Guild Wars 2

lol neat idea, though I think, what would make more logical sense(to Arenanet programming wise) is to have an asura gate in all the major cities, that leads to your home.
I really do like the idea though.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Here’s an idea to implement player housing. Players carry a portable magical door, which they can place on any wall in a town or outpost, to claim it as their own. Even houses that have no interior (since a lot of houses in towns are just decoration) can be claimed, but you can only use the door once. You can place your magical door on top of an existing door, or simply place it in an alley as some sort of secret access to your house.

Once the door is placed, it will forever be the entrance to your private home.

Multiple players can claim the same spot as their house, if they want. They can place their door anywhere they like, as long as it is in one of the existing cities. Touching this door takes them to their very own private house, which would be a separate instance.

Players that are in your party are allowed to join you in your home as you enter it, much like joining a story instance or a dungeon.

Each player receives one such portable door for free. And it can only be used once. Players can buy a new portable door from the Gem store if they change their mind.

This is the single best idea I’ve heard in regards to player housing so far.

I love it! Have a +1.

Think of all the awesome possibilities. Want to move into a Hylek town? A skritt tunnel, maybe, for a while? One of the straw huts in Southsun Cove? No problem.

Seriously, I’d probably be buying doors for my characters by the dozens.

The only thing “missing” from this, that would make it even sweeter for me, is shared housing for people who RP families, or are in RL relationships and such. My boyfriend and I would like to be able to cohabit. This is, of course, only relevant if there is anything that the owner of the house can do that any guests can’t, such as furnishing it.

The other idea would be to give players one door per character instead of per player, for completing the personal story, which I know most players do only on their main right now.

Depending how far they are into the whole process, it may be entirely too late for any new ideas like this, but I put the link to the thread in my signature. I love your idea too much.

I hope it gets exposure at least.

Thanks for the great replies. Of course I don’t know how far Anet is in their development of player housing. But I’d love to see something similar to this, to populate all the cities in Guild Wars 2. And I agree that being able to share a house with other players (your extended family) would also be a great addition.

Either way, this thread needs all the +1s.

I am really looking forward to player housing, but I’d hate to be “stuck” in Divinity’s Reach Salma District, when my character’s backstory says that she’s from Beetletun, or has relocated to Lornar’s Pass permanently, or is currently a fugitive hiding in a swamp hut in Caledon Forest.

Why are you so exited about this Pixelpumpkin?

You basically want to ‘claim’ a house in the open world.. Well then you should be much more exited about the idea of open world housing in stead of instance based housing with a door you can place anywhere…

Like I showed in the other thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Housing-7/first#post2340982) you linked to this one:

This would be fun.
Instance housing is kinda boring.. I agree if you would have instance based housing this idea is better then having one portal or one button to take you to your house but in the end it will still be instance based housing.

Devata.6589:

Why are you so exited about this Pixelpumpkin?

You basically want to ‘claim’ a house in the open world.. Well then you should be much more exited about the idea of open world housing in stead of instance based housing with a door you can place anywhere…

Like I showed in the other thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Housing-7/first#post2340982) you linked to this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWP-DudjDBU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=529in9ycPg4

This would be fun.
Instance housing is kinda boring.. I agree if you would have instance based housing this idea is better then having one portal or one button to take you to your house but in the end it will still be instance based housing.

I can’t overstate how much I don’t want to be walking through Queensdale, or Plains of Ashford and seeing ramshackle huts, cabins, or other randomly-placed abodes. They might as well let Coka Cola go in and smear their advertisement feces all over the landscape. Seriously, could you imagine seeing some odd-looking building rammed into the side of a hill, awkwardly placed in the middle of a corn field, or right next to a centaur camp that has no purpose other than to stroke some idiot’s ego? The game would become a graveyard full of monuments to the vanity of the unwashed masses.

TL;DR

No, it would be ugly.

Devata.6589:

Why are you so exited about this Pixelpumpkin?

You basically want to ‘claim’ a house in the open world.. Well then you should be much more exited about the idea of open world housing in stead of instance based housing with a door you can place anywhere…

I personally don’t see the difference – I don’t care whether it’s instanced or not, and I don’t see why I should

If it is about building your own hut: Tyria is bautifully designed with loads of buildings in the distinct styles that befit their areas. Players shouldn’t meddle with this…

On a similar note though, since all the amazing buildings are already there, I hope that I won’t be limited to my own home instance when housing arrives, when the world has so many awesome other options to offer.

