Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Community Debate - Open World Housing vs Instanced Housing

    • 844 posts
    October 22, 2018 11:57 AM PDT

    hushed said:

    Instance housing is my vote.

    Open world housing just means more travel time, in that area. While it would be very cool to have open world housing, we don't presistently stay logged in, can't interact with people at our homes, and very likely won't be spending the majority of our game time in the homes.

    Instance housing allows those who want to decorate a home, have one.

    Open world housing is a recall away. So maybe even closer than an instanced house. Mine was in Vanguard vs. EQ2.

    I could and did interact with people at my physical house, on my housing island.

    You can decorate both.

    • 1479 posts
    October 22, 2018 12:00 PM PDT

    Watemper said:

    Zendrel "What happens is fun little farm bots come in and the race to get plots begins. Once they are all scooped up those accounts will either be sold for cash so you can actually do housing or else the plots themselves will go up on some website for literally hundreds of dollars or more. If you don't pay you wont get it because everything is already taken. If you limit the number of plots it happens easy."

     

    You do know that selling accounts is usually a bannable offense in Pay to play MMOs. Also, purchasing accounts is also bannable. So if that does happen..they have to advertise in game..which will then have the developer team banning those accounts. So I don't think that would happen unless they are very secretive about it. And selling houses like that will not make it secretive and the community members..like me..will report them. So I don't share your fear frankly.

     

    No one said, nowhere, that a house could be bought and built with a fresh level one gorged in plats. Housing can (and should) be gated behind reputation with the area you are willing to build on. You want a house in thronefast ? Better be more than just neutral with the city then.

     

    Edit : that way, ghost characters would simply be denied.

     

     

    @Naunet : Didn't see example of thoses, thus assumed they weren't. Which games did you play with non instanced housing per example ?


    This post was edited by Mauvais_Oeil at October 22, 2018 12:02 PM PDT
    • 844 posts
    October 22, 2018 12:01 PM PDT

    Zendrel said:

    Zendrel "What happens is fun little farm bots come in and the race to get plots begins. Once they are all scooped up those accounts will either be sold for cash so you can actually do housing or else the plots themselves will go up on some website for literally hundreds of dollars or more. If you don't pay you wont get it because everything is already taken. If you limit the number of plots it happens easy."

    Watemper said:

    You do know that selling accounts is usually a bannable offense in Pay to play MMOs. Also, purchasing accounts is also bannable. So if that does happen..they have to advertise in game..which will then have the developer team banning those accounts. So I don't think that would happen unless they are very secretive about it. And selling houses like that will not make it secretive and the community members..like me..will report them. So I don't share your fear frankly.

    Sounds like you are descibing what happened in ArcheAge. Where one account could buy an unlimited number of houses. And housing plot locations were made very attractive, with some having spectacular locations.

    That is not the expected plan for Pantheon I would venture. Probably would follow the Vanguard example. One plot per account. And no 'amazing' one-of locations to fight over.


    This post was edited by zewtastic at October 22, 2018 12:08 PM PDT
    • 696 posts
    October 22, 2018 12:02 PM PDT

     I hope you know the first paragraph is me quoting someone...I just messed the quote thing up and did quotations around what he said lol.


    This post was edited by Watemper at October 22, 2018 12:03 PM PDT
    • 3852 posts
    October 22, 2018 12:04 PM PDT

    I wasn't in archeage to see that landrush. But I have seen the landrushes in other games - it tends to get nasty and produce a lot of hostility. Many people take housing seriously and often a few plots are distinctly better than others - at least in the general opinion.

    Scatter 5,000 plots around the world in little villages of 20 houses each and this probably would be less of an issue. 

    You also would be likely to never see any other person near a house.

    • 844 posts
    October 22, 2018 12:06 PM PDT

    Watemper said:

     I hope you know the first paragraph is me quoting someone...I just messed the quote thing up and did quotations around what he said lol.

    I did see that. Zendrel is kind of trolling I think. Not reading posts and just throwing out mis-information.

