Housing: Another thing DAOC got right, and why it should be adapted to ESO eventually.

Attorneyatlawl

I've seen a lot of posts talking about the eventual implementation of player housing, along with the usual litany of complaints about things like "There won't be enough land!" or "I don't want people's houses sitting on top of quest areas!", or even suggestions of outright instancing the housing on a personal basis which defeats the vast majority of reasons as to why you'd even want housing in an MMORPG in the first place.

The solution is to simply take DAOC's housing system and adapt it to megaserver tech.

-Just like DAOC, there would be several large zones specifically for people to place their houses in on lots that are auctioned by the game.
-Just like DAOC, we would be able to hire a consignment merchant to sell our stuff to people on our porch, and it could be searched from a central index at the center of the housing zones, requiring you to ride out to the house with it to buy or pay an extra fee to have it picked up for you automatically (15-20%).
-Just like DAOC, we would have neighborhoods, and be able to display our accomplishments with trophies to put on our lawns, inside our homes, etc. as well as the usual slate of decorative items.
-Just like DAOC, there would be rent and multiple tiers of home sizes available, allowing extra storage, prestige in showing off your wealth, and providing more floors to the house for extra placements of tools/merchants/etc.
-Just like DAOC, post-clustering, there would be multiple phases of these zones in existence with travel available between them from a portal, and unlike DAOC, you would be assigned a "home" version based on where you placed your house with new phases automatically being introduced with the megaserver technology as existing ones fill up.

Voila... ESO will have single-handedly solved the potential issues by having no land crunch, and no houses occupying every tiny speck of land in normal gameplay zones. All the benefits of non-instanced housing systems from community, to immersion, to being able to see and visit other peoples' houses, to helping the economy system with extra sales outlets, and even introducing new moneysinks to help keep the economy from inflating gold-wise as quickly.

Roechacca

Didn't play DAOC but SWG had the best housing system in any MMO bar none . Player made cities and towns .

haileyjschmidtub17_ESO

I dunno about other people but I don't participate in player housing to show off.
I use it as a nice quiet area to craft or sit and AVOID the hustle and bustle of other people.
It would be too busy if it wasn't instanced and or it could end up a dead wasteland like FFXIV where you never see your neighbors anyways.

Attorneyatlawl

haileyjschmidtub17_ESO wrote: »

I dunno about other people but I don't participate in player housing to show off.
I use it as a nice quiet area to craft or sit and AVOID the hustle and bustle of other people.
It would be too busy if it wasn't instanced and or it could end up a dead wasteland like FFXIV where you never see your neighbors anyways.

Then set your house interior to "private", just like DAOC.

Carde

Housing or bust.

edit: FFXIV's system isn't that bad, just not that great. Rift's was pretty awesome, though. There's only a few ways you can really do housing wrong and not having it at all is the biggest one of all.

haileyjschmidtub17_ESO

Pretty much agree with most of what Kragorn has to say

The only difference is the front door being the start of the instance.
I would love a private little garden or yard so dang badly.

But yeah FFXIV would be the LAST housing system I'd want to see implemented here.
Wildstars was pretty nice though.

Wasn't playing Rift when it had it's housing so wouldn't know too much on that though.

ItsGlaive

Player towns would be my absolute ideal solution, instances or otherwise. There'd need to be a real genuine reason to visit them other than crafting though, otherwise we could end up with hundreds of ghost towns just like LOTRO.

Possible draws I can think of to keep them populated:

- Daily neighbourhood quests
- Personal chests in houses that can only be accessed in person
- The aforementioned crafting stations
- Guild quests maybe?
- More social and sandbox elements? Maybe interact able inns where you can use the chairs, perform on stage or rent a room. Farming where you can grow mats for provisioners?
- Stables, to house all of your horses
- Guild halls
- A PVP element maybe, you have to defend your town from invaders?

haileyjschmidtub17_ESO

Xabien wrote: »

- A PVP element maybe, you have to defend your town from invaders?

I would cry and avoid houses all together :<

But while the social things are fine what about the people that want to escape and enjoy their homes in peace and quiet?

Malotrus

Roechacca wrote: »

SWG had the best housing system in any MMO bar none . Player made cities and towns .

