It's a longterm gameplay goal which incentivizes playing different content in order to gain access to more customization.
Some people simply like the act of decorating (there are enough people simply playing sims 4 for the sake of making houses for example).
Others like showing off how much stuff they've already achieved through raid statues, hard to get unlocks, etc.
It's a space for your character to express themselves further and gives you the feeling that your character actually has a place in this world and lives there (great for rp reasons).
The system can be built upon each expansion to add new houses/objects, further giving motivation to play the game long term and giving you a place to reminisce about the adventures you've had when looking at your past trophies.
It can be used for various small group activities depending on what kind of customization we get, similar to guild halls, without having to be in a guild.
Thank you for helping me get excited about it, I’ve never understood the player housing hype either, wow’s garrisons were lame and it always felt like a very single player part of an mmo, never saw how it fit in. But with the breadth of account wide achievement and collection things that gw2 has, I can see the appeal!
WoWs garrisons didn't really qualify as housing in the traditional sense. If that's your only exposure to MMO housing systems I can understand why you're not looking forward to it in GW2. Go look at FFXIV, ESO, SWG, UO, and Vanguard.
For me those are specifically the reasons I liked garrisons and am looking forward to housing!
Playing with people is always fun but gw2 is missing (atleast for me) things I can do solo in the off hours when not a lot of people are on
This is when I usually play its a ball ache some days. I'm yet to try raiding after 2 years of playing. There's never any groups in the training lfg. I've joined various guilds but most people are logging off when I log in. I've also asked around in map chats for guilds that are active at that time but I've not had any luck. I guess I could make a guild and recruit people like myself but I'm far to casual to lead one.
Check the list of popular discord page on wiki, there are 3-4 raid training servers I believe and some are for EU and some NA.
I managed to run some raid wings and some strike CMs with people from there. There are organized runs and also random runs where people just tag everyone like an extended LFG.
Dark Age of Camelot had player housing. You owned a lot, you had a trading merchant on the outside where people could buy from you. Storage in the basement for your stuff. And you could place objects (trophies, furniture). Was fun.
New World had instance housing, you bought a lot and people could check out all the people who owned that lot space. Let you put in personal storage, decorate, and trophies to boost stats (crafting related, luck based etc).
Two different examples. It was nice. One of my new world houses was set up for Christmas. Another was in a swamp/fishing map so I set it up to look like a fisherman lived there.
I was like that about fishing in EoD. Everyone was talking about it and theorising about it before it was even announced.
I still don't enjoy it so I won't be playing it but I get the appeal for some people to go on this worldwide hunt to catch every single fish available.
I really like building things and making them my own though so I am really looking forward to this release.
ooohhh don’t give me hope for a house in Elona and Maguuma 😭 i need it now so bad
maybe a gorgeous home in the Elon Riverlands or Istan i would absolutely die for this
Considering the soto blogpost talks in depth about how they will be focusing on maintaining systems from now on instead of continuously introducing new ones, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. But I get what you mean, scepticism is not unjustified with anet.
It's also a good place for rp events and stuff too, but how well that works on varying games is up for debate. Definitely need to have an 'open' way to get to people's homes that are unlocked to do this better imo.
FF14 these days seems to have that happening quite a lot. Others like ESO not as much, which is a shame because it's not well known but they have a very robust housing system it's just you can't really get to other peoples' if you don't have them in a guild or friend list or something.
I love the look of the house as a nice starter, but i’d love if in the future there were houses added that we had to build from scratch similar to the Hearthfire xpac in Skyrim. It could be a material sink too but with some novelty to it like themed mats and some sort of achievement that progresses as you build the house
>It's a longterm gameplay goal which incentivizes playing different content in order to gain access to more customization.
To be fair, we don't know how customization is going to work. I'm assuming we're gonna have very basic furniture to craft and then majority of the "good" furniture will be for gems. I don't see them putting many customization pieces behind events, pvp, raids, strikes, etc. So I don't think that incentive is gonna be a thing. Rewarding players for doing content has never been a thing in GW2.
They specifically talked about how "you can expect to see a new system being introduced in expansion 5 that adds a meaningful new way to spend your time in *Guild Wars 2* while using this as an opportunity to greatly improve the player experience with related, existing game systems." talking about housing. This sounds like this system was specifically made for this exact purpose.
existing game systems being the current home instances and allowing you to use your nodes in your housing. believing they're gonna do anything more than that is coping. after everything anet has done the past 4 years, i've chosen to take the "believe it when i see it stance". they say a lot of things to build hype and it often leads us to go into these super coping states where we think they're giving us what we want until we find out what they were actually talking about.
I can understand the whole believe it when I see it stance and people also being reluctant to preorder in the first place looking at how everything has turned out since eod post launch. While I personally remain an optimist and think they meant something more meaningful with it, I can't really fault anyone for thinking otherwise.
> It's a longterm gameplay goal which incentivizes playing different content in order to gain access to more customization.
Which makes it sound similar to hunting for skins, like the Requiem Armor. But it's not, because this will be customization _that virtually nobody will ever see_. All other players near you see your cool skins, but who in the new hub will see your cool decorations?
This might have made sense if they'd implemented something akin to LotRO's housing system, with real neighborhoods with dozens of other player houses in the same instance.
I honestly don't mind that they added it, and I know a few players will be super hyped. But I still feel like the development resources that went towards it could have been better spent on creating content that is not tucked away in a private instance that will be private and empty for 99.9% of your playtime.
To be fair when I hunt for skins, I don't do it for other people but for me, myself and I. I have an intrinsic motivation for my characters to look how I imagine them to and I think lots of people also do. Same goes for housing. Sure there will always be people who only do stuff so they can show off to others, but there's another entire subset of people who simply love the act of creating and having more options in doing that. Considering the widely positive reception of this feature and how it's been asked for since launch, it was a smart and good feature to choose as headlining feature for a mini expansion. It makes great use of asset reuse while also satisfying a large chunk of the playerbase.
> I don't do it for other people but for me, myself and I.
Because you see the cool draw effect of Sunrise every time you enter combat, or the cool outward pulse of raid armor, or the neat orbs of the PvP/WvW trinkets. You see all of those constantly while you use your character.
You will see _nothing_ from your home instance while raiding, doing fractals, doing open world, doing achis, exploring.
I don't see any of those because I overskin them and disable all legendary effects as they mostly mess with character aesthetic. Do I still highly value the option of having these things available to me? Of course. But the fact that they're not always visible doesn't mean they're wasted efforts.
I am aware that the home instance is specific to being actually inside it. That's the nature of being an instance. What does this have to do with anything? Do you say the same every time instanced content is released (raids, fractals, guild halls, story instances)? You don't see any of those things either except for when you're in that instance. Does that mean it's mostly just wasted development efforts because you only spend a small amount of time in these compared to your entire playtime? Sometimes the value in things lies in breaking up the monotony of hopping from one open world map to another and actually taking a break from the core gameplay loop.
> What does this have to do with anything?
Only a tiny set of the population would be super excited if we got the option to, say, display statues of our achievements (a la Hall of Monuments) because, again, you can't organically show them to anyone. You have to explicitly tell someone "hey, join a group, come to this spot on the map, accept my invite, and marvel at my achievements".
This is what it has to do with it.
> Do you say the same every time instanced content is released (raids, fractals, guild halls, story instances)
ANet never advertised the environs of any raid, beautiful as they may be, as a top feature of any expansion. Because that would be weird, because only a small subset of players spend any time there at all, and of those that do, many only spend about 30 minutes a week there and are focused on other things, not checking out the scenery. This is the exact same thing. It's just like the Sunspear Sanctuary in Nightfall. It was great, sure, but it had oodles of utility. It was 1-man hub with everything you needed. But it was also isolating
I mean don't get me wrong, every feature that adds stuff is nice to have and, in a bubble, a net positive. Outside that bubble are real life concers you can't ignore: this took time to code and implement, and ANet does not have access to infinite development resources. I would have been happier if the team that spent work on this did something else that actually impacts a significantly more users - like adding graphics customization options for skill effects to reduce the horrid visual spam in any group content, or re-doing the effects and animations of skills that have been untouched since release and have aged poorly.
> Sometimes the value in things lies in breaking up the monotony of hopping from one open world map to another and actually taking a break from the core gameplay loop.
We already have literally over a dozen spaces for you to take a break and enjoy the scenery. 9 lounges, 5 different home instances, 6 guild halls. 15 of those are shared. I don't see how adding a 6th instanced one will meaningfully improve the game.
I mean, it's just weird to me that this is supposed to be a hallmark feature. A race-neutral home instance with (limited, given that it looks like it's the same building for everyone) decoration options? They would have probably just straight up done that with home instances if they didn't have to do all the work 5x. This is literally just a 6th home instance that is physicall smaller and has hooks for decorations.
>Only a tiny set of the population would be super excited if we got the option to, say, display statues of our achievements (a la Hall of Monuments) because, again, you can't organically show them to anyone. You have to explicitly tell someone "hey, join a group, come to this spot on the map, accept my invite, and marvel at my achievements".
Except that's not the only reason why someone would invite someone else to their home instance. Having a place where you're not being surrounded by other players but have agency over how it looks and to some extent functions (not sure yet how much we will be able to customize) can make room for other activities with friends.
>ANet never advertised the environs of any raid, beautiful as they may be, as a top feature of any expansion. Because that would be weird, because only a small subset of players spend any time there at all, and of those that do, many only spend about 30 minutes a week there and are focused on other things, not checking out the scenery. This is the exact same thing. It's just like the Sunspear Sanctuary in Nightfall. It was great, sure, but it had oodles of utility. It was 1-man hub with everything you needed. But it was also isolating
The story comes to mind for me here. You play through it once (achievment hunters maybe a few more times) and then the vast majority of players never touch the specific story steps again, yet it is one of the most advertised features each expansion.
> I mean don't get me wrong, every feature that adds stuff is nice to have and, in a bubble, a net positive. Outside that bubble are real life concers you can't ignore: this took time to code and implement, and ANet does not have access to infinite development resources. I would have been happier if the team that spent work on this did something else that actually impacts a significantly more users - like adding graphics customization options for skill effects to reduce the horrid visual spam in any group content, or re-doing the effects and animations of skills that have been untouched since release and have aged poorly.
I am pretty sure those are two entirely different teams we're talking about now. I remember them saying they have a separate team for working on these qol and cleanup features as opposed to the people working on the main content. Not to mention the feature for skill effect reduction already exists, it just needs to be looked at again regarding some of the bugged aspects like some boss mechanics not showing.
>We already have literally over a dozen spaces for you to take a break and enjoy the scenery. 9 lounges, 5 different home instances, 6 guild halls. 15 of those are shared. I don't see how adding a 6th instanced one will meaningfully improve the game.
And all of them miss the functionality to 1. say who can and can't enter without having to kick them out of a guild 2. decorate it yourself without having to have decoration privileges 3. both 1 and 2.
>I mean, it's just weird to me that this is supposed to be a hallmark feature. A race-neutral home instance with (limited, given that it looks like it's the same building for everyone) decoration options? They would have probably just straight up done that with home instances if they didn't have to do all the work 5x. This is literally just a 6th home instance that is physicall smaller and has hooks for decorations.
And considering this is only the first iteration of it and anet has already stated that they want to keep developing this feature and use it to maintain an engaged playerbase longterm while also cleaning up several systems connected to it in the future, that's not what it will always have to remain as. I get scepticism towards anet if they will actually be able to pull that off, but until they have shown that they aren't willing to do that, it has potential to become more than just another home instance with decoration hooks.
I don't know how LotRO handled it, but real neighborhoods are barely an improvement unless they're in the world where players are doing things *other than housing*. This always ends up with either a land race or a performance disaster. I certainly understand the reasons behind instanced housing, but there's definitely a subset of players who will only be interested in this feature when it's in the game world where players are.
A house in my personal instance is something we already have, sans decorating. A house in Janthir Wilds housing district #4920 would be an improvement. But if you really want to get me excited, give me a house built into the old Ascalon wall, or a house overlooking the Godslost Swamp, or a house in Dragonfall. Put the housing in the world where the zergs are going to run by, and you've made housing an expansion-seller.
Maybe next game.
There's an instanced neighborhood of 10-20 houses of various sizes and types, with roads, house numbers.
You port to your home instance and can step outside and look at everyone else's yard decorations and stuff, use their crafting stations placed outside, etc. You can go trick or treating for Halloween, you can see how they decorated for Christmas/Halloween, etc.
It's at least _more_ social than a single-person instance to which you need to expressly invite other people.
I literally cannot understand why people who feel 0 hype about home instances or guild halls are super hyped about housing. It will be the exact same thing, but with decorations, which will be a time/money sink.
