community enhancement. Houses/Neighborhoods (how to make a server community come together more) [Archive]

Kithica

10-29-2010, 02:37 PM

I've been thinking about this a bit since the housing areas opened up and people started making large markets and gathering places oustide the confines of thier house and guild hall.A problem I see is that no matter what is available at a guild hall or house, almost no players go there and if they do, they only go there for a quick stop to buy something or guild amenity use. In fact really, the only prolonged stay a person has in a guild hall is crafting.Since there's no writs, bank, or other things in houses, the reason to go into someone else's house is almost nonexistant.So there's the problem as I see it. Not enough reason for people to use houses and to a lesser degree Guild Halls.As I ponder this problem, I think back to EQ1. I played there from beta to the release date of EQ2. In the early years players had to rely on the community for almost everything. The Commonlands tunnel was the perfect place to gather for groups and just chat. There was no global chat channels and everyone used the out of character zone channel to sell things, gather groups and just about anything else. It was a real community.So on to fixes.The idea I keep seeing pop up is a neighborhood of somekind to gather people in one place(or a couple places). What I imagine is an area about 4 times the size of a T3 guild hall. I could see a town center with roads and a capitol building. As you move away from that center there'd be roads and land plots available to purchase. Some larger than others for sale at different prices. In other larger areas spread out around the town would be places a guild could take up residence.So you can see the idea. a town built up by players and guilds.An important part here though. To make the place a community, you can't instance any of the houses or GHs. Maybe you can add a script like the one in the tower in Mara that kicks people out if they aren't allowed in but it's important to keep the place open and in one instance. That way in one town you'd hear things like, "Haha, check out what this guy did in his house. it looks so funny", or "come over to Kithica's farm if you need some whatever", ect.Of course you'd have to limit the size according to certain things and you'd have to limit item count ect, just like the large guild halls. But I think if you did something along these lines you'd have a real nice addition to the game.Of course all this would mean "level up" the town in some way as players use it.Anyway, I call this Kithica's Township idea.Please, I'd rather not hear about how this or that won't work. Instead, any additions to the idea would be awsome.*edit*Oh some other things I'd love to see are a music hall or theater.

Ulrichvon

10-29-2010, 04:08 PM

No offense, but nothing you mentiond is going to engage me or many other players unlike yourself.That being said, I do not understand why so many players make so many varied suggesitons on how to bring players together in game.It really shocks me, as the best and most obvious answer was already solved years ago in EQ1.Plain of KnowledgeCreating a single zone that houses all the rapid connection points in game and designing those transportation points to require zoning thru PoK pretty much creates a condition and zone where people will spend a sizeable part of their idle time.If that is your goal, then I whole heartedly feel that is the answer. Remove all rapid transportation options and replace them with bells, portals, and rings to a PoK zone that then has portals, bells, rings to all other conneciton points in game.The only way to bring everyone together is to force transportation thru fewer common areas.

Katz

10-30-2010, 03:43 PM

Forcing transportation through one common area will only have players passing through the area. What would be the point in lingering there?To get people to linger in an area, there has to be a reason to linger there.

pantherr

10-30-2010, 03:50 PM

<cite>Katz wrote:</cite><blockquote>Forcing transportation through one common area will only have players passing through the area. What would be the point in lingering there?To get people to linger in an area, there has to be a reason to linger there.</blockquote>Why do people linger in GHs? Because all of there broker, transport crafting needs are met there etcPeople always lingered in PoK back in eq1. If they made the GH bells etc take you to PoK, why would you wait in your GH when you could wait in PoK and be one zone closer. PoK became the main area that everyone went to when they had idle time or were just waiting around.That being said, it wouldn't work because then all of the transportation methods in guild halls would have to be combined into one teleporter to a PoK type zone, and thus it would remove the need for guild halls all together. I don't see SOE removing or revamping all of the guild halls to accomodate something like this.

Kithica

10-30-2010, 05:48 PM

I'd like to see something to do in these community areas.

