Here's how to do player housing

[Jervaise]

Here's how to do player housing:

Start designing a new game and make sure player housing is thought of from the very beginning.

[WowIsDead64]

Here's how to do player housing:

Start designing a new game and make sure player housing is thought of from the very beginning.

It's considered to be bad idea to start from scratch, because game has years of content, that would be scrapped. Better idea - to use non-binary design, i.e. to start implementing housing gradually. Current Blizzards' motto is - we do it or we don't. Problem is - housing is too big thing to implement it as one solid feature. So if we won't start some day - we will never have it.

[Cynical Asshole]

Housing like this would be a very pointless feature.

The player needs to have a reason to visit their house. Needs to be proud of their house too.

The house must have crafting benches, needs to be of significant size, needs to have features that change the racial theme of the interior and/or exterior, preferably the posibility to have a house in other areas too, fixed locations handpicked by Blizzard, of course.

[Shadowferal]

Too...Sims.

[WowIsDead64]

Housing like this would be a very pointless feature.

The player needs to have a reason to visit their house. Needs to be proud of their house too.

The house must have crafting benches, needs to be of significant size, needs to have features that change the racial theme of the interior and/or exterior, preferably the posibility to have a house in other areas too, fixed locations handpicked by Blizzard, of course.

Should housing be purely cosmetic or should it have some content tied to it? Should it be personal or account wide? These are big questions. Of course we all know Blizzards' design philosophy. Everything should be challenging, everything should be competitive, everything should be prestige-based, blah blah blah. Yeah, it's paradox. Everybody calls Wow purely PVE game, while it has extremely PVPish design. But at the same time I think we shouldn't invent bicycle. Housing is RPish, creative and self-expression feature. Something on a par with character customization, transmogs and mounts.

[BB8]

For me it would be houses everywhere on Azeroth.
Really every village and settlement should have houses.
- Seperate action house for selling and buying properties and everything that connects (furniture, skins, etc, etc)
- Capitals can easily house 100 - 200 houses per server / Towns 20-100 / Villages 5-20
- 1 house per account
- All your alts walk there as NPC (until you log in with one ofcourse)
- An extra House Stone to teleport to your property

[Loreth88]

For example, I would be happy for players if at least one apartment could be furnished, and for guilds a house or a fortress.

[VinceVega]

Wow will never have housing.

1. Because the engine just doesn't make it very easy or possible at all to implement it

2. Blizzard cannot win. Right now people are discontend, that they don't have housing. But people don't quit because ethey don't have housing. Tehy quit because of a thousand other reasons. The moment they DO implement housing they have created another reason to quit for casuals: Beeing that they cannot in any way shape or form satisfy this niche. Everyone screaming/asking for this has another thing in their head of what housing is supposed to be. And no concept of... what is feasible for wow. A really really old game by now. So no matter what they do IMHO after creating housing more people would quit over it than people would quit if they don't boither at all.

- - - Updated - - -

For me it would be houses everywhere on Azeroth.
Really every village and settlement should have houses.
- Seperate action house for selling and buying properties and everything that connects (furniture, skins, etc, etc)
- Capitals can easily house 100 - 200 houses per server / Towns 20-100 / Villages 5-20
- 1 house per account
- All your alts walk there as NPC (until you log in with one ofcourse)
- An extra House Stone to teleport to your property

Like the artifical scarcity in FF14? HATED that with a passion. Casuals will never get a house ever. Every plot will be sold immediatly and never enough plots. Ever...

[Nymrohd]

Here's how to do player housing:

Start designing a new game and make sure player housing is thought of from the very beginning.

ESO added Housing down the line and did not struggle integrating it. It's probably what keeps that game afloat. Pet Battles were added in MoP and they did not struggle integrating them in all previous expansions and have kept adding more pet content constantly.

At the moment WoW has a massive catalog of HD art assets for different cultures and Blizzard level designers are very much clutter bugs and have designed a crazy number of doodads for each art style.

[BB8]

Wow will never have housing.

1. Because the engine just doesn't make it very easy or possible at all to implement it

2. Blizzard cannot win. Right now people are discontend, that they don't have housing. But people don't quit because ethey don't have housing. Tehy quit because of a thousand other reasons. The moment they DO implement housing they have created another reason to quit for casuals: Beeing that they cannot in any way shape or form satisfy this niche. Everyone screaming/asking for this has another thing in their head of what housing is supposed to be. And no concept of... what is feasible for wow. A really really old game by now. So no matter what they do IMHO after creating housing more people would quit over it than people would quit if they don't boither at all.

- - - Updated - - -



Like the artifical scarcity in FF14? HATED that with a passion. Casuals will never get a house ever. Every plot will be sold immediatly and never enough plots. Ever...

I never played FF14, so dont know what the situation was there.
How many players are there per server?
Maybe they can make more houses that the player limit per server.
Then all can buy a house.

[VinceVega]

I never played FF14, so dont know what the situation was there.
How many players are there per server?
Maybe they can make more houses that the player limit per server.
Then all can buy a house.

