Guild Wars 2

miracle.4216:

Really this isn’t going to happen – It would require changing the design of the whole city for starters. And, of course there never would be enough space for everyone. Further when people are offline for extended periods or when they’ve finished playing the game their “house” would just be wasted space. Maybe you might get to rent a flat in an apartment block or something.

I agree that the cities could do with some activities (in addition to vistas etc.). However, non instanced housing would hardly suffice for that, unless the privileged few spent their whole game time sitting on their door steps and entertaining passers by.

Since i cant quote for some reason…

“I don’t think much change of the city would be needed. As it is, much of the city AWAY from any main vendors is pretty much EMPTY/DEAD/USELESS. The game is beautiful and there’s a lot of depth to it, unfortunately it’s also dead once anyone strays away from “hand-held” questing. Housing would add a vibrant sandbox element to this beautiful game and also additional income for Arenanet and money sinks to help the economy.”

Not sure what you mean with the “hand held” questing…because this game is the complete opposite of that system…you can do what ever the hell you please really.

And I often do see a lot of people away from the city centers, exploring, RPing, just chilling, getting vistas, or whatever, at least on my server. This might be different across different servers.

I know a really neat game for you, it’s called the sims. But in all seriousness, what is the big deal with every game people are wanting housing?

Kqpro.8410:

I know a really neat game for you, it’s called the sims. But in all seriousness, what is the big deal with every game people are wanting housing?

Because, it makes the game that much more immersive, fun, and long lasting. I know i would spend hours and hours just on decorating my home. Also opens up a lotta stuff for Anet in the gem store. And for players who dont want it, they dont need one! They can be nomads…haha. Wouldnt harm them at all.

Add to that a “homeshow” kind of forum and people can inspire even more players with their creativity.

And let’s not forget the roleplayers, there’s nothing like a nice, player-made and -run tavern to go after a long day of dungeon crawl and dragonhunting. (In games allowing that, I’ve even seen places like this being frequented by people who normally don’t care much about the roleplay opportunities in such games, yet they still took the opportunity to partake in fun social activities.)

If you could get house items from dungeons, there are also the bragging rights for having gathered them all. Certainly, you can show off your dungeon/story progress with armour and weapons as well, but not all at the same time.

Another common use for houses that hasn’t been mentioned so far: They often may get additional storage space, too. Partly necessary to store furniture, it’s also a good place to put “collectibles”. (So if anyone wants to keep fancy gear that they don’t often use but which looks too cool to throw away wouldn’t take up bank space which is better used for items that are needed regularly. And where better to use the various sets of town clothing than in themed homes?)

+1

Then give us GW2 expansion sets like Pets, Bon Voyage or Mansion&Garden stuff set.

Anyway a great suggestion!

At least some of these would be needed to make this even more fun:

1. It should be instanced and you could invite anyone to join your house and only invited people can get there. The instance could be located virtually anywhere, if you wanna live in Malchor’s Leap with kittenload of Risen in your back yard, go ahead. I’d personally prefer Queensdale over Malchor’s.

2. Choosing a theme and style for the house. For example you would have 5 different themes (1 for each race) and few styles (human themed houses could be either gorgeous villas or plain farmer cabins) but you could freely choose a theme and style despite of character race (charr could get an asura-themed house).

3. Interior design, furniture and decorations with lots of different colors, styles and a free placement of course.

4. Exterior design like walls, roof, chimney, flowers, trees, fence etc etc.

5. Activities like crafting stations or snowball throwing at a yard of a norn themed house. Why not playing some dice with friends?

6. Storage. Add gear lockers, access to bank, or just plain chest which acts like a bank where you can store a small amount of stuff. Maybe an achievement display where invited people can look at trophies of your accomplishments.

Purchasing a house and adding content in it should cost something (gold, karma or trophies). Also much content should be available from dungeons, exploring, events or other activities (for example having a drinking competition with pirates could award you with the table you drank from or helping seraph getting rid of centaur banners could award you with one of those banners).

Also a housing for guilds would be nice. They would be themed larger halls with same content available as individual player housing.

