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Elder Scrolls Online - Home Improvement with Bill the Skoomaman Murphy - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Elder Scrolls Online - Home Improvement with Bill the Skoomaman Murphy - MMORPG.com
It’s going to be an Elder Scrolls week here at MMORPG.com, as just about everyone is feeling the hype from last week’s Morrowind announcement, and this week’s PC launch of Homestead. Housing is finally here in Tamriel, and while it’s certainly robust, we’ve got a few features we’d love to see added in the coming months.
Comments
Instanced housing is the only type of housing that works in popular MMOs. Any other kind of housing and you end up upseting and disappointing a large amount of the playerbase (which is exactly what happened with Archeage).
So before you say it's garbage, keep it to yourself, apparently others are more than happy with it.
I still am a little bummed out that i expected a LOT more from ALL games with housing.I first saw what the Unreal engine could do back in 1999 and figured we SHOULD be seeing a LOT better games/housing.Now fast forward almost 20 years later and what i have been seeing could have been done 15 years ago,so we are not advancing our games or the industry at all.
We should have windows with breakable glass,ability to have several movers like the doors for example.Using voxels or whatever,we could be building houses ourselves with foundations basically doing whatever we want with architecture/color/brick types etc etc.The industry and housing just seems so lacking still and i don't know if we ever see it done well because of cost/upkeep and zone stability.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I used my alts and got the three starter closets, now the Jungle House. All characters on your account can use them for instant quick travel and that's about as useful as the housing gets.
Who said they are done with housing? I wouldn't be surprised if more usefulness is added at some point.
Housing has never been something i usually get into, i did once in EQ2 and made a really cool pad, but i like to have a place to hang my hat so to speak and if the urge to decorate strikes it's there.
No real use at the moment except for walking around in them, so you might as well just port to the demo homes on the store page, pick the furnished option and just hang out there.
In SWTOR your first home is big. you can put your companions in your home, ships, and a lot of stuff in it.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
The houses are cut and pastes of houses already in the game so charging what theyre charging (even though less than I thought they would charge) is laughable.
There is zero functionality and ZoS is gambling on the people who believe in them hoping they make some of the changes people are clamoring for. Theyre also riding people who they have ridden and will pay anything and buy everything ZoS shovels through the store regardless of price.
Housing in this game should have been THE thing to bring people back or to the game in the first place. I also dont think its a coincidence they announced Mirrowind 'expansion' before housing even officially released. I think they knew they were delivering a turd and they needed something else out there for people to look forward to. Which is EXTREMELY telling. You (as a developer) add something to the game people have wanted since before the game was even released, and you 'bury' its release with the announcement of a future release of the most popular (most peoples opinion) area of the ES universe.
They saw the negativity on the PTS forums and figured if they got out ahead of it they could quell some of it with the Morrowind announcement.
I guess thats a good barometer for people to look at come May, if they announce a new DLC before Morrowind officially releases you have an idea how 'good' its going to be. Wont help if you pre order I guess but for those that dont....
WOW and Wildstar both are recent examples of developers learning from what came before and using their creativity to improve on previous concepts.
ESO's housing is a giant step backwards on housing functionality and feels, IMO, like housing that was mailed in simply for the purpose of providing a new avenue to the cash shop. And no, I'm not talking about buying the empty, lifeless house itself: that can be done with either in-game gold or crowns.
I'm talking about the new system of furniture crafting that bears no resemblance whatsoever to the crafting professions that were designed with the idea of making them fun and rewarding in and of themselves with material requirements balanced to require some work to obtain them but not too much.
It's that balance of mats requirement that is totally out of whack here. Every piece of furnishing you want to craft has extremely high requirements of materials that are also much harder to get than the materials for any other crafting profession.
So why did they do this? Simple. All other crafting was developed at a time in ESO's cycle when their motivation was all about interesting and rewarding game play and none of the crafted items from those legacy crafting activities are in competition with crown store offerings.
