Darth Hater

I think ships represent a better option for player housing. My idea is to have a large spaceport in the major cities, which will be instanced, with which you can go and view your ship in a hangar area like KOTOR. The hangar will have permission granting and all that and terminals to intereact with the outside of the ship. The interior is accessible through the boarding ramp obviously and can be decorated at will. Now the problem with this plan I know is the smaller fighters and other craft of a single pilot nature. So I propose this, renting the space complete with a storeroom and lounge type area for goods and trophies. I also believe this might open up the possiblities of random encounters where criminals attempt to break in and steal cargo or sabotage the ships.
Sorry this was so long for my first post on this community.

Me too, lets Old Ben train Jedi on the way to Alderan.

Long posts are good, they let us know what your thinking. And welcome, http://darthhater.com/faq/ for the new guy.

thanks for the welcome

Very tricky thing to balance. On one hand you get a home people will to in urban sprawl, on the other you have a clean world with few visitors. I like the lot idea, give people the option to design the buildings in towns that otherwise are just there for looks. The outside should stay the same, but the interior is up for all forms of alteration.

I've always wanted my ship or one of my ships to be my house. However, I was a big fan of SWG style housing, but I'm also a big fan of sand-box MMOs. There are not a lot of people liked it because it created clutter on some plantes.

What I don't want to see is instanced type housing, unless it's the ship idea. I don't want to have to go into an instanced neighborhood just to go to my house. I want to be able to just run from the starport to my house not have to go from the starport to load into an instance then run to my house and then again maybe have to load into an another instance again to get inside my house.

The problem with putting them on ships is that players can't come and go to look at your ship. If you ever leave that world and go to another(or just chill in space), no one can come look at your nice stuff. Maybe Han Solo lived in his ship, but most normal people in the galaxy had a house somewhere. Even the likes of Luke and Leia(and her husband, Han) had nice little homes on Coruscant. A space-Winnebago is nice, but it's nice to set your roots down somewhere for when you're not out saving the galaxy.

I'm not a big fan of the sandbox mmo idea SWG had going on.
Some planets were nothing but cluttered cities that added no immersion to the game at all.
Maybe its the 'Space Cowboy' in my, but I loved the ship from KOTOR, especially moving around inside it <3. But I think Rogue brings up a very good point that if you got a ship, that sucker is going to move! That may or may not be a big issue, depending on how travel is done.

Maybe we can convince Bioware to please us all :P

LotRO is kinda like what you want, Sleeper. You have instanced neighborhoods(each instance is named like a street) with houses with fenced in yards along streets. You buy a house, you have your whole house and yard to decorate with goodies, along with an address for your home. You still pay a maintenance for your house, but you also have a house of your own in an instance to reduce lag and clutter in the "real world". Each race has their racial-themed neighborhoods, with houses looking like their style.

It's a good mix of Open World(SWG) and Instanced(EQ2/FFXI).

i think thats a neat idea right there.
Using empty lots/buildings/neighborhoods inside of cities and allow players to 'purchase' them. As long as it didn't have that 'sandbox' setup that SWG had, I think it would be a great idea.

My main issue with SWG housing is that you had all this extra open space, and you'd come across a random, abandoned player town. All the houses looked the same, no roads, no people. Really cut the immersion out of the game for me, at least.
I never really touched LotRO - But I imagine traveling through a city then running into a loading screen every other street would get very annoying.

Nevi, the little player communities aren't random loading screens in town. The neighborhoods have an entrance outside of each main town. When you go there, you right-click the neighborhood gate, which opens a menu showing a list of all the neighborhoods/instances. This allows you to visit other neighborhoods, not just the one you're living it. It's out of the way and convenient, but still leaves a lot of room inside for housing. The neighborhoods even have huge buildings that serve as guild halls.

As an added bonus, when you purchase a house, you get a new spell that lets you teleport back to your house. When you join a guild that has a guild hall(or your guild buys one I assume), you also get a spell to teleport to that guildhall. I suppose it helps you get back to your house or guild hall when you need something(I assume it has a cooldown to limit non-stop traveling, but I could be mistaken).