     

    I cleaned it up. :)


    This post was edited by zewtastic at October 22, 2018 12:08 PM PDT
    • 696 posts
    October 22, 2018 12:12 PM PDT

    zewtastic said:

    Watemper said:

     I hope you know the first paragraph is me quoting someone...I just messed the quote thing up and did quotations around what he said lol.

    I did see that. Zendrel is kind of trolling I think. Not reading posts and just throwing out mis-information.

     

    I cleaned it up. :)

    Haha I am really dumb when it comes to the blockquote stuff for some reason..so I tend to mess it up when I am trying to edit it down from a big block chain.

    • 844 posts
    October 22, 2018 12:22 PM PDT

    dorotea said:

    I wasn't in archeage to see that landrush. But I have seen the landrushes in other games - it tends to get nasty and produce a lot of hostility. Many people take housing seriously and often a few plots are distinctly better than others - at least in the general opinion.

    Scatter 5,000 plots around the world in little villages of 20 houses each and this probably would be less of an issue. 

    You also would be likely to never see any other person near a house.

    AA was a pretty ugly situation. Players had been in the beta for months and everyone had spotted locations for their house, their guild members locations, etc. On launch the authentication servers crashed very badly, only letting in a small number of players. People that had paid premium money to get early access were blocked from logging in. It turned into massive chaos. When auth servers came back up Trion throttled back player login access. Wait times were in the hundreds of hours. Online players never logged out. Using hacks and cheats to keep their characters active. Premium players started to get their priority access. So they went to first in line to log in. FTP players essentially never got to log in as long as there was a stream of premium players always stepping in front of them in line. 

    Then it was found out bots were buying new housing plots with impunity. People could not figure out how though since the costs for each additional house would dramatically increase the tax costs. Also the bots seemed to be everywhere at all times.

    Myself and another engineer actually tracked that bots were able to access the servers during down times and purchase houses. Regular players were unable to log in when the Auth server was down. Bots just went directly to the game servers bypassing the auth server. It was also discovered that there was a massive bug with the taxation escalation. When ownership of 10 plots was reached taxes went to zero. So the bots could buy unlimited numbers.

    Trion did zero to adress this massive scandle and nothing to fix it or make reparations. But they did immediately introduce a massive bait-and-switch campaign whereby they implemented a huge P2W scheme. And to this day Trion is pretty much a hated MMO publisher among many gamers.


    This post was edited by zewtastic at October 22, 2018 2:27 PM PDT
    • 198 posts
    October 22, 2018 12:24 PM PDT

    I think instanced, but limited housing in or near population centers would be fine.  If banking, crafting, trading, etc is nearby, it should keep those hubs populated, but give players their housing and decoration.

    • 1479 posts
    October 22, 2018 12:43 PM PDT

    zewtastic said:

    AA was a pretty ugly situation. Players had been in the beta for months and everyone had spotted locations for their house, their guild members locations, etc. On launch the authentication servers crashed very badly, only letting in a small number of players. People that had paid premium money to get early access were blocked from logging in. It turned into massive chaos. When auth servers came back up Verant throttled back player login access. Wait times were in the hundreds of hours. Online players never logged out. Using hacks and cheats to keep their characters active. Premium players started to get their priority access. So they went to first in line to log in. FTP players essentially never got to log in as long as there was a stream of premium players always stepping in front of them in line.

    Verant did zero to adress this massive scandle and nothing to fix it or make reparations. But they did immediately introduce a massive bait-and-switch campaign whereby they implemented a huge P2W scheme. And to this day Verant is pretty much a hated MMO publisher among many gamers.

     

    Yegh, let's not start rumors accidentaly, Trion worlds are not verant, neither are XL games.

     

    Edit : cool sum up however, did you work for any of them back then ? That game never interested me so I have no clues of it's history.


    This post was edited by Mauvais_Oeil at October 22, 2018 12:45 PM PDT
    • 3 posts
    October 22, 2018 12:47 PM PDT

    ewwwww neither please :)

    • 646 posts
    October 22, 2018 1:23 PM PDT

    MauvaisOeil said:@Naunet : Didn't see example of thoses, thus assumed they weren't. Which games did you play with non instanced housing per example ?

