I think it would be a neat idea to have your house visited by NPC’s that are your friends’ characters. This could be limited to people you pick, or only those on your favorites list.
These visits would only occur while you are in the house. Maybe they knock and you can choose to let them in or have an option to give them a spare key so they can waltz in whenever you are there. If a person is online and in game, then their current character cannot be selected to visit you. If they do log in while you are interacting with their “copy” then maybe Chromie or some other bronze dragon can come in and whisk them away while talking about protecting the timeways (only if they also try to visit your house at the same time).
Also, since they are breaking down the various barriers between factions, being visited by opposite faction friends should not be an issue. If I recall correctly, I believe they stated that your own characters can use opposite faction housing or something similar.
These visits could allow for your friends’ NPC to hand out quests related to housing for decorations and other rewards, serving at least as the quest giver. Quest turn-in could be going to a mailbox as though you were writing them a letter that you succeeded.
Small things this NPC could do while in the house is interact with your furniture and decorations or have a drink with you. Maybe they could randomly use toys on their favorites list or yours. Giving you their class-based buffs or food and treats to eat is another idea.
I think this would be a neat addition alongside having your warband characters also serve as guest npc’s in your house, a suggestion I’ve seen others make before.
I just want to end this by saying a close friend of mine passed away a few months after Dragonflight came out. We played this game since vanilla, our mains on opposite factions so we used alts to hang out with each other. It would be a small treat to have their characters show up in my house every once in a while. I’m sure there are others in similar situations who would feel the same way.
Would the NPC be stuck in whatever xmog your friends’ characters are in when the snapshot is taken, or would the xmog change as the PCs change?
That sounds like it could get complicated.
I don’t think this is a bad idea at all, but I wonder if they would feel weird making this ability to let your friend’s alts be in your home when they aren’t even online. That said my son never plays and my wife doesn’t play as often as I do, would be neat to have some of their characters roaming around, chilling on a sofa or chair etc.
Also, I reaaaallly hope we can invite our alts to visit as well, would be great to have a few alts hanging out, doing the same thing as I mentioned above.
Also also, would love if there were a way to select from a list of past mission table followers, especially from SL and WoD. Was pretty cool to have followers roaming around your garrison in WoD, would love that again.
I would imagine it would pull from whatever is current on the characters armory page (or whatever they currently call the online profile for your character), so that if you changed outfits it would not be reflected on the npc until after you log off and that page updates. I would think that the appearance would also not be updated until its next visit, after having logged off, so no NPC will suddenly have an outfit change while they are roaming or talking to you.
I would like that as well, I became attached to some of the mission NPC’s from the Garrison, like Thisalee. At the very least it would make it lively to have various visitors walking around.
I suppose it may be weird as you essentially take that agency away from your friend and may have their NPC show up in your home, regardless of what they (the friend) actually want. Though if you are mutual friends I don’t see this being an issue, or at least I know that none of my mutual friends would take issue with it. Though I can imagine that maybe some people in the RP community may have issue with one of their characters essentially being forced into possibly visiting someone’s home (like maybe their RP character isn’t social and would never do that).