Thread: Housing Improvements on the Way!

The Tell the Community Team thread is here, in case you hadn't noticed.

F2P must be going well if housing's back on the plate for actual improvement. Between this and the fall festival, I couldn't be more excited for lotro.

Give your suggestions, make 'em count! (don't forget mention free-form placement)

WOOT

I hope they actually start implementing these suggestions....

I agree, the fact that it's on the plate for improvement is HUGE!!!

Well... we'll see. I'm happy its on the plate. The question is exactly what they're going to do with it. I have some trepidation on it. Its a major revamp to get it to where its useful. They should go play eq2 for a while to see how to do it right.

Well, yeah, they're asking, but to my recollection it's not the first time they've asked.

It's kinda like yelling at a bunch of kids "HEY! Who wants ice cream!" then walking away.

I'm leary of how many TP's any housing upgrade will cost........i'd bet my first born it won't be free. (Ok....maybe not my first born, but they could have my wife )

~Grumpy~

Teh first-born is free, but it'll cost you a second one just to get the room expansion to actually house the first....

I'd like to see the abilty to buy a house per character instead of it being connected per account. even if you had to pay TPs for I dunno "house slots"

Originally Posted by FireMedic96

I'm leary of how many TP's any housing upgrade will cost...

If they're smart; they'll improve the housing system for everybody ( no hooks, more storage, upgradeable styles ), and make some features purchasable, like, more storage for TP, more styles for TP.

Then make something unique for VIPs. Like only crafting areas in VIP houses, F2Pers will have to stay in the cities.

But it really needs an overhaul before they can start selling stuff. There's no way I'm going to shell out cash for housing like it is now. Like buying additional storage or similar.

It needs to become on par with UO and SWG. Then I'll start blowing my savings on upgrades, adn possibly, even subscribe on a permanent basis

Well I missed the thread request, but it looks like tons of good feedback there.

If I were Turbine in the F2P economy, housing would be my first target. And I mean before anything else. There's just a huge number of people who would pay TP if the housing system was set up like... say... SWG.

In a neighborhood, there are plots. Maybe even the same plot areas that exist at present. You buy a plot. You then buy one of several different exterior models (all obtained from existing in-game models, perhaps a couple of additions). Now you can see your house. Next is letting me position it where I want on my plot of land, but this is one of those features I don't really need.

Now each house has X number of items which can be placed outside. There are Y number of items which can be placed inside. The items inside the house include your house vault. So... drop your stuff on the floor, put it in a vault, or do something fancy like SWG had where you dropped it on the floor, but anywhere in the house you could bring up a "vault view" of everything inside your house.

Most importantly, all items inside the house are actually placed using a simple x/y/z/rotation manipulation. If someone wants to have all their chairs floating 2 feet off the floor, that's their business. Some would scream about how that breaks the immersion... well, don't go inside that house, eh? The vast majority of people will want things to look "Middle-earth-ish" and conform to gravity. But the point of this is it lets you take any model in the game, plunk it into 3d-space, and position it wherever you want it inside your house.

Talk about a money-maker. Heck, make it costs 2x your vault space pricing so it wouldn't be something that's abused for that purpose. Obviously, you'd need some sort of cap on it, but make it silly high.

I'd even go so far as to say, make the initial purchase of the house be in Gold, but any improvements to the size of the house be a monthly or 6-month renewal or something. Why? It's pretty simple... the cost to Turbine is database storage and maintenance. Having one-time purchases, in the long run, quickly catches up. I don't have a problem paying, say, a buck a month per 50 slots. Let me run some numbers:

Standard House Allocation:
10x External Items
50x Internal Items

Cap the external items at 20, cap the internal items at 250ish.

So for internal items... 25 slots... that means there's 8 additional upgrades. So if I wanted to totally pimp out my house and maximize "vault" space, I pay $4 (0.50 per 25 slots) a month to do so. Maybe that's a little too steep, but honestly, the game is free. I think for F2P to truly succeed, they need to move to a model where there *are* recurring fees, but for stuff that you don't *need* to survive or to play the game.

