Official Feedback: Housing

[Sapience]

"Housing is still high on our list of objectives for the year, and we look forward to hearing your suggestions! We’ll be talking more about this throughout the year."

[LethalLethality]

1. More hooks, if place-able hooks aren't possible. I'd rather have a lot of hooks close together, thus running the risk of items clipping, to fine tune placement of items. You could always limit housing decor to X number of items in a house, and no more after that number, despite how many free hooks you have left if need be (hopefully not needed).

2. Neighborhood crafting facilities if you can't have crafting facilities in your house. If you can make it house specific, make it accessible via an area transition hatch (to the basement or attic or wherever) within the home. Perhaps limit them to Deluxe and Kinship houses.

3. More variety when it comes to decor. There are very few items for certain categories, such as Chandeliers. And have items for all regions so that if you have a design style such as Rohirric or Elvish, there will be an assortment of items per category for each.

[Moln]

One of my characters has half his vault full of stuff to decorate my house, which is already fairly decorated, but I cannot for the life of me remember how.

I'm not asking for a reminder, just suggesting that there should be some obvious interface to access. I think the current way is some key combination to enter decorating mode. And I think there were some instructions when I first bought the place...3 years ago...that got misplaced. Somehow. Maybe sold to make space in my inventory (but that's another thread).

[Eulogia]

Please bring back trophies. I still run lower level instances with my kin just because we want a particular trophy for the kin house. Even just banners of victory that we can hang from our ceilings like some medieval castle would be cool. And yes, I know warbands dropped some but they looked lame and many were outdoors only.

[Gedrevn]

The whole point of housing is customization, so actually being able to put things in the house as opposed to having a very limited hook system would be great.

If you want to take an example of a well implemented housing system, look at original Everquest:

• Free form housing design with prefab houses and/or open construction options
• Nearly unlimited item placement with full control over location, rotation, and size
• Ability to convert in-game items into housing objects to create your own trophies
• LARGE and expandable workspaces
• Combination of decorations, utility, and fun items that can be used to enhance your housing space
• X, Y, and Z axis control over decorations both indoor and outdoor

And the argument that something like that is too hard seems pretty ridiculous since EQ and it's engine are far older than LOTRO and it was obviously able to be implemented.

Or if you want really lofty, awesome goals:

• In-world/Open world housing that abandons the instance model (a la Vanguard or UO)
• Multiple theme options within different areas (I.E. different styles of housing - Shire 1 Michael Delving; Shire 2 Woodhall; Elf 1 Grey Havens; Elf 2 Mirkwood; etc.)
• Multiple land plots per character/account
• Additional tiers of housing (Guild Castles [probably not lore appropriate], or better than just small/large houses)

[Fralin]

"Housing is still high on our list of objectives for the year, and we look forward to hearing your suggestions! We’ll be talking more about this throughout the year."

Call me a cynical person but that wording sounds an awful lot like it would be VERY late next year or even 2015 (unforseen bugs and difficulties) that this will be released. I'd be pleasantly surprised if it was before June... then again, I might get an unpleasant surprise with the changes... who knows? But the wording has me worried though, especially the "throughout the year" part. The only way to talk about it throughout the year is if it doesn't release for a year or so.

As for suggestions, larger houses, larger houses, more hooks, more hooks... larger houses with even more hooks

[Wilfern]

Houses seem to have been conceived more as trophy galleries than homes proper. There has been a large assortment of decorative memorabilia, but until Rohan the selection of "livable house" items was rather limited. But even with the added objects, we have the problem with hooks: you can't prop your beds, benches and some other large pieces of furniture against walls, and are reduced to placing them in the middle of the room (or not placing them at all). While we wait for a major revamp, if hooks were made more flexible ("large wall" already accepts "small wall" items), houses would gain much in livability.

