There is no real point to it. A lot of us have voiced our concerns about how there's no "real" use to housing, and ZOS has been silent. There's been a number of threads created and some even deleted.

The most "useful" things to do with homes is being able to buy (with real $$ for exorbitant prices) Mundus Stones.

Here's a thread voicing some of the concerns:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/472179/the-housing-community-wont-be-satisfied-until-zos-fixes-housing/p1

ESO does have rested xp and crafting materials, but since they were implemented before housing was ever a thing, they're not tied to owning a house. After level 50, you gain the Enlightenment xp bonus for your cp levels every day, and it happens automatically not just for people in houses. You can also get hirelings that deliver materials to you regularly, and it's also not tied to farming in your house or something, because it also predates the housing system entirely.

There are other unique bonuses to owning a house, however. Storage chests would be the main thing, as you can expand your account's bank by 360 slots in total (which is quite substantial) if you purchase and place all 8 storage chests in your home. I generally keep frequently used items that I trade between my characters in my bank, and put less frequently used items such as old gear sets or spare furniture in the storage chests. It helps a lot.

The other bonus is the ability to place attunable crafting stations, a transmute station, and Mundus Stones. This is generally unnecessary if you're in a large guild, as those often have all set crafting stations and all Mundus Stones so you can access them. But if you're not an ESO+ sub and don't own a DLC but want to have access to DLC sets and a transmutation station, you can attune crafting stations during an ESO+ trial or something, and place them permanently in your home. Same with the transmute station not requiring CWC, and having it conveniently in your home.

Target dummies are also useful, as they give you a way to parse your dps and practice your rotation, and they need a house to place so I'd say that's also a useful feature. Elsweyr will even add a dummy that applies buffs to you so you can experiment that way, so that's a cool aspect of housing too.

I would argue that the ability to display weapons and armour that you mentioned is not as much of a function, but pure decoration since it wouldn't add any benefits. That said, I (and many others in many threads ) would love to have armour stands and weapons that we could place in our homes, along with many other much-requested furniture like instruments.

So overall, housing is mainly for decorative purposes but it does offer unique perks to it's worthwhile to have one (for the storage at least, if you have everything else in your guild house). But yes I also generally agree that housing is badly neglected and we're not getting nearly as many new features, nor have our feedback heard as much as other aspects of the game do, despite the fact that housing brings ZOS the most revenue.

ZOS don't want housing to become Pay-to-Win, so they won't allow them to add anything other than cosmetic benefits to the player. The extra storage in the chests was borderline.

Unfortunately, as others have said, there is little functionality to housing. Which is extremely disappointing to me because I've purchased and decorated homes for specific characters, but there is no reason to log on/off with them in their homes. In fact, it's a detriment, since it adds an extra loading screen or two when I want to do their writs or quest.

I have crafting areas in several of my homes - nicely decorated ones. But I hardly ever use them. I've used them to craft furniture while decorating, but after the house is fully furnished, the only time I've used them is to craft more food or potions if I'm low and happened to notice while I was in my house. I tried to do crafting writs, but 1 or 2 load screens to get to town to pick up the writs, then a load screen back to the house, and then 1 or 2 more load screens to go back to town to turn them in. Way too many load screens. If we had free ports to a wayshrine, that would help reduce the load screens to 1 for houses not in towns with crafting writs.

Storage has been a great addition, but other than the attunable stations and mundus stones, which are usually only in a guild hall, there's not much else to do in your home. Well, if you want to practice on a target dummy, that's useful.

I hope they do add more functionality, but in addition to the ridiculous P2W argument, which is silly considering we get free inn rooms, the other argument is that functional homes will lead to ghost towns, as if no one will go into town to visit guild traders or pick up quests or duel or do crafting writs (which I'd love to be able to do in my home, since they gave us furnishings that would enable us to do so). I've actually had a thought of picking up crafting writs, then porting to my home and completing them, but then waiting until the next day to turn them in and pick up that day's writs. It would save on a few loading screens.

JadeCoin wrote: »

Housing really needs more functionality. It's lack of functionality that makes me unwilling to spend real world money on this. If houses were actually useful places to spend time, I would buy gladly buy Crown-only homes and things like writ boards, in a heartbeat.