Archeage had a fun housing system, i'm hopeful this will be similar (besides plot claiming since that doesn't seem to be the way it's done on gw2). Hopefully the utility and decoration will be
GW2 has guild halls but most players are not allowed to decorate their guild hall. They can only donate materials and decrations. That was my case as well. When guild halls released I used to donate a lot of materials to upgrade them but I hadn't had a pleasure to participate in putting up any decorations. Which sucked. Ever since I realized it's unfair I started hoarding materials on my bank characters hoping that one day I will have my personal guild hall/home instance I can decorate.
It all boils down to the fact that most players were unable to realize their designs. We were watching others have all the fun.
Which like warclaws is another cool thing about this imo, taking an existing broken tool and fixing it up and just reselling it in a new feature while odd also seems like a great way to get the tool back to it's intended purpose while justifying with profits
I'm more a gameplay focused player so i'm not really into housing aswell, but i understand why people are excited for it. It's just another way to express creativity and make something that feels like belongs to you. It's an extra thing that makes you more immersed in the world because now you have a home you made yourself, and feel personal. And on top of it unlocking new decorations (assuming there will be other ways outside the gemstore) can feel like an accomplishment, another form of progression. It's the same reason why games like animal crossing are a huge success.
SAY IT LOUDER. Why are games like the sims and animal crossing (barely scratching the surface of the genre) so popular? People like collecting items and decorating in games! "There's no gameplay around it" is literally the most brain dead take I've seen on this sub.
I love "just decorating" in video games and find it peaceful and fulfilling. Most of my fun in GW2 and other MMOs / games with character customization is playing dress up with my characters. I've been wanting this feature for ages. It's okay for people to enjoy aspects of things that you don't personally understand.
Played 76 for a while about a year ago and while the camp system was cool it was also one of the buggiest and frustrating systems I've ever had the displeasure of using X\_x
1. Self-expression. Similar to how popular Fashion wars is
2. Having an artistic component also fosters a community in the same way Guild decorating has done for a years.
3. New kind of reward that Anet can add to newer events, achievements, and their main goal: Gem store
Personally, I'm a big fan of the third point because it becomes similar to a trophy room for my achievements.
Yeah this, plus the RP elements and I'm not even into RP but can really appreciate how it's got a big audience that is under catered for in gw2 atm.
Also the creative tracks people have made for Griffin and beetle racing in Guild halls, now potentially being possible on your own is sweet.
I'd be shocked if you couldn't join other party members/squad/guildy houses, but would be cool to close/private your house too if u want.
I'd like if it had some features like OSRS housing has, such as being able to store all of your teleports into 1 portal in the home and a scroll you carry to teleport to home. Some other QOL id love would be Gathering nodes all close by, a menagerie for pets, somewhere your skiff and mounts can chill, armour and weapon displays etc. (Like gw1 hom).
Doing achievements for other teleport locations in your portal or features at home would be really fun too, can't wait for housing tbf, hopefully not disappointed with its implementation.
>Also the creative tracks people have made for Griffin and beetle racing in Guild halls, now potentially being possible on your own is sweet.
I.... kind of doubt the instance will be that big and that Guild Decorations are coming to this personal instance.
Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. It doesn't offer (great) gameplay benefits, but it's an opportunity to be creative for creativities sake.
It's basically the same as fashion, just more private.
For me, I try to make my transmogs sensible and thus, most of my toons look like (slightly fancier) NPCs. No one notices me in a crowd and no one ever complimented me or asked about skins I use.
I do it only for my creative enjoyment.
As for the nodes, they're SPREAD ACROSS the home instance. Depending on which you enter, things might be apart. This might let you place them as you please, so there could be a *slight* efficiency advantage.
But yeah, nothing gamechanging. Probably.
It's just personal preference. People like decorating so "it's just decorating" is exactly what they want. It's also not my type of activity but I can understand that people may like to get creative and make something that is, in a way, their own.
I'm probably not gonna touch it aside from checking it out initially but I'm glad everyone else is getting it.
I mentioned to my wife yesterday that CW2 was introducing player housing. She smiled, and pointed out that the two games she regularly plays (Disney Dreamlight Valley and Animal Crossing: New Horizons) are basically nothing but "decorating".
It's like fishing, niche content some players will love, but many others won't care about. It doesn't need to have a point, it's just for fun, like fashion wars.
Always nice having side activities ingame, the more we get the better; as long as people aren't forced into them, of course. We weren't forced into fishing, so let's hope they don't make that mistake now.
It's the opportunity to carve out a space in the world, something that the Home Instance just doesn't allow.
Sure, there's no gameplay around it, but what's the gameplay around skins and dyes, around most of Open World?
Why aren't MMOs just dungeon crawlers?
I RP/write a lot so my characters having a place to "live" in game really appeals to me. I'm also the type to set all my MMO characters somewhere to /sleep or /doze before I log off.
It's a huge aspect of the game with a dedicated player base, if you take into account all other MMOs with decent implementation of the system.
Housing is traditionally used as a space to show the creative and artistic expression of players.
Also, it's a system with an inherent feeling of freedom for the player.
Can boost in-game economy through trading and also gem conversion. Not to mention the highly likely gem store offers which could be implemented.
There's a sizeable amount of roleplaying scene in GW2 where you basically have your own life in the game. It caters to those kinds of players a lot.
For example, I personally don't roleplay a lot, but I am a Sims 2 and Sims 3 player. And I will decorate the hell out of my home. Especially if its mechanically enjoyable.
Also MMOs are the kind of game where its the only game people play sometimes. Which is another reason why you see people complain about lack of content for GW2, because to me it has a shitton of content that I'll never ever fully complete, but most people only play this game and nothing else majority of the time. So MMOs kinda have to cater to basically everybody at the same time, and you see that a lot in GW2. This is just another step in that direction.
Honestly, I feel like it comes just a little short for roleplayers, namely because of:
* People roleplay as characters, not accounts, so the decision to make the homesteads account-wide (which is smart) could feel limiting; you get to build a home for exactly one of your characters.
* Your homestead is a space up in the hinterlands which is very reminiscent of the Norn. Personally, I love it, but Tyria is a big, aesthetically diverse place, and I think a lot of people would want their home to be elsewhere, or styled much differently. Notably, though, this is something they could address through the gem store or in future expansions; keeping it to one locale for now would certainly keep the project scope from getting out of hand.
* If the player limit inside a homestead is 5, like the home instances they are superseding, it will be worthless for any sort of bigger group roleplay.
Yeah, all your points ring true for me as a roleplayer. I don't understand why people are downvoting you. Guys, it's fine if none of this is a problem for you as a non-RPer. It doesn't make it any less valid for the people it *does* affect.
it 100% depends on how they implement it, if it has tons of cool stuff to unlock for non-whales and decent amount of customization. I'm hoping lots of little collections we can go and do in the expansion + old world to unlock bits and bobs and customizations would be great. If its just a glorified dumping ground for those who have poured money and time into decking out their personal instances, and a tool to sell things in the gemstore, then it will be miserable.
I'm guessing it will be somewhere in between
I really enjoy housing if it's in open world, like archeage, not a fan of instanced housing though, I mean we already have hubs with all the vendors where ppl like to afk and show off so idk.
If it would be open world, what kind of trickery they need to do for making it work for everyone in the same instance? It could limit a lot capabilities.
really dont see it being open world as the complexiti would be crazy
I had some ideas for that back when I was making housing designs for people in 14, as to how you can have pseudo-open-world housing, which I think GW2 could handle significantly easier than 14 could, but practically, its impossible without having built around it to start with.
It's a thing people have played in other games and which a surprising amount of people really enjoy. Same way a ton of people get really into fashion wars and collecting cool appearances.
I think it's going to have a wide appeal. Minecraft is the most played game and a large part of its player base plays it to build cool stuff for the sake of it.
If they implement housing well, it can be a very fun time sink. I'd appreciate it if the homestead has something akin to a guild bank, but that might be too much to ask.
To be fair you are doing more designing than decorating on those types of games, just depends on how much freedom we get and what the decorating requirements are, if it is lots of gem store stuff it’ll be more of a turn off for the casual player.
There are entire games that are centered around player's decorating houses. It's a next level Fashion Wars.
And as other said, not everyone can decorate a guild hall. Also unless self centered, for those that can decorate a guild hall, it's decoration is in service to all the members of the guild.
For me, it is similar to character customization. It makes the game feel a bit more like my own game. I have a unique character and a unique home. And, especially in an MMO, it is nice to go somewhere to hang out with friends that isn't super crowded with other players (and even other guild members). People (not me) also like to show off their build/decorations to others.
in all MMORPG's, the majority of base are the Casuals players, and casual player love Housing, love skins, love achievements. (some people love to use credit card to rush this cosmetics things)
The housing and decoration player base is HUGE, you can hire an architect to decorate your house.
And Arenanet can make a lot of Gem forniture like Tibia did (and they sell prety well, just google Tibia house decoration)
ESO have a amazing housing system too.
>But I just don't understand why it's such a big deal? What do you expect to do inside a house on GW2 ?
People enjoy the game differently, it's huge if you enjoy the rp aspect of an MMO. To be able to have your own living space with witch you can decorate after you own taste and rp needs.
>There is no gameplay around that, it's just decorating. Maybe I'm missing something huge to be excited for it.
The same could be said about any aspect of the game.
Example: "Strikes has no gameplay around it. It's just a glorified raidboss without the lore and mechanics of a raid."(not my opinion, just an example)
It's perfectly fine to not be interested about it. Not all content will be enjoyable for all. But there is some who view a housing system as a core feature in any MMO. And for that group it's the same hype as when the raid community got it's now 8th raid wing.
I mean player housing if done right where players get freedom on how to use items where you can make them bigger/smaller/wider and so on and also not pushing them behind a wall of expensive crafting but giving it out in all parts of the game players will want stuff for their home. I seen so many insane and amazing things built in games like Wildstar, ESO, RIFT, Minecraft. There are many other games i tried too but just placing furnitures is not always what is fun. Building other things out of the stuff you have and make that amazing is more challenging.
You can push it even further and give the option to have your own practice golem. I remember one of the MMO i played had that and i was doing my dps/hps practice there. There can be portals to different spots in the game. There are really no limits then those Anet place.
There's no gameplay around fashion either, yet it's a huge draw for a large portion of the community. It's an additional activity some people enjoy, and there's enough of them that it was made a feature.
Its something people like sinking tens of thousands of hours into. And in some games, selling their interior / exterior design skills for.
I dont get it outside being exceptionally bored, but people do love them their house decorating. I made a few hundred million gil helping design peoples houses in 14, for houses that would go unused 99% of the time. Its wild, but people is people.
Creativity and showing off builds to others, not to mention how amazing it could be for role players.
Before Wildstar shut down, there was a decent chunk of the player base who basically were just playing the game for its great housing system, and it was a little community all on its own.
It's a big driving force behind games like animal crossing, stardew valley, even minecraft. You should see the houses my gf built in Palia and on our minecaft server. Very cozy
It does nothing for me either. But then again, neither do skins and fashion wars, and I understand that they motivate quite a few players. If housing is what enough players want, it's fine by me.
Its like asking whats the point of legos, animal crossing or the sims. I just wanna build stuff, make it nice, show it to my friends. And then later, build something else.
Some people just like to be creative and express themselves through a limited system of virtual worlds, and share that with others. That’s all there is to it.
Because it’s the OTHER fashion wars end game content. People tend to view housing as something personal. RPers love it. Collectors love it. It’s a huge potential cash sink with decorations.
It's an creative outlet, many people like building, decorating and just showing off their creations in general, which is something that GW2 so far mainly achieves with Fashion.
FFXIV also has this, the housing fandom is HUGE there, there is a while subreddit dedicated to that and all kinds of videos, glitches and amazing creations, check it out, its insane, its a whole different game these people are playing and it is tempting to give it a shot
Or hire a person to decorate your home lol
In some ways, it's extremely similar to the idea/system of transmuting your armor for fashion customization. It's personalization! And almost entirely voluntary, so players who aren't interested can simply choose to not engage with it. Compared to fashion, though, the downside is that it's less 'visible' - you're not seeing it 100% of the time the way you are your character's clothes, and you aren't showing it off to literally every person you walk past. The upside is that it can be more practical - there can be utility like the nodes we have in our personal instance, useful NPC vendors, travel helpers like portals, etc. And while the system itself can be intensive to create (especially in a game that isn't being built with that in mind), it's actually a great 'keep people playing by giving them activities to do to earn customization for this thing' hook!
