Player Housing?

Lately I've seen more and more people asking for player housing. I think that if they made the home instances non-instanced places and replaced the home instances with an actual housing system it could actually work or just keep the home instances and use a certain building or w/e for the player to use as a personal house. There are tons of places in the world of Tyria that would be well suited for housing locations and if not that it has been mentioned several times in lore and the game's storyline that the Mists contain countless worlds all varying in size, histories, etc. The home instance is pretty dead and I think we can all agree with that and there isn't much of a reason to return to the home instance unless you're using the nodes and stuff that you've unlocked for the instance but those can all be moved to a player housing system. Thoughts? Would Arenet reconsider?

I want player housing and I think it should be something like dimensions in RIFT: instanced areas we can teleport to (like Mistlock) and we could decorate it, invite friends and we could choose (optional!) to make it public so random strangers could visit and admire our work. :) I think the home instances shouldn't be changed, it's for nodes and NPCs from story.

Also Anet would profit from this as they could sell furniture skins. What I would like to see in GW2 player housing is, that all of your characters would be located inside your account house doing random stuff.

Search is your friend.

Also, has anyone noticed that Marjory and Kas have their own house in Divinity’s Reach? Could that be a preview of future player housing plans in the next xpac? Or could it just be part of the story? I’m just kind of curious to see what happens.

@I Love Root Beer.1872 said:Also, has anyone noticed that Marjory and Kas have their own house in Divinity’s Reach? Could that be a preview of future player housing plans in the next xpac? Or could it just be part of the story? I’m just kind of curious to see what happens.

Marjory and Kas' house has been there for several years now (before HoT even came out). I don't think it's indicative of anything pertaining to player housing.

I never understood why nearly everytime this is suggested, the focus is on ditching the home instance and creating the same thing, but in a different location. Wouldn't the obvious solution be "add decorations to home instances"?

@"starlinvf.1358" said:I never understood why nearly everytime this is suggested, the focus is on ditching the home instance and creating the same thing, but in a different location. Wouldn't the obvious solution be "add decorations to home instances"?

Never felt like the home instance is my character's home. Never felt connected to it.

Definitely want it

@RoseofGilead.8907 said:

@I Love Root Beer.1872 said:Also, has anyone noticed that Marjory and Kas have their own house in Divinity’s Reach? Could that be a preview of future player housing plans in the next xpac? Or could it just be part of the story? I’m just kind of curious to see what happens.

I seriously didn't know that lol. I thought it had just recently been put there.

The home instance is pure garbage. They even placed the harvesting nodes in awful spots with seemingly no thought at all.

I would LOVE to see housing of some sort, but definitely something that can be customized to feel more like your own space and with the ability to decorate like you already can in the guild hall. I mean, scribing is in place. The decoration system is in place. They would just need to do home instances right and being able to manually place the harvesting nodes would be amazing too.

Boo, to housing. We have the guildhall and a home instance. I rather have them make more content more frequently. If they want make the damn home instance more customizable sure fine. But if they are planning on spending large amounts of money on something that will probably be poorly made, I say no. Anet is not know for their homebuilding simulators and dont give the player base one more thing to rage and complain about.

@Eme.2018 said:

@"starlinvf.1358" said:I never understood why nearly everytime this is suggested, the focus is on ditching the home instance and creating the same thing, but in a different location. Wouldn't the obvious solution be "add decorations to home instances"?

Never felt like the home instance is my character's home. Never felt connected to it.

For the human noble path, it most certainly IS your character's home. (Granted, I think that's applicable only to humans on the noble path, but...)

And the question of "player housing" has been live since before the game opened. I am personally very opposed to "plot of land" housing like you see in ArcheAge or FFXIV, but it would be quite feasible to stick a generic "house" behind the "Door" instances that you find across the road from the orphanage in the Salma District. (Look left as you enter the Salma District: you'll see a yellow-name "Door", although it doesn't go anywhere interesting, and of the five home instances, only Salma has it.)

Never understood the appeal, TBH. Housing's always felt like a dull time and gold/real money sink in pretty much every game I've played. But for all the people who love it, thumbs up! I know how passionate people become about their custom spaces. The home instance doesn't really feel like anything but a place to park your nodes.