Xenon.4537:

I can’t overstate how much I don’t want to be walking through Queensdale, or Plains of Ashford and seeing ramshackle huts, cabins, or other randomly-placed abodes. They might as well let Coka Cola go in and smear their advertisement feces all over the landscape. Seriously, could you imagine seeing some odd-looking building rammed into the side of a hill, awkwardly placed in the middle of a corn field, or right next to a centaur camp that has no purpose other than to stroke some idiot’s ego? The game would become a graveyard full of monuments to the vanity of the unwashed masses.

TL;DR

No, it would be ugly.

Agreed. Instanced housing > open-world housing. And “stroking some idiot’s ego” could be applied to commander tags as well (plenty of bad commanders out there), but I digress. In my experience, LOTRO has the best player-housing experience thus far.

Reminds me of secret bases from certain Pokemon games, I like this idea.

Xenon.4537:

Devata.6589:

Why are you so exited about this Pixelpumpkin?

You basically want to ‘claim’ a house in the open world.. Well then you should be much more exited about the idea of open world housing in stead of instance based housing with a door you can place anywhere…

Like I showed in the other thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Housing-7/first#post2340982) you linked to this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWP-DudjDBU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=529in9ycPg4

This would be fun.
Instance housing is kinda boring.. I agree if you would have instance based housing this idea is better then having one portal or one button to take you to your house but in the end it will still be instance based housing.

I can’t overstate how much I don’t want to be walking through Queensdale, or Plains of Ashford and seeing ramshackle huts, cabins, or other randomly-placed abodes. They might as well let Coka Cola go in and smear their advertisement feces all over the landscape. Seriously, could you imagine seeing some odd-looking building rammed into the side of a hill, awkwardly placed in the middle of a corn field, or right next to a centaur camp that has no purpose other than to stroke some idiot’s ego? The game would become a graveyard full of monuments to the vanity of the unwashed masses.

TL;DR

No, it would be ugly.

Thats not the way it works (see second video). In the maps there are specific terrains where you can buy some ground to put a house on. For the current maps there would not be a lot of places to have such places.. still I would suggest trying to have some places in all existing maps just to get people coming back there. but most of it should be in new maps.

So what you are saying “seeing ramshackle huts, cabins, or other randomly-placed abodes.” is not possible. It can’t be places everywhere randomly and so it will not be ugly. Please first watch the movie before you leave a reaction like this because now I have to explain why you are wrong while it’s already in the video.

Reisinger.4203:

Xenon.4537:

I can’t overstate how much I don’t want to be walking through Queensdale, or Plains of Ashford and seeing ramshackle huts, cabins, or other randomly-placed abodes. They might as well let Coka Cola go in and smear their advertisement feces all over the landscape. Seriously, could you imagine seeing some odd-looking building rammed into the side of a hill, awkwardly placed in the middle of a corn field, or right next to a centaur camp that has no purpose other than to stroke some idiot’s ego? The game would become a graveyard full of monuments to the vanity of the unwashed masses.

TL;DR

No, it would be ugly.

Agreed. Instanced housing > open-world housing. And “stroking some idiot’s ego” could be applied to commander tags as well (plenty of bad commanders out there), but I digress. In my experience, LOTRO has the best player-housing experience thus far.

So with that the reaction of Reisinger is also based on false premises.

And about the ‘eletionist’ argument. Then we can also remove all legendary’s or other hard to get stuff.

The instance based still works in that similar way and there is nothing wrong wit it. If somebody is proud of something he wants to show it to other people. Has nothing to do with eletionist.

Besides that, if people place the building it will be a much more lifelike world. Wasn’t that exactly what ArenaNet said it was aiming for. If you would walk in a ‘city area’ a new house may have come or an old one is gone. Somebody painted his house in another color or planted a new tree. It would change all the time. Much more a lively place.

I’m still most interested in a LotRO style housing system, minus the regular rent requirement. I played Horizons for three years. They developed open-world housing in specific locations. Result? Cutthroat competition for prime lots every time a new area opened. Very bad blood between players. Urbanized sections of what had been wilderness. Huge FPS drops (GW2 might avoid that, HZ had a horrible rendering thing where no matter what wall was in your way, every object behind the wall had to render).

