Garrisons Customization

[Deleted]

Hey all !

First of all I just wanna say my game license is frozen so I couldn't post this on the official forums + sorry for being noobish as I only "use" this forum as read-only, rarely posting something. Doesn't mean i should be judged.


To the case :

My brother and I was hanging around in Surwich (questing area in BL behind Dark Portal) and was thinking how those victorian style building haven't been used since Gilneas city and Batle for Gilneas. He personally find this type of architecture super amazing and sad part is - they're in 2 super forgotten spots in entire game (excluding BfG). Somebody put great work into designing them from scrap and now they're rarely used. In Gilneas city you may spend hour or two and then in BL you have 5 quests.

So about those buildings. Now ,I'm not super expert in game design but I used warcraft editor for 5+ years. Those buildings are in game files marked as lets-say-Worgen-House-Brown-01. They are stabile, single, piece of art, like any other building and tree in editor that you can paste into the world.

Now ,as i said ,I'm not expert and there are other technical difficulties and what not ,but can't they be used as skin (replacement) for Garrison's buildings ?
I mean you don't have to do them from scraps ,well Gilnean type maybe more.
But Forsaken building have a Lab (equivalent to Alchemy lab in Garrisons) and many others.
Its just paste the building into the world and spray it inside with some BS,Alch,LW,JC,Engi,etc. doodads

I'm missing something probably and you're gonna fill for me ,but watching/hearing how they "recycled" Ashran faction hubs with existent in game building models got me wondering they could do same with Garrisons for more customization.

They're already in-game ,just as i play with editor on daily basis ,so could they add us more options with copy-paste.
This is just a suggestion ,just something to think about it.


Thanks for your time and I apologise if I missed some crucial part of why this can't be done. Peace.


Extra : Tauren tents,Belf outposts in Terrokar,Ghostlands,Forsaken Brill,Troll district in Orgrimmar,Goblin starter zone,Gnome airstrip in BT,Tanaris pre-cata,Hut with some kind of elevator inside,Nelf moonglade village,Draenei outposts in Azuremyst/Peninsula,Worgen Gilneas. ALL stand-alone buildings.

[Ninotchka]

Disclaimer, I don't work for Blizzard, I don't know how their code is written.

That being said, I suspect that it's much more complicated than just 'edit this structure in'. I see two potential complications without the slightest glimpse of the code. Structures have to fit in the land around them. If you delete one structure and pop in another, you've got to do a bunch of testing to make sure there are no holes in the ground around the structure where you could fall through the world if you run into the side. And you have to do a bunch of testing to make sure that there aren't any textures in the building that interact badly with textures in the outside environment. There's a glitch in the Alliance level 2 garrison where the level 1 barracks textures don't map properly, and the resulting strobe effect is very unpleasant. Also, floors and stairs are in different places for different structures, so you have to worry about NPC pathing, or NPCs standing 3 feet in the air or half buried in the ground. I've noticed that in a few places in garrisons.

Obviously it can be done. You can do anything if you have enough time and dedicated resources. But Blizzard has told us they can't give it to us yet. And seeing the problems they're having implementing just one style of building upgraded a couple of times, I believe them. I wish they had made a different aesthetic decision, though I understand their logic behind it. Hopefully we'll get better customization as beta progresses and in later patches. In the meantime, Wildstar and Landmark have far better implementation of player housing/fortresses.

[Deleted]

Yea I get it , with new improved AI and tight space and hills on Horde side it's quite tough. And I never meant it to be done on launch but something to think about it as I said.
I'm not going nuts omfg blizz why we can't have nice things, but yea, something in the future, when expansion is well polished and new things and features aren't so new anymore and works better.

Just imagine two dudes - tauren and forsaken hanging out in tauren's tents garrisons and the forsaken says : "Man I really had a bad day, let's hang out in my place ,we can sit in coffins at local inn" -cracks me up everytime

[Highlord Hanibuhl]

I'm gonna quote myself from another topic:

What I don't understand is the following:

- There are TONS of models in the game
- Some models are so rarely used, most players haven't seen them (that much)
- There are models for every race (tables, chairs, plants)
- There are models, related to every class
- There are buildings/flavour architecture for every race that's not outdated. (See WOD, Cata, Wrath or MOP models)
- There are new player models, plus some nice racial armor sets

All of the above is true. Just look at the game.

But here's the thing. Why can't they use those existing models to create furniture/environmental/garrisson-sets?
Give me 1 week and I can make fully furnished rooms for all the race/class combo's. It's not that hard...

That way, players will have a sense of customisation, personality AND housing.

This is basically what I suggested as well. It doesn't take that much time since everything has already been made!

[Drilnos]

The primary issue with just copy-pasting assets, it seems to me, is that each building is not one building. It's three - level 1, 2, and 3 variants must exist. Each has to be recognizable as the same sort of structure, and noticeably be a step up from the previous level in terms of quality. Even assuming Surwich and other Worgen towns combined have variants of all 24 garrison structure types, which is unlikely, they certainly don't have three versions of each.

[Wyrt]

The primary issue with just copy-pasting assets, it seems to me, is that each building is not one building. It's three - level 1, 2, and 3 variants must exist. Each has to be recognizable as the same sort of structure, and noticeably be a step up from the previous level in terms of quality. Even assuming Surwich and other Worgen towns combined have variants of all 24 garrison structure types, which is unlikely, they certainly don't have three versions of each.

I'd rather have buildings that looked the same for all 3 levels than to be stuck with just human buildings.

[UnluckyAmateur]

Honestly I don't understand why people want so much from Garrisons, they will only last during WoD if they are lucky.

