TOR PLAYER HOUSING...Is just having a ship to decorate good enough??

Haven and I were on this thread on the main SWToR forums,

What do you think would be the best form of decorative player housing?


*Player ships as housing- (announced)

*Apartments on major cities I/E Corucsant/ Coronet?- (not-announced)

*Full Player housing- (not-announced)

*Merchant store/tent/housing- (not-announced)

*Player Cities- (not-announced)

*Other- (please specify)


We would like your opinions!!!

I am happy with ships as housing. At least it will be used more than housing, so decorating has a little more use.

As for apartments, well, may be nice if there are a few empty ones you can use for RP purposes. Don't need to be player housing, but could be instanced. That also allows for different designs and sizes in interior.

Player merchants? Please no, they have been implemented badly every time I've seen them. If they are there they should be restricted to trading zones or entirely toggle-able so they don't clutter up people's screens.

Player cities? Don't think those will make it in. If they are there will need to be areas reserved for them. Might be nice, especially if set up to create PvP events and keep those out of the hubs (lag reasons).

TL;DR Ships are enough, give me empty "instances" to play around in instead.
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I think it makes sense from the perspective of us playing "active duty". From a point of practicality a base of operations that goes with us and can take on all of the roles of a home/fortress/transport will be the place we spend our time, much like a ship captain at sea. My one question on ship usage would be whether or not other players can visit our them? I'm sure there are RP uses for homes/apartments separate from our ships, but are any of them actually not replaceable with the ship?

I know of 3 functional uses for player housing:

• A showcase for player trophies
  
• An undisturbed meeting place for players (guild meetings, etc...)
  
• A customizable RP area. (The number of functions it might fill for RP purposes could easily be limited by how it is implemented.)

The first 2 can be accommodated simply by making it possible to invite other players to your ship. As to the third, I'll counter with another idea.

Now there are plenty of questions remaining about exactly how grouping and "instancing" will work in SW:TOR. What if the "instances" (flashpoints or whatever they may be called) could be accessed in an "RP mode" wherein they were entirely devoid of NPCs? To take an example from WoW, what if Karazhan were RP accessible without having to clear it, without having to save your raid lock to completed bosses, etc...? What could RPers do with all those areas? Ballroom, Dining Room, Kitchen, Stables, Theatre, Balcony, Game Room, Bedtroom, Inter-dimensional Tower, and probably others I don't remember right this second. Whole events could be staged in just 1 or 2 of those areas, simply by inviting participants to a raid. Now what if we expand that concept to Shadowfang Keep (a basic keep), Zul'Gurub (Ancient Architecture City/Ruins), Scholomance (Medieval Mansion), or for that matter, Stratholme (Medieval City), Black Temple (Occult Temple)?

This would require nothing that isn't already in WoW, namely the Zones themselves and the ability to select a difficulty mode. While it would put more burden on the instance servers, how many people would use it for non-RP purposes? Guild meetings perhaps, simple exploration certainly, maybe for practicing raid positioning for certain encounters, but really I don't think you'd see THAT much extra burden. And the amount of satisfaction RPers and Guilds would derive from it would, IMHO, greatly out-match even an appearance tab.

And one further thought,

If instance servers do experience THAT MUCH of a load increase, then players are getting THAT MUCH out of it. Why not increase instance server capacity if the players are getting THAT MUCH value out of it, if it is THAT MUCH of an attraction?

((My apologies if I'm de-railing your thread. I can make a separate thread. I just think of this as a (better?) alternative to actual player housing.))

Ships are fine for me. I just hope they give us enough options to decorate both the interior and exterior.
What puzzles me about the ships is how the travel works. What happens when i arrive to my destination planet. I park my ship at some sort of spaceport? Or land on the planet where i choose? Or something else? Does anyone have info about this?

Other than the already announced ship housing I'd like to see some guild base of operations... It probably won't be happening but space stations would be nice for this

*Player ships as housing- (announced)
Will enjoy these, I think they plan on expanding their uses in the future, it's not a bad idea I think.

