Housing as described here is HIGHLY unlikely. In multiple interviews Hartsman has stated that if it ever comes it will not be easy to get and also have very few if any amenities. He launched guild housing in EQ2 and saw Qeynos and Freeport die virtually over night. He sees functional housing as a detriment to the over all server community. It is also why there are not bankers and AH in every major zone as well (another interview). He wants to basically force people into the cities to keep them feeling "alive".

Here is just one of the multitude of interviews where he addresses the topic. I selected this one because he is sounding the most diplomatic here http://www.riftwatchers.com/2011/03/...n-the-way-out/ . In otgers he is much more dogmatic hence the "eye roll" comment by the interviewer. It's about 1 min 47 secs from the end.

So might we get some sort of housing? Yeah. At this same time I think it is pretty clear NO amentities. Just look at the guild perks and dummies in the court yard. These are all EQ2 guild hall amenities implemented without the guild hall because he sees what he implemented in EQ2 as a mistake.

"What's the solution to this flaw, in MMORPGs? "

Rental property in NPC Cities.  There, next unsolvable complicated problem please.

Originally posted by PyscoJuggalo

"What's the solution to this flaw, in MMORPGs? "

 

Rental property in NPC Cities.  There next unsolvable complicated problem please.

No surprise really.  Instancing kills main world activity.

I think Anarchy Online (AO) and to an extent Puzzle Pirates has solved or at least worked around this with instanced housing hubs.

In AO, there would be an apartment block present where you could go to your particular house. In Puzzle Pirates, each type of shop (Smith, Tailor, Shipwright, etc..) would show a list of different shops run by various players that you could enter.

To extend this to a game where you have player controlled cities, you could have specially designated buildings that allow you to traverse various instances of the same physical location. Perhaps even offer a service where someone pays to have their shop being the default instance.

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

    Personally, I think the solution is fairly simple.  Make your Guild Housing so that it has a "Guild Bank" terminal (or Player Housing with a "Personal Bank" terminal), but pretty much nothing else except cosmetics.  Also allow players to bring other players in so you can show it off.

Originally posted by Robokapp

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

 

 

This. Non-instanced housing kills this problem dead.

Originally posted by Robokapp

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

I agree.  Personally I favor purchase rather than build, but only because it's easier to program. 

Originally posted by Robokapp

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

Well said.

It was instancing that killed Q and Freep, not guildhouses.

build...buy...you get the idea. the house is just a house. a pair of walls with an interior. not something behind a loading screen.

not something where people go into an vanish from the outside (virtual) world.

it's simple. they have to complicate it with instancing. it can be so simple...does every building have a loading screen when you get through the door? no. why would a player house need to?

edit: adding onto this idea. I looks at various "npc cities" like stormwind or the few towns I visited in lineage 2. big huge buildings...with one big room and 2 guys sitting in a corner. looking at stormwind for example, how many buildings and stores actually serve a prupose?

they're struggling to create cities of "city-like" sizes because they have nothing to fill the builings up with. This is where we can come in. We can make cities, make them grow, by expanding on outskirts, and they only need to give us a handful of key administrative structures like bank, action house, maybe a general goods store etc. We can settle the fields around and form the city. save them the task of figuring out what pointless npc to put in nameless building #23321. should he sell roasted rats or shoe strings?

Originally posted by Robokapp

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

 

 

Something that I thought worked rather well in Vanguard.

Originally posted by Robokapp

build...buy...you get the idea. the house is just a house. a pair of walls with an interior. not something behind a loading screen.

not something where people go into an vanish from the outside (virtual) world.

it's simple. they have to complicate it with instancing. it can be so simple...does every building have a loading screen when you get through the door? no. why would a player house need to?

Because every town just have about 6 -25 houses for players in them.

But yeah, it is mainly lazy devs that is behind the whole problem. Let player rent uninstanced houses, and if they don't pay the rent they would eventually get evicted, like IRL so noone who has quit hogs all the good houses.

 Tibia did something similar, rentable houses. It worked so well in that game, but not sure if its gonna work in mainstream themepark games.

In tibia you had full loot pvp, open world, and people were actually fighting over some of better houses (some with terraces and stuff :p). Its basically UO-lite (with just fighting and housing :p), but its isometric view really works the best with said rentable houses, as you could place stuff on the floor for people to look at it when passing by (thru the window or doors). And that game still has like 50-60k players online at any given time, i believe? Despite having worse graphics than UO :P My point being, if implemented well, out of those 60k people, you couldnt find a single person who wouldnt want one of houses in that game, because it was well worth it. And it wasnt instanced.

