I watched the ArcheAge Housing video on YouTube and was struck with some inspiration for making a small part of a housing feature really fun to participate in…

So the ArcheAge Housing video just shows what appears to be a time-lapse view of a handful of characters banging on different parts of a foundation. At key intervals, more complete section spring into existence. First we see a a skeleton of a wall suddenly appear, then another, and another. Afterwards, the finished walls pop into view while the characters continue to work.

I love what I am seeing, even if they are not explaining anything. I really like how each completed section appears in a small puff of dust that quickly settles to the ground.

My idea

When I watch this ArcheAge video, it’s also like watching a housing project on Television. All the exciting elements of the building are shown with the boring stuff skipped over. An HGTV host may give you a breif how-to or explain what they are doing, and then they go to it, and show you interesting screen shots of development on the way to showing you the completed project.

I think it would be important to translate that excitement of the way we view it. Allow a player or players to do a little work and/or learning of the process(depending on the structure or furniture being built), then reward them with key fun screen shots of the projects process, and all within a generally accepted amount of time. Essentially you get to be that host on televsions, and be a part of the fun, short process of being one of many characters running around a house frame banging a little here, wiring a little there, then running to another section to do something else, and so on.

Construction

The “work” side of this seems like it could be a problem if not handled properly. After going through even a few constructions, a player could easily get bored and would rightfully want the fun parts. So making the entire process fun is key.

The process would consist of multiple size building and multiple sized pieces of furniture or more complex iterations of the same types of furniture and housing. Each would possess less or more steps to completion or more fun things to do in those steps, depending on the complexity and size of the project.

To keep players interested you’d tie down essentially a click-to-complete function with more, and fun, choices to be applied(for a more niche audience), and less complexity with fun(for a wider audience). You would use mostly tools, and only introduce more complex resource requirements as the complexity or size of the project grew(thus providing something for a wider audience while also including a feature that a more niche audience can dig into).

Example

Let’s start with an average house that most players would want. The standard house could have you laying the foundation that would appear all at once. A very easy and standard tutorial quest could be provided with an NPC selling mortar(or a similar material), at a small fee, for the beginning builder. Click to start and wait a few seconds to get the “poof” and a not-so-shiny foundation. What you need now is say a basic hammer that can be bought at many different NPCs. Buy the hammer and start clicking on different parts of the foundation.

You could have different parts of the foundation requiring different amounts of work, but I think a fun way to translate the excitement of being in a DIY video, would be to provide a randomized table. You’d click to start building and your user interface would say, “Click here, no-no now click over here“, and you’d be running around clicking at different parts, while skeleton of the walls are springing to life at their own key intervals from how much overall work has been done.

Adding in group play

Having friends help can be fun and add to the excitement of doing a group project like you see done on TV. Friends or other players would be able to come along with their own tools, and/or resources to help out. They’d click your construction project to ask for an invite to help. Choosing yes throws them into the frey and they get their own instructions on what location to work on, and when. The result is seeing a bunch of people all haphazardly running around banging away at different parts of the foundation. The more poeple helping, the faster the entire poject gets done. The work required is re-adjusted whenever someone leaves or joins the project.

Let’s re-hash and talk about random aspects

Each process and the entire process should be adjusted to fit into a well-balanced amount of time to appeal to the widest possible audience, while still providing more complex projects for those that wish to do them.

A bit about rewards and imbalance

Any rewards from construction should not be overtly superior to something else, but it’s ok if it’s superior when overgeneralizing a comparison. An example of this would be a very elaborate saddle that may grant the player a substantial speed buff for their mount. Players may complain it’s not fair that there isn’t that kind of item to be obtained anywhere else in a game, but it’s something any player could easily do if they wanted. It’s less impacting on people who enjoy getting items through raiding or through armor crafting because it’s not something that’s going to greatly enhance a raiders or PvPers(or any other’s) ability to complete their goals, but still rewards those who enjoy going to the length to create it and enjoy housing/crafting features. A less except-able outcome would be something that too greatly overshadows fun or other features built into a game.

If a crafter could make a high-level hat that provided the best defense of any hat in the game would be unacceptable(unless other options of raid drops plus upgrades gave an equivalent “feeling” result). Because that hat doesn’t have an equivalent item that effects a larger range of players. Those other players could use that kind of reward, but they don’t want to be forced to play a part of the game they really don’t care for to get something that is very helpful to them in the parts they do like.

More on friends helping

I think you could add  even more fun by giving the housing system it’s own pool of resources that you can refill, friends could freely see what you project you are working on and all the resources needed. If they had any of these materials, they could freely provide them for you.

Tools, parts, and resources

This housing would be a big feature in the game and offer ample customization features through blueprints obtainable in-game (or through a cash shop ).

Basic stuff:

• Stone: acquired through nodes(basically from the crafting system)
• Wood
• Hammer
• This could be everything you need and be clearly and easily supplied for beginning a basic house

Advanced stuff:

• Any number of more resource requirements(higher quality/level stone, wood, gold, or other resources that exist)
• Nails(different amounts depending on complexity or size of project)
• Herbs(essentially to provide roofing or ground up for “cement”

As you can see, a number of resource requirements could easily be adjusted for varying size projects. The overall amount of hammering(or sawing, or lifting…) would change as well.

Long projects

You still want this to be fun. So, if you were to get an advanced project that took an overall amount of 8 Hrs to complete(by just one player), it would need some fun new steps thrown into the process. let’s try to make an example of what a long project would be like

• Work on it when you want. Click to start constructing, click to stop with the process being saved.
• Break larger steps into smaller steps and add variety. Don’t require banging on random spots for 1 hr to resurrect one wall. When you get that big, break it down into completing part of that wall. Players will feel more rewarded and find those smaller completion steps to be good start/stop points and feel like they are working at a steady pace toward a complete project. Add some fun reward-only options in-between the many new steps. “Keep going”, “Ganbatte”, and having other positive messages is a nice step. You could also add in

More about rewards here

Oh, don’t forget that rewards aren’t just linear on one time-line. It’s perfectly okay to not give any additional rewards for a person taking a much longer time on a bigger house. The fact that it’s a bigger house is reward enough to justify the longer time and “work” requirment. Remember this may be “work” to some players, but most often, to players that want the bigger housing and crafting stuff, the building of it all IS fun for them. You just want to separate how you dish out these different elements to best cater to the majority and all the niche audiences in your game. That’s why the saddle reward works better as a crafters reward without overstepping into the mainstream(even if it offers a nice reward that many mainstream players would also enjoy having)

Conclusion

This post is getthing rather big, but I think you can cobble together what I’m getting at through all this. I think as long as the steps were broken down properly, it would be a lot of fun and something more people would want to do.

However, I don’t know everything. What am I not taking into consideration? Help me refine this totally awesome idea. Or, tear it apart.

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