Homestead QoL improvements [Merged]

[VenomReaper.8960]

Overall, I have been enjoying the expansion so far and it feels more captivating compared to SotO at release.

However, regarding the homesteads, I feel like there are some QoL features missing/need to be addressed. I'd really like to hear your opinion on the below: 

- I will start with the most important one: We need a way to be able to preview homestead decorations before we craft them. Something like a right click on the decoration from the workbench. Currently there is no reliable way to see the decoration you are about to craft apart from crafting it and check whether you like it when you are about to place it.

- While in homestead you should be able to have access to both bank and TP without leaving the instance. Unless I am missing something, if I need to get some decoration crafting materials from the TP I have to exit the homestead instance, buy the materials from TP and then open the portal again to homestead in order to craft the decoration. If you want to craft lots of stuff for your home, this is a lot of time wasted going back and forth.

- Since the homestead is supposed to be located in Janthir, it is only natural that there should be an exit leading directly to an expansion zone. This will not only make more sense thematically, but it will also enable us to bring our alts to the expansion zones without having to play the first story quests and go through tons of dialogue again.

If I'm missing something and any of the above points are being addressed or have been fixed in any way, please let me know.

[Scar.1793]

no to bank access or TP, forces people to move to actual cities/hubs. I'd rather avoid convenience to not fall in the WoW garrison situation.

[Atoclone.4810]

2 minutes ago, VenomReaper.8960 said:

 

- Since the homestead is supposed to be located in Janthir, it is only natural that there should be an exit leading directly to an expansion zone. This will not only make more sense thematically, but it will also enable us to bring our alts to the expansion zones without having to play the first story quests and go through tons of dialogue again.

If I'm missing something and any of the above points are being addressed or have been fixed in any way, please let me know.

I thought that was pretty off too but apparently it's just a bug and will be patched in

[VenomReaper.8960]

6 minutes ago, Scar.1793 said:

no to bank access or TP, forces people to move to actual cities/hubs. I'd rather avoid convenience to not fall in the WoW garrison situation.

I'd agree with this if they would let us access the homestead instance from Mistlock Sanctuary where the bank and TP are next to each other. In all other cities, the bank and TP are not that close by (LA for example).

[Counter Terrorist.7421]

It's a glorified home instance with a gathering glyph sink. I don't see my self being there longer then it takes to pickup materials. I'd call the warclaw additions new maps and land spear expansion worthy content. But homesteads is just a faster home instance which I highly welcome but I can't help but feel like it is a very weak selling point for an expansion.

All that hype around it just for it to be budget guild hall decoration afk office spot for none veterans without their own guild hall. Feels a bit meh. The area need things to do. There's still time to save it but. In It's current form I can see my self being there less than 2 minutes a day.

[Ashantara.8731]

1 hour ago, VenomReaper.8960 said:

- I will start with the most important one: We need a way to be able to preview homestead decorations before we craft them.

Not only Homestead decoration, but decoration in general. This has been a thorn in my side for a decade now!

One always has to consult the GW2 Wiki for screenshots, and even those are not always getting the size across correctly (which is no longer an issue, of course, because now we can scale each piece of decoration 🙂).

So, 👍 for a Preview option (also for Infusion, please 😉).

[Deaeth.5987]

You can't access TP but you can access your bank from the Handiwork station.

[Solomon Darkfury.3729]

2 hours ago, VenomReaper.8960 said:

Overall, I have been enjoying the expansion so far and it feels more captivating compared to SotO at release.

However, regarding the homesteads, I feel like there are some QoL features missing/need to be addressed. I'd really like to hear your opinion on the below: 

- I will start with the most important one: We need a way to be able to preview homestead decorations before we craft them. Something like a right click on the decoration from the workbench. Currently there is no reliable way to see the decoration you are about to craft apart from crafting it and check whether you like it when you are about to place it.

- While in homestead you should be able to have access to both bank and TP without leaving the instance. Unless I am missing something, if I need to get some decoration crafting materials from the TP I have to exit the homestead instance, buy the materials from TP and then open the portal again to homestead in order to craft the decoration. If you want to craft lots of stuff for your home, this is a lot of time wasted going back and forth.

- Since the homestead is supposed to be located in Janthir, it is only natural that there should be an exit leading directly to an expansion zone. This will not only make more sense thematically, but it will also enable us to bring our alts to the expansion zones without having to play the first story quests and go through tons of dialogue again.

If I'm missing something and any of the above points are being addressed or have been fixed in any way, please let me know.

Add in remove the weekly cap for refining materials that are required in decorations. And also, make your NPC alts in the instance have their infusions.

Edited August 22 by Solomon Darkfury.3729
Added item

[Spiral.3724]

Great suggestions.
I'm also really confused as to why I can't exit my homestead back into Janthir Wilds. There are portals to Lion's Arch & Wiz Tower but not back to Janthir Wilds? Makes zero sense.

[Dean Calaway.9718]

10 hours ago, VenomReaper.8960 said:

We need a way to be able to preview homestead decorations before we craft them.

We desperately need this, I'm not overly interacting with the system yet since I'm waiting for the conclusion of Janthir Wilds to have all the decorations so I can start planning the spaces and even I was taken back with a system that makes you use expensive materials to craft blind, the icons aren't good enough.

I would also like to take it a step further and preview the items in world, as in, we should be able to have the ability to place everything we want around in build mode like a blue print and at the end have a list of all materials needed to craft all that and or recipes, this would make it easy to plan ahead and see what works and what doesn't without having to waste massive amounts of time getting materials to craft an object sometimes several times over only to come to the conclusion that isn't gonna work and have to start over.