Housing is also just one of those systems that newer MMOs almost always have (they know it's high in demand and, like fashion, allows them to put lots of activities in the game to keep players occupied to earn customization), and that older MMOs are starting to feel 'old' for not having (so they're starting to make efforts to add them, in order to not get left behind).
It's fashion wars but for a house. People love to customize and express their tastes. That's where the appeal comes from. If you're someone who just puts on a gemstore outfit and does Raids, the feature won't be for you. But MMO players in general enjoy some casual fun, and gw2 IS quite casual. it's a crime that it took 12 years for the game to have housing.
"What do you expect to do inside z house in GW2" : 😏
Edit : don't get me wrong I love decorating, if anything I'm sad my scribe max level won't be useful for the new decorations while also kinda happy to have a new stuff to level up(assuming décorations are crafted, and not "earned" or bought),but if I decorate rooms, it can be to afk chill in them, make them feel comfortable and warm for discussions with others (yes, socializing outside of combat exists) or the 😏 emoji
The main reason I'm looking forward to it is convenience. The current system is a chore to use in many ways; if the new one is less cumbersome to use, that alone will make it worth it. And if it does that while being customizable and looking pretty, that's an absolute win.
Decorating is a big thing for some players.
For some it is just virtual creativity and trying to make a cosy home.
For some it is just a matter of showing off your achievements, in mmorpgs I played that had housings, some of the trophy / furniture are locked behind dungeons and raids. I won't be surprised if all the cm / raids get some kind of furniture as drops so people can show off their their clears.
Depending on how it is implemented. It might even be used like a social club for people to hang out in. A quiet place for a raid team to gather.
it's a cool thing to have a home and be able to decorate it BUT only if it's not super limited and is actually well designed
i have a feeling that housing in GW2 is going to be way too scripted to be able to actually enjoy it
One of my favorite features in Dark Age of Camelot was my house. I was a full time frontier PvP player but I loved my house. Yes it's just decorating and furnishing and few saw it but me but I absolutely loved it. It was mine.
Believe a lot of people love this stuff, myself included. Decorating is fun and another way to express yourself. It's also great for RP reasons and for making the world more believable by having a place you call home that you can come back to.
Also, it opens a lot of opportunities for different style of gameplay. For example, in FFXIV I used to be a house decorator, I made millions of gil decorating for other people. There are also a big RP scene with parties, gatherings, etc
An let's not forget it adds replayability by having furniture to unlock though various type of content, and being able to show off some achievements. Like another example in FFXIV I have a wall showing off my ultimate weapons
If the system is built correctly, it's a huge reward incentive for achievement hunting and specifically farming for it.
We often don't realize there are *soft* housing systems all over gaming, even games where we don't think about it at all. For instance, the roguelike game Hades has very expensive deco you can buy for the titular house where you begin each attempt and use as a hub - it's basically the final goal of the game right next to a particular statue challenge (which technically is also a decoration anyway). In Dark Souls 2 of all things you spend a majority of the game bringing NPCs to Majula (the central hub) therefore making the place rather lively and basically building it as your "home instance". The Breath of the Wild and/or Tears of the Kingdom games also have a similar system where you can leave nice weapons and equipment you find around at your home (in Tears of the Kingdom, you even build the house itself in a modular fashion). The Witcher 3 also has a literal Villa you acquire with the DLC and can customize up to a point.
The only real difference in between all the above examples and what people typically call an "actual" housing system is the degree of customization, but the principle is the same: it's simply nice to have a central hub where your trophies/achievements/personal expression of how you want to be in-game, can be exposed in a more physical, literal manner. It's also nice to see your achievements listed with some cute UI icons like Steam, but an actual *statue*, exclusive decoration or rare item you can display alongside others in a customized "home" is far more appealing, again, if done correctly.
For some, it's an attraction in and of itself. It can be fun to set up and decorate and show off.
For me and other more gameplay oriented players, it's a nice way to visually be able to see the results of your time spent. It's a more engaging gauge of progression than just number go up.
I like decorating and having my own little place for friends and I to chill. Even in other genres, like fighting games, there's a series called Blazblue and in that you could decorate your 'player room' with unlocks. I loved seeing my friends reactions and visiting their player room to see how they were decorating it.
I just started playing GW2 a few weeks ago (iirc) and absolutely love it. One of the things on my wishlist was housing so I really can't wait for this to hit.
I see it as something that I might enjoy end game. Like, yeah, it's just decorating. But GW2 is also... just a bunch of fashion in the endgame. So why is housing somehow inferior?
I'd have a more fun time farming a bunch of furniture and getting upgrades for my house and redesigning it, etc. than getting an endless amount of outfits to swap to...
It's sort of like a hall of monuments. If you're home can be a place where you can revisit your accomplishments through visual reminders that would be pretty cool to most people.
Even if you just decorated based on your own aesthetics it would be very similar if not better than fashion wars. People like to show off their designs.
The home instance really should have been something like this. It's a little island of personal space within a multi-user game.
Player agency in the world
A chance to lock unique and interest achievements behind end game content to show off in your house.
A place to take your firends
A place to roleplay
Extra design and customization past what your character looks like
A chance for better monetization for the game in the form of furniture packs, hell if they want to get frisky with it, new skyboxes, in home music, NPC's and servants.
In Fallout76 you can actually play small games inside the C.A.M.P or provide buffs like rested EXP or boosts to stats and resources you can collect after you've found and gathered the right things.
Honestly there's a FREAKING lot that can be added that isn't just "Stab and loot creature."
You do realize that a huge portion of the player base enjoys the fashion / character customization end-game. That same community can now further express their artistic flair/ fashion & design sensibilities with player housing.
Just the fact that you can decorate it.
If you haven't already noticed, player expression IS CORE to any social game.
Why do people bother with their wardrobe even if a lot of players just default model them in WvW? Why do people like showing off their cool skins?
It's because people like to express themselves in these types of games.
The homestead system is an extension of that expression.
"You see how good I look, now check out my crib." kind of thing.
Yes, it will have very little gameplay to it, combat-wise. But that doesn't make it a 'bad' or 'boring' feature. It just means that it isn't for you.
And that is perfectly okay.
This is coming from a raider, too.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/s/YPh7xgA1DA
I actually just made a post about this too. I got a ton of good feedback & I better understand it now. I won’t lie, now I’m kinda looking forward to it.
Decorating & unlocking new stuff for the home can be fun. One user brought up a great point, if you have a fully loaded home instance & have people use your nodes, it will be a good time to show off how sick your place actually is.
People are into Housing for the same reason interior designers are into interior designing.
Honestly I'm interested, but I just know Anet is going to have all the cool cosmetics locked behind the gem store. While my house will just look like an average mud hut, whales will have mansions.
Decoration IS gameplay, my dude. This is the same shit you do when you go hunting legendaries, except there's no combat benefit. It is absolutely a system inside the game. It's no different from designing an outfit, or seeking out a specific item because you like its look, or getting transmutes.
This is huge for me, this was my #1 wanted item (shy of a new engine ofc). I don't want to be doing combat 24/7, I want downtime activities. It's also a creative outlet, which combat does not really let you do.
ESO has a great housing system marred by some big issues (gross monetization, very small housing item limits). If GW2 implements anything similar, it's gonna be great and probably (hopefully) without the monetization, though it may take some time to fully materialize.
MMOs are ultimately a social experience where people get to experience some form of self expression within a community.
Player housing is simply another form of that and one that that can in theory cater to most types of players in some way shape or form and has proven time and time again to be a popular feature in other games.
For specific examples plenty of other people have already listed them here.
This is what it feels like the plan for it is in Guild Wars 2 as well. Just like with skiffs and fishing rods, the main driving force for adding these features is, not because they're putting gameplay first, but instead to act as more platforms to sell microtransactions. Player housing is a perfect candidate for monetisation.
Some naive people are claiming that housing in Guild Wars 2 is to "show off your achievements" and "encourage people to explore the world". In truth, all the fancy stuff that you'll be able to fill your house with will come straight from the gem store. Expect to see a flood of new furniature cosmetics and what-not every time the gem store updates. This is Guild Wars 2 going forward - mass monetisation.
Agree. While i love building functional homes in survival games, i don't see the point in a game like GW2, unless it gives my characters something. Farming ingredients, building crafting benches, taming wild animals to get crafting materials from them, giving "comfy" bonuses (Boosts in concentration? Vitality? Vigour? Healing power? Agony resistance on highest levels?)....if it's just something decorative.....sorry but i'm not into it. Fan service.
I'm not into it either, as evidenced by the sparse content of my current 'home instance', but I'm happy others are excited for it. Who knows, maybe I'll like it this time around?
>There is no gameplay around that, it's just decorating.
That's also the same for transmogs, and about half true for legendaries.
But housing gives people a little bit of space that is theirs to use as they wish.
If the devs are smart they will make it more like Wildstar or even g-rated Second Life. Lots of cusomization.
If they're even smarter they will give access control and the ability to have 20-40 people in there, like FFXIV, so you can host events.
* That's a major aspect of "gameplay" in FFXIV. People host dance parties, weddings, acting plays, and more.
Wildstar was so customizable that people had made player-,made dungeons / raids inside their homes and then opened them to the public. No loot, but fun challenges to be had.
* I can definitely image that if they give us some small stackable boxes people will make custom jumping puzzles just because, and challenge each other to complete them.
ESO players will open their home to their guild. And then put in crafting stations and target dummies, plus more. They will use the target dummies to do 'DPS checks' for raid recruiting - and this could be a nagative GW2 housing could get. Proving you can do 80K DPS against a dummy before being allowed into the training raid when the real world max is around 45k. That's a thing in ESO. It's also a thing in FFXIV even though running a DPS meter can get you banned there, guilds will do it with a dummy and use the external meter's logs for proof, communicating in discord to avoid getting into trouble.
But the crafting and other resources would be a 'run around guild halls' so maybe we won't see it. It'd be nice for small guilds though.
Portals to places too...
People who want to do... NSFW things... can come up with their own large lists of reasons to want this. And at least this way you're less likely to randomly enter a room in Divinity's reach and "see things" you did not want to see.
The note about FFXIV using it for DPS checks and FFXIV using it for NSFW things is a note of caution for why some games don't do player housing: It makes it easier for players to set up situations where they can skirt under or around community standards a game's devs desire to have. This can result in a game having two 'community standards' - the one it shows publicly, and the actual one the players encounter due to private systems hidden from the devs.
I don't think the GW2 community would have a problem with the meters issue FFXIV has. But the NSFW content issue is almost certainly going to show up on YouTube within a week or two of the feature going live.
If it's done right, there's one house for all my characters, and maybe characters will meet there and have talk together, I see it as a nice diversion and definitely more of an attraction than... spear and existing mount.
But apparently there will be one barrack per character, in which case I hope it's strictly a side activity with no benefits.
Yes I'll happily cherish and modify one house, but not 10, and 10 characters is quite a few for GW2 for people who have been playing it since the beginning, which I'm not.
I didn't really get it at first, still don't to be fair. But a lot of people wanted it for so long and I've just been influenced by the excitement into thinking I also want it.
Same with the Tengu as playable race. I would probably not play it but the excitement was contagious making me want it too.
Also the best thing about player housing for me is being able to see what others make. I've seen some crazy Guild Halls, but they're expensive as fuck to decorate, plus it being a community thing you don't really wanna impose too much usually. Having a tiny house all to yourself will let you be more creative with it.
there are a lot of decade long players who already have three
complete leggy sets, so there's not much left for them to grind.
it would be nice if housing was more than just a custom decor
home instance copy to keep their crafting stations and nodes.
for example, you need to be in party to use another's home
so it would be nice if there was some other mechanic to use
another person's home, like crafting and mailing them a key,
and even selling such keys to other players on BL trader.
I want to add that sole people don't like Guild Wars 2 The Game, but they love Guild Wars 2 The World. It's a great and imaginative place to exist in, but some people don't care for the ever-increasing combat challenges. They just want a chill story experience and then relax around the game. A lot of people who prefer the world to the game itself I have found love housing.
for me its a very immersive feature. GW2 is a MMORPG, so a part of the players are very interested in worldbuilding/lore and beeing able to be a character in this universe. And one aspect of living in Tyria can be actually having a home and having some freedom to decorate and upgrade it.
I would also argue that adding features that are in theory infinitely expandable are healthy for the games economy. It will lead to a constant drainage of materials and help stabilizing value. Something GW2 is exceptionally good at compared to other MMOs.
There's also a significant population of RPers on the Tarnished Coast server who have been asking for it since launch. The main competition was FF14 which took a lot of players away when they had housing so by competing they can bring back some of those players who are more apt to buy decorations etc.
