Interview Oblivion Q&A on GCM

[android]

USELESS HOUSE!

There are many other things in games that are useless, why such uproar only because of houses that can be owned? I personaly liked the process of building my guild's house in Morrowind.

And I find nothing entertaining about sitting in your shop all day long and waiting for npcs to stop by and buy some of your stuff

 

[Fresh]

USELESS HOUSE!

There are many other things in games that are useless, why such uproar only because of houses that can be owned? I personaly liked the process of building my guild's house in Morrowind.

And I find nothing entertaining about sitting in your shop all day long and waiting for npcs to stop by and buy some of your stuff

It's cuz Oblivion been getting alot of cred lately and now people are getting desperate about things to bitch about.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

SP, the same reason why some folks spent hundreds of hours just collecting ingredients in the wild and making potions. Some folks just like doing that sort of thing.

Those people are obviously sick in the head and you shouldn't encourage them. Instead, you should isolate them and either make sure they get psychiatric help or shoot them.

I like that you can own a house. I ended up downloading a castle mod for Morrowind so I had enough room. I had a weapons room, the armour manequins all suited up and everything. It'd be even better if you could design and build a house to your own specifications.

Please don't shoot me.

 

[Shagnak]

It'd be even better if you could design and build a house to your own specifications.

Yeah, sorta like in the Sims 2?
I used the Morrowind Dev Kit wotsit to make me a house near Seya Deen (sp?). I managed to create a reasonably cool interior, but the exterior I think was customisable to a small extent too (door style etc?). Hmmm...can't remember to what extent.
Anyway, I wouldnt say no to the option of having the Dev Kit options available 'in-game', so you could pay for a dwelling to be built that you have designed. There could be quests involved as well,with the rewards including getting a deed*, finding a builder, a source of building materials, etc etc.
Hell, if you can hire staff you culd almost have a little Sims thing going on in the game.

There could e.g. be a quest giver from nobility that wouldn't consider giving you any missions until you invited him to dinner to your own house.
I'm sure any designer could come up with dozens of ways of making the house owning feature interesting and important. I hope Bethesda does so.

Yeah, agreed. There is no reason why a house in a game has to be just a meaningless entity that pretties up the landscape.
As I pointed out earlier, you could even have events associated with the house. A raid on the Thieves lair and so on. Maybe the place starts to turn to shit if you don't pay for its upkeep.

I doubt anything like our ideas will actually be implemented by Bethesda, I'm just thinking that having a house is not automatically useless. Maybe it was a little in Morrowind, but I found some uses for it and liked having one regardless (and a lot of others did as well), and it does not have to be useless in future implementations.


Edit:
*I think you had to do that sort of thing in Morrowind as well IIRC.
Oh no! More quests! Terrible!

 

[Pegultagol]

why not, it seems to add more interactivity to the landscape. not much of a design choice than simple addition to the game to make it more unique i guess, for better or for worse. it is not that owning a house is an integral part of the gameplay, although it seems rather intriguing.

 

[bryce777]

How useful can you make a house??

I don't know...adventuring just doesn't seem like a very house-oriented activity.

Maybe conquering a city for your own would be cool but buying a house? It is fine, but how much more do you want out of it except maybe as a safe place to make potions or some damn thing.

 

[bryce777]

There could e.g. be a quest giver from nobility that wouldn't consider giving you any missions until you invited him to dinner to your own house.
I'm sure any designer could come up with dozens of ways of making the house owning feature interesting and important. I hope Bethesda does so.

Teatime is truly the stuff adventures are made of.

Well, it would be much like the three musketeers and similar pieces. Maybe they could get more women into gaming if they did something like that.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

And I find nothing entertaining about sitting in your shop all day long and waiting for npcs to stop by and buy some of your stuff

You don't have to sit in a shop all day. You can hire people to run it. You can pop in regularly to stock it with goods you find adventuring, or hire people to harvest plants, etc.

This as opposed to having your own set of personal rooms somewhere which do absolutely nothing.

 

[bryce777]

I don't know, a cutgame of burgertime within the game if you buy a shop would be pretty cool.

