Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Hitei]

Agreed. But this is true for any content, isn't it? Update it, or it gets boring. Like if you run the same dungeon for months it gets boring, so the new patch needs to add new dungeons. If you abandon a feature, it dies. That's the way for MMO content. It isn't unique to housing.

Housing has no innate replayability. You can run the same dungeon for months, you can't place the same cabinet for months. You can not add any dungeons for months and people will still do the dungeons, where a new one is a breath of fresh air. If you don't add housing items for months, people do literally nothing with their housing because there isn't anything to do, it's effectively a one time thing until something else gets added.

[Sharby]

I mean we can literally just look at FFXIV.



If housing is scarce, like it is in XIV, a majority of people will just buy one for FOMO and then abandon it entirely. My ward was even one of the newer ones and is completely abandoned aside from a single neighbor that I see very very occasionally. Most of the houses I visit are devoid of anything meaningful or half-finished, you can literally tell where the owner got bored and gave up. And that's with the XIV population which is heavily skewed towards vanity and casual content/collecting. Imagine the participation in a game where most people are content focused. I don't see it being worth the dev time.


If housing isn't scarce (only possible through instanced housing) then who aside from a minority would care? Part of the appeal is having other people coming over to view your set up, the people who glean satisfaction from just treating their house a solo passion projects seems too low to be worth it.


It wouldn't be the sole reason the overworld is dead, but it doesn't help, I also mostly meant cities. The game already has a problem with cities being empty aside from org/sw and this def wouldn't help. Restricting houses to cosmetic stuff only also isn't a solution because there should be some practical benefit to having one. It's pretty paradoxical, but I can see why Blizzard has avoided it for so long.

[Wangming]

Housing has no innate replayability. You can run the same dungeon for months, you can't place the same cabinet for months. You can not add any dungeons for months and people will still do the dungeons, where a new one is a breath of fresh air. If you don't add housing items for months, people do literally nothing with their housing because there isn't anything to do, it's effectively a one-time thing until something else gets added.

You forget this is Blizzard we are talking about. They love time gating. They would probably TimeGate access to medication for the terminally ill just because they can.
You can't place the same cabinet for months, yes. But you can make the recipe a reward for a quest chain and the rare materials to craft it from all over the place like boss drops, open-world drops and so on. Making that cabinet could take time. And so would finding the right carpet that complements it. Or the wallpaper.

[ercarp]

I must be the only one who has never cared about Player Housing in any MMO, ever. If I want to decorate a house, I'll go play Sims.

[Marlamin]

I must be the only one who has never cared about Player Housing in any MMO, ever. If I want to decorate a house, I'll go play Sims.

But what if you can play The Sims in WoW?

[ercarp]

But what if you can play The Sims in WoW?

I'd probably still be more interested in locking my character in a swimming pool by removing the ladder than decorating a house.

[crusadernero]

Housing has no innate replayability. You can run the same dungeon for months, you can't place the same cabinet for months. You can not add any dungeons for months and people will still do the dungeons, where a new one is a breath of fresh air. If you don't add housing items for months, people do literally nothing with their housing because there isn't anything to do, it's effectively a one time thing until something else gets added.

player housing is something that could be added into the game as a everlasting part of the game, like dungeons & Raids. We dont know always what we get in a new xpac, but we atleast 100% knows there will be dungeons & raids. Housing could be another set feature within the game were they over time could add new stuff to it as time goes by. The options really are endless in this regard.

Besides, imagine how much money Blizzard would rake in when selling a cool chair or cabinet on the shop! kek

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I'd probably still be more interested in locking my character in a swimming pool by removing the ladder than decorating a house.

I would 100% make vulperas and removed the ladder.

[Pheraz]

Housing has no innate replayability. You can run the same dungeon for months, you can't place the same cabinet for months. You can not add any dungeons for months and people will still do the dungeons, where a new one is a breath of fresh air. If you don't add housing items for months, people do literally nothing with their housing because there isn't anything to do, it's effectively a one time thing until something else gets added.

