New gold sink: player houses

Every time I run a new character through Nightfall, I always do all the missions that trick out your command post. Every time I play a game like Oblivion, finding the best house and making it totally awesome is half the fun of the game. Why can't we have something like that in Guild Wars too?

We already have guild halls, which you can fill with helpful merchants and friends and customize fairly well. Perhaps we can get a new area on the isles as well -- a house!

The economy doesn't seem to particularly need a new gold sink as its functioning pretty well now, but it would still be an amazing feature.

Hah we could be real estate moguls, ranch some moas/flamingos/spiders/whatever floats ur boat

Honestly gw is a huge vanity fest, i'm sure everyone would flock to build a house... only if they got to show it off. If it's to be privately viewed, well, functionally all of that can be covered by a gh.

I hadn't even thought of the animals: we could put it in the front (or back) of our menagerie and have a fine good time!

I think that people would flock despite having to invite people like the GH (of which there's no functionality that Balthazar doesn't have) -- it's cool, it's vanity, and it's the same reason I build the sweet house in Oblivion :-P

in my opinion guild wars is great as it is.. why try to make it look like other games?

Agreed, I'm onboard with this too

Anything that offers more facets to the game, as long as people are given the choice of not taking part can, in my opinion, only be a good thing.

I like this idea. Perhaps be able to use your collectible drops to build / furnish the house. Those mysterious mud bricks might finally come into play. Being able to buy / sell plots of land, build houses on them, buy / sell houses, it's all good.

Out in the back garden with the lads having a barbie (BBQ not actually doing wrong things to a barbie doll - people, keep it clean! I'm shocked at you people for thinking such things.)

How would it be implemented? I'd probably go for a completely different set of maps / state in the game. Switch into "house mode" and be able to view houses. So it would have been an expansion pack then - Sim Wars. I don't think I'd want them during normal game play and would also not want certain zones sectioned for houses. I like the freedom of being able to build anywhere, although some rules as to maximum capacity so some zones were heavily populated and others were more rural. Downtown Kamadan vs Drytop.

I'd have a little place in Sanctum Cay overlooking the sea. For some reason I've met a couple of top, russian teenage girls there at different times over the years and gone on to become quite good friends with both of them - yeah baby! Hence my favourite place in the game. I'd also like a little place in Dry Top, it's an obscure and remote part of the game - lone wolf country.

There is always the game, "The Sims" for this kind of thing. It probably blurs the genera of the game too much but if it were offered I'd buy into it and waste yet more time wallowing in online nonsense.

For most of your post I like the way you think! (Though I'm not sure about its ease of implementation ;-) But this bit, I feel, goes against the grain of Guild Wars. Just as everything else in the game, this should really have effectively infinite instanced space.

Yup, that sums it up

pay 100k to have a house that you can walk around in added to your guild hall.

My house would get very dusty.
Too busy saving the world.

Im guessing you got this from lotro. I have actually played lotro and tbh the house part of the game is a retarded gold sink with the only purpose to keep you in their crappy game longer w/o doing anything to help your character progress through the game in anyway.

/notsigned

Well I have one already:
It's fully customizable, but unfortunately, the customizations are somewhat permanent, and I can't sleep in it all to well.
But at least I get a jacuzzi!
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hall_of_monuments

A customizable home/house for a character would be nice... several years ago.

But I don't think it's really feasible to bother with something like that now. To do a good implementation of such a feature would probably take more effort than the live team could afford to dedicate to it these days. And with GW2 looming in the future, many players are using all their gold for HoM-related things and so wouldn't want to spend any gold on this now.

I lol'ed at that point. It reminded me some game where everyone still plays because they can farm repeatedly some areas...

Anyway , on topic , considering they added menagerie without much care , then HoM rewards , i hardly think we will implement house stuff...

Never played LOTRO, or any other MMO for that matter. Please don't make assumptions, because they are probably wrong.

Besides, you'd never have to touch the feature if you didn't want to so...uh, what's the problem exactly?