*Apartments on major cities I/E Corucsant/ Coronet?- (not-announced)
*Full Player housing- (not-announced)
I'm not sure how they'd cover these, since you already have a ship to go back to. Also, how to make it feel "heroic!" Cause remember, Chewie and Han didn't go buy a bungalow together and invite Luke and Ben over for tea.


*Merchant store/tent/housing- (not-announced)
See below "Other


*Player Cities- (not-announced)
Don't see this happening. While interesting, don't see it fitting TOR.

*Other- (please specify)

Grome wrote:

Other than the already announced ship housing I'd like to see some guild base of operations... It probably won't be happening but space stations would be nice for this

Well my friend...

They've mentioned a desire for possible guild Capitol ships. Not at launch, but something to work on for later. I'd like this, because it covers a good bit of possibilities, like possible PVP with the ship or entire guild to guild interaction for various reasons (maybe you run a known merchant type ship on the server, and people seek you out for better prices/gear.)


Personally I'm fine with just having player ships. I'd only want more added if it felt right for TOR and they spent the time to make it right.

I'm fine with just the ships. As long as I have lots of place to stash my collections of items, I will be happy.

A big NO to vendor stalls and other similar stuff, they are lag inducing.

We know that they are looking into "guild ship" for the future (well they liked the idea), but I really wonder what kind of Guild Hall they have in place right now.

In a way, you might not want them to put everything in at launch, they won't be able to do good updates if they have nothing to add into the game.

Kai-Sun wrote:

*Apartments on major cities I/E Corucsant/ Coronet?- (not-announced)
*Full Player housing- (not-announced)
I'm not sure how they'd cover these, since you already have a ship to go back to. Also, how to make it feel "heroic!" Cause remember, Chewie and Han didn't go buy a bungalow together and invite Luke and Ben over for tea.

And Vader had his Death Star, so why would he have an apartment in a city?

Sometimes I feel like the devs are just a tad too focused on how heroic something may be according to the movies



Now that you mention it, I remember reading something like this, yeah. Guild capitol ships would be pretty great indeed... But this here is also true:

azarhal wrote:

In a way, you might not want them to put everything in at launch, they won't be able to do good updates if they have nothing to add into the game.

Somehow lots of people seem to expect it to be all done at launch. That's the great part about an MMO. The devs have the possibility to act and work on the game for a very long time.

I actually just posted the Topic, but, here's my take on it. Haven already read this on the SWToR Forum housing thread...

*Player ships as housing- (announced)

I am all for this. I feel every player, regardless of player class, can really get alot "out of" this. Decorating and "pimping out", both the interior decor, AND the exterior appearance of your ship is an awesome possibility...As the game progresses, I hope they add a multitude of ship types...not just..."Who are you?"..."Sith??"..."Here's your Sith ship..same as everyone elses" <---not very creative in my book (cookie cutter). At launch, thats fine. I just hope they really expound upon diversifying the available ships IG...

*Apartments on major cities I/E Corucsant/ Coronet?- (not-announced)

This has been all over the SWToR forums in recent months. Actually, I feel this is an idea that can REALLY make the "feel" of Corucsant...or any large city for that matter, vastly immersive. Not just .."Ok your in a town, now what?". But like, "I need to go drop some items off at my apartment, then we can hit a Cantina and oogle hawt Twy'leks."

I have read the SWToR book "Fatal Alliance" (its ok), They go into some detail on the Imperial Agent having a "flat" on Corucsant. He was actually sending messages to Dromund Kaas via his Flat. It was kind of a "safe house" if you will.

Another thing a few intelligent posters on the main TOR forums were saying, was to have "instanced apartement space" to where you goto one of these giant skyscrapers, and "load in". low level apt's are small, the mid level ones are medium, and the upper "penthouse" levels are on par with Amidala's penthouse suite off SW EP II & III. I think that idea is brilliant.

Once again, I think every player should be able to purchase and use apartments...

I just think there's vast possibilities in having player Apartments


*Merchant store/tent/housing- (not-announced)
I really don't think they will implement this one at launch..

*Player Cities- (not-announced)

This could be an "expansion" in the future? Or, not at all...who knows..


*Other- (please specify)

Guild capital ships: I really think this one will happen. Maybe not at launch, but definitely in the near future after the game goes live. Just an opinion, though...I'm no dev...