And just in case someone doesn’t understand my english or is too lazy to read:

TLDR: +1

Naattori.9378:

1. It should be instanced and you could invite anyone to join your house and only invited people can get there.

The most convenient way to accomodate for different wishes would probably be the possibility to define access levels for the general public and for individuals.
If you enjoy your privacy, deny public access, if you want to show off (or run a tavern) you might want to allow everyone to get in at any time. Similarly, if you want to share your home with friends (or family, if you don’t worry about your mother changing everything around all the time) you’d give individual people trusted access so they can add to or change the decoration.

Everything else sounds fun, more customization options, yay! (Though I prefer to patiently wait for a good and comfortable implementation of such features rather than getting them quickly, but half-baked.)

I’m having a blonde day and can’t figure out how to “reply with quote”, so I’m going to c/p the relevant text

Basen.8506: I don’t understand why it has to be instanced? 1house per account, 2 million accounts atm divide among 40-50 servers, leaves50.000 houses per world. I don’t really see any difficulty in having 50.000 in this massive world, just don’t make it a cluster fk.

No. Nonononono! One house per account is just about the WORST idea in a long list of things they could do to screw up housing. One house per character is the minimum I would consider to be reasonable, for the very simple reason that our characters aren’t all iterations of the same person, and may have absolutely no reason to know each other or live together. My Charr would never live in human lands, nor my Thief and my Elementalist decorate their homes in the same way. One house per account is the perfect way to render a home totally useless for roleplaying purposes, because you can only set it up to cater to ONE of your alts. One house per account is the biggest reason I gave up on LotRO housing.

On a totally unrelated topic, when I mentioned theming housing regions after races, I didn’t mean that only Sylvari could live in the Sylvari region. I just meant with regard to appearance. Though I’d frankly LOVE to see what a private sylvari residence looks like. And I’d also like to see a variety of different house styles – small cottages or huts, mansions, villas, towers, bowers, grottoes, mausoleums, whatever your fancy, and a wide variety of furnishings to complement them. With the option to alter colours and textures on walls, floors, and furnishings. >.> Not that I’m asking much.

Naattori.9378:

+1

Then give us GW2 expansion sets like Pets, Bon Voyage or Mansion&Garden stuff set.

Anyway a great suggestion!

At least some of these would be needed to make this even more fun:

1. It should be instanced and you could invite anyone to join your house and only invited people can get there. The instance could be located virtually anywhere, if you wanna live in Malchor’s Leap with kittenload of Risen in your back yard, go ahead. I’d personally prefer Queensdale over Malchor’s.

2. Choosing a theme and style for the house. For example you would have 5 different themes (1 for each race) and few styles (human themed houses could be either gorgeous villas or plain farmer cabins) but you could freely choose a theme and style despite of character race (charr could get an asura-themed house).

3. Interior design, furniture and decorations with lots of different colors, styles and a free placement of course.

4. Exterior design like walls, roof, chimney, flowers, trees, fence etc etc.

5. Activities like crafting stations or snowball throwing at a yard of a norn themed house. Why not playing some dice with friends?

6. Storage. Add gear lockers, access to bank, or just plain chest which acts like a bank where you can store a small amount of stuff. Maybe an achievement display where invited people can look at trophies of your accomplishments.

Purchasing a house and adding content in it should cost something (gold, karma or trophies). Also much content should be available from dungeons, exploring, events or other activities (for example having a drinking competition with pirates could award you with the table you drank from or helping seraph getting rid of centaur banners could award you with one of those banners).

Also a housing for guilds would be nice. They would be themed larger halls with same content available as individual player housing.

And just in case someone doesn’t understand my english or is too lazy to read:

TLDR: +1

Some great points here! Would be a lotta work, but IMHO, it’d be totally worth it!

Ekevu.9263 — “The most convenient way to accomodate for different wishes would probably be the possibility to define access levels for the general public and for individuals.
If you enjoy your privacy, deny public access, if you want to show off (or run a tavern) you might want to allow everyone to get in at any time. Similarly, if you want to share your home with friends (or family, if you don’t worry about your mother changing everything around all the time) you’d give individual people trusted access so they can add to or change the decoration.”

This is a good idea, but how would you ever manage that many instances? Just have a giant list to choose from?

ChyldeMyst.5098 — “No. Nonononono! One house per account is just about the WORST idea in a long list of things they could do to screw up housing. One house per character is the minimum I would consider to be reasonable, for the very simple reason that our characters aren’t all iterations of the same person, and may have absolutely no reason to know each other or live together. My Charr would never live in human lands, nor my Thief and my Elementalist decorate their homes in the same way. One house per account is the perfect way to render a home totally useless for roleplaying purposes, because you can only set it up to cater to ONE of your alts. One house per account is the biggest reason I gave up on LotRO housing.”