Kaboomerang

10-30-2010, 07:23 PM

Alvane

10-30-2010, 09:16 PM

<cite>Kithica@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>..............Since there's no writs, bank, or other things in houses, the reason to go into someone else's house is almost nonexistant.................So there's the problem as I see it. Not enough reason for people to use houses and to a lesser degree Guild Halls......So on to fixes.........So you can see the idea. a town built up by players and guilds..........Please, I'd rather not hear about how this or that won't work. Instead, any additions to the idea would be awsome.</blockquote>Only reason for a house is to place things on the broker - you must have a house in order to do so. Other than that, it's storage space for items collected during adventuring that you don't want to delete or sell.Guild halls have replaced town centers. Your idea isn't not new and is in many games including the infamous Farmville.However, although you do not want to hear that it won't work, I will tell you anyway.EQ2's mechanics/engine - will not AFAIK allow for dynamic changes in the game such as building a town center or a village, tearing something else down, destroying something then rebuilding on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. The EQ2 and WoW engines are what is called static. IOW, nothing every changes, no matter how many gnolls you kill or forts you blast.The only way Norrath can be changed is by the artists of SoE such as the destruction of the Overlord Lucan's place of biz in WFP. That is a static change. A player could not possibly do that. With WoW, the new xpac, Cataclysm is a make-over of the original lands - with a story behind the changes. Once again, it's static - not dynamic. Players could not effect any changes themselves.So, for your splendid and wonderful, if not original idea of charcters being able to purchase plots and build houses, towns, villages, is in all probability not possible within the current confines of EQ2. EQ2 would have to use an entirely different type engine/mechanics.Perhaps SoE would consider dynamic gaming for their next game in the EQ series.

Banerm

10-30-2010, 11:02 PM

<cite>Alvane@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>The only way Norrath can be changed is by the artists of SoE such as the destruction of the Overlord Lucan's place of biz in WFP. That is a static change. A player could not possibly do that. With WoW, the new xpac, Cataclysm is a make-over of the original lands - with a story behind the changes. Once again, it's static - not dynamic. Players could not effect any changes themselves.</blockquote>That's not entirely true. EQ2 just as WoW has environmental phasing, which does add a layer beyond that of a static zones. I noticed you mentioned Cataclysm in particular which is full of phasing environments.That being said, the only proper way they could implement such changes inside the towns would be via quest driven mechanics with phasing. Would this bring a community closer together? That's more dependent on the quest arc and how the players effect said arc.

Finora

10-31-2010, 12:53 AM

So...you want some sort of community where people can get together, chat, just hang out and see the scenery, visit other people's homes, have the opportunity to take care of their business at the same time, share with thoughts/gifts etc with other players and such.Sounds an awful lot like what we already have in EQ2. I chat daily with people from my server (and others) in various chat channels. I regularly visit my home, homes of friends, homes/guild halls of others who have decorated. I'm on the mailing list for books written by a player on my main server. Many other people have the same sorts of experience I'm sure.Housing similar to what you are describing is in Vanguard and Lord of the Rings online (and now Eq1 from what I've heard), other than the leveling up the area. I play/have played all those games and while people do visit the neighborhoods, they tend to do their business and move on to whatever else they are doing (at least in Vanguard and LOTRO). Exactly like people tend do in Eq2. I don't think just having neighborhoods around would do all that much to promote community on a server. People barely act as communities in the real world these days, let alone in games.Also you'd probably be looking at some pretty severe item limits on a per house/hall basis in the neighborhood instance. Many people already have massive issues loading a T3 guild hall that isn't even full and decorated big houses in the cities. Expecting multiple guilds/players to share a 1500-1700 item limit likely wouldn't go over well with many, particularly if you would expect this to replace the tradition instanced halls and houses.The problem you are experiencing really is as much of a playerbase thing as a game thing I think. In Eq2 you of course can ignore everyone if you want and play it as a solo experience, you miss a lot of content, but you can. It's not forced on you to be social. So in that respect, it is the game. But it is in the end the players that choose whether they want to be social or not, not the devs. Any leveling up of the housing as you described would likely end up much like the world building XX thing events. A handful of people doing the vast majority of the work, some just running through it one time to say they did help, and the rest just ignoring it completely and waiting for the others to finish it or the devs to auto complete it.Maybe it's just the servers I'm on, but they already do feel like a community to me. We have people announcing in chat they've recently redecorated their homes/halls and inviting people to come see. Occassionally people giving away things at their homes. Joking around at the guide events with guides & other players. Random RP when you happen to bump into someone who stays in character (if someone is behaving as such, I tend to reply in kind even though I'm not much of a RPer).