Exactly.
Also garrisons were so anti wow that most of the players actually quit in wod, including me, for several months.

From a technical point of view in a client (s) <-> server(s) architecture player housing is a nightmare. Imagine you wouldn't give every player his own instance flying around in a "player house" zone you would need to load all data from all players dynamically to then let the clients create the houses. So you need to find some middle spot where the illusion is big enough to give you some sort of "oh look there are other people like me who build their playdo house" feeling but keep a normal FPS/latency for everyone. Yet most players in wow are focused on raiding and mythic + so the effort for this tiny group of house lovers is just not worth it. Imagine they would focus fully on housing and lose manpower in raiding and mythic plus. That's when the game would actually die

[Alanar]

Playing through Zereth Mortis now I've started to wonder if Blizzard might introduce a class that uses a combination of Dominance magic and First One's language/runes.

Really? I dont think thats in the cards.

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IMO best to do for player housing is make it phased like Garrison.

But it needs to be phased or instanced otherwise a lot of players will not be able to get it if there is a limited number of plots in the world that aren't phased or instanced.
And have it like original idea for garrisons where there are plots in every zone. And then if you have it in that zone or are visiting someone who has have that area phase you

Guild halls imo would be better in capitals, phased, but they aren't really player housing.

Lets just not do player housing. Huge waste of dev time for what? To sit in some stupid house to hang your rewards on the wall. Ye no ty. Like others have said.. lets not encourage dead world even more especially with all this phased areas I do not like.

Sorry, really dont see a benefit in this at all. Player housing is just a very boring, pointless idea.

[Wangming]

Exactly.
Also garrisons were so anti wow that most of the players actually quit in wod, including me, for several months.

From a technical point of view in a client (s) <-> server(s) architecture player housing is a nightmare. Imagine you wouldn't give every player his own instance flying around in a "player house" zone you would need to load all data from all players dynamically to then let the clients create the houses. So you need to find some middle spot where the illusion is big enough to give you some sort of "oh look there are other people like me who build their playdo house" feeling but keep a normal FPS/latency for everyone. Yet most players in wow are focused on raiding and mythic + so the effort for this tiny group of house lovers is just not worth it. Imagine they would focus fully on housing and lose manpower in raiding and mythic plus. That's when the game would actually die

If you think it is mythic raiders that keep the game afloat, you are massively out of touch with reality. No offense but this "it works in every other online game but it won't work in wow cause we are special" snowflake mindset is just ridiculous. If implementing housing would make wow lose you but gain millions of people that don't want to treat raiding as a second job but would happily mess around with casual content, I would consider that a fair trade,

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Lets just not do player housing. Huge waste of dev time for what? To sit in some stupid house to hang your rewards on the wall. Ye no ty. Like others have said.. lets not encourage dead world even more especially with all this phased areas I do not like.

You sound like the clingy boyfriend who forbids his partner from meeting other guys thinking that if somebody smiled on her she would instantly cheat on him. If unengaging or nonexistent instanced content is the only way to keep people in the open world, the problem is with the open world.

[Alanar]

If you think it is mythic raiders that keep the game afloat, you are massively out of touch with reality. No offense but this "it works in every other online game but it won't work in wow cause we are special" snowflake mindset is just ridiculous. If implementing housing would make wow lose you but gain millions of people that don't want to treat raiding as a second job but would happily mess around with casual content, I would consider that a fair trade,

People want the world and cities to be alive. Putting players in yet another phased area doesnt solve anything and actualy goes against that idea.

Investing in rp element is a good idea, but imo housing is not the way to go.

