Housing should work like Guild Traders.

phuein · September 2019

Instead of boring lonely instances for housing, we should have houses over-land that every week or month players bid on and compete over! (You can keep the instanced housing separately, too.)

Benefits:

Make Housing a part of the MMO aspect. Everybody has access to the houses; the owners reap the benefits and publicity.
Gamify housing. Make it more interesting, more interactive, and more involved.
Profit from housing. Not just quick access to stations and dummies, but also gain from the public using them: Fees.
Accessible or beautiful locations can become hubs for social gatherings outside of the few active guild users at any given time. Dozens of players. (A house ban-list would be easy to implement against trolls.)

Yesterday, at the 2nd week peak of the multi-bidding system, I saw [again] just how much impact an interactive competitive system has on the players. It's amazing! And this is what games are about. Anything that's static is not a game. I wholly support Zenimax in continuing to make curious changes to the game.

EDIT: Definitely makes sense to keep the results of furnishing the public house, one way or another. No need to lose that investment.

Grimm13 · September 2019

So like Traders only a small population of each server could participate in them? No thanks.

Xerikten · September 2019

bad ideas should never be copied.

jlboozer · September 2019

Nah...I'm good bro

reoskit · September 2019

No, thank you very much.

"Curious change" is certainly one way to describe multibidding...

Please, keep it away from housing.

Eirinin · September 2019

This sounds horrible.

Kagukan · September 2019

Guild trader system is the worst design in the history of MMO's. Why would anyone want to duplicate such a failure?

Donny_Vito · September 2019

Another game I used to play a long time ago, Asherons Call, had a similar system. They had different tiers of housing: mansions, villas, cottages, and then apartments. There was only a set number of houses available (higher tiers had less but there were lots of apartments available), but each tier cost more to buy and the monthly maintenance was also higher. Obviously that game was not as popular as ESO, so I don't think that type of system would work here. And that map was a lot bigger so they could put houses all over. Too many people here and the zones are just too small to fit the number of houses required for players.

Gariele · September 2019

Why would this be a thing. My Guild Hall already has all these things. Many big guilds have built houses to give everything to their guildies. Maybe join one of those guilds or build your own. It’s just gold

DragonRacer · September 2019

God, no.

Darkenarlol · September 2019

no pesky pathetic mortals in my houses, ty

P.S. 1st prize for worst idea of the year btw

idk · September 2019

phuein wrote: »

Instead of boring lonely instances for housing, we should have houses over-land that every week or month players bid on and compete over! (You can keep the instanced housing separately, too.)

Then we would not be bothering to decorate a home. to make it ours, if it is just this short term rental you speak of.

People who really wanted housing wanted a sense of it being theirs and decorating it to their taste. Every one of your points ignores that including the false point that your idea makes housing a part of the MMO aspect since it already does.

redspecter23 · September 2019

I'm going to go with a big no on this one as well. I do housing very casually. I like my nice small house with a few crafting stations close to a bank. I have no intention of paying weekly against other players to maybe have access to it. This suggestion would shut off housing for a huge percentage of the population. How can ZOS sell houses to players if they can't even reliably use them?

Now if you're suggesting a few specific ultra fancy new houses (that have no in game or crown cost) that operate in this way while the rest of the housing system stays as is, I'd still disagree with it but I could at least see some potential in the idea.

DrScott59 · September 2019

Oh Arkay No. Nothing should work like the Guild Trader system. And that includes the Guild Trader system.

Starlock · September 2019

...

It's bad enough that housing was obviously contrived as a way to suck people's wallets. This would make that terrible design premise even more terrible.

solasub · September 2019

NO!

Araneae6537 · September 2019

Wow, who would pay anything for that??? I certainly wouldn’t participate in player housing rental properties if it was designed that way. I enjoy making the place my own, working on achievements and crafting and collecting to get the furnishings I want for my homes and builds. I would not put in that kind of work if it would just be lost in a week / month, if I could even afford to participate in it at all, which I’m certain I could not even if I wanted to.

You could put all that in your home and make it the guild hall as many have done if you’d like more people to drop by regularly.