Alvane

10-31-2010, 03:34 PM

<cite>Banerm wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Alvane@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>The only way Norrath can be changed is by the artists of SoE such as the destruction of the Overlord Lucan's place of biz in WFP. That is a static change. A player could not possibly do that. With WoW, the new xpac, Cataclysm is a make-over of the original lands - with a story behind the changes. Once again, it's static - not dynamic. Players could not effect any changes themselves.</blockquote>That's not entirely true. EQ2 just as WoW has environmental phasing, which does add a layer beyond that of a static zones. I noticed you mentioned Cataclysm in particular which is full of phasing environments.That being said, the only proper way they could implement such changes inside the towns would be via quest driven mechanics with phasing. Would this bring a community closer together? That's more dependent on the quest arc and how the players effect said arc.</blockquote>You are right about phasing, even though it's limited and not world wide in effects. Phasing is utilized in EQ2 in a small way, also. So, if a person buys a plot of land through a quest and builds on it through questing, only that person will see the results. That is basically phasing. At this time, AFAIK, it's limited in use and WoW uses it in dungeonns as well as with the Death Knight starting areas.I doubt EQ2 has the capability of utilizing this technology on a grand scale at this time.

Kitsune

10-31-2010, 05:55 PM

Before the guild halls had transport available, people never gathered anywhere anyway. And why do you want folk to idle in a common out of guild hall transport area? All it is is AFK toons. I'ver been playing now about 5 years and I have never seen gatherings of folk wanting to socialise, except kinda at the Frostfell events.I played Lineage 2 before EQ2 and to sell you had to go sit on the huge town squares of the cities like Dion or one by the coast. Then you squatted down in some place that was empty - HAH! Empty?? - and set up your For Sale sign. You then had to remain logged in to sell. Most folk did this overnight.Might sound good, but you could barely move in those towns to get to all the sellers you actually wanted to see because every person sat down was an obstacle you had to get round. Folk got good at blocking off each other so buyers had difficulty getting to some Sellers! And if you were just passing through, a nightmare. Anyone who was running from seller to seller was too damned busy to talk to you. Thus as a way fo bringing folk together it was an epic Fail.In EQ2 the majority of folk want to chatter to guild mates anyways, and to get any buying/selling etc done as quickly as possible then get out and on with the business of adventuring for levels, or carry on crafting, If crafting unless you use the voice chat, you can't talk and craft at the same time effectively.What you want are more opportunities for Role Play, and to be honest, most folk aren't interested in that. I applaud your enthusiasm, but Antonia Bayle, one of the 2 RP servers, seems to be doing a grand job of fostering community get togethers as it is. Try playing there and see if it enhances your playing needs. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" />

Kithica

10-31-2010, 06:19 PM

If you had ever been a part of the EQ1 commonlands tunnel community you might know what I'm talking about. The idea that chatting in 1-10 channel is anything like a community is ridiculous. Ultima Online had towns. Places people went to do things in the game. No games have anything like that. The first game that does will corner a market that no one has tapped into yet.

Iskandar

10-31-2010, 08:29 PM

greenmantle

10-31-2010, 08:53 PM

<cite>Ulrichvon wrote:</cite><blockquote>No offense, but nothing you mentiond is going to engage me or many other players unlike yourself.That being said, I do not understand why so many players make so many varied suggesitons on how to bring players together in game.It really shocks me, as the best and most obvious answer was already solved years ago in EQ1.Plain of Knowledge</blockquote>You only mentioned half the solution. Cut the mana regen from food in half, remove manatotems and give Chanters an mass mana regen spell that increases regen by say 250%Nothing creates comunity in eq1 or 2 like MGB KEI Pok bank 10 mins.

PlaneCrazy

10-31-2010, 09:12 PM

<cite>Kithica@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>If you had ever been a part of the EQ1 commonlands tunnel community you might know what I'm talking about. The idea that chatting in 1-10 channel is anything like a community is ridiculous. Ultima Online had towns. Places people went to do things in the game. No games have anything like that. The first game that does will corner a market that no one has tapped into yet.</blockquote>That market was tapped, used, abused and discarded in EQ1. I remember the ECM tunnels well and the nightly auctions. I was also the GL of one of the largest guilds in EQ back at launch and our guild was the first to have language teaching meetings in the tunnel. We'd get several groups together and then spam macro's of different languages until everyone was skilled up. I even performed one of the first guild marriages in the Commonlands <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> It was fun and great but, in all honesty, there's not enough of those type of players around anymore to support a game that does that anymore. The money nowadays is in the lazy "gimme" generation that populates most of WoW (and a lot of EQ2's current player base, TBH) These players want instant gratification. You can hardly find anyone in EQ2 willing to spend more then 2 mins travel time to meet you, let alone commit to meeting at a set time and socializing in an area like the Commonlands of old.I think EQ2's decision to instance housing pretty much guaranteed that you wouldn't see player created communities in game. And their constant changes that relaxed travel requirements just added to that. Heck, just look at cities... In EQ1 (at least during the first couple of years) places like Qeynos and Freeport and Kaladim were vibrant cities. In EQ2, the core launch cities are deserted.The only game I have seen lately that comes close to having the same feeling of EQ1, in regards to community, was Vanguard. In VG, houses are player built objects in the game and not instanced. Guild Halls are these massive structures that take a whole guild of players to build (none of these 1 or 2 man guilds in VG!) My second guild in Vanguard was OTG and for a long time there, they had a huge membership (600+ accounts) and they did a whole lot of social activities based around their Guild Hall. In fact, we had almost a Guild City going as we had purchased most of the house plots around our Guild Hall. We had houses for crafting, house for harvesting storage, houses for armor and weapons... etc, etc. It was great.I think that sort of community in a game like EQ2 won't see those sort of player driven communities until the technology changes again... next gen virtual games... that sort of thing.

