More things to do in our homes

Shagreth · February 2023

Saw it mentioned a few years back but I haven't seen anything significant, it can be anything from extra rested xp, our romanced companions (since the feature will come.. one day) giving us a meal with the best stats, to fishing, writ boards, a wayshrine for those living in the sticks etc. the possibilities are endless without making it an OCD and having to visit every hour or something. The way it is now, I very rarely visit my homes that I spent countless hours decorating.

@ZOS_Kevin Please consider some of these recommendations, the housing experience is a little hollow even after all these years.

spartaxoxo · February 2023

I agree. When they first teased housing, they mentioned a gardening update but never got around to doing it! I would love to be able to garden in my home.

Shagreth · February 2023

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I agree. When they first teased housing, they mentioned a gardening update but never got around to doing it! I would love to be able to garden in my home.

Ah yes, gardening, forgot about that. I mean, we even had something like that in Oblivion! (Vile Lair) Housing is underwhelming as it is, there's little usage when it comes to homes, after I've furnished a house -- I rarely ever visit again.

everseeing_njpreub18_ESO · February 2023

First off, I'm all for more housing options, love that aspect of the game. But with that said, i have seen the downside (specifically in SWTOR). In that game i had access to everything i wanted to do in my home and therefore never went to the fleet station (the central hub) and when i rarely did, it was a ghost-town.

As it is you can buy, sell, craft, breakdown, sell stolen stuff, use dummies, fill your ultimate, bank, and more in your home. If I could grab and turn in writs, and then as mentioned garden (assuming this means adding material nodes for various things be they plants, wood, a mine for stone, etc.), I would basically never need to leave the house, and as others might as well, the greater over-world begins to feel empty.

So often while gathering you run across folks doing world bosses or asking for help somewhere, and removing a chunk of the player-base from being around to help i just see as detrimental to the whole.

"Flair" options I would be all for, a "fake fishing node" where i could fish for valueless fish (or even catch normal fish i cant keep just for effect or something), same with gardening where plants would grown over time but not give (or very very limited) actual material rewards. Just so long as folks don't end up sealed in there homes, might be what some prefer but i can see the downside for others (especially newer players).

Shagreth · February 2023

everseeing_njpreub18_ESO wrote: »

First off, I'm all for more housing options, love that aspect of the game. But with that said, i have seen the downside (specifically in SWTOR). In that game i had access to everything i wanted to do in my home and therefore never went to the fleet station (the central hub) and when i rarely did, it was a ghost-town.

As it is you can buy, sell, craft, breakdown, sell stolen stuff, use dummies, fill your ultimate, bank, and more in your home. If I could grab and turn in writs, and then as mentioned garden (assuming this means adding material nodes for various things be they plants, wood, a mine for stone, etc.), I would basically never need to leave the house, and as others might as well, the greater over-world begins to feel empty.

So often while gathering you run across folks doing world bosses or asking for help somewhere, and removing a chunk of the player-base from being around to help i just see as detrimental to the whole.

"Flair" options I would be all for, a "fake fishing node" where i could fish for valueless fish (or even catch normal fish i cant keep just for effect or something), same with gardening where plants would grown over time but not give (or very very limited) actual material rewards. Just so long as folks don't end up sealed in there homes, might be what some prefer but i can see the downside for others (especially newer players).

I am not familiar with SWTOR, but I have experienced what you said with WoW and Garrisons, but the thing is that back then there was nothing to do in the game so everyone just AFK'd in their bases, this will never be the case with ESO since the focus is not only dungeons & raids and waiting for their reset. It could potentially be a concern if they literally added everything in the house, but it really won't if they are smart about it. A couple of fishing nodes that respawn every X hours or a herb or two I guarantee you won't break the game.

More reasons to visit the house doesn't necessarily translate to being able to do everything there. Writ boards would definitely suck some people out of the usual spots like Vivec etc. (less lag for me) but a waypoint, herbs and/or fishing nodes will not harm the game at all. Also, extra rested XP, especially if you have romanced & placed the follower in the house, provided they do add romancing like they promised and stuff like that will have zero impact.

everseeing_njpreub18_ESO · February 2023

I'm all for more, just needs to be done, as you say, smart.

Actually i didn't even notice, if rested XP is not in house, then that i definitely agree with, since i always go "home" before i log out.

Holycannoli · February 2023

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I agree. When they first teased housing, they mentioned a gardening update but never got around to doing it! I would love to be able to garden in my home.

Gardening for decoration would work but gardening for food and alchemy components is no good. It would be less reason for people to be out in the world and that's not a good thing. The world needs to feel alive and populated and active.

Shagreth · February 2023

Holycannoli wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I agree. When they first teased housing, they mentioned a gardening update but never got around to doing it! I would love to be able to garden in my home.

