Chat Bubbles: How Important Is Player Housing In An MMO?

Written by: Richie Procopio (@richieprocopio) | February 27, 2013 8:54 am

34 Comments

Player housing is an interesting feature in MMOs given how differently developers approach its design. Some add it into their game as a half-baked afterthought. Others (like Rift’s dimensions) make it a primary robust feature and try to position it to attract new players. And then there are games like World of Warcraft who don’t have a player housing feature at all.

Player housing can been used as a private meeting place for friends and guildmates. They can also be great for showing off your in-game achievements and creativity. I can also see role-players being fond of player housing for obvious reasons. Developers sometimes hesitate to add instanced player housing because it takes people out of the open world and might make the server’s population seem lower than it actually is.

I’ve never been overly interested in player housing, but that is probably the case solely based on the games I’ve played. In Ultima Online, I never got far enough to own my own home and I remember the endless rows of player housing outside the city gates. Players would wait to ambush anyone leaving the city and so my first expsoure to player housing was not the best expeirence.

Then I played a string of MMOs that didn’t feature player housing: Everquest, World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and now Guild Wars 2. I even played Lord of the Rings Online and Rift a bit, but left those games before their player housing systems were introduced. While player housing isn’t a feature I consider paramount to my enjoyment of an MMO, perhaps I’ve just not been exposed to a game that does it right.

I’ve watched Tuesday’s Top Dimensions and I’ve been impressed with what Rift’s player housing can do. Trion gave players an insane toolset that gives them the freedom to let their imaginations run wild. Wildstar’s player housing feature also looks like something I could spend a lot of time on. Players can purchase their own floating space island from the Protostar Corporation to customize and manage.

I think I could become interested in player housing if it was a well-polished feature in a game I’m already interested in. I don’t, however, see myself seeking out an MMO simply because it has that feature.

What do you think of player housing? Is it an essential feature you look for before trying an MMO? Is it a feature you find necessary to keep your interest or is it a nice diversion to dabble in once in a while? Do you use player housing for role-playing or simply a meeting place for your friends?

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Chat Bubbles: How Important Is Player Housing In An MMO?

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72 comments

arenasb

I don’t think they are needed as core gameplay but they are great for diversity.

The more things you can do in game the better. A good housing structure provides that. The more you remove smaller things like this from games, the more hollow that game becomes. The more activities and features a game has, the more diverse the playerbase is and consequently the more likely you’ll have a greater number of players stick with that game (with the assumption that the features are well done).
http://twitter.com/bisqquit Joe Cooke

I was a big Rift player for nearly 2 years but never bothered with dimensions.
Instanced housing is just like playing lego in a dimly lit room. Let me/my guild build our own place on the server to defend or show off on the fly. Then you have my attention.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz

Anyone that has played Star Wars Galaxies knows the value of having REAL player housing. You could create player cities, it was a real community. The housing in Wildstar, Rift, LoTRO, etc, they’re all pointless. Well, Wildstar seems to have hinted at some real function, but for the most part, instanced housing defeats the purpose of what housing is supposed to do.

No one wants to spend their day in an instanced area, it just doesn’t seem fun. Making the housing part of the actual game world makes so much more sense. The ONLY game I’ve EVER enjoyed housing in, was SWG (Star Wars Galaxies). It just made so much sense. While Rift’s customizable housing is nice, it doesn’t actually add anything to the actual game world. Housing is in most MMOs is just instanced storage that you can customize a bit to make it look nice, no real functionality, it doesn’t add anything to the game.

Housing a-la SWG is perfect because it’s in the real world and people can come in as they’re on their way to a quest or just passing by, and see what you’ve done or what you have. It’s also part of a city, it makes you, physically, part of a community. That inspires more player interaction because you run into people while you’re walking around and going to your city to check your house, as opposed to just being ported to an instance or teleported directly to your house. There’s no trip, which means there’s no possible interaction among players, but that goes to one of my biggest issues with MMOs these days; quick travel. Quick travel really does hurt the community.
- Kevyne_Shandris
  
  Well, in EQII personal housing has a real purpose in the game itself: to encourage people visiting. How SOE did it was to eliminate the 20% broker fee on selling items if players bought them at homes. The side effect of this is encouraging people to decorate their homes for guests (added touches are punch/food for visitors, to instant ports to the location of your sale crates).
  