Trooper Barracks: This idea is intriguing... Imagine as a trooper, you have a "unit" and a "barracks" you are stationed in! Actually having a bunk...footlocker, and wall locker! Thats your area. It would be immersive to the Trooper players storylines...imagine formations!? ..sweet. This would be outside guilds, more focused on the player class and storyline. The trooper could have a guild he is in along with this, though. Once again, just an idea/ opinion

Jedi / Sith Temple Domicile: Similar to Apartments, but, located inside the main Jedi temples on Tyhon and Corucsant...
Conversely, the Sith temples on Korriban and Dromund Kaas could be the location for these "Sith domiciles"..again...just an Idea/ Opinion..

Well I wouldn't mind player apartments at all like this. I just imagined myself dumping my 2 bedroom on Coruscant for a two story penthouse on Corellia.
And of course my secret storage unit on Nar'Shaddaa no one can know about...

Well as an ex-SWG player…I loved player cities, and player housing. (My old guild had 3 cities at one point! Lol) But there was a problem with them, namely random dotted houses and harvesters etc clogging up the landscape like no ones business.

I think player cities could be awesome, if they were say a plot of land were you could build upon, even instance it if you wanted too, it would have a set square footage, but from there allow guilds or just random players to build the city they want, to put down roads, and turrets what ever they want, obviously the bigger the guild, the better the things they could have in their city, a really huge guild or player city could begin to build skyscrapers and huge fortresses and so on, and why not?

Imagine like a group such as ours, who wanted to all mingle together in one city, a huge cross faction city!! The PVP……The RP…..heck the shear awesomeness of the community we would have in that area!!! I think it would be superb, could have fun Mayor Race competitions all sorts, I honestly think something like that would be seriously amazing!

Back to reality though?

Houses will be our ships, end of, at best we may end up with guild capital ships, which will act in some ways like a mini player city, but this is it for me, in this one regard, as with space in general, for a game using the Hero engine, with the scope it has for creating such incredibly huge and diverse worlds, it all seems a bit small to me? If I am proved to be wrong, and we see things like I have mentioned above, you will not find a happier person to be wrong, but……I just cannot see it sadly.

I will say, that I don't want to seem against anything. I'm willing to be shown ideas about how to make things work, I merely stated what I see at this point given my semi limited MMO experience. I'm an incredibly open minded individual.

Schwendo wrote:

*Apartments on major cities I/E Corucsant/ Coronet?- (not-announced)

Another thing a few intelligent posters on the main TOR forums were saying, was to have "instanced apartement space" to where you goto one of these giant skyscrapers, and "load in". low level apt's are small, the mid level ones are medium, and the upper "penthouse" levels are on par with Amidala's penthouse suite off SW EP II & III. I think that idea is brilliant.

This is how I was contemplating most of the ways they would implement player housing, as I can't really see them leaving space open for player cities and actual houses, specially if the game gets incredibly popular and flooded with people.

I think this would be one of the betters ways of handling it to help manage lag.

Schwendo wrote:

Trooper Barracks: This idea is intriguing... Imagine as a trooper, you have a "unit" and a "barracks" you are stationed in! Actually having a bunk...footlocker, and wall locker! Thats your area. It would be immersive to the Trooper players storylines...imagine formations!? ..sweet. This would be outside guilds, more focused on the player class and storyline. The trooper could have a guild he is in along with this, though. Once again, just an idea/ opinion

As long as this comes with my Full Metal Jacket Iconic story experience. R. Lee Ermey VO yelling at me? YES SIR!

Kai-Sun wrote:

I will say, that I don't want to seem against anything. I'm willing to be shown ideas about how to make things work, I merely stated what I see at this point given my semi limited MMO experience. I'm an incredibly open minded individual.

Schwendo wrote:

*Apartments on major cities I/E Corucsant/ Coronet?- (not-announced)

Another thing a few intelligent posters on the main TOR forums were saying, was to have "instanced apartement space" to where you goto one of these giant skyscrapers, and "load in". low level apt's are small, the mid level ones are medium, and the upper "penthouse" levels are on par with Amidala's penthouse suite off SW EP II & III. I think that idea is brilliant.