Basic housing is still an in-game gold and 10 externals with 50 internals is a good amount of stuff you can store.

At any rate, I hope they deliver something with housing. I'd love to see new neighborhoods open up as well with the ability to have multiple houses across different neighborhoods (at a cost!).

Remove hooks and categories. Just make it a total number of interior and exterior decorative items.

If I want to put 10 rugs in my home and one cupboard, so be it. If I want to place 5 pictures, 3 beds and a fireplace, so what?

The one thing I wouldn't want to see is crafting in houses, or even the housing area. I've seen it done before, and it removes a major social element from the game.

Buying a lot, placing a house and then decorating it would be ideal, but just removing the hooks and categories would suffice.

We folk of the Suggestions Board have long-since posted enough housing suggestion topics to know better than to get our hopes up when they say "changes are on the way!" They said that for Mines of Moria and what they meant by that was that they were changing the way the lockout system was working and then added a bunch of trophies from the Moria instances. By this time when ever Turbine says they are changing something, I just say, "I'll believe it when I see it." And, God willing, if housing ever sees an update, i.e. an actual change to how housing works, then I'll be surprised.

You’re told to make improvements to the Housing system, what would be the three (3) most important changes you would make?
1. Remove Hooks and make it possible to add chairs to tables, vases to tables, remove wall features (like those ugly round windows).
2. Make ALL Lighting, including chandeliers actually glow. For instance, I'd LOVE to see the starry chandelier's STARS actually TWINKLE & GLOW!
3. Add features like resize, transpose, stretch, etc.

Question 3
What zone has your favorite in game music?

War pipes! ( Tuckborough Skirmish! )

Originally Posted by tv2zulu

If they're smart; they'll improve the housing system for everybody ( no hooks, more storage, upgradeable styles ), and make some features purchasable, like, more storage for TP, more styles for TP.

Then make something unique for VIPs. Like only crafting areas in VIP houses, F2Pers will have to stay in the cities.

But it really needs an overhaul before they can start selling stuff. There's no way I'm going to shell out cash for housing like it is now. Like buying additional storage or similar.

It needs to become on par with UO and SWG. Then I'll start blowing my savings on upgrades, adn possibly, even subscribe on a permanent basis

Some truly excellent suggestions.

Dang, totally missed the open thread on this.

1. Remove hooks, and make bound decor items to account not character
2. Allow upgrades to house type without having to change address. A small house should be able to upgrade to a deluxe on the spot, a deluxe should be able to add a level or room, etc, without going through the abandon/purchase process.
3. Allow house storage slot increases the same as inventory space.

YES!
I have been looking forword to a house update since I bought my first lotro house!
Just a few suggestions...

1. REMOVE THE HOOK SYSTEM AND ALLOW FREE PLACEMENT OF FURNITURE

2. Add the option of purchasing a miny stable that will take you to two destinations of your choice, (but you have to pay extra upkeep for it).

3. Add item usese, ex. a beer barrel that gives you unlimited free pints (but they can't be sold to vendors or other people).

Thanks

A way to expand the size of your house past the deluxe level would be nice, as would more flexablity in how you arrange it (right now you can have a table but no chairs etc). The only other think I'd like is if there was more functionality in the neighbourhoods. Things like stables and crafting areas come to mind.

I'd actually like to see some new Housing Areas. Moria and Lorien come to mind. Maybe Rivendell and North Downs, around the Trestlebridge area.

Also, why are houses so far from the social centers? We shouldn't need to have a separate crafting area/stablemaster/vendor area for the housing areas; the housing areas should be IN the social centers. Housing areas are instanced, so all Turbine would need to do is make some geographical modifications to the inside of an area to adjust for the new "location" of the "zone," and then put the portal to the housing instance right in the social center. For example, put the portal to housing right next to the Stablemaster in Michel Delving. There will be some other collateral changes (like the map), but it's better than dealing with the issue of a social center competing with the vendors in a separate housing area.