I still think player housing should be done via the guild hall system with a Dragon's Watch mission to capture a special guild hall. I would like to see it more than a just a guild hall; I'd like to see it a whole map that has a guild hall on it. A map that players could clear once a day of creatures and nodes. I'd like to see the map be just east of where Mount Maelstrom and Timberline Falls meet. It's a nice mix of jungle, water and southern Shiverpeaks. The guild hall could be an abandoned Inquest base built into an ancient dwarf structure.

This is a crazy idea but id rather have personal boats that you can customize in a water themed expansion. Personal airships would also be really cool.

@juhani.5361 said:Never understood the appeal, TBH. Housing's always felt like a dull time and gold/real money sink in pretty much every game I've played. But for all the people who love it, thumbs up! I know how passionate people become about their custom spaces. The home instance doesn't really feel like anything but a place to park your nodes.

Exactly! People enjoy different things. Like I never understood the appeal of raids.

I don't want this, there is enough going on in my home instance with nodes, npcs, and cats. And decorations are in the guild hall.

I loved player housing when it came to ESO and I would love it here as well. A major theme of GW2 has always been player style and expression. You can customize your armor, we have tons of minis to follow us around, achievement titles, outfits, mail carriers, finishers, mount skins... Lots of rewards in GW2 aren't about gear stats so much as gear appearance. Having player housing just feels like it would fit so well. Even if all player housing meant is they allowed us to customize our home instance. Choose where certain nodes or items go, how many NPCs are present if any, give us furniture options to place around etc etc. It would make me want to spend time with the home instance rather then just using it as a quick farming spot.

@"I Love Root Beer.1872" said:Lately I've seen more and more people asking for player housing. I think that if they made the home instances non-instanced places and replaced the home instances with an actual housing system it could actually work or just keep the home instances and use a certain building or w/e for the player to use as a personal house.

What i would really DISLIKE is if they added scribing to personal instances. It kind of defeats the point. Yes you could decorate but nobody other then the 4 people in your party could ever see it. (Kind of like a solo personal guild hall.) Anet should think of housing like armor. People want to be creative and show off their decorating skills to the masses not a few. OPEN WORLD housing is currently highly unlikely, but instanced Village or community housing has potential. The basic idea would be that you don't need to be in a party to visit different housing communities and tour through their homes looking at the different design choices they've made or how some people decorate. It would have to over come the current {if more then 5 people in a guild hall then kicks you to new map and old one closes problem}, but maybe a community village would be coded differently (i mean there's WvW map's so clearly it could work).

Yes, anet needs a housing system other then instanced personal housing (or basically the new housing system should replace the old if a player chooses so). They also need to entirely revamp scribing before they add a housing system assuming scribing would be tied to it. It needs to be a FUN, Easy to decorate, game mode not a gold sink, only for the rich 1% of gamers. Guild hall decorating has fallen through the cracks because anet has decided not to devote any resources to it. :( I kind of think housing would be the same. ALOT OF HYPE! People dreaming of possibilities of what they'll do, then it actually launches and suddenly you find out it takes a year of your full-time, ingame salary just to make a couch and are completley turned off by it. Another year rolls by and even less resources are put into it and the communities really dislikes what anet has done, then anet kills the housing team. Sad yes. but hey its what happened before, prolly will happen again.

There are tons of places in the world of Tyria that would be well suited for housing locations and if not that it has been mentioned several times in lore and the game's storyline that the Mists contain countless worlds all varying in size, histories, etc.

I like the idea of the mists and open world housing would seem to fit with that. Imagine a new xpac - new maps for housing. People might not like that but mounts are tied to PoF so Open world housing could be tied to new xpac. Or village housing could be based off of how WvW is coded. (Lots of people in one map kinda thing.)

The home instance is pretty deadNot in Rata Sum Actually :)

and I think we can all agree with that and there isn't much of a reason to return to the home instance unless you're using the nodes and stuff that you've unlocked for the instance but those can all be moved to a player housing system. Thoughts? Would Arenet reconsider?

