgraded like the bank. Maybe storage mules don't fit into your grand scheme for the game, but I would say that most people that have played a decent amount use them. It would be a nice house perk that wouldn't take away from the main world, like a private garden or craft station would.

Or even have it so your other chars are actually in the house, like npcs. And have it where you can actually become one of your other chars there. Maybe a menu pops up as you leave the house asking which char you want to be, and that's the char that re-enters the world. No idea how hard any of these things would be to code, or if they are even possible, but with new races coming alting will be even more prevalant. And anything that keeps a player from having to fully log out to switch chars is going to be nice.

[Okeephe]

For me housing is about centralizing your belongings. You don't need to have a lot of storage in the house, per se, but it should at least allow the 'summon' command to work from all your other storage.

One benefit of housing is that, if you park there when you are offline, you accumulate a 'rested' bonus to xp for the next time you log in.

For starting out there should be apartments. Basic accomodation for a reasonable price

I would like to see a 'modular' approach to housing, where you start out with a basic layout with kitchen, living room, and 2-3 bedrooms that can be added onto as you progress and can afford it. Additions that can be purchased and added on, basements that can be finished, cold room for cheese/shrooms. Crafting rooms for leather, tailor, toolcrafting, etc.

In this way house 'grow' from single family dwellings to mansions, over time.

I like the idea of Bat/Spider caves, Cow barns, and for those that don't want to live in a cave, the ability that when you enter your house, as an animal, you turn into your non animal form, for the duration of your stay, then back to your aninal form when you leave.

AS for the social twits, who feel mmorpgs mean you have to be glued to your on screen friends...poppycock.

I am socializing with my guild members and in game friends even if we are no where near each other. I have discord, and in game chat to fulfill these things.

I am not going to tanning racks or cotton gins to be social there. I would love these things to be in my house.

A lot of the comments I saw are based on teh current size of the maps and population. These will change at release I am sure. Yes, the current population is small, but the goal is to have a much larger population, and therefore much larger zones.

I couldn't care less about marriage.

Skills to make furniture should be added to carpentry, appliances to toolcrafting/BS, painting, pottery, etc. can be added.

Roommates sound interesting for starting out. Where a home owner can sub let rooms for a monthly fee, with eviction a result of not paying.

Property taxes, and upkeep. Yards with gardens, workshops, brew house, the possibilities are endless

[Sheawanna]

For me housing is about centralizing your belongings. You don't need to have a lot of storage in the house, per se, but it should at least allow the 'summon' command to work from all your other storage.

One benefit of housing is that, if you park there when you are offline, you accumulate a 'rested' bonus to xp for the next time you log in.

For starting out there should be apartments. Basic accomodation for a reasonable price

I would like to see a 'modular' approach to housing, where you start out with a basic layout with kitchen, living room, and 2-3 bedrooms that can be added onto as you progress and can afford it. Additions that can be purchased and added on, basements that can be finished, cold room for cheese/shrooms. Crafting rooms for leather, tailor, toolcrafting, etc.

In this way house 'grow' from single family dwellings to mansions, over time.

I like the idea of Bat/Spider caves, Cow barns, and for those that don't want to live in a cave, the ability that when you enter your house, as an animal, you turn into your non animal form, for the duration of your stay, then back to your aninal form when you leave.

AS for the social twits, who feel mmorpgs mean you have to be glued to your on screen friends...poppycock.

I am socializing with my guild members and in game friends even if we are no where near each other. I have discord, and in game chat to fulfill these things.

I am not going to tanning racks or cotton gins to be social there. I would love these things to be in my house.

A lot of the comments I saw are based on teh current size of the maps and population. These will change at release I am sure. Yes, the current population is small, but the goal is to have a much larger population, and therefore much larger zones.

I couldn't care less about marriage.

Skills to make furniture should be added to carpentry, appliances to toolcrafting/BS, painting, pottery, etc. can be added.

Roommates sound interesting for starting out. Where a home owner can sub let rooms for a monthly fee, with eviction a result of not paying.

Property taxes, and upkeep. Yards with gardens, workshops, brew house, the possibilities are endless

As a full time animal going to my house /cave/barn should not turn me into a humanoid (its our home should be safe for us ) . I do not want to wait 3 hours for animal town npcs to speak with me … other then that I'm good with all Ideas . Except marriage n losing my npc favor sounds pretty harsh n not worth it .

[Silvane]

I would really like a garden area. And with it a new type of the plants we already have that work differently. Instead of growing instantly and having a low yield, they should have to be watered each day for three days and then give 10 crops instead of one or two.

Also plantable Oak, Maple etc trees that after growing them can be chopped down.

Also plantable Apple and Orange etc trees that can then be harvested every 24h once grown.

I would prefer a % buff to max health over an xp buff.

I would like to be able to have a house for each character I have.

Being able to place furniture freely without a grid and resizing, rotating freely would be great and the option for the really creative players to set themselfs on a list of public houses so that they can be shown off to others. I am not very great at building awesome houses, but I loved touring public houses in Wildstar where some people build incredible stuff due to being able to place everything freely.

[Kifyi]

Regarding instanced housing and more specifically neighborhoods, I think I would prefer a persistent neighborhood where I can actually get to know my neighbors or even be neighbors with my friends. I don't like the idea of a more .... fluid neighborhood. If that were the case I think I'd prefer just a small instance with only my own residence. However, I can see the benefits of this design so they don't feel stagnant, forgotten or empty.

You could potentially do a form that is neighborhoods in addition to isolated homes. So if you're someone that wants to live in a neighborhood you can. If you want to be on your own, you can. That kind of thing.

I really love the idea of marriage and having your NPC friends over. This kind of thing is generally sorely lacking in MMOs and even in most singleplayer games it often quite shallow and unrewarding. Definitely love this.

I agree with a lot of people I see asking for a small yard with a garden to grow plants and also to see your pets there. Even if they are standing around in/around a literal stable, would be nice.

Would love to see functioning armor racks, display racks for equipment. Bookshelves for books as well as other misc items and trophies of your accomplishments.

I am really excited to see housing added to this game, it's been something I've wanted for a long time.

[Kifyi]

Lets be honest, player housing is a meh idea and waste of dev time. It is such a niche crowd that you would be catering to. If instead of player housing I offer you a counter idea, player made dungeons. Player's could create their own dungeon, drop in monsters, traps, and then set a reward at the end. The player whos dungeon it is would be able to set an entrance fee, level rec (scaled based on monsters used), and treasure for completion. Now you have exponentially increased gameplay by way of new dungeons and by allowing players to tailor those dungeons.

