Hey,
so after spending up to 5 days building a small house, i got quiet the idea of the new system, especially with the new big areas. So i wanted to give out my opinion and maybe suggestions to make the new housing system even more attractive to players.
- Open Zones:
Im pretty sure everyone who bought one of those 3 zones was expecting a generated zone. At least i did, and was pretty dissappointed when i realised i only got my little sandbox. Over time it didnt bother me too much anymore since i realised its way more flexible that way. But for my part (i picked the green elven one) i think its sad and wasted work that the whole "cool" outside part is blocked by a fat wall and you cant see it without moving out. Maybe consider re-doing that, so i can atleast enjoy the view.
- Npcs:
Problem: Other than purely visual, npcs dont have any purpose. but why not implement npcs with a purpose aswell?
Suggestions: Make the Main Housemaid moveable, so you can move her wherever you want, instead of building your whole house/zone around the point of your housemaid. Also, maybe add npcs that fullfill some jobs like Auctioneer, mail, bank etc. (Supports the thought of making your own city/village), or give each of your normal housemaids some kind of extra job.
- Building menu
Problem: The Resizing is a nice feature, but the way you change the size is in way too big steps (i tried lowest ingame sensetivity and lowest dpi). if you wanna move just as example 10 pixels, itd just jump for 100 pixels. Also, if you want to make a custom house, youd have to put floor, walls, roof all on your own together, which might make things not 100% propotional.
Suggestion: Make extra textbars where you can enter the size of the item (as example BaseSize = 100, then you change that to a set number from 30 to 200 or whatever the min/max size is). This way, you wouldnt have to struggle with uneven sizes of the same furniture. And for moving things together, consider some kind of "grid" function or "sticking" function. Would be nice, but i think i speak for everyone who tried to make precise size changes, the resizing is way more important.
- Furnitures:
Problem: It offers quiet alot, but for the size we have now to place furniture, we dont have so much stuff honestly. The only cosistant theme for full-finished houses are basically only stone-themed houses.
Solution: I dont know how hard it would be, but maybe adding houses from zones like logar, varanas or other city/villages would increase the variety of stuff we'd see in player's houses. Also, some decoration like trees/flowers or other really small parts could maybe be redone as bigger item, so i wouldnt have to spend 150 slots to have a nice grassy Forest. Another cool feature would be maybe implementing proper day/night time (day being normal bright and night being actually dark on screen aswell) and playing with dynamic light on light objects like lamps. Unsure about the difficulty of that aswell.
- House Energy:
Problem: Usually, main reason for more space was more chests/storage places or for crafting furniture for better bonuses. Later on, if you had enough dias, you maybe started decorating it aswell, but it wouldve costed more. Now that we have the space of literally varanas, the costs can jump up to extremes (*ahem* zyrex *ahem*) and maybe demotivate someone, since theyre not at the game status of being able to spend weekly dias for their house (not to mention some furnitures are redicioulus expensive).
Solution: Re-consider the prices of energy, either to buy or spend daily, so its more attractive to players, who dont earn 20k per week through selling endcontent stuff.
- Presets:
Problem: If you spend as example 1-2 weeks on a whole zone, you most likely wont change that, since the effort was way too much.
Solution: Create maybe up to 3 presets you can save, so you can try out new styles without completly destroying the other ones. This would maybe also increase the player's motivation of making holiday-based themes (winter, eastern or halloween just to mention a few)
In the end, i believe the housing system is such a cool, nice and unique feature. It turned from your own small 4 walls to your own (possible) zone. It also has alot of potential! Not to mention more furnitures, but first thing that comes to my mind could be a regular server event where players can showcase their house and win unique prices (as example skins, exclusive furniture etc) via votings from the playerbase. Or it could also inspire you guys from the devteam for your next zone/dungeon.