[Megan.8127]

3 hours ago, Spiral.3724 said:

Great suggestions.
I'm also really confused as to why I can't exit my homestead back into Janthir Wilds. There are portals to Lion's Arch & Wiz Tower but not back to Janthir Wilds? Makes zero sense.

Bug aprently

Edited August 22 by Megan.8127

[Pinkeh.4207]

No exit to Lowland Shore is so weird considering the homestead is someone's family ranch near Harvest Den.

[Miriam.9241]

We got a navigation table at pre-sale that has nothing to do with its name.. I thought we could use it as a travel map to each town and not only lion arch and soto. But the name navigation might has nothing to do with it all.

[Pinkeh.4207]

5 minutes ago, Miriam.9241 said:

We got a navigation table at pre-sale that has nothing to do with its name.. I thought we could use it as a travel map to each town and not only lion arch and soto. But the name navigation might has nothing to do with it all.

yeah that thing was totally useless. 😅

[Nemain.5073]

One request I have is to be able to cluster decorations together. Let's say I decorate a table with sets, candles, meals, etc and I want to move that table - I have to move every single decoration separately. It would be ideal to assign children or parent decorations so you can move the whole table as one (with decos) instead of every single piece separately.

[Miriam.9241]

yes, those cluster thing is pretty nice in House Flipper 2 to move things with inside and on then. But this is a different and better system. We can't place our books and things we collected as useless scrap inside our homes.

Yes definite a preview is needed. I don't want to craft several beds, to find this one the sleeping function is working. Even over half of the beds in Janthir Wild you can not interact with, but some in Kodan Houses already having this sleeping feature. The kodan version we needed to do, was not able with the sleeping interaction.

We have no bigger beach and no underwater caves, and just plenty of huge rocks. We water coast line I can see the hard cut map instead of adding more underwater elements before the map ending point. We dont wanted to see the cutting edges under water. But this was a common problem on most water sided maps, even  in LS4. But since today no changes made on maps so I believe nothing would change on homesteds too, even if this would be possible.

The control system for day, night, and possible seasons should be not on a standing NPC. It could be added to a wall panel inside our static only house.. Maybe homested themes and seasons could be easy added there.

Why we have severals portals inside of one portal where we can select the place to go. This even worked in Eye of the North, even not very nice, as Guildwars never updated its pretty old dialog system to something nicer looking.

[Saizu.8632]

Decoration preview pleaseeeeee 

[Weru.5203]

Has anyone figured out the Armor Racks yet?  I thought that we were suppose to be able to display our own armor sets on them, but they appear to only be a statue with no other interaction.

[Meridian.4983]

21 minutes ago, Weru.5203 said:

Has anyone figured out the Armor Racks yet?  I thought that we were suppose to be able to display our own armor sets on them, but they appear to only be a statue with no other interaction.

It was in a recent post that that part of the feature release was pushed back. 

[Luthan.5236]

Versatile table thingy shows red (though it is craftable since it requires skill level 0) in the novice category. Seems like a bug? I would like to be able to see the amount of items (like in the guild hall I think where you can see it in the guild UI) that you own. Maybe with an option to remove all of that type or to highlight them.

The markers with the placed, unplaced, placeable had me confused for a bit at the start. You have to only check placed - to see the stuff that is already placed (like between 300-400 things) by default. But otherwise the other settings will override. (If you check all 3 options thinking it might make all items appear ... it won't work. Seems a bit weird hear. Only 1 option clickable - or clicking one disabling the others - since we have no radio buttons - would be best.)

[Gaiawolf.8261]

Great suggestion we need to be able to preview decorations.

And while on the topic of homestead QOL, can we get some more options to customize the ambient setting, like getting rid of the the kodan NPCs in favor of control boxes and where alts show up? And get that kitten kodan off my raptor! That's mine!

[Spiral.3724]

Just read that it's a known bug that there is no exit to Lowland Shores from the homestead.

[Garrison Storm.3046]

Overall, love the expansiveness and excited to start playing with this area!  

- Preview is an absolute must and huge QoL improvement.

- Love that we can replant our deforested area, and look forward to adding those Drizzlewood trees I see mentioned in the wiki.  That said, some kind of basic terra-forming aspect would be great as well... Raise/lower to make areas more interesting (i.e. less flat).  Creating beach areas, rock formations, ponds, etc.   I also hope to be able to discover bridges at some point, to be able to connect some those peninsulas and islands...

- "Waypoint 01" suggests there we'll be able to add more throughout the instance?  Not sure if this is there yet, but this would be fantastic... and hopefully we can choose locations, as opposed to just unlocking them in designated areas...

- It would be great to have those portals be customizable... Allow the user to designate a couple of WPs of their choosing (one time only, or at a thought-provoking cost to change)... I've got the Wizards Tower teleporter, and use the lobbies to get to Lions' Arch... So at this point, it would be less convenient to get to the portals within my own instance than use my teleporter... But being able to select a couple of frequently-accessed WP's (maybe to access metas or boss events, for example) would be a welcome addition.   

Overall I'm very pleased with this, and look forward to continued development!

[Arc.8247]

For the QoL: Put the HoT nodes somewhere else. The TD node is so obnoxiously loud after opening when you're just crafting things.

And for me as a story player: I'd like for the characters to stay where you put them. And  for them to be able to emote. I was under the impression that that was a thing anyway. sad to see it was not actually included.

Maybe also some other idle npcs, that just roam about like in the home instance. So far homestead idea was nice, but to me it's currently lacking the incentive to use that instead of my home instance.

[Chyro.1462]

Don't know if other V.I.P pass locations are also affected by this, but its really annoying that you can't go to your homestead from mistlock sanctuary. You can place the portal even in busy city hubs, don't see why it doesn't let you inside a v.i.p pass location.