Edit: And yes, I read your whole post. No offense, but I very much disagree the basis of your proposal.

phuein · September 2019

Please make sure to read my op in its entirety, as several comments above already ignore what has already been said in it.

Ye_Olde_Crowe · September 2019

While I'm all for more interactive features in housing, I don't want more interactive features involving other players. More NPC interactivity would be grand, however.

I don't want random people in my RL house, fees or not, and I don't want them in my virtual houses, either. I really like to be left alone, so I would just keep my instanced homes and leave the overland rental homes for those daring folks who crave mingling and competing with others.

Moonfalcon462 · September 2019

EverQuest II's type of housing is the best type of housing which TESO copied.

If you want to bid and fight over housing it should be keeps and castles only.

Jeremy · September 2019

phuein wrote: »

Instead of boring lonely instances for housing, we should have houses over-land that every week or month players bid on and compete over! (You can keep the instanced housing separately, too.)

Benefits:
Make Housing a part of the MMO aspect. Everybody has access to the houses; the owners reap the benefits and publicity.

Gamify housing. Make it more interesting, more interactive, and more involved.

Profit from housing. Not just quick access to stations and dummies, but also gain from the public using them: Fees.

Accessible or beautiful locations can become hubs for social gatherings outside of the few active guild users at any given time. Dozens of players. (A house ban-list would be easy to implement against trolls.)

Yesterday, at the 2nd week peak of the multi-bidding system, I saw [again] just how much impact an interactive competitive system has on the players. It's amazing! And this is what games are about. Anything that's static is not a game. I wholly support Zenimax in continuing to make curious changes to the game.

I don't like the idea of competing for a limited amount of houses. Final Fantasy 14 has a system similar to this - and what ends up happening is you just end up losing your house every time you take a break from the game - which really just has the effect of making me not care about their housing all together.

I do sympathize with your point about it being kind of boring though, due to them being lonely instances. What LOTRO did was have instanced neighborhoods instead of single houses. So that might be something they could consider I could go for.

DLM · September 2019

N O .

InvictusApollo · September 2019

phuein wrote: »

Instead of boring lonely instances for housing, we should have houses over-land that every week or month players bid on and compete over! (You can keep the instanced housing separately, too.)

Benefits:
Make Housing a part of the MMO aspect. Everybody has access to the houses; the owners reap the benefits and publicity.

Gamify housing. Make it more interesting, more interactive, and more involved.

Profit from housing. Not just quick access to stations and dummies, but also gain from the public using them: Fees.

Accessible or beautiful locations can become hubs for social gatherings outside of the few active guild users at any given time. Dozens of players. (A house ban-list would be easy to implement against trolls.)

Yesterday, at the 2nd week peak of the multi-bidding system, I saw [again] just how much impact an interactive competitive system has on the players. It's amazing! And this is what games are about. Anything that's static is not a game. I wholly support Zenimax in continuing to make curious changes to the game.

No. I don't want to pay weekly for my own house. And I don't want to see strangers in it.

ks888 · September 2019

No. I like my peace and quiet and anti-social place to hang.

The only few changes we need to housing is as follows:

let me have all of my pets/mounts and such in my house area (I love dogs irl and made a room for my dogs in the game)
if it has water, give me a fishing hole that has a cooldown (to be fair)
give us an actual Cyrodiil house - a perfect example of a Cyrodiil house would be Caramello outpost - that area and the little outpost is so cool and I want a house like it

End of PvE rant.

kargen27 · September 2019

"Make Housing a part of the MMO aspect. Everybody has access to the houses; the owners reap the benefits and publicity"

Everybody has access to housing now. Along these lines though I would like to see another tab when you open a map that has the homes in that zone listed. You would then click on one of the homes and it would bring up several players who own that home. You click on a name and you visit their home. Should be able to sign a guest book while there. Players would have to opt into having their homes listed.

"Gamify housing. Make it more interesting, more interactive, and more involved."

You need to be more specific. What exactly do you want put in place to make housing more interactive? Just being able to bid on a home doesn't add much.

"Profit from housing. Not just quick access to stations and dummies, but also gain from the public using them: Fees."