  Raiders would normally balk at the idea of decorating homes, but time and time again, guess who puts the most plat down to hire decorators to decorate their homes (or guild halls)? The very raiders who express they have little interest in player housing.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Reginald-Walsmit/661563052 Reginald Walsmit

i liked playerhousing in everquest 2. It was instanced and you could access the auction house from it, or whatever it was. Besides that it wasnt all that super duper but what does give me good memories about it is that when i visited other people’s houses they had some really nice furniture and trophies etc. Some of them looked fantastic. Besides that there wasnt much point to owning a house but still it added an extra layer to the game for many people, something to work towards.

Also i liked housing in daoc where you could put craft station and travel npc’s in hour house. The houses there felt like they were truely yours.
I’d personally love a good housing system in a future mmo. For me they simply add something personal to a usually not so personal gameworld.

Imo housing was one of the extra’s that made old style mmo’s feel way more personal and added to the feeling you really lived in the world. Nowadays they skip all that, including interresting crafting, sandbox, non linear etc. “Simple” things like those can add alot to a game for many people. Mmo’s have become more and more unpersonal.
http://twitter.com/Hoigwai Hoigwai

Housing is generally a mess, I would like good housing in the games just to have something your own and to have trophies in ect.

I will say this, swtor does have housing of a sort, your ship.
Remeer

I’ll try and answer your questions best I can, from my perspective, just a person who, in general likes player housing.

I don’t feel that it segregates the community no, because the people playing the MMO regardless if the player housing is good or not, are going to be playing the MMO for the MMO and not the player housing, not once have I ever at least, come across a MMO where the housing system was so good, that people only played it for that reason, so I would be hard pressed if it did create a divide in the player base.

What I like and dislike about player housing is glaring obvious so, I’ll give an example of a game that did player housing really badly, Age of Conan. In that game, you could have entire guilds making a huge castle project, and not a single other person may have ever seen it because they were simply not in your guild, and at the time, that was the only way you could get invited to that instance. In other words, you had no ways of showing other people what you’ve made.

Which brings me to my next part, what I do like most about player housing, and it is simply put, being able to share what you’ve made, but why.. look at Minecraft. It’s the best example of player housing I can think of, not because it’s not technically a MMO, but because it is, in itself a huge sandbox, which is what, in essence, players want from housing. Well, that’s what i want anyway.

Who would have thought that some players, who are promised a big open persistent world, may be disappointed when all they get is a linear, static, placeholder filled with rules. At the very least, if we’re given a sandbox within that placeholder, whether it be Rift or even Wow maybe in the future, we don’t have to adhere to those rules in the sandbox we are given.

I hope that wasn’t too convoluted.
http://twitter.com/LiamRdsn LiamRdsn

I want to be able to create my own small community, I want a real fantasy/sci fi world that lets me put my foot print on it and sustain it, rather than going through a series of missions/quests without much changing. I liked UO because it had this but since then nothing has come close for me. LOTRO was ok, but it was instanced and most of the time the little communities were ghost towns.

I’m hoping archeage will give you the ability to do all this, I’d love to make a little town near the ghost where we can build docks, hire “police” etc, really make something lasting in the game.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr

Housing to me is nonessential. While Rift’s implementation is great and looks to attract the creative bug in players, my PoV is that why spend time staring at a picture on the wall of your house when there are adventures to undertake and a world (or worlds) to explore. To me, adding housing is just a waste of development time and resources that can be better spent making more quests, or a larger world to explore. Perhaps housing is a better fit for a total sandbox type of game, but for the majority of Themepark or mixed mode MMOs, housing is not a necessity.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Bob-Dobalina/100002971552895 Bob Dobalina

I find instanced housing pretty useless. Housing in the open world (like Archeage) is better but I’d rather have guild halls instead. A meeting place for your crew is much more preferable.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jason-Quinn/504633100 Jason Quinn

Why are these videos always so out of sync?
- http://twitter.com/RichieProcopio Richie Procopio
  
  I don’t know exactly. The raw files and when they are posted to youtube look fine.
- http://www.facebook.com/stradus.woods Stradus Woods
  
  Don’t know I never watch these vidoes because of it tho. Better off just reading it.
http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

During the RIFT SL beta, I really enjoyed visiting the player housing. Always amazed by the creativity and painstaking detail gamers go to in their player housing. But wasn’t crazy about the way the RIFT housing was instanced and separate from a persistent MMO world.