I just hate the idea that...
1) There's a social center, where everyone in town interacts
2) There's a housing area, where everyone "lives"
3) The 2 are nowhere near each other.

Doesn't make sense to me. NPC's live in town. Why can't our housing area be in town? It's not like a new zone would have to be created. Just change the zone cosmetically, and move the portal into the zone.

And why can't I live in Lorien or Rivendell? My elf toon is from Lorien, as chosen on the Character Creation page. Lorien exists in the world. If he's from there, why wouldn't he have a "house" there?

There have been no official updates on housing since the announcement in Sept/Oct. I have a feeling this option is still on the back burner. Which is a shame, this could be a real money maker for them in the LOTRO store.

My suggestions and/or wishes:

1. Remove the "hooks" and allow free placement of furniture.
2. Add the ability to purchase more hooks, if the hooks stay, or at least be able to upgrade the number of decorations allowed in ones house or yard, regardless of the type of house owned. I would really like a yard full of trees, but as it is, I only have three.
3. I know this is what the mail system is for, but it would be kind of cool to have a guestbook in your home. You could leave a little message in the home you visited, along with the date and time of your visit. Just an idea.
4. House-pets. The Cat Lady in Bree can have them, why not us?

Yay! I'm so happy that housing is getting worked on. I have been grumbling about housing since it went in.

I hope it's all sparkly and happy when they're done.

Oh, and also, I wouldn't mind being able to purchase some of the decorations I've seen in other buildings and dwellings, such as the mounted antlers and animal skins seen in the taxidermists' shop and the Bree-town Hunting Lodge. Since I play a Hunter, I'd like to have a house that reflects that.

Originally Posted by Gaelicwolf

Oh, and also, I wouldn't mind being able to purchase some of the decorations I've seen in other buildings and dwellings, such as the mounted antlers and animal skins seen in the taxidermists' shop and the Bree-town Hunting Lodge. Since I play a Hunter, I'd like to have a house that reflects that.

You actually can purchase these, sort of. There are animals in the world that drop special hides that the taxidermist will turn into mounted trophies. There's a moose head one that hangs on the wall and that one drops in Forochel. Many of these trophies can be traded, and often show up on the AH.

I wanna buy a kin house for myself LOL... there's plenty out there just sitting vacant. Please rename the kin houses to luxury houses or something. It is pretty weak that I see all these nice kin houses sitting vacant and I can't even buy one!

I'd like to see rooms for rent in the Prancing Pony. They could have a little storage, and the location is to die for. They'd be perfect for those players who aren't that keen on spending loads of time decorating, but simply want the extra storage.

And who doesn't love the PP?

Originally Posted by cptinthehouse

I wanna buy a kin house for myself LOL... there's plenty out there just sitting vacant. Please rename the kin houses to luxury houses or something. It is pretty weak that I see all these nice kin houses sitting vacant and I can't even buy one!

You can buy one, just form a guild and wait to hit rank 7. Make sure you add 7 other people or alts to it so it doesn't get disbanded.

Will this include the addition of new housing spots or even neighbourhoods? I've been itching to move back to Thorins Homesteads for a deluxe.

Originally Posted by Worldgorger

You can buy one, just form a guild and wait to hit rank 7. Make sure you add 7 other people or alts to it so it doesn't get disbanded.

You know what, I'll try to say this nicely... I realize that you don't know how long I have played this game but going on the bare minimum info presented in my post you will find: my signature shows that I have a level 65 Cappy at the very least and that I suggested that kin houses be renamed to something else. Do you really think that someone running around with a level 65 character requesting a change in the implementation of kin houses would not be aware of that info? Running the risk of stating the obvious: If I was okay with current state of affairs, I'd be in game creating a kin and waiting for it to hit rank 7 instead of posting on the forums requesting a change that would allow people to buy a "kin house" outright for use by one person only.

