Dev Blog: Let's Brainstorm about Housing

[Sommerlund]

Instancing houses are certainly much easier to do, but personnaly i loved the housing system in Asheron's Call.
There were settlements all over the world, you could buy normal houses, abordable for everyone, and villas, much bigger and who had doubble of storage capacity. Then there were allegiance mansions, expensive and you had to be a guild leader to buy one, and everone in the guild could portal there at anytime to meet guilde mates.
This was great, and we had meetings like in real life, with many peoples coming and sitting arround, and one talked.. good memories !




One of the problem you said for non-instanced houses was that when people stopped to play the areas would feel emptier with the time, but that's not a problem, just group with your guild people you know will keep playing with you, or just leave the house and buy anew one in another more crowthed area.

Or just create NPCs to replace your neighbors who aren't online. They will sell what the real owners wants to sell, they would actually replace the vendors. Hmm, maybe not replace, because some would probably never see a buyer, but they could be like secondary vendors.

[Pugmak]

Might these instanced neighborhoods have common areas, like a hotel lounge setup, so that players can go, hang out, work on alcohol resistance, play musical instruments, engage in story telling, etc?

I realize there's taverns, but sometimes a bit more of the less traffic might work for some.

[darklorde]

Looks like you've already got the bones of the discussion sorted out Citan, and I tend to agree with you on all fronts here.

But the real question is, why should I own a house? Why do I want one? What does it grant me and why should I ever be in it instead of where I reside now?

As a Spider player, I 'live' in the Red Wing Casino. I do this because this is where all my storage and vendors are. This is where players show up to do dailies and work orders. This is where I place all my most commonly used items. This is the 'hub' that can allow me to access every other part of the world quickly and efficiently. This is where I garden. This is where I cook. This is where I tailor. This is where I sell my dungeon findings. The Red Wing Casino is my "City" and the ease of access with vast capabilities is what makes it my "Home".

I know there is an animal town meant for my kind, but due to it lacking in many of the above features, it is completely worthless as a home. I'm going to guess that you don't necessarily like this situation, either because the animal town is rarely trafficked or because the red wing casino is "too good", but I like how it works right now. Sure I'd like the animal town to be better and I'd love even more storage & vendors in the casino, but the teleporter to Rahu bridges the gap well enough for me.

The real question is, how are you going to make me 'move' without creating frustration or cheapening my current experience? Will this house be a better home than the one I have here? Can it be? As it stands, I can see people moving about the area all the time, and I have access to everything I need. It's a good MMO feeling to see people doing stuff while you are in a comfortably efficient hub.

When I think of player housing in games (instanced or not) I think "Useless prop that is supposed to provide immersion, but actually just worsens the experience."

I'd be curious if you've thought about the following:
1) Will I be able to access large amounts (or other city's) storage from inside my home?
2) Will I be able to access vendors from inside my home?
3) Will I be able to teleport directly to my home?
4) Will I have access to crafting devices and gardening?
5) Will I be able to see players moving about in the halls and between vendors?
6) If we do have access to crafting devices, will this create isolation inside of a closed room (A big con for Gardening for sure!)
7) Assuming I still have access to all of this, will I be forced into (one of the many) 1-2 minute long loading screens just to access these features? (This is already a partial issue with Red Wing Casino and Rahu. Loading screens in project gorgon can range from relatively painless to beyond awful.)

I worry more for what player housing will take away from me than I do for what it could grant me. Storage is one of the most contentious topics in Gorgon, and for good reason. If this has the potential to make my storage situation worse, I'd prefer to stay away from it entirely.

I'm sure we'd all prefer to talk about all the cool features player housing could bring with quests and neighbors, but I feel like that's all secondary to the aforementioned perks. If I don't "live" in my house, then it's not my god damn home now is it?

this is exactly what im interested in

[Asaf]

In my opinion, owning and furnishing a house should give certain buffs, nothing too overpowered but definitely something even end game players would like to have,
Some furniture pieces would have to be crafted, Others could be a rare drop from a certain boss or event. Each type of furniture would give a different buff (Maybe a certain painting that would give a small boost to fire damage for 4 hours, maybe a cold water tub that would wake you up to boost reflexes, giving a small boost to projective evasion for 4 hours...)

Kind of similar to the system that was in Maplestory 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnKR8F3Ms8E

and maybe certain nodes in your house, that could be gathered once every 24 hours, giving you a reason to visit your house every day and get some easy materials,

Kind of like in Guild wars 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzHbLETyEV8

we could make the different decorations and nodes in your house useable by other players that entered your house

That would open up some possibilities for house owners to either share or profit off their Hard earned housing furniture and nodes.
They could sell entrance to their house to players who do not have access to the house buffs but would pay for it, or maybe give access for free but only certain to certain race\guild members.




As for the marriage system

i think marrying another player is another important option that should be given, it could unlock new possibilities for things to do, maybe when you and your wife are playing in a party together, both of you get a+10% combat exp gain, rewarding you for actually actively playing together) or maybe a certain VFX would play around you when the two of you are standing close to each other in the game.

