Player Housing - the whys and nots

Community General Discussion
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It’s not a new topics but given that Blizzard has previously said they are still considering it, I believe the subject should be raised now and then, with input from those for and against it.

So let’s look at the cons that I’m aware of:

I’m not interested in player housing
There are already a number of things to occupy players in the game which are entirely voluntary - such as pet battles and transmog. Those things do not impact on character progression or the more dynamic parts of the game but are purely there for the fun of it. If housing was similarly designed, anyone who didn’t want to do it could happily ignore it. And I doubt that having it put into development would ‘take devs away’ from the main game since Blizzard have often said that each part of the game has its own teams and what one works on does not affect the main development of the expansion.

It would increase anti-social behaviour, like garrisons did
And this is an important point. Blizzard would need to ensure that there was nothing in player housing’s options that tempted players to stay in them for extended periods of time. No AH, no bank, no other similar items so that they would still need to go back to base now and then.

The positives as far as I can see:

Allowing creative choices
If you had more or less full control over what the interior (and to an extent the exterior) of your house/houses looked like, it would provide a real sense of creativity. Want a gleaming Sin’dorei style house? You can do that. Have a Forsaken wanting his own shambolic cobweb-decorated ruined mansion? That could work. The list goes on and is large in its potential variety.

Giving professions a new lease on life
Every profession could have a large selection of items that could be crafted for player housing. The idea makes my mouth water, loving proffs as I do. And other items of furnishings could drop from dungeons and raids, from mobs out in the world or from quests. Lots of options.

Make the creation of a house a real endeavour
Not just do a quest and make it - have it involved and time consuming and costly (in some way, not real money of course). And the more elaborate it is, the more effort it takes. Perhaps your Forsaken finds the ruins of an old home and has to repair it, rebuild walls and roof, find materials, beat off monsters intent of destroying or looting it, etc. Make it challenging and fun, and make the reward worthwhile.

I think, for something like this, the fun potential could be significant. And we really could do with some more immersive fun being put back in this game we love, I reckon…

11 Likes
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I rather have them focus content and spend time fixing the damn classes and abilities than make houses for us, and yes I like that idea but really not the time now

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It would definitely give crafters something to do other than lament their choice for not picking Alchemy.

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You also seem to forget the tech strain it has. Look at garrisons for example it broke the game for over 2 weeks. Player housing would incur the same issues of server stability, this could be solved by having more server shards yet as we already work on a multiple of shardings wm, server adding yet another just causes more strain and tech error

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I’d rather have Guild Halls first. It would make guilds feel far more social.

3 Likes
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Well, one could say that anything new put into the game would increase the “strain”, but I prefer to think that its more a matter of ensuring it works properly in the first place. So many other issues have caused bugs and lags and whatever, they could create a new tree somewhere and it would likely cause an issue if it isnt done right.

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(cries in Leatherworking)

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As I said, the work done on things like classes and abilities is the work of a separate development team. If a white goods company creates a new model refrigerator, that wouldn’t impact on the work being done on their range of ovens. Its all compartmentalised, from what has been said in the past.

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I think they could do better now that they figured out mini-phasing for individual players when approaching specific vendors or the Mission Table on the boat. There could be 50 players standing in their own little phased bubble and you wouldn’t know it unless they all walked away from the Mission Table at the same time. The same could be done with player housing, as long as there are enough areas for them to occupy, it would split these mini-phased areas per player or group.

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Yes yet now we have additional layers of phasing in comparison to back then so you would be addind a phase on top of a phase on top of another phase. You see how this can cause many an issue

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Guild halls if anything, just regular old housing at this point doesn’t even sound interesting anymore. and you could look at games that had housing and what did it really benefit those games? they all are dead compared to this game which moves along fine with no housing.

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I wouldn’t say ESO is dead. And I certainly wouldnt say Final Fantasy is dead, and both those games have player housing.

While I agree guild halls might be fun, I also see them as eventually causing personality issues. One reason so many perks were taken away from guilds was the problems having those perks caused. I think if a player has a house and has the ability to invite people to their house, it could serve much the same purpose as a guild hall. Without the blow ups and arguments that a guild hall would probably involve.

2 Likes
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To make houses social, make it so you can set who can enter. My Free Company’s guild house on FFXIV never felt isolated. We were usually there together, before and after instances. Trading things, talking, building an aircraft together.

4 Likes
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Let’s see this nice juicy source.

1 Like
15

Allowing guilds to build guild halls would be interesting. After Legion launched, I thought that was the next step in the evolution from garrison :arrow_right: class order halls :arrow_right: guild halls.

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I wonder what it would add to the game.

You craft yourself a bed, buy a table and chair on the AH. Fill out your whole house. Then what? How has WoW changed for the better?

You now have a fully decorated house to sit in, and are crafting tables instead of swords. So we sit in our houses, rather than Orgrimmar. Still, what is it adding?

For RP purposes, I can understand how a house might add more substance to WoW. RP aside, how would it enhance gameplay? Motivation to run a raid for a chair or chair recipe? Craft posters and sell them on the AH in place of potions? What changes other than the name to what we’re doing?

Unless of course we’re gonna sit inside them regularly, garrison style. A customized garrison.

(This may sound cynical, but I cannot understand. FFXIV is a different style of game, and I understand the appreciation for houses there. The only time I ever saw them used was to craft something as a guild. Which felt more like a waste of time, on my end.)

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Less lag maybe, if people aren’t in one place. A lot of people stayed in their garrisons because a lot of the things to do were in the garrisons. But housing doesn’t really work that way. Garrisons weren’t really housing anyway. They were forts filled with activities.

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Black Desert Online has pretty detailed and extensive player housing, I’ve got some pretty nicely appointed residences in various cities and they are handy without harming anything, its some casual enjoyment on the side of the main game. The biggest thing for BDO housing is that it houses the equipment you use to do tradeskills (eg stoves for cooking, alchemy tables etc).

They really don’t do anything for tradeskills though. Because supply is vastly higher than demand (as usual with any permanent tradeskill eg: Tailoring vs Alchemy) the profit from tradeskill manufactured housing gear is essentially zero.

tl;dr it won’t hurt if they follow the BDO model (and not garrisons) but it doesn’t bring a whole lot of extra value to the game compared to the effort to implement. ie: no negatives but somewhat minimal positives.

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I don’t get it. When i’m not busy in game I sit in chat and run my mouth for hours, I don’t need to actually see other players to be social. I had to turn off the LookingForGroup channel because I spent way too much time talking instead of farming :rofl:

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This will never happen anyway.

1 Like