Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
2. CREATIVE FREEDOM. I did enjoy Archeage where you could upload custom art to posters and flags, which gave you some artistic freedom that could truly make your property unique. For example, I was the first person in my zone to build a manor, and I filled it with every crafting station in the game and then made it public so anyone could use the manor without having to go to a town. It was fun to come up with a catchy welcome sign, and even instructions on how to use certain stations to really make it feel like a communal property. That kind of creative agency can really make it YOUR freehold, which stands out from the rest.
3. FUNCTION AND PURPOSE. I'm a huge fan of FUNCTIONAL components of your home. Crafting stations are obviously a huge plus, and your own personal storage. It would also be awesome if you could choose a pet that wandered around your property and provided a passive benefit while you are away, such as healthier crops because your bird pet likes to eat bugs, or happier livestock/breedstock because your dog/cat is good at chasing away the vermin. I think getting buffs from cozying up to your fireplace when it's cold, sleeping in your bed, or sitting near a beautiful decoration would make the entire freehold feel wholesome and meaningful to be in.
PROS
- tile based placement of furniture
- option to recolour 2 major components of the item (e.g. for a chair, you could pick the stain of the wood, and then the colour/pattern of the fabric)
- items are tagged according to function (bed/chair/table/rug/etc.) <--- makes it easier to find stuff in your collection
- ability to place objects diagonally
- Sims 4 surfaces have 9 (?) snap-to-surface options for smaller objects that can be placed on tables and can be rotated - I find this to be sufficient others disagree, but this is where the most detailing happens
- Decks and floors that can be elevated by 1 step (literally one step, 3 inches/7 cm) <-- allows architectural hierarchy of rooms
- Room height options - really changes the feel of a room - especially if you can go multi-floor (if)
- ability to construct half-walls/arches/doors <-- maybe these can be placeable furniture that must be crafted?
CONSOTHER IDEAS
Things I would like to see that is not common:
All of these items really help with immersion for my in game home(s):
beds
rugs
shelves
cupboards
chests
candles
torches
other lighting (hanging candles/lights, standing torches, lamps, etc)
paintings
statues
sculptures
weapon racks
fireplace(s)
As for tools, I'd really enjoy a special storage container in each home or perhaps slot on character where all home furnishings can be stored when not in use (also, if you can sort by item type, name, and other various methods to easily find your stored items)
thank you
A construction skill/carpentry skill tool to build furniture is the second thing I'd like to see most.
People will just sell houses for RTT and force you into taking a political stance to either punish people for being realistic or to allow "exploiters"
It would be much wiser to create instanced housing much like Black Desert has done, but to incorporate industrial properties as a type of share housing system.
For instance I open an "Inn" inside the town (which is limited to maybe 3) and any number of players can rent a bed, but that Inn is limited to 50 beds every 24 hours. The beds need to be cleaned by a maid or they become inactive.
If a single bed becomes inactive any other player may purchase the ownership and must maintain the upkeep. When a majority of the beds are owned by one player they may challenge everyone else by attempting to buy them out.
A single building then becomes a business that 1 player cannot operate on their own and they must create jobs that could be potentially posted on a jobs board outside.
Player owned houses are what every typical MMO features, but those houses are just filler with nothing of any substance to offer to the world. I don't care if random Joe is great at decorating a house, most people are only looking for the advantage houses give you, so cut the fluff and bake content.
Apart from all the cool things you can do with housing items from crafters, I would love to see trophies drop from dungeon bosses or very long and special quest chains. Also mannequins where we can display our favourite armours would be very cool.
Only game with housing I have really played is lotro. And while it's kinda nice, I hope you will never do a hook like system as they have. Leaves far to much empty space. The house seems barren.
I like having paintings, statues, books, pets
items from quests, holiday decor
storage for house items and closet for clothes
placement inside and outside
house actors
ability to set permissions
Formerly T-Elf
Also having physical useful things is also important. Being able to have crafting stations in your house, able to mount heads of bosses you've killed, mannequins for your gear/cosmetics, etc.
Outdoor stuff is obviously important when you have a freehold or housing with land. Being able to garden, plant trees, maybe put training dummies out, stuff like that.
Having pets able to wonder around and mounts able to be put in stalls/graze outside.
Obviously need people to be able to visit as well. Guild housing with everything included but bigger would be great too. Mounting that dragon world boss head in your guild house and having a huge table for meetings, etc. Awesome.
I'm going to include two lists of things that I believe are ABSOLUTELY necessary for the proper immersion and creativity that I believe this great game should allow, next will be some more ambitious or personally preferred customization options for housing.
Must Haves:
More Ambitious:
Fundamentals:
Finally I would like to close with what I believe is simply the fundamentals of a décor system in an RPG. This would of course include the placement of furniture, the crafting requirements to make such items, and unique little bobbles and statues to line your home with to show you feats of achievement throughout the world of Verra. I also think there should be a plethora of benefits to spending time to improve and stay in your home or tavern! Buffs from the foods you cook, from the bed you sleep in, to the shrines you build atop your mantle.
