"SWG's housing system evolved over time as they learned their lessons, but in the end it taught everyone a lot about how to do in-world housing.  The only real mistake they made was not having a system in place to clean up abandoned homes properly. Games like LotRO came up with systems such as "Escrow" so that when they took your house from you for not paying the maintenance fee, you could go to an NPC and collect the things you left inside it."

Originally posted by Stimz

"SWG's housing system evolved over time as they learned their lessons, but in the end it taught everyone a lot about how to do in-world housing.  The only real mistake they made was not having a system in place to clean up abandoned homes properly. Games like LotRO came up with systems such as "Escrow" so that when they took your house from you for not paying the maintenance fee, you could go to an NPC and collect the things you left inside it."

 

You Forget though, SWG did have a way to clean up abandoned homes, I think it was like Once a year or something, Where they would let you get a mission to go out and call in bombing runs on abandoned homes, then the stuff in it would be packed up and put on the character, so if the person came back later, he could put his house down and get his stuff back.

That was a fun hack / fix they added in much later.  The reason they originally didn't do anything was because the maintenance cost on the houses was set to auto withdraw from your bank account.  Most players had enough credits to pay for housing for ages, and SWG didn't want to piss off players who may come back later and find all their stuff was gone. 

Later they did add the system for packing up your house (though you had to log in and do this), and for the demolition.  The way LOTRO does it is superior in my opinion.  It forces players to be active in the game by not tying the rent / maint fees to your bank, but also has a system for packing up your stuff and making it available to you should you lose your house and return to the game at a later date.

Lessons learned across the board.  All in all, SWG's in-world housing was the best I've seen.  Instances housing, including Rift's Dimenions system, sucks IMO.  If the homes have no context in the game world, who cares?

I been wonderin the same thing, I do know Wildstar will be having floating houses.

In Wurm (almost) all things eventually decay. Buildings and walls and gates decay as well. New people will take-over old abandoned settlements.

Scavenging is a viable game tactic, i.e. finding decaying settlements and hunting for valuable goods there.

Originally posted by Stimz

"SWG's housing system evolved over time as they learned their lessons, but in the end it taught everyone a lot about how to do in-world housing.  The only real mistake they made was not having a system in place to clean up abandoned homes properly. Games like LotRO came up with systems such as "Escrow" so that when they took your house from you for not paying the maintenance fee, you could go to an NPC and collect the things you left inside it."

 

You Forget though, SWG did have a way to clean up abandoned homes, I think it was like Once a year or something, Where they would let you get a mission to go out and call in bombing runs on abandoned homes, then the stuff in it would be packed up and put on the character, so if the person came back later, he could put his house down and get his stuff back.

Yep, house pack up. I swooped on a bitchin space using this, right outside Rori Rebel Outpost. The player doesn't lose anyhting but their spot, and if they had left the game for good it was that much the better for cleaning up.

I think a decay system that allows mobs to spawn in ruins or salvage of the actual structure would be sweet as long as the original player gets his stuff packed up.

Originally posted by VassagoMael
Having limited space is what give the housing value. Unlimited space for housing is basically the same thing as instanced housing.

That's fine as long as it doesn't stay there forever after being built, without some kind of upkeep.  It was problematic in SWG for most of the games life because houses didn't require any upkeep, they could just sit there abondoned for years.

Originally posted by ignore_me

Originally posted by Stimz

"SWG's housing system evolved over time as they learned their lessons, but in the end it taught everyone a lot about how to do in-world housing.  The only real mistake they made was not having a system in place to clean up abandoned homes properly. Games like LotRO came up with systems such as "Escrow" so that when they took your house from you for not paying the maintenance fee, you could go to an NPC and collect the things you left inside it."

 

You Forget though, SWG did have a way to clean up abandoned homes, I think it was like Once a year or something, Where they would let you get a mission to go out and call in bombing runs on abandoned homes, then the stuff in it would be packed up and put on the character, so if the person came back later, he could put his house down and get his stuff back.

Yep, house pack up. I swooped on a bitchin space using this, right outside Rori Rebel Outpost. The player doesn't lose anyhting but their spot, and if they had left the game for good it was that much the better for cleaning up.

I think a decay system that allows mobs to spawn in ruins or salvage of the actual structure would be sweet as long as the original player gets his stuff packed up.

This wasn't there for the first few years though and was only implemented when people complained about abandoned houses taking up valuable land.

Originally posted by XAPGames

I have a question about player built / owned housing that exists in the main world of a game (not instanced neighborhoods).  The mechanics of it make sense, but what is to prevent running out of room to build new houses?

 

How did games like SWG handle this?

 

Back in the day in UO (I think around 03-04) they released the Age of Shadow's xpac that introduce a new landmass and much,much more housing.The problem with this was,that it looked like a housing developemnet for the most part.Freakin houses all over.To me it took the feel of UO out of the game in that area (Malas).

I still play the game but avoid Malas except when looking for good's.

Originally posted by niceguy3978

Originally posted by VassagoMael
Having limited space is what give the housing value. Unlimited space for housing is basically the same thing as instanced housing.

That's fine as long as it doesn't stay there forever after being built, without some kind of upkeep.  It was problematic in SWG for most of the games life because houses didn't require any upkeep, they could just sit there abondoned for years.

Just have some sort of property tax that gets rid of houses on accounts that dont log in very often.

This is also how you handle guilds by the way, guild halls should just require a large block of property, say an entire city block, and on that they can build a large guild structure. Then let individual guild members have their own instanced appartment within the guild hall. use a PSU style adress system where you can enter your friends instanced dwellings if they let you.

Make actual houses not only expensive but require certain things to get, say permission from the local government/king/whatever that you get after doing something thats hard to do (certain quests, maybe pvp achivements, certain reputation, it could probably vary from location to location for flavor). Perhaps even require certain kinds of community service in the form of requiring certain sorts of donations or quests or something per week to keep your title and ability to own property.

You should also probably make it account based and not character based. Let peoples alts use their houses if they want, but a limit of one per account.

As long as you keep inactive people from clogging up space and provide free/low cost instanced apparements for most people it really shoudn't be that big of a problem.

I think working in guild halls in the system is important however, people who may want something 'more' than a completly generic appartment may feel fine with having a room located in their guilds headquarters.