Guild Wars 2

Heart of Thorns gave us a great taste of the potential of customizing a home space with the scribe and decorating functionality. While it has its limitations and areas for critique, I feel it’s a good feature. That is if you have a guild and you happen to have the permissions to place things.

I’m not complaining about the feature in Guild Halls. I understand scribing takes a lot of resources and time. But still, as a housing enthusiast exploring that feature for someone who is a casual with no guild, I feel I’m missing out big time on the only offering for decorating a “house.”

I’ve been wanting Guild Wars 2 housing since it launched in 2012, and it’s still true today. I’m hoping we can get a scaled down version of decorating the guild halls for an individual player house. I already have all the nodes and features I can get out of the personal home instance, but it’s a far cry from a legitimate housing system.

I’m hoping the next expansion will expand this feature for proper player housing.

Housing like wildstar or better i would say where people showcase their custom house designs and don’t just buy house template x and fill it with junk you cannot interact with. Not sure if GW2 engine could cope with this.

Bad housing that is poorly configurable and doesn’t allow free form design is a waste of space imo.

vesica tempestas.1563:

Housing like wildstar or better i would say where people showcase their custom house designs and don’t just buy house template x and fill it with junk you cannot interact with. Not sure if GW2 engine could cope with this.

Bad housing that is poorly configurable and doesn’t allow free form design is a waste of space imo.

Yeah, a good housing system that acts as an incentive to play the game could be a great addition. A shallow system that lacks customization seems likely to be a waste of resources.

But what is ‘proper player housing’?

Would you be happy with a system like Elder Scrolls Online has where it’s literally just a house themed instance you can decorate with furniture? (And only objects the developers have designated as furniture – if you see something out in the world you really like and there isn’t a furniture version you can’t have it, if you find a cool weapon or armour piece or trophy you want to show off you can’t put it in your house.) And then once you’re done decorating you can…look at your furniture. Maybe see if you can persuade a friend to come and look at your furniture. That’s about it really.

A lot of people in that game kept saying they really wanted housing and it’d be amazing to have housing but apparently all of them had very distinct and quite different ideas about what ‘housing’ meant and what they got wasn’t it.

Some basically wanted a walk-in bank where they could store inventory items. Some wanted a private town with access to the bank, a merchant, crafting stations, daily quest pick-ups etc. Some wanted features to hold a guild party (I’m still not sure what exactly, I assume decorations, consumable food, customisable music…that kind of thing.). Some wanted to set up merchant stalls and services so other players could visit and use them. Some people don’t seem able to articulate what they want, but what they’ve got very definitely is not it.

I think simply asking for housing runs the risk of ending up with the same problem here. What people at Anet think of when they think of player housing in an MMO may be very different to what you’re thinking of.

Danikat.8537:

But what is ‘proper player housing’?

Would you be happy with a system like Elder Scrolls Online has where it’s literally just a house themed instance you can decorate with furniture? (And only objects the developers have designated as furniture – if you see something out in the world you really like and there isn’t a furniture version you can’t have it, if you find a cool weapon or armour piece or trophy you want to show off you can’t put it in your house.) And then once you’re done decorating you can…look at your furniture. Maybe see if you can persuade a friend to come and look at your furniture. That’s about it really.

A lot of people in that game kept saying they really wanted housing and it’d be amazing to have housing but apparently all of them had very distinct and quite different ideas about what ‘housing’ meant and what they got wasn’t it.

Some basically wanted a walk-in bank where they could store inventory items. Some wanted a private town with access to the bank, a merchant, crafting stations, daily quest pick-ups etc. Some wanted features to hold a guild party (I’m still not sure what exactly, I assume decorations, consumable food, customisable music…that kind of thing.). Some wanted to set up merchant stalls and services so other players could visit and use them. Some people don’t seem able to articulate what they want, but what they’ve got very definitely is not it.

I think simply asking for housing runs the risk of ending up with the same problem here. What people at Anet think of when they think of player housing in an MMO may be very different to what you’re thinking of.