I do agree with you on this, ALTHOUGH i think you should be able to add permissions on who has admin privileges, so if you do want one house for all characters, you can add your other characters to that list so they can alter/decorate your house as well, instead of having to always send all your items to one character/always decorate from that one character. This would also apply to two people sharing/living in a house together.

The best MMO to date that has handled MMO housing the best was FFXI, everyone had their own personal house to decorate grow flowers store stuff it was AMAZING and so simple.

If you havent heard / seen or played the game and how the housing works

now FFXI is close to 10 years old so dont mind the graphics but just pay attention to the content and how Housing works.

I think GW2 will do somthing along this.

I miss my moghouse! it was so small yet so awesome. andkittenI love the music in ffxi ! so much nostalgia atm

Aeson Thackery.5927:

Ekevu.9263:

The most convenient way to accomodate for different wishes would probably be the possibility to define access levels for the general public and for individuals.
If you enjoy your privacy, deny public access, if you want to show off (or run a tavern) you might want to allow everyone to get in at any time. Similarly, if you want to share your home with friends (or family, if you don’t worry about your mother changing everything around all the time) you’d give individual people trusted access so they can add to or change the decoration.

This is a good idea, but how would you ever manage that many instances? Just have a giant list to choose from?

Pretty much, yes – been there, done that.

Bonus points, though, if there were tabs or checkboxes to filter by “All”, “Own houses”, “Guilds” (if there’d be an option to allow house access to all members of a guild or for guild houses, especially if you belong to multiple guilds), “Friends” (everyone who explicitly put you on the access list), and “Other” (Houses that just generally allow public access).

Additionally, especially for the last one, being able to search for account and character names would be a big help.

Ekevu.9263:

Aeson Thackery.5927:

Ekevu.9263:

The most convenient way to accomodate for different wishes would probably be the possibility to define access levels for the general public and for individuals.
If you enjoy your privacy, deny public access, if you want to show off (or run a tavern) you might want to allow everyone to get in at any time. Similarly, if you want to share your home with friends (or family, if you don’t worry about your mother changing everything around all the time) you’d give individual people trusted access so they can add to or change the decoration.

This is a good idea, but how would you ever manage that many instances? Just have a giant list to choose from?

Pretty much, yes – been there, done that.

Bonus points, though, if there were tabs or checkboxes to filter by “All”, “Own houses”, “Guilds” (if there’d be an option to allow house access to all members of a guild or for guild houses, especially if you belong to multiple guilds), “Friends” (everyone who explicitly put you on the access list), and “Other” (Houses that just generally allow public access).

Additionally, especially for the last one, being able to search for account and character names would be a big help.

Which game has done this before?

What if you implemented a system like the open world place house anywhere, but you also made it instanced?

How do you do this you ask?

The Instance is the Guild Hall, in this case being a a chunk of land that Guilds can purchase, and then you give housing rights to your members, allowing them to build houses on the Guild land, this is kinda a bit of both worlds, and then you can invite people to the Guild hall to see your village if you so choose, etc.

CaptSlate.6205:

What if you implemented a system like the open world place house anywhere, but you also made it instanced?

How do you do this you ask?

The Instance is the Guild Hall, in this case being a a chunk of land that Guilds can purchase, and then you give housing rights to your members, allowing them to build houses on the Guild land, this is kinda a bit of both worlds, and then you can invite people to the Guild hall to see your village if you so choose, etc.

…..sooooooo are you saying the individual houses would be in an instance or in the open world?

The Guild Hall is the instance, but inside the instance you can place houses freely

Just some ideas.

-Housing accessed from home instance, entrance location varies depending on social class decision.
-Upgrade housing requires in-game coin, reputation and in-game advancement in areas like crafting. House upgrades become available when players reach milestones.
-Decorations are earned by in-game events, bought from vendors, bought from cash shop, or crafted. Example: Decorations such as Trophies earned from events, Special decorations from cash-shop, Furniture can be bought and crafted.
-Housing should contain all player services.

Human Housing:
-3 types for the 3 social classes.
-Slum housing appropriate for human lower class story line.
-Common housing that complements the common class human story.
-Upper class housing, why you are having a party on the street is beyond me.