 

[Hazelnut]

The problem with houses is that they're mostly used as large areas where players stash cool loot to take pictures of and post on the net. Unless we're talking of a spellcaster who wants to store spell components which he might need, there's not much else. Fighter-types get progressively better gear (and sometimes progressively better looking gear), so why store largely inferior weapons and armor? Nostalgia? I don't know of many players who have nostalgia over their gear, and that can remember how many blows a Dragon against their chestplate, and what was the first weapon they ever used to kill a Golem.

Again, it just seems to end up in the attention whoring department.

hehe - me attention whoring. Well this is the first time I've publicly linked to those pics - they're there for me and a few friends - just thought they'd illustrate what some of us weirdo players enjoy doing. And that is why I collected stuff - I enjoyed doing it and hence this character did. I often put different aspects of me into my characters that I role play - I have more fun that way. Nowt to do with nostalgia for me - just colecting every set of armour + weapon in the game with this char.

Don't see why this means houses are problems in RPG's. Some characters are rolling stones, others would like a base/house, so what? ;-)

Even for roleplaying purposes, I don't see the point, mainly because I know of nothing Bethesda has changed to improve the situation of "Hey, I've got a house, but what am I doing there?". Is the gameworld reacting to this other than NPCs scripted to say a random comment out of of a pool of pre-written sentences regarding my ownership of it? Are the local thugs and thieves keeping an eye on the stash I have and attempting to steal it? Do I have to pay the rent? Can I rent it to someone, or hire some underlings to watch over it while I'm gone? Apparently, the ability to drop items in any household I take over by killing its owner still remains, so why should I bother? What happens if the house I get is terribly puny whem compared to the mansion next door owned by a trivial NPC? Doesn't take long to figure what happens next in players' minds.

Good points - but the same thing was true for a lot of things in MW, e.g. being guild master, but I don't think it automatically makes the concept worthless, just disappointing in implementation. Definitely limits the scope for role playing even with a very forgiving imagination, but the glass is half full to me. I'm hoping that the RAI will be aware of ownership and be able to react in some semi-sensible manner...

I'd rather see some better motivations to own real estate. Renting it out to guilds, passing by adventurers, or as Saint brought up, setting up a shop. Or even have an NPC propose the player a 'game within a game', propose the PC to set out and find full sets of every armor type and give them to the NPC so he can put them up for display in every town, using the PC's vacant estates. Figure out some reward for that (ie, one-time reward of money or items, a share of the profit by the exhibition of the items, better reputation for the player with its own attached perks like discounts at shops, etc.), and it would be much more interesting than standard houses. Just make the house a worthy extra, not just generic and pointless fluff to please players who want every possible feature to exist in the game.

So would I like to see this, but that doesn't mean that being able to buy an ordinary house is worthless functionality - to either fun or role-playing or both.

It would also be nice if when you become a guild master you could influence members of the guild - like giving them orders etc. This could possibly be implemented by allowing the NPC RAI packages to be altered by the PC when you're a guild master... in some aspects anyway. (being able to send all your memebrs off the local cliffs like lemmings is probably not a good idea, but being able to tell them to guard something or be bodyguards or train themselves or raid place x or whatever would be nice) Just a thought - anything like this planned MSFD?

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

@Hazelnut: I wasn't addressing my post at you, though, so the attention whoring remark was more of a general statement.

Don't see why this means houses are problems in RPG's. Some characters are rolling stones, others would like a base/house, so what? ;-)

Houses aren't a problem... But they aren't much of a solution, either. It would take a bit more of elements added into them to make them an attractive option to me.

Good points - but the same thing was true for a lot of things in MW, e.g. being guild master, but I don't think it automatically makes the concept worthless, just disappointing in implementation. Definitely limits the scope for role playing even with a very forgiving imagination, but the glass is half full to me. I'm hoping that the RAI will be aware of ownership and be able to react in some semi-sensible manner...

I think it's both disappointing and worthless in the sense that there's some time and resources invested in it, but you get nothing tangible in return. The same applies for guilds and becoming guild masters. An example of stronghold and/or guild management done well enough to make it interesting comes from Baldur's Gate 2, where some of them had players control them and issue orders. Fighter-types would gather taxes payed by nearby villagers, whereas a Rogue could have his underlings perform different types of jobs with different risk levels (and they'd present him the profit at the end of the week).

But in Morrowind, becoming a guildmaster or getting a faction-specific stronghold was... Hollow. Not much of a reward. Just a warm feeling that you spent hours in something that just... Stands there. Quietly. Built over the many corpses of gold pieces and the spirits of wasted hours. You can swear it's grinning back at you.