Yes, this all could and should be moved over to a better system, but coding might be problematic for anet as i've heard for some people missing Season 1 nodes from there homes can't get them back. but that might be situational.

starlinvf.1358 I never understood why nearly everytime this is suggested, the focus is on ditching the home instance and creating the same thing, but in a different location. Wouldn't the obvious solution be "add decorations to home instances"?I think because being limited to having to be in a party to view an instance that isn't yours and being free to explore anyones home is part of the problem. I like to decorate. I'm my main guilds decorator but being the sole person doing it and it's not even in my control led me to decorate my own personal guild hall and I still run into the problem of nobody except youtube viewers will ever see my amazing designs. :( I like other games like ARchAge for example that you can personalize an open world home and anyone can wander upon it. If anet could apply the same randomness to instance housing it would definetly help. But you can't. So changing or evolving the instanced personal housing system into something else is the next best thing.

juhani.5361 Never understood the appeal, TBH. Housing's always felt like a dull time and gold/real money sink in pretty much every game I've played. But for all the people who love it, thumbs up! I know how passionate people become about their custom spaces. The home instance doesn't really feel like anything but a place to park your nodes.

I think its an extension of a players choice of what they wear, what armors they have, what weapons they carry, what dyes they use. This game is basically Fashion Wars unlike other mmos and i think some people (not all) that like competitive play/ shooter games probably don't get this kind of thing.

Current instanced personal houses are tied to story and are waaay too big at least norn's is. Deciding what style house you have gives even more flavor to your style. There is a huge potential here for anet if done right. A new game mode could be built around this.

Drecien.4508 I don't want this, there is enough going on in my home instance with nodes, npcs, and cats. And decorations are in the guild hall.I totally do, my guild hall is dead i spend hours in it so i should know, hardly anyone ever uses it. my Home instance is a lonely place. I prefer the randomness like the game is designed around. You could be a solo player but you'll always stumble across other willing to help you out because your goals are the same. Even if its a whisper to ask them what cool looking weapon they have. You can't do that in a solo rpg. That kind of dynamic event, random meeting, making friends can also apply to instanced village communities or open world housing.

However, I don't think this should be tied to guild halls. Guild halls could have asuran portals to different village/communities. A drop down list like for fractals could list all the different communities you could visit. Communities could be based on already existing areas in game or if tied to a new xpac specifically those areas.

@"Pimpology.6234" said:

I think its an extension of a players choice of what they wear, what armors they have, what weapons they carry, what dyes they use. This game is basically Fashion Wars unlike other mmos and i think some people (not all) that like competitive play/ shooter games probably don't get this kind of thing.

Current instanced personal houses are tied to story and are waaay too big at least norn's is. Deciding what style house you have gives even more flavor to your style. There is a huge potential here for anet if done right. A new game mode could be built around this.

Heh, interesting you say that, because I'm actually in the prime demographic for loving player housing. a) I'm female. b) I'm middle-aged. c) I'm less competitive than a sea-sponge. d) I like pretty things. e) I browse furniture stores, art supply stores, and home goods places for entertainment and devour magazines like Dwell and sites like Houzz.

All the same, when my husband and I played Skyrim at the same time, he was the one obsessively collecting matching plates and cups. He'd arrange everything in beautiful stacks on each and every one of his houses' shelves. I dumped my spare crap in drawers and was done with it. My time was spent roaming around harvesting things, combining random stuff on the alchemy table, exploring each and every cave, having a chat with every NPC in the game, etc. Meanwhile, he arranged everything into themes. Neatly piled fruit and cheese in dishes on the table, next to forks and knives arranged with precision. I tried once, but I never got a hang of how to "carry" things properly.

I adore decorating my actual house in real time, but in-game? Nope. Interfaces are almost always clunky and frustrating. You're limited by what fits what spot in some game designer's head. Virtual furniture usually only faces one way-- the dev's way. Tried doing the stronghold thing in SWTOR, and the hooks drove me insane. Not to mention that items were impossible to find through the kludgy lookup interface. Bleh. Plus a lot of decorations are just plain ughly. Took me close to an hour to get a decent mailbox/storage/GTN/droid vendor setup in one. I mostly gave up on the rest.

