Player housing poll

[Danikat.8537]

I made this poll to try and start a more structured discussion around player housing in GW2. There's a lot of different ways to add player housing to an MMO (many of which are mutually exclusive) and a lot of different assumptions and expectations about what that seemingly simple term means. I think that makes discussions about whether Anet could or should add it difficult, because two people who both say yes (or no) may be thinking of entirely different things. I find it hard to tell if there's actually any consensus so I thought a poll might help.

The first and last questions require you to pick 1 option, because I think those are mutually exclusive, but the 2nd question is multiple choice so you can pick as many features as you want. The poll would only let me add 3 questions, but I've tried to cover what I think the major points are. I was going to ask about monetisation, but I suspect most players would prefer it to be in-game unlocks, Anet would prefer gem store purchases and the result would be a mix of the two. I was also going to ask about purchased upgrades copying over between multiple homes, but didn't have enough space. (I did ask about character specific homes because I never see that discussion but I think it's an important question since the two versions each have pros and cons and I think would appeal to different people.)

Notes on Question 1
"Adding extra features to the home instances AND a building or space which officially belongs to my character/s" means there would be a house (for humans) pod (for sylvari), and similar areas for the other races which is explicitly owned by your character/s and they get a bit more control over it than the rest of the instance (for example if placable furniture is a feature this space would likely start off empty so it's entirely up to you how it's decorated).

"More home instances to choose in different locations around the world" - these don't have to function the same as the current home instances (that's covered by question 2). I mean something like Elder Scrolls Online's housing system where some buildings in citites or out in the wilderness and some spaces without buildings are available for players to buy. Like GW2's current home instances there's no limit on how many people can have the same one/s even if those players are on the same server, because they each get an instanced copy.

P.S. if you mention another game's housing system in your reply please explain how it works. We haven't all played the same games (no, not even WoW) so other people might not know what you mean.

[Fueki.4753]

I'd rather have Arenanet spend their resources on different things than a third iteration of housing.

And yes, no matter how much one may dislike Guild Halls and home instances, they are iterations of housing. Until Arenanet officially says otherwise, that is not up to debate.

Edited April 11, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Blude.6812]

You need to add , I don't want this to all the questions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can't submit the poll until you answer all 3 question.  As you can see the NO is quite clear but the other 2 results are completely invalid because those that have voted no to the initial redundant all ready covered a 1000+ times housing question, have to answer a question that validates housing.

 

Edited April 11, 2022 by Blude.6812

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I don't care about the current home instance. It offers little over some harvesting nodes and I never go there.

I would like a fully decoratable, account-bound player house combined with an account-bound personal museum where you can display your miniatures, collections, select achievements, select weapons, armors. The account-based museum is inspired by the Hall of Monuments in GW1: Eye of the North. Outside could have a place for your mounts and pets.

It would be super cool if you could have a house somewhere in the open world, but I don't think that's doable with maybe a million players. So it is more realistic that the player house is located in an instanced location where you or your party can visit it.

And there could be many options for monetization. Like selling gemstore house decorations and house storage space. Gemstore tiles, paint colors, wallpapers, services like crafting stations and portals.

Decorations may be earned in game via achievements (account-bound), via drops, crafted (and tradable) and some exclusive ones sold in the gem store.

The Hall of Monuments was a major focus for my gameplay in GW1 for years and I loved it as long-term goal for me.

Edited April 11, 2022 by TheQuickFox.3826

[Excursion.9752]

Old Ultima Online player here. Housing was a huge success there.  Housing is not a bad thing. Its a lot like fishing, not really needed but would be fun to have. Its one of those things that you didn't know you wanted until you get it. A pretty fond memory of mine was when guild members threw in their gold to buy another member a house.  This happened over 20 years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday.

I always used my house as a trophy room. I displayed things that I had accomplished by displaying  items I got from specific content. I must add I really wasn't a house person when I started the game but after I messed around with it for a little while, It actually became fun.

From an economy standpoint having this would add another material/gold sink into the game which wouldn't be so bad. It may even come with a new profession carpentry. So you can make different items to place in your house.

Edited April 11, 2022 by Excursion.9752

[Sylvari.2953]

Housing is the only thing that would fully bring me back to GW2! 😍 Right now it's just a side game because I don't care much about EoD features, unfortunately. I play ESO to collect & decorate houses and I want something similar in GW2, different housing instances on maps!

[Peterson.5172]

24 minutes ago, Excursion.9752 said:

Old Ultima Online player here. Housing was a huge success there.