And GToB has merchants as well, yet we still pay money to put them in guild halls.

I see this message a lot, but the truth of the issue is we actually have no idea how much effort any given feature would take, or how fast/experienced the live team is at doing any given task.

This will be implemented in GW2, don't see the need to do it here as well. I like it, but since we will be getting it in the future, don't see the need to spend manhours on this.

If they could magically poof this into existence without wasting precious live team hours on this: yes, if live team hours go to waste: no..

That means a no I guess..

I'm pretty sure many people wouldn't touch it because this wouldn't do much for game progression or make it interesting and that would make the live teams hard work go to waste. At this point in the game there needs to be updates that are close to 100% needed to keep the game interesting and I see a black hole for your gold not being one.

I think it is too late for player housing.

What I would like to see is more customization of Guild Halls.

A toggle to turn off PvP so I can see pve skills and not have tons of pvp spam when I zone in.

A toggle to show/hide henchmen I really do not like the Kurz hench hanging around in my Luxon hall.

Ability to buy consumables merchants with max faction.

As far as housing coming in GW2, WTF does that have to do with this game?

Cute feature, but it'd require waaaaay too much work for waaaay too little payoff by the Live Team. In other words: I'd rather them put this work into content that everyone can appreciate, rather than something silly like this.

BTW, we're not getting "player housing" in GW2, we're getting an entire instanced city block that changes depending on your personal story and the decisions you make. Don't get your hopes up for being able to buy a table and chair for your house; heck, I wouldn't even bet on having a house that you can call your own, at least not for all possible personal stories.

This idea has been done and it always equates to = giant wal-guilds have giant houses and everyone else doesn't really care after a month.

You say it doesn't effect us and yet it takes developer time away from various projects, how exactly does this not effect us?

Perhaps it should be up to the developers to decide how much time it would take them, and not randoms like us who don't know the development process?

i was actually thinking about posting this, but thanks

i love to see my GH getting some options to make it my PvE restpoint/house

maybe few more guildhalls, the last few before GW2

my point is: a GH and house is too much
in a GH you can see guildies, and with those options it'd be a better place for PvE-ers too
i'm in my own solo guild, so i'll have my house
and for those with guildies/allies, they can have visitors

another idea is a bit more customization in GH's, like making 1 with theme, what place you'd like your npc's at and .... thats enough already
just let em put 3 or 4 places to choose from where to put your npc's

and toggle henchies and PvP-PvE effect will make it an excellent house, IMO

i really do hope Anet will look into this bit

so sry to OP, just a house is kinda alot, small area for every player....
its time consuming, could have hidden bugs they see after a year or 2, and could slow down the servers
these GH ideas are old, but can be done

Sergo, I don't belive ghost dog said anything in that quote about a particular amount of time. The point is that it will take time, no matter how much, from updates of significance, which are not simply a gold sink.

Hm... I like the idea. The command post was the first attempt to this...
But making new areas...

What if they used Guild Halls instead? They are already made.

All they would need is to change the spawn points for the NPCs.
The difference with Guild Halls would be that you would always able to bring friends there... and no PvP access.

But I don't see many uses for them, other than roleplaying...

Hm... maybe if there was a series o quest unlock things like the different crafters in the game to have them all in one place...
Wouldn't that be a 'Personal instance'?

As Aphotic already pointed out, I don't see how this is significantly different than the Hall of Monuments. The biggest change between the two is probably that your "furniture" that you deck your "house" out with in this case would be achievements you've made in the game and other things that your character has acquired.

Honestly this is one hell of a good idea, but would take way too much effort, but i'd gladly wait 1 more month and see this implemented in GW2.

GW2 has a home instance. That's basically the same thing I think. The problem with this idea is that it seams really difficult to implement and doesn't really serve a huge purpose. A huge fundamental change to the game, like the one you are suggesting, would be overshadowed by numerous other ideas that are simply more useful e.g. an auction house.

Honestly, I'd rather they divert the resources that would be used building this suggestion towards getting GW2 finished faster. It's just not worth the effort.

/notsigned