Kitsune

10-31-2010, 09:44 PM

Kithica - When I said chat to guild mates I meant on the Guild channel, not any of the others. The only channels I ever have open are Guild, Norrathtrade and the Test server channels. The rest have nothing I really want to hear, to be honest. Occasioanlly in a newbie area I will have the 1-10 channel open to help new players.A game like you suggest, does indeed need to be built like that from the ground up, and ATTRACT the kind of player who wants to play that kind of game. I am doubtful if it would attractand hold many of the kind of players you want. Mostly you'll get everyone else, players that don't want to socialize that much, or want to/end up belonging to cliques/guilds. /shrug. It's what RL is like, after all.

Kithica

10-31-2010, 10:05 PM

Like I said in the first post..I really don't care about your objections or thoughts on how this or that won't work. I don't care if you think it will have too much lag or would have to be built from the ground up, whatever. do me a favor and start your own thread about how you love things the way they are or something.I posted a suggestion for an addition to the game that I love because I thought there was a niche that no one else had going and EQ2 has an opportunity to grasp before anyone else did.I think that if EQ2 could congeal the effects and benifits of crafting, transportation, chatting, guild halls, housing ect into a community type structure, EQ2 could be a front runner in the multi player gaming world.

PlaneCrazy

10-31-2010, 11:02 PM

<cite>Kithica@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>Like I said in the first post..I really don't care about your objections or thoughts on how this or that won't work. I don't care if you think it will have too much lag or would have to be built from the ground up, whatever. do me a favor and start your own thread about how you love things the way they are or something.I posted a suggestion for an addition to the game that I love because I thought there was a niche that no one else had going and EQ2 has an opportunity to grasp before anyone else did.I think that if EQ2 could congeal the effects and benifits of crafting, transportation, chatting, guild halls, housing ect into a community type structure, EQ2 could be a front runner in the multi player gaming world.</blockquote>Ok, so you opened a thread to showcase your idea, but you really don't care about what other people think, if it conflicts with your ideas. Hmmm... perhaps you should have just sent this as an email to the devs. Forums are used for discussions and if you are just going to dismiss conflicting views to your own, then not much real discussion will take place. Which is sad, considering the best ideas usually come from open discussion.

xguild

11-01-2010, 04:21 AM

Hostility aside I have to agree with the poster at least on one part which is that the game lacks community driven centers, at least on the server I play (don't know how it is in other games).My experiance so far since returning to the game (which was very different three years ago when I played) is that basically the world is very very empty. I played through the New Halas zone from 1st to 20th level and probobly encountered 3-4 people in the week it took me to play through it. The people I did run into where very short (busy) and their is very little going on in this zone.I decided I wanted some intereaction so I went to the Qyenos, walked around and again I found it to be quite dead. Their was very few people around and those that where their again where busy doing their stuff.As for a suggestion on how to solve it, I think you can look to Star Wars Galaxies for inspiriation.One of the great aspects of that game is that Cantinas are always busy because their is a good reason for people to go their (seeking entertainters) and so at any time whenever you feel like it, in SWG you can just head out to the Cantina and you will always find a chatty bunch hanging around watching entertainers do their thing.In Everquest 2 the only real social aspects of community are in guilds and that seems to me where most people are getting their interaction from. I would venture to guess as well that in higher level zones their are more people as the game has been out many years now and the newbie zones are relativly quick (even though it took me a week since Im a bit of an explorer I would imagine if I hunkered down I could blow through a newbie zone in a day or two).

