JayCFraser

I felt compelled to join the forum after reading the stretch goal of housing - and here seems to be the place to voice that concern. Houses: The implication of housing as a stretch goal is not a good one - the idea that it would be the result of a $200,000 jump in budget seems to me to have unwanted implications. The main issue with it is not that it is inherently a bad idea, but more that I have yet to see it done well. Games which have it as a feature done poorly that spring to mind are Fable and Dragon Age (if you allow the camp to function as 'housing' - it does at least seem to serve the fundamental role). The problem with housing in Fable (as with basically everything in Fable) is that the desire for there to be significant flexibility actually ends out resulting in a pretty meaningless choice on behalf of the player - the large number of houses end out making all the houses bland and uninteresting. In Dragon Age the problem with the 'house' was that it served the purpose of being a hub for changing around your party (this actually ties into the romances, too - even just knowing that it was possible to have an orgy (made possible by everyone being in the camp) in Dragon Age ruined a hell of a lot of the feel of the game - it gives the player the knowledge the characters have not been written with consistent motivations). The hub also is irritating in removing the party characters' realism and personalities - they just sit there doing nothing whilst waiting for you... However, in Baldur's Gate II and Neverwinter Nights II the strongholds the player could acquire were fine within the story and relatively seamless (Baldur's Gate II provided a much better implementation, imho). The thing that strikes me about this - and perhaps I'm being naive here - is that these were made comfortably within the capabilities of the engines in question and would by no means justify such a huge leap in budget - they wouldn't justify it in either the sense of adding enough value to the came to be worth paying for it -as well- as not being worth it in the sense they should not have required that amount of money to implement. Which leads to the reason the housing stretch goal looks suspicious. Essentially, it is a question of faith in the game makers. Anyway, it's certainly a very early stage to voice any concerns and an overly picky rant I'm sure.