Content Design Pass On Housing

Amunari

Hello, I am writing a post here today on a rework on what housing should look like in ESO, after a overhaul (design pass) of the system.

Sizes
Land plots will now be broken into 3 sizes. Small Land Plot, Medium Land Plot, Large Land Plot. Each size will be broken into their own bracket cost, and each size will have a preset amount of
room that will be consistent across all of that category size. This means in some small land plots you will have 20x20sq area to work with but all plots of a small size will all be 20x20. Terrain, Water, and so forth may differ slightly, but always in the end the buildable space will be 20x20 (or what ever size is elected for each category size).

Land
First houses will no longer be pre-constructed buildings (models), now they will consist of land-plots, with various sizes. All tree's, shrubs, bushes, and so forth will be removed and nothing will
remain on the plot of land out side of the terrain, water, and natural barriers (mountains, border walls etc).

Construction
A new tool will be build in game which will work similar to the add-on "essential guild tools" Enabling the rotation of objects on x,y,z axis as well as raising or lowering it (aka pushing or pulling).
In additional this a set of "sections" will be set to select things from these. Players will construct houses using "models" and then will be able to select a target model and then select acceptable textures that fit that model. The art team can set it up so that "walls" may have the same "models (ie molding on the walls, etc) and enable various types of textures (graphics) to fit on that wall model. This will enable players to literally build any house with their desired shape, various types of walls to go with that, and then various types of textures to apply to t hat. So i could use the same "model" design for a wall but different textures like this.



It should be noted that walls will have to have 1 model per a style for the east-west direction, and connector points for the corners. In theory if done right this will require 2, or 4 pieces to a houses walls. This depends on if you wish to work into the system non-square related walls, for example corner pieces which will then require up to 4 pieces for a circle structure.

Floors, and roof styles can be applied from there.

From here Players will buid these houses with walls, and floors with objects we will label "simi-permanent" materials. Meaning they will last until deleted / restored. Some work can be done later to help influence shading for these objects to help graphical looks later.

Doodads
these are things like chairs, tables, plants, tree's etc and will be placed and moved/edited accordingly to how they are now.

Lighting
This one is a little tricky as i do not understand how the current engine handles its lightning. In most cases a "light" is dropped that applies an ambient lightsource to the scene (the map you loaded). This single light source should remain constant and we should be able to cycle night and day in the scene, but we can also enable additional lights to help influence the land plot.

Weather
Depending on the engine it may also be able to apply some "weather" effects to the land plot, like snow on the ground (by texture swapping) and falling (animations), which can be added as a new sub-section on the store and sold accordingly for crowns only.

Marketing
Houses will be priced accordingly to each plot of land. 2,500 Crowns, or 500,000 gold, 5,000 crowns, or 1 million gold, and 10,000 crowns, or 2 million gold. In addition to this the crown store will now be expanded to have other sub-categories for "Housing". These will be "animations", "walls", "textures", "doodads", "lighting", "special effects", and "furniture".

Each sub section will now include various things in it which will be sold specifically by crowns in the store, and all current objects in games (lighting, furniture, etc) will be converted into a crown value in the store (in most cases these will be bundled with current and new assets).


Additionally, once this tool is build with another patch we can introduce the same system building for guilds and a guild hall further expanding the store and ultimately the income for the game (which leads to more goodies for us players).

Xologamer

Amunari wrote: »

Hello, I am writing a post here today on a rework on what housing should look like in ESO, after a overhaul (design pass) of the system.

Sizes
Land plots will now be broken into 3 sizes. Small Land Plot, Medium Land Plot, Large Land Plot. Each size will be broken into their own bracket cost, and each size will have a preset amount of
room that will be consistent across all of that category size. This means in some small land plots you will have 20x20sq area to work with but all plots of a small size will all be 20x20. Terrain, Water, and so forth may differ slightly, but always in the end the buildable space will be 20x20 (or what ever size is elected for each category size).

Land
First houses will no longer be pre-constructed buildings (models), now they will consist of land-plots, with various sizes. All tree's, shrubs, bushes, and so forth will be removed and nothing will
remain on the plot of land out side of the terrain, water, and natural barriers (mountains, border walls etc).

Construction
A new tool will be build in game which will work similar to the add-on "essential guild tools" Enabling the rotation of objects on x,y,z axis as well as raising or lowering it (aka pushing or pulling).
In additional this a set of "sections" will be set to select things from these. Players will construct houses using "models" and then will be able to select a target model and then select acceptable textures that fit that model. The art team can set it up so that "walls" may have the same "models (ie molding on the walls, etc) and enable various types of textures (graphics) to fit on that wall model. This will enable players to literally build any house with their desired shape, various types of walls to go with that, and then various types of textures to apply to t hat. So i could use the same "model" design for a wall but different textures like this.