    ArcheAge and BDO are the two that immediately come to mind that were just horrible housing experiences all around. I also consider FFXIV's housing system to be pseudo-open world, as it comes with all the undesirable limitations (limited customization, low decor limits, limited availability and thus necessary upkeep via forcing you to keep a sub, etc) that open world housing systems invariably have, even if the neighborhoods are technically instanced.

    When I compare my experiences with housing in those games to my experiences in Rift and WildStar (and soon ESO, as I have begun dabbling there), the difference is like night and day. Instanced housing provides me a dramatically better experience overall, in what I'm looking for in housing.

    • 107 posts
    October 22, 2018 1:55 PM PDT

    Watemper said:

    Zendrel "What happens is fun little farm bots come in and the race to get plots begins. Once they are all scooped up those accounts will either be sold for cash so you can actually do housing or else the plots themselves will go up on some website for literally hundreds of dollars or more. If you don't pay you wont get it because everything is already taken. If you limit the number of plots it happens easy."

     

    You do know that selling accounts is usually a bannable offense in Pay to play MMOs. Also, purchasing accounts is also bannable. So if that does happen..they have to advertise in game..which will then have the developer team banning those accounts. So I don't think that would happen unless they are very secretive about it. And selling houses like that will not make it secretive and the community members..like me..will report them. So I don't share your fear frankly.

     

    Bannable or not these things get through. Bots are more sophisticated than ever and the ways to leech money off of MMOs are almost perfected. Advertisements are done on level 1 trial accounts while a website takes care of the payment. It swaps easily and would get through.

     

    Also why call me a troll for pointing out the issues with world housing? Seems like a stupid shot at my personal character and not at my issues. I'm very much not a troll and have seen plenty of MMOs get shut down hard by outside sources like farm bots. This stuff actually worries me te most because no one at VR seems to address how literally every MMO that launches is infested with this garbage and have not said any methods of how they will actually deal with it. Saying it's bannable does not work, this crap still gets through. I want to see pantheon stop this crap before it starts otherwise it will be ruined by the gold sellers.

    • 1399 posts
    October 22, 2018 1:55 PM PDT

    When people in this thread are speaking of instanced housing, are they speaking of each house an separate instance as in EQ2 or are they speaking of an instance with just housing like EQ?

    Or is it even relevant to the opinions?

    • 646 posts
    October 22, 2018 2:06 PM PDT

    Zorkon said:When people in this thread are speaking of instanced housing, are they speaking of each house an separate instance as in EQ2 or are they speaking of an instance with just housing like EQ?

    Or is it even relevant to the opinions?

    Each house as its own instance. And it's certainly relevant, as instanced housing neighborhoods face all the same downsides as open world housing.

    • 844 posts
    October 22, 2018 2:28 PM PDT

    MauvaisOeil said:

    zewtastic said:

    AA was a pretty ugly situation. Players had been in the beta for months and everyone had spotted locations for their house, their guild members locations, etc. On launch the authentication servers crashed very badly, only letting in a small number of players. People that had paid premium money to get early access were blocked from logging in. It turned into massive chaos. When auth servers came back up Verant throttled back player login access. Wait times were in the hundreds of hours. Online players never logged out. Using hacks and cheats to keep their characters active. Premium players started to get their priority access. So they went to first in line to log in. FTP players essentially never got to log in as long as there was a stream of premium players always stepping in front of them in line.

    Verant did zero to adress this massive scandle and nothing to fix it or make reparations. But they did immediately introduce a massive bait-and-switch campaign whereby they implemented a huge P2W scheme. And to this day Verant is pretty much a hated MMO publisher among many gamers.

     

    Yegh, let's not start rumors accidentaly, Trion worlds are not verant, neither are XL games. 

    Edit : cool sum up however, did you work for any of them back then ? That game never interested me so I have no clues of it's history.

    Oh yeah My Bad!. Brain fart. I fixed it. Definitely NOT Verant.

    • 844 posts
    October 22, 2018 2:36 PM PDT

    zendrel said:

    Watemper said:

    Zendrel "What happens is fun little farm bots come in and the race to get plots begins. Once they are all scooped up those accounts will either be sold for cash so you can actually do housing or else the plots themselves will go up on some website for literally hundreds of dollars or more. If you don't pay you wont get it because everything is already taken. If you limit the number of plots it happens easy."

