Housing, instancing, and world cohesion

Housing in Scars of Honor is discussed as a system that must balance player expression with the visual and thematic cohesion of the shared world. The main design question is whether housing should be instanced, open-world, or some combination of both.

Instanced and open-world housing

Instanced housing is described as a model where a player enters a separate personal space through a portal-like access point. This offers safety and control, since the house can be customized without directly affecting the shared overworld.

Open-world housing offers a different appeal: turning a corner and seeing a housing district in the world can make the setting feel more inhabited and socially grounded. This can strengthen the sense that housing is part of the game world rather than detached from it.

Risks of unrestricted building

A major concern with fully open player construction is that players often create structures that clash with the intended tone or visual identity of the game. If unrestricted building leads to joke structures or immersion-breaking shapes, the world can stop feeling coherent.

The concern is not that a world can never contain humor, but that a setting loses seriousness if its shared spaces no longer appear to take their own fiction seriously. In that case, housing can undermine rather than enrich the world.

Aesthetic control and aspiration

The preferred direction discussed is a hybrid that combines the safety of instanced housing with some of the spectacle of visible housing in the world. The key requirement is that houses should fit local aesthetics and make players feel that owning one is a meaningful aspiration.

Housing is presented as something that should feel relevant within the world, whether as a reward, a long-term goal, or a marker of progress. The system should be enjoyable, but it should also preserve the integrity of the setting rather than turning the world into a collection of disconnected jokes.

Source

• Recording: What your MMO needs according to @JoshStrifeHayes | Scars of Honor
• YouTube: Watch on YouTube
• Published: Thursday, January 11, 2024 at 2:20 PM UTC