Housing - Where is the immersion and RPG ??

StackonClown

Hi,

I logged on to the PTS, bought a large house and promptly started to build an outdoor feast / dining area with tables, chairs, cooking fires etc
Then I placed some lamps, torches etc to add atmosphere and had a fairly nice looking festive area.

But then --- now what ??

Apart from the chairs which you can sit on, but often point the wrong way, so the '/sitchair' is a free chair anyway!!

Lets see:

How about:

- being able to actually eat or drink at a table while seated
- choose items from your known recipes and eat them as well - and also maybe getting a small token buff by eating food at your own home.. say 1% boost for 30 minutes??
- not just place NPCs statically, but allow them to move around and mingle, and talk thereby adding immersion
- have beds that are actually useable
- the list can go on and on

Yes, I've seen people make upside down horses and spiral chair stairways and trapdoor tiles and transformer characters but is that the point here?

Are we setting up housing as a minecraft / legoland 'amuse your friends with wierd designs simulator' ??

I thought ESO was about Lore and immersion and some small amount of role play as well.

I dont really need to have 50 crafting tables in the house... Yes the DPS dummy is great but is that the only tangible beneift here??

Which all leads me to the question - what exactly does ZOS want us to do with houses? Set up the house, and not really interact with it but 'just stand there' ??

- Stax

StackonClown

... to add to the above the big key for me is INTERACTION.

Yes, I know people will say this is not 'Simlife' but again, as we just playing house decorator then?

If so, then no thanks - I can easily go to an in-game house and admire the decorating by the ZOS devs!

Mojmir

You create immersion, invite people in maybe?

Banana

I remember alot of people whinging back in the day. We need housing.
I wasnt one of them.

austinwalter87ub17_ESO

Housing is pointless without Guild Housing, Storage, Auctioneering, and an emphasis on Crafting. The only thing ZOS did right was allow people to put crafting stations in their house. Beyond that, i fail to see little reason to have it. I will probably get a medium or large size house at the most. No point beyond that.

wiz12268b14_ESO

austinwalter87ub17_ESO wrote: »

Housing is pointless without Guild Housing, Storage, Auctioneering, and an emphasis on Crafting. The only thing ZOS did right was allow people to put crafting stations in their house. Beyond that, i fail to see little reason to have it. I will probably get a medium or large size house at the most. No point beyond that.

Pretty much. I was excited to see what they were going to do with it. It took me about 15 minutes and some reading to see that they didnt do much.


Of course they could add stuff later on (and more than likely put it behind the Sub wall or worse a crown wall) but this is pretty much the worst housing system I have seen in a game besides Lotros and it only beats Lotro out because Lotro has hooks.

An update like this is supposed to be one that both brings old players back and gets totally new players to jump in. I dont see this doing either. It will work for the hardcore lovers of ESO who dont care what ZoS does and will love it. But beyond those I suspect most players will be tepid towards it at best.

Like I said within a couple hours of the PTS release, a house basically gives you a free teleport, and even then you have to own the map its on to go out into the world and not back to where you entered it.

Extremely disappointing especially considering the years they have had to work on it and the dozens of examples other games have given on what to do and not do with housing.

redspecter23

This housing update has a ton of potential, but is definitely lacking immersion. Other than 3 npcs and some animals, the house will be lifeless. Very few items can be interacted with, making it all feel like an empty shell. I compare it to the outlaw refuges. I see bags and desks and cabinets but I can't interact with any of them. I get why it's like this, but it comes at a cost. You lose something intangible. No, I probably wouldn't be looting all those containers in the outlaw refuges, but I'd like to know that I can if I want. Same with my house. Would there be any harm in allowing the containers in your house to function the same way they do in Inns, and NPC houses? Have them respawn their food stuffs or 0 cost white quality weapons once a day so I can interact with them.

HuawaSepp

I think it's a at least something but if you look at games like "The Sims" or just the real life, there is so much more potential.

Glurin

Hey, it's a good start. A nice foundation that they can build on later. Gotta start somewhere, right?

Think about settlements in Fallout 4. At first, you could build walls and shacks, decorate houses and have settlers man little shops, but that was about it. Now you can build and place all kinds of functional stuff that does more than just look pretty (rusty). You can even build your own robot town now if you want to.

Danikat

HuawaSepp wrote: »

I think it's a at least something but if you look at games like "The Sims" or just the real life, there is so much more potential.

To be fair a game like The Sims needs to have an extremely well developed housing system because that is the game. If making houses wasn't any fun there wouldn't be a lot left to do, and for it to be fun there needs to be a lot of options. Whereas in ESO it's just one small part of the game, not even the main focus.

Having said that this is the problem I'm having with housing. I didn't understand why so many people kept asking for it, or got so excited when it was announced because once you've bought your house and decorated it I can't see what you're going to do with it, unless you're a serious role-player. And so far I've not found an answer to that.

I will buy a house and decorate it because I don't have that many other things to do with my gold (basically bank and bag upgrades and riding skills) and because doing it on the PTS was enjoyable and I think I'll actually enjoy it more when I'm carefully selecting and buying decorations one at a time because it will make each one more significant. But I can't see myself visiting often except to place new decorations.

Which means I'm not likely to worry about getting more houses, certainly not the biggest ones.