Kitsune

11-01-2010, 05:45 AM

Cantinas sound interesting.But trying to force people into being a "community" will never work. People have to want to interact, and have a reason to do so. Like I said, the only place I have seen any real interaction over the last 5 years, apart from in Guild Halls, is in the Frostfell Village as people relax from their usual gaming and kick back in there.When we all had to go to one set craft hall area, depending on your level as a crafter, there were more folk about there than any other place apart from Frostfell, and then you only met like 2 or 3 other folks there, but you can't socialize and craft unless you are on voice chat. Least I can't without wrecking what I am crafting.I was involved in the Wishing Well on Liona Server in L2, but that was a player run event once a week. The rest of the time the place was deserted apart from players doing their own things.There have been other threads on this topic and usually they go the same way - people don't want to have their travel and crafting and banking taken out of Guild Halls just to satisy the minority who feel that there should be areas full of folk all interacting. To be honest, most people play the game to go adventuring, or craft, or decorate, not to stand about chatting, especially when they can voice chat in groups or in Guilds while soloing. They want to get on with what they are doing.If this was a real world, all the adventurers would be out adventuring, not hanging about a bank or a Broker. Crafters would be in crafting areas doing their things, and the decorators would be in houses and guilds doing their things. We have never had a need to be out and about in the towns for any real reasons because apart from the Brokers and Banks, there is nothing there to do. No one buys from traders because the player made food etc is better.So unless you can come up with suggestions as to why we adventurers, oor crafters or decorators should hang around anywhere rather than do what we need to in town and get back out to adventure, craft or decorate, you aren't going to convince anyone that this is a valid idea. After all if all you want is socialization, then a game like Second Life is more what you are after, don't you think?

feldon30

11-01-2010, 07:02 AM

I guess it's been a month since the last "We need to find debilitating, hackneyed, artificial tricks of FORCING USERS to repopulate the cities" thread?Here's a solution:<ul><li>Guild Hall Amenities which allow quick travel (Mariner's Bell, World Travel Bell, Druid NPC, Wizard Translocation NPC, and Guild Rally Flag NPC) may not be placed in a guild hall on servers flagged Role-Play.</li></ul>

gourdon

11-01-2010, 07:44 AM

What I have to add has been hinted at in some of the other posts. The bottom line is that people need a purpose to be in the common area if such an idea is going to work. It is also more complicated than that because there needs to be a dynamic that encourages a persistent presence and some way to be noticed and recognized for accomplishments real or imagined. This is not a trivial task.There are three game functions that can play into this to draw players1. Raw utility such as buffing, getting equiped, etc...One problem with building a community area through utility is that trading is all through the broker. The other problem is that there is no out of group buffing in the game. An idea that I had is that there could be some system where visiting friend's houses while they are there or formally having a party could have an impact on vitality and/or provide useful buffs that might last based upon a measure of interaction quality and duration. This same principle could be applied to live events as well. Likewise, it might be a good idea to give tradeskill benefits to encourage guilds to open their halls to outsiders and also encourage outsiders to use those halls instead of the common areas (or vice versa). Maybe the tools in a populated area produce product faster or enhance the skills of all users.2. Progression in some aspect of the game which has ongoing goals such as tradeskilling.To enhance progression in centralized areas rather than dungeons, more progression should be added to live events. Most live events are completely repetitious and become boring quite quickly. It especially gets bad when gathering can be cut out by using the broker on tradeskill tasks. Then, make sure there is some increase in complexity and a record of progress. Even something as simple as telling players how much they individually contributed to druid rings/spires would have made things more interesting. Progression feedback is key and changing things up a little doesn't hurt either.3. Showing off the fruits of progression such as wearing interesting equipment or having interesting titles.There should be many more interesting titles to be had and it wouldn't hurt to have some of them be able to be stacked with other titles, much like many of the long lists of titles of nobility. Being able to share information about achievements or eq2players rankings through titles would be a good idea as well. Also, anything that allows players to individualize themselves is helpful.Someone mentioned that if this was real life, people would be out adventuring etc. They couldn't be more wrong. The biggest problem with RPGs is that players have their characters way too focused on acquiring experience, more loot and better equipment, and not enough on leisure and social activities. There need to be more mechanisms to bring balance to their activities.

Banerm

11-01-2010, 08:23 AM

There are alot of great opinions, memories and ideas which have been shared in this topic, but at it's core you have to wonder why have MMOs become less player centric? With the maturity of the MMO market, be it technological advances or simply creativity advancements, the core structure of most MMOs have started to center less on community and more into immersion. Even Everquest itself has changed more in this direction, than from it's previous years.That being said is it possible to have the best of both worlds? I would like to think it is possible, however it will likely be a niche game into what has grown into a large market. Perhaps EQ Next will address the loss of community while maintaining a dynamic immersive world. Either way players will continue to invest their time in what they find to be enjoyable. I think the core spirit of Everquest will always be in the memories of it's players, recreating an original however seems unreachable.Sorry if none of this made sense, it's late and I was trying to express my jaded viewpoint.

