I read somewhere that big changes were being looked for to change housing, I have a few ideas within

frostyhobo47

So firstly housing is currently really useful for having a nice place to craft your writs and daily quests, it's also a nice place to meet back at after clearing dungeons to dismantle items, sell items, or bank items.

Then we also have the dummies for DPS parsing.

With the addition of generic NPCs and pathing, housing has become much more alive.

So here are my thoughts on ways to make housing more useful, unique, and a way to give certain questline completions unique functional rewards.

So firstly usefulness, the community has been asking for so many little QoL like free fast traveling to wayshrines when leaving your house, and many more examples.

Another commonly requested feature is to get the daily crafting quests accessible from our housing. To my knowledge, the reason this has been shot down is b/c this would basically incentivize many players to never leave their house, but think if these came from special items that you had to purchase with writ vouchers.

For example, all aspects of crafting quests could be boiled down to a separate item purchased from the writ merchant, Buy each of the quest boards, and each turn in box.
This could be another long-term investment that is expensive similar to buying all the crafting stations that has a big reward in the long term.

An example of providing a free fast traveling could be done through a special earned NPC from completing the Mage's Guild questline, who is basically a 'Portal Master' when you talk to them they offer to open a portal to any zone's mage guild ( it could just be one city in each zone), this would also allow for you to have an easier way to get to eeyevea (or however it's spelled) and the earth forge place from he fighter's guild quest. Obviously, each portal location would first require you to have been to those areas before, basically the same rules as wayshrines.

Now onto uniqueness, There should be a couple of features that give incentives to use your house with small benefits, all done through placing certain objects in your house.

First, if you log out in your house and you have a bed then the next time you log in you get a 5-10% 'well-rested' XP boost, basically the idea is that you went to sleep in your house where you would be safe.

Second, once you reach max level on each crafting skill line you gain the ability to purchase a 'resources node' from the respective skill line NPC, where once placed in your house you can harvest that node once a day once per account. Basically, a small little amount of resources after reaching max crafting, wouldn't be enough to incentivize ignore leaving your house so you would still have to go out and farm. This could in fact be a replacement to the mailed resources passive from each tree (Not my primary suggestion with this, but just saying that it would be a little cooler this way).

Third; and this is the largest ask b/c it would be the most impactful from all of these, we could have an NPC that is linked through the game that all players would access to when placed in a house. Basically, this would serve as a non-guild based guild merchant. There would need to be a few requirements about this to allow non-trader guild players to have a reasonable way of selling items without too drastically disrupting the entire guild market that is already established.

• When a player is in a guild that actively has a guild merchant when talking to this NPC would simply bring up the guild store option for all guilds that have a merchant, and those players would be able to list their wares through their guilds
• When a player is not in any guild with a guild trader currently then they would have access to this NPC's special trade market, where players can individually list their items for sale
• When listing items on the special trade market there would be a slightly higher listing fee
• When a player has items listed on the trade market then one of their guilds gains a guild merchant or joins a guild already with a merchant the listed items would be returned to that player via the mail system
• This NPC would need to be earned, or a low cost of crowns, enough to be reasonably traded for in-game for gold

One point about the trader, is that there is almost no way to reasonably sell items to other players in this game even with 3rd party tools

frostyhobo47

oof
One edit:

One point about the trader, is that there is almost no way to reasonably sell items to other players in this game even with 3rd party tools as a player not in a trading guild

Hotdog_23

Let us add Rolis Hlaalu to our homes so we can turn in Master writs in our homes or guild halls. I could careless about doing daily writs in my home. Nice idea but I don't ever see ZOS allowing it but Rolis Hlaalu I can see. Especially now that when I go to a crafting table it tells what needed to craft the writ.

Or they could allow us to have multiple blacksmithing writs open at once for example.

Plus a free port out of our homes would be awesome.

Be safe and have fun

Zypheran

Where did you read of these potential big changes?

idk

frostyhobo47 wrote: »

For example, all aspects of crafting quests could be boiled down to a separate item purchased from the writ merchant, Buy each of the quest boards, and each turn in box.
This could be another long-term investment that is expensive similar to buying all the crafting stations that has a big reward in the long term.

I did not read past this point because it was getting too long. Zos has spoken to this and they said they want us to have reason to go to cities which is why they do not add certain functionality such as this. I agree with them on this.

I am curious as Zypheran is, where did you read of potential changes? I have not heard Zos suggest major changes and we know there are a lot of "rumors" that people start to troll others.

Raideen

Some really good ideas OP.

I made a thread recently about making housing more functional in order to increase the amount of people who use it in game. This would make housing more desirable long with the monetary benefit.

I like the idea of the personal trader which would supplement guild traders.

I would make it so that the listed items are listed indefinitely, meaning they always stay on your personal trader until they are purchased or taken out by the home owner.
I suggested some kind of leaderboard for housing, maybe this would be the user interface in which other players are able to find and enter your home to visit your trader.