I wholeheartedly agree with you ! Now, admittedly, it would be difficult to implement that as such in TESO, cause the world was not originally designed so as to offer enough desert / viable available space for players to create their cities and build their houses. Every tiny space of land is already decorated or has a purpose. And the islands/continents are not that vaste anyway.

Therefore I doubt they can implement a housing system other than through instancing. You get in your place through a door in a random building already created in the city, same door for many players, like in EverQuest2 or Ryzom. Or like in LOTRO, possibly, but not sure you'd win much in terms of socialisation or immersion.

Lava_Croft

Roechacca wrote: »

Didn't play DAOC but SWG had the best housing system in any MMO bar none . Player made cities and towns .

Like Ultima Online did in the 90's?

ebunts14_ESO

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

I've seen a lot of posts talking about the eventual implementation of player housing, along with the usual litany of complaints about things like "There won't be enough land!" or "I don't want people's houses sitting on top of quest areas!", or even suggestions of outright instancing the housing on a personal basis which defeats the vast majority of reasons as to why you'd even want housing in an MMORPG in the first place.

The solution is to simply take DAOC's housing system and adapt it to megaserver tech.

-Just like DAOC, there would be several large zones specifically for people to place their houses in on lots that are auctioned by the game.
-Just like DAOC, we would be able to hire a consignment merchant to sell our stuff to people on our porch, and it could be searched from a central index at the center of the housing zones, requiring you to ride out to the house with it to buy or pay an extra fee to have it picked up for you automatically (15-20%).
-Just like DAOC, we would have neighborhoods, and be able to display our accomplishments with trophies to put on our lawns, inside our homes, etc. as well as the usual slate of decorative items.
-Just like DAOC, there would be rent and multiple tiers of home sizes available, allowing extra storage, prestige in showing off your wealth, and providing more floors to the house for extra placements of tools/merchants/etc.
-Just like DAOC, post-clustering, there would be multiple phases of these zones in existence with travel available between them from a portal, and unlike DAOC, you would be assigned a "home" version based on where you placed your house with new phases automatically being introduced with the megaserver technology as existing ones fill up.

Voila... ESO will have single-handedly solved the potential issues by having no land crunch, and no houses occupying every tiny speck of land in normal gameplay zones. All the benefits of non-instanced housing systems from community, to immersion, to being able to see and visit other peoples' houses, to helping the economy system with extra sales outlets, and even introducing new moneysinks to help keep the economy from inflating gold-wise as quickly.

You think DAoC had the best housing in a mmo? You couldn't have played too many mmo's that has housing then. DAoC and LoTR both have the worst housing in any mmo's.

Both UO and SWG had the best housing of any mmo. I agree that housing in the open world is not the best solution in ESO but only in the current gaming world. Copies of the world can be created and housing can be allowed in those copies. You can have 3 options for house placement.

1. place house anywhere in the housing world (like in UO and SWG).
2. Buy plot and place house of your choice.
3. Use the towns, cities and villages buildings for housing.

You can use, to get to your house by,

1. Use of wayshrines
2. Use a specific door (in most towns, cities, villages) in the game world where you walk through the door and enter the housing world.

As one housing world fills a second copy is created, then a third and so on as needed, to place housing. But most of all, do not use the dumb and stupid hook point system that DAoC and LoTR uses (that's the worst BS system I ever seen in any MMO).

Rook_Master

Open world housing is a thing of the past, just like full corpse looting.

What I would like is instanced Guild Housing. Something where Guildies can come and hang out. I don't care anything for a personal house, but give me Guild Housing!

wOOOOt_of_SD

How about we godt some balancing. xp rewards and PVP lag fixed before we start on new funny Projects?

maryriv

Yeah, and no BoP either, it's silly.

BigM

wOOOOt_of_SD wrote: »

How about we get some balancing. xp rewards and PVP lag fixed before we start on new funny Projects?

^^This!

Necrelios

RIFT must have the best housing system of any MMO I've seen. You have an entire skill set dedicated to it if you want, and you can build your own private "dimension" wall by wall and brick by brick or just purchase already built structures to decorate. You can design your own landscaping rock by rock and tree by tree, and even have the option to build custom PvP matches inside your own player dimension just for friends you invite over.