It should be noted that walls will have to have 1 model per a style for the east-west direction, and connector points for the corners. In theory if done right this will require 2, or 4 pieces to a houses walls. This depends on if you wish to work into the system non-square related walls, for example corner pieces which will then require up to 4 pieces for a circle structure.

Floors, and roof styles can be applied from there.

From here Players will buid these houses with walls, and floors with objects we will label "simi-permanent" materials. Meaning they will last until deleted / restored. Some work can be done later to help influence shading for these objects to help graphical looks later.

Doodads
these are things like chairs, tables, plants, tree's etc and will be placed and moved/edited accordingly to how they are now.

Lighting
This one is a little tricky as i do not understand how the current engine handles its lightning. In most cases a "light" is dropped that applies an ambient lightsource to the scene (the map you loaded). This single light source should remain constant and we should be able to cycle night and day in the scene, but we can also enable additional lights to help influence the land plot.

Weather
Depending on the engine it may also be able to apply some "weather" effects to the land plot, like snow on the ground (by texture swapping) and falling (animations), which can be added as a new sub-section on the store and sold accordingly for crowns only.

Marketing
Houses will be priced accordingly to each plot of land. 2,500 Crowns, or 500,000 gold, 5,000 crowns, or 1 million gold, and 10,000 crowns, or 2 million gold. In addition to this the crown store will now be expanded to have other sub-categories for "Housing". These will be "animations", "walls", "textures", "doodads", "lighting", "special effects", and "furniture".

Each sub section will now include various things in it which will be sold specifically by crowns in the store, and all current objects in games (lighting, furniture, etc) will be converted into a crown value in the store (in most cases these will be bundled with current and new assets).


Additionally, once this tool is build with another patch we can introduce the same system building for guilds and a guild hall further expanding the store and ultimately the income for the game (which leads to more goodies for us players).

no bad idea but this is never going to be implementat

Amunari

The return for this is very high and the work load should not be to significant from a code perspective this could be done very quickly. It requires a lot of art-related development (model, animations and textures to be made) but out side of that it it should be fairly easy.

The dev team would be insane not to do something like this and it would be a very easy sell to the marketing team considering everyone calls this "housing simulator online".

MajThorax

Check sims and paralives for tile housing. Eso devs won't start measuring space. They will keep putting buildings, water, land and trees randomly together, slap a price tag and release them. They could increase the furnishing limit but they won't.

Amunari

They were smart you'd set natural limits like 100/100/100 and then break things into sections like plants/furniture/stuff
and sell "upgrades" for it.

VaranisArano

Amunari wrote: »

The return for this is very high and the work load should not be to significant from a code perspective this could be done very quickly. It requires a lot of art-related development (model, animations and textures to be made) but out side of that it it should be fairly easy.

The dev team would be insane not to do something like this and it would be a very easy sell to the marketing team considering everyone calls this "housing simulator online".

So basically:
"The coding side of this is easy, so it doesn't matter how much effort its going to take our art team to create all the assets for this new housing system. I'm sure they'll be able to fit it in while also creating all the assets for 4 dungeons, a Chapter, and a zone DLC. In no way will adding a huge housing workload to their already packed quarterly release requirements cause any problems. We certainly won't have any problems with hiring and training any new artists needed either. The Dev team would be insane not to do this!"

As a vision of what Housing could have been when it was introduced, this ain't a bad idea.
Several years in, on a practical level it ain't happening. You forgot about the Accounting Department.

What so many people throwing out their suggestions don't understand is that just because a company can do something better or that they'll even make a little more profit from it doesn't mean that company is going to make the improvement. The argument of "you've got to spend money to make money" very rarely applies to revamping already existing systems that are profitable, and ESO's Housing system is profitable. ZOS can afford to sit back and take the approach of least effort/most profit.

ZOS has a pretty sweet set-up going with Housing right now. The Art Team works on the Chapter/DLC assets - you know, the content of ESO that actually draws in new players - and a couple new homes. Then ZOS sells off some of those assets as furnishings, essentially double-dipping on stuff the art team had to make anyway. It doesn't thrill players who want even more out of housing, but it sells, and by all measures we can see as players, it's certainly profitable enough for ZOS to stick with it for several years now. They don't have to spend extra money to make money, try to compete with other more Housing-centric games, or to chase after every last crown from Housing centric players by revamping the system when they make sufficient profit now.