[Deleted]

What they should have done is add multiple race buildings into a single base, which was actually the case in Warcraft 2/3. You had, for instance, human, high elven, wildhammer and ironforge dwarven buildings, indicating what each race brought to the table. That would have made sense.

[huth]

Profession buildings actually do that. Horde leather hut for example is tauren themed.

I'd rather have buildings that looked the same for all 3 levels than to be stuck with just human buildings.

And for everybody that thinks like you, there's somebody who thinks the opposite. Which of you is right?

I'd go with the 3 different levels because those actually have a gameplay implication(don't need to look at plans to figure out what you have)


A much bigger issue is that "just copy-pasting existing assets" simply won't work. They still need quite some work before they're usable for garrisons. In particularly bad cases it might even end up being more work than just building the asset from scratch.

[Wyrt]

And for everybody that thinks like you, there's somebody who thinks the opposite. Which of you is right?

I'd go with the 3 different levels because those actually have a gameplay implication(don't need to look at plans to figure out what you have)


A much bigger issue is that "just copy-pasting existing assets" simply won't work. They still need quite some work before they're usable for garrisons. In particularly bad cases it might even end up being more work than just building the asset from scratch.

Well, if they think differently than me they could just stick with the human/orc buildings that have 3 levels.

[huth]

Well, if they think differently than me they could just stick with the human/orc buildings that have 3 levels.

I think you misunderstand. We would either get one, or the other. Not both. So there is no sticking with the basic buildings, because they wouldn't exist. The resources to adapt those other race buildings have to come from somewhere, after all.

[Mawnix]

I'm gonna quote myself from another topic:




This is basically what I suggested as well. It doesn't take that much time since everything has already been made!

If you understood coding and game development on an MMO at all, you wouldn't be saying this.

[Azahel]

As a lore nerd, customization is quite out of place on the story, so I'm glad they're not spending resources just to cater for people's individuality needs.

[Hyve]

It would be nice to have differing themes for the Garrison, but it's a huge under-taking as it is. Once the technology for Garrisons it done though, maybe they'll implement something similar in the following expansion, and then allow themes?

Remember, Farms (kind of) lead to this, so who is to say Garrisons won't lead to something bigger?

[Tech Priest Bojangles]

Honestly I don't understand why people want so much from Garrisons, they will only last during WoD if they are lucky.

We're gonna be stuck with them for 2+ years so I hope they do it right.

[Azahel]

What's out of place are Sentinels and Pandaren giving a rats ass about following humans all over Draenor, but you have the option to make them staff your garrison, so having it just stay a mini-stormwind while you can change who guards it is hardly out of place in the story or in general.

Despite what people still think to this day, the sentinels are part of the Alliance army and the Iron Horde are a threat to Azeroth.
As for the pandaren, Garrosh was under their care and escaped from the shado-pans hands in plain sight. It's only logical that they are after him and Kairoz.
The Garrison is a military base for alliance operations in Draenor, and you are in charge of it. It's not a personal house or something, characters are not there on vacation, they are doing business.

[Highlord Hanibuhl]

If you understood coding and game development on an MMO at all, you wouldn't be saying this.

Thing is: I do

I just don't know how they set up WoW.
Also a fun thing: I suggested this knowingly, because I've done it before on 3 different games.

[huth]

I'm poking holes in your declaration. There are Night Elven bases on Draenor, so having a garrison mirror one of these bases isn't going against the lore. Same goes for a Draenei outpost, or Blood Elves on Horde. The Sentinels don't take orders from Varian Wrynn, they don't have humans commanding and directing them and never should. Sentinels are not part of the "Alliance army". So yes, a Garrison is a military base, that's obvious, and it can, within the lore, be a Night Elf base or a Draenei base or a Blood Elf base. I'm hoping that the tired old dogshit that is orcs and humans will be for the first patch or two, then we'll have the ability to give our garrisons a distinction that can match the guard units we have stationed there.

The Garrison is specificially an Alliance or Horde military base. Not a Draenei, Blood Elf or Forsaken one. The other folks have little more than small encampments around Draenor, barring alt!Draenei fortifications, which aren't technically allied with the Alliance.

[AbalDarkwind]

As a lore nerd, customization is quite out of place on the story, so I'm glad they're not spending resources just to cater for people's individuality needs.

As a fellow lore nerd, what are you talking about? Why would customization be out of place in the story? The only lore reason for having Stormwind and Orgrimmar-themes are because those are the Architects you recruit: A̶l̶e̶x̶i̶ ̶B̶a̶r̶o̶v̶ Baros Alexston, Architect of Stormwind, and Gazlowe, Architect of Orgrimmar. If you recruited, say, a Night Elf Druid who handles Wisps, what would stop you from growing some Ancients for your Garrison?

The Garrison is a military base for alliance operations in Draenor, and you are in charge of it. It's not a personal house or something, characters are not there on vacation, they are doing business.

Then, why can you customize your followers? Shouldn't they always either be Human or Orc-dominated with just a few of each other race?

[Deleted]

As a fellow lore nerd, what are you talking about? Why would customization be out of place in the story? The only lore reason for having Stormwind and Orgrimmar-themes are because those are the Architects you recruit: Alexi Barov, Architect of Stormwind, and Gazlowe, Architect of Orgrimmar. If you recruited, say, a Night Elf Druid who handles Wisps, what would stop you from growing some Ancients for your Garrison?



Then, why can you customize your followers? Shouldn't they always either be Human or Orc-dominated with just a few of each other race?

Isn't Alexi Barov the Forsaken guy?