And also, no city only had 10-20 spots each, some had 100's and you had to pay rent every 2 weeks or so, or your house goes back to auction. Im sure how adding a few houses to each town in any mmo couldnt be such a huge problem? Instanced housing usually just ends up as glorified warehouse, so i actually prefer no housing at all than some crappy instance nobody but its owner gets to see.

Originally posted by dreamscaper

Originally posted by Robokapp

solution is to give space in or near cities to build non-instanced houses.

 

 

 

This. Non-instanced housing kills this problem dead.

That doesn't solve the problem at all though,

The issue being brought up is redundancy, having two things that perform the same function means players will find the one that is the most fun or efficient and largely ignore the other.

It doesn't matter if it is instanced or not, if you can do the same things in your house and cities then there is little reason for players to use both.

The only way to solve redundancy is remove one of the options or give the options totally different functionalities.

naturally a capital city will be

1) on a large river or lake, usually river.

2) in a large open field for room for future development.

this is true hystorically. well a big open field would easily give room for many houses to be installed. they can have 'upkeep'...with gradual decay if not payed until they stop existing. just so the area isnt littered with crap. can have weekly upkeep and maybe 5 stages of deterioriation (1 per week) and on 6th week full removal.

it's...to me its simple. and a town in an open field gives ample space for beginner quests and professions and whatnot to be exercised. the "field" itself could be the hub - not the city. right? space as he asset of value in this context. Maybe as population (measured in numbr of houses) grows, stuff can randomly spawn around the town like ...I'm thinking Majesty here where graveyards, sewers and other monster-spewing things appear naturally as the town grows...

there's potential for some great sand here imo. without taking away from the normal gameplay.

Originally posted by Robokapp

build...buy...you get the idea. the house is just a house. a pair of walls with an interior. not something behind a loading screen.

 

not something where people go into an vanish from the outside (virtual) world.

 

it's simple. they have to complicate it with instancing. it can be so simple...does every building have a loading screen when you get through the door? no. why would a player house need to?

 

 

edit: adding onto this idea. I looks at various "npc cities" like stormwind or the few towns I visited in lineage 2. big huge buildings...with one big room and 2 guys sitting in a corner. looking at stormwind for example, how many buildings and stores actually serve a prupose?

 

they're struggling to create cities of "city-like" sizes because they have nothing to fill the builings up with. This is where we can come in. We can make cities, make them grow, by expanding on outskirts, and they only need to give us a handful of key administrative structures like bank, action house, maybe a general goods store etc. We can settle the fields around and form the city. save them the task of figuring out what pointless npc to put in nameless building #23321. should he sell roasted rats or shoe strings?

Originally posted by Robokapp

naturally a capital city will be

 

1) on a large river or lake, usually river.

2) in a large open field for room for future development.

 

this is true hystorically. well a big open field would easily give room for many houses to be installed. they can have 'upkeep'...with gradual decay if not payed until they stop existing. just so the area isnt littered with crap. can have weekly upkeep and maybe 5 stages of deterioriation (1 per week) and on 6th week full removal.

 

it's...to me its simple. and a town in an open field gives ample space for beginner quests and professions and whatnot to be exercised. the "field" itself could be the hub - not the city. right? space as he asset of value in this context. Maybe as population (measured in numbr of houses) grows, stuff can randomly spawn around the town like ...I'm thinking Majesty here where graveyards, sewers and other monster-spewing things appear naturally as the town grows...

 

there's potential for some great sand here imo. without taking away from the normal gameplay.

Originally posted by JimyHumuHumu

 Tibia did something similar, rentable houses. It worked so well in that game, but not sure if its gonna work in mainstream themepark games.

In tibia you had full loot pvp, open world, and people were actually fighting over some of better houses (some with terraces and stuff :p). Its basically UO-lite (with just fighting and housing :p), but its isometric view really works the best with said rentable houses, as you could place stuff on the floor for people to look at it when passing by (thru the window or doors). And that game still has like 50-60k players online at any given time, i believe? Despite having worse graphics than UO :P My point being, if implemented well, out of those 60k people, you couldnt find a single person who wouldnt want one of houses in that game, because it was well worth it. And it wasnt instanced.

And also, no city only had 10-20 spots each, some had 100's and you had to pay rent every 2 weeks or so, or your house goes back to auction. Im sure how adding a few houses to each town in any mmo couldnt be such a huge problem? Instanced housing usually just ends up as glorified warehouse, so i actually prefer no housing at all than some crappy instance nobody but its owner gets to see.

Houseing dosn't make sense with cities

If you want people to live in the cities they would need apartments, houses are usually far away from cities and built around smaller communities

best thing is for instanced apartments something like FFXI where you have your mog house

Other than that there is simply no room in a city for houseing it takes up way to much space.

Unless you do what GW2 is doing and gives everyone a whole district where they could have their house but that seems a bit much really.