The thing that concerns me though is that there is nothing special that would drive people to visit housing traders. What benefit does the player get from visiting a housing trader vs a guild trader. Its easier to visit guild traders and the items available to list are the same. This would make homestead traders kinda useless.

...however. Perhaps through homestead traders we could list our BOUND armor/weapons/jewelry (but not reconstructed armor). This would allow for dungeon/trial armor to be purchased from players. Of course the first rebuttal from naysayers would be "then no one would need to run trials/vets" and to this I 100% disagree. Players are still going to run dungeons for the fun of it, and the cost of "bound" armor would most likely be on the more expensive side of things. Secondly, people WOULD run dungeons to obtain armor to sell. So, the content is still getting consumed.

Generally in MMO's people want to have the best armor and be tough, quite often to actually make the content easier to get through. In fact, I power level my toons usually on Dolmens because I would rather my character be strong when I quest. Its simply how I like to play. I like content consumption, I like the engagement, but I do not crave content that is super hard to get through. Some do, I don't. For folks like me, being able to get trial gear without running a trial would be huge for allowing me to get the "best in slot" gear without doing the content because A. I dont care for guilds and the drama that always ensues in guild chat and B. I dont have the luxury of scheduling my game time, my game time happens more organically.

The other option is to make it so that only dungeon armor can be sold through the trader, not trials, not arenas. This could be done initially to test how the system plays out in game, because theory crafting only gets so far.

So that is just an idea. I am not "selling it", but its just an idea that would allow for homestead traders to sell "unique" gear.

The other way would be if we had a chance to make "perfected" crafted gear. But this would mean all the crafted armor would have to be revisited to give it its "perfected" bonus, and of course balancing would have to be revisited. But, this would put crafters back into the mainstream for having some of the best gear in game which is how the game was originally sold.

Bottom line for me is that I am less concerned about WHAT is put into housing to make it more desirable to the community which leads to greater monetization for ZOS, and I am more interested in simply making housing having a function in game.

I completely disagree with the naysayers (and ZOS) that players would "never leave their homes" if they could craft their writs there, that is just bollocks. What it would do is reduce the time it takes for a daily activity that is not fun, but mundane. Just like leveling up mounts. No reason we cant have a mount trainer in our homes to make it easier to train. It's not going new players from visiting the stable master, but it would allow for veteran players to get through the process faster.

But even if all the other stuff you and I have mentioned is just laughed at, there are two things that are an absolute must and ZOS would be foolish NOT to implement them.
1. Beds offering rested XP (as you and I suggested and I am sure many others have as well).
2. Dining in home would increase food buff duration.

These are the easiest things to implement.
They tie directly into the game we all play now.
They reinforce "using housing" because there are direct buffs attached to the housing.
Because there would be increased player interaction with housing, the chances for crown store sales goes up (players purchasing different homes, furnishings etc).
The development cost investment would pay for itself through increased homestead interaction, this is of course based on the idea that the player base is as healthy as often promoted.

kind_hero

Here is what I would like most to see added to housing:

• wayshrine
• grappling hook/void portal mechanic and portals for large houses. you could build up
• multi-attuned crafting stations to save space
• many building blocks or prefabs for each race style
• visit other people's public houses without addons
• guild masters to be able to set a house as a guild castle
• option to set the music in the house (from the game soundtrack/region)
• slots upgrade (buy more slots for a specific house)
• ability to hide grass/plants

maximusrex45

Hotdog_23 wrote: »

Let us add Rolis Hlaalu to our homes so we can turn in Master writs in our homes or guild halls. I could careless about doing daily writs in my home. Nice idea but I don't ever see ZOS allowing it but Rolis Hlaalu I can see. Especially now that when I go to a crafting table it tells what needed to craft the writ.

I would be happy if he existed at every daily writ turn in location.

Synthwavius

What about minigames? Imagine inviting friends to your house to play some card game or whatever. Currently as it is housing for me is really antisocial content.

hafgood

No, this game does not have an auction house, I came from runescape where there was one and found it difficult at first to get my head round the guild trader situation. Now I'm used to it i find it OK.

This trader you are asking for is an auction house by the back door, its not going to happen and neither should it.

People need to learn that not all games have to have the same features, its the differences that sets them apart. If all games played and the features of runescape then they would be runescape and so what would be the point of playing anything else?

The health buff for staying in your house would be abused no end. Doing a trial the next day? Park in the house to get the buff, and I'm sure that's not what you wanted it to be.

And the resource nodes in the house? Again no, thats what the hirelings are for.

And to the suggestion of being able to sell dungeon or trial gear? That's a big big no, the whole point is you have to run the content to get it, always has been, I don't want players being able to short cut to the gear I've run the content for simply because I can sell it to them.

katanagirl1

I agree to everything said in the post above, except the well-rested housing buff. It has a precedent in Skyrim.

Why would it be bad to use it before a trial? You could use it every day if you like. I don’t know if I would travel to my house that often to use it, though.