This is how I was contemplating most of the ways they would implement player housing, as I can't really see them leaving space open for player cities and actual houses, specially if the game gets incredibly popular and flooded with people.

I think this would be one of the betters ways of handling it to help manage lag.

Schwendo wrote:

Trooper Barracks: This idea is intriguing... Imagine as a trooper, you have a "unit" and a "barracks" you are stationed in! Actually having a bunk...footlocker, and wall locker! Thats your area. It would be immersive to the Trooper players storylines...imagine formations!? ..sweet. This would be outside guilds, more focused on the player class and storyline. The trooper could have a guild he is in along with this, though. Once again, just an idea/ opinion

As long as this comes with my Full Metal Jacket Iconic story experience. R. Lee Ermey VO yelling at me? YES SIR!

R.LEE!! I actually met him in the service. He came down to Camp Pendleton in a stretch limo. Man, that guy is JUST like that IRL!!

Coming from the Marine background, Man Kai, that would be a blast!! Imagine if the "Trooper" story Arc took you actually through boot camp, and into the "fleet"...wow the possibilities...

Ty', I actually have been the mayor of the CoG city in Gorath for over 5 years now. I have decorated the 4+ cantinas...city hall...houses...etc.. I could only hope that they wold implement some for m of this in TOR...I am realistic, though...I won't be holding my breath...I'll post some screenies of our player housing in SWG for people like Kai, who may not have played an MMO with the vast housing possibilities...

Also Ty,

You are 100% correct...post NGE failure, the entire servers were dotted with the skeletons of 100's of player houses...now vacant. The demo patch helped a bit, along with the "90 day rule", but, theres STILL dozens of houses all over...I would not like to see that mistake replicated in TOR...

I love the idea of Guild Capitol ships. This makes a lot of sense, and it pretty freaking awesome.

The problem I have with player housing, is that I don't feel it has been done right. Player housing I've seen:

DAoC
LotRO
AO
SWG
UO
... I feel like I'm missing some.

So, the problems I have with the previous models:

UO/SWG: The clutter... oh god the clutter. I think player cities did more harm than good. I somewhat enjoy the concept, but look at the state of SWG now. They're ghost towns of waste. Their stuff went everywhere, and sooner or later you had vast stretches of land with no order. It eventually started to look shoddy. There's a reason slums are they way they are.

LotRO/DAoC: Instanced neighborhoods have the issues that they become barren. The people who spend the most times in their homes are probably Role-Players, yet it destroys the "neighborhood" when no one is every around. If you could find a way to consolidate active homes together, that would be preferable. I was very disappointed to run up to the neighborhood instance, have to pick from a list of 50 or so neighborhoods, and then run over to my house in a completely barren place. I want to see life here. We want to create social hubs where people will bump into one another, and this runs into the same pitfalls that GWs and STO and the like run into, where you separate people up into too many instances.

AO actually doesn't have it bad. They basically had apartment buildings, where you had a little "room." I think this solution would be great for TOR if you did it in a certain way.

Have several "apartment buildings" Divide these up with Dorm style layouts/common rooms. For instance, you could have a tower with... 10 floors. Each floor would (for simplicity of example) be arranged as a square. The middle area inside the square would be a "common" or "social" area. Where as the lines of the square would represent doors into a small little instanced apartment. So you could, in theory, go to ANY door, in order to get into your apartment (or that of anyone in your party list), similar to the guild base portal interface in City of Heroes.

The reason I say to have multiple floors, is because those who care and want to use them for social areas, will use the other floors, while those that don't, will just use the first available door on the first floor. Role-players could pick a door on any of the 10 floors and use the same one as "their" door, and would likely find neighbors that way. People who wanted to be social, could move their discussion from the first floor, up to another unoccupied floor, but it would still be public so people could have a chance to "randomly walk by."

I don't feel like Player Housing is needed or will be provided, but if it were, that is how I would want it implemented.

Schwendo wrote:

Kai-Sun wrote:

I will say, that I don't want to seem against anything. I'm willing to be shown ideas about how to make things work, I merely stated what I see at this point given my semi limited MMO experience. I'm an incredibly open minded individual.