LotRO still had some issues, in that wanting a whole neighborhood for your guild was hard to manage as anyone could hop into the instance and buy a house while your guild was getting coordinated. Plus the rent thing meant that if you didn’t affirmatively upkeep the house, you lost it and all the decorations went into an escrow locker to be retrieved once you coughed up the gold for another house, possibly no longer with your guild.

I bet ANet will come up with something fun. That’s been their goal in everything, to get rid of the unfun parts of game features. Likely it will have ideas none of us would have thought of but once we see them we’ll be unable to imagine doing without. Still, I’d bet against open-world. There’s too many players and not enough world.

The portable door sounds -awesome-. Though then the interior of the house needs to be customizable to an even higher degree, or you might enter a noble mansion via a sewer grating …

(btw I want Caudecus Manor or something on the same scale to be my family estate. I can has?)

Donari.5237:

I’m still most interested in a LotRO style housing system, minus the regular rent requirement. I played Horizons for three years. They developed open-world housing in specific locations. Result? Cutthroat competition for prime lots every time a new area opened. Very bad blood between players. Urbanized sections of what had been wilderness. Huge FPS drops (GW2 might avoid that, HZ had a horrible rendering thing where no matter what wall was in your way, every object behind the wall had to render).

LotRO still had some issues, in that wanting a whole neighborhood for your guild was hard to manage as anyone could hop into the instance and buy a house while your guild was getting coordinated. Plus the rent thing meant that if you didn’t affirmatively upkeep the house, you lost it and all the decorations went into an escrow locker to be retrieved once you coughed up the gold for another house, possibly no longer with your guild.

I bet ANet will come up with something fun. That’s been their goal in everything, to get rid of the unfun parts of game features. Likely it will have ideas none of us would have thought of but once we see them we’ll be unable to imagine doing without. Still, I’d bet against open-world. There’s too many players and not enough world.

You’re making some really good points there.

Donari.5237:

The portable door sounds -awesome-. Though then the interior of the house needs to be customizable to an even higher degree, or you might enter a noble mansion via a sewer grating …

… and such a mismatch would be hilarious to many, while RPers could actively avoid it and keep their own world consistent. I have no problem with a little creativity for those who want it, especially if housing is instanced (who will ever know?)

But yes, I’ve been thinking the same about the sizes and customization options of interiors.

Donari.5237:

(btw I want Caudecus Manor or something on the same scale to be my family estate. I can has?)

Just slap your door onto Jenna’s palace ;D

No, in seriousness, those buildings that are already owned by specific NPCs probably shouldn’t be valid door-targets. But there is fancy housing the DR, LA and Ebonhawke (to name but a few) that would be up for grabs…

-laughs- Hence my “or something on the same scale.” I have zero desire ever to claim major landmarks as my own. I just want something that grand available for my noble character (though note he himself is peripatetic, a wastrel in some ways, and has just bought a cliffside ship-house in LA with his actress lover — the estate would be his family’s).

Horizons did allow for some large estates, though with minimal drop points to put things and everything in big and clunky scale. I am deeply hopeful that this MMO will come up with something that lets us decorate at the level of detail that game-provided interiors have. LotRO was a let down in that regard, you could have a large area of floor and only two spots on it to put tables.

I don’t know much about programming but this sounds like it would take a lot of work on server side.

Tyr.1963:

lol neat idea, though I think, what would make more logical sense(to Arenanet programming wise) is to have an asura gate in all the major cities, that leads to your home.
I really do like the idea though.

There is the unused Asura hub in Lion’s Arch and also a spare Asura Gate in Rata Sum (not the Polymock one, the one next to the Asura Gate to Lion’s Arch).

If they did do this, it would defeat the purpose of the Personal Instance (which I’m okay with since it kind of flopped. It’s a pain to get to and there’s no point in sitting in it).

However, I would like to see some sort of personal bank space (not shared account bank) if this were to happen.

Donari.5237:

I’m still most interested in a LotRO style housing system, minus the regular rent requirement. I played Horizons for three years. They developed open-world housing in specific locations. Result? Cutthroat competition for prime lots every time a new area opened. Very bad blood between players. Urbanized sections of what had been wilderness. Huge FPS drops (GW2 might avoid that, HZ had a horrible rendering thing where no matter what wall was in your way, every object behind the wall had to render).

