Housing ideas to help boost player interaction.

Raideen

Sadly the housing section of the forum does not see as much traffic or use as some of the other forum sections. I obviously do not have any way to collect data to determine how many people use housing on a daily basis, but I have to wonder if the lack of traffic in the housing section is a direct reflection of housing not being used much in game. I thought I would post some brain storm ideas on how to potentially get the average ESO player to find more use for housing.

HOUSING LEADERBOARD
An "OPT IN" function of housing that allows the home owner to invite (through a leaderboard) random players to visit and interact with furniture (perhaps with settings toggle to keep them from using lights). There could be a rating system implemented where the "coolest" houses are shown on a leaderboard, this might need to be a hidden calculation based on the number of interactions per player visit to keep trolls from abusing it vs a voting system.


FUNCTIONAL FURNITURE:
1. Dining Tables - Create Table/Chair furniture that increases the duration of food/drinks by 1 or 2 hours. I envision the chairs being attached to the table (not physically, but placed as a "set") so that it is required that the player sit. Upon using your food/drink while sitting, you extend your buff duration. Possibly only make them placeable in Apartment homes and up (to ensure players gold sink into a larger home and/or drive crown sales).
2. Beds - Create beds (singles and doubles) that work differently than beds in game. These are interactive with 1 sleep position for single beds, 2 sleep positions for double beds. Create an "enter bed and sleep animation". The character would say in the bed until the player chooses to move them. The beds would give a 5% XP buff for 2 hours. Useable in all homes (to help new players with their free inn. Helps drive the concept that at an early stage that housing is much more than just for looks).
3. Wardrobes (armoires) - Simple and obvious concept, armor storage but only for armor (not weapons). Head, shoulder, pants, chest, gloves, belt, boots. Smaller "single" wardrobes would hold 1 set of armor, so 7 slots. "Double" wardrobes would hold 2 armor sets, so 14 slots.
4. Weapon Racks - Same concept as wardrobes but holds weapons instead. 1 rack could hold 6 weapons. It would be nice to see our actual weapons being displayed, but that would seemingly take a lot more development time than a static visual rack with a UI.
5. Jewelry Box - Holds 3 jewelry items.
6. More stove/oven/cooktop variations for the provisioning crafting station.
7. Desks with writing instruments and paper. Basically a guest book where people can write a little greeting, or leave notes to the house owner. Kinda like mail, but more personal. The player would sit at the desk/chair combo with a UI popup to write a letter/sign the book.
NOTE....on the Wardrobe, Weapon Rack and Jewelry box. Upon interacting with a piece, it would replace your currently equipped item and that item would then be put into the storage.


SIGNIFICANT OTHER PERMISSIONS
The ability to "link" your account with people to allow them 100% access to furnishing your home, including picking up and placing furniture. This of course would have to be a strict OPT IN setting with a legal disclaimer and TOS ensuring Zenimax Media can not be held responsible for disgruntled players in a relationship gone bad who steal all the furniture (incase it was ever to happen).
I play the game 99% of the time with my Lady. Each one of our created characters has a "spouse", and we take turns on making homes for them. The issue is that the homes I own do not feel like homes for her, and her homes do not feel like homes for me and its in part because its difficult to determine beforehand what furnishing items are going to go in any given area (decorating is often very organic), which makes it hard for us to decorate. It would be much simpler if they had full permission to purchase crown furniture and place it, craft furniture and place it and pick up furniture.

If you are fearful of the "relationship gone bad" issue, the system could be created that when they pick up furniture it does not go into their inventory, but a "house" inventory. This would ensure that they can not take/steal the home owners furniture. They could mess it all up, but that is a lot less of an issue than furniture being gone.


Anyway, just brainstorming some ideas. Time to eat.

reaveii

I don't have much else to say apart from I really like all these ideas! Yeah, housing is a rather neglected feature and I feel like these ideas would really help make housing more than just a cosmetic thing. Would love to see it get done.

katanagirl1

Good suggestions, especially a housing leaderboard idea. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable inviting random players, though. There are still housing permission bugs not yet addressed. Console players still have no way to save our house setting as a backup.