Given the history of previous TES games being open to modders, I hope ESO adopts a similar system where players have full customization over their houses and private areas where we can really sink in and let our creativity flow.

drzycki_ESO

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

I've seen a lot of posts talking about the eventual implementation of player housing, along with the usual litany of complaints about things like "There won't be enough land!" or "I don't want people's houses sitting on top of quest areas!", or even suggestions of outright instancing the housing on a personal basis which defeats the vast majority of reasons as to why you'd even want housing in an MMORPG in the first place.

The solution is to simply take DAOC's housing system and adapt it to megaserver tech.

-Just like DAOC, there would be several large zones specifically for people to place their houses in on lots that are auctioned by the game.
-Just like DAOC, we would be able to hire a consignment merchant to sell our stuff to people on our porch, and it could be searched from a central index at the center of the housing zones, requiring you to ride out to the house with it to buy or pay an extra fee to have it picked up for you automatically (15-20%).
-Just like DAOC, we would have neighborhoods, and be able to display our accomplishments with trophies to put on our lawns, inside our homes, etc. as well as the usual slate of decorative items.
-Just like DAOC, there would be rent and multiple tiers of home sizes available, allowing extra storage, prestige in showing off your wealth, and providing more floors to the house for extra placements of tools/merchants/etc.
-Just like DAOC, post-clustering, there would be multiple phases of these zones in existence with travel available between them from a portal, and unlike DAOC, you would be assigned a "home" version based on where you placed your house with new phases automatically being introduced with the megaserver technology as existing ones fill up.

Voila... ESO will have single-handedly solved the potential issues by having no land crunch, and no houses occupying every tiny speck of land in normal gameplay zones. All the benefits of non-instanced housing systems from community, to immersion, to being able to see and visit other peoples' houses, to helping the economy system with extra sales outlets, and even introducing new moneysinks to help keep the economy from inflating gold-wise as quickly.

DAOC had the best housing of any game I have ever played. It really felt like mine. It had it's own neighborhood and it was fun to interact with my neighbors. I liked touring the other neighborhoods to see the other houses and decorations.

Single instance housing is awful.

RSram

Would be great if the house was included in the JS so I could go in and steal everyone stuff, and if I get caught then the owner and I can engage in PVP.

BigM

Well one thing is certain, if the changes they have done with billing and making the game B2P if they don't start getting people to purchase crowns and make some big money you can forget a lot of updates to the game.

With how the lag is I see a lot of people giving up on game, so this is first major fix.

Make the one's that have been here from before day 1 happy so they stay subbed. Second major fix.

It's a beautiful world and I hope it is here a long time.

alainjbrennanb16_ESO

soz but i don't really care about housing padding filling, yes i would use it if it came along, but it simple padding filling, i would rather have new zones and quests instead

tallenn

I hated the DAoC housing model. It was the worst housing model I've seen, except perhaps UO, where houses littered the landscape within 2 months. But in DAoC, unless you were among the first to get a house, you were going to be running quite ways to get to your house.

I much preferred the housing in EQ2, where all of the housing was instanced, and multiple people shared a door (this is also similar to the single player Elder Scrolls games, though obviously you didn't have to share a door, since you were the only player in the world). I also kind of liked Star Wars: Galaxies' method, though not as much as EQ2. It is probably the best way to do non-instanced housing though.

Seraphyel

There is no room for housing in ESO. I don't know how or where it even could work.

CodexMMO

Ryzom had instanced "Apartments". You give up a backyard, but the game didn't look like Sim City. It wasn't perfect, but it was way better than no housing. Other players could also come over and visit. I want to see player owned housing in ESO soon

drzycki_ESO

tallenn wrote: »

I hated the DAoC housing model. It was the worst housing model I've seen, except perhaps UO, where houses littered the landscape within 2 months. But in DAoC, unless you were among the first to get a house, you were going to be running quite ways to get to your house.

I much preferred the housing in EQ2, where all of the housing was instanced, and multiple people shared a door (this is also similar to the single player Elder Scrolls games, though obviously you didn't have to share a door, since you were the only player in the world). I also kind of liked Star Wars: Galaxies' method, though not as much as EQ2. It is probably the best way to do non-instanced housing though.