     

    You do know that selling accounts is usually a bannable offense in Pay to play MMOs. Also, purchasing accounts is also bannable. So if that does happen..they have to advertise in game..which will then have the developer team banning those accounts. So I don't think that would happen unless they are very secretive about it. And selling houses like that will not make it secretive and the community members..like me..will report them. So I don't share your fear frankly.

    Bannable or not these things get through. Bots are more sophisticated than ever and the ways to leech money off of MMOs are almost perfected. Advertisements are done on level 1 trial accounts while a website takes care of the payment. It swaps easily and would get through 

    Also why call me a troll for pointing out the issues with world housing? Seems like a stupid shot at my personal character and not at my issues. I'm very much not a troll and have seen plenty of MMOs get shut down hard by outside sources like farm bots. This stuff actually worries me te most because no one at VR seems to address how literally every MMO that launches is infested with this garbage and have not said any methods of how they will actually deal with it. Saying it's bannable does not work, this crap still gets through. I want to see pantheon stop this crap before it starts otherwise it will be ruined by the gold sellers.

    Trolling is making stuff up without any evidence or actual examples. Just to be outrageous or incite some reaction. Just spewing out your opinions with zero evidence or examples to support said opinion is simply trolling. Since your opinions were proven to be wrong in previous posts.

    You do it again right here: "I'm very much not a troll and have seen plenty of MMOs get shut down hard by outside sources like farm bots."

    Zero evidence, zero examples. Just a random statement with nothing to support it. What games, what bots, what farming, what MMOs, How long? When? What studio. Where is the evidence bots caused anything like you claim.

    • 646 posts
    October 22, 2018 2:46 PM PDT

    zewtastic said:Zero evidence, zero examples. Just a random statement with nothing to support it. What games, what bots, what farming, what MMOs, How long? When? What studio. Where is the evidence bots caused anything like you claim.

    They aren't bots, however... Until recent, highly restrictive changes in FFXIV's housing, the housing market was controlled by just a few, extremely wealthy players who ran guilds that bought up all available houses the moment they became available and then charged 5x or more the actual housing cost for people to get them to relinquish them.

    • 107 posts
    October 22, 2018 3:21 PM PDT

    zewtastic said:

    zendrel said:

    Watemper said:

    Zendrel "What happens is fun little farm bots come in and the race to get plots begins. Once they are all scooped up those accounts will either be sold for cash so you can actually do housing or else the plots themselves will go up on some website for literally hundreds of dollars or more. If you don't pay you wont get it because everything is already taken. If you limit the number of plots it happens easy."

     

    You do know that selling accounts is usually a bannable offense in Pay to play MMOs. Also, purchasing accounts is also bannable. So if that does happen..they have to advertise in game..which will then have the developer team banning those accounts. So I don't think that would happen unless they are very secretive about it. And selling houses like that will not make it secretive and the community members..like me..will report them. So I don't share your fear frankly.

    Bannable or not these things get through. Bots are more sophisticated than ever and the ways to leech money off of MMOs are almost perfected. Advertisements are done on level 1 trial accounts while a website takes care of the payment. It swaps easily and would get through 

    Also why call me a troll for pointing out the issues with world housing? Seems like a stupid shot at my personal character and not at my issues. I'm very much not a troll and have seen plenty of MMOs get shut down hard by outside sources like farm bots. This stuff actually worries me te most because no one at VR seems to address how literally every MMO that launches is infested with this garbage and have not said any methods of how they will actually deal with it. Saying it's bannable does not work, this crap still gets through. I want to see pantheon stop this crap before it starts otherwise it will be ruined by the gold sellers.

    Trolling is making stuff up without any evidence or actual examples. Just to be outrageous or incite some reaction. Just spewing out your opinions with zero evidence or examples to support said opinion is simply trolling. Since your opinions were proven to be wrong in previous posts.

    You do it again right here: "I'm very much not a troll and have seen plenty of MMOs get shut down hard by outside sources like farm bots."