You should play monolisk

[Unhandled Exception]

So, I should be added to the list of those that really don't see a need for housing at all. I am someone who spent about five seconds customizing his character, though. I realized shortly after streaming became a thing that most players/streamer actually do that customization stuff and *I* am the weird one. I have a long reply, but it's more tailored to what would make housing fun for me and me only. I wouldn't want customization of features so much as customization of gameplay.

As a system admin/IT worker, I very much understand the need to do instanced housing. There's practical problems that come up if you don't use instances. That said, if you're willing to ignore "housing" in the traditional sense and go crazy on the "instanced", I do have a few ideas that will run long.

As Ranperre and Delfofthebla have indicated, it might help to know more as to what this Housing is really intended to be. Do you want it to be somewhere the player spends 80% of their in-game time or more like %5 of their time? A good mix? Does the player-base really care about customization of something in-game? The Casino already works for me as a central crafting hub and I can make Flower Arrangement buffs to share with others who will help me with music during Gardening sessions. Is this housing going to somehow break the social aspects because people spend even less time sharing buffs? Do you want to spend a lot of time coding something unique that has never really been done before in an MMO like was done with Brewing or stick with tried-and-true housing with predictable customization?

One thing that was already brought up by ProfessorCat and others is more complex "Hang Out" options or stuff we can do in place of that for favor or otherwise. Maybe what we don't need so much of is instanced housing but instances based on social/crafting or combat activities with our players and NPC friends. Not like the Casino or other games, but more like a Sims game with NPCs made up of other players and our favorite NPCs.

So, keeping in mind that housing itself isn't what we're looking for, here's some ideas:

0) For the purposes of the discussion, I'm going to refer to housing instances as "Neighborhoods". I'm kind of assuming this all happens in Statehelm, but "Villages" or "Burroughs" could be used, as well I suppose. These will be instanced not per set of people, but the whole are will be instanced PER PLAYER. I think it would be nice if you could still invite other ONLINE players to your specific instanced village as-desired, though. That said, even though these are called Neighborhoods, they only look like that to the player and are a per player instance.

1) Add a new "Standings" feature to the Friends and Guilds options whereby you can set your own feelings toward a player to Soulmates, Like Family, Best Friends, Close Friends, or Neutral standing with you. I'm not sure if the feeling should be required to be mutual or not. I think it'd be okay to have it be "Not" for now. If you add Marriage as a "Standing" I suppose it would have to be Mutual.

2) Add a new feature similar to Title where you set two Combat and two Crafting "Specialties". Other players will be able to see these or they wouldn't be private. You may be encouraged to set these to your highest Combat skills and highest Crafting skills. I think manually set might provide for more options, but I could see arguments for automatically having them set. Could maybe be the two highest skills you have in Combat and Crafting.

3) When these Friends and Guild mates from #1 (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=1) above are OFFLINE, they show up in your "Neighborhood" or Housing instance. They are more likely to show up in order of Standing and Friendship (if a Guild mate is also a Friend and is at Soulmates standing they will basically always be there when offline). In this way, housing could be instanced, but still be mostly made up of people that you know.

4) Imagine a scenario where your Soulmate Friend who is also a Guild member is Sword/Psych and Gardening/Cooking, here's a series of things that could take place:

4a) Your PC (now NPC) friend provides you with Sword and Psych training at reduced costs (for Councils which could even actually maybe go to that player?). This could be through a buff or otherwise. Imagine you need a Sword Skill from Janet Lews but haven't gotten your Favor up with her. Maybe your Soulmate friend acts as a go-between to give you that Favor or reduce the cost of the skill. Maybe they are high enough level they qualify to sell you the skill themself. On a related note, aside from spamming guild chat for everything I loot, one problem I have with picking up combat skills I've already learned is not being able to easily provide them to guildmates for free in large guilds that have a limit on storage but no limit on players they can add. Sure I can sell items at a stall for money, but my guild mate doesn't get a reduced price. Something like this might provide such an option. Perhaps Statehelm has a storage for items we can give or sell at reduced costs to guild members.

4b) A Garden and Cooking Stove in your instance based on the two craft skills.

4c) Maybe you have an option to train or Do Favor for these PC-NPCs that gives one or the both of you some small amount of experience according to level or quest difficulty.

4d) Maybe you just can come back to get small one-hour buffs on Combat or Crafting for these types? Maybe just exp buffs?

4e) Possibly add the ability to even Hang Out with these PC-NPCs.

5) Having a fully-instanced Neighborhood to yourself opens up some really interesting options for "WarCache-like" combat scenarios based off of who your Friends and Guild mates are. If you could also invite online Friends to participate in these quests, that might be pretty fun, too. What's also nice is that you could put instance-changing events in here for a more traditional customization. Perhaps you and your online friends go on a quest for a guild mate to slay some Demon Boar that got away from him and then, when finished, you can mount the head on the fireplace in your home.

6) Okay, so this next part is a bit further out there, but what if you could cash in on your Notoriety and Combat Wisdom in some manner to show up as an NPC like above in other people's housing instances for a period of time and get experience, materials, or money? Here's my idea broken up into sub points. EDIT: And yes, I realize there may be a plan to use Notoriety and Combat Wisdom in different ways so these two could just be exchanged for some other terminology that is gained via some other manner if so:

6a) Add a new measurement called Crafting Wisdom to the game. Upon creation of a yellow (or after X number of crafts), you gain a Crafting Wisdom point.

6b) Add the above features with two Combat and Craft specialties. Add the "Standings" feature as above. Have some of these (again, only when OFFLINE) players show up in your Neighborhood instance as masters of their craft, even if not strictly friends based on the Standings.

6c) Every day or week, players may bid or some system (5%?) will automatically bid using either Crafting or Combat Wisdom into a "pool" based on one of their two set Combat or Crafting skills or set a percentage of their Crafting and Combat Wisdom to be used and split to all four skills.

6d) Players who contribute Combat Wisdom points will show up in other online and active player's housing instances at a rate equal to their contribution to the pool plus whatever necessary modifiers (maybe exp in that skill), but only while they are OFFLINE. Additionally, they maybe only show up one week per year or one day per month or something and then go off-rotation per player. This involves some interesting math and database updates to do as the formula changes based on who is online or offline, but the idea would be if you are going to vacation from the game for a day/week or whatever, you could load up on a bid (unless the system is automatic bid, in which case you'd have to grind) and then you will show up in other player's instances and come back to a lot of money/materials/XP or whatever.

6e) So, instead of getting money from training, materials from fetch quests, or what-not, another option is that you gain Notoriety based on the interactions you have with players via this system while offline. This can be used in Statehelm for some other undefined reason later on. Obviously by showing up for more players more often you are going to be a more well-known name, even if briefly. A really interesting thing I was thinking about was actually spending Notoriety to unlock much more involved "combat quests" for you and your friends or Guilds. Quests that would be at least as complex as the Dailies if not more so. After all, if everyone knows who you are, how likely are going to be asked to solve some Alharth-level problem?

