Some MMOs have it, some don’t, some have no plans to introduce it, but the subject of player housing has come up with reference to Star Wars: the Old Republic, and I’d like to offer thoughts on the subject to our faithful readers. My experiences with MMO-based player housing mostly revolve around the methodology of Lord of the Rings Online, so I’ll be curious to hear from folks from other games with other experiences. As always, your mileage may vary.
“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!”
The biggest-name MMO World of Warcraft has survived eight years now with no player housing. LotRO introduced player housing five years ago and is only now announcing their first major revamp of the system. Currently their model involves set-aside areas near the four races’ starting areas, each with instanced ‘neighborhoods’ to allow the same relatively small map of twenty to thirty homes to be reused repeatedly. There’s no race requirement to purchasing, so your dwarf can buy a house in the elven area and vice versa, and each race’s general aesthetic is used to create the homes in that specific area. There is a weekly rent you have to pay and it lets you pay up to six weeks in advance, so it creates a bit of a cash-sink for the economy. If you forget to pay or stop playing, your house gets locked and your stuff put into escrow and you have to pay a relatively small fee to get it back. The houses can be decorated with various items found in-game or crafted, and the number of ‘hooks’ that you can use for decorating depends on the size of the house.
The houses also offer one, two, or three shared ‘housing containers’ of thirty slots that any authorized characters can pop in, drop stuff off or take it out. By default, your own characters have automatic access, but you can give your entire kinship access to your personal house if you want or just a set list of trusted friends… which you might want to be careful about doing, since one option also grants them access to redecorate. Just trust me on this one. For a kinship house, the leader can authorize or revoke the privilege for people based on name or kinship rank. Also, unlike SWTOR, LotRO‘s kinship houses and their containers are their only method for a guild bank of sorts, so a maximum of ninety slots seems quite tiny, even for a small kinship like mine. Admittedly, they’ve announced that they’re completely overhauling the system here shortly, so hopefully they’ll be kinder in terms of granting a guild bank option.
‘Next on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition…’
That being said, is player housing something that we should ask BioWare to keep working on? We know they were at one point namedropping the phrase ‘guild capital ship’, which might be analogous to a kinship house in LotRO. Are there significant numbers of players interested in housing? I can certainly see a major benefit to roleplayers and storytellers wanting to play off the ‘family’ aspect of a Legacy and having housing that all members of a Legacy can access. It certainly would help immersion to say ‘I’m a Corellian’ and be able to have a home there, and it would be nice to roleplay somewhere other than in a cantina, fleet, or randomly out in the galaxy. However, I’m not entirely sure that there are enough role-players (even on the RP servers) to justify the sort of time and effort that it would take to implement. Some might immediately wonder why player housing would even really be necessary, considering every player has a ship with access to the same cargo hold you can check out on fleet or any planet, and you can purchase unlocks to put things such as the mailbox and a repair droid on board. The only huge benefit to having a player home in terms of game mechanics is having some sort of additional shared storage so you don’t have to always be mailing stuff to your alts, but this could be tied into the usual banking system the way EverQuest and LotRO do it.
The fact that you can mail stuff cross-faction now, and with how the new reputation system is tied into a Legacy, it seems as if any solution for player housing will require either a completely separate new area that anyone with a ship could get to or it would by default have to be located somewhere that allows both major factions to show up without getting nuked from orbit, even on PVP servers. This automatically rules out either faction’s starter or capital planets, as well as Taris and Balmorra. What is left is Alderaan, Belsavis, Corellia, Hoth, Ilum, Nar Shaddaa, Quesh, Voss, and Tatooine, with Makeb getting tossed into the ring after Rise of the Hutt Cartel goes live. Of those, let’s rule out Prison Planet Belsavis, PVP Planet Ilum, and Toxic Atmosphere Planet Quesh as places no reasonably-sane person is actually going to want to buy a home.
So, the others have varying possibilities (hot tubs on Hoth, woohoo!), but due to the fact you can’t just go wandering on a high-level planet as a lowbie, perhaps the best choice would be Nar Shaddaa if it has to be somewhere currently extant or soon-to-be extant on the game, which will restrict the possibilities for the ‘look’ of these personal homes. Although, any of the contested planets could work if they rigged up a special travel route from either faction’s spaceport so a lowbie Corellian could ‘visit home’ without getting his butt handed to him by a high-level enemy, for example. Otherwise, it would have to be somewhere all-new that anyone past their starter planet could get to.
Reasonably, it should allow for open-air estates like one would normally expect on a planet, apartments or flats, and just regular-joe sorts of houses. Ideally, there should be variations to allow each race’s planetary aesthetic to shine, just like LotRO has their dwarves’ homes be underground and built primarily of stone, while the hobbits get hobbit-holes just like Tolkien described in his books. I sense BioWare’s art department would either have a field day with this challenge or swear mightily at whichever higher-up mandated they begin work on it. Maybe an easier implementation is the notion of decorating one’s personal ship beyond putting a somewhat silly customization on the ship droids. Would be nice if I could nuke the mildly sexist pin-up in my female Trooper’s ship (she doesn’t swing that way).