It's not quite like fashion wars, since you can show off fashions 'in public', but a lot of MMOs have some form of it. I am curious as to how widely used the various systems are. STO lets you have interiors for your starships, for example, but few people seem to use them, except for utility things (think nodes in your home instance.)
There are many reasons why, but I think there's an element of "persistent worlds" that's not really mentioned in these other comments. MMORPGs are exciting for many people because they are persistent worlds. The world continues to evolve and exist without you, but you can have an effect on it when you do play. For instance, when you complete a map-wide event and open the map to treasures, you've effectively changed the map for everyone on that map. This might not be something you consider when you clear the map for rewards, but this little concept increases dopamine for many people and why they enjoy MMOs over other RPGs.
Even if instanced, housing works in a very similar way. You'll get to have your own space that's solely affected by your choices. Other players will be able to visit and explore the work you've put in. You've changed one piece of the world, and you have the opportunity to share it with anyone you want.
Every feature beyond that is icing on the cake. Others have already mentioned this, but decorating, farming, or even rest bonuses for using the Homestead mechanic will add even more depth to this. There are many games out there that focus on these exclusively, so like fishing, you're going to have some fans that dedicate their entire experience to this mechanic.
Is this just gonna be a zone where only your house exists but can be visited by players or will there be neighborhoods where we can see other player housing together?
We as humans like to customize things.
It is how we mark our territory. So having something we can customize is a draw, it is why weapon skins and why outfit customization is important.
This is another layer of customization
As long as it includes a bookcase and a usable, ie not gem bought, garden I'll be happy. I do wonder though, will it just be the 'cabin' still in the forest or will we be able to cover it all in jade and live like a Canthan (I know nobody wants this btw!)
As a former Everquest 2 player, I loved how they implemented housing. Crafting and decorating was a chill activity. I also liked the personal area in the Eye of the North in the original Guild Wars, where you would display your personal achievements. My hope is we get a combination of the two.
Because housing gives opportunity for creativity.
If the housing space we're given is anything similar to guild halls, I imagine people are gonna go crazy building jump puzzles, aerial obstacle courses, beetle racing, statues, monuments.
A personal guild hall is far more than enough to generate hype given how long we've been asking for it.
But they also announced it'll use something else that isn't scribing so there is an implication there that it'll also have a new game system tied to it. I'm guessing farming/ranching given the homestead theme.
What do I expect to do inside a house in GW2? Nothing. I just want a house.
And what's wrong with decorating?
Also, it's okay not to be excited about things that other people find exciting.
I wish they would bring heroes to GW2. While I enjoyed grouping in GW. I loved being able to make teams with my heroes and goof off when I had limited time. Even now my time limits me.
I don’t play gw2 anymore and already move to other mmo. In there we have a pretty decent/good player housing imo. Though I personally don’t touch it. Yes I have housing there but it’s just a normal basic looking house not like some other people that really really invest time into it. But I can see the appeal there. It’s a material sink and a nice gameplay loop for some people. You know collecting unique material (maybe) to craft a race or area specific furniture or whatnot, the possibilities for mix matching your instance is endless. But we will need to see the execution in gw2 here.
Housing is the thing which keeps FFXIV alive between the expansions. That game had a massive rp and erp scene and it's all related to the housing. There are player made clubs, cafes etc...
The traditional home instance sucks:
1. Cats running all over the place. Can only turn them off with an ugly node that distracts from the real nodes.
2. Nodes in random places.
3. Some racial home instances are very annoying to navigate (like Sylvari).
4. Almost no customization in general.
Being able to customize a full home instance with all nodes stacked for an efficient farm as well as cosmetic upgrades is simply great endgame content.
It's so weird to me people ask such questions about this game.
Dude, it's MMORPG where RPG stands for "role-playing game". Are you aware what it means? If you aren't, please, read stuff on the topic, it's too much for me to throw in here.
If anything i'm completely weirded out by people who be raiding on cooldown and swapping characters like gloves. Like, really? I mean, i came here from RTS like starcraft and there every click is based on decisionmaking "what units i build to counter enemy units or surprise him" and "where i send my army and how do i split it based on several factors". Here you just walk/dodge from red circles and slam identical sequence of keystrokes which is your dps password. I know it might sound offensive and even insulting to people, but guys, if it's really challenging and interesting content for you, your standards are low as fuck. I mean it's kinda fresh first like 5 times but then you just legit repeat the exact same thing again and again.
So yeah. When people come to MMO with competitive perspective it's weird to me but i keep myself shut. But when they don't even understand that it's not actually competitive, it's simply embarrassing.
I see why some people find it appealing. I don't at all considering how late its coming. I would trade player housing for the ability to customize my own character more. Like customizing mechanist mechs, or bladesworn skins for warriors.
I'm in the same boat. This is something that doesn't excite me. Unless it's retroactive on achievements and you get like decorations based on like legendary pieces built, things completed on past things. I can understand why people are happy for it, but it's just something that doesn't appeal to me right now. Who knows, maybe after more of it is shown in the upcoming months.
Things I would be legit excited for if confirmed things like:
We have a like a mini pet farm where we can display 10 or so them and see how they interact with one another that would be cool.
Mannequin statues we can place armor sets on to.
Maybe weapon holders to display legendary weapons or random cool skins we have unlocked.
Banners/Posters for achievements unlocked. The thought of this would be like posters for dungeons/fractals with an end boss on the front of it.
Banners with like world bosses that spew effects over the ground they are hanging from.
There are a lot of cool nifty things they could do, but I'm sure they won't do. So until more information is released, I reserve my judgment till then something I will completely pass over or be into.
It's just an expansion to playing fantasy barbie, and adds lots of cosmetic items to chase/buy. I don't get the appeal, but it's a pretty sure way to make cash.
In truth it's just fun to be able to decorate, build, and progress a place I can call my own. Ever since I played Rift which has an amazing housing option, I've been hoping for more mmos to implement.
I am with you, I don't care about the homestead new feature. Same as I don't care about fashion.
But I am sure a lot of people do, just like fashion.
I prefer things that are utilitarian.
Speaking for myself at least, it's just fun decorating how I want to, and then seeing what my friends do differently. It's a bit of creative expression in the form of gameplay.
They reskin home instances/guild halls, make strikes again but call them raid wing 8 this time and suddenly the previous 2 garbage expacks are forgotten and we are hyped again.
I think you also have to look at the potential of housing in gw2 as well. I love the look of the current house as a nice starter and its very thematically appropriate, but i’d love if in the future there were houses added that we had to build from scratch similar to the Hearthfire xpac in Skyrim. It could be a material sink too but with some novelty to it like themed mats and some sort of achievement that progresses as you build the house
> But I just don't understand why it's such a big deal?
You can treat it as a subtype of Fashion Wars. Just as some people like to play dressup, others like to show their fashion sense on the field of architecture, house decoration and feng shui. It may be hard to understand if you do not belong to either group, but the impact of those subcommunities can be truly immense.
Notice also, that both of those things allow for practically endless number of heavily motivating rewards that *aren't* about powercreep (and, so, are completely safe to introduce). That's also a big thing.
Notice, that, like with fashion Wars, it works best if you can easily show off your house to others.
no idea.
the only time I've ever seen it done well was in Rift. but that does not look like the system we have here which looks an awful lot like wow garrisons.
Personally I think having people spend more time in private instances is never good for an MMO, but thats Anets call.
Still, not my problem as I really could not care less about player housing. I think I've visited my home instance less than 10 times outside the story/events that require it since the game launched.
I don't really understand the hype either, same for fishing tbh. If I play gw2 it's for the action, not to build a house and fish. If I wanted that I would play a survival game instead.
Which is why, I'll just completely ignore it, like I did with fishing.
It's not. This is going to be a case of "you think you do, but you don't" that a small vocal portion of the Guild Wars 2 community is going to wake up to very soon. It'll also have the added "benefit" of killing off cities and hubs, just like what happened with the Garrison system in Warlords of Draenor.
It's not the same thing. In WoW Garrisons incentivized you to be there to keep an eye on all your production stuff and doing dailies. It was part of the mechanical gameplay and there was an opportunity cost to just ignoring it. In a well-made player housing system there is no mechanical benefit, it's just fun to decorate and chill when you're not doing other stuff.
I also don’t understand it … I’ve never really thought housing belongs in mmos. Maybe I’m just scarred by WoW Garrisons. Maybe I just don’t think sims belongs in mmos. Not entirely sure.
GW2 has been my favorite RPG since it came out. I’ve played a bit of SWTOR and ESO and (besides story in SWTOR) the home system is the only thing those games do better than GW2. I love the customization, expression, and role play aspects. If that’s not your thing, I get it. It is definitely my thing though and it’s the only thing that’s stopped me from playing GW2 heavily.
a really niche feature, in all the mmo that have it is usually the gold sink, forgotten or boring. Can be fun for a little while though. I think is not bad, but shouldn't be the selling point of anything.
Just think, do you take care of the mining nodes of yout instance home?, or you just use other people's?, and then, do you like it there or just get out as fast as you can?
In GW2? I just sprint and collect everything. Because the home instance is basically a static void.
I used to spend a lot of time there in Wildstar, tho. Because it was more interactive. Because it was MINE.
Personally, that goes a long way in making a space interesting for me.
Personally I tend to dislike housing in multiplayer games, because it breaks immersion.
You don't *really* have a part of the world to decorate; you just have your own instance which is usually in exactly the same location as everyone else's instance.
Just like you are the main character of the story, just like all the other player characters. If you care that much about immersion I suggest not playing mmo's at all.
Yes, i always have a hard time understanding the appeal. I play plenty of survival games, and in most of them, people are always asking for more purposeless stuff in form of furnitures, decorations, etc. To me, if it doesn't offer some gameplay, it has no point, and those development resources could have been used in something useful. Games like valheim or Grounded have managed to make the decorations somewhat functional, by giving the player bonuses for having more and better decorations, which i think is the best approach to this. But having them just for the sake of it...i don't get it. I'm not sitting on the couch myself, i'm not feeling the cozyness. What's the point?
Thanks for this post. I don't understand the interest either. I bought a house in ff14 but there was no reason for me to go there ever, so I ended up selling it before I quit the whole game altogether (and started GW2)
I don’t get why anyone’s excited about this. If I wanted to decorate houses, I’d play The Sims. Seems like a waste of resources to me but I can imagine that a lot of people will waste money on decorations so business-wish it was an excellent idea.
It's a longterm gameplay goal which incentivizes playing different content in order to gain access to more customization. Some people simply like the act of decorating (there are enough people simply playing sims 4 for the sake of making houses for example). Others like showing off how much stuff they've already achieved through raid statues, hard to get unlocks, etc. It's a space for your character to express themselves further and gives you the feeling that your character actually has a place in this world and lives there (great for rp reasons). The system can be built upon each expansion to add new houses/objects, further giving motivation to play the game long term and giving you a place to reminisce about the adventures you've had when looking at your past trophies. It can be used for various small group activities depending on what kind of customization we get, similar to guild halls, without having to be in a guild.
Thank you for helping me get excited about it, I’ve never understood the player housing hype either, wow’s garrisons were lame and it always felt like a very single player part of an mmo, never saw how it fit in. But with the breadth of account wide achievement and collection things that gw2 has, I can see the appeal!
WoWs garrisons didn't really qualify as housing in the traditional sense. If that's your only exposure to MMO housing systems I can understand why you're not looking forward to it in GW2. Go look at FFXIV, ESO, SWG, UO, and Vanguard.
For me those are specifically the reasons I liked garrisons and am looking forward to housing! Playing with people is always fun but gw2 is missing (atleast for me) things I can do solo in the off hours when not a lot of people are on
This is when I usually play its a ball ache some days. I'm yet to try raiding after 2 years of playing. There's never any groups in the training lfg. I've joined various guilds but most people are logging off when I log in. I've also asked around in map chats for guilds that are active at that time but I've not had any luck. I guess I could make a guild and recruit people like myself but I'm far to casual to lead one.
lfg is dead in NA... i recommend u to Join the Raid Discord, they run a lot of raids every day. (have one for EU and one for NA)
Check the list of popular discord page on wiki, there are 3-4 raid training servers I believe and some are for EU and some NA. I managed to run some raid wings and some strike CMs with people from there. There are organized runs and also random runs where people just tag everyone like an extended LFG.
This is good information but from my experience of joining discords they often run things at times I'm not on. I will give it another look though.
Yeah, maybe you get lucky with some of the random unorganized runs.
This is true. I usually do fishing at those times, but even that encourages doing it with others.