LotRO still had some issues, in that wanting a whole neighborhood for your guild was hard to manage as anyone could hop into the instance and buy a house while your guild was getting coordinated. Plus the rent thing meant that if you didn’t affirmatively upkeep the house, you lost it and all the decorations went into an escrow locker to be retrieved once you coughed up the gold for another house, possibly no longer with your guild.

I bet ANet will come up with something fun. That’s been their goal in everything, to get rid of the unfun parts of game features. Likely it will have ideas none of us would have thought of but once we see them we’ll be unable to imagine doing without. Still, I’d bet against open-world. There’s too many players and not enough world.

The portable door sounds -awesome-. Though then the interior of the house needs to be customizable to an even higher degree, or you might enter a noble mansion via a sewer grating …

(btw I want Caudecus Manor or something on the same scale to be my family estate. I can has?)

I prefer the EQ2 style of housing or some combination of the two. I don’t like how you lose your house if you are gone for a while in LOTRO or the limited amount of items you can place and limitations on where you can place the items. EQ2 has prestige housing you can get that doesn’t even require rent and you never lose your house. If you have one that requires rent, you just pay rent to open the house back up. Plus the decorating is amazing there. You can place items anywhere and there are many ways to obtain items. Quested, carpenter made, artisan made, purchased from the cash shop, etc. Plus the item amount in the home is much larger than in LOTRO. The only thing I like better about Lotro is that you have neighborhoods. I do love the neighborhood concept.

I would like for us to have guild neighborhood instances similar to lotro neighborhoods but with the EQ2 features.

The reason I suggested instanced housing in this way, is because I can see some problems occurring with players being free to place a house in the middle of any explorable. You can imagine players placing their house right next to a profitable event, or where a dragon often spawns. And there could be conflicts with dynamic events overlapping areas where players have placed their house, or npc’s getting stuck on buildings that weren’t always there. By limiting player houses to the big cities already in the game, you remove this problem entirely. Plus no extra buildings actually appear in the game world, it’s all existing architecture. And yes, if you want to claim a house inside Jenna’s palace, you could. I personally would probably claim one of those high balconies above Lion’s Arch’s Mystic Forge. Close to the bank and the trading post as well. Or maybe place my door in one of the dark alleys, as a secret lair.

Additional features could of course include:

• Changing the appearance of the door (wood, steel, stone)
• Changing the look of the instanced house (a fortress, a palace, a comfy house)
• Adding or moving rooms
• Arranging furniture, and hanging collectables on the wall.
• Display cases of your personal achievements and special weapons, much like the original Hall of Monuments.

I’d prefer player housing to be integrated with the environment. The cities are huge for the most part, and there’s lots of parts that we don’t even see. I like to think my character already lives -somewhere-. He already has a home perhaps, it’s just not live yet. No need for additional environments, other than interiors ofc.

Exactly. So your house could be one of the many houses that already exist in say Divinity’s Reach, but can currently not be accessed. No additional houses would have to be added to the game. Just slap your door on one of those houses, and claim that as your personal instanced home.

Of course there may be houses that get multiple doors slapped on to them by several players. But that is not a problem, because you wouldn’t see other people’s doors, unless they are in your party.

I disagree with this idea. While fairly…creative, I prefer a portal-type system—or really, any system that isn’t about taking a random house in the world that can also be claimed by many other players. Even if you can’t see the other player’s doors, the idea seems kind of weak to me and I don’t think it would be used. Having housing integrated into the environment is very ideal, but the game has to be built around that for it to be done well.

It basically is a portal. Nothing has to be changed about the environment. The door is just a visual representation of a gateway into your private home instance. You won’t see it actually opening and revealing a room. It will just be something you walk up to and activate, and then it loads the inside of your home as a separate instance (which you can then fully customize).

+1. I want to live in Ebonhawke ^^

Great suggestion, personally in my opinion the best player house feature i ever have seen!
If arenanet do not implent this i will start a mass protest against anet, when they add play housing without it… Super good idea, with your suggestion and anets skills this would go perfectly!))

A excellent idea, but probably vary difficult to implement.

Very excellent idea!

Great to see people are still enthusiastic about this idea (I was surprised to see it dug up again). I’d love to hear a dev’s thoughts on this. Is it possible to create something like this for GW2? Is it within the technical limits?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Great to see people are still enthusiastic about this idea (I was surprised to see it dug up again).

