Homes need services for Wayshrines, Armor repair, and Guild Banking.

Woefulmonkey

I will start with my suggestion then follow with my reasoning.

Suggestions:

There needs to be a ‘WayShrine Stone’ service that allows you to setup a ‘Fee’ teleporter that you can use from your ‘House’. Personally I think ‘Homes’ should just have this ability built in, but I think any player who invests in a home would definitely be willing to ‘buy’ this service.

The ‘Merchant’ service at your ‘House’ should provide ‘Repair’ services. I understand why you don’t give that when ‘Questing’ or doing ‘Dungeons’ but there is no reason not to provide that as a service from you house. I would even buy a separate ‘Repair’ service for my house.

The ‘Banker’ should provide Guild Bank and Store access. Again I get no giving you that access from anywhere during Questing and Dungeons, but why deny that access from your ‘Home’.

Reasoning:

I spent lots of time and money to create a home base that I think is really cool, but I have basically no reason to go there on a regular basis. If you want player to really get into ‘home’ ownership then there needs to be a reason to ‘want’ to spend time at your home. It has been only 1 week an I already regret my purchases.

I have been playing ESO for about 8 months now. I had been familiar with “Homes’ since the first month, but was never really interested since the first experience you are exposed to is a ‘Apartment’ which is a small room inside of an Inn and I had not purchased a ‘Merchant’ or ‘Banker’ servant yet. So it seemed like a pretty useless vanity item and I basically ignored them until last month.

Then I joined a guild that had a guild house… Which was an enormous estate with both indoor and outdoor areas and was populated with crafting stations, practice dummies (you can actually fight), a banker and a merchant.

Well now I was interested and I dropped about 100$ to get a ‘Large’ house and populate it with similar items. (A gift to myself for Christmas).

I had fun decorating four several hours and creating my space the way I wanted it. I thought this would be a cool ‘home’ base where I would park my characters when I logged off so I would get to see it at least a little basically every day.

So, why oh why do I never go home?

Well the first time I started my day from my house I started looking to do my normal ‘prep’ work before starting a random dungeon.

First I went to Charge and Repair my equipment so I am at 100%.... but I could not repair my stuff from home…

Ok, that was a bummer but then I though ‘I’ll just travel to a town and repair there’… So I hit the map and selected a town only to be hit with a 750 gold charge to for the trip… WTF.

Ok, well I am not paying 750 gold every day for every character just to fast travel to repair my stuff…

So I decided to travel to the nearest ‘Wayshrine’ and travel from there… I have fully upgraded the speed for my mounts but even so it took about 2 minutes to get though load screens and make it to my desired destination.

I know 2 minutes does not sound like a long time, but it is enough of a deterrent that I no longer park my characters at my house. My ‘Real’ in game home is a barn inside a town right next to a ‘Wayshrine’ and 10 seconds from a merchant who can repair my stuff and a bank where I can do 'Guild' transactions.

Judging from the volume of players I see in this area every time I load in, I would say this is a very common behavior. If you want people to change that behavior you need to give them the ability to do these basic things from their home. These do not seem to be game breaking or even unfair advantage items. They are just the basic service that need to exist to give players a reason to ‘go home’ on a regular basis.

Elsonso

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

I will start with my suggestion then follow with my reasoning.

Suggestions:

The ‘Merchant’ service at your ‘House’ should provide ‘Repair’ services. I understand why you don’t give that when ‘Questing’ or doing ‘Dungeons’ but there is no reason not to provide that as a service from you house. I would even buy a separate ‘Repair’ service for my house.

The ‘Banker’ should provide Guild Bank and Store access. Again I get no giving you that access from anywhere during Questing and Dungeons, but why deny that access from your ‘Home’.

I would go for this. I have not purchased the Banker or Merchant, but probably would if they added this when stationed in the house. It might even be the thing that spurs me into actually using the Housing. Right now, it is just a fast travel to one of four cities in the world.

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

Then I joined a guild that had a guild house… Which was an enormous estate with both indoor and outdoor areas and was populated with crafting stations, practice dummies (you can actually fight), a banker and a merchant.

I am also in such a guild and this has reduced my need to develop and real estate on my own. It is also why it would be nice to have fully functional merchants and bankers.

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

I know 2 minutes does not sound like a long time, but it is enough of a deterrent that I no longer park my characters at my house. My ‘Real’ in game home is a barn inside a town right next to a ‘Wayshrine’ and 10 seconds from a merchant who can repair my stuff and a bank where I can do 'Guild' transactions.

I can see the point of the in-house wayshrine, but one problem with housing is that so few houses are in a location that is really convenient and has the space to do what I want to do. I would much rather have a house where the house needs to be than to have a wayshrine in it so that the poor location is convenient. I'd like to actually walk through the door of the place.

kargen27

I'm going to disagree. If we had these services in our homes I believe the towns would be much less populated and I like seeing several characters out and about in towns.

I do think the homes need some form of functionality. Would be nice to have a dummy that can hold a set of armor making it so we can switch an entire set of gear with one click. Storage would be nice.