The problem with forming a personal kin with alts expressly for the purpose of buying a big kin house, is that you then can't join any other kin with real people in it.

I've been complaining elsewhere in the forum about the kinship system here in Lotro.

If characters could join more than one kin, this wouldn't be a problem.

Turbine just earned some respect back from me for putting housing back on the plate. Their version of housing has been one of my biggest complaints with the game.

I think if we can afford it, we should be allowed to buy kin houses. Hobbit homes only feel bagendish inside the kin homes... otherwise they are caverns with tons of wasted space.

Hey guys what do you think of horse posts or in some cases rails in front of your house, then the horses you own will be parked out front automatically. Or even a stable you could buy then when you log in your horses will be loaded into the stable or fenced in yard where they can roam around. If you live by someone you'll know there in game if the horses are in the yard.

I also think we need to make buyable crafting stations for the home, You have the storage there let's make the stuff at home, then your client can entertain themselves in your house while you're making their armor. We all have the fireplaces and you can't even use them for cooking, you have to build a campfire in the middle of your room.

I have some more ideas but that's it for now.

Originally Posted by Leejun

Hey guys what do you think of horse posts or in some cases rails in front of your house, then the horses you own will be parked out front automatically. Or even a stable you could buy then when you log in your horses will be loaded into the stable or fenced in yard where they can roam around. If you live by someone you'll know there in game if the horses are in the yard.

I also think we need to make buyable crafting stations for the home, You have the storage there let's make the stuff at home, then your client can entertain themselves in your house while you're making their armor. We all have the fireplaces and you can't even use them for cooking, you have to build a campfire in the middle of your room.

I have some more ideas but that's it for now.

These have been asked for before. We were told that it would put too much strain on the servers and they, the powers that be, do not want the housing areas to turn into crafting hubs because it would make other areas, i.e. Esteldin, MD, and Twenty First Hall, into ghost towns.

OK, just to toss in my thoughts here. First off, I want to apologize for the length of this post, and second, I want to clearly state that these are the thoughts of a relatively new, and very uninformed, player. I don't know what things were like before housing came in, I don't have a stable of high level characters, and I've only been at this for about a month. That said, here we go.

About a week ago, myself and a few friends bought houses. Four of us total, one in each area. Now, I won't just continue to hammer the points made by others. We've all heard that houses need more flexibility, better options, no hooks, more hooks, etc. But I do want to address the crafting point. I get the argument, if people can craft in their own homes, then places like the 21st Hall will become ghost towns. Actually no, I don't get it. See, I don't know where, or even what, 21st Hall is. Its a Hall, so as a dwarf, I'm guessing its a dwarven thing... What I do know is that I have two dwarven characters who share my house, an artisan level weaponsmith, and an almost artisan level armorer. I've never taken either one to the 21st Hall, so being able to work a forge in my own backyard can't possibly be taking me away from there. What I also know is that my neighborhood (Drorshiem) is generally a ghost town. As are my friends when I go to visit their homes. And, at the risk of sounding arrogant, I think this uninformed noob knows why.

There's very little real reason to be in housing neighborhoods. Sure, I bought a house, and then bought two friends of mine their houses (I make money pretty quick in game). We've all had fun decorating our homes, and even making eachother some decorations. But now what? From an IC RP perspective, the option to have meetings and get togethers in our homes have some very serious drawbacks. Location is one (the Thorin's Hall homesteads are not along anyones way from anywhere to anywhere, so no one 'just drops by', except for one of my neighbors, who I occassionally find drunk in my yard). Decoration options is another (you can't have four friends sitting around a table, if you can't have a table and chairs in your house). As far as OOC simple mechanics, the only real benefits to home ownership I've seen are extra storage, a new travel destination, and some basic discounts from neighborhood vendors. The only way to change this is to give some real benefit and reason to be there. One more caveat, I'm no computer person, not a programmer or whatnot, so I have no idea if this can even be done, or how hard it is, but here's my thoughts.