Charr War Band
-Chars live in War Band housing, not personal dwellings.
-Upgrade your War Band with banners, trophies, and troop equipment.
-As your popularity increases, you can recruit more War Band members filling your halls. War Band NPCs drink, fight, tell stories and practice combat.

Asuras Lab
-Asura’s houses are their labs, they live breath and sometimes eat science!
-Upgrade your lab with new equipment, libraries and other social class related items.
-As popularity is gained, you can apply for lab assistants to work on new projects in your lab. Come home to find them pondering over the mysteries of the universe with some humorous results.

Norn Hunting Lodge
-Lodge adorned with the spirit animal of your character.
-Decorate your Lodge with trophies of your hunts.
-I cant think of anything else but there will be ale, and lots of it!

Sylvari’s Guarden Dream
-Sylvari’s personal area is located in the “Dream” accessed from Sylvari Home Instance.
-Flowers and scenery should be appropriately colored to the time of day player awakened.
-I’m guessing there should be plants and plant like furniture lol!

Guild Halls/Hangouts
-A variety of Guild Halls should be able to be purchased in every major city. The types of guild halls available should reflect the area near the city of it’s purchase.
-Entrances to guild halls should be located in the city map where it was purchased. Locations vary by guild hall purchased. Guild hall should also be available for fast travel.
-Guild hall upgrades should include defenses, NPC bodyguards, additional rooms, banners, trophies and player services.
-Would be awesome to have guild crafting stations where guild members can craft armor with guild symbol adorned on it.
-Assault/Defend guild halls through scheduled PVP events. Challenged must be issued and accepted.
-More upgrades become available through Guild pvp/pve milestones.

Sorry for the long post, I tried to break up for easy reading!

There is alot of room in the cities, it just depends on how they do it. For example, when they step in the door they will no longer be in the city, but in the house instance. You could have settings to have your house OPEN (everyone can come in) or PRIVATE (only friends can come in) perhaps there could be multiple people living in the same “houses” in the city but just in different “instances” of the house itself.

Do it like LOTRO where there were multiple “neighborhoods.” So basically there are preset plots of land to purchase within a given neighborhood. This way you have maybe 20-30 neighbors. The instances are clean looking, but free reign to choose house style, yard decorations, etc.

I’ve never played a game with player housing, so maybe this is how it works already, or maybe there’s a better way, but how I imagine instanced housing working with a persistent feeling:

Maybe make an area in each major city, like our personal instance, with a street of buildings. Each one is an instance, maybe there’s 5-10.

You choose one (different floor plans) for your home. You can decorate, etc.

You can mark your house as explorable or private.

You can enter any of the 5-10 buildings and go to a random explorable home to have fun seeing what others have done. You have a list in your hero panel listing your last 10 visited homes and can mark some as favorites.

This way you can explore and have a feeling of persistence but it’s still instaced.

Aeson Thackery.5927:

Not sure what you mean with the “hand held” questing…because this game is the complete opposite of that system…you can do what ever the hell you please really.
And I often do see a lot of people away from the city centers, exploring, RPing, just chilling, getting vistas, or whatever, at least on my server. This might be different across different servers.

By hand-held, I mean Guild Wars 2 is(unfortunately) NOT a sandbox game. It is a theme park game. All theme park games feel “hand-held” to me. If you think GW2 is sandbox, then you’ve never played a good one, just my opinion. I don’t like theme parks, but I love GW because of its PvP and it entertains me as an interim game until the next “Ultima Online” sandbox game comes along if ever. Just feels like such a shame because GW2 could be an epic sandbox game with some additional tweaks.

I’m on Yak’s Bend a fairly populated server. Regarding people away from city centers "exploring, RPing, just chilling, getting vistas or “whatever”… Getting vistas is all I see on rare occasion. I don’t see anything else you’ve mentioned there rarely ever at all. Housing within the city would/should add some fundamental meaning other than just doing “whatever”.

Perhaps Guilds can fight over control of particular cities and those who have control can enjoy the non-instanced housing, although I’d much rather there be a system where it’s available for purchase/on-going maintenance.