Gardening for decoration would work but gardening for food and alchemy components is no good. It would be less reason for people to be out in the world and that's not a good thing. The world needs to feel alive and populated and active.

Hyperbole. It won't if the optimal way to farm is still going outside in the world, like I said, if you gather a couple of Nirnroots with a respawn rate of say.. 30 minutes every now and then -- your game won't break. I wouldn't be interested in gardening that yields absolutely nothing other than looks, I mean, we already have a bunch of plant furnishing.

spartaxoxo · February 2023

everseeing_njpreub18_ESO wrote: »

First off, I'm all for more housing options, love that aspect of the game. But with that said, i have seen the downside (specifically in SWTOR). In that game i had access to everything i wanted to do in my home and therefore never went to the fleet station (the central hub) and when i rarely did, it was a ghost-town.

As it is you can buy, sell, craft, breakdown, sell stolen stuff, use dummies, fill your ultimate, bank, and more in your home. If I could grab and turn in writs, and then as mentioned garden (assuming this means adding material nodes for various things be they plants, wood, a mine for stone, etc.), I would basically never need to leave the house, and as others might as well, the greater over-world begins to feel empty.

So often while gathering you run across folks doing world bosses or asking for help somewhere, and removing a chunk of the player-base from being around to help i just see as detrimental to the whole.

"Flair" options I would be all for, a "fake fishing node" where i could fish for valueless fish (or even catch normal fish i cant keep just for effect or something), same with gardening where plants would grown over time but not give (or very very limited) actual material rewards. Just so long as folks don't end up sealed in there homes, might be what some prefer but i can see the downside for others (especially newer players).

Yeah. I don't think gardening could or should compete with going out into the world and gathering. But say a little bit of furnishing mats once a week wouldn't hurt and it would a nice little something extra.

katanagirl1 · February 2023

Shagreth wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I agree. When they first teased housing, they mentioned a gardening update but never got around to doing it! I would love to be able to garden in my home.

Gardening for decoration would work but gardening for food and alchemy components is no good. It would be less reason for people to be out in the world and that's not a good thing. The world needs to feel alive and populated and active.

Hyperbole. It won't if the optimal way to farm is still going outside in the world, like I said, if you gather a couple of Nirnroots with a respawn rate of say.. 30 minutes every now and then -- your game won't break. I wouldn't be interested in gardening that yields absolutely nothing other than looks, I mean, we already have a bunch of plant furnishing.

High Isle and Galen have a lot of plants that could be used for gardening only in the decorative sense that we don’t have already. Tomatoes on the vine, and cornstalks come to mind. I would love to have these furnishing plans.

ElementalDud · February 2023

I would love to see the option of having vampire/werewolf altars for houses so we can turn people right in the comfort of our own home. My main home is set up to be a spooky vampire mansion, it would make for a much more memorable turning experience than some crevice in Rawlkha, not to mention easier to get to since it would just be a quick teleport.

ThelerisTelvanni · February 2023

Well I think some gardeing sounds good. Having some ashpotatos in the yard to cook sounds nice to me. Also some plants for alchemy are welcome. I don't think that it will hurt anyone to have those.

Having the daily crafting quests inhouse for short ways seems good to me as well. Short ways mean less wasted time on those! And in return more time I can use to travel the world or run some dungeons and raids.

Well I am not into fishing but I also do not see the harm in adding a that to some Houses with pools.

Maybe adding cattle for eggs, milk and meet is also kind of nice. Imagine having your own Kwarma mine!

To be honest the Garrison WoW added during WoD was someting I loved and that needed more customisation. Getting stuff for it was cool and I loved it. To those that think that the Garrision was the problem in that expasin: It was not! Most AFKed there because there was nothing else to do! TESO on the other hand does not have that content problem. You can play every chapter and go to any other once your done with the current one. WoW on the other hand only utelises the content of it's current expansin/patch. Where you run out of content in WoW you will have plenty in TESO. Unless you play since Beta, have done everything a 1000 times and are still hungry for more content. Well tending to your garden might give you something to do.

Shagreth · February 2023

ThelerisTelvanni wrote: »

To be honest the Garrison WoW added during WoD was someting I loved and that needed more customisation. Getting stuff for it was cool and I loved it. To those that think that the Garrision was the problem in that expasin: It was not! Most AFKed there because there was nothing else to do! TESO on the other hand does not have that content problem. You can play every chapter and go to any other once your done with the current one. WoW on the other hand only utelises the content of it's current expansin/patch. Where you run out of content in WoW you will have plenty in TESO. Unless you play since Beta, have done everything a 1000 times and are still hungry for more content. Well tending to your garden might give you something to do.

I agree. Hence why I think that even if they put a bunch of stuff to do in our homes -- the open world won't suffer. Housing feels hollow as is, and it should have improved on some departments after so many years.

