Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Elder Scrolls Online - Housing Impressions from Homestead on PTS - MMORPG.com
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Elder Scrolls Online - Housing Impressions from Homestead on PTS - MMORPG.com
Homestead, the forthcoming mega housing patch for Elder Scrolls Online, just hit the Public Test Server and we dove in eagerly to view a few of the more luxurious spaces and see how the decorating works. Alongside all the new homely goodness, ESO is also adding furniture crafting, overhauling a ton of class and weapon skills for balance, and tweaking loads of other aspects to the game.
Comments
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
Sounds like they're doing it Black Desert style, with housing in the open world and the inside just locally phased after you walk through the door.
Except you load into each house - like LotRO, really.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
First of all that pic looks nice,the interior looks nice but is there any crafting furniture?
I have been mentioning it a lot lately..."immersion" it seems devs making rpg's have no clue what immersion is.Yes houses and anything else in the game world belong totally in the game world and NOT in cash shops.
I knew there had top be a catch top this housing,i THOUGHT it was free ,dumbass i should know better.Yes of course people/players MANY will just fork over money and buy them.
Good thing i don't support cash shop games,they will always be a lame gimmick to ruin immersion and fill their pockets.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Yes, as the article says, furniture is crafted.
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
Housing can be earned in game except for a few. Really, how are companies supposed to earn their money?
If they charge a sub only then players are going to balk and they will lose players. If they just have "optional only cosmetics" (which some players will claim should be earned by in game money and not bought" then only a small amount of people buy them.
At this point I think game companies should just say 'forget it' it's too hard to make money as everyone wants things for free.
Or maybe it's just a small minority and they should just ignore them.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.
My Review Manifesto
Follow me on Twitter if you dare.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ok, Bill, let me help you out, seriously. Got pen and paper? Write this down.
1. Ra'khal
2. Wayrest
3. Mournhold
4. Eden Root
5. Ebonhart
Got em? Sticky them to your monitor.
Now all of your shopping needs are resolved. Every single one of them is right next to a wayshrine. And, if you can't find something in one of those spots, your probably not going to find it anywhere else. Plain, simple, and EASY.
Au contraire, he hit right into the gold. Not everything has to copy older games. In tamriel you go shopping like in old days on earth. 3-5 trading guild on your roster, 3-5 hotspots you can shop further and you find everything there is to buy. You have to do a little something for your goal. Nothing to hard, really.
Housing looks great, can't wait to patch it. Oh, and nice review!
Gaming companies did billions in revenue last I heard. I think they're making money just fine. But thanks for your concern.
"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
Wow... if you go down the "destructive sarcasm" way, at least do it properly.
-Ebonheart not Ebonhart
-Elden Root not Eden Root
-Ra'khal? That's not even close! I suppose you mean Rawl'kha. If he follows your... helpful piece of advice, he'll be lost forever, looking for a place called Ra'khal.
But of course the gist is true, if you learn which places are good for which stuffs to get, ESO's trading system is a great one, which I truly enjoy.
It's ok if someone prefers a WoW style auction house it's just not everyone's cup of tea. I'm fine with both personally, an auction house is much more stable and safe, ESO's is more like a real market place, you have to keep your eyes open and know the reasonable prices so you dont waste money, but once you learned the way around and keep yourself updated you can find some great deals which you'd never do in a WoW style auction house.
When I first logged into ESO, one of the first things I stumbled into was wondering where the AH was.
At first it bugged me a little, I thought people were pulling my leg, when they answered in /zone, that there was no AH.
So after a bit of this and that, I join some guilds, I find out about the trading system, learn where all the vendors are, which was easy enough, since all guild vendors are marked on the maps you have explored.
And even if you have not explored all your maps at a lower lvl, you just port to all your guildmembers and problems solved. Loved that. Such a little thing that travelling thing, but made me feel that ESO devs were brilliant.
Now it has to be said I played ESO at release, but actually abandoned it due to goldfarmer spam in the /zones.
Now fast forward a couple years later and I log in again to check it out (having forgot all about the spam), but then the miracle became apparent to me.
ESO does not have goldfarmer spam in their /zone at all.
Why not I wondered?
2 simple things apparently is the reason.
1: Cant make infinite amount of characters a day, they put a limit, brilliant way to fix that.
2: Guild vendors makes it almost impossible for goldfarmers to settle down in random guilds, cause their profit would not really be there, when it can be weeks in between they'd get a good guildvendor.
Top of that guildvendors brings about a little friendly competition betwen guilds, when they have to bid on vendors from week to week, and it also brings members together to have a goal to work for inside their guilds.
Now thirdly gold is okay decent to get. Not so easy it devalues the prices on the market, but also not so hard that you feel poor, if you put in a little effort ever so often.
So the way this vendor system works in ESO have really grown on me, I feel its just one of many clever design choices that the devs have made for that game.
No individual traders on the server to rule or ruin a market for others.
Travelling all over the world to check out vendors is like treasure hunting and lets you revisit places that you'd not often go to otherwise. Love that.