Scrap the standard/luxury house options. Just have a basic house. Then, let people add to it, modify it, expand it, etc, as they wish. Want a second floor, cost ya X amount to buy and an additional Y amount in upkeep. Spare bedroom out back for guests? Same concept. You get it. Add the option of buying one (and only one) crafting station to your home. Workbench, forge, oven, whatever you want, but just one. I love the stable idea suggested earlier. And these can all add to the RP elements of the homes. So what if they're out of the way? For people who really want to RP there (myself included), they'll still go. Oh, and as someone with a pair of dwarven smiths living in the house, I would love to be able to hang some axes, armor, etc I've made on my walls. I can build book shelves, why not a weapons mounting plaque?

From an OOC mechanics standpoint, a few simple things could draw more people to the housing districts. A tranquil space (pond, garden, rock statue, whatever) that can be added that grants a temporary hope buff based on how long you've spent at it. Offer higher rest XP bonuses for time spent in your own neighborhood instead of on the streets of Bree. There are plenty of others I'm sure smarter people than me can come up with. But give people a reason to be there, and they will be.

So, whether it be cosmetic changes to the decorations, structural changes to the homes (bigger, more flexible), or system changes to the options (crafting, buying more than one home, which I would do if I could), until changes are made that will make people actually want to be in the housing neighborhoods, then the housing system will continue to be an under utilized and vastly under appreciated aspect of the game. Sadly, this is how the spiral works, that the housing doesn't attract players, so it doesn't get the developer support to make it attractive to players, since it is seen as something not many people care about. Lack of developer support means less attraction to players, and so on and so on.

Well, sorry for the long ramble, and for those of you who kept reading to make it this far, thank you for listening. I hope it was at least entertaining for you.

Cheers

^
very good points, actually...

having a choice of one crafting station per house (forge, workbench, oven, or farmland) would be more convenient, and makes sense, since we already have a supplier in the neighborhood... also, I especially like the idea of having a housing system with expandable options, like to add that second floor if we really wanted it... as far as furniture goes, I also like that idea of having the option to hang weapons and armor on a wall, to show off our gear... I've seen decorations throughout buildings in this game that are not available for our own personal house, and a shield+weapons type was one... perhaps we should get an option to at least be able to convert crafted weapons/armor/shields to a 'trophy' format, and treat it like that... weapons and shields on small walls, and propped armor (complete set) as small furniture...

I think pretty much everyone wants the current hook system to DIAF in favor of a more-open setting.

Basically you would have the furniture that you can move with the mouse or rotate even, but also have sliders for x,y, and rotation with ticks so you can set it to some standard interval if you want and you don't spend 5 minutes trying to line up 90 degrees.

What I think they should implement instead of the current size limitation is just a max size limitation, but other than that, let you put as much **** in there as you can fit furniture-wise (put a limit obviously, but have it be high enough up there that it's more to ensure that there's room to walk in the place.) So essentially enormous yard items would be limited to a kin house or even just 1 per deluxe yard.

They could even take a page from Oblivion where you could get a 'mannequin' or two where you could display a suit of armor or implement a way to place out regular equipment items you may want to display on a table or wall.

Many have also said that we need more craftable furniture items...this is a must. One thing to note is that there need to be some bigger chandeliers. All the ones I've seen vanish into the ceiling on anything but a hobbit kin house.

Given the current size hook limitations, they at least need to look at how they classify certain items and their size. If the item says it's for a large hook, and I put it in the hook and it's smaller than a hobbit, I think that's a bit ridiculous.

As far as crafting stations go, while I would love a superior forge in my house (not much of an issue since I'm kindred with Thorin's and am currently levelling in Moria, but anyway), I can definitely see that as a problem from their viewpoint. However, I do think that a kinhouse is a perfect place to be able to be able to put a crafting station. I don't think they should be able to put superior stations in there per-se...or perhaps only 1 type of superior at most, but being able to fill up some of that space would go a long way to adding an additional use to a kinhouse other than the current TP hub for your members.