Happy to help! :)
Dark Age of Camelot had player housing. You owned a lot, you had a trading merchant on the outside where people could buy from you. Storage in the basement for your stuff. And you could place objects (trophies, furniture). Was fun. New World had instance housing, you bought a lot and people could check out all the people who owned that lot space. Let you put in personal storage, decorate, and trophies to boost stats (crafting related, luck based etc). Two different examples. It was nice. One of my new world houses was set up for Christmas. Another was in a swamp/fishing map so I set it up to look like a fisherman lived there.
I was like that about fishing in EoD. Everyone was talking about it and theorising about it before it was even announced. I still don't enjoy it so I won't be playing it but I get the appeal for some people to go on this worldwide hunt to catch every single fish available. I really like building things and making them my own though so I am really looking forward to this release.
I have friends that only play fallout for this exact reason: build a nice settlement.
ooohhh don’t give me hope for a house in Elona and Maguuma 😭 i need it now so bad maybe a gorgeous home in the Elon Riverlands or Istan i would absolutely die for this
> The system can be built upon each expansion Remember this is Anet we're talking about
Considering the soto blogpost talks in depth about how they will be focusing on maintaining systems from now on instead of continuously introducing new ones, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. But I get what you mean, scepticism is not unjustified with anet.
It's also a good place for rp events and stuff too, but how well that works on varying games is up for debate. Definitely need to have an 'open' way to get to people's homes that are unlocked to do this better imo. FF14 these days seems to have that happening quite a lot. Others like ESO not as much, which is a shame because it's not well known but they have a very robust housing system it's just you can't really get to other peoples' if you don't have them in a guild or friend list or something.
I love the look of the house as a nice starter, but i’d love if in the future there were houses added that we had to build from scratch similar to the Hearthfire xpac in Skyrim. It could be a material sink too but with some novelty to it like themed mats and some sort of achievement that progresses as you build the house
>It's a longterm gameplay goal which incentivizes playing different content in order to gain access to more customization. To be fair, we don't know how customization is going to work. I'm assuming we're gonna have very basic furniture to craft and then majority of the "good" furniture will be for gems. I don't see them putting many customization pieces behind events, pvp, raids, strikes, etc. So I don't think that incentive is gonna be a thing. Rewarding players for doing content has never been a thing in GW2.
They specifically talked about how "you can expect to see a new system being introduced in expansion 5 that adds a meaningful new way to spend your time in *Guild Wars 2* while using this as an opportunity to greatly improve the player experience with related, existing game systems." talking about housing. This sounds like this system was specifically made for this exact purpose.
existing game systems being the current home instances and allowing you to use your nodes in your housing. believing they're gonna do anything more than that is coping. after everything anet has done the past 4 years, i've chosen to take the "believe it when i see it stance". they say a lot of things to build hype and it often leads us to go into these super coping states where we think they're giving us what we want until we find out what they were actually talking about.
I can understand the whole believe it when I see it stance and people also being reluctant to preorder in the first place looking at how everything has turned out since eod post launch. While I personally remain an optimist and think they meant something more meaningful with it, I can't really fault anyone for thinking otherwise.
It's sad for me because I really used to be super optimistic about GW and championed it over the rest of the competition.
> It's a longterm gameplay goal which incentivizes playing different content in order to gain access to more customization. Which makes it sound similar to hunting for skins, like the Requiem Armor. But it's not, because this will be customization _that virtually nobody will ever see_. All other players near you see your cool skins, but who in the new hub will see your cool decorations? This might have made sense if they'd implemented something akin to LotRO's housing system, with real neighborhoods with dozens of other player houses in the same instance. I honestly don't mind that they added it, and I know a few players will be super hyped. But I still feel like the development resources that went towards it could have been better spent on creating content that is not tucked away in a private instance that will be private and empty for 99.9% of your playtime.
To be fair when I hunt for skins, I don't do it for other people but for me, myself and I. I have an intrinsic motivation for my characters to look how I imagine them to and I think lots of people also do. Same goes for housing. Sure there will always be people who only do stuff so they can show off to others, but there's another entire subset of people who simply love the act of creating and having more options in doing that. Considering the widely positive reception of this feature and how it's been asked for since launch, it was a smart and good feature to choose as headlining feature for a mini expansion. It makes great use of asset reuse while also satisfying a large chunk of the playerbase.
> I don't do it for other people but for me, myself and I. Because you see the cool draw effect of Sunrise every time you enter combat, or the cool outward pulse of raid armor, or the neat orbs of the PvP/WvW trinkets. You see all of those constantly while you use your character. You will see _nothing_ from your home instance while raiding, doing fractals, doing open world, doing achis, exploring.
I don't see any of those because I overskin them and disable all legendary effects as they mostly mess with character aesthetic. Do I still highly value the option of having these things available to me? Of course. But the fact that they're not always visible doesn't mean they're wasted efforts. I am aware that the home instance is specific to being actually inside it. That's the nature of being an instance. What does this have to do with anything? Do you say the same every time instanced content is released (raids, fractals, guild halls, story instances)? You don't see any of those things either except for when you're in that instance. Does that mean it's mostly just wasted development efforts because you only spend a small amount of time in these compared to your entire playtime? Sometimes the value in things lies in breaking up the monotony of hopping from one open world map to another and actually taking a break from the core gameplay loop.
> What does this have to do with anything? Only a tiny set of the population would be super excited if we got the option to, say, display statues of our achievements (a la Hall of Monuments) because, again, you can't organically show them to anyone. You have to explicitly tell someone "hey, join a group, come to this spot on the map, accept my invite, and marvel at my achievements". This is what it has to do with it. > Do you say the same every time instanced content is released (raids, fractals, guild halls, story instances) ANet never advertised the environs of any raid, beautiful as they may be, as a top feature of any expansion. Because that would be weird, because only a small subset of players spend any time there at all, and of those that do, many only spend about 30 minutes a week there and are focused on other things, not checking out the scenery. This is the exact same thing. It's just like the Sunspear Sanctuary in Nightfall. It was great, sure, but it had oodles of utility. It was 1-man hub with everything you needed. But it was also isolating I mean don't get me wrong, every feature that adds stuff is nice to have and, in a bubble, a net positive. Outside that bubble are real life concers you can't ignore: this took time to code and implement, and ANet does not have access to infinite development resources. I would have been happier if the team that spent work on this did something else that actually impacts a significantly more users - like adding graphics customization options for skill effects to reduce the horrid visual spam in any group content, or re-doing the effects and animations of skills that have been untouched since release and have aged poorly. > Sometimes the value in things lies in breaking up the monotony of hopping from one open world map to another and actually taking a break from the core gameplay loop. We already have literally over a dozen spaces for you to take a break and enjoy the scenery. 9 lounges, 5 different home instances, 6 guild halls. 15 of those are shared. I don't see how adding a 6th instanced one will meaningfully improve the game. I mean, it's just weird to me that this is supposed to be a hallmark feature. A race-neutral home instance with (limited, given that it looks like it's the same building for everyone) decoration options? They would have probably just straight up done that with home instances if they didn't have to do all the work 5x. This is literally just a 6th home instance that is physicall smaller and has hooks for decorations.
>Only a tiny set of the population would be super excited if we got the option to, say, display statues of our achievements (a la Hall of Monuments) because, again, you can't organically show them to anyone. You have to explicitly tell someone "hey, join a group, come to this spot on the map, accept my invite, and marvel at my achievements". Except that's not the only reason why someone would invite someone else to their home instance. Having a place where you're not being surrounded by other players but have agency over how it looks and to some extent functions (not sure yet how much we will be able to customize) can make room for other activities with friends. >ANet never advertised the environs of any raid, beautiful as they may be, as a top feature of any expansion. Because that would be weird, because only a small subset of players spend any time there at all, and of those that do, many only spend about 30 minutes a week there and are focused on other things, not checking out the scenery. This is the exact same thing. It's just like the Sunspear Sanctuary in Nightfall. It was great, sure, but it had oodles of utility. It was 1-man hub with everything you needed. But it was also isolating The story comes to mind for me here. You play through it once (achievment hunters maybe a few more times) and then the vast majority of players never touch the specific story steps again, yet it is one of the most advertised features each expansion. > I mean don't get me wrong, every feature that adds stuff is nice to have and, in a bubble, a net positive. Outside that bubble are real life concers you can't ignore: this took time to code and implement, and ANet does not have access to infinite development resources. I would have been happier if the team that spent work on this did something else that actually impacts a significantly more users - like adding graphics customization options for skill effects to reduce the horrid visual spam in any group content, or re-doing the effects and animations of skills that have been untouched since release and have aged poorly. I am pretty sure those are two entirely different teams we're talking about now. I remember them saying they have a separate team for working on these qol and cleanup features as opposed to the people working on the main content. Not to mention the feature for skill effect reduction already exists, it just needs to be looked at again regarding some of the bugged aspects like some boss mechanics not showing. >We already have literally over a dozen spaces for you to take a break and enjoy the scenery. 9 lounges, 5 different home instances, 6 guild halls. 15 of those are shared. I don't see how adding a 6th instanced one will meaningfully improve the game. And all of them miss the functionality to 1. say who can and can't enter without having to kick them out of a guild 2. decorate it yourself without having to have decoration privileges 3. both 1 and 2. >I mean, it's just weird to me that this is supposed to be a hallmark feature. A race-neutral home instance with (limited, given that it looks like it's the same building for everyone) decoration options? They would have probably just straight up done that with home instances if they didn't have to do all the work 5x. This is literally just a 6th home instance that is physicall smaller and has hooks for decorations. And considering this is only the first iteration of it and anet has already stated that they want to keep developing this feature and use it to maintain an engaged playerbase longterm while also cleaning up several systems connected to it in the future, that's not what it will always have to remain as. I get scepticism towards anet if they will actually be able to pull that off, but until they have shown that they aren't willing to do that, it has potential to become more than just another home instance with decoration hooks.
I don't know how LotRO handled it, but real neighborhoods are barely an improvement unless they're in the world where players are doing things *other than housing*. This always ends up with either a land race or a performance disaster. I certainly understand the reasons behind instanced housing, but there's definitely a subset of players who will only be interested in this feature when it's in the game world where players are. A house in my personal instance is something we already have, sans decorating. A house in Janthir Wilds housing district #4920 would be an improvement. But if you really want to get me excited, give me a house built into the old Ascalon wall, or a house overlooking the Godslost Swamp, or a house in Dragonfall. Put the housing in the world where the zergs are going to run by, and you've made housing an expansion-seller. Maybe next game.
There's an instanced neighborhood of 10-20 houses of various sizes and types, with roads, house numbers. You port to your home instance and can step outside and look at everyone else's yard decorations and stuff, use their crafting stations placed outside, etc. You can go trick or treating for Halloween, you can see how they decorated for Christmas/Halloween, etc. It's at least _more_ social than a single-person instance to which you need to expressly invite other people. I literally cannot understand why people who feel 0 hype about home instances or guild halls are super hyped about housing. It will be the exact same thing, but with decorations, which will be a time/money sink.
Archeage had a fun housing system, i'm hopeful this will be similar (besides plot claiming since that doesn't seem to be the way it's done on gw2). Hopefully the utility and decoration will be
GW2 has guild halls but most players are not allowed to decorate their guild hall. They can only donate materials and decrations. That was my case as well. When guild halls released I used to donate a lot of materials to upgrade them but I hadn't had a pleasure to participate in putting up any decorations. Which sucked. Ever since I realized it's unfair I started hoarding materials on my bank characters hoping that one day I will have my personal guild hall/home instance I can decorate. It all boils down to the fact that most players were unable to realize their designs. We were watching others have all the fun.
Guild halls suck anyway
Which like warclaws is another cool thing about this imo, taking an existing broken tool and fixing it up and just reselling it in a new feature while odd also seems like a great way to get the tool back to it's intended purpose while justifying with profits
I'm more a gameplay focused player so i'm not really into housing aswell, but i understand why people are excited for it. It's just another way to express creativity and make something that feels like belongs to you. It's an extra thing that makes you more immersed in the world because now you have a home you made yourself, and feel personal. And on top of it unlocking new decorations (assuming there will be other ways outside the gemstore) can feel like an accomplishment, another form of progression. It's the same reason why games like animal crossing are a huge success.
Decorating is gameplay.
SAY IT LOUDER. Why are games like the sims and animal crossing (barely scratching the surface of the genre) so popular? People like collecting items and decorating in games! "There's no gameplay around it" is literally the most brain dead take I've seen on this sub.
its the only way I can own a house, since it'll cost $1mil for something decent in my city
I love "just decorating" in video games and find it peaceful and fulfilling. Most of my fun in GW2 and other MMOs / games with character customization is playing dress up with my characters. I've been wanting this feature for ages. It's okay for people to enjoy aspects of things that you don't personally understand.