I'm sure if Anet took the job on, they'd do something a lot friendlier and more fun. I adore what they've done with mounts-- something that's basically only functional in most games. Not to mention, housing is a huge revenue generator. A new gaming mode is always welcome and adds to player retention. Heck, if Anet added an Eichler complete with a mid-century modern set of decos to the middle of the Salma district, I'd be all over decorating that sucker ;)

More people are not asking than asking.

I never got boring in my guild hall, somes decorations are a gold sink but some are correct /cheap, I made my order of whisper glob with 30 gold coin, only need 1-2 for a cool tree or elonian fence, that's pretty cheap imo. I got a lot of fun while making myself a little "home" within my guild hall, Players without guild should have this opportunity too. The thing is, they should pay a little more interest in guild hall like adding a lvl 500 scribe with very old assets: asuran floor tiles... sylvari chairs...norn houses...Whereas home instances is for me far less developed: expensive nodes, can't choose where to put them... cats just to say "hey we are here!", random un-choosable npcs from your story you don't remember anymore... Home instances could simply disapear or became a regular area, I would not see the difference. The solution could be a giant map with race themed sub-areas with buildings that you can claim for you, the furnitures system could be like the scribe one but easier like: one green wood chair = 4 green wood dowel + 2 green wood planks. It would make far more sense. Or simply buying already built furnitures as a reasonable price like 10 silvers.. And more complex the furniture is, more expensive she will be. Don't get me wrong, e.g: giant asuran stone wall would cost less than a small complex three-parts asuran console.And Anet could sell access to a specific part of this giant map like the sky or the underground, skins for furnitures, services like tp, bank etc why not?, weather features: rain/snow/ash rain/full darkness/fog.....

I will surely create a real thread about it, it seems interesting. That's my opinion ^^

I respect all of your opinions. I myself am pretty hopeful that they'll bring player housing into reality eventually. I just hope they do it right. I do see where the people who don't want it are going though.

@Pimpology.6234 said:

@"I Love Root Beer.1872" said:Lately I've seen more and more people asking for player housing. I think that if they made the home instances non-instanced places and replaced the home instances with an actual housing system it could actually work or just keep the home instances and use a certain building or w/e for the player to use as a personal house.

There are tons of places in the world of Tyria that would be well suited for housing locations and if not that it has been mentioned several times in lore and the game's storyline that the Mists contain countless worlds all varying in size, histories, etc.

The home instance is pretty deadNot in Rata Sum Actually :)

and I think we can all agree with that and there isn't much of a reason to return to the home instance unless you're using the nodes and stuff that you've unlocked for the instance but those can all be moved to a player housing system. Thoughts? Would Arenet reconsider?

starlinvf.1358 I never understood why nearly everytime this is suggested, the focus is on ditching the home instance and creating the same thing, but in a different location. Wouldn't the obvious solution be "add decorations to home instances"?I think because being limited to having to be in a party to view an instance that isn't yours and being free to explore anyones home is part of the problem. I like to decorate. I'm my main guilds decorator but being the sole person doing it and it's not even in my control led me to decorate my own personal guild hall and I still run into the problem of nobody except youtube viewers will ever see my amazing designs. :( I like other games like ARchAge for example that you can personalize an open world home and anyone can wander upon it. If anet could apply the same randomness to instance housing it would definetly help. But you can't. So changing or evolving the instanced personal housing system into something else is the next best thing.

juhani.5361 Never understood the appeal, TBH. Housing's always felt like a dull time and gold/real money sink in pretty much every game I've played. But for all the people who love it, thumbs up! I know how passionate people become about their custom spaces. The home instance doesn't really feel like anything but a place to park your nodes.

Drecien.4508 I don't want this, there is enough going on in my home instance with nodes, npcs, and cats. And decorations are in the guild hall.I totally do, my guild hall is dead i spend hours in it so i should know, hardly anyone ever uses it. my Home instance is a lonely place. I prefer the randomness like the game is designed around. You could be a solo player but you'll always stumble across other willing to help you out because your goals are the same. Even if its a whisper to ask them what cool looking weapon they have. You can't do that in a solo rpg. That kind of dynamic event, random meeting, making friends can also apply to instanced village communities or open world housing.

That's a lot to read, thankfully I have time on my hands lol, great suggestion though. I've seen community housing or w/e work in a game I just can't remember which game it was lol. But I like it lol