Owning Property in EverQuest Next

I was not attacking your posts or thoughts, I was simply reminded of some thoughts by reading your post. As far as Orcs and Dragons forcing people in the real world to relocate supposedly making my point invalid.... Wanting to see more aspects of our reality included in an MMO to flush out the world and add potential content is not the same as wanting to include Orcs and Dragons in real life to make our reality feel more like an MMO, so yes the comparison does apply.

Simply put, if I had a house in the virtual world or in the real world, and it was burned down by a dragon I would not spend the rest of my life living in a tree or traveling the world going from inn to inn if I had the choice regardless of real world or virtual world.

The Combine Empire fled to Kunark to escape the Ring of Scale and to rebuild their lives... literally phrased "rebuild"
Wonder if they are going to sleep in the dirt, or in bare trees for the rest of their lives, or maybe build some houses and other important structures?

Guess I shouldnt think about all that, after all, its not a virtual world, its just a game to log in from 7pm-10pm EST raid with the only 24 people in the game that I like, then farm a few consumables on the weekend right?

Again I am not attacking your thoughts or opinion, just trying to discuss different angles, I do actually agree and like many of your perspectives such as to much clutter, or to much empty space if the balance is not maintained. As well as the real world development expense if an efficient way of building and balancing the claim/housing concepts is not possible.

I'm only going to make this one last post on this issue and then I'm done with this thread. I think I've made myself clear enough already, but I'll be even more clear this one last time.

If the devs allow players to build freely in the open world then the open world has to be designed around allowing for players to build freely in it. I don't see any possible argument around that observation. That means some other possibility in the game design has to be sacrificed or compromised to allow for people to build freely. We've seen in other games with older designs what this can mean to a setting. What this could mean in a procedurally generated world I don't think any of us can predict.

To be blunt, I don't care if one player wants a shack in his favorite spot in the woods. I don't care how his few closest friends or occasional passerby might enjoy the shack. What I do I care about is how every other player in the game will have to miss out on something so that the game can be designed for some guy to maybe build a shack in the woods.

To be even more blunt, I'd rather be fighting orcs or stealing wyvern eggs or finding a lair entrance, almost anything, than walking past yet another shack in the woods and thinking about what could have been instead. Especially in a game when what could have been could have changed every time I walk past if that shack weren't there.

I find the trade off an unacceptable compromise and even the wishful thinking about how great that shack in the woods could be to be shallow in light of what I have seen of the reality of housing in the open world in other games.

Certainly there are compromises, and I have mentioned a couple that I would find acceptable. There are often better and worse ways to achieve a goal and please the most amount of people. No amount of internet ring around the rosies forum debate is going to change my mind on open world building, however. And, to be honest, I don't care if I change the mind of anyone in this thread. The only people who really matter in regards to hearing what we have to say are the devs. They have our input and I suspect they've largely already decided what it is they're going to do in this matter anyways.

The devs obviously have to designate specific parts of the wilderness for those shacks in the woods, but it's gonna be about picking specific spots across all biomes of the world, and not about picking specific biomes in which everyone can build freely everywhere.

I agree with your stance, but this is a complete non-issue to resolve, as it's a metacode issue (i.e. abstract problemsolving and not programming or design per se) and nobody is going to lose out on anything just because some of us are able to build a shack in the woods. It depends entirely on how that system is implemented and what its boundaries are.

Remember that devs today can do literally anything they want with the world design, there are no limits other than their imaginations. If they want to make sure that the evolving landscape is not messed up by all those wilderness claims, then they specify areas that don't evolve as much (or at all) and set claimability to those areas. Rallying Cries and other things that progress the landscape will be located in other areas.

I think the devs have already confirmed that a select few locations in EQN will not change dynamically as the rest of the world will. But the specifics of that isn't yet known, afaik.

If they do it right that could still be the case. One week you may see a shack there another you may find a monster infested ruin. Granted I don't actually think the devs have the balls to do something like that with housing. Too many people will cry.

The shack will most likely be standing just fine and the environment around will change, just as it does in Landmark. Whether the voxels heal/change or not is, as I understand voxels, a matter of the individual voxel's data properties. The player will likely be able to choose if they want their housing to be infestable or otherwise. Once the player forfeits the claim, it might deteriorate with the rest of the landscape.

Also, I get a feeling that a lot of players underestimate the sheer size that Norrath is going to have. With these powerful designing tools, combined with the right algorithms, the devs may be able to create a massive rough Norrathian landscape in minutes and then start hand-drawing it from there. This cuts designing time by a ridiculous amount and, with the voxel technology, the devs can build for both scope and detail (if they understand the importance (and regretfully absence) of environmental cadence in MMOs).

E.g. these claims could exist in vast regions on the outskirts of the main stories and plots, allowing for a much bigger Norrath because the main gameplay and story events are not going to be spread out anyways. Claimable regions will likely have extremely low player signature, compared to the core Norrathian areas which wouldn't be much bigger in total than any other big MMO.

Do you mean places like this screenshot overloaded with amazing overwhelming endless content like grass and a couple cows? Glad they did not chose to replace all that mind blowing grass with a "hut"

Or this screenshot where this nothing but grass and a river?



There is not a single out doors zone in Everquest, Everquest2, Vanguard, World of Warcraft, Star Wars the Old Republic, etc etc etc that does not have at least a few places where a plot could be dropped to build a house or a "hut" as you called them without effecting more than a single roaming NPC, and not even one of the games I listed designed the world to make room for player housing or building in the adventure zone.

The dev team did not leave these places empty to leave room for future expansion, six years later these two plots in the same zone have not changed. When you say you would see a hut and think what could have been there instead, the answer is grass, or another tree. Pretty exciting stuff.