    Zero evidence, zero examples. Just a random statement with nothing to support it. What games, what bots, what farming, what MMOs, How long? When? What studio. Where is the evidence bots caused anything like you claim.

     

    Yeah no there is a crap load of evidence is why i dont mention it. final fantasy, wildstar, elder scrolls, eve, pretty much every game has some form of a small group owning like everything because of the use of bots and such. The fact that I have to mention the specifics mean you clearly have not played launch of many games. Every single time day 1 DDOS attacks, farm bot swarms in pvp battlegrounds, farm bots on nodes with speed hacks, etc etc etc. If you open up an opportunity for a computer to exploit something it will happen nowadays. In wildstar you couldnt even grab a node because of speed hacking bots. If you went to a battleground the winner was whoever had the least number of mindless bots on their side. In Eve certain groups controlled minerals because the game stuck most of a needed mineral in a fairly small section of the game. If you make a limited number of plots its going to cause issues because the few who own those are going to be selling them for real world cash only.

    • 1479 posts
    October 22, 2018 3:21 PM PDT

    Naunet said:

    zewtastic said:Zero evidence, zero examples. Just a random statement with nothing to support it. What games, what bots, what farming, what MMOs, How long? When? What studio. Where is the evidence bots caused anything like you claim.

    They aren't bots, however... Until recent, highly restrictive changes in FFXIV's housing, the housing market was controlled by just a few, extremely wealthy players who ran guilds that bought up all available houses the moment they became available and then charged 5x or more the actual housing cost for people to get them to relinquish them.

     

    That's still the case, in truce. FFXIV's recent mechanics. They only stop players to buy them for themselves, but with a little group four or five accounts, you can own at least 13 houses, and 9 more per character  added to the equation, just create some FC, exp it with turning in items to the grand company, and once it's done, buy a house and invite one of the accounts that already is a member of a guild with housing, give him the leadership, leave the FC and do it again.

    The "top PVE" guild of FFXIV owns 35 Free Company (Guilds) for workshop usage, and I would bet they do have a lot of personal housing too (still limited to 1 per account, except if done before the new rules).

    • 107 posts
    October 22, 2018 3:24 PM PDT

    Naunet said:

    zewtastic said:Zero evidence, zero examples. Just a random statement with nothing to support it. What games, what bots, what farming, what MMOs, How long? When? What studio. Where is the evidence bots caused anything like you claim.

    They aren't bots, however... Until recent, highly restrictive changes in FFXIV's housing, the housing market was controlled by just a few, extremely wealthy players who ran guilds that bought up all available houses the moment they became available and then charged 5x or more the actual housing cost for people to get them to relinquish them.

     

    This also I was not just talking about bots. You cant open up opportunities for groups to exploit these sorts of things. Sure you can say to just open more plots but how cluttered is this world going to get? You would have to make it a real limit and then this issue will happen.

    • 646 posts
    October 22, 2018 3:25 PM PDT

    MauvaisOeil said:That's still the case, in truce. FFXIV's recent mechanics. They only stop players to buy them for themselves, but with a little group four or five accounts, you can own at least 13 houses, and 9 more per character  added to the equation, just create some FC, exp it with turning in items to the grand company, and once it's done, buy a house and invite one of the accounts that already is a member of a guild with housing, give him the leadership, leave the FC and do it again.

    The "top PVE" guild of FFXIV owns 35 Free Company (Guilds) for workshop usage, and I would bet they do have a lot of personal housing too (still limited to 1 per account, except if done before the new rules).

    IIRC, their policy about houses going on the market after a random period of time instead of right when the previous owner relinquished them pretty much killed the old "house flipping" market (which got so bad that SE was outright banning people caught doing it). There's definitely still a MASSIVE issue with supply vs demand in that game, and it's still entirely possible for dedicated groups of people (or individual dedicated players) to take up a large share of the available housing.

    Ugh, the housing in that game is so dang frustratingly bad.

    • 1019 posts
    October 22, 2018 4:00 PM PDT

    Instanced.  Do what EQ2 did.  Add different aminities so people want a house.  Don't add aminities that should stay in cities/gathering points for people (i.e. Broker, vendor, trainers etc.)

