Guild Wars 2

I think putting crafting in housing get is a bad idea, due to affects it’seems had on previous games.

It can decrease the pop of cities, and make the game appear less lively.

Been discussed many time before over the years. It’s a no go.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Personal-Housing
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Personal-Housing/first
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Player-Housing-anytime-soon/first#post6177737
and combining two of the favorite dead horse topics in to one
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/On-Mounts-Housing/first

and there are likely many more.

Mods please merge.

guild hall is the beta of housing :P

more seriously answer now.before the release of the game they said that at some point they will add player housing but it’s not important right now. prob when they can spare time they will make something either improve the home instance or create something better than that

Have a house… so you can AFK in it. Wow. Fun.

can it be a crafting skill like in runescape with cool little animates lmao XD

DeanBB.4268:

Have a house… so you can AFK in it. Wow. Fun.

That is, pretty much, the reason ANet isn’t thinking of investing in personal housing. It either doesn’t get used in any meaningful capacity, or players AFK there instead of doing things in open world.

Rauderi.8706:

DeanBB.4268:

Have a house… so you can AFK in it. Wow. Fun.

That is, pretty much, the reason ANet isn’t thinking of investing in personal housing. It either doesn’t get used in any meaningful capacity, or players AFK there instead of doing things in open world.

Oh yes and where is the source for this information? I would really like to see it.

Btw if people are just afking in their homes where is the problem in that? After all if that’s all they are gonna do when logged in what makes you think they are not already doing the same in a city? Having tons of ppl afk in a city does exactly the same as what some of you are saying is what you are concerned about. Sure you may “see” these people but does that actually mean it is a lively population? Ask something in map chat and you may still get no response = not a very lively place. So really, what exactly is the difference?

Actually I would rather have ppl afk in their homes instead of the cities so that when you do see people in the cities there is a good chance that they are actually playing the game and not just standing there afk showing off all their glorious leet skins/legendary weapons. They are taking up population spots which could be filled with real people doing stuff. You can be sure these people that afk to display their wealth/special snowflake whatever would still do so in the city anyway rather than their own home instance. So really, I can’t see at all why anyone would afk in their home instance anyway, what exactly would they get out of it?

I think the Pros would far out weigh the Cons for player housing and I think Anet would also agree, or in the least their wallet. Look at guild halls, have they taken away the afkers or populations from the cities? If so I haven’t noticed as such, they still seem lively to me or as dead as they used to be, however you want to look at it.

Rauderi.8706:

DeanBB.4268:

Have a house… so you can AFK in it. Wow. Fun.

That is, pretty much, the reason ANet isn’t thinking of investing in personal housing. It either doesn’t get used in any meaningful capacity, or players AFK there instead of doing things in open world.

I’ve never played a game with housing but your afk comment doesn’t strike me as something that’s likely to happen. Are there that many people who are going to log on to play but then instead of playing afk in an instance? Because to me that doesn’t even make sense. Why would they log on to play and then only afk?

The only time I can see people afk’ing there if when they have to afk after playing a while and choose to do it there instead of the open world where they might scale up events, be reported by other players on suspicion of afk farming or be killed by mobs.

Personally, If they are the types to log on in order to afk I’d prefer that they afk in an instance instead of cluttering up maps.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Personally, If they are the types to log on in order to afk I’d prefer that they afk in an instance instead of cluttering up maps.

That’s a fair point.

And I’m certainly not against the idea of having actual home instances. Character-based with account-bound inventories, personal quests, etc. It’d be awesome.

Buuut, I’m sure ANet has examined other games like WildStar and realized it hasn’t quite worked out. And then there’s the Legendary cancellation that tells me it’s not gonna happen in the foreseeable future.

If there’s any sort of hope for it, it’s in the fact that guild halls exist, so the concept work and possible reusable code is in there somewhere. Definitely won’t see it until, bare minimum, the upcoming expansion.

I’m ok with Home Instance being “Player Housing”.

Give us an empty domicile in each Starting City Home Instance.

Add free decorations from a vendor(unlocking new ones as you level your toon), and decorations that unlock as rewards from doing in-game stuff(events, map completions, JP end chests, etc.) NO CRAFTING for Home Instance decorations. Don’t make this part a “gold sink”…Guild Halls do that enough.

Also some “Scavanger-Hunt” style things, or some collections, to unlock Crafting Stations/Vendors/BLTP/Bank Access in your Home Instance. Make it all accessible for everyone…i.e. nothing exclusive to Raids/EotM/Fractals.