Schwendo wrote:

*Apartments on major cities I/E Corucsant/ Coronet?- (not-announced)

Another thing a few intelligent posters on the main TOR forums were saying, was to have "instanced apartement space" to where you goto one of these giant skyscrapers, and "load in". low level apt's are small, the mid level ones are medium, and the upper "penthouse" levels are on par with Amidala's penthouse suite off SW EP II & III. I think that idea is brilliant.

This is how I was contemplating most of the ways they would implement player housing, as I can't really see them leaving space open for player cities and actual houses, specially if the game gets incredibly popular and flooded with people.

I think this would be one of the betters ways of handling it to help manage lag.

Schwendo wrote:

Trooper Barracks: This idea is intriguing... Imagine as a trooper, you have a "unit" and a "barracks" you are stationed in! Actually having a bunk...footlocker, and wall locker! Thats your area. It would be immersive to the Trooper players storylines...imagine formations!? ..sweet. This would be outside guilds, more focused on the player class and storyline. The trooper could have a guild he is in along with this, though. Once again, just an idea/ opinion

As long as this comes with my Full Metal Jacket Iconic story experience. R. Lee Ermey VO yelling at me? YES SIR!

R.LEE!! I actually met him in the service. He came down to Camp Pendleton in a stretch limo. Man, that guy is JUST like that IRL!!

Coming from the Marine background, Man Kai, that would be a blast!! Imagine if the "Trooper" story Arc took you actually through boot camp, and into the "fleet"...wow the possibilities...

Ty', I actually have been the mayor of the CoG city in Gorath for over 5 years now. I have decorated the 4+ cantinas...city hall...houses...etc.. I could only hope that they wold implement some for m of this in TOR...I am realistic, though...I won't be holding my breath...I'll post some screenies of our player housing in SWG for people like Kai, who may not have played an MMO with the vast housing possibilities...

Also Ty,

You are 100% correct...post NGE failure, the entire servers were dotted with the skeletons of 100's of player houses...now vacant. The demo patch helped a bit, along with the "90 day rule", but, theres STILL dozens of houses all over...I would not like to see that mistake replicated in TOR...

I can see why you'd enjoy this, but you're the rare exception.

Would you be content if they gave you a guild capital ship that had a large amount of space with costumization/decoration options with trophies/banners/etc that the guild earns?

Lord_Paladin wrote:

I can see why you'd enjoy this, but you're the rare exception.

Would you be content if they gave you a guild capital ship that had a large amount of space with costumization/decoration options with trophies/banners/etc that the guild earns?

I wouldn't mind helping people decorate, but as I said, do not want player cities for TOR.

The Capital Ship as I laid out, is probably the best way to achieve many of the player/guild housing ideas. You'll probably see decent bit of areas on the ship with some options to change them a bit, though probably not on a grand scale. Lots of opportunities I think though, for the Cap ship and the regular player ships.

Schwendo wrote:

*Player ships as housing- (announced)

I am all for this. I feel every player, regardless of player class, can really get alot "out of" this. Decorating and "pimping out", both the interior decor, AND the exterior appearance of your ship is an awesome possibility...As the game progresses, I hope they add a multitude of ship types...not just..."Who are you?"..."Sith??"..."Here's your Sith ship..same as everyone elses" <---not very creative in my book (cookie cutter). At launch, thats fine. I just hope they really expound upon diversifying the available ships IG...

I feel the same way. At the beginning I was somehow secretly hoping for thousands of different ship types.

If you want them to be sort of elaborated though you can't expect such numbers. But one for each class is a very restricted choice...

I *mostly* read all the responses here (I did skim through some).

Here's my take/experience:

1. Player Ships - have they said definitively that they are decorable? I don't recall anything on the subject except a brief comment in an interview which suggested but gave no details. I've seen implementations of "decorable" which were very bad. SW:G's decorable is win - everyone else (with one exception) has failed miserably.

2. Instanced Housing: NeoCron did this (NeoCron 2 is free to play, if you want to check what it looks like). This was a big success IMO - you went to your elevator and punched in your name and tada! There you were. Other players could visit you by typing your name, same deal. You could buy nicer apartments as you gained funds & faction (certain factions own certain buildings, see?) Overall a brilliant and elegant solution. The only problem was their decorating kind of sucked.