Wow, I could not have been more excited after reading this. Housing would be such an amazing addition to Guild Wars 2. I’m really looking forward to this addition in the future.

miracle.4216:

Aeson Thackery.5927:

Not sure what you mean with the “hand held” questing…because this game is the complete opposite of that system…you can do what ever the hell you please really.
And I often do see a lot of people away from the city centers, exploring, RPing, just chilling, getting vistas, or whatever, at least on my server. This might be different across different servers.

By hand-held, I mean Guild Wars 2 is(unfortunately) NOT a sandbox game. It is a theme park game. All theme park games feel “hand-held” to me. If you think GW2 is sandbox, then you’ve never played a good one, just my opinion. I don’t like theme parks, but I love GW because of its PvP and it entertains me as an interim game until the next “Ultima Online” sandbox game comes along if ever. Just feels like such a shame because GW2 could be an epic sandbox game with some additional tweaks.

I’m on Yak’s Bend a fairly populated server. Regarding people away from city centers "exploring, RPing, just chilling, getting vistas or “whatever”… Getting vistas is all I see on rare occasion. I don’t see anything else you’ve mentioned there rarely ever at all. Housing within the city would/should add some fundamental meaning other than just doing “whatever”.

Perhaps Guilds can fight over control of particular cities and those who have control can enjoy the non-instanced housing, although I’d much rather there be a system where it’s available for purchase/on-going maintenance.

You’re partially correct, but it is not a “traditional” themepark mmo, ala WoW. And i know a good sandbox, i played one of the ultimate ones for four years, Star Wars Galaxies. Yes it has quests, but you dont have to do them in any order, heck you dont even have to do them at ALL. You could do entirely PvP, or crafting, or just explore. “Hand-held” questing is a game like WoW, where the quests all lead to one another, and it guides you to a specific area, quest A leads to quest B, quest B leads to C, etc. So no, there is no hand held questing in GW2, there are just quests for you to do, if you so choose. This game is also way more open than any other themepark mmo, such as WoW, SWTOR, etc, etc.

Aaron.1495:

I’ve never played a game with player housing, so maybe this is how it works already, or maybe there’s a better way…

I have played several games with housing systems, they are very popular but alot of games leave them out because housing is normally the LEAST multiplayer aspect of an MMO.

Basic example of a housing system:
I played a game that gave everyone a house at their home city. The house was a 1 room shack you could buy furniture for and place using a grid system. Furniture gave boons to players and sometimes even quests. Other types of furniture could be used as storage or even used to grow plants. House was used for storage, mail, and to change characters.

Advanced example of a housing system:
Another game I have played had player housing areas. Each area carried a set amount of houses and areas were randomly generated depending oh the number of player’s registered on the server. so if you were player 1,620 your house might be in area 0016X-0020Y. Your name was listed on the front door and you could leave the door unlocked, locked or give out keys. House was 1 room but could be expanded 1X1 row per-upgrade. Furniture was placed on a grid system and some of them were used to create things such as food and items, some your player could interact with, and others were just for looks.

So player housing can be used as a social function or it could be used as a place where players can do character maintenance or go afk without putting undue stress on a public area like a city

Anyway Aeson, I agree with your original post that there should be non-instanced housing! Especially in Divinity’s Reach.

However, Non-instanced housing should serve a purpose in GW2 and here’s how:
-Any vendor/bank access needed should easily be available from your house alone.
-The house can remain “open” to the public as other building structures currently are,. You could decorate it by displaying trophies of your achievements, rare items, mini statues of your characters or decorative items to be purchased in trading post.
-Housing would be a method for players to learn about others, view their “personal Guild Wars 1/2 story”, their achievements and encourage player interaction.
-Each time you decide to explore a city, you have the potential to learn something new.
-Certain areas/structures could be seen as premium spaces purchased by wealthiest individuals in the community or those who have impacted the world in some way.
-Perhaps you may have unlocked/achieved X things in GW1 and 2 in order to be qualify for premium non-instanced housing and keeping it may be a grind on its own.

Things like THIS would make a city ALIVE and make exploring interesting/meaningful. Obviously there would need to be some on-going costs/work to keep a space dedicated to you otherwise it would grow stale from inactive players.

Again, not everyone should have housing some may not even want it. But there are people like us who want to immerse ourselves in the game in a meaningful way. There could also be an instanced housing option that would provide some of the same benefits, perhaps housing within instanced Alliance Guild Cities/Halls? (as opposed to each guild in the alliance having their own hall ala GW1 as all of them were frequently empty).

