Why do so many people like "Player Housing"

[Deleted]

WoW did NOT do it with Garrisons. It's so far from what we asked for so it might as well had been a giant bag of poo, which it kinda was. It's like when we asked for shorter gaps between expansions and Blizzard somehow thought we asked for shorter expansions. It's like they don't listen AT ALL.

No housing is not the same as Garrisons. Think more like The Sims, that's housing. And not at all what we got.

No, that was just Blizzard. They've been spouting off about Annual Expansions since Burning Crusade, this is just them finally attempting to realize that delusion, at our expense. Us asking for shorter gaps somehow got caught up in all that, because "you see, now we won't have 12-month Raid Tier Cycles" except that's exactly what Hellfire Citadel looks like it's going to end up being. So much for "yeah, we won't be doing a 3rd Raiding Tier, even though we made you pay for it, because we don't need it, WoW 7 is coming out that soon, totally." Otherwise, agree, yeah, & no, they don't listen, they read (supposedly), but they don't actually care about what we write, because "Blizzard knows best, so take your medicine & shut the f*ck up you dumb sheep."

The Garrison is not Player Housing, the Garrison is like a '90s Era take on Player Housing, where 3D Environments were limited to what today can only be described as "the bottom of your shoe", with a layer of 21st Century Textures on top in order to make it look pretty.

As for actual Player Housing, I've always enjoyed it because it lets me make a tiny corner of the world my own, with decorations that I personally chose, not some committee of schmucks. In an MMO or Sandbox World, it's a nice touch, having a customizable "Home Base" where you can always retreat to if you want. Otherwise known as Roleplaying, yeah.

P.S.

WoD didn't have housing. Blizzard told us it wasn't going to be housing. When they were describing it they compared garrisons to the old RTS games. So because Blizzard failed to do housing, because they specifically weren't trying to do housing, you don't want them to do housing?

Lol'd.

P.P.S.

"Player Housing" has been an issue in MMOs at least as far back as the 1990s - the reason is personalization, customization, and a form of permanence in a virtual world. World of Warcraft is terrible at customization and personalization compared to many other games, including most prominently Minecraft.

This is why Transmogging is so incredibly popular - it's a *minor* form of customization in a game designed around exposing players to the developer's vision, not about allowing them freedom or creativity.

This guy gets it.

[Valeron]

Because it's a tiny part of the game that's yours.

This right here. You have a sense of ownership and creativity in a persistent online world.

[lawow74]

It's another mini-game to engage players with. Some like the immersive aspect of it, others just like having something different to do in a game they already enjoy.

[WarpedAcorn]

The very first MMO I played was Shadowbane back in 2003. While it didn't have player housing, it was basically all about city building and defending your little plot of land (and farming for hours and hours to pay the gold to maintain it, ughhh...). So while not player housing, you still had to place all your buildings and your walls so that it could best defend against a siege.

The next MMO I played was Star Wars Galaxies. Player housing was pretty big and even had an entire class devoted to it. A lot of players would spend hours upon hours fixing up their little slice of heaven on Tattoine (or Naboo or whatever). There were different sizes of houses and different styles of those houses as well, not to mention so many different items that could be placed and and positioned anyway possible. You could get lost for days just building. The only recent MMO to come close to SWG, in my opinion, is Rift's Dimensions.


What makes this so much fun? Well the best description was something one guy said previously...Legos. Its the equivalent of dumping your digital blocks on the floor and creating something. You get to flex you creative muscle, and that scratches a very particular artistic itch some people have. And of course once your done you get to show it off and see other people be impressed by it, so there is some ego stroking to it as well. ; )

But yeah, mainly its just about offering a creative platform for people who are interested in that to enjoy. I haven't seen an MMO where there is any real benefit to player housing outside of the intrinsic value you assign to it yourself.


EDIT: Also, I think Developers like it because I would imagine that once the initial design is completed, its a very easy aspect to maintain. They don't have to worry about balance issues after all. And if there is a Cash Shop, you can offer new "blocks" to players who might be very eager to get new pieces to build with.

[Katchii]

It's an outlet for creativity and gives some players a sense of ownership and accomplishment. I can see the appeal, I just personally don't care enough about it to want to spend time doing it over progressing my character power.

[Pull My Finger]

Eh, if WoW had housing, people would whine about "afking in your house all the time".

[May90]

Never in my entire life of gaming have I ever had an interest in playing house with my video game characters.
I'm working on building my own life and my own house, when I play a game it's to play a game, not to watch my character play house.

I'd babysit my little cousin more if I wanted to play house.

This is kind of a weird logic. Building your own house doesn't mean you necessarily don't want to build your virtual chaos as well. You can continue your logic:
- If I want a challenge, I will go run a marathon.
- If I want combat, I will go do some boxing.
- If I want achievement, I will work harder on my job.
- If I want socialization, I will hang out with my friends.
As you understand, if you go this way, you will come to the conclusion that video games are pointless. But you apparently play them, so something in your logic is flawed.

I hope this answers also your "why" questions: people like player housing for the same reason you like something else in a video game.

[Deleted]

In terms of housing I still think the Garrison was a great concept. Sadly they had to fuck it up somehow because a base to call home? How freaking exciting is that?

[Deleted]

That's quite a shitty reply, seriously.