6f) I've been trying to think of ways this system could be "gamed" and while I think some of that could happen, the XP or Material or Council gains could be tempered by simply adjusting them or making them not that significant to begin with.

7) Add a new "Visit" option to select one NPC that has YOU at Soulmates or higher to come visit you at your instance (within reason). Their menus and options will always be available to you and anyone else here. Some NPCs might be ineligible because they'd be broken if they were this easily accessible (Hulon) and some might be ineligible because they have a "job to do" that explains why they maybe could never leave their location (Sir Arif). No comment on if "Storage" options should be available here or not, that seems best left unaddressed by me (though it does make sense to have Council Storage in Statehelm somewhere). Alternatively, maybe it should be more than just ONE NPC among your Friends/Soulmates should be allowed to visit, too?

8) I could see some further customizations based on your favorite gods. Perhaps something buff-related.

9) Speaking of Gods, I was trying to think of an explanation about "interdimensional" item storage being available due to some weird story where Janice Alberith went on an adventure looking for a rumored but unknown God (Bogdelle) that appears to have wiped herself from existence and is only even rumored due to Janice having a "dream too real" -- sent by Miraverre -- of such a lost God. In the process of resolving the existence of this God, Janice discovers an ancient Himamanav device that was prized, then experimented on and finally, over time, dragged to Statehelm and allows players to store any one (two, three, more?) item(s) an unlimited number of times. Maybe with Gadgeteering and some crystals or other materials and a few quests you could even construct a device to be able to access one or two of these "unlimited" inventory slots from anywhere in the world (food, snacks, fire dust, etc would all be great candidates for these slots).

Such an "unlimited of one item" inventory option would let Greenberg store lemons indefinitely and some of us that do nothing but grow Cotton for user or sale later would have a place where we can store it till it's really needed without affecting our other available inventory. If such a place existed, I'd probably visit it at least once every other day probably (unless the Gadgeteering device would allow me to access all of it remotely, obviously). It'd also be just different enough from existing storage that it wouldn't completely replace the Casino as a hub for someone like me while being a place that would still be worthwhile enough to frequent.

9) "Instance buffs" in a Neighbor instance, either being bought using Combat or Crafting Wisdom or Notoriety or via quests or something would be a way to lure us all out of the Casino to instanced-based crafting/gardening if that is something to be preferred. I could even see players making a Flower Arrangement buff to lure others to their instance to start, but then as more players showed up, the "instance buff" could take over. Multiple ways to do something like this, too.

10) Selective portals. If we do have instanced housing, maybe make the portals such that you can put in the name of a person and some council machine sets the coordinates to go to their Neighborhood instance for you so we don't have to use codes or other oddities (or maybe players use codes to choose where they want their house to be to begin with, something so we have something a little bit more involved than "Statehelm Burroughs #001-100 (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=001-100) ".

11) I'm not gonna lie, not a huge fan of the vendor stalls in Serbule, though I do see how it provides more skills and serves a purpose for player-based selling. I also realize it can be a fun old-school way to do buying/selling. Auctioning and auction houses are in games now though because they were always a superior way to handle a player economy. On top of the #9 (https://forum.projectgorgon.com/usertag.php?do=list&action=hash&hash=9) item where you have one or more "unlimited item" storage options, why not also make it that you provide a price for each item stored in such a manner? That way, if my primary good I sell is Cotton, I could first pay or quest or something to have that slot available for unlimited use yet price the Cotton that it is high enough that if someone did somehow buy it all, I'd be happy. It'd be different from the player stalls, and could lead to "Auctioneering" being an advanced skill above Retail Management or Industry or something. With multiple players selling multiple items at varying prices, someone looking for a specific good at the lowest price wouldn't have to travel to stalls, they could just buy straight out of a player's "unlimited" inventory spot and then buy from the next lowest price from another player. No traveling and price look up involved. The one concern about such a system would be that it might be so superior that few people would use the Serbule Keep anymore. (unless newbies were somehow restricted from using Auctioning till like level 40/50 Industry or something).

12) There can also be more traditional quests that grant a user Civic Pride or something.

EDIT: I do like the Front Door option, I'm just thinking it might be easier to think less of this as traditional "housing" in a instance shared with multiple players and more of one single personalized instance built dynamically based upon PCs who the players know and NPCs they Hang Out or gain Favor with already in game.

[Dumdidum]

Housing reminds me of the one game that got it perfectly right (for me): Ultima Online (UO).
Housing was part of the world, not some instance. There was a reason why this was very important:
1) prime locations were hot because it allowed you to have a vendor up, with loads of people passing willing to peek at your wares
2) you had prefabs and player designs, so houses were often showcases and perls of creativity. UO allowed trophies and rares to be displayed in your houses for others to enjoy
3) it was a place where you could install your crafting stations, store your raw materials, and make it a one stop crafting station for your gears, brews etc. Its all lovely and all to have to run to 20 different places to craft 1 thing, but it will be offputting and boring in the long haul.
4) if you didnt pay rent eventually your house would collapse, with all loot basically falling on the ground. Everyone with time to spare would gather to try and loot some rares or materials which made for a lot of laughs and giggles.
5) Houses were part of the emerging world, not some instanced thing nobody else would ever see apart from maybe 1 or 2 people on your friends list.

Houses were endgame, so it gave you a reason as a player to save up, trade, play the game, to eventually be able to afford that prime location for your castle. Meanwhile new players could settle for basic small houses until they were ready for more.

I would urge our lovely mod/dev team to watch some YT videos about Ultima online housing if they never played the game themselves.

Lastly: i am personally not at all interested in marriage, nor am i interested in instanced housing. I would (maybe) use it if it gave me crafting/storing convenience, but that would be it.

[Aunshalee]

Showing up to this party late! Player housing is exciting and daunting and I'm eager to see how it fits in. A few of these suggestions may already be in circulation, but here's my two cents:

Limited Property Ownership. A player should only have one house for the entirety of their account, regardless of housing district variety that may be available. However, a player may "relocate" the property to a different housing district for a cost, should other districts exist. If player-to-player property sales will be possible, this should be a limit of two properties per player without the option to "relocate" a property to a different housing district. Limiting housing in this way ensures that players are less likely to be taken out of the game at large to play Real Estate Mogul: Gorgon Edition.

Modular Housing Expansion. Modular expansions allow players to more flexibly dictate the size of the property they want to manage. Certain expansion options may only be available to specific creature forms (like a barn for cows, an attic for bats) or made available by accomplishing feats and befriending NPCs in the world. There should be a modest upper limit for expanding one's house, so additions can be meaningful and players aren't sucked into decorating vast, echoing halls for eternity if player-made placeables will be an option. Being limited, it should be possible to "remodel" an addition, replacing it with a different one. In a hypothetical, a house starts the size of a studio apartment, but can be expanded by up to 5 additional rooms if the player meets criteria. This ties into...

