Interesting take on SWG's housing

esquire1980

Watched a trailer for an expanion being added to another game that included development to "claim" an existing instance for your own and then build your in-game house in the claimed "world" with SWG style decoration of the cave, world piece, map, whatever you chose. They added they do not have all that much in deco pieces as yet but much more would be forthcoming.

The entire time I was watching this I thought of all of the genises created exploration worlds/maps/instances that are included in this game and thought how this would make an interesting addition to STO as well. Possible SWG type player citys, possible PVP areas which Klingon fleets could ground attack a "fed" city, only the time (and clickable acceptance) has been leaked out via spys and vise versa. Like kinda what has been spoken of for future development of the fleet starbases. Imagine a Kling fleet posing a ground invasion of an entire world...... and the Fed having to muster forces to go "save that world". All within the ground maps that already exist in the exploration zones. With the proper rewards (even deco type banners to display in your "world" that either the victors carried away from their conquest back to their "world" or the sucessful defenders display in their "world") there would be an in-game reason for PVP, conquest and control. Could be expanded from a space map, where ship to ship PVP battles insue, with the attackers beaming down (if they can get to your "world" to start the ground invasion.......... etc etc etc.

Could be hours upon hours of great sandbox style gameplay, all using existing resources within STO.

*Hangs head* And yes Cryptic, I'd probably pay the store for the privilage.

jtoney3448

If you ask me player housing made SWG great, that feeling that this is your space you spent time making it yours and it would always be there for your characters was great. And i think it is the most sorely left out over looked and disreguarded aspect of all mmo save a few.

In SWG you could make your ship interior into your home so you could live out of your ship as your character. And people did some epic things using simple items to cause amazing effects. Ive walked into someones house in galaxies and there was a giant star destroyer facing me that they had made from simple object like a puzzle.

Our ships in ST should be our home, but cryptic doesnt seem to care all that much about ship interiors, or honestly starbase interiors. Guild halls in galaxies were pretty amazing cause of what people did amazing things with them, starbases we get over priced generic stuff no one cares about.

Our ship interiors, bridges, etc are all horribly inaccurate and inconsistant. Sov bridge looks very little like a sov bridge, same with galaxy etc, Intrepids isnt even in the same galaxy thats how far off it is.

Does every detail need to be perfect? No. Id settle for decent non 1/2 a$$ed TRIBBLE thats so far out of scale of reason id think giants were the ones who made the ship. They can say its cause of cameras but it doesnt really fly when they make correct bridges and interiors like the TOS one.

Player housing should be a major part of an MMO, a place to show off items, kick back, spend time with friends etc. Having just a bank and inventory is inconvenient to begin with. Houses in SWG allowed those of us that played a lot to store vast amounts of items from years of playing, stuff that reminded us of good times and bad times. Stuff that reminded us of events, immersing outselves in our characters and making us feel at home in that universe.

Ships in STO dont feel that way even remotely, we cant climb in jef tubes, or tinker in engineering. I dont care if most of this stuff is totally cosmetic, immersion in MMOs is important. WoW failed on these fronts but people over look it cause of its sheer numbers. But I felt far more attached to my SWG characters who had homes, cities etc then I ever did to my WoW characters that had a bank and an inventory.

lostusthorn

SWG player housing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=326XjBN7JDE

Please note, every single object inside the housing is an actual object that you can pick up and move around, or in case of useable item drop or pickup to transfer it to your inventory.
And everything is either loot, crafted or veteran reward.

xenor002

I miss my large generic house 3 with windows. I was part of the first group of people to own one on Europe-Farstar. One of my good friends was the first..sooo much stuff in that hosue I had ot use so many invetory boosts for that house alone.

The walls were covered in weapons, trophies and posters from the first year to the last day of SWG. I had some pretty damn near impossible stuff to get too hanging on my walls in that house alone..oh how I miss SWG housing...

..BUT....Star Trek is different. There are standard looks for Starfleel and the KDF. I agree that interiors need way more polish and that certain classes of starships should have their own "standard interior," but we will never get that in STO for some time sadly.

Man I miss my Spirit of Lifeday...it was the huge mining ship that was a bit of a pain to get..used her as my third house and everything in her was Lifeday loot and decorations that I got over the years...its bridge and huge open windowed area...watching enemy starfighters shooting right at us..that huge, long laser cannon in the front...I miss being able to look out of windows while in combat.

I'd pay to have ship interiors work like SWG's in JTL. The battle still going on..friends could look out of windows and see the battle....good memories popping up now...

Unknown

This content has been removed.

praghas

Any game that does not have SWG styled housing is lacking. The last year and a half I played SWG, which was a pay per month game, all I did was housing. Nothing else, i'd go in a couple times a week and mess around with the decor add some new things, create a new house, create some new decorations, all sorts of things, I had three accounts, that was $45 a month, just to play with the detailed and grand housing that game had to offer.