A more practical version of your idea that requires very little investment goes like this: assuming ZOS thinks there's enough interest in "build your own" style housing, we'll see an expansion of what they've already been doing - releasing the building blocks from the art team's work for chapter/DLC content and maybe more open plot homes like the Coldharbor plot.

That's the path of least effort/most profit, and that makes the Accounting Department very happy.

Jaraal

Amunari wrote: »

They were smart you'd set natural limits like 100/100/100 and then break things into sections like plants/furniture/stuff
and sell "upgrades" for it.

I'm honestly surprised they aren't already selling additional furnishing space (aside from the doubled cap for ESO+) in the crown store. While that would be perceived as greedy by some, there's no question hardcore housing enthusiasts would pay for that immediately.

Amunari

You dont understand how big this rework could be. The art asset creation is not hard, and it can be spaced over time all they need is initial set up of a few options lets say 4 different models for lets say 4 pieces (resulting in 16 combinations).

These blank models to an experienced developer are 30-60 minute projects. The textures themselves are fairly easy and done in a similar amount of time.Content developers can create the land plots in about 1 hour each. Assuming they start with 30 different plats, that means they will require 30 hours of work, or a week or two.

The total production time of this on the content-development side is maybe 2-3 weeks. The code can be done during that period easily, resulting in a month ish development cycle on a massive rework of the biggest hit in the game, resulting in IMMENSE Expansions to creativity, and income through monetization.

This is a power argument to do it. Hell, give me access and i'll develop the rework myself!

VaranisArano

Amunari wrote: »

This is a power argument to do it. Hell, give me access and i'll develop the rework myself!

Then I would strongly suggest that you provide a portfolio to ZOS or go ahead and get started on asset creation if this is in fact something you want to do. As we've seen, creating excellent addons that add to the game experience is one route to getting hired by ZOS as an official member of the team, including for Housing. They'll surely be much more inclined to give access to someone who's proven they can do the work.

If this is an empty promise, then just keep throwing out ideas while proclaiming how easy it'll be.

Tigerseye

Can't say I wouldn't like it, if it was more like The Sims, because I would.

It would definitely make me build far more, if I could just throw up walls (of any size) and place windows, stairs (of any length), roofs and so on, as you can there.

Although, only if your build cost no slots, as it does if you buy a pre-built house.

Otherwise, we're back to the same old furnishing slot issues.

Obviously, all existing houses would have to be left as-is, though.

Unless people chose to demolish them and start again, on the empty plot.

Existing inn rooms and apartments would, again obviously, have to be left unaffected, too.

Amunari

VaranisArano wrote: »

Amunari wrote: »

This is a power argument to do it. Hell, give me access and i'll develop the rework myself!

Then I would strongly suggest that you provide a portfolio to ZOS or go ahead and get started on asset creation if this is in fact something you want to do. As we've seen, creating excellent addons that add to the game experience is one route to getting hired by ZOS as an official member of the team, including for Housing. They'll surely be much more inclined to give access to someone who's proven they can do the work.

If this is an empty promise, then just keep throwing out ideas while proclaiming how easy it'll be.

Unless there is some sort of way to locally add the models, this is really just not an option via a mod. There are plots that can be used to build the house on, but the actual models being added to the game is questionable (i'd have to start poking around). The more important issue is beyond this however, to general more income for the company, and that cannot be solved by a mod.

As for getting a job at ZoS, no thanks.

Zypheran

I'm not sure this would be a good idea for housing as a whole.
This would obviously be a great system for those that like to create their own homes from scratch but it would seem most people just like the current model where they buy a pre-made house and just decorate it.
The point of the system to me has always been balance. Trying to maintain the right balance to give a satisfactory system that allows blank slate creation to those that want it and also satisfaction for those who just want a trophy house to show off their shinny rarites. As much as I personally would like your idea, I think it pushes that balance too much in the direction of from-scratch creation.
In truth, and you have to keep in mind that this is not nor never shall be SIMs, ZOS have actually done a really good job at delivering a system that strikes a balance between simplicity and creativity. We can argue that we need higher item limits and more construction pieces but ultimately, right now, for a game that is not a housing simulator, you can still construct an entire building from scratch and decorate it. I fear that to move in the direction you suggested would make housing appeal only to a much narrower demographic of the game population and thus have even less resources made available to it.
But for what it's worth, I personally think your idea would be amazing