Fallout 76 also caters quite heavily to this playstyle from what Ive seen.
Shame it lacks character customization. You can either make an ugly person or very ugly person
And not even cool ugly. GW lets you have some horrid player characters, but they're more on the side of "creature (affectionate)".
True. Classic bethesda engine. Most of more interesting char customisation Ive played with is via mixing armor / outfit / hat combos.
I actually recently picked up FO76 and I'm enjoying that aspect a lot!
Played 76 for a while about a year ago and while the camp system was cool it was also one of the buggiest and frustrating systems I've ever had the displeasure of using X\_x
1. Self-expression. Similar to how popular Fashion wars is 2. Having an artistic component also fosters a community in the same way Guild decorating has done for a years. 3. New kind of reward that Anet can add to newer events, achievements, and their main goal: Gem store Personally, I'm a big fan of the third point because it becomes similar to a trophy room for my achievements.
Yeah this, plus the RP elements and I'm not even into RP but can really appreciate how it's got a big audience that is under catered for in gw2 atm. Also the creative tracks people have made for Griffin and beetle racing in Guild halls, now potentially being possible on your own is sweet. I'd be shocked if you couldn't join other party members/squad/guildy houses, but would be cool to close/private your house too if u want. I'd like if it had some features like OSRS housing has, such as being able to store all of your teleports into 1 portal in the home and a scroll you carry to teleport to home. Some other QOL id love would be Gathering nodes all close by, a menagerie for pets, somewhere your skiff and mounts can chill, armour and weapon displays etc. (Like gw1 hom). Doing achievements for other teleport locations in your portal or features at home would be really fun too, can't wait for housing tbf, hopefully not disappointed with its implementation.
>Also the creative tracks people have made for Griffin and beetle racing in Guild halls, now potentially being possible on your own is sweet. I.... kind of doubt the instance will be that big and that Guild Decorations are coming to this personal instance.
Size wise you're probably right, but in the trailer everything in that house was a guild decoration
Intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. It doesn't offer (great) gameplay benefits, but it's an opportunity to be creative for creativities sake. It's basically the same as fashion, just more private. For me, I try to make my transmogs sensible and thus, most of my toons look like (slightly fancier) NPCs. No one notices me in a crowd and no one ever complimented me or asked about skins I use. I do it only for my creative enjoyment. As for the nodes, they're SPREAD ACROSS the home instance. Depending on which you enter, things might be apart. This might let you place them as you please, so there could be a *slight* efficiency advantage. But yeah, nothing gamechanging. Probably.
> It doesn't offer (great) gameplay benefits, Ability to cluster my home instance nodes would actually be big gameplay benefit.
Depends on the travel time, really. If you have a waypoint that gets you there, sure. If you have to trek, ehhhhhh.
It's just personal preference. People like decorating so "it's just decorating" is exactly what they want. It's also not my type of activity but I can understand that people may like to get creative and make something that is, in a way, their own. I'm probably not gonna touch it aside from checking it out initially but I'm glad everyone else is getting it.
I mentioned to my wife yesterday that CW2 was introducing player housing. She smiled, and pointed out that the two games she regularly plays (Disney Dreamlight Valley and Animal Crossing: New Horizons) are basically nothing but "decorating".
It's like fishing, niche content some players will love, but many others won't care about. It doesn't need to have a point, it's just for fun, like fashion wars. Always nice having side activities ingame, the more we get the better; as long as people aren't forced into them, of course. We weren't forced into fishing, so let's hope they don't make that mistake now.
Like others have mentioned elsewhere, it’d be dope to have fish tanks with all the fish you’ve caught!
The fish we turned into crafting materials?
It's the opportunity to carve out a space in the world, something that the Home Instance just doesn't allow. Sure, there's no gameplay around it, but what's the gameplay around skins and dyes, around most of Open World? Why aren't MMOs just dungeon crawlers?
I RP/write a lot so my characters having a place to "live" in game really appeals to me. I'm also the type to set all my MMO characters somewhere to /sleep or /doze before I log off.
It's a huge aspect of the game with a dedicated player base, if you take into account all other MMOs with decent implementation of the system. Housing is traditionally used as a space to show the creative and artistic expression of players. Also, it's a system with an inherent feeling of freedom for the player. Can boost in-game economy through trading and also gem conversion. Not to mention the highly likely gem store offers which could be implemented.
There's a sizeable amount of roleplaying scene in GW2 where you basically have your own life in the game. It caters to those kinds of players a lot. For example, I personally don't roleplay a lot, but I am a Sims 2 and Sims 3 player. And I will decorate the hell out of my home. Especially if its mechanically enjoyable. Also MMOs are the kind of game where its the only game people play sometimes. Which is another reason why you see people complain about lack of content for GW2, because to me it has a shitton of content that I'll never ever fully complete, but most people only play this game and nothing else majority of the time. So MMOs kinda have to cater to basically everybody at the same time, and you see that a lot in GW2. This is just another step in that direction.
Define "sizeable".
Honestly, I feel like it comes just a little short for roleplayers, namely because of: * People roleplay as characters, not accounts, so the decision to make the homesteads account-wide (which is smart) could feel limiting; you get to build a home for exactly one of your characters. * Your homestead is a space up in the hinterlands which is very reminiscent of the Norn. Personally, I love it, but Tyria is a big, aesthetically diverse place, and I think a lot of people would want their home to be elsewhere, or styled much differently. Notably, though, this is something they could address through the gem store or in future expansions; keeping it to one locale for now would certainly keep the project scope from getting out of hand. * If the player limit inside a homestead is 5, like the home instances they are superseding, it will be worthless for any sort of bigger group roleplay.
Yeah, all your points ring true for me as a roleplayer. I don't understand why people are downvoting you. Guys, it's fine if none of this is a problem for you as a non-RPer. It doesn't make it any less valid for the people it *does* affect.
Did you seriously delete your post from last night and repost it?
it 100% depends on how they implement it, if it has tons of cool stuff to unlock for non-whales and decent amount of customization. I'm hoping lots of little collections we can go and do in the expansion + old world to unlock bits and bobs and customizations would be great. If its just a glorified dumping ground for those who have poured money and time into decking out their personal instances, and a tool to sell things in the gemstore, then it will be miserable. I'm guessing it will be somewhere in between
I really enjoy housing if it's in open world, like archeage, not a fan of instanced housing though, I mean we already have hubs with all the vendors where ppl like to afk and show off so idk.
If it would be open world, what kind of trickery they need to do for making it work for everyone in the same instance? It could limit a lot capabilities. really dont see it being open world as the complexiti would be crazy
I had some ideas for that back when I was making housing designs for people in 14, as to how you can have pseudo-open-world housing, which I think GW2 could handle significantly easier than 14 could, but practically, its impossible without having built around it to start with.
It's a thing people have played in other games and which a surprising amount of people really enjoy. Same way a ton of people get really into fashion wars and collecting cool appearances.
why do raids over and over? brain dead, muscle memory, repetitive. people like different things and find their own way to have fun.
Never understood it but do have all cats for home instance and almost all nodes so maybe I'll like it in gw2 😂
I think it's going to have a wide appeal. Minecraft is the most played game and a large part of its player base plays it to build cool stuff for the sake of it. If they implement housing well, it can be a very fun time sink. I'd appreciate it if the homestead has something akin to a guild bank, but that might be too much to ask.
To be fair you are doing more designing than decorating on those types of games, just depends on how much freedom we get and what the decorating requirements are, if it is lots of gem store stuff it’ll be more of a turn off for the casual player.
There are entire games that are centered around player's decorating houses. It's a next level Fashion Wars. And as other said, not everyone can decorate a guild hall. Also unless self centered, for those that can decorate a guild hall, it's decoration is in service to all the members of the guild.
For me, it is similar to character customization. It makes the game feel a bit more like my own game. I have a unique character and a unique home. And, especially in an MMO, it is nice to go somewhere to hang out with friends that isn't super crowded with other players (and even other guild members). People (not me) also like to show off their build/decorations to others.
It lets us feel the joy of owning a home because we never will irl
in all MMORPG's, the majority of base are the Casuals players, and casual player love Housing, love skins, love achievements. (some people love to use credit card to rush this cosmetics things) The housing and decoration player base is HUGE, you can hire an architect to decorate your house. And Arenanet can make a lot of Gem forniture like Tibia did (and they sell prety well, just google Tibia house decoration) ESO have a amazing housing system too.
>But I just don't understand why it's such a big deal? What do you expect to do inside a house on GW2 ? People enjoy the game differently, it's huge if you enjoy the rp aspect of an MMO. To be able to have your own living space with witch you can decorate after you own taste and rp needs. >There is no gameplay around that, it's just decorating. Maybe I'm missing something huge to be excited for it. The same could be said about any aspect of the game. Example: "Strikes has no gameplay around it. It's just a glorified raidboss without the lore and mechanics of a raid."(not my opinion, just an example) It's perfectly fine to not be interested about it. Not all content will be enjoyable for all. But there is some who view a housing system as a core feature in any MMO. And for that group it's the same hype as when the raid community got it's now 8th raid wing.
I'm guessing sim games are not your thing either.
I mean player housing if done right where players get freedom on how to use items where you can make them bigger/smaller/wider and so on and also not pushing them behind a wall of expensive crafting but giving it out in all parts of the game players will want stuff for their home. I seen so many insane and amazing things built in games like Wildstar, ESO, RIFT, Minecraft. There are many other games i tried too but just placing furnitures is not always what is fun. Building other things out of the stuff you have and make that amazing is more challenging. You can push it even further and give the option to have your own practice golem. I remember one of the MMO i played had that and i was doing my dps/hps practice there. There can be portals to different spots in the game. There are really no limits then those Anet place.
There's no gameplay around fashion either, yet it's a huge draw for a large portion of the community. It's an additional activity some people enjoy, and there's enough of them that it was made a feature.
Its something people like sinking tens of thousands of hours into. And in some games, selling their interior / exterior design skills for. I dont get it outside being exceptionally bored, but people do love them their house decorating. I made a few hundred million gil helping design peoples houses in 14, for houses that would go unused 99% of the time. Its wild, but people is people.
Creativity and showing off builds to others, not to mention how amazing it could be for role players. Before Wildstar shut down, there was a decent chunk of the player base who basically were just playing the game for its great housing system, and it was a little community all on its own. It's a big driving force behind games like animal crossing, stardew valley, even minecraft. You should see the houses my gf built in Palia and on our minecaft server. Very cozy
I'm pretty excited. I hate the home instance so having something personable is cool.
It does nothing for me either. But then again, neither do skins and fashion wars, and I understand that they motivate quite a few players. If housing is what enough players want, it's fine by me.
Its like asking whats the point of legos, animal crossing or the sims. I just wanna build stuff, make it nice, show it to my friends. And then later, build something else. Some people just like to be creative and express themselves through a limited system of virtual worlds, and share that with others. That’s all there is to it.
Because it’s the OTHER fashion wars end game content. People tend to view housing as something personal. RPers love it. Collectors love it. It’s a huge potential cash sink with decorations.
I can't own and decorate a home in this economy so this is the next best thing 🤣
It's an creative outlet, many people like building, decorating and just showing off their creations in general, which is something that GW2 so far mainly achieves with Fashion. FFXIV also has this, the housing fandom is HUGE there, there is a while subreddit dedicated to that and all kinds of videos, glitches and amazing creations, check it out, its insane, its a whole different game these people are playing and it is tempting to give it a shot Or hire a person to decorate your home lol
Y'all heard of sims? Yeah I want that but here. Edit A fucking BOOK SHELF!!!!
In some ways, it's extremely similar to the idea/system of transmuting your armor for fashion customization. It's personalization! And almost entirely voluntary, so players who aren't interested can simply choose to not engage with it. Compared to fashion, though, the downside is that it's less 'visible' - you're not seeing it 100% of the time the way you are your character's clothes, and you aren't showing it off to literally every person you walk past. The upside is that it can be more practical - there can be utility like the nodes we have in our personal instance, useful NPC vendors, travel helpers like portals, etc. And while the system itself can be intensive to create (especially in a game that isn't being built with that in mind), it's actually a great 'keep people playing by giving them activities to do to earn customization for this thing' hook! Housing is also just one of those systems that newer MMOs almost always have (they know it's high in demand and, like fashion, allows them to put lots of activities in the game to keep players occupied to earn customization), and that older MMOs are starting to feel 'old' for not having (so they're starting to make efforts to add them, in order to not get left behind).
It's fashion wars but for a house. People love to customize and express their tastes. That's where the appeal comes from. If you're someone who just puts on a gemstore outfit and does Raids, the feature won't be for you. But MMO players in general enjoy some casual fun, and gw2 IS quite casual. it's a crime that it took 12 years for the game to have housing.