From an economy standpoint having this would add another material/gold sink into the game which wouldn't be so bad. It may even come with a new profession carpentry. So you can make different items to place in your house.

while i can understand why some people like housing, i like the idea of it too, but i doubt its implementation can be meaningful (widely used). gw2 nodes are interesting, but they cost way too much.

wildstar had one of the best housing systems in "recent" mmo history, even mixing with gameplay, still went down and down

economy-wise i've played games with housing, where the "housing" element was pretty much forgotten by everyone, and people spent tiny amounts of money/gold there vs rest of the game

so (to make an excuse for anet), i rather they spend dev resources elsewhere

[Omega.6801]

I'd rather have resources spent elsewhere.

[standardFoe.2983]

No.

So much of EoD is designed to milk money from the gem store since GW2 is dependent on player donations to survive financially.

This release is such a let down on instances/events, specializations, skins, achievements, adventures and all the other parts of earlier releases that actually add to player engagement.

My personal wish is that development go back to focusing on combat and achievements and leave superficial things like decorating to other games.

Edited April 11, 2022 by standardFoe.2983

[ugrakarma.9416]

Anet seems unable at this moment to deliver anything deep or that requires much innovation.

Fishing is good, but inst deep, can be considered a "polished work". Fishes itselfs is just icons, can't compare with work needed for a housing, better than GH actually are.

Skiffs is a mount reskin, in frostgourge sound, theres a water area near a JP with mounts forbidden, if u approach it in a skiff its "desmount" u lolz.

Jade Bot is developed as skills.

So basically, EoD is a large "reutilization resources" xpac.

The last time Anet really developed something new(and hard) was equipment/skills storage stuff, and some consider it heavy monetized.

If they deliver a housing system, would be a huge reskin of guild halls, and ppl actually complain about lots of limitations on GH system. 

Edited April 11, 2022 by ugrakarma.9416

[neighto.7386]

Only picked other for #2 as I have zero interest in any sort of housing other than what we already have with Home instances and Guild halls.    I have zero interest in any sort of housing that you know Anet will HIGHLY monetize and have next to nothing achievable by playing the game.    The last expansion just showed that they are only adding things in the game they can hawk off skins in the gem store (fishing poles, skiffs, Turtle skins etc etc)   I understand Anet needs to make money, but its just getting out of hand now.... I really miss the days of old with this game before they fell into the typical MMO monetization trap. 

[Hashberry.4510]

After what they did with fishing its clear they have nothing creative to offer, just some boring variation on mounts (so overdone) with a dull cheevo hunt attached.

 

I hope folks who enjoy housing get it though, good luck.

[Tachenon.5270]

I'm not interested in housing in an MMO. Only ever bothered with it once in another MMO and didn't stick with it for long. But I wouldn't be against anet adding more of it to GW2 for the people who like it, so /e shrug.

If they could incorporate something akin to the house building in the Sims games, I'd be all over that. Knowing anet, though, you'd probably have to dodge roll through half a baker's dozen consecutive AOEs just to get through the front door. Or you couldn't paint the walls until you gathered 250,000 dry bones to make paint. It's become something of a tradition 'round here, ya know. Hee.

[SinisterSlay.6973]

I'm not interested in housing.

I would rather anet put resources into Fashion Wars and get some face sculpting tools, a couple hundred extra hair styles or let us customize them, and tons and tons of armor skins and outfits. Like release one a week or something. They can all be gem store items. I just want the devs to really dive into the true end game content Guild wars offers.

[Vetkin.6041]

Housing is my greatest wish for this game since release.

[Antycypator.9874]

I think housing doesn't add anything useful to the game, but sometimes I would like to spend some time on decorating an instance, just like I was doing with Guild Hall. Honestly, I don't even visit my home instance, because there's nothing to do exept sinking thousands of gold for gathering nodes and opening all these chests for low-value loot.

[DeanBB.4268]

I really have no interest in housing, but if it was implemented, wouldn't it have to be like Baba Yaga's hut, walking around on chicken legs, following the homeless and wandering commander? So... much like the jade bot, really, just there, anywhere, when you need it?

[patton the great.7126]

Complete waste of time when this game is in the current state of disrepair. About as useful as Capes or boats that do the same thing as one of the mounts....

[Vayne.8563]

9 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

I'd rather have Arenanet spend their resources on different things than a third iteration of housing.

