I bought an estate, and I have some gripes with housing.

[caidicus]

[EDIT]
Since posting this, many people have offered me information that has made the estate more useful as a guild hub. I've put in a training dummy, a banker, a vendor, all of the work stations, and even a mundus stone.

All of these modifications have greatly improved the usefulness of the property, and addressed at least some of my concerns. Thanks for the contributions, posters.
[EDIT]

So, I am new to ESO, and seeing as I don't have the will to play games all the time, I often just buy stuff in games that allow me to do so.

So, here I am on the Crown Store, looking at houses. I see the really large estates that cost about 13k crowns, with an additional few K crowns to buy it furnished.

I chose that option, after seeing the preview and seeing how awesome the house looked. There was furnishings all over the house, making it look like a house. Cool, looks like a good deal.

After purchasing it, however, I realized that nothing in the house is usable. It's all cosmetic. There are crates everywhere, but they're simply decoration. There's a kitchen with cooking areas and fires and all that, but none of it does anything.

Even the bed can't be slept in by pressing E.

That was unfortunate, but even greater faults started to pop up. Each work station that you want to add to the house costs about 2.5k to 3k more crowns. This adds up fast. But hey, whatever.

I was thinking, this would be a great guild headquarters, but even more problems came up. There are no market vendors, bankers, or anything that would draw people to use the estate as a guild headquarters. There isn't even the option to upgrade services to convert the estate into a guild headquarters.

Now, to be clear, there are two additional assistants that can be bought for 5K crowns each, one lets you sell stuff from your inventory, one is a banker. You can place them in the house, which adds a little convenience, but it's still a long way from making all that investment feel like it was a good investment for your guild.

I've placed my work stations in the garage beside the stables, and the single vendor (she only buys stuff from players, she has nothing to sell) is standing by those work stations. The garage is to the right of the house (the one I own, layouts are different, depending on the property you purchase), and that is basically the only purpose that my place serves.

All that space, all those rooms, all those seats that can't actually be sat in, etc. Why would anyone want to use the house for anything?

I understand that ESO is structured more like an MMO than a traditional Elder Scrolls game, so "stuff" is generally more difficult to get. That still doesn't remove the disappointment I had when I realized that unlike all other Elder Scrolls before ESO, this giant house that I spent real money for did not come with any goodies. No plants that grow on my land, no bugs in the air that I could harvest, no fishing spot, the only reward for owning the house is a bunch of pretty decorations and a new title on my name "Lord."

Lord of the empty halls, perhaps.

There's one more issue that makes the properties less than ideal, if you warp to it, you have to walk back from it, afte you leave. There's no wayshrine at your place, so while warping there is free, warping anywhere else will cost you either money or the time to run to the closest wayshrine.

Seeing as there are wayshrines in the world, which are closer to work stations, this makes the estates and homes even less viable as Guild hubs.

Is Zenimax planning to do anything further with homes, or is this half thought out idea their final answer?

Also, if you own one of these properties, and you've thought of benefits that I obviously overlooked, I would be very grateful to learn of them.

[Drake]

You should have sought information before buying... especially with real money, people would have told you that houses are only for cosmetic purposes and no one knows if that will ever change.

[caidicus]

Postat inițial de Sajah:

You should have sought information before buying... especially with real money, people would have told you that houses are only for cosmetic purposes and no one knows if that will ever change.

True enough, though what's done is done. All I can do is voice my thoughts on here, in hopes that it might one day lead to refinements of the housing system.

Slim chances, perhaps, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

[JumbaWumba]

Houses are cosmetic: for RP, guild halls, etc. Only function they have is the crafting benches, so you can create sets from the comfort of your home.

......that is it. Banks are shared, and can be 240 spaces (480 if ESO+), so no real point in containers in home.

[Wo1f]

All i can say, without being too rude, is ...its your own fault for rushing into spending a huge amount of money/crowns without doing any due diligence/research, especially given the fact that you are new to the game.

If you had done any reasearch into housing in this game prior to opening your wallet, you would have realized that housing is essentially pointless in eso, its mostly for show or rp-ing and mostly cosmetic, it was designed that way intentionally (no storage capabiliteis) so as to be "an end game gold sink" so to speak, and really not worth the time/moeny for most players, especially for new players.

Players that own bigger properties have been playing for a long time and accumulated alot of ingame gold, and thus can afford to spend the gold on such things, and they mostly use houses to furnish them with crafting stations (for convenience) and practice/target dummies to prectice/optmise/measure their skill rotations/dps.

Some guilds also have large houses/properties that act as a meeting space for menbers and may also contain those craft stations and target dummies for the convenience of the members not having to leave the guld hall to do their crafting etc.

[quarre]

I'm too lazy to read all this stuff, so:
- All furnishings except ones with "Interactable" text in description are decorations.
- You can put Banker and Vendor in your house if you bought 5k crowns assistants.
- You can purchase crafting stations for ~45-70k gold. Same with those for crowns. Or you can gather more money and purchase set crafting stations for 300-500k gold each.
- You can buy few training dummies, but... yeah, you can buy those for gold as well.
- You can purchase mundus stones, and they will work... but its stupid, okay?