Furnishing crafting in ESO is actually a very good case study of how changing monetization models in a game influences development focus in more subtle and less obvious ways. It's no longer all about "fun and rewarding." Those are now secondary considerations. The primary design consideration is "how does this enhance our potential future revenues?"
This is why ESO didn't do something new and creative with their housing and it's so devoid of functionality: because that does not serve their purpose of selling home decorations in the crown store which is what this type of housing is all about.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Dev time would be better spent elsewhere IMO.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Purchase of houses and items via cash shops or expansions will provide revenue directly. Adding features broadens the games appeal to a wider number of people - maybe by removing a reason people wonlt buy the game - and additional sales means more revenue. It also generates articles on e.g. mmorpg.com which in turn generates publicity which again may result in additional sales.
And in this case the cost is probably not that great since most (all?) of the art assets will already have existed.
Personally I have never been that invested in houses - especially ones with no functional role. I have absolutely no issue with the feature being added however as I recognise that some people like housing.
Let's party like it is 1863!
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
The housing should be cheaper and in general affordable for whatever way you choose to buy it. I'd say if furniture crafting is really that bad, hopefully they can fix it to bring it in line with the other crafting professions. I think crafting is pretty good in this game.
Then they should just allow players to craft all the standard in game styles easily with motifs and only put "premier" furniture on the store, with fancier or special styles (i.e. I think BDO had a Christmas themed furniture set). That's what other games do and it makes it at least feel like a fair choice. They could also sell "premier" furniture crafting motifs on the store like they do now. That would be a better use of my money since I could craft as much furniture with that as I wanted, and sell some, instead of just buying one set of furniture. I hope they do consumer friendly things like that.
I actually like that the houses are existing building styles. It makes it more immersive and it's also fun when you've seen a building in game that you really like. I just wish they would have made small towns of houses instead of just one house per type. That way there would be an in game place for players to hang out outside of their houses. Maybe add a General Goods vendor and Banker NPC, along with crafting tables and other normal "town square" type objects. That social aspect would be amazing.
And I'm about to hate myself for suggesting this, but if they really need to monetize the idea of vendors and NPCs in or near homes, then just make players buy a cash shop item before we can "see" the NPCs in our home's "town square". But at least that way it's still a shared social experience. I mean it's an MMO afterall!
All in all these are changes they can easily make in future updates. I just hope they do.
The message was very clear: they know it's extra grindy and not in line with any other crafting... and they want it that way.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
They have a right to their opinion.
That said, no, you are wrong about it being the only housing that works. The reason that UO housing worked is because the game had servers. Each server had its own community, which could not interact with other server communities. The world was set up with large areas of nothing, that ended up being filled up with open world housing. In ESO, they have megaserver tech, which basically forces heavy instancing and phasing. There simply would not be enough space in the game world to accommodate a million players or more.
Other types of housing has been successful. DAoC housing worked fine. LOTR housing worked well. Neither were my cup of tea, but they still worked. They were both popular MMO's.
Really, you are going to disappoint everyone if you don't have un-instanced housing. But Zen really has no choice here. In order to have it, based on their server tech, it has to be this way. Not because one or the other doesn't work.
Agree with this. And what really surprised me was, no standard beds for sale at vendors!?! WTF. A complete set of basic furniture should be on the vendors at reasonable prices IMHO. If people want to get fancy then go to the store or the guild traders, but with basic furniture not available from vendors the only reason to get housing for me at this point are the teleports.
That said the more they money grub, the less I am going to give them my money. If it gets to the point where I can no longer enjoy the game without giving them money for what is essentially basic goods or services then I will simply leave.
Chat prices and guild trader prices for just about anything are upwards of 30k. Which is just ridiculous, but I guess there must be people paying that much for it so whatever... But with prices like that I imagine there are a lot of people like myself who are just going to craft what they want, and dry up the market for anything but hard to find items.
On the good side, I am not sure if everything can potentially drop out in the world, but I have received a few nice drops so far.(it's a shame I only have an empty room to put them in) .