[Suggestion] Player apartments

[Dracyon Imperius.6309]

To preface this: what I am suggesting is not creating plots like in FF XIV, but something along the lines of small-scale personal instances set in the major cities with decorations that can be bought from vendors near the premices.

 

Where I'm sure a great many players would be interested in full-on player housing on the scale of the Salma Quarter, simply having player apartments would likely be easier to design and implement. Those instances could be of great use for players seeking to be more attached to a city, developing their immersion or aiding the ailing roleplaying community, and could provide ArenaNet with a gold sink and content that would likely get positive feedback from the community as a whole. Gemstore decorations notwithstanding, though I do not particularly like the thought of gemstore decos being a thing.

 

Now, we know that the technology exists to create player instances keyed to individual players, add items to them, and decorate. There are closed buildings that are easily accessible in most major cities, like the towers in Lion's Arch and certain mansions in Divinity's Reach, and installing another lift in the Grove or a gate in Rata Sum would be achievable with only minimal changes. Such apartments are bound to have windows, but you can replace that with a rough outer map like when we use the personal instances, or in the case of Rata Sum, you could use aquaria and large console panels as delimitations. I cannot speak for the technical limitations, of course, and I leave that to players who would be far more knowledgeable than me.

 

Likewise, decorations could be an easily implement feature, since each city does have a fairly typical assortment of furniture. The collection of chairs I had to sit on alone speaks to such variety, one that has not yet been implemented as guild hall decorations thus far, with some exceptions. Ergo, we do have things vendors could sell for materials that are currently woefully undervalued, like twitching forgemetal, as well as gold and silver (the materials and the currency), thus giving those materials more value, encouraging mining in some maps that are mostly revisited during current events and world bosses, and so on. It would also offer a solid vanilla offerring while allowing for some items to be expansion-specific.

 

Guild halls are a formidable piece of content, and I have spent a lot of time visiting, upgrading and decorating both Gilded Hollow and Lost Precipice. They are also, unfortunately, designed for large guilds, requiring considerable funds and effort if you are going to make the most of them. Effort, I might add, that some solo players or small groups pull off, and all the more props to them. Replicating them on a smaller, less demanding scale would enable a lot of players to enjoy their own pieces of customizable content, some of which could reward playing the story, quite simply.

 

My favourite place in all of the original game was the Eye of the North, because I could see the minis I had arrayed there, statues of heroes clad in heroic armour, and big banners that made me feel like the content I had played through rewarded me. Earning gold or currency by playing the main story is one thing, but a constant reminder that my character pummeled Zhaïtan, fought Mordremoth's consciousness and kicked Balthy in the groin would mean so much more. It always frustrated me that the game had little to remind you of how you had saved the world. No permanent skin, no awesome title, just a passing cinematic and talking to a bunch of people in Amnoon.

 

Pair that with the idea of creating spaces you can truly call your own and work for with more than mission boards and resource nodes in mind, and I think you can create something that is not only tantalizingly feasible, but also glorious.

[Trise.2865]

At this point, I feel like we should have a separate subforum for Player Housing threads...

[Dami.5046]

no it's own forum.

[Knighthonor.4061]

> @"Trise.2865" said:

> At this point, I feel like we should have a separate subforum for Player Housing threads...

 

Or put Player Housing into the game. Problem solved...

 

#RocketScience

[Tyranni.9780]

I'd love to see some kind of player housing. Apartments and/or instanced houses are a great idea, imo. I loved the housing in EQ2. It was one of the few things in that game that I actually spent loads of money on because of all the different styles, locations, and decorations and each alt could have their own. Not to mention people crafting furniture and decorations to sell to other players, although the coolest stuff was always in the store. My alts each had a different "address" in various towns and you could link them & teleport from one to the other. I spent a ton buying fancy mansions from the game store to indulge my fantasy decorating urges. lol. Even had one that had little caves to decorate with little paths and a creek from the entrance. I often miss that aspect of that game. Fantastic feature that nearly everyone indulged in. :)

[Chichimec.9364]

All my alts live at the Lily of the Elon and I love it there because of all the essential services being so readily available. So I'm not sure if I would use a personal house myself or not. However, I do know that a lot of folks love the idea of decorating their own spaces online. Back in the day my sisters used to laugh at me for getting immersed in rpgs for hours on end. They laughed until Facebook started getting those games where you could decorate your own house and show it off to other people. They promptly started getting immersed in those games for hours. ;)

 

This summer a fourteen year old niece of mine is going to a camp focused on game designing. When she was seven and eight years old she happily spent hours online in a kids' mmo where her real life friends and her would decorate their own houses with all kinds of cool stuff. They would visit each other's houses and then go off on in-game adventures together. When I visited her real life house she used to love to take me on a tour of her virtual house to show me all the awesome stuff she had gotten since my last visit. I enjoyed how excited she was about it all. :)

 

So even if I might not bother with a virtual house myself, I know there are people who really respond to that kind of thing. I think the op makes a good point that this could be a nice revenue stream for Anet. Heck, if the decorations were cool enough, I might even get my own place too. B)