My Main Concern After Playing Release 1

Is the housing!
My personnel point of view is that the housing is going to spoil the whole game for everyone else, I really feel that the housing should be kept separate in a separate instance away from the main game, Where players can still play dolls house and stash and decorate their stuff to their hearts content.
The main game towns need restyling just for the game with NPC's in residence not tons of locked player houses that have alarming styles that do not fit together in a cohesive style for that town or region area, The housing is cool don't get me wrong but please make it a separate feature, and keep the main game areas for the actual game. cheers

 

I disagree. Separated housing seems completely pointless to me, and UO while it was nice to own a piece of the world, the complete openness led to sprawl issues. I think we have a good compromise in that there are specific plots in specific areas that are still part of the world.

Also remember that this first version is mainly to test housing (since it is one of the more quickly finished systems) and the later cities in the main portion of the game WILL be more NPC-centric. The devs leading up to Release 1 stated a few times that the town would seem "empty" in this regard and that you can't infer that to be the norm later on.

 

I am sick of instanced housing is it's own separate area in games.
Having the housing in the cities brings back a sense of community to me. Where people can decorate and create a tavern or inn and others can simply walk by and decide to visit, etc.

It's not just about playing "doll house" and stashing stuff.. it's about immersion for some.

 

Also disagree, at least there should be again a "gaming world", and not only playing arenes for funny circumstances like Holiday Parks or football grounds. Not again Disneyland (with different outfit setting) online like 90% of all so called MMORPG's. If there will be again a game designed as a 'fantasy world' every single instance is killing this attempt. Not again, such games exist as MMOG's massively. UO was killed for me (curiously ) after Richard G. was gone; 'trammelisation' of that gaming world was involved and UO became a common fantasy-quest game with some limited different options.
Finally for a gaming world building houses, villages, towns fits not only well, it should be part, especially if its possible. I greet so called sandboxgaming! Anyway i am able to have some visions also about challenging combat. Hopefully not only for egomanic 'skilling' and 'treasuring'.

 

If UO had instanced housing, I seriously bet the game would have failed. UO is one of the few games where you make tons of new friends because you were passing by their house. Nothing more was needed, just passing by because you had to, and you ran into them.

 

Totally disagree. The game would fail in 6 months if things were done as you suggest.

 

Disagree, seperate locked housing is exactly how the real world works, this isn't final fantasy where you arbitrarily wander it to peoples houses without a peep from them, then walk in to a bedroom and nick a potion from the floor without them giving a monkeys.

 

I never liked instances. I need a massive persistent connected world where items left on the ground stay there until they decay.

Instanced housing? No thanks.

I enjoyed having a home in UO in the actual gaming world. Watching reds run by my home or trapping a gazer in my home using boxes to work my magic resist.

Instanced housing stifles and restricts your gaming experience.

 

Well this is all instances, the Town is an instance, so why not just add 3 districts connected by town gates, usually a few seconds to enter the next instance its only another district of the same town. Would add 3 more public crafting areas you would see all players living in your district. With the houses in town now you will only see about 60 to 70 players even if the town as 1000's in it, could triple the land plots so on release could improve sales if it states 20000 housing plots up for grabs get in early earn your Home.

 

That might be something they can do later, as maybe a patch or part of the future episode releases. I've thought of that, and can see it happening. Basically, as future Episodes get released, or even if they let players band together to somehow make the villages, towns, and cities grow, then districts could be added onto existing areas to make them grow. Maybe like having a village over time grow into a town, and then into a city, expanding the size and adding districts to it. Same with the town expanding into a city, and a city just adding more districts to itself as time passes.

 

One of the things I like most about housing is that what ever I do to the outside it will be seen by anyone who walks by. Infact, what I don't do will be seen too, and I'm talking about damage from a siege. I like that it will show and stay there until repaired.

 

100% on target.

 

The dev's have already said no to instanced housing of any kind. I suggested allowing people to rent rooms at an inn for a daily/weekly/monthly fee that was instanced with a few different sizes and it would be basically extra storage and decoration use. Nobody else could go in and it's only value would be for screenshots and storage. It would be smaller than the smallest home was my original thought, but then seeing how small the smallest homes were I think it would have to be that size...

I don't think it's necessary but if housing is as rare as we all assume it will be, where only 1 in 50 people might have a home it might help give value to decorative items. Otherwise housing decorations will be over abundant and have little value.

I guess we'll see what happens. It wouldn't be too hard to implement post launch if they feel the need.

 

My opinion is the opposite. Housings looks like it's basically already almost ready for launch so that means things will be smooth and hopefully won't intrude at all into other fun areas.

That also means there they are going to be working on the rest of the features and content they want to make.

I satisfied that there is already a really good variety of Housing available.

Oh and all the housing will be limited to the lot areas so... ya. No UO with houses absolutely everywhere.

 

My main concern is that we won't be able to drop things anywhere like back in UO.

 

I don't quite follow you on the value of decorative items. I should point out that it is much closer to 1 in 10 having a home, but even with 5 times more homes than you say, I don't see that changing the value of decorative items unless we can resell these items.

Decorative items may have a value to Portalarmium since they stand to make a profit off of them, but unless the player can sell them most are worthless --aside from the Horn of Plenty; the couple of potted plants that produce benefits; the metronome; etc. The vast amount of decorative items do nothing but help provide a period setting like a stage prop does. I don't see this as something of value. In this case 100,000 Thrones of Bone don't have any less value than one wooden table. The reason: we don't need either the Throne of Bone nor the table if there is nothing that can be obtained from either of them.

 

It has been said over and over that this isnt UO (nor is it Classic Ultima), yet RG talks some pretty good game (pardon the pun) about appealing to both.

I'm definitely of the solo/classic persuasion so I am keen to see what towns will look like Solo Offline (my understanding is that everything will be filled with NPC housing a-la U6/7), though RG has speculated that folks like me will want to play solo online (where my understanding is the towns will be populated with player housing... though the players in question wont actually be home so to speak).

 

I'm going to disagree, too. Housing was a huge deal in UO. It is likely one of the reasons the game is still alive today. No other game(that I can recall) has successfully integrated housing like UO did.

The one thing I don't like about UO housing was the sprawl that other people mentioned, but this seems to have been remedied.

Housing also creates a sandbox goal that people can work towards. There would be little point to owning a house, if it was not visible in game by everyone.

 

Completely disagree with the OP. Housing will add a lot more life to the cities. I seriously doubt all you will see is a bunch of locked houses. I for one will be keeping mine open at all times, and I hope as many people as possible come to my house and my vendors. It is much better then a city full of wallpaper houses that cannot be interacted with.

EDIT: In fact, without player houses, all you would see would be an empty town, except in front of the auction house where an army of people would be sitting down doing nothing or AFK.

 

100% disagre, sorry. I 100% preffer this UO housing style (that include also personal shops). You can play that "not play dolls houses style" in tons of games already.