Homestead Party Size? Should support squads.

[Poobah.6254]

I feel like there was some wiggle room in what was said on the live stream, but it was quite heavily implied that homesteads currently only support up to 5 players and I feel that this is inadequate for much of what players are excited to use their homesteads for. I appreciate that you may not want to be stepping on the toes of Guild Halls but Guild Halls are not owned/controlled by an individual, and also have an enormous amount of terrain, both of which are turn-offs to decorators, not to mention also being difficult to ferry people in to. How can you have a race track or a night club or an RP tavern if the player cap is just 5? Or hell what if I simply have more than 4 friends I want to hang out with?

You're providing us with a large area to play with and an enormous amount of power and versatility with the decoration system which I'm excited to use! Right now though I think the two massive limitations it has are the method of joining - ie. you only seem to be able to enter when the host enters, so party members cannot come and go as they please, and that party size issue. I dunno if you can fix the method of joining, maybe that's a hard coded problem (though it would be great if the instance could work like, say, a convergence, or guild hall) but surely there's a way to raise the player cap / support squads at least? It's be really sad to see an awesome feature not quite land not even because of the feature itself but the structures around it.

[Parasite.5389]

6 minutes ago, Poobah.6254 said:

but it was quite heavily implied that homesteads currently only support up to 5 players

it was straight up said, not implied

[Kelly.7019]

yes it shoul. anet should have looked at this closer. party size is too small for a community that decorates. it would be fun to do housing tours in squads. that is something that will have to be looked into down the road though i suspect if this is anything like guild halls. initally it will get attention then that attenion will fade so good luck with the squad thing.

[Kelly.7019]

36 minutes ago, Poobah.6254 said:

this is inadequate for much of what players are excited to use their homesteads for

its anets take on housing. anets gunna do it their way not the way players wanted. (as you can already see by fixed node locations)

plus anet never fixed the issues of squads in guild hall anywas they never all fit, though they did totally revamp how you decorate so this just seems like something they didn't want to focus on, which is weird with how other ingame decorating communities are but again- it's anets take on decorating , not the best methods and practices for it.

36 minutes ago, Poobah.6254 said:

. I appreciate that you may not want to be stepping on the toes of Guild Halls but Guild Halls are not owned/controlled by an individual, and also have an enormous amount of terrain, both of which are turn-offs to decorators,

if by decorators you mean interior decorators - yea maybe , but if you mean all decorators then definitely not! From what i can tell from guild halls there are 3 basic types of decorators.

1) interior decorators - they like small spaces/ rooms to decorate. Decorate once and done forever. (sometimes)

2) Architects - they like building things, spreading out building / constructing things all over the place from the ground floor to the ceiling. Trying to build homes within homes or not even homes at all but sculptures like say ducks 😄 Temporary, Seasonal, holiday & festival decorating.

3) track builders - beetle racers.

36 minutes ago, Poobah.6254 said:

, not to mention also being difficult to ferry people in to. How can you have a race track or a night club or an RP tavern if the player cap is just 5?

yes, this is the problem with guildhalls an now homesteads. Why didn't they fix this? too expensive? again decorating seems fixed (so far) seems like they should have fixed this too.

It would have been nice to think outside the box and let your friendslist or guildies not in a party be able to visit your home. but squads at the very least would be along the lines of the anet way.

36 minutes ago, Poobah.6254 said:

Right now though I think the two massive limitations it has are the method of joining - ie. you only seem to be able to enter when the host enters, so party members cannot come and go as they please, and that party size issue

Ding Ding! they musta looked into this but just couldn't get it to work. I can't imagine (well i can,but anyways) they'd just look over this.

 

Basically if you want to show your house off to the masses you're just going to have to get a youtube channel. 😞

Edited August 3 by Kelly.7019

[Dean Calaway.9718]

22 minutes ago, Poobah.6254 said:

How can you have a race track

Where do you think you're gonna have the room in the homestead to build a race track... ?

[Randulf.7614]

12 minutes ago, Kelly.7019 said:

its anets take on housing. anets gunna do it their way not the way players wanted. (as you can already see by fixed node locations)

plus anet never fixed the issues of squads in guild hall anywas they never all fit, though they did totally revamp how you decorate so this just seems like something they didn't want to focus on, which is weird with how other ingame decorating communities are but again- it's anets take on decorating , not the best methods and practices for it.

The fixed nodes are due to stability reasons and to avoid potential bugs/glitches. They aren’t building a game from scratch here, some things have to fit into an ancient infrastructure and I personally think they’ve done a remarkable job getting it to work even in the way they have. 

[Poobah.6254]

3 hours ago, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

Where do you think you're gonna have the room in the homestead to build a race track... ?

The exterior of the homestead area is a large map, haven't you seen any of the previews? They're deliberately giving players a lot of space to work with.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

6 hours ago, Poobah.6254 said:

The exterior of the homestead area is a large map, haven't you seen any of the previews? They're deliberately giving players a lot of space to work with.

It's smaller than the Mad King raceway and that's already the smallest track in the game, gonna be a thrilling 7 second race.

[Kelly.7019]

On 8/3/2024 at 10:46 AM, Poobah.6254 said:

The exterior of the homestead area is a large map, haven't you seen any of the previews? They're deliberately giving players a lot of space to work with.

Yea, i noticed in the preview she stopped going down that river on her skiff. i wonder if that was on purpose to not show something or just to let players explore the place for themselves. but that alone shows there's room to build a track if ya wanted. I mean people built tracks in the lil space under the guild missions area in Gilded Hollow so i'm sure there is enough space in this map. (people will make it work regardless) 🙂

[Ghastly.3914]

Agree, the more the better. It's unfortunate how small the amount of players that can visit you is....compared to the other mmo competition.

[Nemain.5073]

On 8/3/2024 at 11:39 PM, Dean Calaway.9718 said:

It's smaller than the Mad King raceway and that's already the smallest track in the game, gonna be a thrilling 7 second race.

You're DRASTICALLY underestimating the beetle community. The Homestead instance has huge verticality and spans across a huge distance. If I remember correctly, That_Shaman mentioned it's almost as big as a Guild Hall.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

25 minutes ago, Nemain.5073 said:

You're DRASTICALLY underestimating the beetle community. The Homestead instance has huge verticality and spans across a huge distance. If I remember correctly, That_Shaman mentioned it's almost as big as a Guild Hall.

I think you and I have different working definitions of adjectives regarding size.

Not only that, Anet wouldn't wanna make Guild Halls and the incredible sinks within it obsolete.

So you're getting party size homesteads, and you're gonna like it.

[Quench.7091]

If someone joins a different homestead instance, they can switch to another member's instance. Inviting late comers should possible. I'm glad they cleared that up in the livestream.

That said, party size is too small for some activities. It would be fun if there were LFG panel parties that wouldn't close after 5 people join! Roller beetle race tracks and jumping puzzle maps could stay open to visitors. It would be easier to show off decorated homes with larger quantities of people. If ArenaNet plans to sell things like homestead decoration skins, they should probably make visiting other peoples' homesteads as easy as possible. Limiting player entry can limit the desire to decorate a homestead well.

Edit: Guild halls have the advantage of not needing to have the owner logged in for entering them, although I do hope that they find a way to make guild halls more open to non-members. It will be harder to guest into guild halls than it will to guest into a homestead if changes aren't made, even with the current party size limitations on homesteads.

Edited August 15 by Quench.7091