Building Permits. The Civic Duty skill already provides the framework for something like this in player housing. A player would be able to expand their house based on how involved they are in the community, along with resource or monetary costs for the "construction" via Building Permits for Modular Expansions from the lead authority NPC in the city where the housing district is located. In a hypothetical, a player looking to add additional rooms to their estate in Serbule would go to Sir Coth to obtain a Building Permit. Limit one Permit per one module expansion. Remodeling an existing expansion should cost 75%-50% of whatever the cost of a module would be. The "relocation" option of Limited Property Ownership would also be a Permit-based cost.

Open-Air Housing District. Similar to the courtyards players congregate in currently, housing should be located in an open-air district where neighbors can congregate. This would also allow for player shops, a community garden, etc.

Community Garden. The garden always produces a set table of common vegetables, fruits or both, with a tiered harvest list paid out at the end of a period based on contribution. The garden will not wilt or die without tending, but players that spend time tending it will be rewarded when the harvest triggers with resources based on their contribution, as well as additional benefits like a week-long buff or Civic Duty experience. The payout shouldn't be exorbitant for high contributors, but should encourage involvement. The community garden could also be a target for local pests, like pesky rabbits!

House Maintenance. With a cleanliness de/buff system already in place for players, it would make sense to have a similar for housing as well. A well-maintained house may entice more positive visitors, whereas a poorly-maintained house may invite trouble. Buffs and debuffs may also be doled out based on house state.

"The Help". If servants will be an option, they should not trivialize the resource costs associated with the player's adventures by being ridiculously adept at acquiring resources or money for the player. However, they should be able to help a player maintain their house and standing in as a point of contact for features like the Work Order Board, reading off or composing the player's mail, or collecting earnings from stall sales. One of their functions could also be as the interface for storage access, negating the need for "physical" storage in a home. Servants should have quarters of their own, taking up a house expansion module.

Furniture, if it isn't pre-fab with the housing additions, should be meaningful and texture-consistent with the resources used to make it (i.e. all oak furniture should look like it's made with oak wood).

Since we're also discussing interpersonal aspects....

Marriage. Named NPCs being available for marriage is an excellent idea! I would also suggest that servants can be married, if they're implemented.

Matchmaker for players who aren't interested in existing NPCs, a Matchmaker NPC is an option to help find a player true love by matching criteria against a modest list of "hidden" suitors. Offering hidden suitors may make the experience more personalized for players! In a hypothetical, a player would visit a Matchmaker NPC and select from a trait preference list (similar to the interests current NPCs have now) and the Matchmaker will take up the offline/Hang Out time to look for a match. The match may not be perfect! Some "extra hidden" suitors may only be available if the player meets certain criteria themselves, like being a werewolf, having a high Compassion level, etc. After a match is found, the suitor will show up at the player's house when they're home to socialize. If servants are implemented, they should also be able to "ring" for the Matchmaker for convenience, who will then be a visitor with all the usual features that NPC provides.

Brothels would be a racy alternative to marrying an existing NPC or a Matchmaker suitor, depending on the degree of openness sexuality will see in Gorgon. It would function somewhat similarly to the Matchmaker -- just with 100% less potential commitment! The player would make a request of a Proprietor based on criteria they set, the tryst would take up the offline/Hang Out time and provide specific buffs (and possibly painful reminders to address with your physician!). Seeing the same companion could increase the type of buff they provide (if they provide specific buffs based on their character), titles can be associated with the frequency of Brothel feature use, and repeat companions may eventually be available for marriage.

Players should also be able to designate friends as family, or even life-partners through marriage. In a hypothetical, if a friend is listed as "family", both players inherit each other's in-laws as potential visitors.

Apprenticing. Players should be able to mentor other players in a specific skill by "renting" out a room of their house for a period. In this case, apprentice quarters would be a house expansion module choice and would be required to take on an apprentice.

I'll stop here, or I'll spend all day typing a novel. I look forward to seeing how housing is implemented!

[Dibbuk]

Entirely my personal opinion, here is what I would like to see in housing:

1) Storage access. Once in your home, you should be able to access ALL storage in all zones and dungeons, so you can arrange and consolidate it as you wish.

2) Portals. A commons should have the portal back to the town your housing is tied to,.

3) Guild Portals. The commons should also have a guild home portal that you can access if you are a member of a guild. Guild homes should have a housing portal like the one in town that takes you back to your housing commons, again only if you are a member of a guild.

4) Decor. Using dye skill, you can dye the walls in the color and pattern of your choice. Furniture can be crafted to add accents.

5) Equipment. Commons might also have amenities such as tanning racks, cotton gins, water taps, community gardens, work benches, and meditation pillars, etc.

[Roccandil]

I wonder if the following could work:

Provide a small number of open world hardpoints that can be purchased, developed, and then opened for instanced housing, with whatever is constructed in the open world as the common area.

That would allow players to live outside NPC towns, even in dangerous zones. It could also allow for community projects to improve the open-world development common area that all the instanced housing is connected to (and which would appear as the open-world visual for any travelers wandering by).

So, while there might only be a few such hardpoints scattered across the maps, they could each theoretically host an infinite number of instanced houses, and it seems unlikely that they would go stagnant, while at the same time those living there would likely take pride in the open-world appearance of their settlement. :)

[Zavos]

I'm a bit late to the party, but I'd like to outline the concepts that I find engaging in player housing

1) The Crossroads
i.e. the teleportation options within a house that provide a regular reason to enter it. Everquest and EQ2 have many, many examples of these (abit the general focus on esoteric locations kind of takes away from the utility of this)

2) The Utility
In practice, this usually boils down to crafting tools, such as the cotton gin. However, anything that can perform a service (such as a writing desk or meditation shrine) can create meaningful rewards for players that focus on housing

3) Storage
Just something to keep in mind, having some form of storage, and/or tying it to the various storages in the world (such as the favor storage in the zone the house is located in) is of vital importance.

4) Useful & Useless
Features that provide a function that is, in practice, negligible provide depth to a house. The primary example I'd like to use is EQ2 2006 Frostfell's "feast" furnishings, which provided infinite amounts of lv1 food that would expire quickly. They were more than simple, static decorations, except not really.

5) The Fantasy
Different characters would have different infinity+1 strongholds. A warrior type might desire a literal fortress, a animal player might want a pocket of untamed(-ish) wilderness, a mage might want a private demiplane... being able to cater to different type of character fantasies is something that should be considered when designing the housing locations & their setting customizations.

