Ok let's talk housing because I just spent the last few hours on it.
1. All housing that I've seen is dank, dark, and miserable. Even the light coming in the "windows" doesn't really light the rooms. So, you say, buy some lights. Except that the light from any given lamp only extends a couple of feet from it. Meaning that to properly light any given room, I'd need at least 20 for the smallest and a good few hundred for the largest.
2. Houses are, in spite of what the introductions say, either one room, or giant mansions. And none of the rooms have functioning doors or bathrooms. One of the ones on the market gives the impression of at least three large rooms on the second floor with a bottom floor that you can fill. How about nope? It's all one hallway with a stairs leading up to the upstairs hallway. The inside of the house doesn't match the outside shape in any way.
3. Item limits... if you are not a paying member of ESO, your beginning item limit is 15 with the largest house being 300. Yep, you read that right. If you are a paying member, you get twice that.
Now let's look at the only reasonable alternative game with excellent housing in comparison, EQ2.
1. Many houses are bright and clear unless you are counting the oldest released when the game started. Very little dank and dark about these houses unless it's on purpose.
2. Houses vary from two rooms at their cheapest to six rooms at the most expensive. That's assuming you go with traditional houses rather than the "housing areas" which I am not counting for the purpose of what I'm writing.
3. Item limits... The smallest start with 200 items, and that is expandable to 500 not including "building blocks" which effectively starts at another 200 expandable to 500. So you can actually have 1000 items in a two room. One of my biggest houses I've been working on for a while is in a housing area and currently number (including building blocks) 2400 items.
So one of my worries was that there would be hooks in ESO. There aren't. You can put anything anywhere you like. But there might as well be since you can ONLY PUT 15 ITEMS IN THE APARTMENTS.
I had high hopes. To say that I'm disappointed is putting it lightly. It's somewhere in between the nasty "hooks" garbage and true housing like you have in EQ2. The devs STILL aren't getting it.
I watched twitch players and the housing to me at least looks pretty good but the players were complaining a lot ..lol.The only knock i would have is they use the same brick/tiles almost everywhere and for obvious reasons,to keep the polycount/ gpu lag down.
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.
I don't often agree, because what we want in a game could be different at times, but I am in full support of what you are saying.
DAS, that's not true and you know it. I know some thought SWG's housing was great but I didn't. It just resulted in vast swaths of ignored houses and urban sprawl. No thanks.
DAS, that's not true and you know it. I know some thought SWG's housing was great but I didn't. It just resulted in vast swaths of ignored houses and urban sprawl. No thanks.
I think you are confusing cause and effect in this instance. The housing in SWG was incredible for a fair amount of time. Before they opened up the adventure planets to housing, before SOE destroyed the entire community by introducing the hologrind, then cut out its barely beating heart with the NGE screw over.
I have written more than my fair share on the SWG topic so I am going to leave it at that.
I bet ""housing" will be over within few weeks or month, because, as many already said, there isn't anything to it. As usually with this kind of things in MOOs the crowd will rush new content, buy all manors just for stupid titles, furniture from crown store to decorate their houses to some extent and then what? That's it, there isn't nothing more to do, than load in (oh how we love those loading screens!), stand for a minute, look around and off you go to come back next time maybe only when you will get some new chair or table. I really dont get excitement and all the hype with this thing.
I also think they need to remove the big walls surrounding the houses. I want to be able to see the area my house is in and feel like I'm a part of that piece of wilderness or the town. I want to see people walking by and all the activity. Sure I get that they need to load it when you walk in, but find a non-intrusive way to do that.
Swg still to my mind had the best player housing ( yes i agree that we ended up with planets full of housing but even then they came up with a system were players went around found houses that had expired ( player paid rent for thier houses with in game money) and basical the house was blown up ( placed back into players inventry.
And as for designing the interior of the houses anything you could pick up in game junk loot, parts of items you constructed for crafting you could place in the house ( was very pleased with my toilet made from starship booster with a chair hidden in it so you could actualy sit on it) as well as rewards from quests and collectables were placable in the house i still cannot understand why no one is able to do something similair today
I like that housing is optional. Games like Wildstar require you to spend a lot of time on housing, especially at endgame.. to get the most out of the game. I didn't like that.
