I have been browsing forum and found housing topics.
In one replies its unconfirmed and possible, in others its out of consideration and not an option. I do not now what is the truth and what are devs ideas about it so i will allow myself for fantasizing.

If devs are taking this under consideration than having house can be really simple without making every patch of land filled with houses or one multihouse with thousands of residents (a one little building with entrance leading to instanced house for everyone).

Such simple thing (resolving housing issue) has been done in game called Two Worlds 2 in multiplayer game. Player could buy an instanced patch of land and not only build his house there and develop and furnish it. Player also could invest in it practically creating small village with houses for npc workers, field, shops, guardhouses and so on. On top of that player had to resolve issues that emerged like wild beasts that ware kidnapping or killing residences and thus lowering income or slowing development.

Here it could be exploited more - player would have to pay taxes to its province and thus faction and this would influence how faction would in the end do against other factions.

Lets go deeper.
Player could choose type of his land:
- village (economic value - providing food and profit to province from taxes)
- military property (military value - providing military strength to province)
- economic property (a mine, forest etc - providing building and other materials to province)

[once again - I have no idea how game will work so I will just allow my imagination to run wild for now, in my small hope that devs ever visit such forums, it would be nice if my wishful thinking had influenced them to do something epic]

If village would be managed properly - it would bring profit to player, from that profit would be payed tax to province.
Neglected village would tend to be target of attacks from wild animals (wolves eating cattle, big spiders kidnapping villagers on roads, etc), would be victim of raids of enemy faction player soldiers (pillaging goods and money, killing residents, destroying buildings). All this would lead to drop of profits of that village and lowering tax income of province.
Villages would be cheap to start and maintain, fairly easy to make them bring profit, but poor defense would make it easy target.
Village, according to players wish, would bring their goods to towns market where according do demand and supply it would be sold with bigger or smaller profit, or it could stay in village store for other players to browse. Selling to town would bring immediate but smaller profit, selling to players could bring better profits but its not so sure (longer in store the bigger chance, someone will attack village and steal goods). Buying same goods from town would cost much more as middleman tend to hype price for bigger profit. The more of same good is offered to town the less price it can offer. Towns would have some minimal but fluctuating random demand for goods to simulate real economy.

Village could have buildings like
- grain field - would produce grain
- wind/watermill - to make flour from grain
- fisherman hut - providing fish (if river/lake available)
- cattle breeder (sheeps/cow) - would provide wool/skin, meat and milk
- horse breeder - would provide horses as mounts or farm animals to improve production on grain field
- guardhouse - to provide protection from lesser animals and bandit raids
- guard tower - to spot potential danger earlier and inform guards from other player military building)
- shop - for selling goods to villagers and other players (villagers would have also demand on certain products and based on how player is seen by them will buy items from village shop even if its prices are higher than in town - all depend on how well player would manage village, what decisions player would do concerning their issues - love, hate, fear, etc)

here it starts to be also interesting for new players who cannot afford to start a village or are not interested - in town will be npc who will hire players to help out in field, with animals, as a miller, guardsman etc. The better the player to better output of his work would be (more grain, better horses, higher quality of flour, etc). So player interested in such work would go to that npc, would browse all available jobs and apply for it. That worker-player would gain both cash and would improve his skill in that particular job. Naturally player-farmer could just hire npc but npcs skill would be 0 while players would develop. Naturally farmer-players would have to make better offers to get player-workers with higher skill or get player-workers at all it there is more jobs than interested player-workers.
Now, the higher particular skill of player farmer the better output of whole village (so better farming skill the better he would do as a village manager).
There is a catch - this works only in offline mode! So player would have to be logged off to perform the job and to prevent farming on dummy account - offline job cannot exceed, lets say half of average daily time online (round up top to full hours) - payment would be hourly.

Economic property would bring way larger profit but would need way much money and attention as it would be very attractive target for raids.
Also clans would need lots of building material for sieges (both defense and offence) and very rare materials would be available to find only in such properties by player-workers with high level of skill. Also such properties (like mine) would run out of materials and player would have to close it and invest in other property. There would be chance for a simple coal mine, or mine filled with diamonds or gold, etc, an strong healthy forrest with lots of good quality wood or a marsh with rotten trees etc. Mine could collapse, etc, etc. The profit could be very nice but the better the profits expected the bigger the risk.

Military property would provide defense against player raids and npc raids on villages and economic properties. The better level of facilities the better fighter npc.
Players would be able to build guard tower (faster response time to both npc and player rides) with facilities for training basic soldiers for defense and advanced spies and scouts to scout for enemies and to seek other factions profitable villages, military and economic properties. Guard towers would then sell such info for barrack owners.
Barrack owners would then buy such info and attack enemy faction properties and villages. Barrack owners main profit would be loot from raids.
Barrack forces would have upkeep, but both barrack forces and guard tower forces would get from province small fee each time they would respond to an attack on same faction properties and villages. Forces that would respond to attack would be combined forces of average level and number of both all guard towers and all barracks.
Upkeep of soldiers would include both money and food.

Economic property could also build facilities that would produce military equipment used only by npc fighters in guard towers and barracks. Players could also take a job in such property as a miner or woodcutter or guard, scout, etc. Earn skills/ranks etc

Ranks from obtaining skills in these 3 fields of expertise could bring players additional perks like better healing or bonus to fighting skills etc...




Wow... its like an idea for completly different game...