When that is said though, Im not so gullible that I dont think goldfarmers exist in that game in one form or the other, but they are in no way evasive for the community, in fact they are pretty invisible.
So while its not a trade I condone, I dont mind them in the current abbreviation they might be present.
ESO simply just works and makes things that other games struggle with on a daily basis, a peaceful walk in the park.
If I were to mention a small thing about ESO that Im sad about, it is that the game will never have flying, never have VR adaption and it would have been nice if there were more pets and vanity items to earn through doing things ingame, instead of just buying them.
Dont get me wrong, I love the store, not that I can afford spending much money on it ( I cant), but its still designed in a great way. Love watching what new things they are bringing each month, but how Id love if they would have split it more half and half.
Half the items to be gotten through gameplay, half through the store. Would be nice.
And I cant wait for the housing. Im hoping I can make enough gold for a little cozy cottage somewhere and find some books for furniture, will be neat
Few things.
1: I dont think you oversimplify how raiding focused games (that may not always have been so as such), leaves players burned down the road, after years of being in love with their games (looking at fx WoW).
So its a relief to see another person speak up about this phenomina.
2: I think you raise a fair point about the vendors, but whereas people, in a central AH dominated game, have no other chance than voluntere to either conform to the manipulation of the market by the few, (who rules over everyone), - Or jump into trade and be executed by trolls (looking at WoW again), then ESO in comparison leaves players with choices.
The fact that people can steal their way to furtune, means they have a chance at turning rich at their own pace, in their own time.
Being in a trading guild is not a picnic from a casuals point of view. They often ask for weekly contributions, they often ask for a minimum required amount of items added to their guildstore weekly.
As a casual I may not log in for a few weeks or couple of months here and there, there is no way I can maintain a spot in a high tier trading guild.
I do not mind this at all. Trading guilds work hard to keep their guilds active and they still have to worry about the prices other guilds runs with, when they have vendors up too.
You could say that where WoWs toptier raiders sits with a monopoly on who gets to raid mythic and who does not, ESO has a game of guilds deciding who gets to join their succesful guilds that repeatedly manage to buy a vendor each week.
However, joining a high tier trading guild is really easy. When I joined ESO after a two year break away, I joined one a week in and I was not even looking, they were just randomly recruiting in /zones.
Then I joined a newbie guild also, one that was just started, since I felt I needed to be with people who could use a little guidance about the game, that guild too managed to get a guild vendor every second week for the couple of months I was in it. (I was removed due to long absence and can join again if I wish.)
So I have a feeling its not so hard to get a vendor, as some might feel.
On top of that, most guilds no matter their goldreserve, holds their own inside auctions, which goes on once or twice a week. There rare patterns, crafted gear etc. can be bought and sold as well.
I have to be honest and say: You are likely not wrong, my experiences are just different and I have to make other conclusions based on those.
Of all the games I have played with a central AH, I have to say, that I in comparison prefer ESOs model.
Which is what it boils down to, pure preference
People can make a living in ESO at all lvls of play. From hardcore trader in a trading guild, middle guild with occasional vendors and all the way down to the player that can not meet attendance requirements and will steal for a living.
Peoples own time and ambitions sets the limits.
I actually like the option of using crowns or gold to get the one I want since I get crowns for subbing and never spend them on anything but I do spend the gold I make on in-game items and materials. After most of 3 years playing the game with only a few absences and subbing about 2/3 of that time, I have ~ 2.5 Mil gold (and about 3 times that much worth of saved mats) and 13,000 crowns with another 4500 coming next month. I'm actually leaning toward using my crowns to buy the Hunding's Retreat in Stros M'Kai that is my favorite house. It costs 1.3 MIl gold BTW.
As a side note: I have visited all the houses on the PTS and neither the island nor the cave appeal to me all that much. And I also actually prefer the look, floor plan and outdoor areas of a couple of the large 1.2-1.3 Mil ones over the ones that cost 3 Mil+.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Whether the current system could be improved - valid question.
With the - mostly historic - complaints about server lag and the effort Zen have put into making the servers more responsive I simply cannot see them introducing a global AH. Or people being happy if they do.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
1) You can place only 5 "other" decorations on the property, and mounts, pets, banker/merchant fall in that category. So if I buy the mansions for 3 mil gold, all I can add in the property are say 5 horses, or 3 horses, a cat and a dog.... that can't even begin to fill the mount stables, let alone make the yard and house look like it is inhabited.
2) None of the bedside tables, bookshelves, chests, etc are interactible. I cannot open my own bedroom drawer to put something in it, or unload my books on a bookshelf.
What is up with that? Why do I spend hundreds of thousand or millions of gold for a piece for a small instance that cannot be used for anything except to be looked at as a museum?
I really hope they change the above so I can populate my property with as many mounts, pets, etc as I want and be able to use the storage containers I see everywhere, for.. storage.
Also I did not see any way to add crafting stations, not sure if there are some hidden recipes for crafting stations, but if not, those definitely need to be added so the properties can be complete with crafting areas.
If what I saw is all there is to it, I'd score the housing system in ESO as 3/10.