Without functionality, though, what I currently do with housing in the game is:

- Farm gold to buy houses in game
- Farm furnishing plans in game
- Farm furnishing mats in game
- Craft furnishings and decorate homes with them

In other words, since there's no real gameplay aspect to housing, the gameplay aspect for me is limited to collecting and decorating through in-game means. This keeps me from spending any money in the Crown Store, since if I bought the furnishings or houses there, there would be no gameplay aspect whatsoever! And what's the point of that, honestly?

Yeah, housing is pretty much a gold/time sink or a Crowns sink. I prefer crafting furniture for my homes and buying items from the luxury vendor or achievement furnishers. That's not to say that I haven't bought some items with Crowns, but it's largely in-game activities that provides furnishings for my homes.

Tigerseye wrote: »

Jayne_Doe wrote: »

JadeCoin wrote: »

Housing really needs more functionality. It's lack of functionality that makes me unwilling to spend real world money on this. If houses were actually useful places to spend time, I would buy gladly buy Crown-only homes and things like writ boards, in a heartbeat.

Without functionality, though, what I currently do with housing in the game is:

- Farm gold to buy houses in game
- Farm furnishing plans in game
- Farm furnishing mats in game
- Craft furnishings and decorate homes with them

In other words, since there's no real gameplay aspect to housing, the gameplay aspect for me is limited to collecting and decorating through in-game means. This keeps me from spending any money in the Crown Store, since if I bought the furnishings or houses there, there would be no gameplay aspect whatsoever! And what's the point of that, honestly?

Yeah, housing is pretty much a gold/time sink or a Crowns sink. I prefer crafting furniture for my homes and buying items from the luxury vendor or achievement furnishers. That's not to say that I haven't bought some items with Crowns, but it's largely in-game activities that provides furnishings for my homes.

I think that is working as intended, though.

If you bought most of the items for your homes via the Crown Store (without converting gold to Crowns first, obviously), you would be spending tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars (or whatever other currency).

Almost no one can afford to do that and even if they could, it would be a total waste of money.

I mainly decorate with things I craft myself, then I might add a few things I get through looting/stealing and a few things I buy with gold from guild traders/the luxury vendor and then, finally, I might add a few things from the Crown Store.

Like items from the occasional furnishing pack, maybe a statue or two (more, in the case of the palace), a fireplace or two, maybe a Reachman Rug you can't get ingame, paintings you can't get ingame in some homes, normally a few plants you can't get ingame and that is pretty much it.

Any more than that and it would be completely cost prohibitive, even if houses had more functionality.

Yes, agreed. And that was my point. While I occasionally do decorate with some CS furnishings, and then only from a few special furnishing packs, it's largely furnished from crafting and in-game vendors.

But housing is still designed as a Crowns sink, as evidenced by the weighted selection of CS-only homes being 10k+ crowns. You can pretty much bypass that sink and stick with the gold/time sink, but it's still there.

ETA: Esp. since, at this time, houses cannot be gifted, so we cannot buy CS-exclusive homes with gold.

JadeCoin wrote: »

Tigerseye wrote: »

Jayne_Doe wrote: »

JadeCoin wrote: »

Housing really needs more functionality. It's lack of functionality that makes me unwilling to spend real world money on this. If houses were actually useful places to spend time, I would buy gladly buy Crown-only homes and things like writ boards, in a heartbeat.

Without functionality, though, what I currently do with housing in the game is:

- Farm gold to buy houses in game
- Farm furnishing plans in game
- Farm furnishing mats in game
- Craft furnishings and decorate homes with them

In other words, since there's no real gameplay aspect to housing, the gameplay aspect for me is limited to collecting and decorating through in-game means. This keeps me from spending any money in the Crown Store, since if I bought the furnishings or houses there, there would be no gameplay aspect whatsoever! And what's the point of that, honestly?

Yeah, housing is pretty much a gold/time sink or a Crowns sink. I prefer crafting furniture for my homes and buying items from the luxury vendor or achievement furnishers. That's not to say that I haven't bought some items with Crowns, but it's largely in-game activities that provides furnishings for my homes.

I think that is working as intended, though.

If you bought most of the items for your homes via the Crown Store (without converting gold to Crowns first, obviously), you would be spending tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars (or whatever other currency).

Almost no one can afford to do that and even if they could, it would be a total waste of money.