So would I like to see this, but that doesn't mean that being able to buy an ordinary house is worthless functionality - to either fun or role-playing or both.

At this point, there's not much that convinces me otherwise... It's not that its one hundred percent worthless, though, it's just that for the larger part it doesn't seem like it's providing any special functionality or roleplaying elements.

Of course, if Bethesda makes it so I can turn my house into a harem or slave guild of sorts, I *could* change my mind... :whistles:

 

[FireWolf]

Houses don't really float my bucket. However, a god damn Keep would certainly change matters.

A keep that offers a chance to play Lord of the Manor. Essentially, as you do service for the crown, duke, or whomever you choose to throw your lot in with, you are rewarded by a title, some land and some peasants. As you continue to render service to him, you gain prosperity, with subsequently gets you more land, peasants, revenue and eventually allows you to sport a small militia. The militia can be put to use in your name: aiding you in quests, fighting for the baron/earl/duke of your choice, as well as defending your lands against bandits and other threats. Also offering you a place that people come to you to bring you quests, such as messengers from other lords, the townsfolk requesting your aid. letting you choose to tax your peasants a little or a lot and the repercussions of your choice (lightly taxed peasants becoming complacent and taking advantage, over taxed peasants leaving or rising up against you). It'd also provide a use for the surpluss weapons and armor you collect, allowing you to outfit your kinsmen with the gear you don't use.

Now that, I think, would be a worthwile investment of time for property as opposed to a hovel in the suburbs.

If you're not going to allow fighting on horseback, give the horses damned carriages or carts, since they're only (goods) transports. I think if you're going to implement horses, not allowing combat on them is a crime.

 

[Hazelnut]

@Hazelnut: I wasn't addressing my post at you, though, so the attention whoring remark was more of a general statement.

Yah, but I was the one posting screenshots of my virtual MW 'house' where I've collected all the weapons & armour I could find.. so I felt my hand had to go up really!

I think it's both disappointing and worthless in the sense that there's some time and resources invested in it, but you get nothing tangible in return. The same applies for guilds and becoming guild masters. An example of stronghold and/or guild management done well enough to make it interesting comes from Baldur's Gate 2, where some of them had players control them and issue orders. Fighter-types would gather taxes payed by nearby villagers, whereas a Rogue could have his underlings perform different types of jobs with different risk levels (and they'd present him the profit at the end of the week).

Now this I don't remember from BG2 (but I only played through once and got bored 1/2 way though the expansion) - pretty sure my char never got a stronghold. Sounds not dis-similar to Bloodmoons mead hall in principle. Which is not much better than a plain house IMHO.. I couldn't care less about the mead profits, by that time I had more gold than I could ever spend. The kind of stuff I want with the ownership is NPC's leaving notes on your door while you're away asking for help, offering quests - appropriate to your reputation & morals. Maybe coming back to home & safety to find that you've really pissed off the theves guild and there's someone big & mean sitting there ready to teach you a lesson. It turns things around giving the world a place to seek you out rather than you having to find everything..

But in Morrowind, becoming a guildmaster or getting a faction-specific stronghold was... Hollow. Not much of a reward. Just a warm feeling that you spent hours in something that just... Stands there. Quietly. Built over the many corpses of gold pieces and the spirits of wasted hours. You can swear it's grinning back at you.

Nicely put - worthy of a sig in fact, and oh so true, no reward at all - except of course for all the hours working at it and wondering about the reward, which is better than nothing assuming you enjoyed it. Lets face it - in many things the dream is often better than the reality.. ;-)

 

[Drakron]

You just end up making the house a feature that way, if some quests became only avaible when having a house and are not tied to the fact the player owns the house it just gears the players to have one so they can play those quests, it shifts from being a option to be a requirement.

 

[Hazelnut]

You just end up making the house a feature that way, if some quests became only avaible when having a house and are not tied to the fact the player owns the house it just gears the players to have one so they can play those quests, it shifts from being a option to be a requirement.

I see your point, but how is it any different from not-finding/declining quests because of your char's imaginary role? The quests are ones that happen if you own a property and have a reputation, just like others that you get if you find the dark brotherhood to join them - it's just a different choice. I didn't mention whether the quests should be tied to ownership or not, but I think its a good idea. It doesn't have to be the case for all of them, so as to have them make (role-playing) sense IMHO.