Kitsune

11-01-2010, 10:39 PM

Banerm, you hit it on the nail. As I wrote my last post, I wondered why the demographics have changed away towards solo play and no real community spirit. People don't want to group, they want to stick in their own small cliques or solo. I hate PUGs, and won't go into one now. There are too many morons about. Why should I put up with the kid who bounces around my screen making his character noises all the time when all I want is a quiet time with my mates, or al;one, doing our own thing?Leisure time is becomming shorter these days, maybe because more folks are doing 2 or more part time jobs just to make ends meet. Or like me they are retraining at college, When we have any free time, we don't want to mess about, we want to do what we want, be it stand and gossip in the Guild Hall while idly browsing the Broker, or rearranging our banks, or maybe like me last wee - finally my little Guild got to over L 30 so I bought me a big house in Qeynos and was decorating it pluis trying to find the best status items for the least cost to reduce the rent SP to zero. I was also switching between toons crafting and passing Rares around to do this. I was as happy as a pig in muck. I did head out to get the special collection finished for the Grave Candy Dish, but only on that one toon. When I next get time online, it will be to get the other 2 or maybe 3 toons through it too. Solo events.When time is short, you don't want to elbow your way through a throng to get what you need. You don't want other players blocking your view, you want to complete your business and get out.I remember playing Diablo 2 with friends. We started up a private server game, just the 3 of us, and played together even though 250 miles in the UK then apart. I would have given my eye teeth for the inn in the desert section of Diablo 2 to have been interactive! To have been ble to click an entertainer and watch something, to sit down and eat a meal, drink a drink! I think until you can do that in games, what else is going to pull you away from other stuff?Neverwinter Nights has interactive taverns, even blacking out interactive .. er.. bedroom encounters! But again, it was one person and NPCs.Nearest thing to this from what I have heard IS Second Life. /shrug. I choose to play EQ2 right now, it doesn't have those game features. I don't want to ever playSecond Life! My choice, same as it is the OPs choice. Antonia Bayle is the place to go to RP and have a community, I do not want it forced on me, sorry.

mysticalone

11-01-2010, 10:54 PM

<cite>PlaneCrazy wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kithica@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>Like I said in the first post..I really don't care about your objections or thoughts on how this or that won't work. I don't care if you think it will have too much lag or would have to be built from the ground up, whatever. do me a favor and start your own thread about how you love things the way they are or something.I posted a suggestion for an addition to the game that I love because I thought there was a niche that no one else had going and EQ2 has an opportunity to grasp before anyone else did.I think that if EQ2 could congeal the effects and benifits of crafting, transportation, chatting, guild halls, housing ect into a community type structure, EQ2 could be a front runner in the multi player gaming world.</blockquote>Ok, so you opened a thread to showcase your idea, but you really don't care about what other people think, if it conflicts with your ideas. Hmmm... perhaps you should have just sent this as an email to the devs. Forums are used for discussions and if you are just going to dismiss conflicting views to your own, then not much real discussion will take place. Which is sad, considering the best ideas usually come from open discussion.</blockquote>Aye if you open a thread on a discussion forum its for people to give input on it be it negative or positive. If one wants not input then just put in a suggestion via the support system as there is an option for this...that being said although the idea is nice it wont change the issue. People wont congregate anymore then they do now in guild halls. So I am seeing that one wants to remove guild hall and force people into a bottlneck. Will it improve the game? not really people will port in and then port out like they do now its just an extra bump in the road and a place where soe will have to channel more server resources to support it since everyone is being funnelled into one area. I like open housing but it doesn't make things anymore alive then instanced housing does. People still go there to put down their new toys and rest for a bit. p.s. I loved vanguard but I have camera issues with it although I am tempted to open that game up again and see if they fixed it. I used to go into buildings and camera perspective was horrible and I would be unable to see mobs attacking me. Lag was also prety nasty in housed areas even after it was all fixed. I can't say that their method of housing made anything feel anymore populated however or busy. It was just housing in another form. /shrug