6) The Key
This be a personal reqest; in certain MMOs where I invested quite heavily on my player-owned house, I would often extend it's services to friends. Being able to create a item that would allow others to access another's house without their micromanagement (or even being logged in) would be nice.

[Figger1]

I played EQ2 for a few years and they have instanced housing and it was fine. Most major cities had different housings that were themed of the city they were in. And they had a few different layouts and designs for each city. Most of the housing was rented and some was forever owned that you had to pay real money for. More storage would be nice to have in a house. They also had house decoration contests and the contestants would open their houses to the public and other players could go look at them and vote on them.

[Ra.jar]

I think there are two aspects you really want to focus on with housing:

1. It should be a social thing. There is nothing more boring than a house that is devoid of life and lonely. They should have functions that allow the meeting of new people and the ability to spend time with old friends, in new and interesting ways.

2. There needs to be a reason to actually spend time in a house. Whether this simply be special crafting recipes or activities one can only do in their home or even some mechanical benefit for those more inclined to that sort of thing. Maybe a system where players can write things in their house, whether it be character biographies, tales from their past, thoughts about other people in the world. A journal? I suppose. Then this could be sent out to all neighbours and people could sit by their in game fire, reading the tales of other characters. Just something I thought of while falling asleep last night, one of THOSE thoughts. But really any activities that are fun to do while being relaxing (Important for a house, where you want to escape from the outside fantasy world you are already escaping to haha) would be a good move I think.

[Karamasha]

I really like the idea of instanced neighborhoods, I really hate when games just have 1 instanced house everyone is using.
I'm really glad that you're making the housing a more social thing with neighbours and not just a place for players to hide and store stuff.
Citan How's the development going btw, any news on the launch of the game or the soft reset?

[Ogmios]

Is any thought being given to the impact housing will have on the city populations? I am not saying housing is a bad idea, but for example, what is the motivation for hanging out around the well Serb once housing goes in? The towns will feel much more lifeless I bet when housing goes in.

Edit: I went back and I saw some posts where people talked about housing’s impact on the community feel. I love coming into a town and seeing people hanging out. Given the current player counts, if you make it so everyone can bank and craft at home, the towns will be dead and the game will feel empty except for global chat. People need to have a reason to be in town to come out of their homes.

I saw a post where someone brought up UO. Once owning a house became common in UO, the banks and the towns became pretty lifeless. I would really hate to see that happen here.

[player1986]

I actually prefer the idea of instanced housing over landscape for a lot of the same reasons mentioned in the OP.If you're looking for a mmorpg that has great depth and great abilities please try project gorgon, you can find a free demo on steam.i am a pro mmorpg game player,i already played many mmorpg games,i am playing fifa ultimate team now.i make fifa coins (https://www.playermall.com) by fifa ut auction market in game.

[Mikhaila]

I'll put in some unpopular notions.

Storage in the house should only link to the zone it's in. There should not be access to all storage in the world. This makes a fundamental change in the game, making things far easier.

Similarly, many things players want, change the social landscape of PG. Right now we congregate for gardening, and other activities. You see people in various places doing various skills. Adding too much to a house for "convenience" also makes it more likely people do all crafting there, never have to visit some zones, and weakens player interaction.

Faster travel, teleporting to zones from the house or a central point would do the same thing to PG that we have seen in other games. In EQ there was an active travel system that took time. Druids and wizards teleporting people across continents, people traveling by boat. After Plane of Knowledge, that ended and many zones became ghost towns.

Part of what makes PG great is the difficulty that adds gameplay and fosters community. PG has an actual player economy based on scarcity of goods. No scarcity, no economy. The scarcity of storage drives behavior and game play. As does the scarcity of money. It's easy to make money, but twice as easy to spend it.

[Lyesea]

I agree with you,
I dont think there should be a way to craft in house without a player made item. Maybe carpentry where the highest level recipie able to be crafted correlates to the quality of the item crafted.

I strong agree on the fast travel stuff, as said by another casino already is a massive convenience hub no need for a house to compound on that.

I think the house should be a place one goes to rest and appretiate trophies for bluffs rather than a convenience spot.

[Meshak]

I'm a new player. Instanced housing would make the most sense. Just give players a way to access the housing zone from any town. It really is all about additional storage and being able to access your storage in other towns from your home. The ability to place vendors, ie. a gardener to support the gardening. Just my quick and dirty thoughts.

[Sommerlund]

Instancing houses are certainly much easier to do, but personnaly i loved the housing system in Asheron's Call.
There were settlements all over the world, you could buy normal houses, abordable for everyone, and villas, much bigger and who had doubble of storage capacity. Then there were allegiance mansions, expensive and you had to be a guild leader to buy one, and everone in the guild could portal there at anytime to meet guilde mates.
This was great, and we had meetings like in real life, with many peoples coming and sitting arround, and one talked.. good memories !

https://ibb.co/1Tsvv3Y


One of the problem you said for non-instanced houses was that when people stopped to play the areas would feel emptier with the time, but that's not a problem, just group with your guild people you know will keep playing with you, or just leave the house and buy anew one in another more crowthed area.

Or just create NPCs to replace your neighbors who aren't online. They will sell what the real owners wants to sell, they would actually replace the vendors. Hmm, maybe not replace, because some would probably never see a buyer, but they could be like secondary vendors.

[Pugmak]

Might these instanced neighborhoods have common areas, like a hotel lounge setup, so that players can go, hang out, work on alcohol resistance, play musical instruments, engage in story telling, etc?

I realize there's taverns, but sometimes a bit more of the less traffic might work for some.

[darklorde]

Looks like you've already got the bones of the discussion sorted out Citan, and I tend to agree with you on all fronts here.

But the real question is, why should I own a house? Why do I want one? What does it grant me and why should I ever be in it instead of where I reside now?

As a Spider player, I 'live' in the Red Wing Casino. I do this because this is where all my storage and vendors are. This is where players show up to do dailies and work orders. This is where I place all my most commonly used items. This is the 'hub' that can allow me to access every other part of the world quickly and efficiently. This is where I garden. This is where I cook. This is where I tailor. This is where I sell my dungeon findings. The Red Wing Casino is my "City" and the ease of access with vast capabilities is what makes it my "Home".

I know there is an animal town meant for my kind, but due to it lacking in many of the above features, it is completely worthless as a home. I'm going to guess that you don't necessarily like this situation, either because the animal town is rarely trafficked or because the red wing casino is "too good", but I like how it works right now. Sure I'd like the animal town to be better and I'd love even more storage & vendors in the casino, but the teleporter to Rahu bridges the gap well enough for me.

The real question is, how are you going to make me 'move' without creating frustration or cheapening my current experience? Will this house be a better home than the one I have here? Can it be? As it stands, I can see people moving about the area all the time, and I have access to everything I need. It's a good MMO feeling to see people doing stuff while you are in a comfortably efficient hub.