Which is why, if they decide to even consider it, ANet would want to read the countless posts on the subject (here as well as on other forums) and revisit the CDI method of community interaction. They most certainly should not spend the development resources without some market research.

Honestly, I enjoyed the way FFXIV did their player housing.

It was instanced, but you had to buy each plot of land, and each plot was priced by size (so you could have a small home or a freaking large home if you were out and out rich). However guilds typically bought these homes as well (as they didn’t or possibly still don’t have separate guild halls), do they typically had the large plots.

But you could walk down the street of the instance you were in and visit someone else in their house (mostly outside unless they invited you in), and just becuase you had a house as a guild didn’t mean individual players couldn’t also buy land in that instance for their own personal home. And to stop people from being from making money off this you couldn’t buy from other people, you bought from Square Enix with in game funds.

I think a system like that could work here (as we already deal with instances anyway), and we wouldn’t have to compete with guilds for guild halls

This been discussed and discussed and discussed in many many many threads, for the last five years or more. I believe it time to let it go.

Ashen.2907:

Which is why, if they decide to even consider it, ANet would want to read the countless posts on the subject (here as well as on other forums) and revisit the CDI method of community interaction. They most certainly should not spend the development resources without some market research.

But that’s why I’m saying the people making those posts need to be specific about exactly what they want from a housing system. The majority of topics I’ve seen don’t go into much detail and there seems to be an underlying assumption that everyone knows what good player housing looks like and everyone agrees on what features it should and should not have without anyone needing to explain it.

Having seen one game burned by that already and the ensuring arguments about what essential features were missing which showed that there are many, many different opinions and it’d be impossible to accommodate them all (because some are totally contradictory – like instanced vs. un-instanced vs. shared instance housing) I’m very wary of it happening again.

Danikat.8537:

Ashen.2907:

Which is why, if they decide to even consider it, ANet would want to read the countless posts on the subject (here as well as on other forums) and revisit the CDI method of community interaction. They most certainly should not spend the development resources without some market research.

But that’s why I’m saying the people making those posts need to be specific about exactly what they want from a housing system. The majority of topics I’ve seen don’t go into much detail and there seems to be an underlying assumption that everyone knows what good player housing looks like and everyone agrees on what features it should and should not have without anyone needing to explain it.

Having seen one game burned by that already and the ensuring arguments about what essential features were missing which showed that there are many, many different opinions and it’d be impossible to accommodate them all (because some are totally contradictory – like instanced vs. un-instanced vs. shared instance housing) I’m very wary of it happening again.

That is what developer involvement in the discussion, perhaps using the CDI format, is for. To guide the input into greater productivity. Sure some solid info can be gained by gleaning the occasional detail from a random post, but framework from the dev end of things is necessary to be truly productive.

Danikat.8537:

Ashen.2907:

Which is why, if they decide to even consider it, ANet would want to read the countless posts on the subject (here as well as on other forums) and revisit the CDI method of community interaction. They most certainly should not spend the development resources without some market research.

But that’s why I’m saying the people making those posts need to be specific about exactly what they want from a housing system. The majority of topics I’ve seen don’t go into much detail and there seems to be an underlying assumption that everyone knows what good player housing looks like and everyone agrees on what features it should and should not have without anyone needing to explain it.

Having seen one game burned by that already and the ensuring arguments about what essential features were missing which showed that there are many, many different opinions and it’d be impossible to accommodate them all (because some are totally contradictory – like instanced vs. un-instanced vs. shared instance housing) I’m very wary of it happening again.

- the ability to design the house itself, including walls, roof, floors, stairs, inner walls etc
-ability to design out building and surrounding land like gardens
- the ability to place items you can use, e.g bookshelves, armor dummies, display cases, chairs
- good control mechanism for placing items.
- it has to be instanced for obvious performance and sprawl reasons that are pretty well understood.

Mentioned Wildstar because that is the outstanding feature of that game:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=top+10+wildstar+houses&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjI6IjR68LTAhUKOsAKHVNOCvoQsAQITA&biw=1102&bih=780

Bunny.3081:

I’ve been wanting Guild Wars 2 housing since it launched in 2012, and it’s still true today.