[Belegwe]

I would like to see:
*Expandable houses where more rooms can be added (outdoor depiction of many houses indicate that there is much more space on the inside, but some small amount of outdoor expandability -- wing/dormer/upstairs would be cool too).
*More freedom/spots for decorating.
*3 levels of house (personal/account/kinship) instead of 2, with the ability to have more than one personal house per account even (especially?) if the personal and account ones shared the exact same vault space. "Personal" (as opposed to Account-wide) houses could even be located in the various cities, 1, 2, 3, or 4, etc. specific houses for example in Bree, Little Delving, Barnavon, Aldburg, Lorien etc with address/front door shared by everyone who has that house and thus only have interior decorating hooks. (I did, after all, just inherent a particular house in a certain city from a certain quest that shall not be named here -- would be cool to be able to move a character in and redecorate)
*More choices of house exterior design per neighborhood including some ability to have non-area-specific houses (see below)
*More decoration slots inside (especially) and outside (within reason)
*Perhaps a grid based system for decorations where each decoration has a size factor (i.e. 2 x 3 x 4 squares) and overlap can only be one square wide/long (that way it could look like we were neat homeowners with our chairs tucked at least somewhat under the table/compatible items "connected"/items placed on tables etc.) Placement could involve a starting point and +/- buttons for x, y, and z axes as necessary.
*New, additional housing areas in different locations, including "neutral" and "semi-neutral" housing areas where houses from different races and areas would be permitted (Even Bree-land had Hobbit holes)

[Lohi]

[*]In-world/Open world housing that abandons the instance model (a la Vanguard or UO)

I don't like this idea. In those games it ruined the look for the world; UO especially. Maybe it works in a free form game with no set lore or pre-existing maps. We don't want shanty towns in Shire or subdivisions in Bree.

[*]Multiple theme options within different areas (I.E. different styles of housing - Shire 1 Michael Delving; Shire 2 Woodhall; Elf 1 Grey Havens; Elf 2 Mirkwood; etc.)

What I'd like is that the existing housing areas stop being isolated enclaves away from civilization. Bree and Duillond housing is the worst offenders here. Ie the Shire housing should feel like a real town, either a part of Michel Delving or at least a town on a major road; and Bree housing should be in the Bree area, perhaps near Staddle or such.

One idea I've had in the past is that the housing actually be in the existing world. Doors exist everywhere that go nowhere. Turn those doors into instanced housing. The door on a farm house in Bywater becomes a door to an actual house. Mutliple players can share that door and go to their own house instance. The same with all those unused doors in Bree, Thorin's hall, Celondim, Rivendell, etc. You get a choice of all the styles you like this way. This means the housing is integrated into the world itself instead of replicating 1960s gated communities.

[VeteranLurker]

The housing system was fine for the first 50-levels worth of accumulated items, but not anymore. Basically, I would say that the three tiers of houses each need more rooms and more hooks; approximately double what they are now. Some of the rooms can be cosmetic-only (until in-game items are added), such as a kitchen: you can decorate it and RP there, but maybe it doesn't have many hooks. I don't need to display every item all the time, but some more variety/options would be great -- there really isn't nearly enough hooks/rooms for all of the stuff which a level-95 character can even modestly accumulate.

More random NPC neighbors. They don't all have to be 'doing' something or chatting at us (and in fact they probably shouldn't be: lag can be an issue, and for events in neighborhoods you don't want the NPC-chatter to be out of hand), but a few more of them hanging around the provisioner/vault building might be nice.

Horses: I have like 4 dozen of them now. Where do I put them all? How about a pasture in the yard, and a barn/stable building. Would be nice for it to show skins of some of the actual horses which I have in my inventory (rather than just some random horse): if I have one horse, that's the one it shows; if I have 50, it picks say 1-5 from the 50 that I have.

It was mentioned in the festivals thread, but it really belongs here since it pertains to the housing neighborhoods: have the change of seasons affect the yards and neighborhoods (i.e. items which we ourselves cannot change). For example, snow and NPCs wearing heavier clothing in the winter; flowers in spring and summer only, harvest produce only in the fall. Same for the yard: I have willows which do not change at all, no matter how many yule trees or autumn trees I put next to them. These neighborhood effects don't need to be drastic (winter doesn't need to feel like I'm in Forochel), but some subtle changes like snow on the rooftops, leaves on the ground, etc. would be nice.

Actually, I think you already know these things, since I see them implemented in Rohan -- small stables in the towns (not just the travel-hub), NPC-variety, livestock, kitchens, even privies. Rohan looks 'lived in'.

Oh! here's another: a stable-hub inside the housing neighborhood! My upper-level character can port to many places, but not so for the lower level ones: if they're at the house for some reason, they have to ride off to the nearest town to hit up the swift-travel. This one is a trade-off though, because if you can do everything from your neighborhood then you'd never need to go into town at all.

