3 Different Houses
There are 3 big ways you can handle player housing. Lets explore a few of them.
Open World- We’ve experience this with Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online. It’s interesting and offers the change of having a player based community just about anywhere. But problematic players can drop houses down on quest zones. Or a city can butt right up against a popular dungeon, etc. The second big issue is the Ghost Town effect of waning player interest and half maintained accounts.
Designated Zones- LoTRO uses this method and it seems to work well. Heck, technically Gaia Online (gasp) used something like this for their player housing. It allows for control over player content, but also acts to ghettoize a region of players. Guild group 1 may never ever meet Guild 2, but sometimes just exploring these player zones is interesting enough in it’s own right.
Apartments- These are the minimalist approach. Phantasy Star Universe was very much like this. You had to search endless series of named ‘rooms’ which the players fill with their various stuff. The only real reason you go to someone’s place is to trade items, chat, or visit their virtual shop. It works, but it’s very impersonal.
The best mix? Hard to tell, but it would be fun to see.
I want instantiated housing or nothing, personally. Especially since the Hero Engine can have thousands of players on a single server, having housing any other way would get ridiculous. I think the ideal thing is Freighter = Housing, but I doubt they’ll go that route.
I actually MUCH prefer Open World housing – I think it’s Epic and Fun and Awesome! But I realize that SOOOO many other people hate it, and I’m happy with any form of player housing pretty much … I just don’t like it when everyone enters their own house from the same point … it kind of makes it like your house is only used/visited by you – and why have a house in a single player game? Everyone should be able to enter anyone else’s house at any time by finding it amongst all the other houses and guild halls. (Guild halls rock!!)
PurpleCliff