The Theory Of

Here you'll find discussion of all manner of topics relating to the theory of multiplayer games. As I see it, anyway. A note to commentors: if you stray off-topic or if your reply contains ad hominem attacks, your comment will be deleted.

Author: JB47394

This is an odd idea, and has some good points, but I think the idea as a whole wouldn't work very well.

I think what would happen is you would have houses fading in and out in and out all day long. It'd be like a light show, except with houses. No doubt it could work, but it would just be weird to see. I think is also takes away from the RPG experience as a whole.

If you're interested in player housing, play a trial of Star Wars Galaxies, there's loads of houses on that game. A player buys a house deed, chooses a planet, then finds a spot to place it. It sits there until they decide to move it. So everyone sees their house, (although they all pretty much look the same, just different styles for different planets), the house can be entered if it is set to "Public", it may not be entered if it is set to "Private". They may place it wherever they want, as long as it's not in an NPC's city limits. They may place it in player cities as long as they have permission from the mayor. The player has 10 total lots to place "structures". Some people have more than one house, some have three. The contents of the house also don't load until you walk inside it, which is good because some people have over 400 items in their house.

I'd have to agree with Nineven. Also take into account that some cities are large trading hubs, using Ironforge as an example. With just players alone before the AH was sync'd with allied cities it would bog down even my computer, much less a low end computer. So take into account all these people constantly zoning in and out, and the houses zoning in and out as well and you have a recipe for mad lag. Better option would be how UO and SWG did it.  Make the worlds actually big enough to support the playerbase and you'll have cities sprining to life and actually adding to something to the game like in SWG.

I have some ideas of my own how I'd approach virtual living. Yours is a bit different from what I pictured. I'm not going to post critique right now on this concept. Being so original and unconventional it's really hard to imagine without something else concrete to refer to

the only thing I'm concered with here is... how do you find your house?

the general idea intrigues me.

Okay after some thought, some repsonses:

#1 For me, I like player run cities because that gives a Guild a place to congregate. Looks like you integrated that one. Nice. I like this as an option because it allows a Guild to live together and always see each other and support each other. But in order for all that to work the game has to be something like EVE or Shadowbane (it could be PVE but the concept is that all activities are localized)

#2 Moving houses I am unclear on the benefits I guess. I see you mention banks. Hm, I think Banks exist in mmorpg as a central hub to get players to congregate. I suppose in your concept players could still see other in this dynamic neighborhood?

#3 Selling goods at a house is interesting. I wonder how that affects centralized markets? I dont know...

eh, not much to say I just havent seen anything like this one. you get 5 stars for originality. Do you really want to play a game with this feature? Any more examples? Perhaps you holding back a critical feature you would implement thus we're not in the loop with you.

Now to think of it this concept is similar to my own thoughts. However, my concept didn't really have a dynamic neighborhood. So my idea was more technically feasible with current tech. I think yours might be doable as well tho if I follow

Although Feasible, I really don't see this as practical.  Many games use the house as a location to sell gear.  If the house is popping up in different locations everytime a person zones, this game mechanic is out the window.  Also, finding a person's house that you'd like to visit, for whatever reason, would be next to impossible, without coding some complicated search and pathing feature.  Really, it doesn't make any sense. 

In UO houses served the function of having the merchant NPCs and it showed off all your gear and accomplishments. It would seem to me a house can be used as a trophy case or museum of sorts. If the House teleports then you lose that feeling. also, houses are supposed to be the one thing that's true persistant state. The cool thing bout having your house is that it is always online actually

I love how Oblivion ( not an mmo but still good) does housing how u buy it in a certain town and u need to go to that town to use it..

I believe player housing should be something that you really have to work for, such as Ultima Online. Not it being one of the FIRST things you're supposed to do, such as Star Wars Galaxies.

I believe the interest in player made housing is going to come to an end soon. Unless it becomes more lucrative. What's more fun, getting a house bought, built and placed within 2 hours? Or actually trying and commiting yourself to aquiring your house...

I garente if anyone could get a house within 2 hours in RL the housing market would crash. So why not the "Game housing Market"?