You could even add a locker system to the kinhouse that's tied to characters by account. So say me and HobbitX are in the same kin and are going to work together help make some stuff for a new member or perhaps an alt or something, we'd just meet up in the kinhouse and craft away. If I wanted to make something for my level 20 alt, I could then drop it in my 'locker', and as long as my alt is in the same kin, they could come pick it up there. Limit it to only being able to hold 1 or 2 items with no upgrades so as not to bork shared storage in the vault.

Lastly...expand the security options. Let the kinleader set permissions for changing things per room and per chest. This way they could have a recruit-level chest that anyone can access...and so on...setting the permissions for adding to the chest or removing separately based on rank or even person for each chest.

Anyway, I'm rambling...but that's what I got regarding housing so far from my short time in lotro.

Turbine has done a wonderful job in creating the housing areas in the game. There are many benefits to owning a home in game chief of which is the cheaper repair bill at housing vendors for homeowners.

One thing I would like to see added in the housing areas is a pub

I love the housing feature in LoTRO. It is easily one of the best parts of the game for me.

The only thing that I wish were changed, is the amount of houses one can own per server. I play each character as their own individual, and with styles varying, would prefer to have their own homes/decorations -- especially for roleplay purposes. My Hobbit Burglar doesn't quite fancy hanging out in my Elf Scholar's book cluttered home. xD

The worry of people buying up all homes in a single neighborhood on one account could be abolished by not allowing two characters on the same server to purchase in the same neighborhood. Or perhaps putting a housing cap of up to 3-4 per racial area per IP? (Not sure if that's possible or whatnot).

Anyway, I personally would like to have more homes available.

A friend of mine recently purchased a house in the Shire, and once again the issue of LOTRO housing needs is being discussed in our kinship. Here are our wishes for housing improvements, all of which probably have already been suggested.

1. Free-form decorating. Allow us to use our creative energy to decorate and make our house a home, with the ability to have a table and chairs close by, so we can actually sit and eat. Limit the number of items, like is done in SWG for instance, and instead of chests, allow us to use the chests and bookcases we purchase and make to hold items as well.

2. Allow us to be the ones to decide whose name is attached to the house. One of my characters purchased our account's one-allowed home, but it actually is used by another of my characters. I would like to choose to have her name as the owner, rather than a character I rarely if ever play with, and now only keep on hand, because it's she who actually owns the house.

3. Please consider allowing account holders to own more than one house. If it's a concern that people with 7 characters will purchase 7 houses, then create some sort of penalty - additional houses on an account simply costs more. Even offer this as a Turbine Point only purchase, which might also cut down on the number of houses purchased per account.

4. If none of these things can be done, (and I doubt that, given the number of other games which offer much of what I've requested here), then why not just do away with housing all together. It's a great source of frustration for players, and if you post a "tell us what you want" post, and then never respond, or give us a "we're listening!" post in return, then all you really do is further the perception that you don't care.

I have a Home in the Shire and am a part of a kin which has a house in the Bree area. I like the fact that you can have auctions in your kin house but I'd really like to see crafting there rather than in my personal house. My house is useful though, it adds one more teleport spot (as does the kinship house) and since my house is near the store (selling, repairing and vault) and exit I don't waste any time.

I find the exteriors to be far more attractive than the interiors and I agree with the suggestions already put forward ..
I'd like to see more collectable furniture or furnishings, and exteriors, which change in the stores , so that there would be more variety in the neighbourhoods, a little too much the same ... and expand the places to buy..

Speaking of Housing improvements. Has anyone heard anything as of late as to when they may start work on this? I know they stated "This year" in a Q&A article on the day of Free to play launch, which I can not find at the moment, but haven't heard anything about it for first Quarter update. Just curious.