This is a pretty good video of housing from EQ2. http://youtu.be/QmYrUAWdudY Shows a before and after and they explain how they use items in different ways to create something different.

I had so much fun decorating my house in EQ2 and would’t mind something similar to this. Where we can make house items, purchase, as well as find them through the world as rewards etc..

I am a FFXI escapee, and I am LOVING everything about GW2….but I really miss my moghouse! I would be really happy to have a space to decorate again, doing holiday events and getting the decorations from them was one of my favorite things about FFXI and would love to see something like that implemented in GW2.

But I love the idea of instanced, with the option to invite friends in to hang out when you want to take a break from all the adventuring!

After reading the Title, the first thing that came to mind was the WildStar game.

Playing Housing is becoming very popular in games in today’s age. But FIRST I would like to see Guild Housing like the original Guild Wars. Loved having our own vendors and a place to hang in Guild Wars.

Guild Housing/Hall First THEN fiddle with the idea of Player Housing.

miracle.4216:

Anyway Aeson, I agree with your original post that there should be non-instanced housing! Especially in Divinity’s Reach.

However, Non-instanced housing should serve a purpose in GW2 and here’s how:
-Any vendor/bank access needed should easily be available from your house alone.
-The house can remain “open” to the public as other building structures currently are,. You could decorate it by displaying trophies of your achievements, rare items, mini statues of your characters or decorative items to be purchased in trading post.
-Housing would be a method for players to learn about others, view their “personal Guild Wars 1/2 story”, their achievements and encourage player interaction.
-Each time you decide to explore a city, you have the potential to learn something new.
-Certain areas/structures could be seen as premium spaces purchased by wealthiest individuals in the community or those who have impacted the world in some way.
-Perhaps you may have unlocked/achieved X things in GW1 and 2 in order to be qualify for premium non-instanced housing and keeping it may be a grind on its own.

Things like THIS would make a city ALIVE and make exploring interesting/meaningful. Obviously there would need to be some on-going costs/work to keep a space dedicated to you otherwise it would grow stale from inactive players.

Again, not everyone should have housing some may not even want it. But there are people like us who want to immerse ourselves in the game in a meaningful way. There could also be an instanced housing option that would provide some of the same benefits, perhaps housing within instanced Alliance Guild Cities/Halls? (as opposed to each guild in the alliance having their own hall ala GW1 as all of them were frequently empty).

Some great points, i didnt really think of that. I do like that idea, the people who really want non-instanced housing could have one out of a few limited lots all across tyria. They just better be prepared to pay a hefty price haha. I can only imagine what a castle apartment would go for at the very top of Divinity’s Reach…shudders oh what i would pay for that

Quriocity.6713 — “But I love the idea of instanced, with the option to invite friends in to hang out when you want to take a break from all the adventuring!”

Although it seems simple, this is one of the biggest things! I LOVE how houses add a nice place to relax, chill out, and if theyre smart, it’d be a place you could customize to your heart’s content! Like you said, i loved collecting things from holiday events, rare stuff (statues, pictures, fountains, holograms) from all over, and from drops in dungeons, in SWG. Then i could get some guildies or just random friends to come over, and we just chill out and show off our houses, and talk for a bit!

LoboKendo.8492 — “After reading the Title, the first thing that came to mind was the WildStar game.
Playing Housing is becoming very popular in games in today’s age. But FIRST I would like to see Guild Housing like the original Guild Wars. Loved having our own vendors and a place to hang in Guild Wars.
Guild Housing/Hall First THEN fiddle with the idea of Player Housing.”

Anet has been quoted in the past that these will probably come at the same time, and it makes sense to as well.

Quriocity.6713:

I am a FFXI escapee, and I am LOVING everything about GW2….but I really miss my moghouse! I would be really happy to have a space to decorate again, doing holiday events and getting the decorations from them was one of my favorite things about FFXI and would love to see something like that implemented in GW2.

But I love the idea of instanced, with the option to invite friends in to hang out when you want to take a break from all the adventuring!

FFXI housing had so much potential and gave a good anchor point for players. Made it feel like home. I would go all the way home b4 I loged out, now I logout in an empty house in my home instance. not the same feeling.
Too bad they never realy expanded on FFXI housing.