Supreme_Atromancer · February 2023

Yes, I 100% support this.

I remember the respawning planters from Skyrim's College and Oblivion's Frostcrag Spire. I'd absolutely love something like this.

Writ boards and, perhaps turn-in stations I very much support.

As someone mentioned above, I think they've been gradually moving in the right direction- a lot of our character respeccing options are by now possible from our houses, likewise ulti wells, crafting/transmute stations. Houses get a LOT of use from these. Resetting progs will often reset their instance and get ulti, transmute gear, decon, make fotm glyphs, etc. If you parse, you're going to be spending significant time in a home. Often ToT comps are played from homes, too.

I think that those things are a great start. People will often duel in houses, but as has been mentioned quite often, people would love for zos to capitalise on this some more. Allowing more complex interactible furnishings (like they did with spinning blades in Elinhir Private Arena) could be put to GREAT use- people would have a HELL of a lot of fun with those. Allowing houses to act as private Battlegrounds is an extreme, but would be absolutely fantastic. Even allowing small-scale team duels from your home would be excellent.

Given how cool combat dummies are, and the varied use imaginative people have gotten out of them, I think its time to take it a step further. Allow us to do healing-parse dummies, by perhaps having togglable damage output. The natural evolution of dummies that can actually do damage would blow the creative doors wide open for people to craft their own personal "dungeons".

I want to add that none of these would really take away my need "to be in the world". Doing upkeep, and having fun with friends is great. Progress, economy, grinding, achievements all still happen in the world and the devs have done such an astonishing job creating Tamriel that my desire to be out and about would not be diminished (*cough* but basegame refresh! *COUGH* *cough*). Sorry, damned Khnaten Flu going around.

I think there are probably a lot more ideas to be had to add value and reasons to use housing and spend time in them, especially passive activities. I'd love to hear more ideas.

DarcyMardin · February 2023

I would love some gardening and fishing for my homes.

Shagreth · February 2023

Supreme_Atromancer wrote: »

I think there are probably a lot more ideas to be had to add value and reasons to use housing and spend time in them, especially passive activities. I'd love to hear more ideas.

Amazing post, thank you, and I couldn't agree more on the points you made.

Over the years I keep suggesting things like this, but very little has been done. I like the ult restoring well and the vampire one, but they are way too expensive, kinda wish these kind of items you buy once and can place in multiple homes, that would increase the value tenfold, like traders etc. @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_GinaBruno Really hope you guys are listening to this feedback, I know over the years that the sentiment is there, perhaps one day we're going to see a big update focused entirely on housing, or even multiple ones. It's one of the end-games after all for many people.

phaneub17_ESO · February 2023

Build an obstacle course over slaughterfish waters. You can use Doors that open and close as drops and bridges, do I go across or go down, with jump puzzles. There are some furniture that shoot fire or lightning and treat them as penalty points to avoid. If you have the Windmill, I assume the blades can physically push you I never actually tried, or use it as a jump path.

Zurixadai · February 2023

Love the ideas in here so far!

everseeing_njpreub18_ESO wrote: »

As it is you can buy, sell, craft, breakdown, sell stolen stuff, use dummies, fill your ultimate, bank, and more in your home. If I could grab and turn in writs, and then as mentioned garden (assuming this means adding material nodes for various things be they plants, wood, a mine for stone, etc.), I would basically never need to leave the house, and as others might as well, the greater over-world begins to feel empty.

As a preface: hi, hope you're having a great day, and hopefully I'm not coming off as out of line by quoting you. Just wanted to continue a discussion on this particular idea, as it's something I see floated around quite a bit.

Here's my hot take: I think it's basically criminal that we can't pick up crafting writs in our homes.

I've turned the Flaming Nix Deluxe Garret house into a crafting hall of sorts, so that's become where I do my writs everyday. The Garret is (maybe) twenty seconds from the writboards in Mournhold. So every day, within less than a minute, I can grab those writs, go back inside my house to churn them out, and then run another thirty seconds to turn them in. A full one hundred percent of the actual work takes place inside of my house, and I'm "populating" the actual main city for about forty seconds, all told.

All that to say: me having to run outside to grab writs, to then just run right back inside to do those writs, is not adding to the visible population of ESO's major cities in any meaningful way. Sure, not everyone does them that way, but I'd much rather ask for more functionality in this area, instead of less. Writs are already so close to being fully in-house, and the main cities have so much that I already have to do there; can we just have writs?

If someone were to say, "We should never be able to grab daily pledges inside our house," I'd be sad, but I'd understand. That could be a bit too much; I get it. Or if it's selling/buying at the guild vendor, or respec shrines--whatever it is. Don't get me wrong, I personally want all those things in housing. I think housing would be better with those things, but I would ultimately understand if those ideas get vetoed. Something something main city populations, fine.