I’m hoping the next expansion will expand this feature for proper player housing.

This. I believe! I personally take the living story trailer submarine as 100% confirmation that the submarine is a player house, one of 100 available, and it comes with a fishing rod I can use to fish.

I believe! Player housing is coming.

This is not a sarcastic post I seriously think (and have made posts previously) that housing would bring new gemstore items, drops, rewards, achievements, collections, incentives, ‘quests’ to the game, even progression if they take time to build it (crafting disciplines? masteries? could come up with a lot) and thus add a lot of monetary and gameplay value to the game!

Woot Woot! Hype!

In fact I think the houses of White Mantle in that heart in Lake Doric where you turn into one, are player housing props. Did you see walls that clean and renovated anywhere else in the game? No sir. These houses look ready to move into. :P

They’ve demonstrated their version of housing in Guild Halls- if that system was scaled down for a player instance with furniture that’d be great. I honestly don’t care what additional features come with it- everyone wants something different.

I hope most will agree the current home instance doesn’t satisfy the term “housing” no matter what your desires.

@ gimli, that’s a really good point actually, all those sources of housing items and blueprints doesn’t affect power scaling or is pay to win, got to be a good money maker for Anet.

I don’t understand why people want this feature… There’s far better games out there for building custom houses. I would rather they dedicate development resources to actual content like new open world maps, world bosses, dungeons, raids, etc. Heck, what about wvw and pvp? Those players are going to feel completely shafted if Anet spends time making player housing instead of breathing life back into dying game modes.

Marjory and Kasmeer have a house in Divinity’s Reach…why can’t we have a house?

I’d suggest finding an open guild to join. Scribing costs have come down from launch and the guild halls have a couple secret rooms you can claim for your own. I myself have a corner in Guilded Hallow with 3 floors, a fireplace, and a dock!

Karnasis.6892:

Honestly, I enjoyed the way FFXIV did their player housing.

It was instanced

It is not instanced… Instance means its your own personal game world where other people cant join unless they are in your party. Housing areas in FFXIV do have loading screens but they are not instanced. Also there is no loading screen when entering yours or someone else house.

Personally i would love to see housing i think it would work amazing in this type of game. They could add rare housing drops to dungeons/world bosses/raids to give people even more incentive to do them (i would very much like something like this instead of another gear level) and they can even make nice money by selling some in gem store.

For those who don’t understand why people would want housing- you’re dealing with a multifaceted game that features PvE content, both open world and dungeon/raiding, different flavors of PvP, and Guild Hall progression with construction tools. This MMO is a variety of flavors and while not everyone wants to sample them all, the variety is what makes the world of Tyria so enjoyable.

I’m all for updating WvW, PvP, and more raids, though I do little of that content. I still want housing to be a feature.

Matt H.6142:

I’d suggest finding an open guild to join. Scribing costs have come down from launch and the guild halls have a couple secret rooms you can claim for your own. I myself have a corner in Guilded Hallow with 3 floors, a fireplace, and a dock!

That sounds awesome! I hope I can find a guild then to try out this feature for myself! Individual player housing is still something I want to see come to fruition!

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

Blude.6812:

This been discussed and discussed and discussed in many many many threads, for the last five years or more. I believe it time to let it go.

this ^^^^ or in other words no thank you no way nope .nay nah nixie uh uh nyea nao nein voch nahi

I was being nice. I would like a robot script that just deleted any post the mentions housing (and mounts).

I’ve never understood the attraction of player housing in MMO’s. To me, it’s something to put time into but in which I cannot actually do anything. Thus, it has no attraction. What I’d like to understand is the motivations of those who do like such a feature.

Nole.3017:

Karnasis.6892:

Honestly, I enjoyed the way FFXIV did their player housing.

It was instanced

It is not instanced… Instance means its your own personal game world where other people cant join unless they are in your party. Housing areas in FFXIV do have loading screens but they are not instanced. Also there is no loading screen when entering yours or someone else house.