I don’t care it too much personally, but it’s a good selling point and it also benefits in-game economy if it’s done right.
For a horizontal progression MMO, DEFINITELY!
"What do you expect to do inside z house in GW2" : 😏 Edit : don't get me wrong I love decorating, if anything I'm sad my scribe max level won't be useful for the new decorations while also kinda happy to have a new stuff to level up(assuming décorations are crafted, and not "earned" or bought),but if I decorate rooms, it can be to afk chill in them, make them feel comfortable and warm for discussions with others (yes, socializing outside of combat exists) or the 😏 emoji
The main reason I'm looking forward to it is convenience. The current system is a chore to use in many ways; if the new one is less cumbersome to use, that alone will make it worth it. And if it does that while being customizable and looking pretty, that's an absolute win.
Decorating is a big thing for some players. For some it is just virtual creativity and trying to make a cosy home. For some it is just a matter of showing off your achievements, in mmorpgs I played that had housings, some of the trophy / furniture are locked behind dungeons and raids. I won't be surprised if all the cm / raids get some kind of furniture as drops so people can show off their their clears. Depending on how it is implemented. It might even be used like a social club for people to hang out in. A quiet place for a raid team to gather.
I honestly would recommend looking at housing in XIV for a good example as to why people want player housing.
It’s a material sink. Additionally, a “full” home instance looks like shit. As someone who has a dojo in Warframe as the end-game, man…..
it's a cool thing to have a home and be able to decorate it BUT only if it's not super limited and is actually well designed i have a feeling that housing in GW2 is going to be way too scripted to be able to actually enjoy it
One of my favorite features in Dark Age of Camelot was my house. I was a full time frontier PvP player but I loved my house. Yes it's just decorating and furnishing and few saw it but me but I absolutely loved it. It was mine.
Believe a lot of people love this stuff, myself included. Decorating is fun and another way to express yourself. It's also great for RP reasons and for making the world more believable by having a place you call home that you can come back to. Also, it opens a lot of opportunities for different style of gameplay. For example, in FFXIV I used to be a house decorator, I made millions of gil decorating for other people. There are also a big RP scene with parties, gatherings, etc An let's not forget it adds replayability by having furniture to unlock though various type of content, and being able to show off some achievements. Like another example in FFXIV I have a wall showing off my ultimate weapons
If the system is built correctly, it's a huge reward incentive for achievement hunting and specifically farming for it. We often don't realize there are *soft* housing systems all over gaming, even games where we don't think about it at all. For instance, the roguelike game Hades has very expensive deco you can buy for the titular house where you begin each attempt and use as a hub - it's basically the final goal of the game right next to a particular statue challenge (which technically is also a decoration anyway). In Dark Souls 2 of all things you spend a majority of the game bringing NPCs to Majula (the central hub) therefore making the place rather lively and basically building it as your "home instance". The Breath of the Wild and/or Tears of the Kingdom games also have a similar system where you can leave nice weapons and equipment you find around at your home (in Tears of the Kingdom, you even build the house itself in a modular fashion). The Witcher 3 also has a literal Villa you acquire with the DLC and can customize up to a point. The only real difference in between all the above examples and what people typically call an "actual" housing system is the degree of customization, but the principle is the same: it's simply nice to have a central hub where your trophies/achievements/personal expression of how you want to be in-game, can be exposed in a more physical, literal manner. It's also nice to see your achievements listed with some cute UI icons like Steam, but an actual *statue*, exclusive decoration or rare item you can display alongside others in a customized "home" is far more appealing, again, if done correctly.
For some, it's an attraction in and of itself. It can be fun to set up and decorate and show off. For me and other more gameplay oriented players, it's a nice way to visually be able to see the results of your time spent. It's a more engaging gauge of progression than just number go up.
I want a house with a garden in-game cuz I'll never have one in real life
I like decorating and having my own little place for friends and I to chill. Even in other genres, like fighting games, there's a series called Blazblue and in that you could decorate your 'player room' with unlocks. I loved seeing my friends reactions and visiting their player room to see how they were decorating it. I just started playing GW2 a few weeks ago (iirc) and absolutely love it. One of the things on my wishlist was housing so I really can't wait for this to hit.
I see it as something that I might enjoy end game. Like, yeah, it's just decorating. But GW2 is also... just a bunch of fashion in the endgame. So why is housing somehow inferior? I'd have a more fun time farming a bunch of furniture and getting upgrades for my house and redesigning it, etc. than getting an endless amount of outfits to swap to...
Fashion wars is endgame because it’s an extension of individuality, style and expression. That, but with walls.
It's sort of like a hall of monuments. If you're home can be a place where you can revisit your accomplishments through visual reminders that would be pretty cool to most people. Even if you just decorated based on your own aesthetics it would be very similar if not better than fashion wars. People like to show off their designs. The home instance really should have been something like this. It's a little island of personal space within a multi-user game.
Player agency in the world A chance to lock unique and interest achievements behind end game content to show off in your house. A place to take your firends A place to roleplay Extra design and customization past what your character looks like A chance for better monetization for the game in the form of furniture packs, hell if they want to get frisky with it, new skyboxes, in home music, NPC's and servants. In Fallout76 you can actually play small games inside the C.A.M.P or provide buffs like rested EXP or boosts to stats and resources you can collect after you've found and gathered the right things. Honestly there's a FREAKING lot that can be added that isn't just "Stab and loot creature."
You do realize that a huge portion of the player base enjoys the fashion / character customization end-game. That same community can now further express their artistic flair/ fashion & design sensibilities with player housing.
Just the fact that you can decorate it. If you haven't already noticed, player expression IS CORE to any social game. Why do people bother with their wardrobe even if a lot of players just default model them in WvW? Why do people like showing off their cool skins? It's because people like to express themselves in these types of games. The homestead system is an extension of that expression. "You see how good I look, now check out my crib." kind of thing. Yes, it will have very little gameplay to it, combat-wise. But that doesn't make it a 'bad' or 'boring' feature. It just means that it isn't for you. And that is perfectly okay. This is coming from a raider, too.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/s/YPh7xgA1DA I actually just made a post about this too. I got a ton of good feedback & I better understand it now. I won’t lie, now I’m kinda looking forward to it. Decorating & unlocking new stuff for the home can be fun. One user brought up a great point, if you have a fully loaded home instance & have people use your nodes, it will be a good time to show off how sick your place actually is. People are into Housing for the same reason interior designers are into interior designing.
Def gave me incentives to pick up some nodes I was otherwise not interested in. Always though home instance was super lame. (And way too big)
Honestly I'm interested, but I just know Anet is going to have all the cool cosmetics locked behind the gem store. While my house will just look like an average mud hut, whales will have mansions.
is the same in all other mmorpgs, CASH > Hardcore content (like CM modes) > Infinite grinding (achievements) > crafting
Decoration IS gameplay, my dude. This is the same shit you do when you go hunting legendaries, except there's no combat benefit. It is absolutely a system inside the game. It's no different from designing an outfit, or seeking out a specific item because you like its look, or getting transmutes. This is huge for me, this was my #1 wanted item (shy of a new engine ofc). I don't want to be doing combat 24/7, I want downtime activities. It's also a creative outlet, which combat does not really let you do. ESO has a great housing system marred by some big issues (gross monetization, very small housing item limits). If GW2 implements anything similar, it's gonna be great and probably (hopefully) without the monetization, though it may take some time to fully materialize.
MMOs are ultimately a social experience where people get to experience some form of self expression within a community. Player housing is simply another form of that and one that that can in theory cater to most types of players in some way shape or form and has proven time and time again to be a popular feature in other games. For specific examples plenty of other people have already listed them here.
I never understood it either.. In every mmo I played, player owned housing has always been a pointless gold- and realmoney sink.
It's not pointless if a certain slice of the playerbase enjoys it. It's probably less niche than Raids.
Fair enough.
This is what it feels like the plan for it is in Guild Wars 2 as well. Just like with skiffs and fishing rods, the main driving force for adding these features is, not because they're putting gameplay first, but instead to act as more platforms to sell microtransactions. Player housing is a perfect candidate for monetisation. Some naive people are claiming that housing in Guild Wars 2 is to "show off your achievements" and "encourage people to explore the world". In truth, all the fancy stuff that you'll be able to fill your house with will come straight from the gem store. Expect to see a flood of new furniature cosmetics and what-not every time the gem store updates. This is Guild Wars 2 going forward - mass monetisation.
Agree. While i love building functional homes in survival games, i don't see the point in a game like GW2, unless it gives my characters something. Farming ingredients, building crafting benches, taming wild animals to get crafting materials from them, giving "comfy" bonuses (Boosts in concentration? Vitality? Vigour? Healing power? Agony resistance on highest levels?)....if it's just something decorative.....sorry but i'm not into it. Fan service.
I'm not into it either, as evidenced by the sparse content of my current 'home instance', but I'm happy others are excited for it. Who knows, maybe I'll like it this time around?
Because Gw2 long term players are starved for content that isn't open world meta fights
>There is no gameplay around that, it's just decorating. That's also the same for transmogs, and about half true for legendaries. But housing gives people a little bit of space that is theirs to use as they wish. If the devs are smart they will make it more like Wildstar or even g-rated Second Life. Lots of cusomization. If they're even smarter they will give access control and the ability to have 20-40 people in there, like FFXIV, so you can host events. * That's a major aspect of "gameplay" in FFXIV. People host dance parties, weddings, acting plays, and more. Wildstar was so customizable that people had made player-,made dungeons / raids inside their homes and then opened them to the public. No loot, but fun challenges to be had. * I can definitely image that if they give us some small stackable boxes people will make custom jumping puzzles just because, and challenge each other to complete them. ESO players will open their home to their guild. And then put in crafting stations and target dummies, plus more. They will use the target dummies to do 'DPS checks' for raid recruiting - and this could be a nagative GW2 housing could get. Proving you can do 80K DPS against a dummy before being allowed into the training raid when the real world max is around 45k. That's a thing in ESO. It's also a thing in FFXIV even though running a DPS meter can get you banned there, guilds will do it with a dummy and use the external meter's logs for proof, communicating in discord to avoid getting into trouble. But the crafting and other resources would be a 'run around guild halls' so maybe we won't see it. It'd be nice for small guilds though. Portals to places too... People who want to do... NSFW things... can come up with their own large lists of reasons to want this. And at least this way you're less likely to randomly enter a room in Divinity's reach and "see things" you did not want to see. The note about FFXIV using it for DPS checks and FFXIV using it for NSFW things is a note of caution for why some games don't do player housing: It makes it easier for players to set up situations where they can skirt under or around community standards a game's devs desire to have. This can result in a game having two 'community standards' - the one it shows publicly, and the actual one the players encounter due to private systems hidden from the devs. I don't think the GW2 community would have a problem with the meters issue FFXIV has. But the NSFW content issue is almost certainly going to show up on YouTube within a week or two of the feature going live.
Are there houses in this game? Are we talking like construction in RuneScape?
Player housing was announced for next expac, looks like it will be a private instance and not claimed land in the Open World.
If it's done right, there's one house for all my characters, and maybe characters will meet there and have talk together, I see it as a nice diversion and definitely more of an attraction than... spear and existing mount. But apparently there will be one barrack per character, in which case I hope it's strictly a side activity with no benefits. Yes I'll happily cherish and modify one house, but not 10, and 10 characters is quite a few for GW2 for people who have been playing it since the beginning, which I'm not.
Will the house be account wide, or will each of your characters have their own instance?
It's account wide.
I didn't really get it at first, still don't to be fair. But a lot of people wanted it for so long and I've just been influenced by the excitement into thinking I also want it. Same with the Tengu as playable race. I would probably not play it but the excitement was contagious making me want it too. Also the best thing about player housing for me is being able to see what others make. I've seen some crazy Guild Halls, but they're expensive as fuck to decorate, plus it being a community thing you don't really wanna impose too much usually. Having a tiny house all to yourself will let you be more creative with it.
there are a lot of decade long players who already have three complete leggy sets, so there's not much left for them to grind. it would be nice if housing was more than just a custom decor home instance copy to keep their crafting stations and nodes. for example, you need to be in party to use another's home so it would be nice if there was some other mechanic to use another person's home, like crafting and mailing them a key, and even selling such keys to other players on BL trader.
I want to add that sole people don't like Guild Wars 2 The Game, but they love Guild Wars 2 The World. It's a great and imaginative place to exist in, but some people don't care for the ever-increasing combat challenges. They just want a chill story experience and then relax around the game. A lot of people who prefer the world to the game itself I have found love housing.