When I think of player housing in games (instanced or not) I think "Useless prop that is supposed to provide immersion, but actually just worsens the experience."

I'd be curious if you've thought about the following:
1) Will I be able to access large amounts (or other city's) storage from inside my home?
2) Will I be able to access vendors from inside my home?
3) Will I be able to teleport directly to my home?
4) Will I have access to crafting devices and gardening?
5) Will I be able to see players moving about in the halls and between vendors?
6) If we do have access to crafting devices, will this create isolation inside of a closed room (A big con for Gardening for sure!)
7) Assuming I still have access to all of this, will I be forced into (one of the many) 1-2 minute long loading screens just to access these features? (This is already a partial issue with Red Wing Casino and Rahu. Loading screens in project gorgon can range from relatively painless to beyond awful.)

I worry more for what player housing will take away from me than I do for what it could grant me. Storage is one of the most contentious topics in Gorgon, and for good reason. If this has the potential to make my storage situation worse, I'd prefer to stay away from it entirely.

I'm sure we'd all prefer to talk about all the cool features player housing could bring with quests and neighbors, but I feel like that's all secondary to the aforementioned perks. If I don't "live" in my house, then it's not my god damn home now is it?

this is exactly what im interested in

[Asaf]

In my opinion, owning and furnishing a house should give certain buffs, nothing too overpowered but definitely something even end game players would like to have,
Some furniture pieces would have to be crafted, Others could be a rare drop from a certain boss or event. Each type of furniture would give a different buff (Maybe a certain painting that would give a small boost to fire damage for 4 hours, maybe a cold water tub that would wake you up to boost reflexes, giving a small boost to projective evasion for 4 hours...)

Kind of similar to the system that was in Maplestory 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnKR8F3Ms8E

and maybe certain nodes in your house, that could be gathered once every 24 hours, giving you a reason to visit your house every day and get some easy materials,

Kind of like in Guild wars 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzHbLETyEV8

we could make the different decorations and nodes in your house useable by other players that entered your house

That would open up some possibilities for house owners to either share or profit off their Hard earned housing furniture and nodes.
They could sell entrance to their house to players who do not have access to the house buffs but would pay for it, or maybe give access for free but only certain to certain race\guild members.




As for the marriage system

i think marrying another player is another important option that should be given, it could unlock new possibilities for things to do, maybe when you and your wife are playing in a party together, both of you get a+10% combat exp gain, rewarding you for actually actively playing together) or maybe a certain VFX would play around you when the two of you are standing close to each other in the game.

These are just rough ideas i had

[Grobyddonot]

IMHO: Regardless of the way the housing system will evolve, player comfort and convenience must be paramount. The most important aspects, as already pointed out in this thread by other players, are:

1. Storage
2. Fast Travel (to and from home)
3. More Storage
4. Some decorative customization options (lots of people will love it, they always do)
5. Even more Storage

P.S. Can't wait for the housing system to be implemented.

[adrikthorsen]

Perhaps 'neighborhood' instances in the vein of FFXIV/EQ1/LoTRO could make for a more social player instanced housing experience? The way these games handled(the ones that did anyway) absent players was to 'expire' their house, which, of course, we don't want HERE - however, perhaps we could HYBRID in the way EQ2 handled housing(in this game everyone clicked on an inn door in a city to enter their home, so everybody's house was actually in the same exact spot - the house stays the same, it's literally an instance inside of an instance - which would make each instanced 'neighborhood' remain social. Say there are... 50 houses in a 'neighborhood' but of course, each house type is actually available to many people, so each 'neighborhood' would likely remain vital and social - ignoring the fact that 200 people are in a town with 50 houses is a lot easier than ignoring the fact that 200 people are entering one home door :p This, imo, would have the added benefit of allowing a certain level of RP like 'I'm from Little Serbule, which is in Serbule, a town that sprang up outside of the keep settled mostly by elven refugees intially, it is now a cosmopolitan place and I'm one of the first humans to buy a new home there' then as an 'active' player one would enter the 'neighborhood' instance - entering an entire small village(with its' own NPCs, quests, market, storage?) - perhaps a 24-hour cooldown reagentless return home ability could be used here as well.

[Enphuego]

Housing Ideas:

The two MMOs that have had the best housing I've experienced are FFXI and EQ2. To be fair I only played EQ2 on release and quit a few months later to play WoW so I didn't get to see the long term results of player housing on cities.

Player housing should replace the vendor stalls somehow. The whole vendor stall area is laggy as hell and difficult to use. While I understand that it's intentionally less efficient than say the WoW auction house, there's probably a way to replace the actual player stalls with some version of housing for much less lag. In EQ2 you could set up to vendor while you were online but not playing (frankly I bought a second account and PC to serve as my 24/7 vendor) and the players could either use an auction house or visit your instanced house to buy directly. Some mix and match of that might work for getting rid of player stalls. If the entrance to instanced housing had some sort of storefront interaction where you could select from a dropdown of vendors then it would more or less be the same system currently in place. I really do believe that 90% of the performance complaints about the game result from people running around the player stalls in Serb - that area should be redesigned just to get rid of bad reviews about performance, even if the end game state will resolve the pain.

The EQ2 house also had storage where you could drop items for other players, etc. That functionality could either be implemented like a guild chest where certain players have permissions or something like shops where you can reserve an item for a player. That gives other players a reason to enter your house so they can see your awesome furniture. It also makes moving items to others a little bit easier - you can stick it in your house storage and tell the other person to pick it up when they are in town. I'd love to see one chest for personal items, one chest where a list of players can pick up stuff, another where they can drop off stuff. That way we could do things like have one player maintain a cheese supply and the others drop off milk and stomachs.

It needs a mailbox too! At least some way to send an offline player a text message. I'm not sure if it needs to go full bore like WoW where you can send items and money.

Decoration is always an important feature, carpentry seems an obvious skill to set up your place. In FFXI there was some ability to grow things while you were offline - maybe instanced housing would be a good place to do mushroom farming and age cheese. If I remember correctly they had potted plants you had to maintain. While I'm not sure about rewarding constant play, so long as the stakes aren't high then I don't see a problem with it.

The front door in EQ2 was great. There were real houses in a seeming neighborhood that had obvious clues about how expensive it was with a shared instanced front door. You knew when you were going to the rich part of town or if you were slumming it. That brings up that player housing is a status symbol. While you want to get away from monthly rent - it might not be an issue if you just let players resume their rental after a long haitus since there's no monthly fee for the game and the housing is instanced anyways. There could also be a mechanism that increases the price based on demand. Like it's going to be pretty cheap to commute in from Amulna but if you want a prime spot in Casino you can get priced right out of it. That would allow for a fixed number of slots but unlike the current player stall system allow for some rotation based on money paid rather than time spent in the spot.