Even if we had a way to have links to other houses that we could visit as an Open House sort of thing would be great. Just other players who wanted to show off their houses.

I know there are a lot of players here who are solely into housing, but I wonder if this section of the forum is not busy for the same reason I don’t get to do as much housing decoration as I’d like: I spend so much time doing other things, like daily quests and farming for housing plans.

idk

If I understand the first idea correctly it is a leaderboard for housing based on how people vote. If that is the case it is easily manipulated which means it can be controlled. I have seen similar in PvP where players help players from other guilds get Emporer, even across factions. Then in turn those guilds help out those who helped them.

As for functional furniture beyond chairs, the most obvious lacking area is beds, which OP mentions. Beds should have been functional from day one.

As for wardrobes and weapon racks, I can see them as decorations but the only way they will be functional is if Zos wants to add more detached storage like the chests. Same with jewelry boxes. The rest of the functional furniture would be at the bottom of the list of every QoL suggestion.

The access idea, Zos cannot give us the ability to grant 100% access to furnishing homes. The reason is they cannot put away furniture as they do not have access to our character's inventory which would be a requirement for that.

What we really need is a UI with all the homes we have been granted access to that also lists the level of access we have been granted. I am surprised that was not suggested here as it is probably one of the top QoL items that would boost interaction with housing.

Raideen

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Good suggestions, especially a housing leaderboard idea. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable inviting random players, though. There are still housing permission bugs not yet addressed. Console players still have no way to save our house setting as a backup.

That is why I prefaced this as an "OPT IN" function, meaning if one chooses not to partake, then their house works as it does now.
I do think housing needs the same function as an "outfit", the ability to save snapshots of the current build. This way we can save/upload the house. But this would have to come with a housing furniture bag.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Even if we had a way to have links to other houses that we could visit as an Open House sort of thing would be great. Just other players who wanted to show off their houses.

But the system needs to do more than be superficial. I have spent the past 6 years or so much in building games and if I had to list the single most common denominator for MOST (not all) of the creative building community is that they want everyone to come see their work and praise their work, but care little to visit others with a constructive critique. I have seen this attitude in Landmark, Dual Universe, Space Engineers, Empyrion, Portal Knights to list a few. Because of this housing first and foremost needs to have function. This is the only way to get all players to invest in it.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I know there are a lot of players here who are solely into housing, but I wonder if this section of the forum is not busy for the same reason I don’t get to do as much housing decoration as I’d like: I spend so much time doing other things, like daily quests and farming for housing plans.

I considered the same, but I really think it has more to do with housing sadly being niche in ESO.

Raideen

idk wrote: »

If I understand the first idea correctly it is a leaderboard for housing based on how people vote. If that is the case it is easily manipulated which means it can be controlled. I have seen similar in PvP where players help players from other guilds get Emporer, even across factions. Then in turn those guilds help out those who helped them.

This is why I prefaced "...this might need to be a hidden calculation based on the number of interactions per player visit to keep trolls from abusing it vs a voting system."

idk wrote: »

As for functional furniture beyond chairs, the most obvious lacking area is beds, which OP mentions. Beds should have been functional from day one.

In order to entice the entire player base into housing, housing must have a functional aspect in game. This is why I suggest a food buff and an XP increase. Both of those would be easy to implement, and neither would have a negative net effect on the game.

idk wrote: »

As for wardrobes and weapon racks, I can see them as decorations but the only way they will be functional is if Zos wants to add more detached storage like the chests. Same with jewelry boxes. The rest of the functional furniture would be at the bottom of the list of every QoL suggestion.

It's not a QOL suggestion, its about making housing have a function. These are early morning, just woke up, have not had coffee brainstorming ideas. Obviously they are not fleshed out, the goal is to remove the cobwebs from other brains and start to consider how housing can be better utilized in game because it gives ZOS more items to create for the crown store (one of the complaints is everything is a rehash of something else), it would give a bonus function to new and veteran players. This in turn helps with monetization of the game.

idk wrote: »

The access idea, Zos cannot give us the ability to grant 100% access to furnishing homes. The reason is they cannot put away furniture as they do not have access to our character's inventory which would be a requirement for that.

