Discussion: Proposal For Housing Upgrades

This post is to detail upgrades I would like to see for the LOTRO housing system, and also includes ways to pay for the upgrades through new items in the LOTRO store.

The existing neighborhood system should be expanded on by offering Rank 10 Kins to buy a Kinship Neighborhood. These new kinship neighborhoods would be roughly based on the layout of the existing neighborhoods, though possibly expanded to allow more lots to exist should the average kin size be larger then a current neighborhood. These new kinship neighborhoods would have a larger more central kinship house that would also accommodate the neighborhood vault, neighborhood vendors, and add kin use only crafting and skirmish trainer/bard/exchange, and player bards. These services will help make these neighborhoods hubs of activity and will also relieve lag from other world centers. Kins that reach a certain capacity would be able to purchase additional neighborhoods, even in other regions. The Neighborhoods can also be named after the kin, and the kin leader would be able to set access permissions to the Neighborhood.

Since most of the neighborhood entrances are not close to major horse routes, I would also propose adding a horse path just outside of the gate that connects to the major world hubs (Bree, Thorins, Celeondim, Surikyla, Rivendell, 21st hall, ICG, Galtrev). This will make them feel less far away in an ever growing middle earth.

Existing neighborhoods should all be closed and players given a token equivalent to the value of their house. Housing Escrow should also be change to have an unlimited duration. This would not only help clear out areas that are mostly foreclosed, but would help clear the way for additional changes to neighborhoods.

Houses that fall 6 weeks behind in payment (12 weeks, or 3 months total elapsed time) would be foreclosed on, placing a token for a new lot and all items into a non-expiring escrow.

Both the new Kin Neighborhoods, and the existing Neighborhoods would allow a player to buy a lot, and then choose what type of home to place on that lot. Homes would not have to match the neighborhood type. So any lot could have a normal or deluxe house, of Dwarf, Man, Hobbit or Elf design.

Both the new Kin Neighborhoods and the existing neighborhoods would have free-form placement of yard and interior housing items, allowing much greater control and capacity.

The cost of development for these new systems can be paid for by new LOTRO store items. Ideas for items include:

Exclusive Furnishings and Wall art. There are many furniture and wall art item throughout middle earth that we don't have access to that can be converted, and new items can be made as well. Since many of these items are set pieces for new content this will also help offset art time needed for that as well.

New Normal and Deluxe House styles. This could include existing styles decorated for the various festivals of Middle Earth.

Larger Normal and Deluxe house interiors, or additional layout styles. These could have themes form other regions, like Dunland, Moria, Mirkwoord, or even Lothlorien flets.

Kin Neighborhood Seasons, allow the kin leader to buy different seasonal layouts to apply to the neighborhood, like a snowy winter with iced over ponds in Bree, or a orange autumn in Falathorn.

Scrolls that grant additional pre-payment weeks.

Scrolls that remove weekly upkeep entirely.

Access to new neighborhoods in places like Rivendell, Moria, Lothlorien, Dunland, etc.

I really believe that with some work the LOTRO housing system can be something pretty cool and engaging, and have put a lot of thought into how this would work not only for players, but for Turbine as a company. I hope that anyone else that has ideas on how to expand the housing system and make it better, or even other things Turbine could put in the store to pay for it will add to this.

Thanks for for your post Rex. I share your opinion !
Updates always includes upgrades character-leveling and fighting.
I have been a kinship leader for more 4 years now and my kinship has always had a considerable number of players (one of the biggest and oldest kinships of the Laurelin-server), but kinships have been left in the cold for 4 years now and there have been no changes to the housing systems or kinship ranking-systems.

I have recently tried Dungeons and Dragons (also a creation of Turbine), and there they have a good system for kinships ...
Members do quests and receive XP-points and at the same time their kinships get also points and rank up. Kinships received special benefits the higher they rank up. It is good the rewards kinships and give better rewards for kinships that stay active!

Community and housing is not that much in Dungeons and Dragons i must say.

But the idea of having a kinship-neighborhood would benefit a lot of kinships as specially the ones on RP-servers.

RP is one of the main attraction-points of this game ... i dont know many other games who have a dedicated RP server.

So Turbine, in your next updates, please try thinking about all the players who would like to see some progress in the housing-systems and the kinship-reward system. There is so much more to this game then just leveling your character !!!

I Agree with this thread, and support your thought chap!

Two things I would like to add though, correct me if you already posted them:

-More hooks (at least one enormous, 4 large, 6 small for exterior hooks. And add a few more large furnature for interiors)
-The ability to upgrade your house by building another room!

I notice that on my property. I havetons of space that is not used. I would like to add a room or two and also some more hooks...

My in-game name is Kaelalas, my server is the Imladris server, my homesteads is the falathlorn Homesteads, my nieghborhood is Maidlanc, and my house is 9-Haven Way.

Envoyé par Killerunicorn5

I Agree with this thread, and support your thought chap!

Two things I would like to add though, correct me if you already posted them:

-More hooks (at least one enormous, 4 large, 6 small for exterior hooks. And add a few more large furnature for interiors)
-The ability to upgrade your house by building another room!

I notice that on my property. I havetons of space that is not used. I would like to add a room or two and also some more hooks...

