Housing/Lodging System suggestion
Expanding on the topic of housing and lodging system for ToS. I’ve come across a number of housing systems throughout the games I’ve played, with quite a few of them done really beautifully. But most of them give off a vibe that they are placed in as an afterthought rather than a system that is tightly integrated for the game.
Generic (run in the mill) housing systems in games/mmos we find are like the following
- Land/Plot/Unit available for purchase
- Players bid to buy unit/land/plot
- Comes empty or prefurnished
- Players do quests/craft/trade/buy from cash shop furnitures
- Some even allow hiring of NPCs
- Adjust furniture/npc placement
- Some furnitures have build in functionality like access stash/guild/craft windows and such
And that’s it, the very same system can be placed in another MMO and be perfectly ok since it is a system by itself with few links to the game world itself.
How do we make a housing/lodging system that is unique to ToS, doesn’t feel like those run in the mill housing systems?
The concept of a family (Team)
One thing which sets ToS different from other games is its character selection screen. It depicts a lodge with many of the player’s characters all gathered together, just like a family. What if we can convert this into the a housing system with a twist that is only doable for a game like ToS?
Changing the perspective of the character - player and the fourth wall
For those who are interested what the fourth wall is
The fourth wall in this case is the separation between the player and the characters the player control. The characters act as if they have thoughts of their own, just that the players control their actions when they are out adventuring. Sometimes they can speak on the screen (with speech bubbles) which is only viewable by the player himself/herself (not visible to other players), commenting on stuff like the following:
- Random thoughts on the current quest
- Random comments on the new cute Goddess Blessed Cube accessories (potential upselling of cubes)
- Comment that the character is tired after prolong farming/grinding (promote healthy gaming habits)
- Random comment on other characters within the player’s team/family.
With this in place it is also good to give the player the ability to key in each character birthday in the character creation/edit screen. This will be covered later in the post.
So what does decoupling the character and the controller (player) have to do with housing/lodging?
If the characters have thoughts on their own and can comment on other characters, they can interact with each other within the family/team too. This goes to the main meat of the post.
Upgrading the character selection lodge
What makes ToS so unique is the vast array of classes it has for the player to choose. What we can do to further emphasise on this unique aspect is to further integrate it to other systems. The proposal is to have a character lodge/house that expands the more characters the player has for his/her account.
The lodge starts with a simple 1 living room, and with each new character created, a new room will be created. The interesting play on this is the new room created inherits one of the class characteristics the character comes with, for example:
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A character created with Miko within the class build can have a mini prayer shrine in the room;
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A character created with Squire within the class build can model that room to be a kitchen;
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A character with Nak May will have a punching bag in the room they come with;
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Necromancers get a bubbling cauldron;
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Archers get a shooting range style room;
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Bullet Markers can get a room with pistols hung on walls to admire;
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Alchemists get a laboratory so on and forth.
Players can freely interchange the style of the room when the visit the lodge, add furniture attained via questing/TP cubes/events to the main living room or any of the character rooms.
But all these will be dead and lonely with little to no interaction, which is why the character/player perspective comes in as a topic before this.
With characters able to interact within the character lodge itself, the lodge becomes alive, just like a home.
Characters within the lodge can be seen interacting with furniture or other characters. To give examples using the above:
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Miko can be seen practicing caligraphy in her own room, with numerous crumpled paper stewn across the floor. Presumely practising so she wouldn’t waste any materials while writing her amulets;
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Squire can been seen helping the Bullet marker maintaining his gun, with the bullet marker giving pointers beside him;
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Nak May is practising with the punching bag;
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Necromancer is lying sick on the bed in her own room, with the cauldron beside here giving a smoke with a skull sign;
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Archer and Alchemist are seen chilling and talking in the living room, with speech bubbles talking about random stuff like new ToS events and news, upcoming gacha or general ToS topics.
Characters can also interact with the furniture that is placed by the player. Some will garner comments by some characters. Premium TP bought ones can have premium character interactions (animated) and such.
When the player visits the lodge at a different time, the characters move around the lodge doing different things. Remember the birthday customisation which I mentioned before? During days where it is a character’s birthday, the lodge will be decorated to celebrate that character’s birthday. The lodge theme will also change itself based off the events IMC has prepared, like Xmas, Lunar New Year decorations so on and forth.
Pros of the proposed system:
- Ability for IMC to inform players on events/news in a fun and integrated way
- Potential to sell new products such as housing furnitures and lodge tile sets
- Breathe life the game’s diversity of classes, which is the game’s selling point. Give players more reasons to roll new characters to add to their family/team.
- Ability to incorporate new things that players can discover, like hiding a new skill that is going to be implemented soon (foreshadowing). Eg. Nak May can be seen practising a new attack animation in lodge.
Cons:
- More work is needed to be done as compared to normal, static housing systems where players just collect furnitures and play dollhouse.