[Cheery]

One idea I've had in the past is that the housing actually be in the existing world. Doors exist everywhere that go nowhere. Turn those doors into instanced housing. The door on a farm house in Bywater becomes a door to an actual house. Mutliple players can share that door and go to their own house instance. The same with all those unused doors in Bree, Thorin's hall, Celondim, Rivendell, etc. You get a choice of all the styles you like this way. This means the housing is integrated into the world itself instead of replicating 1960s gated communities.

This is a great idea.

I don't understand why I am limited to one house per account. Why can't each character have a house ( with visiting privileges by anyone I want)?

My house has a back yard. With no hooks.

The current hooking arrangement satisfies almost no one. Maybe the store should sell alternate arrangements of hooks, some for indoors, some for outdoors. Or, flexy-hooks that allow more choice in what to attach.

I'd really like a trophy case in which I could put items I no longer use but can't give up for sentimental reasons. This entry is applicable to the storage thread, too. But to be a trophy case, it would have to show the icon of the item, if not the item.

[SouthernBelle0927]

*raises hand* I've got a few!!

1. A decorating hook where housing chests used to be in the deluxe (and I presume kinship) houses.
2. Make it possible to put chairs next to tables--for example, next to the academic tables or the breakfast tables.
3. Put small furniture hooks next to the fireplaces for chairs.
4. Center the rugs in the rooms. This is a pet peeve of mine--every single rug I've placed is off center in its respective room.
5. Standard Bree houses--make it possible to put a piece of furniture on top of the rug in the front room. I believe, but am not certain, that it's possible in the standard Shire house.
6. Fix the scholar bookstand (Bilbo's birthday reward). They all have an "use me hand" if you mouse over them, but don't do anything. Maybe make the book pages turnable?
7. Stainable (dyeable) wood furniture. All the wood furniture from Bree looks like raw wood. It would give us something to do with all those brown-hued dyes.
8. More craftable items that are a little more formal.
9. improve the yards in Bree-Land Homesteads. Some are mostly dirt.
10. Add a gate slot at the entrance to house paths for any house that has a fence. You could make garden gates and arbors (like the one at the entrance to the Lowbanks Estate in Bree) available for purchase or crafting.
11. Last one (I promise!) How about letting woodworkers make a rocking chair? I'd love to sit by the fire in a rocking chair at the end of a hard day questing and just relax. (It would be the perfect complement for a book-reading emote ).

[Galuhad]

I'd rather abolish housing neighbourhoods completely. I would like to see private instanced landscapes, which are free to build in how I want and where I want (complete free-placement).

Private instances can be snapshots of any existing locations in a variety of sizes, enclosed with invisible walls. Basic locations such as Duillond, Breeland, The Shire, and Thorins's Gate (based off current locations) could be available for free to anyone who wants to take an instance. Premium locations such as Kingstead, Forochel, Lothlorien, Mirkwood or wherever could be available in the store. As new landscapes are released in the future, housing locations could also be created in the store. House in Gondor anyone? Players may have two active slots in which to put these locations (additional purchased landscapes will be shown under 'inactive' housing instances). Kinships would have one active slot. Additional active slots could be purchased in the store, meaning players could create multiple housing instances at the same time.

Access to the private instance would be through the new housing panel, which would also allow you to search other people's houses and visit their instances (unless set to private). Players could also 'like' instances they visit, if they feel the owner has done a good job, providing gamers with a ranking of most liked housing etc. Players would also be free to name their housing instance (subject to normal naming policies).

Once inside the instance, the player will have an almost blank canvas. The landscape will be the same as it's live counterpart, with trees and rocks all matching etc. but the building of the house will be down to the player. They will effectively have free-placement to either build a house from scratch using walls, blocks, tiles, roofs, trees and so on to get the house they want, the size they want. Or use a pre-built house which can be crafted or bought in the store. Items will then be placed wherever the user wants on an XYZ axis, with rotation control through yaw, pitch and roll, and also scalable through each of the different axis. Players could also for fun, maybe have some monsters to place to make it interesting for visitors. Imagine visiting someone's housing instance and coming across a group of orcs trying to cause damage to the area.