Perhaps the biggest reason why BioWare would offer up player housing, despite the number of reasons why it would possibly be a logistical nightmare to implement, is the simple fact that home decorations are an obvious thing to include in the cartel market as well, either in the ‘pray you don’t get lounge-wear or a flag again’ cartel packs or selling individual items for limited periods of time. A secondary consideration is that you can give crafters something new to create. Considering the current crew skills on tap, not too many skills are related to interior decorating, but perhaps their scope could be broadened, or maybe they could even create a whole new craft to cover it. Both options have worked very well for Lord of the Rings Online, so it might work here too.
So, what do you think, TORWarriors? Do you want to have a personal home in the game other than your ship? If so, how would you like to see them implement it? Do you think they actually will give us something like this? Let’s hear what you have to say on the matter!
TORWars Podcast #152: The Terrors of Nuturing the SWTOR Community
I would be satisfied with customization of my ship. Things like flickering lights, change the color of lights, etc. would be pretty darn cool.
I have seen the idea tossed around of “achievement” type decorations that would be placed around a ship. That would be pretty neat as well. Although i could see our personal starships becoming pretty cluttered quickly (especially the BH ship) so a guild ship would be best for this.
I played FF11 and that had player housing in it. It was pretty simple, but added something extra to do.
Some people had fun with it others could care less.
In the end, they more they can offer up to people to keep players playing, it gets my vote.
I agree with BK the ships should be like player housing, Change lights, furniture, add trouphies ect…
I third the idea of more customization on personal ships. Those pretty much are our player housing. Just make it easier for friends to access your ship possibly. Basically, if your online, and your ship is on the same planet as your friend or guild mate, they can go to the space port and have the option of entering your ship whether your there or not. Or you can lock your ship if you wish no one to enter.
I also like the idea of “trophies” aboard your ship. But you can choose where to put them and how they are displayed if you wish to display them at all.
Maybe even “skins” for the inside of your ship. Use the same floor plan but a number of aesthetic differences.
um… farmville
ps, love the podcast, i find myself rocking to the intro while leaving work on tuesday and thursday, mouthing the Lando portion near the end pulling into the driveway “What have we here?”
Normally I’d be in the “decorating our ships will suffice” camp, but it occured to me a while back that as [SEE BELOW FOR SPOILERS] I should really have my own Star Destroyer by now. (Complete with Silencer, of course.)
So yes, I suppose I’m for player housing. Just don’t mind me if I leave the *surface* housing to the peons and cruise around the galaxy in my flagship instead.
—————[INQUISITOR SPOILERS BELOW]—————
a Dark Council member
—————[END SPOILERS AND POST]—————
Personal ship customizations sound great, also id be for going all out for guild capital ships!!
Like many other i’ve experienced player housing from my swg-time. It was amazing, but that was also because of the crafting profession. I doubt we will see anything similar for a long time. We might see housing in swtor build around our ship or capitalships. But I doubt it will be anything huge, since it will lmo take too much work to have any major impact on the game – which it must have, to be worth implementing.
But, if they put down a group to make this a big thing …
Then I would like to see custom build space ships, a rework of the codex, where many of our thropies would come from. Custom funitures, lights, controlpanels and so on. And yet have fixed places for our thropies in our bad ass custom build ships.
A rework of the codex is in the works… or so i have read/heard.
Although… no mention on it in a long while now.
It has so much potential, but alas, it sits a semi-broken feature until one day revamped & optimized.
One of my favorite things about LOTRO is the housing system. I still log into the game from time to time to pay the upkeep. I also play during festivals because I have a list of festival items I want for decorations. Funny how housing is the thing that keeps me going back that game.
SWTOR housing? I agree that the ship would be a nice place for it. I’m not sure if it should be high on the devs’ priority list. But, it would be a nice addition.
I think they could approach housing if they go after it on a guild level. Capital ships as they’ve suggested before could be neat. I’d like to see alternatives like republic/imperial/pirate-mercenary-themed space stations, abandoned asteroid bases, etc.
Guild members could enter their base by ship and interact there, using it as a home base between PVP/PVE queues and to hang out. Fleet would be the alternative. There could be NPCs to give the place a feeling of life other than the guildies and your guild activies. Maybe some ‘guild executive’ npcs that send you on missions to do things for the guild. Guilds could be given a faction loyalty meter of some kind : Loyalist/Mercenary-Neutral/Rebel. The missions given would belong to a specific rep leaning. New sets of missions would show up as your guild reaches completion milestones (e.g. 1000 missions completed).’
If your guild decides to be a rebel within the empire, that could unlock customizations for your station that reflect that mentality.
Adding customization to our individual character ships would be appreciated. I don’t think they’ll push a second housing option that does the same thing as the ship.
I would like to see guild/squadron emblems added and have the individual player ships reflect our affiliation. Maybe a customization slot for the ship equipment pane, and we buy the customization item from a vendor. It’d add a simple personal touch to space combat.