I don't see this happening. Not with guild halls and everything other than dummies easily found in towns. I suppose if you had every crafting station maybe players would visit to do master writs and things like that. Thing is how would they know you have those things in the home and how would you charge them to use the stations. I do know a few RP guilds like to rent homes from other players but that would be real hit or miss with this idea because they are looking for something specific.

"Accessible or beautiful locations can become hubs for social gatherings outside of the few active guild users at any given time. Dozens of players."

They would need to make an exception for these homes to allow more players to enter at the same time.

Aurie · September 2019

Just bow out of this idea gracefully OP.

No one’s going to agree with you.

Do you even build or decorate your own houses? And I don’t mean just one trial run, which you may not have enjoyed or seen the point of. I can’t help feeling that if you did, you would never have made this thread.

redspecter23 · September 2019

phuein wrote: »

Please make sure to read my op in its entirety, as several comments above already ignore what has already been said in it.

Obligatory, dismissive "did you even read what I wrote" response when faced with overwhelming negative feedback. Gotcha.

P.S. I did read it entirely and still disagree.

bearbelly · September 2019

reoskit · September 2019

phuein wrote: »

Please make sure to read my op in its entirety, as several comments above already ignore what has already been said in it.

Housing fiend.
Trade guild GM.
OP reader.

Still a no from me.

phuein wrote: »

Yesterday, at the 2nd week peak of the multi-bidding system, I saw [again] just how much impact an interactive competitive system has on the players. It's amazing! And this is what games are about. Anything that's static is not a game. I wholly support Zenimax in continuing to make curious changes to the game.

We (you dev addons, so I assume PC?) have had four flips with multibidding, not two. Just the same, allow me to point you to a thread that discusses the "impact" you appear to extol.

Gnatrak · September 2019

Aion has a similar feature in which I enjoyed to a degree. The population is much smaller than ESO so bidding on homes isn't too painful, but nobody really uses the homes like they do here. The main reason why people buy the luxury homes is because they provide a buff that is greatly sought out from PVPers. However, once you buy your home it will not go back on up for auction each week as long as you paid your rent. If you failed to pay your rent you will obviously lose the home and it will reset to default, thus losing all the decorative work you put into it and allowing someone else to buy it.

I think you're forgetting that ESO is not your average MMO, so suggesting homes to go back up for auction weekly or monthly simply won't work here. The housing here is far more detailed and people spend a lot of time farming materials or saving up gold to craft / buy furniture, and don't forget the amount of thought put into decorating. Who the hell is going to want to spend that much time on housing only to lose it every week and forced to buy it again? Basically nobody. The only people I can see possibly enjoying this are the elitists wanting to show off how much money they have, and do you think they are going to actually redecorate their homes weekly? No, they're just going to throw all their storage chests, assistants and trophies/busts in there then call it a day. Ultimately this would make most of the player base lose interest in housing.

However, I do think it would be nice to visit other players homes without being in a guild scrolling through the roster & etc. Perhaps adding a weekly auction to our current housing set up would work better. It can give people the option to showcase their home in the current open world, this way when it resets weekly nobody will actually lose their home, the money they spent to buy it or the time spent on decorating it. To keep the competition friendly, fair and fresh a cool down period would be needed to keep elitists from excessively bidding weekly thus giving other people a chance to win and showcase their homes. It would indeed be nice to have a separate housing instance in each alliance to fill the need for players who want to live in a community, with the same auctioning method as I mentioned above I could see this possibly working and drawing the attention of people who are really into housing.

Araneae6537 · September 2019

@Zurica, that was one of the features I didn’t like about housing in Aion when I tried it for a few weeks in 2016, that housing required rent, yuck! Inventory was also a pain. GW2 was the first game I played that had separate materials storage and I’m very glad that ESO does as well!

I agree it would be great if they facilitated visiting homes for people who wanted to opt into that. SWTOR also had this feature as well as NPCs that could be placed in homes — both of which would be awesome in ESO but ESO housing is still way better overall for not having hooks for furnishings but letting you put stuff anywhere!