3. Guild Halls / Housing / Ships:
First, let me say this: Guild Halls in SW:G were one of the greatest things they ever put in. Despite the fact that most of them ended up becoming "malls" or people's personal housing, they were awesome when used for the intended purpose.

NeoCron had the same thing - guild apartments/headquarters. See previous post for comments regarding that, as they were much like the apartments.

The problem I have with Capital Ships as a Guild Hall is multifold.
First, would they be instanced, or all cluttering up the apparently limited space around a planet, if there is in fact free-form flight (which I think there is not)? Would they be actually visible, where you have to fly to them, or would they be an option at the helm of your personal ship?

Since there is no space combat/flight that I'm aware of, (the tunnel shooter is not open space flight) then it would be fair to assume that "Capital Ships" would only be interiors (read: instanced). If they were actual ships you had to fly to, that would make it more of a bother to get to, and many would be less inclined to go there. But, since I'm assuming they're basically an instanced room set, then why not just make it an apartment in a city? What's the difference, really?

If they actually did implement Caps, then they would have to follow precedent -- make them pilotable, usable in *ahem* space combat, and eventually (you KNOW it'd be demanded) in PvP. The players would then want to be able to launch from them and use personal ships as well. Which brings up a whole 'nother set of problems....

Anywho. I'm starting to ramble.
Really, there are planets (i.e. Coruscant) which are a single city covering an entire planet (in movies/literature; not sure about their implementation). It is therefore not unreasonable that everyone would be able to have (1) a personal apartment and (2) a guild hall on said planet -- instanced, of course.

Perhaps even a shop....

Grome wrote:

I feel the same way. At the beginning I was somehow secretly hoping for thousands of different ship types.

If you want them to be sort of elaborated though you can't expect such numbers. But one for each class is a very restricted choice...

Actually, this is not true. I would imagine the prohibitive factor here was design time/resources, and nothing else. The fact is, the relative poly count of ships is lower than characters, since there are so many contiguous surfaces on the exterior. Add to that the fact that the interiors load as the environment, which is enclosed and therefore smaller than the worlds, then really there is no restrictions on ship types other than, as I said, design time.

Consider the amount of armor/clothing/weapon/race/character customization that has to load when you're in a public area.
Plus environment, vehicles, et cetera...

Yeah, ships are not that big a deal. It's a matter of how much of your resources you want to throw at them.
Since they've demonstrated that space/ships are a *very* low priority for ToR, I wouldn't expect too much more regarding them.

Player Housing is so far down on the list of things I look for in a game as to not even register. OK, I could see the appeal of player cities where guild members hang out, but still this is hardly a must to avoid qq (rage quit for those unfamiliar with qq) for me.

They already said why there is a limited number of ships. The problem is story... The ship take a lot of time to make because of the story cutscenes and companions stuff that happen in them, aka scripting. I remember one dev mentioning that it took more time to do all the stuff in the Ebon Hawk than all the rest of KoTOR. Same thing with Mass Effect, the Normandy scripting take a lot of resources and time to do.

The only thing they can do for SWTOR is different exterior, but a lot of the ship interior will need to be "the same" to not break the scripting.

Velaxi wrote:

Yeah, ships are not that big a deal. It's a matter of how much of your resources you want to throw at them.
Since they've demonstrated that space/ships are a *very* low priority for ToR, I wouldn't expect too much more regarding them.

While it's true they're low priority, I do think they'll eventually add more as time goes on, maybe as rewards for certain space missions. It'll take a back seat to the ground game, but it's another area to expand on if they feel it's needed, which is cool.

I like ships as much as the next guy, but I'm more focused on what their trying to do story wise with our characters moreso then my ship.

Velaxi wrote:

I *mostly* read all the responses here (I did skim through some).

Here's my take/experience:

1. Player Ships - have they said definitively that they are decorable? I don't recall anything on the subject except a brief comment in an interview which suggested but gave no details. I've seen implementations of "decorable" which were very bad. SW:G's decorable is win - everyone else (with one exception) has failed miserably.