Items to be used in the instance could be anything: building materials for houses (stairs, different styles of walls, tiles, bricks, stones, glass etc.), landscape objects (trees, flowers, shrubs, rocks, water, fences, scarecrows), decoration objects (vases, books, bookcases, trophies, tables, chairs, lights, rugs, beds, foods, pictures, candles etc.), AoE music boxes, AoE weather systems... and so much more, really anything that exists in the game already could be used. Either purchased from NPCs, looted, crafted, or bought in the store. Some items, for example building materials, should be crafted, but if they are also available for a reasonable price in the store then that too would be Ok for people who don't want to wait. The items will be free-placed, rotatable, and scalable, giving more possibilities through object morphing. If they can be dyed as well then even better.

A Lua API could be implemented at the same time which would provide authors access to each item, the ability to place an item, and to modify it. This way we can write plugins to assist people in building their instances - duplicate items, manage exact placement etc.

Really the idea here is that players have the opportunity to be as creative as they like, with an almost endless number of possibilities. The system would also allow for future expansion through new landscapes and items, which could be very profitable. But for players who do want something more simple, then they can craft/buy a ready-made house that can be dropped into their landscape and then decorated how they want.

If this sounds like a stretch, then I'd recommend taking a look at dimensions in Rift.

If such an update is not possible, and really we're only going to end up with little more than additional hooks then I'd rather the time was spent on other improvements to the game - go hard or go home.

[Lohi]

2. Neighborhood crafting facilities if you can't have crafting facilities in your house. If you can make it house specific, make it accessible via an area transition hatch (to the basement or attic or wherever) within the home. Perhaps limit them to Deluxe and Kinship houses.

The problem here is that it will depopulate other crafting areas in the game. We want to see players in areas other than max level end game and at home crafting, especially on servers where lower level players are rare. A solution would be to have better travel options from housing to nearby public crafting areas.

If anything, add something to housing that players want to do that is unique to housing, or kinship housing, something you can't find elsewhere. This used to be true for shared storage, but now that this is in the vaults the individual housing chests lost so much value (though kinship chests retained value). Also sort of helped early on when housing was the only place to get discounts on repairs/potions, at least until you earned kindred rep somewhere else.

Here are some other ideas:

- message boards for kinship houses, or kinship calendars.
- players have to help build kinship houses, and the house grows over time as it expands, with house size limited by rank of kin (ie, allow getting kinship house at rank 1 but it's small by default). Crafting can play a part here (ie, grow lots and lots of veggies to make a farm plot, dig lots and lots of ore to get Thorin's Hall room, get lots and lots of wood to make a Bree room, etc).
- houses in higher level zones.
- tie housing area into the festivals in some way. They all have an area that seems to be intended for festive purposes.
- allow other players to harvest stuff from your veggie plot (once per day), or take some coal from your fireplace, or things like that. Ie, not just a reason to visit your home but to visit your neighbor's homes too.
- house pets. Ok those dwarf guards don't count, and are kinda creepy, and can you even get them without using the hated store? I'd rather have a dog that wanders the kinship grounds, or a cat sleeping next to the kinship chest. These make much more sense than a personal non-combat pet.
- stables; either personal hitching post, or kinship stable with 3 or 4 slots, or a neighborhood wide stable. Then let the player put one of their collected mounts at the stables, with a name like "Biff's Pony", cycle through them maybe at the shared stables. At the very least have a normal travel stable inside the housing neighborhoods.
- weeds... Ya really. Basically if you ignore your house too long it starts to look a bit shabby. Cobwebs upstairs, shrews in the garden, rats in the basement, etc. But let neighbors have permission to clean up.

[Gedrevn]

I don't like this idea. In those games it ruined the look for the world; UO especially. Maybe it works in a free form game with no set lore or pre-existing maps. We don't want shanty towns in Shire or subdivisions in Bree.

Done well I think this works out very cool, but it is also possible to do it poorly and make it look like UO

Your point about instanced doors (EQ2 style) while IMO not quite as cool as well implemented open world, is a good option to spread things out from how it is now.

[Shukar]

I'd like to see fewer types of hooks that accept more types of items. My chests are full of Small Furniture, but I still have many open Thin Furniture hooks in my house. There just aren't a lot of types of Thin Furniture, or Special Furniture.