By that definition GW2 isn’t instanced, but I think the devs would say otherwise. A true open world would have no player caps, no multiple copies of a zone, and no load screen. But sadly GW2 has those things and that makes it instanced. GW1 was also instanced, but differently, as every time you left town you were no longer able to see anyone unless they were in your party becuase everyone had their own version of the world.

In massively multiplayer online games, an instance is a special area, typically a dungeon, that generates a new copy of the location for each group, or for certain number of players, that enters the area. This the definition I got when entering “Instanced Gaming Definition” into google.

And the player housing in FFXIV might not have player caps for the whole zone, but it does have multiple instances due to the limited land space per instance and that it loads basically everyone’s house within the instance. And yes, there is no load screen for your own home, but if you use the personal rooms for some reason those are instanced within the bigger instance.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’ve never understood the attraction of player housing in MMO’s. To me, it’s something to put time into but in which I cannot actually do anything. Thus, it has no attraction. What I’d like to understand is the motivations of those who do like such a feature.

We have a guy in my guild who decorates our guild hall and that’s one of the main things he does in the game. He goes out and farms what he needs to get stuff to put in the guild hall. Our guild hall often changes but usually looks great because of him.

Housing is a chance to do something non-combat. It’s downtime in a game with increasingly little down time.

You go there to chill when you don’t feel like farming.

Of course,. it has to be something that’s more than just a home instance. There has to be a lot of different ways to decorate it and move those decorations around.

But just as some people love combat and dungeons and hard core stuff, housing and decorating is something a lot of people do like. My wife plays MMOs, but I guarantee you, if a house was in the game, she’s spend hours decorating it, farming for stuff to put in it, or spending money in the cash shop.

That’s unfortunately a fact. lol

and to all ppl that say no to housing why???

You mean having housing like a home instance with NPCs and other stuff we gathered/bought?

wait, dont we already have that ?

I’d love player housing or, maybe just expansion on the current home instance so you can customize it aesthetically.

Katastroff.1045:

You mean having housing like a home instance with NPCs and other stuff we gathered/bought?

wait, dont we already have that ?

no none of us means that

A big problem with housing is what happens when a player with a house leaves the game.
I played Lotro which had housing, and there were complete communities full of empty houses with not a player in sight, simply because the players had left the game.
Unlike characters which can be kept forever if they dont play, because non logged in characters dont appear in the game , the houses of non logged in players do and they stay there forever.
To make housing viable from the perspective of the dev time required, houses MUST cost the player gold on a continuing basis, and most players will hate this.

mauried.5608:

A big problem with housing is what happens when a player with a house leaves the game.
I played Lotro which had housing, and there were complete communities full of empty houses with not a player in sight, simply because the players had left the game.
Unlike characters which can be kept forever if they dont play, because non logged in characters dont appear in the game , the houses of non logged in players do and they stay there forever.
To make housing viable from the perspective of the dev time required, houses MUST cost the player gold on a continuing basis, and most players will hate this.

the houses were in the open world?

i use to want housing myself. But seeing how Anet implements anything nowadays, I reckon it would involve massive amounts of materials, require high level fractals, high level raids, legendary status on PvP and, well, they don’t care about wvw some at least thats something.

Probably like 50k leather, 100k ancient wood planks, etc. Then some gem purchase for about 3k gems..

mulzi.8273:

i use to want housing myself. But seeing how Anet implements anything nowadays, I reckon it would involve massive amounts of materials, require high level fractals, high level raids, legendary status on PvP and, well, they don’t care about wvw some at least thats something.

Probably like 50k leather, 100k ancient wood planks, etc. Then some gem purchase for about 3k gems..

you know thee guild halls are supposed to be for you know a guild

zealex.9410:

mauried.5608:

A big problem with housing is what happens when a player with a house leaves the game.
I played Lotro which had housing, and there were complete communities full of empty houses with not a player in sight, simply because the players had left the game.
Unlike characters which can be kept forever if they dont play, because non logged in characters dont appear in the game , the houses of non logged in players do and they stay there forever.
To make housing viable from the perspective of the dev time required, houses MUST cost the player gold on a continuing basis, and most players will hate this.

the houses were in the open world?