I know this would take work to tweak base game functionality of Home Instances, but base structure/functionality is there from GH stuff…I hope someone can look at this for future inclusion/development.

It shouldn’t be the home instance, parts of the game should become instanced “homes” just like dimensions in Rift!!! Want a home in the volcano in Mount Maelstrom? Or in a Hylek-style colourful village? Maybe the basement of Durmand Priory HQ? HELL YESSS!

Mea.5491:

It shouldn’t be the home instance, parts of the game should become instanced “homes” just like dimensions in Rift!!! Want a home in the volcano in Mount Maelstrom? Or in a Hylek-style colourful village? Maybe the basement of Durmand Priory HQ? HELL YESSS!

Earn a home in EVERY ZONE!

I’m not sure if I’m serious or not. :P

Rauderi.8706:

Earn a home in EVERY ZONE!

I’m not sure if I’m serious or not. :P

Earning a home in every zone sounds like an awesome idea! o_o

I saw player housing in FF14. To me it really gets me into my character. I’m not just a random hero wandering the land. I actually live in this land. GW2 could do that too. I rarely visit my home instance but I might use it with this feature.

More immersion for us. ANET gets a chance to mass produce gemstore decorations for houses like they mass produce gliders.

The data footprint is non existent in today’s standards. It would take 7 numbers to describe a decoration: 1 id and 6 for position/rotation. 28 bytes… that’s nothing anymore.

I actually like the earn a home in every zone thing.

mauried.5608:

One of the issues with player housing I have experianced in other games that have it , is what to do with the houses when the player leaves the game.
You can easily end up with the equivalent of deserted cities full of abandoned houses.
MMO companies are reluctant to take someones house for the same reasons that they dont delete your characters even if you havnt played for many years.

In Lord of the Rings online you get kicked out of your house if you don’t pay the rent. All your stuff put in escrow. In Ultima Online your house would decay in 30 days, if you don’t refresh it. After 30 days its drops and all your stuff it up for grabs by other players.

I would love to see real housing in GW2 but like another poster said. This staff can’t even get out the legendaries that were promised with the expansion eight months ago, and just released the third wing to the raid. Most expansions are on there second or third raid after eight months.

But you know, who knows. What most MMO companies consider a priority in an expansion. Like lots zones, dungeons to play, full complete raids, fulfilling on promises made, following up the expansion content after release. ANET decides lets fix a 3 year old world boss. The direction of this company is completely schizophrenic. If they spent the next year on a quest chain to get tin foil hats I wouldn’t be the slightest surprised.

For housing, my characters just need a box…..

Andy Warhol.6250:

For housing, my characters just need a box…..

I tried to find a picture of a Charr in a box, but this is the best I could find:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/6a/dc/df/6adcdf2bb55af6e227c9f31c316c5e8e.jpg

As much as I liked housing in DAoC, I would prefer they skip that here. If they need to spend time on anything, it’s fixing the things that are already released.

Maybe finish the second underwater weapon for Revenant for example. Or, the character movement lock that has been happening since launch, where you see your character trying to move but are stuck to the ground (even though not immobilized).

I’d rather they fix the current issues first.

I have mixed feelings about player housing. My experience from games that actually have housing is that players, in general, rarely use it.

It tends to be a cool place to store your trophies but beyond that they offer no functionality.

Lotro…housing instances are ghost towns. You get personal storage there but with shared storage accessible in towns, there’s no reason to visit your home.

Swtor…pretty much the same.

Asheron’s Call (going waaay back) had the most functionality in that you can hook items that buff you. Items you quest for and are rewarded with can be hooked to provide a small buff to your stats.

AC had the coolest feature in that housing was not instanced. You could stumble across various housing settlements. The other 2 listed above were instanced.

About the only benefit is that Anet could put housing specific items on the gem store as a revenue generator. Both Lotro and Swtor did that. As for usability, I have yet to experience housing that is more than a fluff item.

Personally, I don’t think housing should be instanced. Also, for it to be of any use, it should give some worthwhile bonuses to stay a spell – Perhaps bonuses to select stats, karma, goldfind etc… or an equivalent food/utility buff of some sort. They could also be hubs for social activity.

In a game that is B2P and there is no real penalty for taking a break and not logging in for a while, I can only see player housing added to the Home Instance. Otherwise, “Playertown” would grow to fill an entire map and never go away, regardless of how empty it would be.

And if in your home instance, and nobody sees it but you (and those few you invite), then what purpose does it serve? I have yet to read any truly compelling purpose.

