Doors and rooms

[Cathy]

Why can't we put a decorative door in our house over a functional door? What's the point of having a decorative door that's just a wall hanging? Also, the functional doors are really ugly and do not match any of the wall papers.
Also, once you've added rooms, you cannot delete them. So if you add a room and then decide you really didn't want a door there, too bad. You can put a chest in front of it, but you can't hang anything over it.
To the devs, I suggest looking at how My Time at Portia handles the house expansions. instead of just ugly square rooms with a door dead center in every wall, each upgrade reconfigures the rooms. If you had items placed, an upgrade just leaves the items in the center of the room and you can replace them.
That is so much more aesthetically pleasing than basically the office cubes we get in Dreamlight. Also, why only one rug? I have not seen any other rugs in the game other than the one we get early on. Scrooge doesn't sell them either.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

It may be a future quest. it is kind of silly right now to have pretend doors. A lot of decorating stuff does not fit the house in any sense. I am hoping they will give us some options for various styled dwellings that will fit the interior design.

[BodhiRemi]

I’d prefer they remove the doors entirely and be able to move freely from room to room. Or at least show multiple rooms at once for a more adjoined feel. And yes, the fake door thing is super annoying.

[Cathy]

I get that it's still pre-release. But I also tested "My Time at Sandrock" in a closed beta, and even their original, completely bare NPC rooms were more interesting than this.

The dev team obviously focused on the NPCs and the terrain, and these are both well developed. It also seems like they sub-contracted the house interior, or added it as an afterthought.

I would recommend completely redesigning the player home module -- textures, lighting, functionality, etc -- and replace it in a later phase. Explain it by saying the original was always intended as a place-holder for the final rendering. The house interior should be on par with other areas of the game.

For existing house modifications, the release (to redo interiors) can leave all storage chests in the center of the rooms for players to relocate (intact with items inside) and return other decorations to player inventory. Remove interior doors and use doorways instead. Keep the exterior door. Decorative doors are skins for the exterior door. Decorative windows increase interior lighting during the day.

Add stairs between floors, players like continuity. Houses expanded to second floor offer a balcony with another functioning exterior door onto the balcony. Third floor offers a crow's nest with spiral stairs and functional door. It opens for a viewpoint from the roof.

Personally, I'd be fine with anchoring the house to a fixed location to make it easier to provide the balcony and crow's nest vantage point.

I won't insult your artists by listing details on using different room shapes and curved edges. You know what to do. The current interior layout looks like a powerpoint slide using a default template, I'm hoping they really are placeholders for the real interior.

[Maljen]

Agreed, I REALLY hate the doors. They need to go and allow for open rooms, or else the use of the decorative doors.

[Cmdo.Delta]

Originally posted by BodhiRemi:

I’d prefer they remove the doors entirely and be able to move freely from room to room. Or at least show multiple rooms at once for a more adjoined feel. And yes, the fake door thing is super annoying.

Yeah just like Anna and Kristoff's house... I wish it would be like that...

[Cathy]

I undertand that NPC interiors will always be a bit nicer, because those objects are just part of the textures, they are not moveable. But the player house interiors could still look nicer and work with the moveable objects available to the player.

Virtually every other game that allows interior modifications by the player looks better than this. The houses for Witcher3 DLC are lovely, though you are confined to chests and book cases for storage. Even pixel Stardew Valley provides better interior design and room transition. I'd say the interiors of "My Time At Portia" are the closest to what they'd want to do. The houses can be upgraded (and change quite a bit with upgrades) and can be customized with wallpaper and flooring. And you can place all kinds of furniture inside. The art style of that game is also close to Disney's style.

I get why they are using closed doors and an "elevator". This way, they do not need to offer any room-to-room transition. They give you a grid (choose one of three sizes) and the next "room" is a separate grid. That's fine for a beta build. If it's still undefined in alpha, they should at least note in the interior view that it is under development. But the interior view is important.

The quests will engage you for a few days, but after you've maxed your relationships and finished the quests, all that's left is decorating. There is no multiplayer, so nothing there to hold players. So if your interiors are poor, players wander off and do not return to the game. The devs need to complete the player house interior.