But writs? Man, they're just so fast and so easy to do in a house. Master Writs? Yep, I do those in a house too, because I can and it's faster. I've got friends who do crafting writs on like twelve characters, everyday, and I'm slowly learning to do them on multiple characters myself. The ability to do all that in one house would be nothing short of Stendarr's fullest blessing.

Anyway, I've got a monstrously long list of ideas for housing that I'd love to see, but I'll truncate since this comment is long enough already:

-Portals, or just generally better traversal in houses, since I can't mount and houses insist on being massive. The Grapple Bow posts or the Black Drake geysers would be great. Or, you know, just like... ladders.

-Mount trainer houseguest. Tons of houses come with stables that can't be removed, and tons of those stables stand empty.

-I think gardening is a terrific idea; honestly, just make it similar to the hireling mats we get in the mail, except we get the materials ourselves, and I'd call that a win.

-As an overall piece of functionality that I'd love to see: let me "mirror" furnishings, or give me mirrored furnishings for sale--doors, specifically, are probably the best example. Leyawiin itself has double-doors in its style, but I can't imitate that because spinning the Leyawiin door around causes it to open the "wrong" way. Mirroring statues and stuff could also be nice for symmetry, and all that.

-Boats. I want all the boats.

Shagreth · February 2023

Zurixadai wrote: »

Anyway, I've got a monstrously long list of ideas for housing that I'd love to see, but I'll truncate since this comment is long enough already:

-Portals, or just generally better traversal in houses, since I can't mount and houses insist on being massive. The Grapple Bow posts or the Black Drake geysers would be great. Or, you know, just like... ladders.

-Mount trainer houseguest. Tons of houses come with stables that can't be removed, and tons of those stables stand empty.

-I think gardening is a terrific idea; honestly, just make it similar to the hireling mats we get in the mail, except we get the materials ourselves, and I'd call that a win.

-As an overall piece of functionality that I'd love to see: let me "mirror" furnishings, or give me mirrored furnishings for sale--doors, specifically, are probably the best example. Leyawiin itself has double-doors in its style, but I can't imitate that because spinning the Leyawiin door around causes it to open the "wrong" way. Mirroring statues and stuff could also be nice for symmetry, and all that.

-Boats. I want all the boats.

Some great feedback indeed. I also had this idea of portals but forgot to mention it, something like what we see in some Daedric Homes (i.e. wraithhome) would work wonders for manor-sized houses, the technology is already there! Anyway, homes could be so much more and I would especially love for more reasons for me to visit mine, even if it's just me doing my writs there.

Araneae6537 · February 2023

Shagreth wrote: »

Zurixadai wrote: »

Anyway, I've got a monstrously long list of ideas for housing that I'd love to see, but I'll truncate since this comment is long enough already:

-Portals, or just generally better traversal in houses, since I can't mount and houses insist on being massive. The Grapple Bow posts or the Black Drake geysers would be great. Or, you know, just like... ladders.

-Mount trainer houseguest. Tons of houses come with stables that can't be removed, and tons of those stables stand empty.

-I think gardening is a terrific idea; honestly, just make it similar to the hireling mats we get in the mail, except we get the materials ourselves, and I'd call that a win.

-As an overall piece of functionality that I'd love to see: let me "mirror" furnishings, or give me mirrored furnishings for sale--doors, specifically, are probably the best example. Leyawiin itself has double-doors in its style, but I can't imitate that because spinning the Leyawiin door around causes it to open the "wrong" way. Mirroring statues and stuff could also be nice for symmetry, and all that.

-Boats. I want all the boats.

Some great feedback indeed. I also had this idea of portals but forgot to mention it, something like what we see in some Daedric Homes (i.e. wraithhome) would work wonders for manor-sized houses, the technology is already there! Anyway, homes could be so much more and I would especially love for more reasons for me to visit mine, even if it's just me doing my writs there.

I like the option of portals we can place, but generally don’t like them build into homes unless it’s taking us to somewhere not meant to be physically connected (as in Hunter’s Glade, Jode’s Embrace, Hall of the Lunar Champion) but dislike them for going from the bottom of a tower to the top, or as they are used in Wraithhome and Bastian Sanguinaris. But to set where we want our entrance to be and other uses would be great.

Shagreth · February 2023

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I like the option of portals we can place, but generally don’t like them build into homes unless it’s taking us to somewhere not meant to be physically connected (as in Hunter’s Glade, Jode’s Embrace, Hall of the Lunar Champion) but dislike them for going from the bottom of a tower to the top, or as they are used in Wraithhome and Bastian Sanguinaris. But to set where we want our entrance to be and other uses would be great.

Yup, and make it free, but we both know that's not gonna happen. Some things should be basic and purchasable with gold, same for two-seat mounts etc.