On one hand I do agree Durost, but on the other we definitely don't want to go overboard. If the new AI will actually allow enemies and npcs to move through the game world dynamically as they say then we do need a lot of open space for them to play with. I believe it could be pulled off with the right limitations on placement but we'll see. I hope they've learned a lot from SWG in this regard, it was a feature players loved but it's execution did cause several problems down the road. It needs to be done in a way that makes the world feel more alive but doesn't clutter it up with ghost towns.

Really solid point. With the permanent world changing events going on in game, I would highly suggest the out come of a player "run" city popping up in game. A metropolis of sorts, where player housing can exist En Mass, surrounded with questing opportunities and more. A Mega zone, with mega room for everything. And imagine if quests from other cities ingame would link back to it, recognizing it as a legitimate place.... Yet, the players could feel such ownership... like they, the community, created it.

So many Options, so many ideas.

Been away from the forum for a bit and I seem to be quite late to this party.

I'm not necessarily opposed to property in the open world if lessons have been learned from UO. It would need to be handled very carefully.

I would caution some to be careful with what they wish for. Those who want an anything goes type of system shouldn't already be planning their prime locale castle. You're most likely not going to get your ideal plot and will have to settle for something you don't really want but have to take.

Ok I have a weird question. The camp that is pushing for building areas to be instanced, or completely restricted from the adventure areas said that most people dont care about this building stuff and wont do it, and dont want to see it. The other camp that wanted building areas to stay out of the adventure zones said there wouldnt be enough plots for everyone without choking the AI or some people would be cheated out of plots to leave room for story bricks.

So which is it because it doesnt seem like both could be true. If the majority of the playerbase does not want to build how could a handfull of plots in each zone, some clumped together some spread out, some back in the major city areas not be enough for everyone without choking story bricks or leaving players without a possible plot?

Sony does not have a history of designing their individual servers for extremely large populations on each server anyway. As an example look at this simple image of how many plots and story bricks areas you could add to the commonlands without deleting any of the current pve content... Green is the pre-existing static pve content, blue is where story bricks could be added, and red is my idea of plots...

Hey, nice work.

As I'm seeing it, the housing takes up aa very small portion of the map, so not many players could actually live there. It would kind of be The "Oh mannnnn I got the good spot" feeling to have a house in a zone like this.

Can it work? Certainly!

Does it hinder or remove other possible game play mechanics?
Not really, Developers don't generally stuff every inch of a zone with content, or vistas. Sometimes, you just run, or ride, for a good while on your way to your next adventure. However... this is next. The AI could really mix things up! Who knows! And with the Crazy world changing events going on every so often, plus the earthquakes or what have you... well, Hm... I just don't know!

Does the plan have to be carefully constructed? Absolutely.

But its certainly possible from the looks of things. Housing could exist in the open world. Though, perhaps slots are a bit on the small side. Based on EQ2, everybody is going to want a house, or guild hall.

oh yes.

Well Llyrankeen you are describing every other game on the market. If your desire is to have an EQ skinned (insert game here) then you will be rewarded by the most restrictive manner in which they allow player input. There is of course a spectrum, but if EQNext is a not a place where players can have some impact on the world they should have just kept going with their static EQ3 project.

Again there are countless games that do not allow players to enjoy a dynamic world. Not sure why you feel your justifications are sufficient to have this game be a cast off MMO.

Here's to the shack in the woods, and to hell with an unchanging world.

Agreed.

I voted to be exactly as it is in Landmark, because I believe that the player should have the ability to say: THIS IS MY CLAIN!! AND MY SHACK SHALL BE BUILD HERE!
But also adding a clain system that should work likely as real life does.... After all you can clain as yours whatever you want in real life, that is not the problem, the problem remains if other people say otherwise and use their power to prove you wrong.
Want to clain a piece of Qeynos as yours without buying it? That's ok....but you better bring your army with you...
Want to clain a piece of land on orcish territory? That's ok..... as long as it is a castle with at least 1000 heavily armed guards 24/7 to protect it.

Other thing that I believe should be added in EQN's building system is NPC constructors. For instance... you go to "Bill the Architect" and hire him to go to your clain. Once he gets there he would have all the templates available with him, as he were all the crafting tables in Landmark, then you would design your home and Bill would build it. Something like that.
That might became something fun!

Sir, I appreciate your thoughts and your forum signature.

I can see both sides, but realistically I dont see a way that players could have claims wherever they want in EQN. My god.. the lag..

Could rope off portions of zones (like an instance or even provide zone continents off the original.. but actually in game? Lord.. anyone remember the first few.. well ok even now in Landmark. Trying to get a claim..? It was insane, so...many...people... Did I mention lag as you are trying to run past the giant ***** built in the air? rofl no thanks

And thats what Landmark is for. For all the builders to build to their hearts content. Perhaps the ones the developers decide to bring into game, could be allowed to have a claim in EQN? Now that would be an interesting contest...

Lag? really. The reason to Theme Park the game is Lag. That's awful.

If they made the game look like a cartoon partially to make it run better, and devised this voxel system lets hope it wasn't just a useless innovation coupled with a dubious art design choice that results in the same old static game world.

Landmark is now creeping into something I wish didn't exist. Landmark will be the justification for every freedom excised from EQNext.

Ive been getting this feeling for about three weeks now but I will just try to focus on the positive until more information is released or they scrap this build and try EQN version 4

Ever play Star Wars Galaxies? I don't remember that game being all that laggy when nobody had good internet.

Landmark does cause some problems. However there are ways around it.