These are just rough ideas i had

[Grobyddonot]

IMHO: Regardless of the way the housing system will evolve, player comfort and convenience must be paramount. The most important aspects, as already pointed out in this thread by other players, are:

1. Storage
2. Fast Travel (to and from home)
3. More Storage
4. Some decorative customization options (lots of people will love it, they always do)
5. Even more Storage

P.S. Can't wait for the housing system to be implemented.

[adrikthorsen]

Perhaps 'neighborhood' instances in the vein of FFXIV/EQ1/LoTRO could make for a more social player instanced housing experience? The way these games handled(the ones that did anyway) absent players was to 'expire' their house, which, of course, we don't want HERE - however, perhaps we could HYBRID in the way EQ2 handled housing(in this game everyone clicked on an inn door in a city to enter their home, so everybody's house was actually in the same exact spot - the house stays the same, it's literally an instance inside of an instance - which would make each instanced 'neighborhood' remain social. Say there are... 50 houses in a 'neighborhood' but of course, each house type is actually available to many people, so each 'neighborhood' would likely remain vital and social - ignoring the fact that 200 people are in a town with 50 houses is a lot easier than ignoring the fact that 200 people are entering one home door This, imo, would have the added benefit of allowing a certain level of RP like 'I'm from Little Serbule, which is in Serbule, a town that sprang up outside of the keep settled mostly by elven refugees intially, it is now a cosmopolitan place and I'm one of the first humans to buy a new home there' then as an 'active' player one would enter the 'neighborhood' instance - entering an entire small village(with its' own NPCs, quests, market, storage?) - perhaps a 24-hour cooldown reagentless return home ability could be used here as well.

[Enphuego]

Housing Ideas:

The two MMOs that have had the best housing I've experienced are FFXI and EQ2. To be fair I only played EQ2 on release and quit a few months later to play WoW so I didn't get to see the long term results of player housing on cities.

Player housing should replace the vendor stalls somehow. The whole vendor stall area is laggy as hell and difficult to use. While I understand that it's intentionally less efficient than say the WoW auction house, there's probably a way to replace the actual player stalls with some version of housing for much less lag. In EQ2 you could set up to vendor while you were online but not playing (frankly I bought a second account and PC to serve as my 24/7 vendor) and the players could either use an auction house or visit your instanced house to buy directly. Some mix and match of that might work for getting rid of player stalls. If the entrance to instanced housing had some sort of storefront interaction where you could select from a dropdown of vendors then it would more or less be the same system currently in place. I really do believe that 90% of the performance complaints about the game result from people running around the player stalls in Serb - that area should be redesigned just to get rid of bad reviews about performance, even if the end game state will resolve the pain.

The EQ2 house also had storage where you could drop items for other players, etc. That functionality could either be implemented like a guild chest where certain players have permissions or something like shops where you can reserve an item for a player. That gives other players a reason to enter your house so they can see your awesome furniture. It also makes moving items to others a little bit easier - you can stick it in your house storage and tell the other person to pick it up when they are in town. I'd love to see one chest for personal items, one chest where a list of players can pick up stuff, another where they can drop off stuff. That way we could do things like have one player maintain a cheese supply and the others drop off milk and stomachs.

It needs a mailbox too! At least some way to send an offline player a text message. I'm not sure if it needs to go full bore like WoW where you can send items and money.

Decoration is always an important feature, carpentry seems an obvious skill to set up your place. In FFXI there was some ability to grow things while you were offline - maybe instanced housing would be a good place to do mushroom farming and age cheese. If I remember correctly they had potted plants you had to maintain. While I'm not sure about rewarding constant play, so long as the stakes aren't high then I don't see a problem with it.

The front door in EQ2 was great. There were real houses in a seeming neighborhood that had obvious clues about how expensive it was with a shared instanced front door. You knew when you were going to the rich part of town or if you were slumming it. That brings up that player housing is a status symbol. While you want to get away from monthly rent - it might not be an issue if you just let players resume their rental after a long haitus since there's no monthly fee for the game and the housing is instanced anyways. There could also be a mechanism that increases the price based on demand. Like it's going to be pretty cheap to commute in from Amulna but if you want a prime spot in Casino you can get priced right out of it. That would allow for a fixed number of slots but unlike the current player stall system allow for some rotation based on money paid rather than time spent in the spot.

Where the other games fell short is that there just wasn't much reason to be in your house on a regular basis. Why go through a loading screen when you can just use storage outside of the house? Mushroom farming and aging cheese or beer might be one reason. There should be some sort of benefit in terms of convenience - like maybe you can recall to your house?

It might also be interesting if you could move your house and be places other than the main cities. If you were doing a lot of work in Gazluk, maybe your house could be there? Maybe you could have a house in more than one zone? Maybe you could get a super basic house in Serbule or the Casino for free and then rent houses on a monthly basis wherever you spent a lot of time.

I don't really care for the marriage to NPC mechanism. Obviously, I can just not get married in game so long as there's not an unignorable benefit to being married. It would make more sense to me to be able to marry other players... but I'm going to guess that it would lead to drama. Which is maybe OK? Imagine an online rant about getting divorced in a video game lol.