Sure someone who plays and wants to do all the quests in one game will buy a house just to get the quests, but so what - I don't care, especially if they still have fun doing it. Just because we love games with options and freedom to play different roles and have a game world react accordingly (well that's the ideal anyway) - should that mean that the game should also make the player play 'the right way'? Enforce full on role playing at all times? Personally I don't think so, but it does seem a recurring theme here at the codex which I find interesting.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Now this I don't remember from BG2 (but I only played through once and got bored 1/2 way though the expansion) - pretty sure my char never got a stronghold. Sounds not dis-similar to Bloodmoons mead hall in principle. Which is not much better than a plain house IMHO.. I couldn't care less about the mead profits, by that time I had more gold than I could ever spend. The kind of stuff I want with the ownership is NPC's leaving notes on your door while you're away asking for help, offering quests - appropriate to your reputation & morals. Maybe coming back to home & safety to find that you've really pissed off the theves guild and there's someone big & mean sitting there ready to teach you a lesson. It turns things around giving the world a place to seek you out rather than you having to find everything..

Pretty much the kind of thing that would make possession of a stronghold, guild or mere house more interesting than simple ownership.

Nicely put - worthy of a sig in fact, and oh so true, no reward at all - except of course for all the hours working at it and wondering about the reward, which is better than nothing assuming you enjoyed it. Lets face it - in many things the dream is often better than the reality.. ;-)

I assume so, at least for some people.

 

[Shagnak]

But in Morrowind, becoming a guildmaster or getting a faction-specific stronghold was... Hollow. Not much of a reward. Just a warm feeling that you spent hours in something that just... Stands there. Quietly. Built over the many corpses of gold pieces and the spirits of wasted hours. You can swear it's grinning back at you.

Nicely put - worthy of a sig in fact

Yes, very poignant.
Our Role-Player surely has a way with words!
Word has it that he is a bit of a writer... :wink:

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Another way to look at it is if houses are nothing more than just empty rooms with no additional features or options, why not just clear out a crypt near a town and store your useless shit that you're too stupid to sell? Let's face it. Crypts are:

• Free. You're going to clear a couple out just for kicks anyway. No need to spend money on a house or do a quest when you've killed all those queer four armed skeletons in one.
• Cool. You own a house? Guess what? BORING! Sure, you may have a bed and a table, but nothing beats altars and wall torches for atmosphere. In fact, considering you're an adventurer in a fantasy setting game, you're most likely a homosexual if you prefer a house to a killer crypt.
• Status symbols. Any peasant can buy a house, but not too many farmer serf bitches can kill off a crypt full of evil undead. That's right, you dah man when you live in a crypt.
• Climate controlled. It's a fantasy setting. There is no air conditioning. Those homos that bought houses get to fry under the radiant heating of the summer sun. You, Mister Groovy Crypt Dweller, get a constant 52 degrees F all year around.
• Security. Most fantasy setting people know enough to avoid a crypt. The only people you'll have invading your cool crypt will be other asshole adventurers looking to score some loot. But hey, anyone can rob a house.

So, if a property offers no additional features, there's no point when you can just get yourself a crypt.

 

[NeutralMilkHotel]

Crypts are for goth kids and fairies. :!:

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Word has it that he is a bit of a writer... :wink:

It's a conspiracy, I tell you!

 

[android]

Another way to look at it is if houses are nothing more than just empty rooms with no additional features or options, why not just clear out a crypt near a town and store your useless shit that you're too stupid to sell?.

I really hope the devs will learn from this and include some Crypts for Rent © in the game.

 

[Shagnak]

AAAwwwwwww....now I wanna crypt goddamit!

 

[Claw]

Just ask Stan.


I don't have anything against houses per se, but inserting a convenient home for me to take possession of feels like cheating.

 

[Sol Invictus]

The point Saint is trying to make is that why bother implementing houses at all? If you're gonna implement something make sure it isn't half assed and is at least worth implementing for gameplay specific reasons. Having a shop to sell your loot in would certainly be a lot more immersive not to mention useful to your character than having a useless house with storage rooms in it.

 

[NeutralMilkHotel]

Why not just sell your loot to a trader/shop? This isn't fucking sim-shop.