I just want somewhere to place my trophies.. not a building simulator I'm forced to spend time with. If you want a building game.. there are better options out there than in any MMO, ever.
I do wish it had some storage though. Storage is a massive problem in ESO, especially for new players.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Instanced housing looks okay but here is what sucks I was really disappointed and turned away from the game pretty fast...
1.) Crown Shop Packs requires 3 $39.99 Max packages to obtain the biggest house in the game...
2.) No way to adjust lighting
3.) The house with the water-fall forgot its name the light comes through windows that doesn't look realistic at all the rest of it is great...
Over-All I am really turned off by the housing great features, but not much you can do with it, ( AND I HATE THE WAY FURNITURE WORKS !) Instead of having a bunch of items that can't be copy and placed around users should be able to unlock packs which allow players to place furniture anywhere multiple times as many as they wish to.
Housing does look good but needs major improvements including Housing in the woods etc, I can make a better scene than the ESO developers can in other games and already have before. Rift for example has better housing and better customization.
I like ESO, so its with some regret that I find housing a bit lacking.
A lot of posters have already mentioned most of the things I agree with, but I guess it might help to be an extra voice, in case Zenimax does see this.
1: The lack of sunlight through the windows in the houses is very disappointing.
2: When we buy a house in a village, it is surrounded by a huge wall, it almost comes off as more of a prison, than an actual house. Id have liked to be able to walk out on the street and see other players around. Or sit at my window and watch the busy life outside on the streets.
3: Id have liked a function where we can open up our house to the public. Not a pick and choose who function, but simply an overall function that allows everybody to visit my house when they want.
4: More functionality. I assume this will come in a later patch or crownstore option, but just to make sure its addressed.
More NPCs please: Things like bartenders, cleaning staff, stablemasters, merchants, butlers, waitresses, gardeners.
A quest daily furniture Writ NPC maybe also?
A rare spawn merchant that can occasionally spawn in our houses?
Moving pets that wander around.
A place in your house where you can put your gear on display? Sets you might have collected and or used in the past?.
6: This point is not top priority I am sure, so its more of a sidenote at this point, but what I notice is that all the houses looks very polished and perfect. Maybe later on we can get an option to buy a house that is a bit broken? Like a few shattered windows, doors hanging, roof with holes, a crooked chimney, those sort of things.
I could add much more, but these above things are the things Id like to see sorted out first.
Can't you have storage and crafting stations in them, at least?
The fast travel convenience is also (slightly) neat - but it took forever to load into my tiny room - which is annoying.
Storage no. Crafting stations yes.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
There are no real downsides to having housing in an MMO, ESO included. At very least, It offers a lore-friendly way to remove excessive amounts of cash from the game. Everything else depends on implementation. ESO's version also makes crafting a more viable way to make money. So even if houses lack in functionality from characters perspective they are still useful to a game as a system.
Yeah, the housing in this game is another crap attempt. It's only slightly better than hooks. You want good housing? Go EQ2. As for "hundreds of items", you get 300 with the largest houses. That's hardly anything. In EQ2, my biggest house is up to 2400 items.
DAS, that's not true and you know it. I know some thought SWG's housing was great but I didn't. It just resulted in vast swaths of ignored houses and urban sprawl. No thanks.
I think you are confusing cause and effect in this instance. The housing in SWG was incredible for a fair amount of time. Before they opened up the adventure planets to housing, before SOE destroyed the entire community by introducing the hologrind, then cut out its barely beating heart with the NGE screw over.
I have written more than my fair share on the SWG topic so I am going to leave it at that.
As a Star Wars fan it was kinda immersion ruining when going to the "desert planet" Tatooine, opening up the planet ingame map and looking at a Manhattan style street map where there was a house at every free spot lol.
Not to mention the ruined spawns because of it.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
So what do we think do we think eso will actually put in some type of gardening system or something, and make housing more useful...
BDO vs Arche Age when it came to housing, and Farming / Crafting I would vote for Arche Age, however they ruined the game don't bother with it now, but as far as housing and crafting it was one of the best for a long time that I have ever played.
BDO on the other hand did not feel the same way Arche Age did to me at all.
ESO on the other hand could add gardening, growing crops to cook food to player housing, and do many unique things and improvements with it that would make housing useful.
So what do we think do we think eso will actually put in some type of gardening system or something, and make housing more useful...