And just for the pure fun of it I would like to have the option for a few events in a home. Instead of just 1v1 dueling allow teams to duel. Maybe have a death match. Everyone ports in, the owner starts the event and last person standing wins.

I wouldn't mind giving players the option to choose to harvest/mine/whatever the items Hirelings bring. Instead of receiving items in the mail they would appear in the location of your choice in the home. Wouldn't take away from the towns populations as you can check mail anywhere anyway and you would still need to log onto the characters for the goodies to appear. One character could gather them just like one character can open the mail. Again make it a choice. It would probably take more time for the items to be gathered in a home but some people might find it fun and a reason to visit their homes.

Woefulmonkey

I get your objection, but I think it is unfounded.

You are assuming that if they provided these service 100% of users would spend 100+ $ of spend months acquiring in game gold so they could purchase a large home and fully stock it.

I think that is a highly optimistic view of what the average player is wiling to do to acquire these facilities.

I think you will find a large majority of players are unwilling to pay 5$ for a mount or a pet let alone 100+$ for a virtual house.

For those of use who are willing to put in that time or pay that kind of money I think these are reasonable service to 'expect'.

Nerouyn

A few things the OP may not know.

Wayshrines are presently kind of redundant. Teleport to your home. Teleport to any unowned home. Exit the gate. You're back where you were before you teleported to your home, which is probably where you want to be. I reported that as an exploit first time I experienced it but it hasn't been fixed and I've seen others talking about. So it's apparently legit. Use and enjoy.

I agree that merchants should have the ability to repair but master crafting writs have a good chance of rewarding repair kits. There seems to be an abundance of these and they can be bought from guild traders at a price which may be cheaper than repairing at a merchant. Consider using those.

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

Ok, that was a bummer but then I though ‘I’ll just travel to a town and repair there’… So I hit the map and selected a town only to be hit with a 750 gold charge to for the trip… WTF.

Ok, well I am not paying 750 gold every day for every character just to fast travel to repair my stuff…

Teleporting directly to your home is free. Teleporting to a wayshrine is also free if you do it from a wayshrine. Opening up your map and teleporting to a wayshrine costs gold.

Don't do it the map way.

Several cheap homes are very close to wayshrines, eg. Mara's Kiss in Vulkhel Guard. Teleport to it. Leave. Use the nearby wayshrine to go wherever you want. No charge. Some homes are also near repair merchants and some of those homes are very cheap, eg. Snugpod in Grahtwood.

KanedaSyndrome

It's tricky with housing.

Doing instanced housing leads to a dilemma. How many services should be possible to do from your home? If you can do all, then who will visit the major cities? The cities will be devoid of life and player activity.
Too few services in your house, and nobody really uses their house.

The only way I ever see this fixed is to do non-instanced housing, which won't happen in ESO.

Woefulmonkey

Hi Nerouyn,

Thanks for the info, I had noticed that you were taken back to your last teleport location from an unowned home, but had not tried moving from a home to an unowned home then leaving. I will give that a shot and see if it helps.

I also know you can get quite a few repair kits from writs but they are not continent for minor repairs to 'all' your armor. I keep them for major repairs or repairs in dungeons.

MilwaukeeScott

I agree with OP

Nerouyn

Woefulmonkey wrote: »

Hi Nerouyn,

Thanks for the info, I had noticed that you were taken back to your last teleport location from an unowned home, but had not tried moving from a home to an unowned home then leaving. I will give that a shot and see if it helps.

I also know you can get quite a few repair kits from writs but they are not continent for minor repairs to 'all' your armor. I keep them for major repairs or repairs in dungeons.

They're a bit less convenient, yes, in terms of needing to apply to each individual armour piece separately, but may also be much cheaper.

I wasn't aware previously but just checked now and not surprisingly there are addons to automate this tedium away.

http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1828-KyomasRepairnRecharge.html

Woefulmonkey

Hi Nerouyn,

Thanks for the repair info. Unfortunately I am on a console version so add ons are not an option.

To be clear.my main point here is that players who are willing to invest 100$+ on a virtual home should not need work arounds or add ons just to have a reason to spend 'in game' time there.

I should want to spend time at my home for more than just admiring my trophies... that kind of vanity enjoyment fades really fast.

Things like this are way cheaper for developers to create and maintain meaning they can be excellent fund raising mechanisms for other 'real' game content.

The developers should want you to 'want' to spend time at home and use it's services... because the more useful it is and the more time you spend there, the more likely you are to spend more money on it over time.

This is good for the community as a whole since it helps fund other more costly projects.

I am not saying you should be able to do everything from your home, but I do think full featured repairs, banking, and travel are necessities.

Even if each of these things were additional separate services, I would pay for them, although I think at least the travel service should be built into homes by default.

Furthermore I think all daily repeatable quests should have services that allow you to start them, but not complete them from your home.

I know those changes 'would' get me to spend money on my home...
However, as they are today I regret the money I have spent and will not spend any more.
Additionally, would tell anyone considering buying one to think twice, since it's only practice purpose is to display view your trophies...
So, they really need to consider how much just that is worth.

LadyAstrum

No, thank you.