[Feamil_Ninnoren]

I was thinking if the farther down you are in reputation with a specific group of NPCs the more you can have your house look like one of that reputation's houses.

[Belnavar]

The biggest issue with housing is that there are so many housing items, but we have nowhere to put them. I did not get a single one of the RoR housing items from Hytbold because of this, and this meant I stopped doing the Hytbold dailies earlier than I might have otherwise.

So, the answer is manifold: more housing hooks or, better yet, doing away with the hook system altogether and letting us have free placement. Then add more rooms, extensions, attics, cellars, gardens. And then let us buy multiple houses, city apartments, and so forth. This will give us the space to fully realise the housing system.

That is the biggest thing that housing really needs. Otherwise I'd like a way to display armour sets, a stable to display some or all of our horses (perhaps it could rotate them every time we visit), crafting facilities, wandering neighbours, a neighbourhood advancement system (perhaps unlocking additional plots of land and housing items), and the buff system that WildStar is implementing, which would encourage us to visit our houses more often.

-Bel

[MercedMike]

Well, we have repeatedly asked for them, but here are my kinhouse priorities:

1) REALLY REALLY NEEDED -- the ability to set access to various chests (or subchests) by kin rank!
2) REALLY NEEDED -- more items for the Special Furniture slots.
3) REALLY NEEDED -- name of the character a particular item is bound to.
4) NICE to have -- more flexible hook placement

Give us those first! THEN all the other ideas are very good. But these are truly needed.

[Laerenian]

Housing is part of what makes LOTRO great, because it gives an incentive for a lot of non-combat gameplay. Very happy to see Turbine take care of it and improve it.

If I could do suggestions, I would have a few key elements:

1) Integrate it to the gameplay: I have a house that I really like, but I don't spend much time there, mostly because there is nothing to do. Integrating gameplay elements that incentivize players to get back to their house and spend some time there from time to time would not only bring the focus back to the houses, but also create life within player cities. Which leads me to my second thought...

2) Bring life to player cities: One thing that makes me sad is that each time I go back to player cities, they feel "dead", with few to no people walking the streets. Finding ways to give more life to these streets would be very enjoyable, even if it's "ambiance" NPCs walking the streets simply, or finding ways to bring players back to them.

3) Give more impact to Guild Housing: Guilds could really benefit from having impactful housing. I'm thinking various tiers of housing, some very expensive to reach, requiring a lot of players to come together to buy it, but that would provide tangible benefits for the members. A lot of cues can be taken here from the guild system from Guild Wars 2 where guilds can compile points based on what their members do, and spend these against some XP, power, gold, crafting, etc. bonuses for a limited amount of time. A system such as this one could be tied to the Guild Hall, and not only improve gameplay-related elements within housing but also for the guilds. (ie: All guild members come together to hire a Master Farmer who will roam the guild's fields for 2 weeks, giving harvest bonus to all Farmers within the guild)

[Darrenworldwide]

Please make housing into something worth playing for - it's another kind of end game. Things I'd really like to see:

1) More hooks, the ability to place hooks in different places, and more things to place on hooks!
2) Crafting stations (in Kin houses, at a minimum)
3) The ability to modify the house (add rooms, etc.)
4) Stables so that I can actually see all my mounts.
5) Integration of housing instances into locations throughout middle earth so that they feel like they are part of the town.
6) More crafted housing items
7) Better integration with other storage systems (like shared bank spaces, wardrobe, etc.)
8) the ability to put weapons and armour on the wall.

[hobbit1968]

Well, definetly HOOKS. But the Hobbit Holes need to be revamped. being a Hobbit, its like walking into a gym. There are plenty of examples of Hobbit holes in the Shire. example: Bag End. I dont mean it being this big, I just mean there should be corridors and quaint rooms. Its supposed to be Homey, not a huge room.

****Oh, and not to be charged Mithril Coins to get extra hooks. It should all be standard. Do not make this some crazy money maker. This is something that has been dragged on for literally years. Be kind to the players.****

[Achillos]

What I'd like is that the existing housing areas stop being isolated enclaves away from civilization. Bree and Duillond housing is the worst offenders here. Ie the Shire housing should feel like a real town, either a part of Michel Delving or at least a town on a major road; and Bree housing should be in the Bree area, perhaps near Staddle or such. One idea I've had in the past is that the housing actually be in the existing world. Doors exist everywhere that go nowhere. Turn those doors into instanced housing. The door on a farm house in Bywater becomes a door to an actual house. Mutliple players can share that door and go to their own house instance. The same with all those unused doors in Bree, Thorin's hall, Celondim, Rivendell, etc. You get a choice of all the styles you like this way. This means the housing is integrated into the world itself instead of replicating 1960s gated communities.