BDO vs Arche Age when it came to housing, and Farming / Crafting I would vote for Arche Age, however they ruined the game don't bother with it now, but as far as housing and crafting it was one of the best for a long time that I have ever played.
BDO on the other hand did not feel the same way Arche Age did to me at all.
ESO on the other hand could add gardening, growing crops to cook food to player housing, and do many unique things and improvements with it that would make housing useful.
ESO will do nothing more for housing other than add housing items to put in your house. I've seen it far too often.
DAS, that's not true and you know it. I know some thought SWG's housing was great but I didn't. It just resulted in vast swaths of ignored houses and urban sprawl. No thanks.
They did fix that, if you didn't pay the rent the house wouldn't be there anymore. Plus the idea of having player housing in the real world was great. I could sit on the balcony and watch the neighborhood.
You could even buy a guild house and turn it into a store, mall, or private residence, you could go into the homes of others and use their vendor or just check out how they decorated the place.
The ultimate was being able to pickup your home and move it to another location or planet. Best use of housing I've ever seen in a game.
"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
a friend of mine that stopped eso some time ago asked me how housing was, about storage and useful things. I said "No storage, nothing useful beside the merchant/banker from crown store, craft stations that is not a big deal", after that he said "why comeback to game that make a update with housing, almost 3 years after launch that dont add nothing that i can use to improve my gameplay".
I have to agree, i came back to play "sims" on eso, the crafting furniture is really nice, but stop there. the maximum number of items is a joke, the storage system on house can "break" the eso plus, im pretty sure they wont change that anytime soon since money is better then make a better game. I will stay on eso a few weeks but i dont know if will be longer then that, this will get repetitive really soon and my house with 300 max items have 250 already, with 80% of the house totaly empty.
I agree that Ultima Onlines housing was probably the best, along with Star Wars Galaxies. ESO housing is absolutely one of the most boring I have seen, and entirely overpriced. BDO housing is even better. I am a payed subscriber, and I will definitely spend my money crowns on other stuff like the crates which have been well worth the purchases.
Comments
1. All housing that I've seen is dank, dark, and miserable. Even the light coming in the "windows" doesn't really light the rooms. So, you say, buy some lights. Except that the light from any given lamp only extends a couple of feet from it. Meaning that to properly light any given room, I'd need at least 20 for the smallest and a good few hundred for the largest.
2. Houses are, in spite of what the introductions say, either one room, or giant mansions. And none of the rooms have functioning doors or bathrooms. One of the ones on the market gives the impression of at least three large rooms on the second floor with a bottom floor that you can fill. How about nope? It's all one hallway with a stairs leading up to the upstairs hallway. The inside of the house doesn't match the outside shape in any way.
3. Item limits... if you are not a paying member of ESO, your beginning item limit is 15 with the largest house being 300. Yep, you read that right. If you are a paying member, you get twice that.
Now let's look at the only reasonable alternative game with excellent housing in comparison, EQ2.
1. Many houses are bright and clear unless you are counting the oldest released when the game started. Very little dank and dark about these houses unless it's on purpose.
2. Houses vary from two rooms at their cheapest to six rooms at the most expensive. That's assuming you go with traditional houses rather than the "housing areas" which I am not counting for the purpose of what I'm writing.
3. Item limits... The smallest start with 200 items, and that is expandable to 500 not including "building blocks" which effectively starts at another 200 expandable to 500. So you can actually have 1000 items in a two room. One of my biggest houses I've been working on for a while is in a housing area and currently number (including building blocks) 2400 items.
So one of my worries was that there would be hooks in ESO. There aren't. You can put anything anywhere you like. But there might as well be since you can ONLY PUT 15 ITEMS IN THE APARTMENTS.
I had high hopes. To say that I'm disappointed is putting it lightly. It's somewhere in between the nasty "hooks" garbage and true housing like you have in EQ2. The devs STILL aren't getting it.
I don't often agree, because what we want in a game could be different at times, but I am in full support of what you are saying.
~~ postlarval ~~
I think you are confusing cause and effect in this instance. The housing in SWG was incredible for a fair amount of time. Before they opened up the adventure planets to housing, before SOE destroyed the entire community by introducing the hologrind, then cut out its barely beating heart with the NGE screw over.