You have to somehow balance the availability with the the fact that people stop playing sometimes. Which renders your chosen neighborhood/instance empty.
FF14 does, as far as i know not open nearly enough layers for the people who would buy a house.
But if you open to many you have at some point a completly empty instance with your house the only one being lived in.

I think they open up slots if you don't log in after a certain time but don't quote me on that.

They have another sytem where you only buy a room basically. But they are very.... basic.... compared to the houses you can buy.

But blizz will never be able to compete with FF14 in this particular piece of content. So i don't think i can be made reality ever. They can only loose.

[Lochton]

But blizz will never be able to compete with FF14 in this particular piece of content. So i don't think i can be made reality ever. They can only loose.

Correct. Just like FFXIV can't compete with ArcheAge in the matter of housing.

The answer is, we shouldn't.

Blizzard researched and worked on personal player-phased areas in MoP, and grew from there to the Garrison. They have shown that they can plot down personally phased zones where they wish to, the issue is within. WoW shouldn't copy FFXIV (who copied LOTRO, if I recall) with neighborhoods, nor should they copy ArcheAge with the ability to place your housing in the open world directly (and they'll never be able to). And I think Wildstar's method is, too out there for WoW.

Instead, they need to work on the Garrison system, as well as they have admitted, work on their engine so that players are able to modify, alter, and relocate items within the limited phased area. In the phasing system, Blizzard just has to dedicate some areas to support the housing location choice. They of course have to design building options to be deployed within the region (Faction or racial options), as well as plots, which already work - the problem comes after that, the ability to place objects, furnish them, or relocate them. The engine just doesn't have that support yet. It was already mentioned in an interview that it would literally need sacrifice to put in the demand for making the engine do such a thing.

For me, WoW's housing should be the premise of the Garrison (phased zone within select regions), or apartments (Located within various cities, themes changing pr. city). As for the content, it should be connected to professions, vendors, achievements, world content, world drops, Raid, PvP, Dungeons, Rated, Ranked content, and the store (though for the store I would rather it be some more 'out of place' items. If an area, then the ability to have a farm placed, if an apartment, at least the ability for floor plan selection.

[WowIsDead64]

Correct. Just like FFXIV can't compete with ArcheAge in the matter of housing.

The answer is, we shouldn't.

Blizzard researched and worked on personal player-phased areas in MoP, and grew from there to the Garrison. They have shown that they can plot down personally phased zones where they wish to, the issue is within. WoW shouldn't copy FFXIV (who copied LOTRO, if I recall) with neighborhoods, nor should they copy ArcheAge with the ability to place your housing in the open world directly (and they'll never be able to). And I think Wildstar's method is, too out there for WoW.

Instead, they need to work on the Garrison system, as well as they have admitted, work on their engine so that players are able to modify, alter, and relocate items within the limited phased area. In the phasing system, Blizzard just has to dedicate some areas to support the housing location choice. They of course have to design building options to be deployed within the region (Faction or racial options), as well as plots, which already work - the problem comes after that, the ability to place objects, furnish them, or relocate them. The engine just doesn't have that support yet. It was already mentioned in an interview that it would literally need sacrifice to put in the demand for making the engine do such a thing.

For me, WoW's housing should be the premise of the Garrison (phased zone within select regions), or apartments (Located within various cities, themes changing pr. city). As for the content, it should be connected to professions, vendors, achievements, world content, world drops, Raid, PvP, Dungeons, Rated, Ranked content, and the store (though for the store I would rather it be some more 'out of place' items. If an area, then the ability to have a farm placed, if an apartment, at least the ability for floor plan selection.

Unfortunately farm/garrison had different goal - to integrate mobile mini-games into Wow. Not real housing.

[Cynical Asshole]

Should housing be purely cosmetic or should it have some content tied to it? Should it be personal or account wide? These are big questions. Of course we all know Blizzards' design philosophy. Everything should be challenging, everything should be competitive, everything should be prestige-based, blah blah blah. Yeah, it's paradox. Everybody calls Wow purely PVE game, while it has extremely PVPish design. But at the same time I think we shouldn't invent bicycle. Housing is RPish, creative and self-expression feature. Something on a par with character customization, transmogs and mounts.

If it's purely cosmetic, 90% of players will never visit their own house, meaning it would be a waste of time and resources developing it.

Personally, I quite liked the Garrisons, no problems for me there, and I think housing should be very much based on the Garrison systems, but with even more stuff, like coming up with a new profession that makes furniture and trophies, and there would be different racial style furniture pieces, etc...

However, I can see there being a problem when a player switches factions, as it would involve losing the house they had on their previous faction, including everything in it, as some stuff is very much faction related and it doesn't transfer, like having night elf furniture, and switching to Horde. Does it automatically transform into the undead stuff because that's the Horde equivalent?

[Lochton]

Unfortunately farm/garrison had different goal - to integrate mobile mini-games into Wow. Not real housing.

No, its goal was to try and make the system run with personal phasing, which was mentioned in an interview, and it works. And it is housing for Garrison, though not dynamic/free but modular, still housing whether you like it or not. The farm and Garrison's project goal were a success, heck, the farm was a success, the Garrison, not as much.

