SWTOR Player Housing: Like A Boss!

Now there's a nice place for a house.

Now there’s a nice place for a house.

Most of us need a place to call our own. Whether it’s decorated with works of art or discarded pizza boxes, a personal space is something many people are willing to spend time and money on. Player housing is no exception.

SWTOR has been missing such an amenity ever since its launch. For those of you who are yelling ‘your ship is player housing!’, let me just tell you why you are completely wrong, not to mention how you have completely misunderstood the concept.For a start, the game devs have admitted that any time a change on the player ships is required it makes them ‘cry’. Like a number of things in BW’s heavily modified (and in some respects broken) version of the Hero engine, making changes is tricky. The player ships are a particular issue because they have so many hooks for conversations and other aspects of progression. Changes cannot be made without risking the whole rat’s nest falling down around your ears. In fact you can only sit in chairs on your ship because it’s a frequently reset instance. If it wasn’t, you’d break the game and this is why sitting in the persistant world still can’t happen except as an emote.

‘But you can customise your ship,’ I hear the stupid cry out. No. No you can’t. You cannot truly customise your ship in any way – placing a training dummy does not count, so don’t waste your breath. In fact if that is what you understand ‘player housing’ to mean, you need to look at Rift, Wildstar and any number of games to educate yourself. Just as an example, in DCUO the player housing includes an ‘Armory’ that allows you to save and quickly switch between gear builds. Sound enticing?

With the introduction of SWTOR player housing, the team has wisely started fresh. No pre-existing knots to work through, no muss, no fuss. Finally the RP community gets a little love, finally (I hope) players get somewhere to meet up on Raid Thursday, or whatever your schedule is.

Also, everyone needs to remember that we DO NOT KNOW what the expansion will be, only that it will INCLUDE player housing. It’s highly unlikely that half a dozen apartment options is going to be the totality of it.

Sure, we could always complain that the SSHP (Super Secret Housing Project) uses resources that could otherwise be utilised to create more Ops, Flashpoints etc. But this is an MMO, which means its players have broad and divergent interests. You can’t please everyone and you shouldn’t try. What you should do is pick your battles. I, for one, think this battle is worth fighting.

Simon is a long-time senior contributor to The Oceanic Gamer and also has his own blog

Comments

  1. True2theDivine says

    I hate rifts player housing. Want a good example. DAoC. That. Was epic player housing.

  2. What you’ve said about the ships seems to be true from what we’ve learned – they cut corners like it’s crunch time at the circle factory (-Yahtzee).
    I can imagine how player housing could be very interesting and worthwhile, I can’t imagine BW making it anything more than another opportunity for yet more loading screens and somewhere for people to hoard junk bought from the Cartel Market.
    If that’s what floats your boat though, go nuts.

  3. Streked3121 says

    If they do add housing i hope they add houseing on alderaan or however its spelled

  4. Robert Hindy says

    “in DCUO the player housing includes an ‘Armory’ that allows you to save and quickly switch between gear builds”

    This was only added in the last 3 months. They only added it to your “lair” because they wanted them easily accessible to change outside of a dungeon and combat.

  5. I don’t disagree with you, I would love player housing, but where would you even be able to put the house, in the middle of Korriban. Probably not. As funny as it would be to live next door to the Sith Temple. If they were to implement player housing they should create another planet with minimum quests and lots of open area for houses. Either a new planet or add increased land to the current planets.

  6. Only Fun player housing is when its on the terrain for everyone and there isnt enough terrain in this game for that ammount of housing. UO was fun if a bit crowded.