The Guild Wars 2 home instance had the potential, but I couldn’t really see the difference and never felt a need to visit the home instance after the early personal story.

The WoW Mists Tillers farm could have been player housing, but it’s just a series of unlocks. But it does have a feature, I would love to see in player housing. A small gardening plot where you can grow crafting materials.
http://twitter.com/McGamor Michael

Rift’s housing is not a primary, robust feature. If it was, it wouldn’t be only available to end-game players. But yes, Housing is very important to me and I wont play a mmo without it, period.
JJversion1

I’ve always felt that Player Housing should be an important and viable, but optional, feature to any MMORPG. Not essential, but not something that the Devs should skimp out on or add in as an “after thought” with no real design in mind. There are some whom do not like such a feature and they have every right to not want to participate, however it should be made available just in case they should one day change their minds.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JD5RIAPTFFZFIF3DCNYVVG7NIQ Kyle Bohannon

ive never understood the appeal to player housing, its nothing that has ever excited me or drawn me to a specific game because of it. i play mmorpgs to experience the story, and to kill things. spending time decorating my house, or adding things to it is of no interest of mine. i dont log onto a game to sit around and chat, i can do that over a voice chat program, i log onto a game to slay things, get shiny epics, kill other people, and experience the story
http://www.facebook.com/stradus.woods Stradus Woods

No not needed. In most cases is more a liability then is useful. That being said there are games out there for housing.
http://twitter.com/Clajo3 Clajo

I also played Starwars Galaxies.
The housing in that game opened countless avenues for player interaction. Of course the game was designed that way. You can’t plop housing in any game and expect it to work by itself. I saw houses turned into merchant shops with NPC vendors, museums, trophy rooms, restaurants, fight clubs, casinos, night clubs, memorials, etc.

To all who have never played a game with housing like this that say they “don’t see the point” have no idea. Trust me, if you play a game that uses housing similar to Starwars Galaxies design; you will use it for something. You will, and you’ll be glad to have it.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz
  
  Amen to this statement right here. Clajo knows the value of housing. Instanced housing is worthless, pointless, and time could be better spent on more story content. Housing in SWG, to me, is the ONLY housing system that should EVER exist.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Jim-Bergevin-Jr/1393526370 Jim Bergevin Jr
    
    Well that’s the key isn’t it? SWG housing was a part of the gameplay experience – just like a quest or raid is in other games. SWG is unique in that is was a pretty crap game in terms of actual gameplay (regardless of the version), but it was the community that made the game memorable, and the type of housing implemented fit within that purpose. As I said below, housing like this fits with games like SWG that were pretty much sandbox from the get go. For any other type of game, it’s a waste of resources that could have been spent making larger worlds to explore or quests to complete.
    - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz
      
      You can add player cities to any game. There are plenty of areas in just about EVERY MMO that I’ve played that had massive amounts of empty space to the point that the world just felt like a giant forest/plain. As for gameplay, I don’t see how it was any crappier than any other MMO considering that it was a duplicate of other MMOs at the time including WoW. Skills bar and skills. That seemed like a jab at the game just to make a jab.
mobtek mobtekl

In Skyrim I loved it, I really enjoyed customising my home, having somewhere other than a bank to store items etc.
Having a ‘home’ made the game more immersive to me.
Kevyne_Shandris

Played EQII before coming to WoW and truly miss not only player housing, guild halls (which become micro-cities but will guild mates).

Is it important? That’s in the eye of the beholder.

Personally I not only enjoyed having may own hall and guild hall, it’s very fun customizing it to your liking. In EQII designers would take decorating homes/guild halls to new extremes, taking otherwise innocent items ingame and turn them ino decorations that are awe inspiring. A wonderful way for players to be creative, let alone give tradeskillers a side economy.
Peregrine451

Player housing, when done right, is a great way to keep players playing the game and to keep them interested in logging back in every day.