I just wanted to add my voice for letting us customize our ships as personal housing and give guilds the big capital ships for guild housing. They could do so much with the ships that it would be a shame if we ended up with semi-implemented houses that we never really visit.
That is what happed to me in LotRO. I love my house which is right on a pond for easy fishing. Still, I rarely go there beacuse it’s really just a place to drop stuff off.
So, please Bioware can you do more with our ships?
I adored having a house in LOTRO and being able to customize my ship to some degree in STO. I’d love it if we could make our ship more of a home with trophies and other decor!
Legacy ships may be the way forward. Somewhere near to Nar Shaddaa, you have a small fleet of the things.
All your alts can dock their personal starships there (1 hangar per char type) and whichever char you are logged on as, all your alts are hanging around on the capital ship getting on with whatever.
12 chars per account means you need 12 rooms or suites (suites of rooms preferable, but compact as on a ship) each char would be able to decorate their suite to their tastes. You then have central area for command and control (and flying the ship). Portholes could show the local space region, and some sort of legacy bank would be there as well as mail boxes, unlocked legacy perks e.g. practice droids and personal cargo holds in each char’s suite.
This wouldn’t be a capital ship, more a frigate or escort vessel size as clearly a family of 12 don’t generally have their own super star destroyers in which to conduct their family life.
Thoughts?
Player housing? Meh
I remember _in-world_ player housing from Ultima Online. I also remember the massive, horrendous suburban-sprawl it created. It wasn’t pretty and really reduced the immersion of moving through the world.
As far as _instanced_ player housing goes, I don’t think this is the time for it. SWTOR needs people out and about in the world to keep that feel of active, vibrant servers. (Bioware made the mistake of putting a player count in the default UI.) With the drop off of subscribers they really can’t afford another round of “SWTOR’s dying”. It would be a different thing if they tied instanced player housing into the fleet chat channels and player counts. But then you lose the feel of being away from everyone.
Our current ships don’t support much customization, unfortunately. Too many class quest triggers that would need to be redone if there was much customization to the existing ships. If we ever got a chance to earn a different ship perhaps that one could be setup to handle more customization.
As much as people like player housing I don’t see Bioware adding it if/when the player base meets or exceeds their high-water mark. The design effort required and the possible PR downside just works against it currently.
Standard BW Answer: “Yes, we want that in the game too, though we can’t give an estimate for when”.
I just don’t see it happening. Everything BW seem to be doing for the last 12 months is focus on maximum profit for minimum expenditure or panic reactions to player outrage. And who can blame them, given how the game is now? (CC packs to buy armour already in the game since launch).
Developing player housing would be expensive. So unless it was a project that was already in the works before the layoffs happened… I can’t see it being developed, ever.
They can’t make time to develop small things, never mind the big stuff.
/readycheck … 5th March 2012.
Exhibit-A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEYp0pZd2ag#t=1920s
I like LotRO, but I think the way they do housing is poor (I understand that they are currently re-vamping it). If SWTOR can do housing in a similar way it’s done in EQ2 then I will gladly welcome it.
In EQ2 housing you can put almost anything anywhere. There are no ‘hooks’. I also find it nice that some quest rewards are housing items.
I believe it would make the game stronger and retain those individuals who like to work on decorating their homes.
Yeah, we already have housing in the form of our ships. But I’ll definitely vote for customization. I’ve never played an MMO with player housing before, but I’ve played the heck out of the elder scrolls games, and buying+customizing your homes was as much fun for me as the main quest.
If EA would let BW create quests for trophies and ship customizations that would be great. Along with the ability to do take groups of friends on our ships in a meaningful way.
Guild capital ships would be awesome, especially if there was a system in place for upgrading based on either guild size or accomplishments. Maybe some guild quest lines that can be done as large groups…
As a recent migrant from Lotro, and a long-term player of that game, I can say that I think housing adds a great deal of fun and playability to that game. Sure its not of value to everyone, but I imagine (based on personal experience and interaction with a variety of people with different play-styles) that it’s one of that game’s stronger draws (though obviously it has it’s flaws).
As part of the ftp experience, I’ve seen housing act as the primary reason people spent money at all in the game – for a not insignificant number of people, housing is just really really fun. It draws people in, and lets them feel like they’re creating something of their own, creating a little slice of home of their own in the game. Even for me – I’ve spent my fair share of time in Lotro doing deeds, running instances, and/or grinding repetitive quests for housing items alone. Heck, even instance and raid housing drops are sought after, and a reason alone (sometimes to run said content.
I came into Swtor kind of assuming they had a similar system, or something analagous to it. Was kinda disappointing to hear that there isn’t such a system (thought decorating one’s fighter ship with holograms and the like would have been a really really sweet idea). Don’t get me wrong, I really like Swtor so far, and might even sub for a long time – it’s just that the future implementation of housing is something they should seriously consider, as it would go a long way to helping casual ftp’ers and preferred folk remain interested in the game, thereby raising the likelihood that they’ll spend money or sub.