2. Instanced Housing: NeoCron did this (NeoCron 2 is free to play, if you want to check what it looks like). This was a big success IMO - you went to your elevator and punched in your name and tada! There you were. Other players could visit you by typing your name, same deal. You could buy nicer apartments as you gained funds & faction (certain factions own certain buildings, see?) Overall a brilliant and elegant solution. The only problem was their decorating kind of sucked.

3. Guild Halls / Housing / Ships:
First, let me say this: Guild Halls in SW:G were one of the greatest things they ever put in. Despite the fact that most of them ended up becoming "malls" or people's personal housing, they were awesome when used for the intended purpose.

NeoCron had the same thing - guild apartments/headquarters. See previous post for comments regarding that, as they were much like the apartments.

1) They have said the ships were customizable. But what they're talking about is visual changes to the exterior of your ship based off of rewards you get from space combat missions.

2) I seriously doubt they will do this, since you have player housing in the form of ships, and they don't imagine it's heroic to sit around in your home hanging pictures. After all, Darth Vader never watered his flowers or spend an hour fiding just the right place to hang all those tuskan raider masks. (that was me being sarcastic at BioWare's expense )

3) I'm really "meh" about this. I think Guild Ships gives you everything you need without having to do this. And I would much rather have that than SWG style guild halls.

Quote :

The problem I have with Capital Ships as a Guild Hall is multifold.
First, would they be instanced, or all cluttering up the apparently limited space around a planet, if there is in fact free-form flight (which I think there is not)? Would they be actually visible, where you have to fly to them, or would they be an option at the helm of your personal ship?

Since there is no space combat/flight that I'm aware of, (the tunnel shooter is not open space flight) then it would be fair to assume that "Capital Ships" would only be interiors (read: instanced). If they were actual ships you had to fly to, that would make it more of a bother to get to, and many would be less inclined to go there. But, since I'm assuming they're basically an instanced room set, then why not just make it an apartment in a city? What's the difference, really?

If they actually did implement Caps, then they would have to follow precedent -- make them pilotable, usable in *ahem* space combat, and eventually (you KNOW it'd be demanded) in PvP. The players would then want to be able to launch from them and use personal ships as well. Which brings up a whole 'nother set of problems....

Anywho. I'm starting to ramble.
Really, there are planets (i.e. Coruscant) which are a single city covering an entire planet (in movies/literature; not sure about their implementation). It is therefore not unreasonable that everyone would be able to have (1) a personal apartment and (2) a guild hall on said planet -- instanced, of course.

Perhaps even a shop....

I believe they would be instanced, with a "node" on your map just like planets. Probably with some animation showing your ship fly up and dock before disembarking. Just like going up to the citadel or what not in Mass Effect.

I don't believe TOR will ever implement "just flying." TOR is basically the ultimate theme park to SWG's ultimate sand box.

The perk to making them in space, is it's a "story reason" for why it's a separate instance, and saves them from cluterting up Coruscant, and then you don't just have the "generic door" that everyone walks into to get to their private guild instance.

I really won't respond to the rest, since they'll never be used to fly space missions or in PvP, as you pointed out how ludicrous the idea is.

Velaxi wrote:

Grome wrote:

I feel the same way. At the beginning I was somehow secretly hoping for thousands of different ship types.

If you want them to be sort of elaborated though you can't expect such numbers. But one for each class is a very restricted choice...

Actually, this is not true. I would imagine the prohibitive factor here was design time/resources, and nothing else. The fact is, the relative poly count of ships is lower than characters, since there are so many contiguous surfaces on the exterior. Add to that the fact that the interiors load as the environment, which is enclosed and therefore smaller than the worlds, then really there is no restrictions on ship types other than, as I said, design time.

Consider the amount of armor/clothing/weapon/race/character customization that has to load when you're in a public area.
Plus environment, vehicles, et cetera...

Yeah, ships are not that big a deal. It's a matter of how much of your resources you want to throw at them.
Since they've demonstrated that space/ships are a *very* low priority for ToR, I wouldn't expect too much more regarding them.

Actually from what we've seen, the ships are scaled according to their interiors. Which I think is pretty cool