Of course the same can be said of any well done sandbox element. Unfortunately, MMO devs over the last few years seem to have done everything they can to avoid adding sandbox elements in their games. Something which, I believe, has contributed to player boredom and churn.

MMO developers seem to have just recently rediscovered how much sandbox elements increase player retention. Hopefully this will lead to many more sandbox systems being added to both new and existing MMOs, which will go a long way toward making them feel like that expansive world that many MMO players are searching for.
http://www.facebook.com/JIndeed Jon Hutch

I like DAoC Player housing, I enjoyed it with the Consignment Merchants and how you can sell your stuff from there. I like the player housing that I can see other peoples houses. The next WoW expansion will have player housing. Because of Wildstar amazing housing and how Blizzard takes things from other games. I also think the Farming bit in MoP has benefited the casual gamer. Instance Housing where you can only see your house I don’t like. I like DAoC’s idea of being able to unlock armor-smith anvils and other crafting abilities in your house. That way someone wants me to craft something, come to Nitrus’s house in the town of blank and I’ll craft it for you. Or you can purchase things from my Consignment merchant out front. I enjoy the ability to build, farm craft, gather, and buy/sell through different auction house or consignment merchants. They did a awesome job with Auction houses and Consignment Merchants in DAoC if I wanted to purchase it through Auction House I play 10-20% more then if I took the time to take a trip to they’re house and buy it from the consignment merchant out front of their house. I think more MMO games need casual entertainment like great crafting, real use farming, gathering, housing because it gives more to do at end game then just raid or PVP.
http://twitter.com/phasra Phasra

Player housing is not important to me at all. If I had to vote – I would tell developers to spend more time making other things, that are more important to me. Those things in no particular order would be: dungeons, raids, crafting, story, balance and so on.

If I do play the game and player housing is added – it’s cool, I’ll play around with it just to try it out. I wouldn’t spend too much time on it, though.
Oldschoolremag

I held back on playing Minecraft for a long time. It just seemed like there wasn’t enough game in the game. How wrong I was. I can’t make pretty things, so creative mode doesn’t do it for me, but my first shelter was a dirt hole dug in a panic under attack. Then I made a simple house, then a keep that became a castle with a huge wall around it all. Now I’m scouting out all the mountains for my next home. They will be the towers linked by massive walls between them.

This is just how I amuse myself. If you stop and think about what could be done as a guild, town or city, the potential is massive. Guilds attacking each other’s home base, players attacking other factions cities…I’d really like to try a game like that.
Clint Casey

MMO Housing was basically the entire reason for playing Star Wars Galaxies while it lasted. There were several benefits to this in a game.

1. You had people forming large communities with a hundred or more players spread out in all the different worlds. Those communities developed their own economies and allowed for certain towns to specialize and encouraged people to try different things.

2. You had a faction system that was completely optional if you wanted to join one or not, but once you did you had the dynamic of towns that were allied with one faction or the other dotting these big planet maps, and that encouraged raids on other people’s towns and structures.

3. It gives you a sense of ownership in the game. But unlike Rift, these houses were out in the open world, so you could spend a lot of time just going around and visiting other people’s houses and seeing what kinds of cool stuff they had in there.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=754168227 Len Hobbel

Depending If WOW does it
Everything NEW to all other mmorpgs WOW players attack it hard core. but if WOW gets it, well its awesome.
Considering nothing in WOW is their own ideas…

WOW might get player housing now so its cool, but a few months ago RIFT put their version in and WOW tard attack hardcore. Now they might get them ….

Story matter in WOW ONLY until someone else had a story that was 100 times WOWs…what was swtor and swtors story/cannon/lore was epic in scale…then story didnt matter as much since WOWS is ever changing to adapted to its fixed but flexible lore story line.

YEP Its cool if WOW has it not cool if wow does not. But it can become cool if WOW gets it. But one thing WOW can never have. INSANE graphics and ALL wow players attack everything with graphics in it. WOW can never get modern graphics, they still have people playing on very outdated slug computers and they know they dont want to cut a 50% player base…

AS a wow player…I want to see realism not 16 color Raid Bosses…
- http://www.facebook.com/chris.collins.5059601 Chris Collins
  
  Cool story bro
Durand1w

Player housing is something I look for in any MMO. The reason behind this is that it lets you show off your accomplishments. I would probably still be playing LOTRO if the housing system was not static and empty.