Where the other games fell short is that there just wasn't much reason to be in your house on a regular basis. Why go through a loading screen when you can just use storage outside of the house? Mushroom farming and aging cheese or beer might be one reason. There should be some sort of benefit in terms of convenience - like maybe you can recall to your house?

It might also be interesting if you could move your house and be places other than the main cities. If you were doing a lot of work in Gazluk, maybe your house could be there? Maybe you could have a house in more than one zone? Maybe you could get a super basic house in Serbule or the Casino for free and then rent houses on a monthly basis wherever you spent a lot of time.

I don't really care for the marriage to NPC mechanism. Obviously, I can just not get married in game so long as there's not an unignorable benefit to being married. It would make more sense to me to be able to marry other players... but I'm going to guess that it would lead to drama. Which is maybe OK? Imagine an online rant about getting divorced in a video game lol.

I'd also rather not have to do a lot of work regarding the house. Ideally for me it would be something that wouldn't require maintenance.

Another thought - I spend quite a while doing inventory management in this game... if there was some way that I could dump all my crap in my house at the end of a long night and come back in the morning to having it all sorted into the various storage everywhere, that would be amazing.

Maybe we should be able to have roommates? A 1:1 housing to player ratio is just assumed - but why? Why not have 3 or 4 roommates in a bigger house with more equipment and they could all split the cost.

Some tie to Industry would also be nice. Organize all your work orders, maybe complete them and stash the items then have it turn in once you get to the NPC? Maybe that could tie into the multiple houses concept - if you have a house in Amulna you can turn in leatherworking work orders from any house?

I would also like the ability to put loadouts in storage in the house. Someone mentioned manequins - I'd like to be able to come into my house, choose the 2 loadouts I want and have all that gear in my folder and none of the rest of it. As an example, I have a DPS set, a travel set and a healing set that I carry on me all the time - I'd totally put the DPS set and travel set in the bank before hitting a daily run if there was a practical method to do so. An added bonus would be if loadouts could contain non-equipped items like a skinning or butcher knife so I can bring a crappy skinning knife for fish gut fun in groups and the good skinning knife for solo play.

[Mysfit]

IMHO: Regardless of the way the housing system will evolve, player comfort and convenience must be paramount. The most important aspects, as already pointed out in this thread by other players, are:

1. Storage
2. Fast Travel (to and from home)
3. More Storage
4. Some decorative customization options (lots of people will love it, they always do)
5. Even more Storage

P.S. Can't wait for the housing system to be implemented.

being able to decorate and improve/build on it is needed.
Housing can depopulate cities and such so it must be done with that in mind...no guild housing. instead guild halls might be made in set cities so people hang out there.

[Zecke]

It would be nice to be able to share a house with other players.
With the Loadout(eg. decorations, colours ...) always being those of whoever is online atm.
(including priority settings in case all are on/offline)

[ChompyNibblers]

Hey all, I read through the thread today and did some brainstorming for functional things that I felt I would be excited about in player housing. Before I list features, I wanted to describe a little bit about how I imagine player housing working. In my opinion, player housing would come into effect mid-game and serve as a very expensive end-game material dump for top tier players. That isn't to say that I think non-endgame players should be excluded from owning player housing, but I hope that end-game elements of player housing are made expensive so that it also becomes a part of a players status/collection. I would hope the final version has rooms/upgrades/etc. that are ungodly expensive on a relative basis (say 250M councils for a "Throne Room" or something) but still can deliver a small benefit to the player. Player housing would be as much about showing off as it is about functionality in my mind.

Onto the features, here are some ideas that I feel would make housing exciting without detracting too much from the social aspects of the game:
+ Extra storage - seems like something player housing should have

+ Stores/stalls - let me sell things from my house

+ Crafting stations - I want to be buy and or build various crafting stations (forge, cooking pot, tanning rack)
-- Station upgrades: It would be neat to be able to upgrade the stations in my home, maybe temporarily?. For example, maybe one of the upgrades (rare high-level boss drop?) is "magic coal" that gives a 1% higher chance to craft a certain rarity 10 minutes, only useable in a player house furnace.
-- Also, non-necessary stations, like a woodcarving bench that extends the duration of all my placed carpentry items by 10%; or an alchemy bench that has a 5% chance of creating extra damage boost potions if you craft those potions at this bench.

+ Vase that lets me permanently place a flower display in it but now the display has only 5 uses

+ "Magic" Candelabra that does something similar (candle becomes 5-use instead of duration, maybe the buff duration is also increased by 5%)

+ Dinner table with better food buffs or duration (maybe also provides a community buff if you eat with people, higher buff for a larger gathering)

+ Armor stands for quick loadout swaps

+ Location to have a permanent tapped beer keg and permanent tapped liquor keg (it needs to be replaced when fully consumed, but has no time limit otherwise)

+ Cave for aging/mushroom farming/brewing (also could benefit from output boosts, like a 2-day +5% mushroom harvest, should probably be restricted to just the owner unless upgraded, and even then space should probably be restricted)

+ A number of potential unlockable "Daily" harvests (22hr cd or something, these should also probably have some player upkeep material cost) that must be developed and are more limited:
-- Plots for foraged goods (maybe trees take up 4 plots)
-- Chicken coop for feathers and eggs
-- Cows and goats for milking?
-- Fish pond, but you need to stock it and leave a pair for breeding.
-- Greenhouse for slow gardening with limited plots (also could benefit from some type of low-efficacy/high cost output boost; maybe greenhouses multiply seeds very slowly instead of grow the standard gardening output)
-- a metal vein in the caves
-- high-level players might access a paid or powered BC golem that, once "activated" for the day, will harvest all the daily goods for you during the next 22 hours... (maybe this is a marriage benefit instead?)

+ Animal husbandry - can I have my barn/ranch on my property?, can I get exclusive (and expensive) upgrades?

[Yaffy]

While you have a lot of neat ideas, I'm not a fan of all the boosts for doing things in your house, such as bonuses to crafting or mushroom farming. It's one thing to be able to purchase working stations so you can craft stuff at the convenience of your home, but by making it better to do stuff at home you're making it so nobody will want to craft outside of their house anymore. It can actually turn into an annoying inconvenience, because instead of crafting stuff wherever they happen to be people will be pressured to travel to their house to craft things all the time. It will definitely make the world feel less alive when everyone is being goaded into their home for boosts rather than just crafting wherever it's convenient.