    In large towns/cities you can rent out from different apartment locations. (Above the tavern, above the merchant stores etc. or dedicated apartment buildings) These could be a cheap 1g to 5g a week rent. The cheapest giving you little space and little to no status with the NPC shopkeepers, guards, villagers.

    Outside of the large cities there are usually villages. In these villages there could be a room for rent above a shopkeepers store and there could also be a cheap house at the edge of the village and a nice house near the center of the village. These could be from 5g (apartment) to 20g a week for the nice house. These offer a little more status.  Status is something that NPC's react to and open of more of their shop aminities or quests the more status you have.  Also, these house would give more space the more expensive you get.

    Another additional option is you could have a cottage down by the river. 30g a week to rent, it's a little more spacous offers good status and since it's near the river you get an outside deck that lets you fish from it. (Instanced, same instanced zone as your house, but a small bonus for owning(renting) this location. You have your own node or two to fish.)

    Next would be a farm house.  Two or three free standing houses could surround a small field. Again, 30g a week to rent one of the houses displayed and it's about the same as the size (intierier deminsions size) as the fishing cottage. However, what you get with this house is a gargen that lets you harvest on your solo instanced property (node reuse timers and spawn rates etc apply). 

    Another house or set of houses could be in some houses set in the trees, with the aminity of a little outside area where you can harvest wood.  More houses could be near mountains for ore etc.  A house or two could be on a hillside in the country on a meadow for alchemy harvesting things,

    The houses mentioned cost in rent, but provide slight bonuses to a certain type of harvestable and a certain amount of status that helps with NPC's who offer goods or services based on the amount of status you have who other wise would only offer you basic items or possibly not talk to you at all.

    Each of the houses in the wilderness is actually an instanced door. Since there are only 2 house found near a river, 6 found surrounding fields 4 in woods 3 near mountains 4 near meadows, that only equals 19 houses.  That wouldn't nearly be enough for everyone to own one, but still enough varity that even though they are instances that will look and feel different than the others.

    • 1315 posts
    October 22, 2018 4:11 PM PDT

    I think it would go without saying that being able to purchase open world housing in a city would require minimum faction per tier and maybe something like declaring the city to be your home town which could have in game effects. I could also see one house per character if there are more than 5000 total houses across the world and one per account if there are less than 5000. Additionally Guild/Clan/Company halls would require that groups faction to be high with the city as well as completing a minimum number of quests per month to keep the building.

    For everyone else there would be cheap instanced simple apartments and those you would not need to have much faction to get or declare it your home as you would be paying rent not taxes.

    Just more thoughts.

     

    • 1479 posts
    October 22, 2018 4:21 PM PDT

    Naunet said:

    MauvaisOeil said:That's still the case, in truce. FFXIV's recent mechanics. They only stop players to buy them for themselves, but with a little group four or five accounts, you can own at least 13 houses, and 9 more per character  added to the equation, just create some FC, exp it with turning in items to the grand company, and once it's done, buy a house and invite one of the accounts that already is a member of a guild with housing, give him the leadership, leave the FC and do it again.

    The "top PVE" guild of FFXIV owns 35 Free Company (Guilds) for workshop usage, and I would bet they do have a lot of personal housing too (still limited to 1 per account, except if done before the new rules).

    IIRC, their policy about houses going on the market after a random period of time instead of right when the previous owner relinquished them pretty much killed the old "house flipping" market (which got so bad that SE was outright banning people caught doing it). There's definitely still a MASSIVE issue with supply vs demand in that game, and it's still entirely possible for dedicated groups of people (or individual dedicated players) to take up a large share of the available housing.

    Ugh, the housing in that game is so dang frustratingly bad.

     

    It's not killing moving from plot to plot so... all you have to do is to check undesirable areas (like lavender beds and the gobelet) and buy a house withouth a timer there. There you pay the guy with the plot you want and he leaves it for you to move on it, bypass the timer. Really, their rules are ridiculous, and just minor unconvenience to bypass.


    This post was edited by Mauvais_Oeil at October 22, 2018 4:24 PM PDT