I have written more than my fair share on the SWG topic so I am going to leave it at that.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
As usually with this kind of things in MOOs the crowd will rush new content, buy all manors just for stupid titles, furniture from crown store to decorate their houses to some extent and then what? That's it, there isn't nothing more to do, than load in (oh how we love those loading screens!), stand for a minute, look around and off you go to come back next time maybe only when you will get some new chair or table.
I really dont get excitement and all the hype with this thing.
And as for designing the interior of the houses anything you could pick up in game junk loot, parts of items you constructed for crafting you could place in the house ( was very pleased with my toilet made from starship booster with a chair hidden in it so you could actualy sit on it) as well as rewards from quests and collectables were placable in the house i still cannot understand why no one is able to do something similair today
I just want somewhere to place my trophies.. not a building simulator I'm forced to spend time with. If you want a building game.. there are better options out there than in any MMO, ever.
I do wish it had some storage though. Storage is a massive problem in ESO, especially for new players.
The fast travel convenience is also (slightly) neat - but it took forever to load into my tiny room - which is annoying.
1.) Crown Shop Packs requires 3 $39.99 Max packages to obtain the biggest house in the game...
2.) No way to adjust lighting
3.) The house with the water-fall forgot its name the light comes through windows that doesn't look realistic at all the rest of it is great...
Over-All I am really turned off by the housing great features, but not much you can do with it, ( AND I HATE THE WAY FURNITURE WORKS !) Instead of having a bunch of items that can't be copy and placed around users should be able to unlock packs which allow players to place furniture anywhere multiple times as many as they wish to.
Housing does look good but needs major improvements including Housing in the woods etc, I can make a better scene than the ESO developers can in other games and already have before. Rift for example has better housing and better customization.
Edit: Oh well I guess not. There wasn't an update on the console.
A lot of posters have already mentioned most of the things I agree with, but I guess it might help to be an extra voice, in case Zenimax does see this.
1: The lack of sunlight through the windows in the houses is very disappointing.
2: When we buy a house in a village, it is surrounded by a huge wall, it almost comes off as more of a prison, than an actual house.
Id have liked to be able to walk out on the street and see other players around. Or sit at my window and watch the busy life outside on the streets.
3: Id have liked a function where we can open up our house to the public. Not a pick and choose who function, but simply an overall function that allows everybody to visit my house when they want.
4: More functionality. I assume this will come in a later patch or crownstore option, but just to make sure its addressed.
More NPCs please: Things like bartenders, cleaning staff, stablemasters, merchants, butlers, waitresses, gardeners.
A quest daily furniture Writ NPC maybe also?
A rare spawn merchant that can occasionally spawn in our houses?
Moving pets that wander around.
A place in your house where you can put your gear on display? Sets you might have collected and or used in the past?.
6: This point is not top priority I am sure, so its more of a sidenote at this point, but what I notice is that all the houses looks very polished and perfect.
Maybe later on we can get an option to buy a house that is a bit broken? Like a few shattered windows, doors hanging, roof with holes, a crooked chimney, those sort of things.
I could add much more, but these above things are the things Id like to see sorted out first.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Not to mention the ruined spawns because of it.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
BDO vs Arche Age when it came to housing, and Farming / Crafting I would vote for Arche Age, however they ruined the game don't bother with it now, but as far as housing and crafting it was one of the best for a long time that I have ever played.
BDO on the other hand did not feel the same way Arche Age did to me at all.
ESO on the other hand could add gardening, growing crops to cook food to player housing, and do many unique things and improvements with it that would make housing useful.
They did fix that, if you didn't pay the rent the house wouldn't be there anymore. Plus the idea of having player housing in the real world was great. I could sit on the balcony and watch the neighborhood. You could even buy a guild house and turn it into a store, mall, or private residence, you could go into the homes of others and use their vendor or just check out how they decorated the place. The ultimate was being able to pickup your home and move it to another location or planet. Best use of housing I've ever seen in a game.
"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
I have to agree, i came back to play "sims" on eso, the crafting furniture is really nice, but stop there. the maximum number of items is a joke, the storage system on house can "break" the eso plus, im pretty sure they wont change that anytime soon since money is better then make a better game. I will stay on eso a few weeks but i dont know if will be longer then that, this will get repetitive really soon and my house with 300 max items have 250 already, with 80% of the house totaly empty.