Thank you as always for taking a look at my thoughts, have a wonderful day,
Chaos
I don't have any conflict with the idea, I think prefabs are a great way for people that don't care as much for the detail work of crafting a perfect home, to still come back to a beautiful abode. Will I think that will happen? Probably not. It seems like a fairly convoluted game system to include in an MMO game. However! remember as always that Ashes is a game of community, ask for some help, or even higher someone in town to help build your house for you!
I know you are going to want to prevent objects from clipping into each other because it is not natural. Nearly all of the creativity and fun of a good housing system comes from the unintended ways that you can combine shapes and objects to create new objects.
The best example of this in an MMO is the late "Wildstar", rest in peace. Not only did they let us clip objects into each other, but they let us scale them. This resulted in countless hours of my friends and myself using outside the box ways to build all sorts of objects. Being able to merge, scale, and rotate separate objects into each other will literally create a sub-community of people wanting to show off their houses to each other.
FFXIV has this too, but they did not intended it. Some bugs were found that allowed for some clipping and merging of placed objects. The dev teams initial reaction was a expressed intent to patch it, but when they found that the community loves to use the bugs for creativity. The left it in the game. The game is better for it.
Along with allowing us freedom to place blocks inside of each other. There should be a good amount of basic, building blocks and shapes that can be used to create new objects. The best thing you could do is have it tied to the crafting system where you could make all of the basic shapes out of different textures. So if someone wanted to make a pyramid on their lawn out of the most expensive ore in the game. They could do it to show off.
The worst thing we could have is something like the sims 1. Where objects snap in set spots and the housing system is just a dumb place to put random trophies we get from the world.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
1. Armor/Weapon racks: If possible, to be able to place a copy of the item you want to showcase as this comes in handy with rare and hard to obtain items
2.Shelves and bookshelves: similar principal as above, but it would be nice to have achievements in a physical representation to place on them
3. Unrestricted snapping: As it makes sense to place a table with 2 chairs and a rug on the ground, I would prefer the option to place them on my walls (not ceiling, that should be standard)
4. Various storage options: Chests, Wardrobes, Barrels, etc. and allow non-restrictive item placing (Wardrobe should not only allow armor to be stored)
5. Paintings, posters, flags, etc. : nice to implement/create your own designs and decorate the bedroom with big anime TTs
easy rotation and placement functions are super important to me since they can be very frustrating if not done right.
- Housing should have ambience. When I look out the window I see what is actually outside that window. If it’s afternoon and beautiful I want to see shafts of warm light filtering in. If it’s raining, I want to hear it drumming on the roof.
- Object placement should be completely open so I can be as spartan or messy as I want. FO4 made this possible, especially with mods like OCD Decorator that allowed you to place a static version of basically any object found in game anywhere in your home. That allowed for the perfect amount of customization.
- Give us places to display a collection of x (e.g. books, skins, armor, etc)
- Display dummies are awesome for both storing gear and showing off xmogs
- Let me put a map on the wall of what I just explored
- Objects that add some ambient noise. Enchanted lutes. Hireling piano jockeys. Birds in a cage. Gnomes in a cage.
- Also, it would be great to use crafting skills to change the materials inside the place. E.g. different woods, stone, tiles, cloth, etc. to give complete ownership of the place
So what is in motion?
NPCs are a big part of that. If you have a tavern then maybe you dont want to have only a static barkeeper but want him to move more. Some service person that cleans the tables and which you can click to chat with her or buy drinks from her too.
Some NPCs for crafting stations, if you would make the system so, that it needs some time for example to smelt the iron. Then you dont need to stand there at the smelter but give the ore to you NPC-smelter, and watch him doing his job for 20 minutes (or dont, and do something else), if its a big load of ore. Only then it would make sense to hire an NPC for that. You could think of such things for every job in the game. You could go even so far as to let the farmer of your farm field make a break from time to time and let him drink a beer in your tavern. Let him move there and not only be static at his field (This could be a buff effect for your farmer). But that may be too complicated to programm a possible way for the farmer to the tavern, because you never know what the people are building on their ground.
Another big thing could be not only to think of things from the middle age, but to think about the fact that we will be in a high fantasy world. What i mean is: use magic for some different things. Magic light. A magic illusion of a small waterfall from the roof of your house, going over the walls and ending at the earth.
Magicaly hovering things. Someone wrote everything has to be like real physics work....well...not if you use magic. With magic at housing and decor the possibilities are endless.
What else moves? Pets and mounts. Pets could play around on your ground, or maybe follow you on your freehold, because they are happy to see you. If you have some very interesting mounts, then maybe they could be seen at your stable or even elsewhere. But that could be complicated for a dragon in your stable. You could even go so far as to summon some little demons as a summoner and put them as guards at the entrance.