And you know this how? Other games do it, if other games do it then what is keeping ZOS from doing it? Willpower?
This is simple, as I stated, housing would need its own "bag". Instead of having the players pick items into their inventory, it would go into the houses inventory. If a crown item was purchased by the non-home owner and placed and the home owner removed the other player from permissions, the crown item would be sent to the owing player through the mail.
The bottom line is that housing as a function feels very solo and not very MMO. Decorating in real life has much greater structure in its approach, housing in ESO is more organic because players are limited to what is craftable or purchasable. This means that people with decorating permissions are reliant on the home owner to put furniture down. It simply does not work well.

idk wrote: »

What we really need is a UI with all the homes we have been granted access to that also lists the level of access we have been granted. I am surprised that was not suggested here as it is probably one of the top QoL items that would boost interaction with housing.

Because its already been suggested before, may times by other players. I would be surprised if this is something ZOS is not already heavily aware of.

Raideen

reaveii wrote: »

I don't have much else to say apart from I really like all these ideas! Yeah, housing is a rather neglected feature and I feel like these ideas would really help make housing more than just a cosmetic thing. Would love to see it get done.

Thank you. I agree that housing could have much more functionality making it appeal to a greater portion of the player base, which would only mean $$$ for ZOS, and a stronger housing community.

If you think of anything to add, please share.

Araneae6537

I would love to be able to have more of my homes open for viewing than only my primary through the base game. Housing in ESO is far superior than in SWTOR in most respects but they did have an open house database (similar to what EHT provides ESO) and I think that would be a great addition.

As for the permission issue, could not decorator be removed from even being an option for default permissions? I cannot imagine who would want that! Most people I imagine would want to give that permission only to specific people or at most a guild.

I would REALLY love the ability in ESO to create text for books and notes — surely that would not be server intensive — and even NPC dialogue trees (of course these would have to be unvoiced) to be able to tell stories with our houses. Being able to path “dummies” and give an option for them to attack players within certain areas would add another dimension of interactivity to housing as well!

volkeswagon

I love the idea of a guest book

katanagirl1

Raideen wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Good suggestions, especially a housing leaderboard idea. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable inviting random players, though. There are still housing permission bugs not yet addressed. Console players still have no way to save our house setting as a backup.

That is why I prefaced this as an "OPT IN" function, meaning if one chooses not to partake, then their house works as it does now.
I do think housing needs the same function as an "outfit", the ability to save snapshots of the current build. This way we can save/upload the house. But this would have to come with a housing furniture bag.

Furnishing bag? I’ve been able to share created levels in another PS4 game directly to USB. I don’t see why that would not be an option.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Even if we had a way to have links to other houses that we could visit as an Open House sort of thing would be great. Just other players who wanted to show off their houses.

But the system needs to do more than be superficial. I have spent the past 6 years or so much in building games and if I had to list the single most common denominator for MOST (not all) of the creative building community is that they want everyone to come see their work and praise their work, but care little to visit others with a constructive critique. I have seen this attitude in Landmark, Dual Universe, Space Engineers, Empyrion, Portal Knights to list a few. Because of this housing first and foremost needs to have function. This is the only way to get all players to invest in it.

Permissions bugs aside, I am more willing to visit other people’s houses to see what they have created and hopefully get some ideas. My houses are nothing special at this point yet.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I know there are a lot of players here who are solely into housing, but I wonder if this section of the forum is not busy for the same reason I don’t get to do as much housing decoration as I’d like: I spend so much time doing other things, like daily quests and farming for housing plans.

I considered the same, but I really think it has more to do with housing sadly being niche in ESO.

Really, right now I spend 30 minutes doing crafting writs, one hour farming treasure chests, about an hour doing the four Markarth dailies, two hours PvP, and one hour farming furnishing plans each day. If I have some time at the end of the day and have ideas I work on housing.

EDIT:
Sorry this is such a mess. The quotes are set up around the whole post so I can’t insert mine in the right place and make it look right.