Houses in Lotro were in instanced, but housing couldn’t be in the open world in Guild Wars 2, because of the way the servers are set up.

The idea is servers are created and removed based on need. That’s the megaserver. There’s too many people playing to have houses on just say one server, and that’s all you could have, because only one server may exist.

Housing here would have to be more like Guild Halls.

please stop talking about expansions, what if they listen to you?? haven’t you learn about what happened last time they released one?

This isn’t wow, this game doesn’t need expansions… sadly only pre HoT players would understand… sigh

A litte place in my home instance that i can customize by myself with desks, chairs would be nice (it must not be big, just a little place like one of these boll that are on top of the sylvari home instance (and already have some furniture inside) would be nice (of course the one that you can decorate should have no furniture inside at the beginning)…..

Also: Better housing then Mounts…..i fear next Expansion..when the leaks come true…….i can not imagine this…better just add Player housing XD

plushiesoda.8150:

please stop talking about expansions, what if they listen to you?? haven’t you learn about what happened last time they released one?

This isn’t wow, this game doesn’t need expansions… sadly only pre HoT players would understand… sigh

Expansion 2 was a sure thing a while back, now it’s an official thing with the AMA from yesterday.

Sorry pal, expansion 2 is already being made and will likely go live end of this year.

Danikat.8537:

But what is ‘proper player housing’?

Would you be happy with a system like Elder Scrolls Online has where it’s literally just a house themed instance you can decorate with furniture? (And only objects the developers have designated as furniture – if you see something out in the world you really like and there isn’t a furniture version you can’t have it, if you find a cool weapon or armour piece or trophy you want to show off you can’t put it in your house.) And then once you’re done decorating you can…look at your furniture. Maybe see if you can persuade a friend to come and look at your furniture. That’s about it really.

A lot of people in that game kept saying they really wanted housing and it’d be amazing to have housing but apparently all of them had very distinct and quite different ideas about what ‘housing’ meant and what they got wasn’t it.

Some basically wanted a walk-in bank where they could store inventory items. Some wanted a private town with access to the bank, a merchant, crafting stations, daily quest pick-ups etc. Some wanted features to hold a guild party (I’m still not sure what exactly, I assume decorations, consumable food, customisable music…that kind of thing.). Some wanted to set up merchant stalls and services so other players could visit and use them. Some people don’t seem able to articulate what they want, but what they’ve got very definitely is not it.

I think simply asking for housing runs the risk of ending up with the same problem here. What people at Anet think of when they think of player housing in an MMO may be very different to what you’re thinking of.

The thing is, historically, various games show that housing can fulfill multiple different roles at once. There’s nothing to prevent you having a housing system which essentially supports all of the above.

No-one reasonable expects you to be able to randomly grab items from the world, I would suggest. It’s a given that the developers will determine what the furniture is.

But after that it’s very easy to add a combination of features that make housing attractive and interesting to a diverse pool of players. Dark Age of Camelot did a decent job, for example (with caveats). You could buy a variety of different sizes and shapes of houses, which existed within housing zones, so you could actually be near other people, rather than existing in some sort of hyperspace, and which helped make it feel more like a place.

The housing also offered significant extra storage, which was a boon – obviously this competes slightly with the P4Bankslots of GW2, but they could easily add a bank the size of your base bank without really impacting the sales of those (and then potentially sell expansions to that too).

You could have crafting merchants and the like in your house, which yes “took people out of cities”, but only to a limited degree – and that was part of the joy – you could have a semi-private space, which was just really pleasant some of the time.

Then they had trophies from bosses, which were very fun to collect and arrange about the house. They didn’t drop to everyone all the time, so you actually had to try and farm them and you know what? That didn’t suck.