I think what the people nearly always want is to show off what unique or legendary weapons, armor or other stuff they gathered. To make such things visible, that you dont carry around with you (maybe because its level is too low, but it still is an achievment for you to have that thing) and you want it to be seen, that "in the old times" you were one of them, who got that thing from a big boss. And not just weapons. Think of big shields on the wall instead of drawings, so that it looks like a viking house, and not only decor shields, but real shields from the game that are used then as decor.
What i realy hope for is that there will be no too crazy anime decor things with too bright colors, which dont fit in such a high fantasy world.
Christmas or halloween decor? Please not. That breaks the immersion of a world in high fantasy that is obviously NOT earth. I mean you are making a completely new world, so why dont you make your own holidays? Make it something for example with the gods of this world and a big celebration of the reconquering of this world, when it begins. With that you would have a good reason every year to remind the players how many years went by since the release of the game.
If its possible, then some functional decor is very interesting. For example to klick a lever, and then a big portal opens.
How about a big wall around your freehold? You want to be more effective at defending it, after the node lost a battle? We could have different kinds of walls with different HP around your freehold. But this would obiously only work for range DDs. A warrior standing on a wall would be not so interesting.
And now a realy crazy idea: Building not only on the ground but going underground. Maybe a whole house under the ground for someone who is totally into that thiefs-guild-thing. The entrance would be something totally inconspicuous. The possibilitys of that would be huge and the positive thing would be that you dont have to load the graphics of that, if you just go by.
It would probably require you to have exactly the same items, but it'd be a good idea.
Maybe even make it so people can write Books themself (like in Minecraft ^^) so that colectors or guilds could start creating entaier librarys that actually serv a purpos.
Also, a jukebox in our houses for playing different game music would be amazing!
^ that like perfectly sums up my thoughts as well, but to add to that:
The Screenshots idea would be great if we also had an option to make the screenshot look like it was painted, or sketched, as well.
Mounts able to be placed on the freehold would be nice as well.
If there are books to collect in the world, I would like to be able to put them on a bookshelf in my house.
2. If possible, would be great to add painting on the interior of your home/freehold to change things up without changing the actual look. I dont think allowing paint on the outside of home, except maybe your freehold.
3. Small trophies/statues to place on tables/counters/fireplace, etc. of creatures you kill. Wall mounts or taxidermied creatures of same thing.
4. Having a fireplace that actually works would be cool as well.
It's the little touches that I think could really add to being able to personalize your home that makes the difference.
I think setting some house music would be cool, maybe a magical orb or a singing bird golem that plays favorite atmospheric tunes from the OST if it can't be too technologically advanced. Maybe those tunes are collectible loot, or trading card-like system to encourage players to share.
And maybe the ability to upload art or in-game screenshots to hang up as art. Reviewing player made content is ... a lot, I imagine. So perhaps not uploaded art, but maybe screenshots!
I'd like to see house functionality. Not anything required, because houses and freeholds will sometimes be far far away from where my character is, but maybe something that makes coming home a big comfort. Like a big heal or rested buff. Or crafting buffs, or letting my pets out to run around.
Chest autosorting! Easy tabs and visibility on supplies, and maybe the ability to craft, like cooking, where it pulls the ingredients out of the chests in your freehold/house? Instead of having to have them in your inventory?
And displays, or the ability to display whatever items. Like if I wanted to show off some high quality jewels I dug up from across the world, or trophies from big raid wins. I'd like to know if book have functionality too so keeping a bookshelf might store some lore I found or something.
Hm I think these are the big things that come to mind.
I know this is a risk vs reward game with PvP as a basis for many mechanics. Absolutely the best housing should be able to be destroyed. In node housing should be impacted by the health of the node it's in and should be destroyed if the node is destroyed. That's the risk of having a big, fancy house or living in the city. I'm not arguing that this should change.
What I am saying is for the casual player, or for those of us that cannot log in consistently, I believe there should be some type of permanent housing that is free from outside influence, even if that specific type of housing gives smaller mechanical advantages if any or is purely cosmetic but still requires full resources to build.
Other things I like in housing.
1. No item limits. That's just annoying. If it physically fits, let me put it in.
2. Free placement and rotation of items so long as they obey the game's physics if any.
3. Armor stands, weapons stands, potion racks, bookcases, display cases, cupboards, cabinets, dressers, etc with the freedom to put whatever I want in them and on them. What's the point of collecting things if I can't show off my collection? I loved this about Skyrim, and housing mods were always the first thing I installed.
4. PETS! I love my pets and I want them to come home with me.
5. I would love to interact with pets in my house beyond just looking at them stand there. Please let me pat my dog on the head!
6. A way to make pets or NPCs move about and not just stand there. This can be random or have varying levels of player control. Maybe a player can say, "Horse, you can go anywhere outside, but don't go in the house," and the game takes it over form there. Or maybe a player can place invisible markers the pet or NPC will walk between.