It is a really good idea I just don't know if Zenimax would consider it because it would be so much work for them, however it is one of the better housing ideas I have heard about. Personally I would love it if they had some sort of housing in Cyrodiil and my guild and I could build our town there knowing that we would have to defend it sooner or later. What this does is it brings the guild together, and gives them a common goal that provides profit and makes it all worth fighting for. Cyrodiil would be the place to purchase the Military property with your cool housing idea.

Complexity, depth and immersion in a modern day MMO!

No chance.

Seriously though, some great ideas that would sit well in a sandbox MMO, I am hoping for a Skyrim Hearthfire approach to housing, instanced neighbourhood, buy your land, plans and build your house from scratch over a long period of time with the ability to add additional wings and expansions. Some of the features you describe would make it very appealing to me.

It's the irony of MMO development - the developers spend so much time developing the generic content no one really asked for, such as a standard leveling system, locked classes, PvP balancing, daily grind in the form of daily quests of dungeons we can repeat till we die, instead of making the cool stuff that we do ask for all the time, like housing, proper combat, better graphics and new forms of endgame content.

I would like to see guild halls more than personal housing. Housing would focus on yourself, like a single player game. A guild hall would bring more people together to work as a team to create something, which in the end is why we play MMO's, well most of us.

They made Hearthfire. I have full confidence that TES:O could blow most other games out of the water if they made something similar.

NOTE: Houses and guild halls, as well as any other kind of custom, personalized content are the perfect gold sinks to keep the economy stable.

Wild modification to an idea appears!

modification uses: 'Instead a player owning a village/military or economic land - guild/clan/band could build it and populate it' attack!

It's super effective!

That would do the trick. That would make ties inside of clan even stronger as players would not only play with each other but would also improve and defend their common property. The more time and energy you will spend on something the more valuable for you it becomes and harder to say goodbye to it.

[edit]
If they would implemented it - it would certainly be something any other online game would not have!

... unfortunately its wishful thinking.

If they ever add housing I want freaking castle and servants etc. Own city. Thats hero stuff. Houses are for peasant.

Indeed.

An an even bigger irony is how, back durring Ultima Online's golden age, all these awesome ideas were tossed about and we were told that while they were good ideas, the server technology was just not where it needed to be to allow them to be implemented. And now that server technology is leaps and bounds beyond what was available back then, MMOs these days actually offer LESS freedom than what was available on the old limited servers.

Where is the freaking progress?

Ive thought this too, whats happening in this gerne. Big companies just think cocky that they can get decent amount of subs and leave innovation to indy companies, basically best ideas. The way this is going now, all money goes to Blizzard, just watch how Titan sells 25mill+ and get 10+ mill subs and this is like 2-4 month after launch.

Can't forget Harem... can't go wrong with a harem.

Make the Housing Phased

Agreed.

Yeah, and mage tower for mages and maybe some shady inn for stealth characters..

It's a sophisticated concept for a less-than-sophisticated player base. An example I heard about within an anolysis of the Brony phenomenon, many childrens' shows (old MLP in particular) are made with the assumption that children are shallow and can't handle deep stories. But the new one respects kids' intelligence and provides a much deeper story.

Gamers are the same. The deeper games become, I believe the deeper gamers will become. Not simply some cheap thrill, but a deep and long-lasting experience that, sure, may require a little investment on the player's part.

I like this. You're right. I blame how people are ostracized for correcting spelling and grammar. It just shows people are fine with dumbing things down.

I believe the game will evolve. Right now we're all talking about what should be in for launch. For launch, we just need a good foundation to build upon. If housing isn't in at launch, that doesn't mean it isn't being worked on or being slated for future development.

But this really isn't that type of MMO, it's theme park for a start.

Not all mmo's, it depends what you have been playing.

Hello, McFly?!
"They" did NOT make Hearthfire. But I do agree with you about them being good gold sinks. They can also be a lot of fun, and a good pass-time.


This is because the developers sorta back-peddled on this one. At first it was said they would be out, but they later said this was misspoken, and that they'd like to add them.. just not at game launch.

Oh right, forgot it was Zenimax. But still, the principle stands that Elder Scrolls has had a framework for house personalization before and it could be ported in some form or another.

Willl it play like an Elder Scrolls game? Or in my experience, like Skyrim?

It would work perfectly if it was completely phased.

@G.B. Jacksom

Raph Koster took some of those "old ideas" with him over to SWG and made a bunch possible from UO.



Haven't seen
you since STO and we both were pretty decently involved with SWG for many years. I'm more or less hoping for as SWG type housing system only realising that it would pretty much have to be an instanced area for citys, if not just an instanced area for single player houses. I could probably be content with an instanced single player housing area such as the Hearthfire DLC in Skyrim with a bit more crafting needed for interior and a little better deco placement system (such as uhhh, SWG's /up/down/rotate/etc amd the muber of pixels you want to more it to (/up 100).

Is the forum bugged or what? Can't edit post and now got this "warn status" without the other posts I've made in the past. Also cked, no warnings.

Housing is actually one thing I hope they DON'T take from DAoC. I'd love to see it be like UO or SWG was, but it'd be hard to capture that kind of magic while having it be instanced (which it certainly would have to be).

I'd also love to see the housing system EQ2 had. That sort of instancing is perfectly fine with me.

I dont see housing exactly as themepark feature. Its more virtual world & sandbox game feature. I just hope SOE doesnt blow up Everquext Next, it could be it for me. But then again I think megaserver makes it very easy to implement housing to the game, let player choose zone and build one house there, done.