And yes, no matter how much one may dislike Guild Halls and home instances, they are iterations of housing. Until Arenanet officially says otherwise, that is not up to debate.

Home instances are not housing. You can't place anything in them only Anet can. They changed based on story choices as to who comes in them, but it's not housing. It wasn't introduced as housing. Anet never called it housing.

 

It is an instanced area of each city where story takes place. That's all it was at launch there weren't even nodes to put in it back then. It's not housing.

I'd say it's not up for debate, but that's a silly thing to say since anything someone disagrees with is up for debate on a forum.

[Kaliwenda.3428]

I did not vote because I get my MMO housing fix in another game.  It's really the main reason I even keep active in that game, and my houses there mean a lot to me.

I completely understand why people would want it in GW2.

Edited after I got to the end of the OP:  I'm talking about LOTRO. You can buy instanced player and kin housing in one of the 4 starter cities for in-game currency, and in premium (real money equivalent) areas like Rohan, Erebor, or the Cape of Belfalas.

Houses have furniture hooks that can be moved around for custom placement of items.  You earn housing decorations by playing the story, bartering with festival tokens, or from the store.  Some are drops from instances or mobs.  Oh yeah, there are furniture merchants in the housing neighborhoods (that's in-game currency) and some major hub cities.

Houses have storage chests that you can expand with in-game gold, and you can also buy merchant, vault, and crafting stations for them from the store. (There are vaults and merchants in  the housing neighborhoods to use for free, you just might have to ride a ways to get to them from your house).

You can use wallpaper and floor surfaces to change the look, and there are lighting options too but I don't remember if that's only in premium houses. I'm sure there's more to say but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

OH, you can have your mini-pets roam around inside or outside too.

Also, you can set your house permissions up so that other people can come visit and/or use your decorations (light the fireplace or candles for example),  You add people by name individually, or by category (everyone, kinship members).  This way you can let specific people do things like access your storage, move decorations, even pay the house maintenance!  I have one character that has permission to all the houses across multiple accounts.  Every 6 months they go around and pay the maintenance for the next 6 months (it's a weekly charge but you can pay up to 6 months in advance).

I've never set up to have maintenance be paid by "everyone" but now I'm tempted to set one house that way just to see if anyone actually does it.

The houses are in instanced neighborhoods so that you can ride around and look to see how everyone else has decorated their yards and go inside if they set it up that way.  There's even a quest during the Harvest Festival where you have to go around trick or treating to get a list of different kinds of treats from people's houses.  People coordinate to set up whole neighborhoods so that you can make the rounds and get the quest done.  It's really charming.

Edited April 12, 2022 by Kaliwenda.3428
thought of more stuff

[patton the great.7126]

Would rather see POLYMOCK, an actual legacy guild wars design over player housing, a generic wheeabo request from every mmo ever.

[Quench.7091]

They could probably use inheritance to bring over the Guild Hall system into a player housing system and use the same assets between the two. My biggest criticism about player housing systems in MMOs are their lack of multiplayer. Importing home instance gathering nodes over might help with that end of things.

Something to note is the popularity of player housing inside of other games that have them. Casual players really love these types of things. Open world homes in games often have issues with housing shortages, which attest to the popularity of the feature.

[Fueki.4753]

5 hours ago, Vayne.8563 said:

Home instances are not housing. You can't place anything in them only Anet can. They changed based on story choices as to who comes in them, but it's not housing. It wasn't introduced as housing. Anet never called it housing.

Just because you don't like this iteration of housing, because it's so wildly different from what you wish from a housing feature, doesn't make it less of a housing feature.

[lezbefriends.7516]

16 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

I'd rather have Arenanet spend their resources on different things than a third iteration of housing.

And yes, no matter how much one may dislike Guild Halls and home instances, they are iterations of housing. Until Arenanet officially says otherwise, that is not up to debate.

Guild Halls and home instances are not iterations off housing. Until ANet says they are, that is not up for debate.

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Just because you don't like this iteration of housing, because it's so wildly different from what you wish from a housing feature, doesn't make it less of a housing feature.

It's not housing because it's not a house, it doesn't even contain a house. It was never called housing by anyone at Anet. You can't call a fish a bird, but it's still just a fish, even a flying fish is just a fish.

 

If you're a human, can you tell me where you live in that neighborhood? Which house is actually yours? Can you furnish this house?  Can you move anything around at your discretion? 

It doesn't fit the definition of housing even in the loosest sense of the word.  You can repeat it, but it's still not correct.