Between this, main city mini games and main city jumping puzzles, I feel like she’s found my signature

This is, and will remain, my favourite player housing concept. It would add so much awesome to the world.

Just let us customize our Home instances. A limited dev kit.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Here’s an idea to implement player housing. Players carry a portable magical door, which they can place on any wall in a town or outpost, to claim it as their own. Even houses that have no interior (since a lot of houses in towns are just decoration) can be claimed, but you can only use the door once. You can place your magical door on top of an existing door, or simply place it in an alley as some sort of secret access to your house.

Once the door is placed, it will forever be the entrance to your private home.

Multiple players can claim the same spot as their house, if they want. They can place their door anywhere they like, as long as it is in one of the existing cities. Touching this door takes them to their very own private house, which would be a separate instance.

Players that are in your party are allowed to join you in your home as you enter it, much like joining a story instance or a dungeon.

Each player receives one such portable door for free. And it can only be used once. Players can buy a new portable door from the Gem store if they change their mind.

This is the best idea regarding housing I’ve seen in awhile. It completely solves the debate of wanting to have a permanent home in the world/having it instanced, because in this way you can slap down a house anywhere you want and it’s ‘there’. It’s in the world. I can live in that impossible-to-enter house over there and it’d make sense.

I’d like to make a modification or two, if I may, to the idea. You can only see the doors of guildmates//friends’ listed people. That way immersion isn’t broken by walking around seeing literally every wall in Divinity’s Reach cloaked in hundreds of doors. Different styles could be purchased from the gem store, such as racial-themed doors and yet more furnishings for your home.

So much potential.

…But you see, the problem is that these ideas, no matter how good they are, are destined to be ignored. Anet doesn’t read this forum in the same way they don’t read Engineer forums(Or if they do, they don’t take anything seriously). I’ve yet to see anything to make me think otherwise.

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

I’d like to make a modification or two, if I may, to the idea. You can only see the doors of guildmates//friends’ listed people. That way immersion isn’t broken by walking around seeing literally every wall in Divinity’s Reach cloaked in hundreds of doors.

I agree. I think I mentioned a few posts earlier, about only being able to see the doors of people in your party, and being able to invite anyone from your party into your home instance (like joining a dungeon together, or a story instance). But if it’s guild mates and people on your friends list, that would also work.

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

Different styles could be purchased from the gem store, such as racial-themed doors and yet more furnishings for your home.

I would totally buy a creepy Halloween themed door as a skin for my home instance door. But I can imagine an overgrown door for Sylvari, and some sort of armored door for the Charr. Maybe a glowing lab-door for Asura. Indeed so much potential.

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

…But you see, the problem is that these ideas, no matter how good they are, are destined to be ignored. Anet doesn’t read this forum in the same way they don’t read Engineer forums(Or if they do, they don’t take anything seriously). I’ve yet to see anything to make me think otherwise.

That’s why I also linked to this thread in the active Living Story thread. I think if we want the devs to take note of it, we have to draw their attention to it some how.

(That also goes for some of the other awesome suggestions in this forum, such as the City Jumping Puzzles .)

Yes, an excellent suggestion. It doesn’t seem easy.

I’d be happy with just a portal stone to my home instance the way I can go to HoM, but I don’t really see that happening either.

While I like the idea, my first thought reading the title was … like the halloween doors (!) – meaning I can plop them down anywhere.

If we were to be able to anchor a permanent door exlusively for us, perhaps even character based, it might not be a bad idea to think about how we will able to find the door again … sort of like a permanent personal marker on the map.

It’s a cool idea, but just having that personal, hopefully customizable ‘home’, in the first place, would be nice. There are home instances in 3 of the major cities, but it’s not the same thing as having a place you can design yourself. Imagine:
a) choosing your plot of land and location for it. (island, in a city, out in the woods, etc.)
b) having a variety of buildings, walls, adornments, and so on that you can use to make your home.
c) having storage space to not only hold special items/weapons but that you can display them as well. (maybe statues in a great hall that hold some of your named exotics, legendary or ascended weapons)
d) you could even have achievement trophies with freedom to place them anywhere in your home.

I’m envisioning something like ‘Second Life’, but I imagine the work involved would be tremendous and server space/power limited. Would be cool though.