Housing is mostly for roleplying and/or demonstrating your wealth (mounts, pets, crafting stations etc). You can demonstrate your wealth and progress via Acievement furnishings. Those are xpensive as hell. So its useless. Maaaybe, for dps tests of new build on training dummy. Only reason to purchase Notable house is title. Oh, and you can put 350 (700 with ESO+) furnishings inside.

You can check my illustration where you can see 2/3 of first floor of my house, which is kinda guildhouse. With throne and stuff.

If you wanna advice... buy Twin Arches. Its a house in Bangkorai for 60-70k gold only. You can place trader, banker, training dummy or two, crafting stations and decorate cute tavern + office. Its not "best" house, but one of cutest ones. 2nd is Cyrodilic Jungle House, but its not so easy to decorate. But - wayshrine nearby + 5 guild traders + stablemaster. Talking about bigger houses (staple can have only 6 people at same time), i'd suggest Grymharth's Woe in Eastmarch. Easy to decorate, lots of free space, in a middle of town + Outlaws Refuge in few metres. 12 people at same time.

TBH, only bad thing about Twin Arches is ~30 sec to nearest wayshrine.

You can decorate your house with all and everything, but lets be serious:
1st, noone will give a duck because they always teleport to Rawl'kha or Rivenspire;
2nd, only good thing house is cool for is roleplaying.

[caidicus]

Thanks again for all of the replies. It's given me some stuff to consider, like "what are mundus stones?"

I still think it's unfortunate that guild houses are largely cosmetic. Being the leader of my new guild, it would at least be nice to set the house as the official guild house, instead of players having to open the friend's list and warp to my primary residence. That makes it seem less official, in my perspective.

Anyway, again, I appreciate the replies, even the "you should have done research before you bought a house" ones, regardless of their being too late to be useful contributions to the discussion.

I honestly didn't know I could buy workstations using ingame gold, I thought they were strictly crown purchases. So, your contributions to this post have been most enlightening.

[quarre]

Even your house could be purchased by gold, and you know it. There's few exceptions, like Vivac's Divination Pool or Mundus, but ~90% of all furniture can be purchased by gold. And for gold you can buy even better crafting stations that for crowns.

Mundus stones are kinda sacred places, which gives you unlimited time buff. Only one Mundus stone can be active at time, if you're not using that armor set from Craglorn. There's 13 of them in total, and they located all across Tamriel: one set per alliance locations + full set in Cyrodiil.

Since you dont need to renew their buff, this item is mostly useless.

And, btw, there's one cute difference between crown-purchased and gold-purchsed furnitures: you cant trade crown-purchased ones. They're bound to your account. And crafted furnitures can be traded as much as you want.

Sometimes furniture purchsing via crowns is cool, if you wanna make cute house asap, but too lazy to gring all guild traders for item you want, or if its only avaliable via crowns. But for most of times... not worth.

Last one, check luxory furniture trader in Coldharbor, who appear only for weekend. He brings items you cant get via craft or crowns. Like, exclusive stuff that changes every weekend. But prepare 100-200k gold first, those can be expensive.

[caidicus]

Postat inițial de kasmemoro:

Even your house could be purchased by gold, and you know it. There's few exceptions, like Vivac's Divination Pool or Mundus, but ~90% of all furniture can be purchased by gold. And for gold you can buy even better crafting stations that for crowns.

Mundus stones are kinda sacred places, which gives you unlimited time buff. Only one Mundus stone can be active at time, if you're not using that armor set from Craglorn. There's 13 of them in total, and they located all across Tamriel: one set per alliance locations + full set in Cyrodiil.

Since you dont need to renew their buff, this item is mostly useless.

And, btw, there's one cute difference between crown-purchased and gold-purchsed furnitures: you cant trade crown-purchased ones. They're bound to your account. And crafted furnitures can be traded as much as you want.

Sometimes furniture purchsing via crowns is cool, if you wanna make cute house asap, but too lazy to gring all guild traders for item you want, or if its only avaliable via crowns. But for most of times... not worth.

Last one, check luxory furniture trader in Coldharbor, who appear only for weekend. He brings items you cant get via craft or crowns. Like, exclusive stuff that changes every weekend. But prepare 100-200k gold first, those can be expensive.

Cool, lots more useful information.

[kip]

Postat inițial de caidicus:

I still think it's unfortunate that guild houses are largely cosmetic. Being the leader of my new guild, it would at least be nice to set the house as the official guild house, instead of players having to open the friend's list and warp to my primary residence. That makes it seem less official, in my perspective.

You can set your house as a guild house - go to settings within the housing editor. There's options for choosing who can visit your house. You can choose guild members and set the guild you want.

oh wait, I misread sorry. Now I see what you mean.