housing got decoration hooks :((

Well it can only be better because LOTRO is one of the worse and most disappointing housing systems ever created.

Placement hooks restrict a player's creativity. In other MMO's I have seen some amazing decorating ideas with free form placement. What seems absurd, such as placing book shelves on the ceiling or tables placed on top of a flower vase have created some extraordinary designs of an unexpected spiraling stair case or a secret room...etc.

SWTOR had a chance to outshine its competitors and they failed miserably. Sure it will be a nice little system. The Devoted will adore, defend, and accept the inferior setup. But why strive for mediocrity when there was an opportunity for excellence?

while I can honestly say it probably won't be better than some of the housing systems out there, I would not call this mediocre either, even though they used hooks at least they gave a lot more options and places to go with it than some other hooks users and you can tell they put work into it. Its not perfect, its not what people expected, not as good as we thought it would be, but still I disagree when people just outright call it mediocre either.

I wouldn't interpret it as being Free Placement since they've gone out of their way to avoid labeling it as Free Placement. And guess what? It turned out to not be Free Placement.

When you take a single statement and fixate on that single statement and ignore the context of the entirety of the rest of the dialogue, then you're obviously doing so for a reason. You 'wanted' it desperately to be Free Placement and when someone offered up one statement that could be construed as being a hinting toward Free Placement, you got excited and hyped up. You ignored everything else in the very long dialogue regarding the Housing system and focused solely on that single statement.

it would have been very easy and simple for them to say "It's Free Placement, put anything you want, anywhere you want" if that was the case. Instead, they said "It's a complicated system and we don't want to tell you about it so much as 'show' you how it works." Why? Because some people freak out and have prejudiced views regarding a Hook System, no matter how robust and vigorous and how much customization comes with that unique system that they've developed.

And, as this very thread has shown, the mere mention of "hook system" leaves people cold and disappointed without them even bothering to examine the system in detail.

Now, maybe you can grasp why they didn't explain the system before as a hook system and why they certainly give you any reason to believe that it was a Free Placement system.

It's great for a hook system, I will give it that. But overall compared to other housing in other MMOs it is mediocre. A great hook system still limits you. It would be great if you could turn it off or the hooks became just a guide line.

Well, I'm going to say outright that if you're bucking for a system that allows us to put tables on top of vases, then you're out of your mind.

Heck, right now with the current system you are out of your mind for wanting to put vases on top of tables.

They said very plainly that they'll be offering a variety of basic models. So, you can be sure that there'll be tables with vases available if that strikes your fancy.

my personal theory is that they wanted originally to do a free system with no hooks but due to some technical issues the could not do it and had to resort to hooks, which caused a delay in designing as a result which caused the pushback. Thats just my own opinion. I think hat if they could have made this without hooks they would have. Not making excuses for them, but sometimes things just won't work, not this teams fault that the previous teams before them went with this game engine and design and such.

but who knows, I honestly don't see this ever becoming free placement since its already been shown and announced as hooks, but still what I am saying is that at least it won't be total crap either. Honestly though I have never seen housing in any other mmo's so I don't have much comparison.

They didn't label it as anything other than "you will be able to place items as you see fit"...that's the problem with their silence...they offer such sparse information, that the few tidbits we DO get, are taken as truth.

Yeah, they didn't say a word about hooks prior because they know, deep down, that the hook system is the last possible thing players wanted. UNIQUENESS is what I enjoy about housing...every freaking place will look (nearly) the same, just like your space ship.

In completely pre-determined positions on the table. I can't move the vase, I can't replace the vase with another that I like without replacing the whole table.. what if I don't like the table that has the vase I like?