He's asking WHY they like those things

To be fair "Why do you like things I don't like?" is a shitty question to begin with, and the OP's opening was extremely hostile, more in the vein of "You're stupid for liking this." rather than "I'm curious what you find appealing about it?"

[Seefer]

That's merely your view on the subject. Other players might enjoy playing a game that allows one to essentially play dollhouse. There is nothing wrong with this anymore than there is implementing fishing, pet raising or go-kart racing.

Play encompasses a lot of things in and out of gaming. Those games with player housing are simply giving players another play option.

That's what The Sims is for?

[Cien]

That's what The Sims is for?

Ugh, did you SEE the most recent sims game? Dire!

And i want my player to be able to take the carpool to work from his player housing, burn in a fire of my own making and water plants when he's able! Already have farmville lite with sunsong ranch! Don't fight the inevitable

[MonsieuRoberts]

I like having a space that's my (character's) own, full of my achievements, of my hard work, of my /played. A place that I can be if I'd rather not be standing in SW or flying above it, or sitting on my mount atop one of dozens of rooftops.

The Garrison is none of this to me, because I really don't feel like anything in my Garrison is necessarily special or earned through great achievement and everyone has the exact same shit, but other games have done it better. Secret bases, ships for commanders, your lair or reprieve or whatever, it's cool to have that one spot where everything is orchestrated from, or where you can escape from all the orchestration.

Plus, I love customization. When I see the settlement crafting in Fallout 4, my mind goes to lego, which I was obsessed with as a kid. And from a gameplay perspective, look at the opportunities that brings! In Fallout 4's example, there is so much connectivity and purpose given to the many pieces of jump in the wasteland because you can use them on your weapons, armor, and settlement, to make stuff, to improve stuff. Your settlements can connect with each other, sending caravans to and fro. They are a space that's all your own, a bunker that you handcrafted, a town that you are responsible for. And that's cool to me.

Simultaneously, that's why I don't like Garrisons. They lack so much of the depth from more involved iterations of player housing.

[Drakhar]

The only MMO that I ever played that did housing right was Ultima Online.

[khalltusk]

The only MMO that I ever played that did housing right was Ultima Online.

Word, I really liked the housing system on UO. The only issue was new comers struggled to get a house as all plots were taken and existing house prices were insane. New expansions solved this.

It is obviously very dated now but it had a great system. Some people really made some awesome looking setups.

[Ealyssa]

Eh, if WoW had housing, people would whine about "afking in your house all the time".

Nope because if done right

1)you wouldn't be afk in it, but building, changing things, thinking about what could be improved and let friend visit (see wildstar exemple)
2)AFKing in it shouldn't give any reward, no rested XP, no free mining/harvesting, no profession related building, no quests. Housing should be about making your plot great, nothing more, nothing less. Only cosmetic.

[Fritters154]

When it is done well it allows for a lot of fun personalized customization similar to the transmog system. Just a fun activity for those who like setting stuff up to have the look they want and feel they want. Blizz unfortunately didn't do it well...

There should have been different building styles available, ability to use different colorations, better guard customization (not just change race but change gear or give them tabards), and it would have also been nice to put it in a different location. I don't completely mind Frostfire or SMV but only my orc shaman and NE druid really fit the locations their garrisons are in, the building style unfortunately doesn't fit the NE though... I would have also loved the ability to create "armor racks" or mount weapons on the wall or even the ability to transmog follower equipment (obviously that would require a tremendous amount of bank space if it was loot we collected but I was thinking more along the lines of old raid missions where you can send a team of 3 followers (dps, tank and heals) to clear and get whole tier sets and weapons from old raids, probably would be restricted to just tier sets but that would be a start).

There were a lot of cool possibilities for garrisons and they would have obviously taken effort to implement, but really, i'm still trying to figure out where the effort that went into WoD was allocated anyway.

[unholytestament]

Eh, if WoW had housing, people would whine about "afking in your house all the time".

I don't see why this complaint holds any weight anymore. People have been making complaints about AFKing in town, your farm, and now your garrison.

It's a complaint that is not going to go away and should have no impact on the decision of developing player housing.

[Shinzai]

I don't much care for it to be honest. If it's more convenient than doing x/y/z in town/out in the open world, then that's about the only reason I'll use it.

[Thelxi]

For me it is the creativity. If they just give the millions the same instance piece of uninspired ugliness (horde garrisons) I don't give a shit about it. But if they give us a piece of land and let us build something there with whatever racial architecture and other stuff, that would be awesome.

[Hallidyne]

I too am active on a RP server, and would love to have player housing. Unfortunately, I also don't want to be separated from the world like garrisons did. So yeah, double edged sword, indeed.

Guild housing, on the other hand, would be very cool, though it would have to be more like Guild Garrison, in order to accommodate larger guilds.

If they do implement player/guild housing in the future, I would seriously hope that you could have the "house" in any zone you wanted. All you would have to do is partition a piece in each zone off for both alliance and horde and fill it with a place-holder building model. Not sure really how they would go about doing that, but Horde Garrisons pretty much sucked mostly because they were in a perpetually frozen zone. I want my house to be in Stonetalon mountains if I'm a Tauren. Maybe Silverpine if I'm a zombie.

etc, etc.

Upon further reflection, in order to cut away from the isolation of staying in your home all day, Blizzard could turn off trade and general chats within the home. They should have done that for Garrisons.