Dev Blog: Let's Brainstorm about Housing

[Yaffy]

While you have a lot of neat ideas, I'm not a fan of all the boosts for doing things in your house, such as bonuses to crafting or mushroom farming. It's one thing to be able to purchase working stations so you can craft stuff at the convenience of your home, but by making it better to do stuff at home you're making it so nobody will want to craft outside of their house anymore. It can actually turn into an annoying inconvenience, because instead of crafting stuff wherever they happen to be people will be pressured to travel to their house to craft things all the time. It will definitely make the world feel less alive when everyone is being goaded into their home for boosts rather than just crafting wherever it's convenient.

[ChompyNibblers]

While you have a lot of neat ideas, I'm not a fan of all the boosts for doing things in your house, such as bonuses to crafting or mushroom farming. It's one thing to be able to purchase working stations so you can craft stuff at the convenience of your home, but by making it better to do stuff at home you're making it so nobody will want to craft outside of their house anymore. It can actually turn into an annoying inconvenience, because instead of crafting stuff wherever they happen to be people will be pressured to travel to their house to craft things all the time. It will definitely make the world feel less alive when everyone is being goaded into their home for boosts rather than just crafting wherever it's convenient.

Thanks Yaffy!

I was thinking this would actually have the opposite effect with the crafting boosts. In my magic coal example, if it was rare enough (say so rare we only see like 1 drop a week in the server) than a player obtaining it could host a crafting event at their house after poetry jam (or something to that effect).

In this same light, I don't really see a huge social difference between crafting some stuff in my home vs crafting stuff elsewhere. Most of the time I'm only actually at the crafting table for 10 seconds and otherwise I'm just running around between storages and vendors collecting things to prepare - something I would still be doing even with player housing. For example, there's nothing particularly social about my crafting a calligraphy bench/meditation stool - its just me sitting for a few seconds and I can do it anywhere. Also today when I made 6 cheese casks, I was in front of the cooking fire for like 3 seconds.

That being said, I would suspect the social piece is a bit more like a death by 1k cuts if things no longer require you to do them in a social area (like cooking and tanning/tailoring) and I can't be confident that these ideas won't lead us down this path.

I intentionally excluded gardening (group instrument buffs) and performance related buffs because I feel that creating incentives for those activities in player housing would drive players to stay in their homes. Similarly to crafting, I would argue that caves are not particularly an important element of the community/social interaction for me but ill concede that allowing players to have caves would likely reduce social encounters with other players. Alternatively, maybe this cave "buff" instead could be crafted at a special house station and deployed in any public cave.

[Yaffy]

Thanks Yaffy!

I was thinking this would actually have the opposite effect with the crafting boosts. In my magic coal example, if it was rare enough (say so rare we only see like 1 drop a week in the server) than a player obtaining it could host a crafting event at their house after poetry jam (or something to that effect).

Yeah I like this idea a lot more. I thought you were basically suggesting something more along the lines of it always being better to craft at home so there was no reason to make stuff elsewhere. An excuse to invite a bunch of people over to one's house is definitely interesting, although in that case maybe the boost should be a lot higher if it's such a rare thing!

When I was talking about crafting I didn't really mean it being a social thing, but just that instead of seeing crafters running around town they would all just vanish into their house. You wouldn't be talking to them probably but it's more like people doing crafting would just be absent, making the towns more empty.

[Mikhaila]

A lot of the suggestions would make towns a lot more empty and lesson social interactions. While can understand why everyone would want all the various conveniences, I don't want to see PG go down the road WOW did, where everything got easier and easier.

Storage is one of those. Many people suggest your house should be able to access all storage areas. I actually dislike the idea. Storage becomes generic and easy and a house gives someone a huge advantage over other players. Storage in the house? Sure, that makes sense. I'd like to see a house start with basic storage and you have to build more. A storage box takes wood, rivets, enchanted nails...whatever. Making more storage chests and giving them to the house increases storage. Make it something to work for like the Warden chest. Maybe even link your house to Statehelm storage. But not further.

[shauma]

Having your house be a central repository so you could organize your storage across all areas would be great. Would it detract from the game in some way, hadn't considered it. Maybe a special carpentry item, so it's timed, so you could have 30 minutes with a big transfer box to re-arrange stuff, but make it a difficult item to craft so you couldn't just drop one any-old-time?

[Mikhaila]

Having your house be a central repository so you could organize your storage across all areas would be great. Would it detract from the game in some way, hadn't considered it. Maybe a special carpentry item, so it's timed, so you could have 30 minutes with a big transfer box to re-arrange stuff, but make it a difficult item to craft so you couldn't just drop one any-old-time?

Compare that to what we have now. Maxing out your bank is hugely expensive with the far end being 200k a slot. The little box is 75 event tokens costing millions. The house as described worth be worth 10's of millions compared to that. All the storage you don't use in out of the way places like FR, Serb Hills, Almulna, chest in a cave, ri-shin shrine, chest on the island etc etc. It's all just the same now, assessible from one spot. A massive advantage.

And yet everyone is going to want a house. And want them more, the more advantages we beg to have added to them. So does the cost go up massively, and only the very rich players can afford one with in-game cash? It makes a donation that gets you a house more of a PTW situation, the better the house gets.

The drive to get more storage is one of the things that drives exploration. And the need for the favor to get that storage. Some people don't like it, but it's an underlaying component of what makes the game work.

We also have a LOT of storage. It compensates for having it spread around.

[Mcnasty]

I have read a good many of these replies. I wish to say that in my experience in this game Eric has never done anything that would screw up play or piss off anyone in such a way. Yes we have had stuff not work, And he hears the screams just fine. Next thing you know we get a big tweak and it is either fixed or gone. I say chill out and give input to your best ability. And folks if you can use existing code that can be tweaked rather than a complete rewrite it is helpful too. I have had great success in getting things added to game through suggestion however it all required extreme patients.

[Ransel]

There are so many great ideas out there for player housing which makes it difficult to know how to implement it imo.

My suggestion would be to make player housing simple at first then slowly add on different functionalities. This might help preserve the games "balance" and assist devs in monitoring how player housing is affecting the overall state of the game.

Personally, I'm on the fence about crafting in player housing because of how I've seen it implemented in other games. I'll have to think about all the bad stuff I've seen over the years and write it down later when I get a chance. There might be ways to avoid some of these bad things.

Here are some suggestions for a potential a "soft launch" of player housing in the future.

* Focus on mostly cosmetic things like decorations and furniture.

* Create a few new crafting recipes that fall under existing trade skills. Ie.. like carpenty/leatherworking recipe to make a mannequin that you can hang / store your favorite set of armor on and view it, or some flower arranging recipes that can make bouquets to place around your house. Possibilities are endless, but maybe just make a few to start.

* Maybe a few minor bonuses to something like non-fiction writing / calligraphy. (who doesn't write better at home!)

* Storage? I think storage should be avoided for the most part, but a small bit of storage makes sense. The reason? Too much storage in a player house will make other forms of storage obsolete. Also, players will find a way to fast travel to the player house even if devs don't implement a direct teleport to your house. Ie.. teleport to town then walk a few steps to your house, at which point the devs are like "why not just allow direct teleport to house!"

* Make special banners, pennants, tapestries, etc that you can hang up to show off your achievements in the game.


Those are some of my initial thoughts. Player housing is a great thing, but it can turn into a bit of a rabbit-hole and quickly destroy the balance of a game if not implemented properly. It's for this reason that I suggest slowly working on the player housing system.