Nineven: "I think what would happen is you would have houses fading in and out in and out all day long. It'd be like a light show, except with houses."

Yeah, something would have to be done about that.  Note that I'm not talking about stuffing this idea into an existing game - particularly not World of Warcraft.  It would require a game that is structured to match this housing concept.

Kaltesherz: "Better option would be how UO and SWG did it.  Make the worlds actually big enough to support the playerbase and you'll have cities sprining to life and actually adding to something to the game like in SWG."

Clearly I disagree.  Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies are precisely what I don't want to see.  A city has far more life when its residents are online.

vajuras: "I suppose in your concept players could still see other in this dynamic neighborhood?'

Of course.  And every house would represent a player who is logged on and somewhere nearby.  Ideally, there would be activities that take place only in towns.  So if you want to craft a certain item, you go to a town.  If lots of other players want to craft items, they'll go to the same town.  The housing will grow and the town will feel more dynamic because there are many characters there.

Note that this technique concentrates characters far better than sprawling fixed housing.  Everyone who does anything in town converges on the same small area.  That area depends on the number of players who are playing their characters nearby.

vajuras: "Selling goods at a house is interesting. I wonder how that affects centralized markets?"

A game with a marketplace as important to the game as EVE Online could not tolerate housing like this.  Moving a house would be moving all the goods inside it.  This style of housing works best in a game that already has portable goods through a central storage system (aka 'a bank').

vajuras: "Perhaps you holding back a critical feature you would implement thus we're not in the loop with you."

What I'm holding back is that I'm not building a game for the hardcore gamers who want their MMO to be an alternate life.  I view MMOs as games, in the vein of hide-and-seek, tennis and chess.  A fanciful feature that permits houses to always be local to my character is perfectly acceptable if I want my players to visit a town and know that if they visit a big town, it's an active town - not just a town with a lot of houses.

It's just a different way of looking at MMOs.

mellobri: "Really, it doesn't make any sense. "

It depends on the game that it is put into and who plays it.  It makes sense to me even if it doesn't to you.

vajuras: "In UO houses served the function of having the merchant NPCs and it showed off all your gear and accomplishments."

That's one of those features of housing that I don't care about.  I don't care for braggarts, nor do I wish to be tempted to be one.

Pepsi: "I love how Oblivion ( not an mmo but still good) does housing how u buy it in a certain town and u need to go to that town to use it.."

A trait that I specifically want to eliminate from housing.  That was the source of my "millstone" comment.

Ah yes your version of houses differ quite vastly from what I had in mind. Not sure why you think owning a house is a "hardcore" activity though. It's actually quite casual building a house and inviting a friend over to check it out. Nothing at all hardcore about having a house really from what I've been exposed too

Realy intresting idea but I honestly don't think it would work. Apart from the already mentioned constant Lightshow going on it would realy destroy any immersion in the game. If I buy a house and place it in a city I do it because of the community, because I like the style of the city or the surrounding area etc. Having the house pop up wherever I go would seriously destroy this feeling of home.

Another problem I see is what is the house actually good for. People can't visit you because it's constantly somewhere else, setting up a shop is equally impossible. How are customers going to find you and if the shop disapears when the player logs out when are you going to sell something? You'd have to be online all day and stand around somewhere in the region just to let customers in your shop. The house would only be a personal storage and function exactly like banks do in current games.

I understand that the whole point of this concept is to make towns more lively but I think moving the house with the player is the wrong way to aproach this. Much more houses and citys need to be made useful. Letting players place shops and buildings NPC Cities don't have or even a game completely without larger NPC cities so the players have to rely on Player Cities. Housing is pretty much a roleplay thing, if you want to make it attractive for all players alike you have to force them. As long as there are NPC cites that offer all services a Player run City could and even more there is no point for players to actually travel all the way to a player citiy out in the woods except maybe for roleplaying.

I probably  should add that I'm a SWG player and setting up shops with NPCs that sell your stuff is how I imagine a shop should work in a game. If the crafting system is going to be more basic like WoW or Lotro a marketplace and selling personally would probably suffice to sell your goods and the whole "the shop disappears" passage above can be ignored.

vajuras: "Not sure why you think owning a house is a "hardcore" activity though."