[ChompyNibblers]

While you have a lot of neat ideas, I'm not a fan of all the boosts for doing things in your house, such as bonuses to crafting or mushroom farming. It's one thing to be able to purchase working stations so you can craft stuff at the convenience of your home, but by making it better to do stuff at home you're making it so nobody will want to craft outside of their house anymore. It can actually turn into an annoying inconvenience, because instead of crafting stuff wherever they happen to be people will be pressured to travel to their house to craft things all the time. It will definitely make the world feel less alive when everyone is being goaded into their home for boosts rather than just crafting wherever it's convenient.

Thanks Yaffy!

I was thinking this would actually have the opposite effect with the crafting boosts. In my magic coal example, if it was rare enough (say so rare we only see like 1 drop a week in the server) than a player obtaining it could host a crafting event at their house after poetry jam (or something to that effect).

In this same light, I don't really see a huge social difference between crafting some stuff in my home vs crafting stuff elsewhere. Most of the time I'm only actually at the crafting table for 10 seconds and otherwise I'm just running around between storages and vendors collecting things to prepare - something I would still be doing even with player housing. For example, there's nothing particularly social about my crafting a calligraphy bench/meditation stool - its just me sitting for a few seconds and I can do it anywhere. Also today when I made 6 cheese casks, I was in front of the cooking fire for like 3 seconds.

That being said, I would suspect the social piece is a bit more like a death by 1k cuts if things no longer require you to do them in a social area (like cooking and tanning/tailoring) and I can't be confident that these ideas won't lead us down this path.

I intentionally excluded gardening (group instrument buffs) and performance related buffs because I feel that creating incentives for those activities in player housing would drive players to stay in their homes. Similarly to crafting, I would argue that caves are not particularly an important element of the community/social interaction for me but ill concede that allowing players to have caves would likely reduce social encounters with other players. Alternatively, maybe this cave "buff" instead could be crafted at a special house station and deployed in any public cave.

[Yaffy]

Thanks Yaffy!

I was thinking this would actually have the opposite effect with the crafting boosts. In my magic coal example, if it was rare enough (say so rare we only see like 1 drop a week in the server) than a player obtaining it could host a crafting event at their house after poetry jam (or something to that effect).

Yeah I like this idea a lot more. I thought you were basically suggesting something more along the lines of it always being better to craft at home so there was no reason to make stuff elsewhere. An excuse to invite a bunch of people over to one's house is definitely interesting, although in that case maybe the boost should be a lot higher if it's such a rare thing!

When I was talking about crafting I didn't really mean it being a social thing, but just that instead of seeing crafters running around town they would all just vanish into their house. You wouldn't be talking to them probably but it's more like people doing crafting would just be absent, making the towns more empty.

[Mikhaila]

A lot of the suggestions would make towns a lot more empty and lesson social interactions. While can understand why everyone would want all the various conveniences, I don't want to see PG go down the road WOW did, where everything got easier and easier.

Storage is one of those. Many people suggest your house should be able to access all storage areas. I actually dislike the idea. Storage becomes generic and easy and a house gives someone a huge advantage over other players. Storage in the house? Sure, that makes sense. I'd like to see a house start with basic storage and you have to build more. A storage box takes wood, rivets, enchanted nails...whatever. Making more storage chests and giving them to the house increases storage. Make it something to work for like the Warden chest. Maybe even link your house to Statehelm storage. But not further.

[shauma]

Having your house be a central repository so you could organize your storage across all areas would be great. Would it detract from the game in some way, hadn't considered it. Maybe a special carpentry item, so it's timed, so you could have 30 minutes with a big transfer box to re-arrange stuff, but make it a difficult item to craft so you couldn't just drop one any-old-time?

[Mikhaila]

Having your house be a central repository so you could organize your storage across all areas would be great. Would it detract from the game in some way, hadn't considered it. Maybe a special carpentry item, so it's timed, so you could have 30 minutes with a big transfer box to re-arrange stuff, but make it a difficult item to craft so you couldn't just drop one any-old-time?

Compare that to what we have now. Maxing out your bank is hugely expensive with the far end being 200k a slot. The little box is 75 event tokens costing millions. The house as described worth be worth 10's of millions compared to that. All the storage you don't use in out of the way places like FR, Serb Hills, Almulna, chest in a cave, ri-shin shrine, chest on the island etc etc. It's all just the same now, assessible from one spot. A massive advantage.

And yet everyone is going to want a house. And want them more, the more advantages we beg to have added to them. So does the cost go up massively, and only the very rich players can afford one with in-game cash? It makes a donation that gets you a house more of a PTW situation, the better the house gets.

The drive to get more storage is one of the things that drives exploration. And the need for the favor to get that storage. Some people don't like it, but it's an underlaying component of what makes the game work.

We also have a LOT of storage. It compensates for having it spread around.

[Mcnasty]

I have read a good many of these replies. I wish to say that in my experience in this game Eric has never done anything that would screw up play or piss off anyone in such a way. Yes we have had stuff not work, And he hears the screams just fine. Next thing you know we get a big tweak and it is either fixed or gone. I say chill out and give input to your best ability. And folks if you can use existing code that can be tweaked rather than a complete rewrite it is helpful too. I have had great success in getting things added to game through suggestion however it all required extreme patients.

[Ransel]

There are so many great ideas out there for player housing which makes it difficult to know how to implement it imo.

My suggestion would be to make player housing simple at first then slowly add on different functionalities. This might help preserve the games "balance" and assist devs in monitoring how player housing is affecting the overall state of the game.

Personally, I'm on the fence about crafting in player housing because of how I've seen it implemented in other games. I'll have to think about all the bad stuff I've seen over the years and write it down later when I get a chance. There might be ways to avoid some of these bad things.

Here are some suggestions for a potential a "soft launch" of player housing in the future.

* Focus on mostly cosmetic things like decorations and furniture.

* Create a few new crafting recipes that fall under existing trade skills. Ie.. like carpenty/leatherworking recipe to make a mannequin that you can hang / store your favorite set of armor on and view it, or some flower arranging recipes that can make bouquets to place around your house. Possibilities are endless, but maybe just make a few to start.

* Maybe a few minor bonuses to something like non-fiction writing / calligraphy. (who doesn't write better at home!)

* Storage? I think storage should be avoided for the most part, but a small bit of storage makes sense. The reason? Too much storage in a player house will make other forms of storage obsolete. Also, players will find a way to fast travel to the player house even if devs don't implement a direct teleport to your house. Ie.. teleport to town then walk a few steps to your house, at which point the devs are like "why not just allow direct teleport to house!"

* Make special banners, pennants, tapestries, etc that you can hang up to show off your achievements in the game.


Those are some of my initial thoughts. Player housing is a great thing, but it can turn into a bit of a rabbit-hole and quickly destroy the balance of a game if not implemented properly. It's for this reason that I suggest slowly working on the player housing system.