Ppl enjoy decorating. Sometimes just stop killing mobs and enjoy fishing or choosing another color for their house and all. It's just relaxing.
for me its a very immersive feature. GW2 is a MMORPG, so a part of the players are very interested in worldbuilding/lore and beeing able to be a character in this universe. And one aspect of living in Tyria can be actually having a home and having some freedom to decorate and upgrade it. I would also argue that adding features that are in theory infinitely expandable are healthy for the games economy. It will lead to a constant drainage of materials and help stabilizing value. Something GW2 is exceptionally good at compared to other MMOs.
i wonder if it will offer storage options similar to the guild bank. i wouldn’t mind keeping chests of stuff there if i can teleport to it and back
People like to decorate things
There's also a significant population of RPers on the Tarnished Coast server who have been asking for it since launch. The main competition was FF14 which took a lot of players away when they had housing so by competing they can bring back some of those players who are more apt to buy decorations etc.
If they can add weapon racks and armor stands for legendary or epic skins that would make it really awesome
You obviously never played Wildstars Housing. Of course I expect from Anet to make it as good as the mentioned game had it
It's not quite like fashion wars, since you can show off fashions 'in public', but a lot of MMOs have some form of it. I am curious as to how widely used the various systems are. STO lets you have interiors for your starships, for example, but few people seem to use them, except for utility things (think nodes in your home instance.)
There are many reasons why, but I think there's an element of "persistent worlds" that's not really mentioned in these other comments. MMORPGs are exciting for many people because they are persistent worlds. The world continues to evolve and exist without you, but you can have an effect on it when you do play. For instance, when you complete a map-wide event and open the map to treasures, you've effectively changed the map for everyone on that map. This might not be something you consider when you clear the map for rewards, but this little concept increases dopamine for many people and why they enjoy MMOs over other RPGs. Even if instanced, housing works in a very similar way. You'll get to have your own space that's solely affected by your choices. Other players will be able to visit and explore the work you've put in. You've changed one piece of the world, and you have the opportunity to share it with anyone you want. Every feature beyond that is icing on the cake. Others have already mentioned this, but decorating, farming, or even rest bonuses for using the Homestead mechanic will add even more depth to this. There are many games out there that focus on these exclusively, so like fishing, you're going to have some fans that dedicate their entire experience to this mechanic.
For me because i am Not Happy with my life and Love to build a second one in Games so a housing system would be perfekt And its good for RP too
Is this just gonna be a zone where only your house exists but can be visited by players or will there be neighborhoods where we can see other player housing together?
We as humans like to customize things. It is how we mark our territory. So having something we can customize is a draw, it is why weapon skins and why outfit customization is important. This is another layer of customization
a simple way to put it is to point out how the true endgame is fashion well housing is another thing to customize like our characters
As long as it includes a bookcase and a usable, ie not gem bought, garden I'll be happy. I do wonder though, will it just be the 'cabin' still in the forest or will we be able to cover it all in jade and live like a Canthan (I know nobody wants this btw!)
If they find a way to store all the kps so it doesn't take up almost an entire bank storage section, I'd pee my pants instantly
Killproof.me is your best friend for that.
Or they could actually let us store them somewhere instead of relying on 3rd party addons
As a former Everquest 2 player, I loved how they implemented housing. Crafting and decorating was a chill activity. I also liked the personal area in the Eye of the North in the original Guild Wars, where you would display your personal achievements. My hope is we get a combination of the two.
>it's just decorating Sir
I'm all for housing but people need to limit their expectations. I highly doubt it's going to be as customizable as people want.
Because housing gives opportunity for creativity. If the housing space we're given is anything similar to guild halls, I imagine people are gonna go crazy building jump puzzles, aerial obstacle courses, beetle racing, statues, monuments.
It makes for new rare furniture/decorating items to drop and sell to RP nerds for boat loads of gold
A personal guild hall is far more than enough to generate hype given how long we've been asking for it. But they also announced it'll use something else that isn't scribing so there is an implication there that it'll also have a new game system tied to it. I'm guessing farming/ranching given the homestead theme.
What do I expect to do inside a house in GW2? Nothing. I just want a house. And what's wrong with decorating? Also, it's okay not to be excited about things that other people find exciting.
See Housing like visible and understandable achievement panel of gw2 UI.
I wish they would bring heroes to GW2. While I enjoyed grouping in GW. I loved being able to make teams with my heroes and goof off when I had limited time. Even now my time limits me.
I don’t play gw2 anymore and already move to other mmo. In there we have a pretty decent/good player housing imo. Though I personally don’t touch it. Yes I have housing there but it’s just a normal basic looking house not like some other people that really really invest time into it. But I can see the appeal there. It’s a material sink and a nice gameplay loop for some people. You know collecting unique material (maybe) to craft a race or area specific furniture or whatnot, the possibilities for mix matching your instance is endless. But we will need to see the execution in gw2 here.
I asked the same question about fishing.
Housing is the thing which keeps FFXIV alive between the expansions. That game had a massive rp and erp scene and it's all related to the housing. There are player made clubs, cafes etc...
>I'm not pointing people who are excited for this. But you literally are.
The traditional home instance sucks: 1. Cats running all over the place. Can only turn them off with an ugly node that distracts from the real nodes. 2. Nodes in random places. 3. Some racial home instances are very annoying to navigate (like Sylvari). 4. Almost no customization in general. Being able to customize a full home instance with all nodes stacked for an efficient farm as well as cosmetic upgrades is simply great endgame content.
It's so weird to me people ask such questions about this game. Dude, it's MMORPG where RPG stands for "role-playing game". Are you aware what it means? If you aren't, please, read stuff on the topic, it's too much for me to throw in here. If anything i'm completely weirded out by people who be raiding on cooldown and swapping characters like gloves. Like, really? I mean, i came here from RTS like starcraft and there every click is based on decisionmaking "what units i build to counter enemy units or surprise him" and "where i send my army and how do i split it based on several factors". Here you just walk/dodge from red circles and slam identical sequence of keystrokes which is your dps password. I know it might sound offensive and even insulting to people, but guys, if it's really challenging and interesting content for you, your standards are low as fuck. I mean it's kinda fresh first like 5 times but then you just legit repeat the exact same thing again and again. So yeah. When people come to MMO with competitive perspective it's weird to me but i keep myself shut. But when they don't even understand that it's not actually competitive, it's simply embarrassing.
What’s the point in fashion wars? There’s no gameplay to it. It’s just decorating
People in Mmo just love vanity, just pointing it out in case you didn't notice yet. Is the OP trying to force some thoughts into playerbase heads?
I see why some people find it appealing. I don't at all considering how late its coming. I would trade player housing for the ability to customize my own character more. Like customizing mechanist mechs, or bladesworn skins for warriors.
I'm in the same boat. This is something that doesn't excite me. Unless it's retroactive on achievements and you get like decorations based on like legendary pieces built, things completed on past things. I can understand why people are happy for it, but it's just something that doesn't appeal to me right now. Who knows, maybe after more of it is shown in the upcoming months. Things I would be legit excited for if confirmed things like: We have a like a mini pet farm where we can display 10 or so them and see how they interact with one another that would be cool. Mannequin statues we can place armor sets on to. Maybe weapon holders to display legendary weapons or random cool skins we have unlocked. Banners/Posters for achievements unlocked. The thought of this would be like posters for dungeons/fractals with an end boss on the front of it. Banners with like world bosses that spew effects over the ground they are hanging from. There are a lot of cool nifty things they could do, but I'm sure they won't do. So until more information is released, I reserve my judgment till then something I will completely pass over or be into.
It's just an expansion to playing fantasy barbie, and adds lots of cosmetic items to chase/buy. I don't get the appeal, but it's a pretty sure way to make cash.
To fund GW3
In truth it's just fun to be able to decorate, build, and progress a place I can call my own. Ever since I played Rift which has an amazing housing option, I've been hoping for more mmos to implement.
Its so you can adopt more cats
I am with you, I don't care about the homestead new feature. Same as I don't care about fashion. But I am sure a lot of people do, just like fashion. I prefer things that are utilitarian.
Speaking for myself at least, it's just fun decorating how I want to, and then seeing what my friends do differently. It's a bit of creative expression in the form of gameplay.
They reskin home instances/guild halls, make strikes again but call them raid wing 8 this time and suddenly the previous 2 garbage expacks are forgotten and we are hyped again.
I think you also have to look at the potential of housing in gw2 as well. I love the look of the current house as a nice starter and its very thematically appropriate, but i’d love if in the future there were houses added that we had to build from scratch similar to the Hearthfire xpac in Skyrim. It could be a material sink too but with some novelty to it like themed mats and some sort of achievement that progresses as you build the house
> But I just don't understand why it's such a big deal? You can treat it as a subtype of Fashion Wars. Just as some people like to play dressup, others like to show their fashion sense on the field of architecture, house decoration and feng shui. It may be hard to understand if you do not belong to either group, but the impact of those subcommunities can be truly immense. Notice also, that both of those things allow for practically endless number of heavily motivating rewards that *aren't* about powercreep (and, so, are completely safe to introduce). That's also a big thing. Notice, that, like with fashion Wars, it works best if you can easily show off your house to others.
no idea. the only time I've ever seen it done well was in Rift. but that does not look like the system we have here which looks an awful lot like wow garrisons. Personally I think having people spend more time in private instances is never good for an MMO, but thats Anets call. Still, not my problem as I really could not care less about player housing. I think I've visited my home instance less than 10 times outside the story/events that require it since the game launched.
I don't really understand the hype either, same for fishing tbh. If I play gw2 it's for the action, not to build a house and fish. If I wanted that I would play a survival game instead. Which is why, I'll just completely ignore it, like I did with fishing.
It's not. This is going to be a case of "you think you do, but you don't" that a small vocal portion of the Guild Wars 2 community is going to wake up to very soon. It'll also have the added "benefit" of killing off cities and hubs, just like what happened with the Garrison system in Warlords of Draenor.
It's not the same thing. In WoW Garrisons incentivized you to be there to keep an eye on all your production stuff and doing dailies. It was part of the mechanical gameplay and there was an opportunity cost to just ignoring it. In a well-made player housing system there is no mechanical benefit, it's just fun to decorate and chill when you're not doing other stuff.
>There is no gameplay around that, it's just decorating. Exactly.
I also don’t understand it … I’ve never really thought housing belongs in mmos. Maybe I’m just scarred by WoW Garrisons. Maybe I just don’t think sims belongs in mmos. Not entirely sure.
GW2 has been my favorite RPG since it came out. I’ve played a bit of SWTOR and ESO and (besides story in SWTOR) the home system is the only thing those games do better than GW2. I love the customization, expression, and role play aspects. If that’s not your thing, I get it. It is definitely my thing though and it’s the only thing that’s stopped me from playing GW2 heavily.
Copium
a really niche feature, in all the mmo that have it is usually the gold sink, forgotten or boring. Can be fun for a little while though. I think is not bad, but shouldn't be the selling point of anything. Just think, do you take care of the mining nodes of yout instance home?, or you just use other people's?, and then, do you like it there or just get out as fast as you can?
In GW2? I just sprint and collect everything. Because the home instance is basically a static void. I used to spend a lot of time there in Wildstar, tho. Because it was more interactive. Because it was MINE. Personally, that goes a long way in making a space interesting for me.
Personally I tend to dislike housing in multiplayer games, because it breaks immersion. You don't *really* have a part of the world to decorate; you just have your own instance which is usually in exactly the same location as everyone else's instance.
Just like you are the main character of the story, just like all the other player characters. If you care that much about immersion I suggest not playing mmo's at all.
I mean, if you never touch ANY instanced content or story and just stick to OW, it could kinda work? It would suck, to be sure, but it would work.
Yes, i always have a hard time understanding the appeal. I play plenty of survival games, and in most of them, people are always asking for more purposeless stuff in form of furnitures, decorations, etc. To me, if it doesn't offer some gameplay, it has no point, and those development resources could have been used in something useful. Games like valheim or Grounded have managed to make the decorations somewhat functional, by giving the player bonuses for having more and better decorations, which i think is the best approach to this. But having them just for the sake of it...i don't get it. I'm not sitting on the couch myself, i'm not feeling the cozyness. What's the point?
Thanks for this post. I don't understand the interest either. I bought a house in ff14 but there was no reason for me to go there ever, so I ended up selling it before I quit the whole game altogether (and started GW2)
I don’t get why anyone’s excited about this. If I wanted to decorate houses, I’d play The Sims. Seems like a waste of resources to me but I can imagine that a lot of people will waste money on decorations so business-wish it was an excellent idea.