Golbezz

11-02-2010, 02:15 AM

<cite>Kithica@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>If you had ever been a part of the EQ1 commonlands tunnel community you might know what I'm talking about. The idea that chatting in 1-10 channel is anything like a community is ridiculous. Ultima Online had towns. Places people went to do things in the game. No games have anything like that. The first game that does will corner a market that no one has tapped into yet.</blockquote>EC tunnel was only good for ripping other players off when they had no idea what the value of an item was. Sure it was easy plat, but knowing the market bazaar was even easier plat for a good reseller.Bazaar leveled things out between buyers and sellers although prices could spike a bit when few traders were standing around /afk in trader mode. Bazaar made it easier for both buyers and sellers to conduct their transactions. The natural evolution of that online only selling came when EQ2 discontinued the online only merchant system used at launch.These days I do not miss EC tunnel sales at all. I am very busy with work and like so many other players I do not have time to fight over an item's price in /tells. I go to the broker, list what I went to sell and purchase anything I want to buy. The only people who stand to lose from the current broker system are those who have no job and are online all the time.People generally don't stand around just doing social activities except maybe on the RP servers and from what i understand it's usually not in the open city zones. If you're not seeing that on LDL, then maybe try rolling an alt on AB and see if it's different there. Most players have no interest in talking to random players in the zones using /say. They chat in level channels while they are out killing, questing or crafting. You could combine all the city zones and surrounding villages in FP and Qeynos and you would still see very few people around wanting to do things. Most would probably be afk at the broker or bank anyway. No one would hang around any similar zones for reasons other than using the banker/broker on their way to do something productive.EQ2 is a multitask game compared to old pre-bazaar, pre-PoK EQ. If you are happy sitting around looking for social activities all I can say is good luck finding those few people who want to do the same thing, because they are a very small minority of players. Most log in and want to do something related to advancing their character in some way.I suspect there is a very good reason very few players want to do the old EC style community activities:Players in the college student age range 10 years ago now have jobs in their chosen career field, they have lives that are more than just going to class and playing EQ, they have families or other RL commitments that keep them from spending that time in game. They get home from work and just want to go run zones, raid, quest, craft or whatever is advancing their character.There is little patience for wasting time in game doing things that are not advancing a character. Evidence of this is the reduction in travel time. As this game gets larger and older, travel is becoming faster as few players are willing to waste that time between point A and B.

Golbezz

11-02-2010, 02:26 AM

<cite>feldon30 wrote:</cite><blockquote>I guess it's been a month since the last "We need to find debilitating, hackneyed, artificial tricks of FORCING USERS to repopulate the cities" thread?Here's a solution:<ul><li>Guild Hall Amenities which allow quick travel (Mariner's Bell, World Travel Bell, Druid NPC, Wizard Translocation NPC, and Guild Rally Flag NPC) may not be placed in a guild hall on servers flagged Role-Play.</li></ul></blockquote>If you combined this idea with free transfers OFF the RP servers it may actually work to help increase the population on the standard rule servers. Of course this might mean AB and LDL would need to be merged but I think could could be a very good thing for everyone. RP'ers could get all the non-RP'ers off their servers and the rest of the servers could gain some population.Still, you might need to block crafting stations, harversters, banker, brokers and menders from being placed in a guild hall as people would need to run to the crafting instances, bankers, menders and brokers to add to the lag, I mean "community feel" of the game.It might be good to also remove the rally flag since all those raiders running to the zone in adds to the whole "community" feel of the game...