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If you think it is mythic raiders that keep the game afloat, you are massively out of touch with reality. No offense but this "it works in every other online game but it won't work in wow cause we are special" snowflake mindset is just ridiculous. If implementing housing would make wow lose you but gain millions of people that don't want to treat raiding as a second job but would happily mess around with casual content, I would consider that a fair trade,

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You sound like the clingy boyfriend who forbids his partner from meeting other guys thinking that if somebody smiled on her she would instantly cheat on him. If unengaging or nonexistent instanced content is the only way to keep people in the open world, the problem is with the open world.

Idk how your mind works lol, but you couldnt be more off.

My point still stands as its true. Player housing just isnt a very good idea in wow. Cities and world should be the focus and the removal of certain phased areas. The last thing we need is to put players back in a box like garrisons.

You tried really hard to be funny or insulting, both didnt work. Please dont try that again my god

[Pheraz]

If you think it is mythic raiders that keep the game afloat, you are massively out of touch with reality. No offense but this "it works in every other online game but it won't work in wow cause we are special" snowflake mindset is just ridiculous. If implementing housing would make wow lose you but gain millions of people that don't want to treat raiding as a second job but would happily mess around with casual content, I would consider that a fair trade,

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You sound like the clingy boyfriend who forbids his partner from meeting other guys thinking that if somebody smiled on her she would instantly cheat on him. If unengaging or nonexistent instanced content is the only way to keep people in the open world, the problem is with the open world.

That's not what I said.
WoW is a game for communities of people. For example guilds. Those communities are what keep the game alive in its core. The game is designed around those communities. Player housing is a niche feature and gets very boring after X amount of time for the average wow player. The game is not designed around those types of players. LFG and LFR are features that enable players to be part of a group of players. It's an addition that doesn't change the direction of the game in being a game for a group of players. It axed chores that would be needed to be a true RPG though but it looks like it was worth it.
I'd say it would be actually better to design a completely new game just for player housing instead of trying to press this into WoW and risk a full crash. Maybe that's what they will do with their mobile game.

[Nyel]

Can someone give me a tl;dr of the last week if anything worthwile / mentionable regarding the next expansion happened?

[Highlord Hanibuhl]

Regarding player housing, even though Wildstar is no more, they did a pretty decent job at Housing:



Although I still think a mobile camp (like Red Dead Redemption 2), which you can customise and upgrade, would fit the game so much more. We're all adventurers that venture out in the world and are not bound to one place.
That way, you can have a your 'house' and customise it and still let it be wherever you want!

[Shadochi]

Housing has no innate replayability. You can run the same dungeon for months, you can't place the same cabinet for months.

You obviously haven't seen me playing sims...
tho TBH with the wow engine player housing would be chosing from one of the provided house models and then maybe changing some stuff around

[Nymrohd]

Housing has no innate replayability. You can run the same dungeon for months, you can't place the same cabinet for months. You can not add any dungeons for months and people will still do the dungeons, where a new one is a breath of fresh air. If you don't add housing items for months, people do literally nothing with their housing because there isn't anything to do, it's effectively a one time thing until something else gets added.

You absolutely can place the same cabinet for months. You can place it in different rooms, you can try to move it to a different corner, you can place it in the new house you just bought. Heck you can get a dozen cabinets and stack them in a precise way to create a completely different object that doesn't exist in the game.

First off, on how additional content for housing is added. Almost every patch includes dozens if not hundreds of doodads used to decorate new zones, raids and dungeons. Every single one of those doodads is also a housing item. EVERY ONE OF THEM. Now think about how simple it is to take a single doodad and recolor it a dozen different ways which is what Blizzard does with the other two prominent collectibles in the game (mounts and pets)

But the issue is with houses themselves. Blizzard for whatever reason had extremely limited variety in map objects with their own interiors (I think they are called WMOs in WoW?). Classic had like 3-4 cave systems repeated all over the planet. Most expacs only add a few similar interiors as well. For most races the housing interiors are in the single digits, often the LOW single digits. This tells me that there is an engine issue; something is limiting them on how many complex interiors they can include in the game. This does suggest that any housing would have to be instanced.