Alexander Quess.1932:

Quriocity.6713:

I am a FFXI escapee, and I am LOVING everything about GW2….but I really miss my moghouse! I would be really happy to have a space to decorate again, doing holiday events and getting the decorations from them was one of my favorite things about FFXI and would love to see something like that implemented in GW2.

But I love the idea of instanced, with the option to invite friends in to hang out when you want to take a break from all the adventuring!

FFXI housing had so much potential and gave a good anchor point for players. Made it feel like home. I would go all the way home b4 I loged out, now I logout in an empty house in my home instance. not the same feeling.
Too bad they never realy expanded on FFXI housing.

Agreed, I love having that sense of “Home”. Hard to describe in words, but when you actually feel it, it’s awesome!!

I’m not sure how many players are in each server but it seems like few enough where you could have persistent housing per server (idk if that’s possible or not). So not all 3 million players would have to divide up the same world? but even if that’s not possible, you could have “premium housing” in the persistent world. Obviously this would be reserved for the wealthy players (in-game) and would require keeping up appearances. I’m sure a lot of things can be done with this.

It should be instanced but should allow you to see the houses of your friends. Like, a top 5 maybe?

houses…slums…failing schools… ….nice

Persistent housing offers alot but has many problems in return.
Instance Housing is the easiest and less demanding housing system.

I do understand, and like, the idea of allowing people to enter your house.
Only thing I can think of is allowing people to enter your house through partying like home districts do…
AND/OR…
When entering your home you are promoted “Enter Your Home” and “Enter Friends Home [TEXT BOX].” Enter player name or select from friends list to enter that player’s home IF the player chooses to leave his/her door unlocked (ie. Allow other players to enter your home).

I would really like housing implemented. The personal instance doesn’t seem special enough as it is so adding character housing within it would be a great complement to it. IMO anyways.

I remember following a Guild Wars 2 Dev Discussion Panel before the game was released and Player Housing came up. The Dev said that while player housing would not be in the initial release, that is something they may consider in the future, but I have not seen any information or indication of any type of player housing since then.

Instanced is fine I believe, to make sure that there won’t be any ghost towns after a while, but Airships, or a little estate like the ’Wizard’s fief’ or a wizard tower with reacheable bank or a vendor sounds great. (Just not a casual house in the city please)

In any case looking forward to it..

I think instanced housing is fine, so long as it’s fully contestable and upgradeable.
Example: Instanced areas exist in all of the zones(some needing to be unlocked via personal story/world completion, such as orr) with a waypoint near them for fast traveling. You enter the instance and it’s basically your plot of land, you get to purchase and upgrade a house on that land, fully furnish it with random furnishings you can make(new craft carpenter?)/buy and grow a garden or something in your “yard,” for cosmetic purposes only. The ability to “dye” your house any of the dye colors you have(they’d act as paint) and just overall some really nice housing options, such as allowing people to view it while you’re not around or inviting your friends over for a party.

I would like have like 1k-2k persistent houses, really expensive in open world, the houses could be traded between players, and other players can atack a house to conquist it, players with a house can pk other players arround their house(with item drops)
I would like the same for guilds.

But in this game for casuals carebears we will get a instanced house where u can change ur bed and have a merch who sells u kitten.

there isnt much space for all houses in world…

I like the idea of an instance, but with a stripped down environment option for those of us that want to build our homes ourselves from the ground up and from our own designs. Maximize our potential for contentment and freedom by even giving us ways to turn housing into sandbox style micro-player-made content.
The way to do it right: EQ2 has always seemed like a gold standard to me. That is how it is done. You can fill a house, you can build a house, you can create house themes and there is a whole rating system for players to really get involved with.

LOTRO had housing I liked at first, but quickly grew frustrated with, as I felt I like was filling in a paint-by-number with their lock-to furniture placement. I liked being able to show off my trophies, but I was left feeling frustrated and constrained by it, on more than one occasion.
Mog house in FFXI was very tiny, but again… better than nothing at all and decent enough for its time, given how old the game is.

The artist in me wants personal choices, I don’t want the choices made for me. Which is why I get a bit concerned about Arenanet’s plans for their player instance. Especially after GW1’s Hall of Monuments. That felt very impersonal. How much will be us? How much will be “fill in the blank spot we put right here”/paint by number? Housing that gives me a developer level feeling of freedom is fantastic.

Also … Imagine furniture/wall/floor dye systems. How fantastic would that be?

