Why do Vanity items / Player housing / Pets exist?

[LiquidOuroboros]

Why do Vanity items / Player housing / Pets exist?

Why do you care what clothes you were, or what car you drive? Vanity ftw imo.

Some of us actually enjoys roleplaying. I consider myself a pretty hardcore gamer and a roleplayer both. But if I had 2 items almost identical in stats, Id take the better looking one even if it was a few stats worse.

Not sure if OP is trolling, stupid or ignorant. Vanity items spice the game up and makes it richer. Why even care if they cost money? Noone is forcing you to buy any of it.

[Tharia]

*snip*

Yes and we also should reduce games to 2D with anmies as a red dot and people as a blue dot and amybe only excel tables at all. All this grafic and amory stuff eats way to much developed resources. Imagine how many dungeons Developer could do for the action if we just use ASCII as a GUI. All the fighting content we get if we remove all the other needless stuff.

[Brojam]

Because some of us actually enjoy all of these things

[Yshnal]

Because of variety and different tastes. Some people enjoy killing monsters, others fighting against other players, someone else likes to roleplay, another one likes to craft stuff and/or play the market, the guy next to them likes to collect all the gear because he likes how it looks, his friend wants to get all pets and mounts available, their FC mate is a housing addict, etc. And some people even enjoy everything. It's not that hard to understand, if you think a bit about it. Content for everyone, as everyone pays the same.

This is an MMO, so I say that it's good that it tries to build a wonderful virtual world with plenty of alternatives for everyone to enjoy.

[Renik]

@OP

certainly devs has to fix a lot of things, housing, minions and mounts are just vanity items, a waste of resources taking into account the current state of the game, but this is an MMORPG.

Also, while making housing, minions and mounts takes time and resorces, making new dungeons and HMversions (that will get old after the first week) takes even more time and resources.
If you're mad because the game is becoming repetitive and boring, don't complain about the resorces invested in vanity content, complain about the poor design of end-game content.

On the other hand, if you're ok with repetitive content and just don't care about the rest, then you're the one who is worng about the MMORPG, not the rest of the gamers, Blizzard decided they wanted an MMO where everything was instanced and repetitive, but that's not an MMO, that's just a multiplayer with a big chat room.

PS: I went a bit offtopic, but all these threads has the same root, so i'll leave my post as it is.

[LiquidOuroboros]

Just realized that OP is actually saying: "I dont like strawberry Milkshake, therefore - noone should make them. Because - you know - *I* dont like them and thats all that matters"

[Khaleon]

Having homes, pets, vanity gear, ect is as old as MMOs literally. Look at how many folks in UO had homes, tamed dragons or kirin, rare dungeon drops shown off in their house or paperdoll. FFXI had fairly customizable housing where you were actually REWARDED for the type of furniture you had in your house. EQ2 was almost equal to UO in terms of the amount of fluff you could find. Rift has housing that some people manage to make more entertaining than the developers themselves could, plus pets, vanity gear, ect. That isn't even touching AC1, Atlantica Online, Second Life, and the multitude of other MMOs.

Many people look to MMOs not for the combat but for an escape from reality, be it because of family, social, financial, or health reasons. As a company you aim for the largest cut of pie you can get, and that entails getting those folks who want to make a game into their second world. Look at Skyrim, a single player RPG that has some of the most in-depth housing customization on the market, it didn't need to have housing, but some people have spent more time just working on their homes than they have the main story line. Just because one group may not like fluff do not make the fluff crowd outright wrong.

[Yoohre_WildRiver]

because after a hard day of mob figthing, primal killing, dungeon grinding hard labor day, is nice to come to a warm home and be greeted by the smile of a goobue sproutling or the gentle purr of a baby behemoth.

i dont think is wasted development at all, its a nice addition for CRAFTER style players, i myself like battle content and crafting content, i play them and enjoy both aspects equally.

[RyuPower]

Vanity items
you like a look of a set but it too weak to use end game
Vanity items will will you keep the look of the old set be use the newer sets

Player housing
a place you can go with a party that is safe and private
and there a lot more then it just being a house
you can do many other things a you player house
chocobo breeding will most likely be done there
crafting might get a bonus when you craft at you player house, with the tools in the house

minions
are like trophies

[LlenCoram]

God forbid anyone likes things you don't like.