If they do solve this issue though, the biggest money maker is the houses themselves. Every expansion could add multiple houses in release (one in each zone & one bigger house/mansion in a capital). You could have guild houses in addition to normal houses (or just have really massive houses owned by guild leaders with permissions given to the guild). You could bring back some guild features as well (the amazing gold maker from Cata that gave your guild 5% for all gold earned, but make that gold limited to only be used for specific purposes like guild housing or repairs). Then each patch could add a couple of new houses. You could even convert dungeon areas into housing. These could call millions of gold, with significant discounts for completing certain achievements and also purchaseable from the cash shop.

Housing also doesn't need to take services away from cities. But it COULD, just for a massive gold cost. The Brutosaur allows you to have a mobile AH for 5 million gold. Perhaps the Steamwheedle cartel could offer to set up shop in your mansions courtyard (or heck, you could provide them a room or an outdoor area close to all the crafting stations) for a similar amount.

If you want to look at housing look at ESO. The professions all work with housing; housing items are among the best sellers and they have unique reagents that drive the gathering economy even further. Every single patch adds more furnishings; every tree and bush, book and chair found in a new zone or dungeon can be part of the housing system. Each patch also adds at least a couple of houses, some of them absolutely massive (I own a three story keep with its own temple and crypt, moat and extensive garden).

As for people saying that no one is interested in spending hours and money in buying and decorating houses . . . you should check some of the most financially successful browser and mobile games out there.

[Shadochi]

Regarding player housing, even though Wildstar is no more, they did a pretty decent job at Housing:

[video=youtube;YlP8ShpFZII]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlP8ShpFZII[video]

Although I still think a mobile camp (like Red Dead Redemption 2), which you can customise and upgrade, would fit the game so much more. We're all adventurers that venture out in the world and are not bound to one place.
That way, you can have a your 'house' and customise it and still let it be wherever you want!

This right here would be the main problem for WOW Housing. We just dont have the interactivity of this form to move and rotate. At most we would get rotating around the Y axis. And moving and rotating would be done with the vehicle UI

[Nymrohd]

This right here would be the main problem for WOW Housing. We just dont have the interactivity of this form to move and rotate. At most we would get rotating around the Y axis. And moving and rotating would be done with the vehicle UI

Given how absolutely littered the world is with doodads I am certain that Blizzard's development tools allow for extreme precision in placing items. Housing would obviously require a completely new UI and completely new functions when in decorator mode.

[Baedril]

This right here would be the main problem for WOW Housing. We just dont have the interactivity of this form to move and rotate. At most we would get rotating around the Y axis. And moving and rotating would be done with the vehicle UI

Yeah, there's some roleplay servers :^) that do this, with full customizability from rotating to recolouring to resizing and I think it's going to have completely spoiled me on player housing in WoW, I just can't imagine a world where blizzard player housing is not just swapping out items in pre-defined slots. Maybe that's just me being too cynical, though.

[Marlamin]

This right here would be the main problem for WOW Housing. We just dont have the interactivity of this form to move and rotate. At most we would get rotating around the Y axis. And moving and rotating would be done with the vehicle UI

It's perfectly possible to do this in WoW, just needs some UI programmers (and obviously client/server devs to implement tranmission/saving of it) to work on it.

Or you know, they could hire Peter who already made this in his addon.

Yeah, there's some <redacted> :^) that do this, with full customizability from rotating to recolouring to resizing and I think it's going to have completely spoiled me on player housing in WoW, I just can't imagine a world where blizzard player housing is not just swapping out items in pre-defined slots. Maybe that's just me being too cynical, though.

Yeah, the stuff some people made on <redacted> is truly amazing/innovative but wouldn't necessarily work for Blizz's version of WoW. There's performance/anti-cheat/exploit/accessibility issues and such they'd want to keep in mind, some of those are definitely issue on some places made on <redacted>. It should still be something Blizz should take inspiration from, though.