Decorating worked passably well, and other games have done better. The only thing GW2 would need to avoid with decorating was their own self-harming urge to monetize everything cosmetic to the very maximum possible degree. BDO does that with housing and it’s kind of a kitten-show housing-wise as a result. Allow crafters – preferably existing crafters, not a new skill, to make a very wide variety of good-looking stuff, with at least the racial styles and maybe more as drops. Let chairs and beds and so on actually work. Food and music you’ve noted and that sort of thing could be great, and music could reasonably be monetized if it’s stuff beyond what’s already in the game (for god’s sake don’t try to make us pay twice for that, Anet!). Once you have a really good customization base, then you can sell ridiculous fancy nonsense for gems – I’m sure some glowing four-poster bed which floats and is accompanied by little cherubs or whatever could be sold for a good number of gems. But if you start trying to sell every bed beyond the ugliest chunk of wood and straw, as some games do – that’s not a good decision.

The big decision with GW2 I think would be whether housing was per-account or per-character. RPers will want the latter, but it may not be practical. I’d suggest making it per-account but allowing people to own multiple houses (at great expense).

Anyway I don’t anticipate it happening with expansion 2.

mauried.5608:

A big problem with housing is what happens when a player with a house leaves the game.
I played Lotro which had housing, and there were complete communities full of empty houses with not a player in sight, simply because the players had left the game.
Unlike characters which can be kept forever if they dont play, because non logged in characters dont appear in the game , the houses of non logged in players do and they stay there forever.
To make housing viable from the perspective of the dev time required, houses MUST cost the player gold on a continuing basis, and most players will hate this.

people don’t hate this housing model in Arch Age, why they would hate it here?

Sure add housing, make it optional at the cost of $45 a month to maintain all the extra servers (space) and a new and separate dev team (if you opt into housing).

ESO managed it ^^

vicious.5683:

mauried.5608:

A big problem with housing is what happens when a player with a house leaves the game.
I played Lotro which had housing, and there were complete communities full of empty houses with not a player in sight, simply because the players had left the game.
Unlike characters which can be kept forever if they dont play, because non logged in characters dont appear in the game , the houses of non logged in players do and they stay there forever.
To make housing viable from the perspective of the dev time required, houses MUST cost the player gold on a continuing basis, and most players will hate this.

people don’t hate this housing model in Arch Age, why they would hate it here?

Because this game is core-built and marketed as something you can play, walk away from, and come back without having lost anything but the things you could have gained by continuing play. Anything gained by your account is yours forever in GW2 (unless ANet makes a hard call to alter it).

If you spend a good amount of time and resources setting up a house, it’s game-killing for many players to then lose it because they didn’t play for a month. Medical reasons, military deployment, or just had a new shiny thing to do for a little, whatever the reason, if their home is gone on return that’s it, they’re likely gone from the game too. (I know that’s one big reason I left DaoC and LotRO, I lost homes I’d customized).

ArcheAge is a cutthroat griefer’s game. Of course people who enjoy that are in it to fight tooth and nail to hold onto anything they value. I’m glad they have that game to play it … and that I have this game designed against griefing to enjoy in my leisure time.

I hope that answers your question.

vesica tempestas.1563:

Housing like wildstar or better i would say where people showcase their custom house designs and don’t just buy house template x and fill it with junk you cannot interact with. Not sure if GW2 engine could cope with this.

Bad housing that is poorly configurable and doesn’t allow free form design is a waste of space imo.

i wish people would explain more what wildstar housing is? for those who haven’t played the game. I brainstorm bout ideas and know there are better ones out there, but with nothing specific to compare it to, understand and its not likely that i’m going to go out and play Black, Desert, Wildstar, Arch Age just to get and idea of housing, explanations would be helpful.

As far as showcasing their custom house designs we really need at least an instanced village. I can do a lot of amazing things with a home, but if no one is around to around to see it, what’s really the point.

plushiesoda.8150:

please stop talking about expansions, what if they listen to you?? haven’t you learn about what happened last time they released one?

This isn’t wow, this game doesn’t need expansions… sadly only pre HoT players would understand… sigh

Too bad they were already working on the next Xpac even b4 HoT was released, huh. They see it as a Money Train, and have planned for such in the future.

[Quote]They see it as a Money Train, and have planned for such in the future.[/quote]

How ironic to opine that ANet employees don’t need food or housing in a thread about player housing.