I’ve thought about this for years but I held off on making a thread after the announcement because it’s hard to not feel like we’re just gonna end up getting Garrisons 2.0 with the absolute minimum amount of effort put in by Blizzard but… Whatever, lol, here’s how I think player housing needs to be in order to be a successful feature.
I know they’re looking for feedback and desires for how it should be. They might be common sense but even common sense things need to be voiced because they might go overlooked.
In brief, there are just 5 qualities that player housing MUST have:
It must be EVERGREEN and tier agnostic. As in, it should not be linked to player power and items for it should come from content from all expansions, professions and achievements. For example: I may choose to have my house in, say, Spires of Arak (one of my favorite zones) from WoD, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that my house should be restricted to only displaying WoD housing items.
There must be a LARGE SELECTION of different houses to choose from, in different racial styles, sizes and gold prices and in different zones all across the world, with multiple selections in every capital city. Realistically, I unironically expect a selection of 10 different houses at a minimum when the feature comes out, with a regular cadence of more houses to be added in future updates. Just 10 houses is literally nothing compared to other games like BDO which as hundreds of locations or ESO which has dozens.
The player must have a FINE GRAIN level of customization. None of this “oh, you got an item to put in your house and it HAS TO go here and ONLY here.” I need to be able to put anything anywhere. I choose where to put it, not Blizzard. If I wanna put my Onyxia head trophy on the floor in the middle of the living room, let me. No, Blizzard putting a “node” for the item to attach to, and there’s 10 different node locations, is not good enough. Everything from the flooring material to the color of the ceilings should be customizable.
The player needs to be able to see their house in the world when they’re not inside it. Whether or not houses are in neighborhoods or instanced or whatever - if I make alterations to the outside of the house: I give it a garden with flowers out front, I change the window panel sidings, or the color of my front door - it should be visible to me from a distance. I should know that that house is mine and not just the same cookie cutter design that everyone else has. Maybe another player also owns a house at the same location, but to them they are seeing their house.
Lastly, it must not be overly burdened by cash shop items. Everyone expects it by now but… just don’t let it be overbearing, please. The majority of items/decorations should be obtainable through regular play and not from swiping your credit card (again).
Those are the most logical essentials. If it just did those 5 things and did them WELL (especially number 3), then community reception would go from “eh it’s okay. Atleast its in the game now” to “Dude, wow has housing now! You have to resub for this!”
disagree entirely.
I HATE ESOs way of moving crap around like that.
put fixed spots all over the floor, walls, ceiling and let me pick on and choose what I want to put there…
we DONT need that crap of being able tomove a chair an inch to the left…
Why does it automatically come down to rejecting someone’s idea in favor of yours? How about requesting both?
I prefer the idea of freely moving objects, but I can understand your position too. Maybe a compromise would work, where you could snap objects in place, but then use a widget to move them from there.
What I reponded to isnt going to be ‘both’
And bliz already knows that moving crap around freely like that is NOT how this game was set up and unless theyve performed some miracle with it, all youre asking for is for housing to be delayed until they CAN do it like that.
If you cant cope with 100 fixed spots for something to sit on then maybe housing isnt something you need to worry about in the first place.
The ESO editor is annoying as hell and THE reason why I dont bother with my houses much anymore.
“Good news everyone!” He said in Professor Prutricide’s voice “I’ve invented chairs that move around on their own and have sentience! They’re also flesh eating!”
I literally wasnt speaking to that at all lol.
Theyre wanting that ‘edit mode’ thing like ESO where you move stuff around 1/4 inch at a time if you want.
Thats a level of detail that might delay housing indefinitely based on comments I read about it a long while back when Ion was poopooing housing entirely.
As I said,…mabye theyve performed a miracle and figured it out, but Im not personally wanting to put housing on hold because the OP wants to be able to move his world 2 inches to the left lol.
tons of fixed spots are perfectly fine. If you want to move a table to the left, choose the node to the left and select the table.
Sorry to disagree but the ESO house editor is HORRIBLE to use. lol
The ESO housing editor really wasn’t that bad imo, it just took some getting used to the controls.
Perhaps a middle ground. I’m imagining a system to where there’s an invisible grid inside your house, such that when placing items (say a chair) in it, the grid pops up and the chair just fits in alignment with that grid. The chair can still go anywhere in the house, and aligned any which direction, but this way placing it is a lot easier.
So a housing system similar to Palia? I’m cool with that. Especially if we can buy more than one plot to build a house on. Multiple houses would be a good option so a single home wouldn’t be a huge gold sink.
Absolutely - evergreen, and spanning the whole game history.
Yes*. There should be instanced apartments available in every major city that EVERY account gets for free. That’s the low end. At the upper end, there should be a WHOLE OTHER VERSION of the game world that is for housing only - people can buy plots in this world, and build - BUILD - their own grand castles and whatnot, solo or with the help of friends and guildies. I firmly believe if housing is only prefab stuff (and of course there should be prefab stuff available), it will mostly be a wasted effort. The real potential is in the building, piece by piece. Blizzard has the BEST art team in the business, and if we can learn anything from Lego, Minecraft, and the pile of crafter/builder games on steam (Valheim, Grounded, Enshrouded, Ark, etc etc), people want to build their own home.
Yes. Creativity is key, and you can’t have creativity with limited agency.
Yes*, but like I said earlier, it has to be a special housing-layer. The normal game world, especially for people who have zero interest in housing, needs to be free of player creations. This is a non-starter, and Bliz knows it.
Of course. There will be cash-shop bling, but not much.
Transmog has been the biggest unexpected success of the game IMO, and housing can one-up that, if they do it right. Creativity is key - prefab-only is a huge meh.
I love the idea of having a stormwind/org apartment, even if its the low tier version of things.
But there’s an insane amount of unused and open spaces available in the normal game world. The houses/neighborhoods could be mostly or totally hidden from the regular questing experience. Just fly between any two zones and you’ll find lots of spaces, usually areas that are literally already very flat, lol. Almost like they were actually intended for housing blocks.
Trust me, it’s a non-starter. All the way back in UO, housing quickly became a huge eyesore. Let alone if there’s ANY player creativity involved, you will quickly run into vulgarity/trolling real-estate.
But I agree that using the game world is very appealing, which is why I suggest a housing-layer, specifically for people interested in housing. You could shop around for your favorite plot, get into bidding wars, work with other people to establish whole thematic neighborhoods, etc. The various layers could even have their own HOAs lol. I’m not kidding, as awful as that sounds for anyone who has dealt with RL HOAs…
Kinda hope housing goes the route of Ready Player One or Judge Dredd’s Megacity one where we’re just small spaces lumped together and stacked on top of each other in a gigantic dystopian ghetto.