Aragnor.4250:

Instanced is fine I believe, to make sure that there won’t be any ghost towns after a while.

When I was making MODs for an old game called NWN I created a basic function that took care of that issue. This was back when servers could not hold very many people and 100 was considered massive. To keep the illusion that the player was in a big active city I created a script that on heartbeat the number of players in zone was checked. Too few players would cause the server to spawn generic NPCs around merchant shops and NPCs that walked around common waypoints. When too many players were in zone then it would remove NPCs so players would not lag from massive NPCs.

Alexander Quess.1932:

I remember following a Guild Wars 2 Dev Discussion Panel before the game was released and Player Housing came up. The Dev said that while player housing would not be in the initial release, that is something they may consider in the future, but I have not seen any information or indication of any type of player housing since then.

They said it’s definitely coming sometime down the road.

all those trophies you pick up in game….automatically placed on a trophy cabinet in your house…with dye option to change the colours…:)

Naattori.9378:

+1

Then give us GW2 expansion sets like Pets, Bon Voyage or Mansion&Garden stuff set.

Anyway a great suggestion!

At least some of these would be needed to make this even more fun:

1. It should be instanced and you could invite anyone to join your house and only invited people can get there. The instance could be located virtually anywhere, if you wanna live in Malchor’s Leap with kittenload of Risen in your back yard, go ahead. I’d personally prefer Queensdale over Malchor’s.

2. Choosing a theme and style for the house. For example you would have 5 different themes (1 for each race) and few styles (human themed houses could be either gorgeous villas or plain farmer cabins) but you could freely choose a theme and style despite of character race (charr could get an asura-themed house).

3. Interior design, furniture and decorations with lots of different colors, styles and a free placement of course.

4. Exterior design like walls, roof, chimney, flowers, trees, fence etc etc.

5. Activities like crafting stations or snowball throwing at a yard of a norn themed house. Why not playing some dice with friends?

6. Storage. Add gear lockers, access to bank, or just plain chest which acts like a bank where you can store a small amount of stuff. Maybe an achievement display where invited people can look at trophies of your accomplishments.

Purchasing a house and adding content in it should cost something (gold, karma or trophies). Also much content should be available from dungeons, exploring, events or other activities (for example having a drinking competition with pirates could award you with the table you drank from or helping seraph getting rid of centaur banners could award you with one of those banners).

Also a housing for guilds would be nice. They would be themed larger halls with same content available as individual player housing.

And just in case someone doesn’t understand my english or is too lazy to read:

TLDR: +1

This, 1 zillion billion trillion times this. Implement this and you can have my money. you can have it all.

Bumping this great suggestion.

Ys Majika.4263:

all those trophies you pick up in game….automatically placed on a trophy cabinet in your house…with dye option to change the colours…:)

Especially the bigger accomplishments! They could have rare trophy designs and types as well to display.

Yeah I want houses but definitely not instances houses.

The LotRO instanced neighborhood way seems to me to be the only feasible way to accommodate everyone while still giving a community feel. I’ve seen housing in many games and that really was the best, other than having too few hook points and having a monthly upkeep fee. Though at least if you didn’t pay the fee, all your neat items just went into an escrow location for retrieval once you paid.

DaoC had a monthly fee that if missed just once meant every single item you’d put in the house poofed. This made it mandatory to login on that character and pay that fee. Losing my house due to RL distractions, combined with the horrors of Trials of Atlantis, well .. bye bye to that MMO for me. I pay taxes and a mortgage and bills in RL, games that give me the same pressures lose a lot of the fun escape factor.

Horizons had world housing, released in lots, causing a landrush every time one opened up. Not only did the wilds become suburbs, but there was a ton of bad feeling and flamewars from people that got edged out in their attempt to get their dream lot. Those of you saying “not everyone can have a house” please remember GW2 is made to make everyone happy to see other players.

So yeah. I really do want a house to decorate, I’m fine with it being an investment of money and time, but I absolutely don’t want the world cluttered with houses or to have all that investment lost if I don’t choose to play that character (or the game) for a bit. No upkeep fees, PLEASE. This game is pitched as one from which you can walk away for a time and resume later without losing anything.

Not that I expect to do anything with any spare leisure moments for a long time but play this game — still, part of the joy is that I’m not grinding or compelled to be here. I’m here because it’s fun.