Floh commented on immersion, and that's a better notion of what I'm not interested in.  I'm not concerned with immersion in the fiction of the game.  I'm more interested in the mechanics of the game.  I used the term hardcore because once players get immersed in a game,  the game takes on importance in their mind.  People get emotional.

Floh: "Apart from the already mentioned constant Lightshow going on it would realy destroy any immersion in the game."

As I mentioned to vajuras above, immersion is definitely not part of my design goals.  I want players immersed in their interactions with other players, not the game.  The game is simply a vehicle to get players to interact.

Floh: "Having the house pop up wherever I go would seriously destroy this feeling of home."

Agreed.  But it would create a different feeling, and it's the one that I was after: the town you see is a live town.  It's difficult for me to make claims about it without having a game to show to you.

Floh: "Another problem I see is what is the house actually good for."

It's good for doing things that require a house or a structure.  Houses are tools for characters to use in game activities.

Floh: "Housing is pretty much a roleplay thing"

Housing is just part of the big picture.  These are 'permanent' structures that players use to access certain types of entertainment.  I'm removing their permanence so that if the player moves, their access to that entertainment moves with them.

So I want structures to stop being the tool of a roleplayer and become the tool of someone who wants to engage in some activity that happens to involve a structure.  Those structures should be placed in a town layout, without lots of dead wood.  That led me to the idea of portable housing.  But it's really portable structures.

Floh: "I probably  should add that I'm a SWG player and setting up shops with NPCs that sell your stuff is how I imagine a shop should work in a game."

Whatever is needed.  I look to EVE Online when I consider game economies.  Theirs works.  Players record goods for sale with NPC shops, and other players come along and buy through those NPC shops.  That's a perfectly viable model.

Players could put up goods for sale in a town, and whatever NPC shops were required would come into being.  So if you're crafting silver items and trying to sell them in your town, an NPC shop would exist to support those sales.  It might start out as a nicknack shop, but if there was enough inventory, it might grow into a Silver Goods Shop, with multiple NPCs manning the store to deal with potential buyers.

Structures are for a purpose, and they only exist so long as that purpose can be realized.  If you are not online, then your storage is not needed and it i s taken out of the game, just as your character is.  Because bringing back a small percentage of structures in static locations would produce no sense of community, I chose to clump the structures dynamically.

Note that your goods for sale remain in the game in the NPC shop after you log out because their purpose can still be realized.  But a smithy without a smith is useless as a structure and is taken out of the game.

One thing that I agree with you about is the division between NPC cities and player cities.  As I've mentioned, NPC services should be an outgrowth of player activities, meaning that players are the backbone of the cities, with NPCs providing specific services within those player cities.  Such as the retail shops.

Thanks for the replies, everyone.  You got me thinking.

Interesting concept, as always.

I could see this happening in a high-fantasy/scifi game, a more 'realistic' title is obviously an enormous challenge for a dynamic housing system like this.

I really liked the idea of towns developing based on the amount of players in the region. This could turn into a social experiment where players from a certain region would advertise their city to attract more players thus developing their town. Distinctly like how things work in EVE at the moment, Alliances control certain trade hotspots based on their influence.

Hrothmund: "I could see this happening in a high-fantasy/scifi game, a more 'realistic' title is obviously an enormous challenge for a dynamic housing system like this."

Yes, I've used the term 'fanciful' to describe this.  Realism is decidedly not a goal.  I wonder how the essential spirit of the system could be adapted, however.  The goal is to eliminate unused content such as dead monsters, logged off characters, completed instances and so forth.  I've applied it to structures, but I wonder what other applications there might be.

Hrothmund: "This could turn into a social experiment where players from a certain region would advertise their city to attract more players thus developing their town."

It's always interesting to see how people respond to game systems.  It would never have occurred to me to take the time to 'game' the town upgrade system.  After all, it's temporary.  Any upgrades would last only as long as players are logged in and possibly only if they're close to the settlement.

I would sincerely hope that the players had far more entertaining pursuits available to them than that.