STO Team, take note, that's about $810 I spent over there just on housing... You know how much i've spent on lock boxes? Less than $10.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

azurianstar

I would love if STO implemented SWG-style housing.

Given how you can place things in the Foundry, I would think it would be plausible to pull it off. I figure you would need something similar to the Foundry Interface when placing objects on a map. Or cryptic making more locations like we have with Trophies.

We could spice up locations like:

The Ready Room
Personal Quarters
The Ship Lounge
Player Starbases

Not to mention "player housing". Hey, Kirk did live in San Fransisco, Sisko and Worf lived on DS9 (not the Defiant), and the Picard home was in France.

People probably kill me for saying this, but Cryptic could add stuff to the Z-store in selling Misc Items as well as making Latinum useful in selling decorations at various locations in the game (give another reason to travel to those worlds).

jtoney3448

Seeing as how foundry can make mission interiors would be ideal to let us create our own ship interior or use ones made by others the mod them ourself. Of course let the default ones be there for everyone who doesnt want to.

Make it where you can load 1 custom interior per character, foundry slots are there for a reason not to overload the data base. I bet we would see fantastic scaled versions of the ships from the shows interior.

I said it before if a developer is to lazy or unwilling to make something give that community the tools and it will be done in no time. Foundry is a prime example, foundry has content that blows cryptics apart.

Simply make it where you make it in the foundry tool but instead of publish you get another option to set as create interior. This then makes it available for yourself and you can chose a public option if you wish to share it. If someone wants to use your interior you get a set amount of dilithium.

Then in ship customization you get a drop down on interiors and chose custom. If you want doff officers and boffs on your ships you have to set them up before publishing. I think its a good system not perfect but I dont have all the answers.

sumghai

My stance is that, since most of the time, Trek episodes are set on Starfleet vessels (with the exception of DS9), ship interiors would work best as STO's "player housing".

Right now, however, ship interiors contribute very little to STO's gameplay. Other than accessing a few DOff assignments or a private get-together spot for fringe RPers, Cryptic and PWE simply aren't going to be bothered.

That being said, if you take a look at the link in my sig, you will find a preexisting and very extensive discussion (including ideas from the Devs themselves) as to how to both expand upon ship interior customisation AND actually make it useful to normal gameplay.

The forums search function is your friend!

smallvalley

This game already has player housing. What function did you think ship interiors were supposed to serve? There's even an invite button when you're in there, for crying out loud.

hydaspes

True, there is player housing and now fleet (guild) housing.

What they don't have, is customizable housing. And that is a potential money earner. I remebered second life, it was not even a game. You could buy plots and buy stuff for on it, and it had a really good crafting tool with which you could even make your own objects. People spent a lot of money just for a virtual home.

But STO is not set up that way. So it would be a huge investment to create such a thing. For instance, the Foundry tool is very poor, and so difficult and user unfriendly to use that not a lot of people would actually customize. They would have to build a completely new creation tool, or buy an expensive licence for one, and customize that, first.

Next they would have to overhaul the whole structure, because the instances are based on a limited amount of pre-existing maps, not on numerous custom maps of different sizes. And there is not a system for numerous adresses, like in SWG, so that would need to be set up too or else each space would be very isolated (you would get no people there).

Its just a very risky investment, a lot of expense, and are enough people going to use it?

But there could be cheaper ways. The Starbase structure works. So make personal spaces like it, with fixed positions for furniture that you can buy/earn to upgrade. And to give it a personal touch, for instance, the choice of a limited number of different maps. Attach these with a link to the ship interior or starbase interior, and voila. They could do this if it turns out the Starbases are profitable. Lets say, semi-custimizable personal housing, where you will have to work with invites.

I think it would make the game more attractive.

brodie0854

Personally i LOVED the housing system in SWG, its one of the things i missed the most.
Of course whilst i'd love to rent a place on Vulcan or even own a moon of my own where i can plonk a house, your starships interior would be good, although people couldnt just stroll in and have a look (i'll admit any time i'd go into a shop in SWG i'd explore the rest of the house)....I loved my shop!

Take note, if they made something like this and sold decoration packs on the C-Store i'd spend a bloody fortune!...it's probably a good thing for my marriage they dont.

sumghai

I suggest you'all pop over to the thread linked in my sig, since the devs actually visit that topic more and have been taking note of player ideas too.

Player housing in the form of a fixed house that you plonk on a planet or a Starbase isn't going to have that much appeal or relevancy as ship interiors.

smallvalley

sumghai wrote: »

I suggest you'all pop over to the thread linked in my sig, since the devs actually visit that topic more and have been taking note of player ideas too.

Player housing in the form of a fixed house that you plonk on a planet or a Starbase isn't going to have that much appeal or relevancy as ship interiors.

I agree completely. Ship interiors already serve as a functional equivalent of housing, so I would much rather they spent more time adding functionality to the ship's interior.