Note: Only houses of people on your friends list would be visible.

First, please, please, PLEASE don't make houses instanced. Have them be in the world.

Secondly, I'd like it if there were houses you could buy in town, but also if you had the ability to gather resources to build your own house out in the country.

Finally, make houses capable of being broken into by other players. You could spend gold in order to upgrade to tougher locks for both your house and your chests, as well as hiring mercenary guards that would need to be paid x amount a month or roundabouts.

While great to have, each one of those thing will create major problems.
1-To accomadate the large amount of houses in the world, the city in which the houses are will have to expand, which will be problematic.
2- After a year, the whole world could be littered with houses in TESO, and griefers can block entrances to dungeons in this fashion possibly.
3- A lot of people will hate this probably, I at least wouldnt appreciate someone breaking in because i forgot to make a lock.

It would be cool if you could chop down tree's and mine.. Then Build a house ... But not gonna happen sadly..

I would love houses and if I cant build my own.. I would love to buy one inside a random town..

I had a thought about faction wars though... I have a thought this game will be "The Great War" between the Aldmeri Dominion and the Imperials..

Nothing which actually "touches" the world that other players can see (im choosing words carefully) is probable.
We probably arent going to be able changing the environment of the world in any way, since this mmo may have over 1 million people, every possible little change will be doubled X1,000,000 times. So if you want to give a player an option to build a house - you need a room for 1 million houses. That is just so highly not probable.

The more logical thing is that we will have hidden houses or streets at seperate cells, so there will be 10,000 streets with 100 houses, but for us it will seem to be only 1 street since we wont see the other streets (Ive already seen that system before in another game and it actually quite worked).
Like, when you enter the city "whiterun" you will actually enter the city "whiterun num#3471" and the only citizens and houses you will see will be belonging to people from that channel as well. We are likely to be able "teleporting" between channels to see our friends houses though.
Im bad at english, you understand what i mean? there will be 10000 "whiteruns" but everytime you will enter whiterun it will load only 1 channel of it and leave 9999 out of your sight, so it wont seem so impossibly big.

They will do same trickery with other things, since you cant put every change everyone makes in the same world for all, it would be chaotic.

Then, perhaps, making it so you can only see the houses of people on your friends list/clan(guild, etc)?

1. Unless it was like SWG with incredibly expansive maps that allowed you to plop a house down anywhere in the open world; open being outside of any town.
2. As long as the maps are big enough -- and hopefully they are gargantuan -- I don't think it would reach a point of congestion.
3. Agreed. Player houses should be private with access granted expressly to other players by the owner.

I really hope this game will have player housing, however it's implemented.

SOLUTION!

Since you would already be able to interact with the environment to gather recourses for your house, how about doing the opposite; you can chop/burn down/blow up someone's house that may be in the way?

Pros:

- This guy stole your gear or killed your teammate/friend; now you seek out his house, take his valuables and burn his house down.

- If they are in the way of dungeons; you do this and they're not.

Cons:

- People may do this for no reason, simply becuase the are a griefer. (To justify this you would be able to report the person to a guard and he would send them to jail or something.

- People could easily break into your house and steal your valuables. (Buy a locked chest, a chest which only the player who places it can get into.

- Too cluttery in the world. (You wouldn't be able to build a house on somewhere like a main road, randomly inside a town ect.)

Thoughts?

Leaked scans say that player houses won't be in... at least at release anyway, because it would be too hard to implement in an MMO like fans are expecting.

The only thing I expect is instanced housing and a safe space I can call my own, and give me a sense of ownership of the world. FFXI did this in 2003. Why an MMO developed for release a decade later can't, doesn't make sense to me.

I want to be able to steal from player houses. Your house. My house. My friends house.

It doesnt need to be an easy task.. in fact you can upgrade your lock to kill me on an unsuccessful picking attempt for all i care. But in that .001% chance that I do get into your lovely house, that you've spent so long to customize.. I want to steal things.

Make thieves cool to play as well as hated by everyone that's not a thief. They need REAL roles.

That sounds awesome. I'll need to make sure I protect my house with wierd traps and crazy locks to keep people out!

Wow no player housing...

yep no player housing, I saw it also. They said it would be too hard to do...

Link?

Every time a magazine gets leaked everyone wants links.

We can't link for you or we get banned permanently.

Just realised that. But why the ban?

Because Linking to a scan would be giving an article to you for free which bethesda payed good money for gameinformer to print.

Edit:

I meant Zenimax...

Im so screwed up right now over this...

There's no player housing.

Oh.. I get it now.

Let me start by saying im a huge TES fan. I will keep playing these games until they put me 6ft under. That being said, i WILL NOT give a single penny to the online version if there is no player housing. This BS about "can't" do it is not gonna cut it with me.

One of the best features of SWG was the housing. Decorating them with the spoils of victory, being able to give public access to your house but still keeping your collection safe was awesome. Not to mention being able to have your own vendors in them.

I know there has to be countless players out there like me that would love a place to show off all those rare riches, and be able to admire others. On the same note...guild halls would be welcomed as well.

If enough of us make our voices heard, maybe they will change their mind.

As someone who played Star Wars Galaxies from launch until closure, I know that player housing in a non-instanced manner is completely possible. The SWG system had its issues, but many of the issues, like ghost towns and general abandonment, are due to the developers being idiots and ruining the game causing most of the player base to leave. I don’t see why a SWG esque system is so “impossible” for the devs to do with current tech if it was possible in 2003.

No player housing in an Elder Scrolls where people are making beautiful housing mods on the Nexus and getting recognized for it is [censored].

IS ZENIMAX ONLINE EVEN REMOTELY AWARE OF WHAT THE ELDER SCROLLS PLAYERS REALLY WANT??

Zenimax Online, if you are even reading this, go do your homework and go to Skyrim Nexus.
Browse thru the popular mods and READ UP on what players want in an Elder Scrolls game.

The ENTIRE GI article shows me that you have no [censored] clue on what makes this franchise great.

If RuneScape can impliment player housing, why can't Zenimax? Impossible my backside.

The entire article was filled with "We couldn't implement this classic TES feature because it wouldn't work in an MMO." It's crazy. The fact they're saying they cant even do player housing makes me really worry about this studio's talent...

It won't work? Bull.

I can understand them not wanting their entire game world littered with houses. I get that. I don't think any of us really want housing mazes like we saw in games like Ultima Online. They are memory hogs.

But, don't tell us that it's too hard to implement. You are lying straight to us. If games that were developed 15 years ago can do it, don't even attempt to try and insult our intelligence like that.

Why not limited areas throughout the game world where houses can be placed? Don't allow placement on roads, city and dungeon entrances, and force players to place their homes a certain distance away from other houses. Allow housing on certain stretches of land, along some rivers and roads, right outside city walls and gates and some other spots in the world that aren't big landmark type areas. Think of it like the pattern on a cow, patches here and there. Do I realize that there will not be enough space for everyone to have a house? Yes. To suppliment the demand for open-world housing, add an option to city taverns and inns that allow players to 'rent' rooms to act as their own personal space. While it's not a house in the world, it is a stop-gap for that player until new lands and content are released, which will open up more space for housing.

I also don't remember there being banks in Elder Scrolls games. Let me guess, you couldn't connect the dots to come to the logical conclusion that houses would act as your bank? Even the lowest level character could rent a room out with a single chest and some modest ways to decorate. Everyone would have access to their bank without breaking the lore of the single player games.

How is this hard to implement? Limited housing placement controlled by the developers and instanced tavern/inn rooms to suppliment the demand.

Again, how is that hard? I don't get it.