Make homes more functional

FenravynMJE · May 4

I'll start by saying I've not played in over 8 months, however whilst playing other games I've noticed a missed opportunity in ESO housing.

Other than dummies/ crafting stations/ mundus stones there is no other functionality to houses. Most players also just use guild houses for these.
Several games implement a way to grow or produce
F76 - items that produce food, plants to grow ingredients.
Skyrim - through creation kit you could manage and grow a farm.
Starfield - grow plants local to that planet and tame wildlife that produces ingredients.

Many other non Bethesda titles have fantastic reasons to make a home like your base.
No man's sky has many things in a base to make it useful and a reason to visit back.
New World (RIP) several items you'd display gave in game boosts.

I know all the games mentioned might not be everyone's cup of tea, but can't be denied they have elements to housing/bases that personally I think would improve ESO's current housing system.

Nemesis7884 · May 4

It would be nice for more things to do in your house alone or in groups which could expand the housing communities beyond the pure decoraters... i personally stopped buying houses or engaging with my existing onss because i simply have no reason to go there beyond just looking at it....

CatalinaWineMixer2 · May 4

I like the idea of gardening for things like alchemy and provisioning. This would be something fun to have in a Guild Gall.

LunaFlora · May 4

Gardening would indeed be fun to have in our homes.

Besides ESO i play infinity Nikki and Palia which both have gardening in their housing, it is nice to grow your own materials.
They also both have fishing in housing, wish for that in ESO too.

Tandor · May 4

Such things are fine in single player offline games, but in mutiplayer online games they simply lead to players spending more time in private instances with the result that new players log into an apparently empty world with the result that they move on.

LunaFlora · May 4

Tandor wrote: »

Such things are fine in single player offline games, but in mutiplayer online games they simply lead to players spending more time in private instances with the result that new players log into an apparently empty world with the result that they move on.

i mentioned Palia in my comment, it is multiplayer and whilst it is smaller than ESO i have not encountered your hypothetical problem.

FenravynMJE · May 4

Tandor wrote: »

Such things are fine in single player offline games, but in mutiplayer online games they simply lead to players spending more time in private instances with the result that new players log into an apparently empty world with the result that they move on.

Many zones in ESO feel empty of players anyway just due to the large amount of zones available.
Personally I don't feel it would cause any harm to say for example growing Columbine, Mountain Flower, and Bugloss at your home to create tri stat potions. These were generally given away free in daily rewards ( I assume it's no different with the new tomes system) so it also wouldn't create an unfair advantage.

I feel it also leans into the whole tamriel is your home vibe that the new management seem to be focusing on with wide range quality of life updates.

Maybe this idea will never see the light of day, however more options to housing outside of decorative and crafting stations wouldn't go a miss.

Danikat · May 4

It would be nice to have some more reasons to visit. This was one of my concerns with housing originally, that once you've fully decorated a house there's not much reason to go back, which makes decorating it feel somewhat pointless unless you're part of a decorating guild or whatever.

The assistants and storge chests help a bit with that, the chests are my main reason for visting houses I've finished decorating, but some more options could be nice too.

If ZOS are worried about market manipulation or whatever from private gathering nodes they could limit it in some way. An obvious one is to limit how many you can have - make it like the storage chests where they're the same in every home you put them into so you can have them in all your houses but having 20 houses doesn't let you grow 20 different things.

Another example I've seen from other games is you don't just get a space to plant whatever you want, you collect specific plants (or metals or whatever) kind of like antiquities where they require lots of different tasks and the rarer/more valuable nodes are rarer drops and/or from more difficult tasks. Also they'll only ever be basic versions so no bait or nirncrux or other bonus items, meaning you still have a reason to harvest the ones out in the world as well.

Tandor wrote: »

Such things are fine in single player offline games, but in mutiplayer online games they simply lead to players spending more time in private instances with the result that new players log into an apparently empty world with the result that they move on.

Lots of online games use the same ideas, and it doesn't mean spending lots of time in your home.

For example Guild Wars 2 lets you grow crops (and generate other resources) in your homestead, but it's not like they added a whole farming mini-game. You unlock the harvesting nodes by playing other parts of the game (or trading with other players) and once you've got them it only takes a few minutes once a day at most to harvest all of them. It gives players a reason to visit once per day, but doesn't require they spend much time away from everyone else.

Since that game also gives you a 'rested' buff for logging out in your homestead I think a lot of players go there to log out, then gather resources just before heading out the next day. Which (without gathering resources) is something a lot of role-players in ESO already do.

Honestly I think the most time consuming 'home activity' I've seen in any game outside of farming sims and survival/crafting games is decorating and we've already got that. (Even in Valheim I think I've spent more time creating and decorating a base than hanging around using the crafting stations, because most of them are either instant or can be left to run while I'm out exploring.)

illutian · May 4

Before we go adding more functionality to Homes. How about we get higher caps.

10 Special Collectibles, which includes all House Guests, Mounts, Non-combat Pets, and Merchant Assistants is not enough.
...Deconstructor, Merchant, Bank, Fencer. Right there, almost half the slots are taken up by NPCs that add a huge benefit to a home in terms of convenience.