Future DLC idea: Towns based off of the housing system. (Become the canonreeve of Mathiisen anyone?)

Ae'ron · January 2023

One thing that I have thought about quite a lot is what would a town building/control system look like in ESO. Full disclosure, I started thinking about this a lot when I began to worldbuild a story based off of a 4th era descendent of my current in-game oc. It surrounded the potential story of Mathiisen Manor and turned into me thinking about what it would be like for us to be able to "liberate" or take control of a town via the storyline and then be able to guide its development or at least its appearance in a way that is similar to how we can currently interact with our own homes.

For a house like mathiisen manor, it would make perfect sense if we got that home after becoming the new canonreeve of Mathiisen and the town became ours to lead and protect. Want to turn it into an Embassy town? Grow a graht-oak in its heart and appoint a treethane to lead in your absence. Want to emphasize the forge? Expand the port aspect, train smiths, and welcome new ships to the city. Build new city walls, set patrols, engage daedric assaults, repel vampire attacks, and push back coastal raids by Sea Elf pirates.

Imagine a future DLC with a system to hire and train your own city guard, to have the town grow and follow your ideals. Set patron deities, open a temple, welcome displaced refugees from the Three Banners War or use the town as a training ground for your alliance's elite forces. Want it aligned with the Mages Guild or the Fighters Guild? Have them make up the bulk of the npcs that appear, alter the guards' uniforms and armor, select what banners appear, etc. The possibilities are endless and there are already several houses in game that could serve as a basis for this kind of story/world building based expansion. Mathiisen is only the one that I've thought of the most.

What about you? Is there a house in game that YOU would want to be your base of operations? Would you want to become the latest Thane of Skyrim, Canonreeve or Treethane of the Dominion, Lord of High Rock? What ideas do you have for a potential future system like this that would serve as a massive expansion of the housing system?

Luke_Flamesword · January 2023

I love manage and build things like this - it doesn't matter if this city, guild or company - I would love to have some complex system, where I can spent hours with designing spaces (housing 2.0), manage economy and other aspects of system, make some quests, invest some resources obtainable by playing a game (it's great money sink and another goal for play more other acitivities), etc. It's should also have some sort of mechanic which encourages players to visit and make some acitivity in other players places - for example special events like defending city with players teamed by group finder rewarded with special resources for system itself.

System like this can be expandable with future updates and very easy monetize in crown store with some cosmetics, so it's a lot of work but also potential profit for ZOS. I hope some day to see something like this, but I'm afraid that it may be just to complex to make, but who knows...

Supreme_Atromancer · February 2023

I think it would be awesome.

Amongst other games that ESO takes inspiration from, TES games are definitely prominent. Housing, followers, a card game, and soon, Endless Dungeons like in Blades. Could a settlement/town-builder also happen?

When I look at the map sometimes, I wonder about those little pockets of places that seem too small to feature as marketable DLC zones as we know them today. Now that the q4 has also been dropped, I wonder what they could do with them?

Consider the 3 spots I've circled below, for the sake of pure speculation about what *could* be done:

In the north-east, existing as an appendage to Eastmarch, stands the mysterious Redoran city of Blacklight. Amongst the cold mountains of the Velothis, but still exposed to ash storms and alien ecologies of Red Mountain, Blacklight could be an absolutely fascinating place.

In the south, between Imperial Leyawiin and free city of Senchal lies the as-yet unexplored Khajiiti port-city of Alabaster. Very little news filters out to the rest of Tamriel about how it fares during this turbulent time.

And finally, in the north-west, on the high bluffs of the Druadachs, standing against the cold winds of the Sea of Ghosts is the enigmatic Breton city of Jehanna. Far remote from their cousins on the Iliac Bay, and with some degree of Nordic history and conflict, there should be much to explore about this fascinating place.

The interesting things that tie these three locations together is their position as port cities within mountainous landscapes; they haven't been explored yet, they may not be big enough to support chapters (in the traditional sense), they connect other areas of the map that are sorely wished to be filled out by the community, and, perhaps most interestingly- they could each represent faction strongholds; one for each of the 3 alliances.

As the game evolves, and ZOS explores new systems, new things to do, and new reasons to be in Tamriel, I think that those sorts of places would be ripe for such new ideas. Systems that spring immediately to mind include PvP and townbuilding.

I'd personally love it if they build a townbuilding concept around these three cities, and used them to connect the map. I think it would be a fantastic idea to make such a system capable of supporting- but not exclusive to- a sort of "guildhall" thing, which there is some demand for.