- - - Updated - - -

However, I can see there being a problem when a player switches factions, as it would involve losing the house they had on their previous faction, including everything in it, as some stuff is very much faction related and it doesn't transfer, like having night elf furniture, and switching to Horde. Does it automatically transform into the undead stuff because that's the Horde equivalent?

Rightly due so, if you change faction, your house should be demolished, items shipped to the mailbox, and the gold purchase used for it, as well, the rest is a loss, and rightly so in my book.

[Lochton]

Well, player housing. That meme even Chilton talked about.

My guess is it will never happen in WoW. Simply because it could cost a raid tier.

That wasn't even a joke this time, that apparently is the serious answer.

[loras]

First, it has to be implemented in the subtlest of ways.

- Ponder an inn in a major city, ThunderBluff, Darnassus.
- Now, for example Stormwind. Imagine simply walking upstairs into a phased room. And that's it.
- Outside a window, you can see players on the patio below. But, all it is is a room.
- The player literally enters a small room with the design of that major city.
- Adjust the phasing so a Night Elf of Darnassus could have a view of the Commons area in Ironforge.
- The player can have their own book shelfs which is a visual for achievements, they can actually click on a bed to sleep on for resting experience.
- They can have banners on the wall, rugs, etc.
- This could affect many elements of the game: guilds, auction house, mailing.
- armor rack (affecting gear durability)

- Unlike (or like) garrisons, there is no customization of the building itself. That's inheritant to the city. No new textures, just those of the city.
- In this way, they're not isolating.
- It would bring races to their inheritent cities, also remember its phased.
- Most importantly, is that its a subtle addition.
- Less is more. Adding small features at the start and eventually adding some more.
- It could work as an integral part of the game if done right but not overdone.
- Not isolating players but expanding this always thought about place thats never been implemented and needs to the right way.

I... do not see how this would be a worthwhile addition.
Housing for the sake of housing is pointless, even the garrison is a better version of this, especially considering how annoying cramped building rooms generally are in WoW.

Personally i'd just take the garrison idea but reserve a phased plot for it in all major cities, like you get an estate in it and can modify it to your liking like garrison plus.
Bigger plots bigger upkeep, to keep guilds motivated and to give weird dudes something to splurge their gold on without inhibiting others.
But bigger plots are only for more aesthetical stuff, not for anything with practical value.
Plus it wouldn't matter much to add stuff like i.e. a bank or anything since a capital city already has all that stuff and you just get a little more centralised access to it all.
Could even link it to the portal hub.

A good way to access expansion specific stuff without too much hassle either; a mission table that (if properly unlocked and yada yada) allows access to SL, Legion, BfA and WoD mission tables in example, or some npc for all unlocked past LFR raids; something to make life easier regarding noncurrent content that is effectively abandonware anyway, given how they treat it.

They'd have to up their game with regards to phasing though, as capital cities would find this hard to deal with at present.

But it'd also allow overly rich guilds and individuals to try to outbid themselves for getting their absurd estate visualised for all those who visit the non-instanced version.
I imagine there being two plots, one is always your own garrison, but another which will be dynamic; i.e. it will be the estate of a grouped player if you're visiting their estate, and if you're not grouped it's a non-instanced version of the highest-paying player or guild.
Could add one to every city, i mean they're already portal-linked anyway, might as well allow more easier access via your own estate.

[Relapses]

That wasn't even a joke this time, that apparently is the serious answer.

It assuredly would -- just using Garrisons as an example: The drought before WoD was one of the longest in the game's history and they were still so hopelessly broken upon release that it represents one of the few times Blizzard has given players game time to compensate.

[WowIsDead64]

No, its goal was to try and make the system run with personal phasing, which was mentioned in an interview, and it works. And it is housing for Garrison, though not dynamic/free but modular, still housing whether you like it or not. The farm and Garrison's project goal were a success, heck, the farm was a success, the Garrison, not as much.

Unfortunately no. They didn't like initial garrison design exactly because it was hard to play it without addons, that weren't available on phone. Their goal was - $15 sub fee for mobile game.

[Lochton]

It assuredly would -- just using Garrisons as an example: The drought before WoD was one of the longest in the game's history and they were still so hopelessly broken upon release that it represents one of the few times Blizzard has given players game time to compensate.

Pardon me? One of the few times? I've been compensated gametime about 21 times in WoW's history and were given 3 days game time due to the Garrison at launch being broken, that is about it but in the interview, there wasn't much joking about it to me, so either they don't have staff, or they don't have an interest. So, if it was a joke, then there is a fear that there is no interest in it, and if not, then the problem is staff. Though, with a massive infusion of new people from the purchase of a studio, maybe in the future.

- - - Updated - - -

It never is a serious answer.

If is if you were lacking people to make it work?

- - - Updated - - -

Unfortunately no. They didn't like initial garrison design exactly because it was hard to play it without addons, that weren't available on phone. Their goal was - $15 sub fee for mobile game.

You only needed a mission table addon if you were unable to figure it out. The rest of the Garrison was flat-out the easiest playpen ever made.