I mainly decorate with things I craft myself, then I might add a few things I get through looting/stealing and a few things I buy with gold from guild traders/the luxury vendor and then, finally, I might add a few things from the Crown Store.

Like items from the occasional furnishing pack, maybe a statue or two (more, in the case of the palace), a fireplace or two, maybe a Reachman Rug you can't get ingame, paintings you can't get ingame in some homes, normally a few plants you can't get ingame and that is pretty much it.

Any more than that and it would be completely cost prohibitive, even if houses had more functionality.

Well, the amount I'm currently spending on housing is $0. I'd spend quite a bit more than that for functionality.

I might buy some notable Crown houses, for example, because there would actually be a reason to visit them.

Yep, that’s exactly where I’m at too. I visited the Xanmeer Manor and got really excited by the underwater views. It’s such a beautiful home! But then I remembered there’s still no real reason to visit a house, other than to look at all the static furniture you’ve placed and think “Yep, I put that there!” And that’s not worth the price of three AAA video games...

I love this game though, and with extra functionality I could probably justify a notable home purchase in the future given how much I play. They’re holding an AMA on Reddit soon though, so fingers crossed they’ll answer a question on housing plans

LuxLunae wrote: »

Those 150$ valued houses are not there for you to spend 150$ in one go just on crowns...

Those are for the people who subscribed to the game over time and have collected a lot of crowns in the process.

I have no problem knowing they exist and it will always be out of my range...it's a thank you to the players who invested over the years...

Err, no... that's completely incorrect. It'd take forever to "gather" that many crowns via a sub, over a year... without spending crowns on ANYTHING else.

I have 41 homes, 36 excluding the little apartments, I bought most with crowns... regret it all. Yes, I've spent thousands of real $ on this game. It's impossible to keep track of the thousands of pieces of furniture I've acquired (all built myself or came with furnished homes, I don't buy individual pieces from the store), resulting in me feeling so frustrated trying to organize it all that it's destroyed my will to play normally.. UGH!

I had bought a 6 month subscription, that was enough crowns for just one of these ridiculous homes...

Pinesy wrote: »

I have 41 homes, 36 excluding the little apartments, I bought most with crowns... regret it all. Yes, I've spent thousands of real $ on this game. It's impossible to keep track of the thousands of pieces of furniture I've acquired (all built myself or came with furnished homes, I don't buy individual pieces from the store), resulting in me feeling so frustrated trying to organize it all that it's destroyed my will to play normally.. UGH!

I had bought a 6 month subscription, that was enough crowns for just one of these ridiculous homes...

Without counting, I have at least the same number of homes.....all bought with crowns.

I don't regret it in the slightest, because it was my decision to spend the cash on housing, and I have had enormous fun decorating them. There are still quite a few that I simply haven't got round to yet, waiting to be done

But I am so disappointed by ZOS' attitude to housing and the housing community, and so I completely understand your point of view. I really hope that ZOS have some sort of conscience, and realise how much home owners feel utterly let down by their lack of action, unless it's directly concerned with turning a large profit.

Recently I have had a break from housing, mainly due to the current frustrations. I am very much looking forward to rolling a necro in four days time, and had a lovely couple of hours today on my main crafter, crafting the first few gear sets, and making food, potions and glyphs etc for my new character. Giving us a new class as well as the Elsweyr chapter is a lease of life for ESO.

I do believe that taking a step back and doing something else (and Elsweyr and necros are just coming at the right time) helps to unwind a bit. It's so easy to get oneself twisted up in knots given the current housing situation. This of course doesn't mean that the issues go away. Far from it, and the battle continues. But for the sake of one's own sanity it's a good thing to do something else, and put the thing that is screwing one up on the back-burner for a while..

Soon I shall return to housing with renewed enthusiasm. But @ZOS, make no mistake....your incompetence, disinterest and the appalling way that you treat the housing community is far from forgotten.

Darkstorne wrote: »

Pinesy wrote: »

I have 41 homes, 36 excluding the little apartments, I bought most with crowns... regret it all..

That's a whole new gaming PC. Like, RTX 2080Ti monster. It's probably even a second hand car!

My gaming PC I built 3 years ago is still fine since I only play ESO ~ But yeah, since ESO has been my only entertainment for a couple years, I didn't feel bad spending $$ on it, but with the complete dismissal by the devs i've stopped spending $$ on it.