Maybe… attach a corral next to it to store all your unused mounts? :O

I played this game (villager’s and Heroes) that had a sort of instance housing system but not really. For those of you that played GW1 you would remember they had servers or worlds or whatever (zones?) that you could choose to play on. Those instances worked sort of like that. You pick your “home” instance which had about 60-80 houses in it. You would buy only 1 of them of course but you could see every other player’s house that also belonged to that instance.

They could do something like that here for a roleplay type thing as well as a community/social area. In that game guilds could create their own instance/town. Granted the houses there were nothing more than glorified banks and you could not even enter your house or customise it too much. However I am sure Anet could do wonders here with a bit of time/thought and skill.

Andy Warhol.6250:

Personally, I don’t think housing should be instanced. Also, for it to be of any use, it should give some worthwhile bonuses to stay a spell – Perhaps bonuses to select stats, karma, goldfind etc… or an equivalent food/utility buff of some sort. They could also be hubs for social activity.

Not sure how this would work. In order for player A to enter his home without it being an instance it would need to be present regardless of which megaserver he is in. This would seem to require that every player’s house would need to be present in every server of whichever map player housing was placed in.

Lets say there are 300,000 players. Sure some arent playing any more now, but when the next big content patch comes there is no pay wall to keep them from coming back, so they could very well all return. Imagine hundreds of thousands of unique player character homes. This could mean multiple zones, each larger than any zone currently existing in the game.

I think it could be interesting to see really. Based on the real world this could mean a space larger than San Francisco county.

The home instance is good enough.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

The home instance is good enough.

It’s really not, because it’s not intended to feel like it belongs to the character, they just happen to live in that area. You can’t do anything with the buildings, and random people wander around in the area, living their lives just as your characters do.

The true idea behind personal housing is for it to be something that feels like it belongs to you and/or your characters. Allow people to personalize it, much as they personalize their characters. Maybe nobody else will notice or care, but some players want something they can look at and say “I changed this.” In a world where everything resets, that’s a rare feeling.

Fine. The home instance is good enough . . . for me. If I want more, I’ll play The Sims. Right now, I’d rather they work on content than anything else.

Steven.7534:

I think the question for getting player housing started about 3 years ago…

I was just wondering if we are any closer in getting player housing?

Don’t get me wrong, the guild stuff is pretty nice looking ,however, I’m not going to invest time, mats, and gold/gems into some thing that isn’t mine. That simple.

Honestly, I’d love player housing as long as they don’t allow merchants inside them. I’ve enjoyed MMO’s with with this feature, EQ2 comes to mind (RIP Next), though with the guild halls having merchants and all, made the game feel empty.

If we can’t have player housing, could we at least have the ability to log out and log back into our home instances without getting kicked from them upon login?

Paulytnz.7619:

I played this game (villager’s and Heroes) that had a sort of instance housing system but not really. For those of you that played GW1 you would remember they had servers or worlds or whatever (zones?) that you could choose to play on. Those instances worked sort of like that. You pick your “home” instance which had about 60-80 houses in it. You would buy only 1 of them of course but you could see every other player’s house that also belonged to that instance.

LotRO also does this, with infinitely spawned duplicate neighborhoods accessed by specific portals in the world, location determined by your preferred racial architectural style. The problem there for me was two fold: One, there were maybe twenty or so homes per neighborhood, of varying size and customizability (they had attachment points and item limits), and a guild couldn’t claim all the homes. So even if a guild went into one neighborhood, creating the instance from scratch, random other people could use up the slots so you couldn’t actually live near your friends by the time you had the gold to buy.

Two, even with all these spawned maps, you had to pay biweekly mortgage. You could pay a bit in advance, but if you happened not to log in for a while, you lost the house. All your furniture went into an escrow box at an NPC in the map’s center and you could get it out to furnish a new place if you had bag space to hold it and could afford the purchase fee of a new house, which probably would be by strangers as all the homes by your guild would be bought up (including yours, when you lost it someone else could snap it up).

So I think GW2 might do better with individual personal house instances, accessed from various locations in the world, to which you can invite others and set permissions as to who may randomly enter and use/rearrange the furniture. There should be zero maintenance to keep what you have even if you vanish for a year. And ideally from my perspective, each of your alts could have a separate version to suit their varying RP personae but you could enter any of your houses on any of your alts. There could be a drop down like there is of guilds when walking into a guild hall so you can choose which alt’s domicile to visit.