Couldn't agree more with these ideas. For example, Bree is a big town with many beautiful houses and locations. But they are all so empty and devoid of life because no one is ever going in and out of them. Not sure how feasible this idea is, but heck, I bet someone could figure out how to make it work. And if housing will continue in the instance communities, at least give them a feeling of liveliness! There is a great stage overlooking the lake in the hobbit housing community and a nice little neighborhood center, but you never see anyone doing anything in these places. I think it would be cool if bands played at night on the stage and if there were social gatherings of NPCs in the town center. Give the neighborhoods some life, something to draw players into the neighborhoods more often. If you're going to make such a nice setting for all the housing communities, go the extra step and make them fun.

[rosey21]

Well, definetly HOOKS. But the Hobbit Holes need to be revamped. being a Hobbit, its like walking into a gym. There are plenty of examples of Hobbit holes in the Shire. example: Bag End. I dont mean it being this big, I just mean there should be corridors and quaint rooms. Its supposed to be Homey, not a huge room.

****Oh, and not to be charged Mithril Coins to get extra hooks. It should all be standard. Do not make this some crazy money maker. This is something that has been dragged on for literally years. Be kind to the players.****

I don't foresee them doing anything with the hook system. If they do I will be shocked. However if they do add extra hooks, be prepared to pay. This alone is gonna take allot of hours & I just don't see them taking all this time upgrading this feature & not charging for it.

I have seen many comment that they would pay for extra hooks & I am willing to bet Turbine will take em up on there offer.

[KalorAlros]

3) Give more impact to Guild Housing: Guilds could really benefit from having impactful housing. I'm thinking various tiers of housing, some very expensive to reach, requiring a lot of players to come together to buy it, but that would provide tangible benefits for the members. A lot of cues can be taken here from the guild system from Guild Wars 2 where guilds can compile points based on what their members do, and spend these against some XP, power, gold, crafting, etc. bonuses for a limited amount of time. A system such as this one could be tied to the Guild Hall, and not only improve gameplay-related elements within housing but also for the guilds. (ie: All guild members come together to hire a Master Farmer who will roam the guild's fields for 2 weeks, giving harvest bonus to all Farmers within the guild)

This is a good idea in theory. In practice, it can lead to bad, bad places (Fleet starbases in STO, for example), where everything is nothing more than a resource grind. Careful balance would have to be maintained. Otherwise, I would support this

Also, someone above mentioned giving the areas lively feels again, even just with a few NPC's. Great idea. Perhaps using a formula so that, for example, for every 5 players who own a house in a neighborhood, *alts included!* a new NPC would be added. Some, purely cosmetic. Others, functional. Perhaps?

My own idea is functionality. A house is great for storage, thats about it for me, aside from the occasional kin party (which will happen less once we get kin housing). Add some function to it. Craft facilities might be a bit much, but still plausible. Say, one craft item to a house, requiring large yard/large furniture, depending? So a weaponsmith could add a forge, but not a workbench to work wood on. And perhaps it could be limited to a guild recipe, at a high rep level, limiting, but not eliminating, the possibility of getting access.

More diversity is ALWAYS good. Perhaps, as someone else mentioned, each house could be customized in appearance, ie: Elf/Dwarf/Man/Hobbit standard/deluxe/kin 1, 2, and 3, with 3 being a premium purchase? More options add variety, and enrich the environment.

Elimination of the hook sizes, except in places where space is a limitation (beside doors, for example), and the item won't physically fit. Make floor/wall/ceiling places, and only apply sizes where the limitation would be present. This allows diversity and customization options we currently don't have.

Regarding tables and chairs, possibly making tables a sort of "container", that can only hold chairs. For each chair space, there could be an "equip" spot for it, where you can place chairs, and customize where they appear in the instance or world.

I have a lot of ideas about this, but not many are coming to mind now, I'm sure I'll be posting more