Golbezz

11-02-2010, 03:04 AM

<cite>gourdon wrote:</cite><blockquote>What I have to add has been hinted at in some of the other posts. The bottom line is that people need a purpose to be in the common area if such an idea is going to work. It is also more complicated than that because there needs to be a dynamic that encourages a persistent presence and some way to be noticed and recognized for accomplishments real or imagined. This is not a trivial task.There are three game functions that can play into this to draw players1. Raw utility such as buffing, getting equiped, etc...One problem with building a community area through utility is that trading is all through the broker. The other problem is that there is no out of group buffing in the game. An idea that I had is that there could be some system where visiting friend's houses while they are there or formally having a party could have an impact on vitality and/or provide useful buffs that might last based upon a measure of interaction quality and duration. This same principle could be applied to live events as well. Likewise, it might be a good idea to give tradeskill benefits to encourage guilds to open their halls to outsiders and also encourage outsiders to use those halls instead of the common areas (or vice versa). Maybe the tools in a populated area produce product faster or enhance the skills of all users.2. Progression in some aspect of the game which has ongoing goals such as tradeskilling.To enhance progression in centralized areas rather than dungeons, more progression should be added to live events. Most live events are completely repetitious and become boring quite quickly. It especially gets bad when gathering can be cut out by using the broker on tradeskill tasks. Then, make sure there is some increase in complexity and a record of progress. Even something as simple as telling players how much they individually contributed to druid rings/spires would have made things more interesting. Progression feedback is key and changing things up a little doesn't hurt either.3. Showing off the fruits of progression such as wearing interesting equipment or having interesting titles.There should be many more interesting titles to be had and it wouldn't hurt to have some of them be able to be stacked with other titles, much like many of the long lists of titles of nobility. Being able to share information about achievements or eq2players rankings through titles would be a good idea as well. Also, anything that allows players to individualize themselves is helpful.Someone mentioned that if this was real life, people would be out adventuring etc. They couldn't be more wrong. The biggest problem with RPGs is that players have their characters way too focused on acquiring experience, more loot and better equipment, and not enough on leisure and social activities. There need to be more mechanisms to bring balance to their activities.</blockquote>Nothing is stopping players from selling items like the old EC days. If so many people want to do it then why isn't it happening right now on all servers? Could it be that the MAJORITY of players actually prefer an easy to use buying and selling system?People would be doing social activities in game if they found them fun. Could it be that players don't find social activities fun in game because they do enough of those activities in RL?Yes, it might actually be true that some EQ2 players have lives outside the game and don't need that extra social interaction in the game.

Banerm

11-02-2010, 08:14 AM

<cite>Kitsune wrote:</cite><blockquote>Banerm, you hit it on the nail. As I wrote my last post, I wondered why the demographics have changed away towards solo play and no real community spirit. People don't want to group, they want to stick in their own small cliques or solo. I hate PUGs, and won't go into one now. There are too many morons about. Why should I put up with the kid who bounces around my screen making his character noises all the time when all I want is a quiet time with my mates, or al;one, doing our own thing?Leisure time is becomming shorter these days, maybe because more folks are doing 2 or more part time jobs just to make ends meet. Or like me they are retraining at college, When we have any free time, we don't want to mess about, we want to do what we want, be it stand and gossip in the Guild Hall while idly browsing the Broker, or rearranging our banks, or maybe like me last wee - finally my little Guild got to over L 30 so I bought me a big house in Qeynos and was decorating it pluis trying to find the best status items for the least cost to reduce the rent SP to zero. I was also switching between toons crafting and passing Rares around to do this. I was as happy as a pig in muck. I did head out to get the special collection finished for the Grave Candy Dish, but only on that one toon. When I next get time online, it will be to get the other 2 or maybe 3 toons through it too. Solo events.</blockquote>Thank you for the kind words. I was hoping atleast some would see the message I was trying to get across. Often people forget how progression in the gaming industry has the most profound effect on how we as a playerbase preffer to play.I've personally played the spectrum so to speak. For instance I raided heavily in EQ and was also very active in the server community, however in EQ2 I chose to stay in a private enviorment. My wife and I have our own guild and both of us multi-box. I don't have to worry about fitting my own life around the times others set forth, I think we all get enough of that outside of the game be it from work or school. I enjoyed both playstyles, however as I have gotten older I enjoy controlling my time the way I want. (Versus being told when I need to raid, setting up groups around everyone else's schedule.)Now I know some will say why do you play an MMO if you aren't using the social aspect? My simple answer is there are no immersive LAN based fantasy RPGs worth playing in the current market.

Gladiolus

11-02-2010, 11:08 AM

<cite>Kithica@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>no matter what is available at a guild hall or house, almost no players go there and if they do, they only go there for a quick stop to buy something or guild amenity use. In fact really, the only prolonged stay a person has in a guild hall is crafting.</blockquote>Perhaps it depends on your guild. I can't imagine logging in or out anywhere else. Even if I'm doing nothing, I'm doing it in the guild hall, and the same applies to my guildies. We leave to go hunting and return when we're done. That's where we're comfortable, that's where we live.

Motzi

11-02-2010, 01:30 PM

I find while I'm looking for something to do, I spend that time in the guild hall. I do this for several reaosns:1) Fastest access to transportation such that no matter what I find to do, I can get there fastest from my guild hall.2) Fastest access to Broker, Bank, Merchant, Mail, and Crafting. Even though we have a t3 guild hall, all these amenities are located in one room with rapid access. I also have access to the achievement counserler and 100% comp'd mendor in the adjoining room.So unless more rapid transportation is created with all the amenities in near immediate access and also the same amenities and travel options some how nerfed in my guild hall, I foresee no change that would get me to relocate somewhere else while I idle or look for something to do.