I'd also rather not have to do a lot of work regarding the house. Ideally for me it would be something that wouldn't require maintenance.

Another thought - I spend quite a while doing inventory management in this game... if there was some way that I could dump all my crap in my house at the end of a long night and come back in the morning to having it all sorted into the various storage everywhere, that would be amazing.

Maybe we should be able to have roommates? A 1:1 housing to player ratio is just assumed - but why? Why not have 3 or 4 roommates in a bigger house with more equipment and they could all split the cost.

Some tie to Industry would also be nice. Organize all your work orders, maybe complete them and stash the items then have it turn in once you get to the NPC? Maybe that could tie into the multiple houses concept - if you have a house in Amulna you can turn in leatherworking work orders from any house?

I would also like the ability to put loadouts in storage in the house. Someone mentioned manequins - I'd like to be able to come into my house, choose the 2 loadouts I want and have all that gear in my folder and none of the rest of it. As an example, I have a DPS set, a travel set and a healing set that I carry on me all the time - I'd totally put the DPS set and travel set in the bank before hitting a daily run if there was a practical method to do so. An added bonus would be if loadouts could contain non-equipped items like a skinning or butcher knife so I can bring a crappy skinning knife for fish gut fun in groups and the good skinning knife for solo play.

[Mysfit]

IMHO: Regardless of the way the housing system will evolve, player comfort and convenience must be paramount. The most important aspects, as already pointed out in this thread by other players, are:

1. Storage
2. Fast Travel (to and from home)
3. More Storage
4. Some decorative customization options (lots of people will love it, they always do)
5. Even more Storage

P.S. Can't wait for the housing system to be implemented.

being able to decorate and improve/build on it is needed.
Housing can depopulate cities and such so it must be done with that in mind...no guild housing. instead guild halls might be made in set cities so people hang out there.

[Zecke]

It would be nice to be able to share a house with other players.
With the Loadout(eg. decorations, colours ...) always being those of whoever is online atm.
(including priority settings in case all are on/offline)

[ChompyNibblers]

Hey all, I read through the thread today and did some brainstorming for functional things that I felt I would be excited about in player housing. Before I list features, I wanted to describe a little bit about how I imagine player housing working. In my opinion, player housing would come into effect mid-game and serve as a very expensive end-game material dump for top tier players. That isn't to say that I think non-endgame players should be excluded from owning player housing, but I hope that end-game elements of player housing are made expensive so that it also becomes a part of a players status/collection. I would hope the final version has rooms/upgrades/etc. that are ungodly expensive on a relative basis (say 250M councils for a "Throne Room" or something) but still can deliver a small benefit to the player. Player housing would be as much about showing off as it is about functionality in my mind.

Onto the features, here are some ideas that I feel would make housing exciting without detracting too much from the social aspects of the game:
+ Extra storage - seems like something player housing should have

+ Stores/stalls - let me sell things from my house

+ Crafting stations - I want to be buy and or build various crafting stations (forge, cooking pot, tanning rack)
-- Station upgrades: It would be neat to be able to upgrade the stations in my home, maybe temporarily?. For example, maybe one of the upgrades (rare high-level boss drop?) is "magic coal" that gives a 1% higher chance to craft a certain rarity 10 minutes, only useable in a player house furnace.
-- Also, non-necessary stations, like a woodcarving bench that extends the duration of all my placed carpentry items by 10%; or an alchemy bench that has a 5% chance of creating extra damage boost potions if you craft those potions at this bench.

+ Vase that lets me permanently place a flower display in it but now the display has only 5 uses

+ "Magic" Candelabra that does something similar (candle becomes 5-use instead of duration, maybe the buff duration is also increased by 5%)

+ Dinner table with better food buffs or duration (maybe also provides a community buff if you eat with people, higher buff for a larger gathering)

+ Armor stands for quick loadout swaps

+ Location to have a permanent tapped beer keg and permanent tapped liquor keg (it needs to be replaced when fully consumed, but has no time limit otherwise)

+ Cave for aging/mushroom farming/brewing (also could benefit from output boosts, like a 2-day +5% mushroom harvest, should probably be restricted to just the owner unless upgraded, and even then space should probably be restricted)

+ A number of potential unlockable "Daily" harvests (22hr cd or something, these should also probably have some player upkeep material cost) that must be developed and are more limited:
-- Plots for foraged goods (maybe trees take up 4 plots)
-- Chicken coop for feathers and eggs
-- Cows and goats for milking?
-- Fish pond, but you need to stock it and leave a pair for breeding.
-- Greenhouse for slow gardening with limited plots (also could benefit from some type of low-efficacy/high cost output boost; maybe greenhouses multiply seeds very slowly instead of grow the standard gardening output)
-- a metal vein in the caves
-- high-level players might access a paid or powered BC golem that, once "activated" for the day, will harvest all the daily goods for you during the next 22 hours... (maybe this is a marriage benefit instead?)

+ Animal husbandry - can I have my barn/ranch on my property?, can I get exclusive (and expensive) upgrades?