So what features do I look for/wish for in a housing system?

1> Quest drops for unique housing trophies and items.

2> Craftable items for housing decoration.

3> Free placement of items, meaning no fixed slots.

4> Ability to change the appearance, flooring, walls, ceiling.

5> Usefullness. I can’t stress this one enough. Extra storage is nice, but it should also offer bonuses, crafting station creation (aka a workshop). Give me and others a reason to visit. For Guildhalls, having a quest board of guild content made available by the guilds reputation/influence would be a huge plus (GW2 please read).

6> Quest unlocks. A good system should allow players to unlock fluff content for delving deeper in the housing system. Game reputation/achievement systems should also be a part of this rather than a separate system.

7> Instance Vs In World. Both can be done well, and I think given a choice most would like to have their own unique place in the world. The gotcha that causes game issues is that you end up with abandoned plots. My thoughts on that is that there should be NPC housing for any ‘empty’ plot. Changing the default generic game housing would only be done when a player has earned the prerequisites to make a change (new/larger house).

8> Housing options. Having a unique out of the way place in the game is great, but also many larger capital cities become empty without large quest hubs for end game content. Having more restricted (but prestegious) housing in these cities should be a goal of any game developers.

9> Housing is a money sink. If a game is using microtransactions with an in game store, this should heavily be considered.

10> Features that would amaze or improve the experience:
a> Stables that store and show player mounts for high end housing.
b> Rewards for logging out at a house for X hours. Give me a buff for logging out at a house/inn rather than outside dungeon X.
c> A working shop system. Let players purchase a tavern/inn/forge/library plot and expand beyond the current model.

A robust housing system that is a part of the game, rather than a bolt-on post release is very possible. It just seems that the industry has not yet realized that it can add profit and help retain players. I continued logging in just to pay upkeep in LOTRO for over a year after I quit playing, just on the chance that the game performed an update that interested me again.
Rujuv Winamere

Player housing is absolutely needed for my MMO experience. Some people like gearing up their characters. I prefer something more visual where people can see what I’ve done, rather than report how many numbers my boots have.

Features I look for:

Different types of houses. Blueprints; several bedrooms. Bathroom and kitchen furniture. Too many MMOs miss that. At least two stories is great.

Furniture crafting being a profession. This is awesome and my go-to profession.

Ability to dye furniture and change appearance (walls, floors, outer walls, shape of home, etc)

Opening and closing windows. I need to be able to see through them. If not, what’s the point in buying the house by a waterfall if I can’t SEE the waterfall through my opened windows?

Usefulness. I should be able to have an alchemy lab in my home if I wish. Perhaps going to the kitchen stove and having to cook there. Give people reasons to return to their homes. Also, guests should be able to use the ‘crafting furniture’ like stoves and alchemy labs.

Ability to decorate in DETAIL. Let me place the candles where I want them. The beakers where I want them. Etc. Big hauls of furniture that have pre-decorated surfaces with gadgets make my mouth sour. Decorating is half the fun.

ArcheAge is the only MMO that I know of that allows planting/farming on a large scale. I cannot stress how important it is for me to be able to plant as many trees as I fucking want around my home. ArcheAge is doing housing RIGHT.

Aion is the prime example of housing gone wrong when it comes to limitations. The houses have tons of space left over. They always look empty, especially outdoors. It’s especially infuriating that homes look like they have character and shape on the outside (some even look like they are two story buildings), but you walk inside and it’s suddenly one bland, square room. The windows don’t even show on the inside. *shudder*
Stephen

Star Wars Galaxies was the only MMO I played that has done player housing right. I could place things where I pleased, I had a wall lined with lightsabers that I didn’t used, but couldn’t part with. The main hall in my house had giant trophies, placed where ever I pleased. It really was something fun. I remember logging in some days and doing nothing except decorating my house, or looking through other guild member’s houses. Each planet had their own type of houses with multiple variants as well, which was something I found quite interesting. The guild communities wouldn’t all look the same, there would be different houses and other things that set each community apart. It honestly was one of my favorite parts of that game.

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