Donari.5237:

Paulytnz.7619:

I played this game (villager’s and Heroes) that had a sort of instance housing system but not really. For those of you that played GW1 you would remember they had servers or worlds or whatever (zones?) that you could choose to play on. Those instances worked sort of like that. You pick your “home” instance which had about 60-80 houses in it. You would buy only 1 of them of course but you could see every other player’s house that also belonged to that instance.

LotRO also does this, with infinitely spawned duplicate neighborhoods accessed by specific portals in the world, location determined by your preferred racial architectural style. The problem there for me was two fold: One, there were maybe twenty or so homes per neighborhood, of varying size and customizability (they had attachment points and item limits), and a guild couldn’t claim all the homes. So even if a guild went into one neighborhood, creating the instance from scratch, random other people could use up the slots so you couldn’t actually live near your friends by the time you had the gold to buy.

Two, even with all these spawned maps, you had to pay biweekly mortgage. You could pay a bit in advance, but if you happened not to log in for a while, you lost the house. All your furniture went into an escrow box at an NPC in the map’s center and you could get it out to furnish a new place if you had bag space to hold it and could afford the purchase fee of a new house, which probably would be by strangers as all the homes by your guild would be bought up (including yours, when you lost it someone else could snap it up).

So I think GW2 might do better with individual personal house instances, accessed from various locations in the world, to which you can invite others and set permissions as to who may randomly enter and use/rearrange the furniture. There should be zero maintenance to keep what you have even if you vanish for a year. And ideally from my perspective, each of your alts could have a separate version to suit their varying RP personae but you could enter any of your houses on any of your alts. There could be a drop down like there is of guilds when walking into a guild hall so you can choose which alt’s domicile to visit.

Hmmm interesting, I never did get to play LOTRO, every time I downloaded and installed it, it would never connect to their servers.

It was the same however in this game where if you were inactive for a while you would be kicked out of the town but everything was saved for when you came back to buy into another town. I could easily see anet avoiding this issue by not having any rentals or kick outs.

Also in that game guilds could rule entire towns. Simply by “creating” the village themselves and then forbidding or allowing non guild members to be able to join. I could see that working here.

To quote: The Lonely Island “Anything is possible!”

I do like housing. I like MMORPG’s that give a variety of things to do when I log in – and having my own little part of Tyria makes me feel more invested into the game.

Player housing. I played another game that had it. There were 2 options, you could either have a free studio which was instanced or you could buy a house in one of the many communities. The bigger the house the more that it cost plus there was a monthly maintenance fee.

The reason to like housing. Taking from my experience in that game.

We could make or buy cabinets to store things in. Look at it as extra warehouse space.

You could buy hearthblooms or guestblooms. Only you could water the hearthblooms but anyone visiting your home could water your guestbloom. They would give different items such as dyes, armor pieces for skins and other things that were specific to that game.

You could decorate it with trophies of the dungeons that you have run or the bosses that you have killed. I had 2 different dragon heads on my wall.

You could put paintings of different places from in game on your walls. You could add furniture, beds, chairs, tables, rugs and even walls.

You could have your friends over and throw parties :-)

I’d love personal housing, or more specifically a personal airship you can decorate and moves with content updates.

Though honestly, even though they kind of have the system in the game now, I’m not holding my breath on that ever happening.

Blixxis.6798:

mauried.5608:

One of the issues with player housing I have experianced in other games that have it , is what to do with the houses when the player leaves the game.
You can easily end up with the equivalent of deserted cities full of abandoned houses.
MMO companies are reluctant to take someones house for the same reasons that they dont delete your characters even if you havnt played for many years.

In Lord of the Rings online you get kicked out of your house if you don’t pay the rent. All your stuff put in escrow. In Ultima Online your house would decay in 30 days, if you don’t refresh it. After 30 days its drops and all your stuff it up for grabs by other players.

I would love to see real housing in GW2 but like another poster said. This staff can’t even get out the legendaries that were promised with the expansion eight months ago, and just released the third wing to the raid. Most expansions are on there second or third raid after eight months.

But you know, who knows. What most MMO companies consider a priority in an expansion. Like lots zones, dungeons to play, full complete raids, fulfilling on promises made, following up the expansion content after release. ANET decides lets fix a 3 year old world boss. The direction of this company is completely schizophrenic. If they spent the next year on a quest chain to get tin foil hats I wouldn’t be the slightest surprised.