On our server we actually had some of the guild leaders coordinate everything so guilds could get housing in the same villages if they wanted and people not in guilds could choose where they wanted. It was amazing how everyone cooperated. But that was back then...in the good old days. It would never work now with the mindset of most (not all) players.

I had a beautiful cottage with a lake view. I miss Nimue in the old, old days. I would go back in a heartbeat if it could be the same. /sigh

ThatNeonZebraAgain

Xabien wrote: »

Player towns would be my absolute ideal solution, instances or otherwise. There'd need to be a real genuine reason to visit them other than crafting though, otherwise we could end up with hundreds of ghost towns just like LOTRO.

Possible draws I can think of to keep them populated:

- Daily neighbourhood quests
- Personal chests in houses that can only be accessed in person
- The aforementioned crafting stations
- Guild quests maybe?
- More social and sandbox elements? Maybe interact able inns where you can use the chairs, perform on stage or rent a room. Farming where you can grow mats for provisioners?
- Stables, to house all of your horses
- Guild halls
- A PVP element maybe, you have to defend your town from invaders?

I agree. Use housing to make current cities and surrounding areas more dynamic and actually lived in -- this game needs cities you can get lost in (like in EQ and DAoC). Cheaper housing can be tenements in run-down areas of town, while you can buy stand alone halls outside of town for ridiculous amounts of gold. They should make tons of housing types available in each zone and city/town, but like guild trader spots, there should also be a finite amount of them, and they can turn over ownership (though not possessions or NPCs) if upkeep is not paid.

As for sandbox elements: Make it so that the more valuable your house is, the greater chance it spawns lockboxes that can be picked (can't pick your own boxes tho). That way, you can also hire guards and NPCs to keep a look out, and eventually when PvP part of Justice System is in, you can kill the home invaders. Loot stolen from lockboxes or other containers wouldn't come out of guild bank, but would just be randomly spawned like in current world containers. Another sandbox idea: Monster and Daedra attacks on housing, which can be destroyed like keeps can in Cyrodiil. Got a house in The Rift being attacked by Giants? Better get your butt over there and save it! A hard boss that dropped interesting loot would also be cool.

Kublakan

I think having an exclusive settlement zone made for player housing is a mistake. It might divide the community and make it look empty, especially if its located outside crowed area.

I don't think either it would be possible to have player housing lot in the open world like it was in SWG. ESO is not build for that.

I think the best way to implement player housing would be to integrate it into already crowed area, like in large cities. In the form of instances. You can have one large building with several doors giving access to limitless private instances. And you can place several kind of these buildings across cities in the world. These buildings and instances could be available in a variety of quality, price and space.

TheRealDoc

Loved DAOC housing and personal market traders would help with getting gear at reasonable prices.

Not against another system if it's better, I'm just saying DAOC housing in an ESO style would make me happy.

Attorneyatlawl

haileyjschmidtub17_ESO wrote: »

Pretty much agree with most of what Kragorn has to say

The only difference is the front door being the start of the instance.
I would love a private little garden or yard so dang badly.

But yeah FFXIV would be the LAST housing system I'd want to see implemented here.
Wildstars was pretty nice though.

Wasn't playing Rift when it had it's housing so wouldn't know too much on that though.

That's not how it works, actually. The entire idea is that it your house is not in an instance .

NewBlacksmurf

DAoC was my favorite housing experience since....omg I'm embarrassed to even say how long it's been but 1998-1999

Not sure when housing hit tho as it was a bit after the first year or two

Anyways it was great and due to the similar nature of this game...it would fit right in but a lot later after 2 or 3 other dlc additions

Aimelin

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

DAoC was my favorite housing experience since....omg I'm embarrassed to even say how long it's been but 1998-1999

Not sure when housing hit tho as it was a bit after the first year or two

Anyways it was great and due to the similar nature of this game...it would fit right in but a lot later after 2 or 3 other dlc additions

DAoC released in 2001 ... Just saying

But yea once they eventually clustered the servers housing was perfect in that game, shouldn't be a problem here with their megaserver and phases or w.e you wanna call them.

jircris11

Roechacca wrote: »

Didn't play DAOC but SWG had the best housing system in any MMO bar none . Player made cities and towns .

i miss my city TT_TT