My in-game name is Kaelalas, my server is the Imladris server, my homesteads is the falathlorn Homesteads, my nieghborhood is Maidlanc, and my house is 9-Haven Way.

My idea is to eliminate the idea of hooks by going to a grid based free from placement system. Other games I have played with housing have used systems like this, and basically you can place a lot more items in with a lot more flexibility as to where they go and how they are positioned.

I hope that the people from Turbune read this post and i (as my others) really look out for upgrades for houses and kinships !

I'd like housing items to be bound to account. It's so frustrating to want to replace something but have no idea who placed it in the first place.

I think it'd also be cool to be able to 1 crafting table/forge/etc at your house (supreme, of course) to provide something to do other than store things.

And maybe add a 4th level house where you could have a stable of all the horses on your account (or perhaps just the character who purchased).

I thought I was the only one who wanted housing uogrades. My house is just a storage chest. Why cant we have room additions and more hooks. It would also be great to add a kitchen. Another room addition would be great or maybe we could get to pick from a forge, workbench, or oven. This way I would "USE" the house instead of just storing stuff there. Something needs to be upgraded. Houses were once fun to play with but now thay are just a large storage area.
Please Turbine do Something about the housing, or at least give us some hope or answers about the plans for housing.

Hmmm....
Anyone ever thought about introducing marriage and children and maybe some funny buffs into the housing system?

What great ideas, Rex!

/signed

I especially like the idea about being able to pick different kinds of houses. I've always thought the hobbit deluxe and kinship houses were a little too big and open. I think Turbine did a wonderful job on Grobo Mugwort's house in Staddle, however, and I hope we can have more "tunnelly" houses.

The kinship neighborhood idea is amazing. A lot of my kinmates have moved into the same neighborhood as our kinhouse. It's wonderful riding around and knowing everyone in your neighborhood. One of our dwarf kinmates enjoys trophies and dragons. We placed our enormous yard Draigoch trophy overlooking his house, which is just beneath the kinhouse! It would be so exciting to have a completely unique neighborhood, with seasons and decoratable terrain all over the neighborhood, not just in your kinhouse yard!

I hope that Turbine will take note of this. I think player housing is already one of the neatest things in LOTRO, and it has so much potential to be even better!

this is, I hope, the next thing we should see for the housing system. Currently on Windfola I couldn't even find one neighbourhood with more than 4 free houses, the ideal system would simply replace kinship houses with kinship neighbourhoods, in my mind anyway. I know we have the same vision , lets hope it becomes a reality


Also love the no hooks idea... I currently own 3 houses and I think that's why most neighbourhoods are filled. People with alts and alot of cool decorations with no desire to pick and choose which ones we display lol

/signed

Some nice ideas in here.

In general I'd like to see work on the housing system, but if the devs don't feel it's worth the resources I'd at least like to see a few minor changes to make them a little less out of the way to enjoy.

-The idea in the OP for a stablemaster just outside the instance is great and sounds easy to implement.

-Access to housing chests via vault-keepers would be nice; otherwise shared storage pretty much obsoletes housing chests in every way.

-If they're worried about neighborhood crafting areas turning the major cities into ghost-towns, maybe make an instanced crafting area that is shared by all the neighborhoods of a race; it'd become a social center for homeowners.

Envoyé par Slurch

In general I'd like to see work on the housing system, but if the devs don't feel it's worth the resources I'd at least like to see a few minor changes to make them a little less out of the way to enjoy.

-The idea in the OP for a stablemaster just outside the instance is great and sounds easy to implement.

-Access to housing chests via vault-keepers would be nice; otherwise shared storage pretty much obsoletes housing chests in every way.

-If they're worried about neighborhood crafting areas turning the major cities into ghost-towns, maybe make an instanced crafting area that is shared by all the neighborhoods of a race; it'd become a social center for homeowners.

You may be right - but I think the developers underestimate what the "housing system" brings to their game. I feel it's more significant than they think - and it's a lot of fun collecting trophies and other items to decorate your house with. And I think it would be a wise focus of resources to make some dramatic improvements in the system.

As far as adding instanced neighborhood crafting hubs - I'm not really a supporter of that. The main reason people want to be able to craft and farm at their house is so they can actually spend time in their personlized environment doing something productive. So adding a instanced zone in the neighborhood I feel misses the point.

Also it's a fair concern on the Dev's part that allowing players to craft in their houses would lower the population in towns. Maybe adding something new more hobby-related to do in our houses would be a more appropriate solution.

I like some ideas but that would mean you would need a lot of gold. I own a rank 9 kinship but it only has 21 members, only 4 of which have played in the last 250 days. this would also mean that players at level 1 could own a house if they belonged to a kinship. although i do think there are some very good ideas.

I was thinking it might be cool if the homesteads could be expanded with more lots and the ability a to add more lots if the neighbourhood fills up.

If we could add rooms and stories onto the houses would be cool so people can customize their home to suit them. I think the original houses should be kept as templates.

I propose that players should be able to go into every room of every building in towns so that they feel like real houses and real cities. And also the ability to be able to go anywhere in the world with no 'invisible walls' in the way would be awsome. I thought this was was done really well in Skyrim and really enhanced the gameplay.

All the ideas I have seen on this thred are really good and I hope Turbine sees them.

KEEP UP THE AWESOME WORK TURBINE!