In Aion if you own a house you pay a monthly “maintenance” fee. If the fee is not paid they put your belongings in storage and sell your house to someone else. The house sales are run each week with closing being at noon on Sunday. The houses are in little communities that are actual parts of the game, not instances. The free studios are instanced with no monthly fee.

The home instance… is almost good enough. If only you could select one home instance for all your toons (I like DR) and position the nodes for artistic effect.

Id love to see player housing in this game I really miss it but instanced with a lot of houses together. Maybe an instance with a beach scene another with a desert and so on. They could do something like wildstar where at christmas and certain times of the year people have to go to your house to click on something for an event. Or like Aion where they are events in the housing instances.

How many people in this game would be happy to have to pay a monthly rent for a house?
I suspect the answer is next to none which means the deserted cities problem comes back.
Player housing is a big project for the Game devs, so there has to be some kind of return for Arenanet for introducing it.
It would either have to be some kind of continuous rent , or a large capital cost in gems.

Lost Precipice Guild Hall. Lots of house-things to decorate everywhere.

You’re welcome.

Sartharina.3542:

Lost Precipice Guild Hall. Lots of house-things to decorate everywhere.

You’re welcome.

Not everyone in a guild will have permission to decorate and anyone with permissions can delete your decorations. It’s not exactly the privately owned and decorated housing the thread is discussing.

Unless you’re talking about owning a whole guild hall by yourself? That might be possible, but expensive.

mauried.5608:

How many people in this game would be happy to have to pay a monthly rent for a house?
I suspect the answer is next to none which means the deserted cities problem comes back.
Player housing is a big project for the Game devs, so there has to be some kind of return for Arenanet for introducing it.
It would either have to be some kind of continuous rent , or a large capital cost in gems.

Who says anything about having to pay rent? One game I played that had housing had no rent system.

The benefit Anet can get from it is by having new skin items on the gemstore. They could be the house itself or decorations for it. Ever see a Sims game? Many, many options there from basic things like wallpapers, flooring etc etc.

People are already sick of back items (so many wings), gliders, minipets, wep sets. New options are always welcome. :P

Well yes of course be patient and wait for your character’s 25th birthday.

Im not into a “big” housing system.

But a kind of room where there medals, ranks, trophies and things that player accomplish, could be simple and easy to implement, and would not require so many resources from game/development.

It is very strange that the commander of the pact, the killer of 2 dragons, looks like a nomad and dont have his personnal bunker.

hope the staff think on this with care.

It looks to me that Anet’s version of player housing is the home instance. With the addition of the cats and such it looks to me that is where they are going with it.

ugrakarma.9416:

It is very strange that the commander of the pact, the killer of 2 dragons, looks like a nomad and dont have his personnal bunker.

Whatever do you mean? Traherne is the hero that saved Tyria and killed a million monsters alone, everyone knows that. This “commander” you speak of is just a low level grunt doing the paperwork.

Anyway, all they need to do is furnitures for the home instance and bam done. Housing.

Steven.7534:

I want my housing from Star Wars The Old republic—They were called Galactic Strongholds…Those houses were HUGE!!! They had multi-rooms and different planets with different locations. (you can reference Dulfy.net for what they are like)
That could be done in this game with regions instead of planets. And with new expansions—make a new house…simple.

Yep, I was thinking the same thing. I love my SWtOR Strongholds, and have several, all decorated. Fun times, instanced, and whatever NPCs I want in them. GW2 should do it that way.

ugrakarma.9416:

Im not into a “big” housing system.

But a kind of room where there medals, ranks, trophies and things that player accomplish, could be simple and easy to implement, and would not require so many resources from game/development.

It is very strange that the commander of the pact, the killer of 2 dragons, looks like a nomad and dont have his personnal bunker.

hope the staff think on this with care.

GW1 had the Hall of Monuments, which was sort of like that. You could display certain minis, armor sets, and Hero companions, plus trophies for Campaign Completion.

I had a nice house in Everquest 2. Mind you, I think, by the time I left, I had about six houses, including an underwater one.

Houses in GW2? I think I’m a bit housed-out.

I know this has been bought up before but I’m levelling my scribing at the moment and I can see all the wonderful things u can make. I don’t get to decorate the guild hall as that has already been taken over by some guildies. I would love to decorate my own place. It would be great to have instances with a lot of houses in it. I know everyone isn’t into housing but not everyone is into raids and we have them.

I agree!!! I want housing in GW2 so I could finally quit Rift. It’s literally the only reason why I still play that game, I only log in to build/rebuild my stuff, lol.