World [coming In-game, 91.9% Approval] Clientside / Instanced Housing [ Includes Demonstration & Detail ]

“Oh boy, another housing thread. Lemme just go vote ‘Nope’ in the polls real quick.”

WAIT!! I know this doesn’t look promising at first, but trust me when I say I’ve put a lot of work and detail into this idea. Please read the entire thread first, and if you still think it’s bad, you can vote ‘Nope’ fair and squarely, preferably with an explanation why.

Housing is without a doubt one of the most overly-suggested ideas with possibly the most negative feedback to it. Some of it is due to them being low-quality ideas/suggestions, others dislike it for the possible performance issues it could have, and others dislike it because of how hard it would be to make it fit into the world conveniently. In short, housing suggestions have not been very well received for the past… Well, I don’t know how long, let’s just say since the first day of Wynncraft.

So, today I’m here to offer my full take on housing for an idea, as well as show the implementation of it in some respective. I know this is probably not the “perfect” housing idea everyone would want, but at the very least I do believe it’s very high-quality and flexible.

Without further adieu, introducing Instanced Housing!



Instanced Housing is as the name suggests: Housing that is purely clientside and only the owner and allowed residents can view and use the house. There are quite a few benefits to this system:

• World Space is no longer an issue. The biggest problem housing must address in practically any game is how to make it not take up all of the world. With Instanced Housing, space issues can be heavily ignored.
  
  
• Decide who gets to see/use your house. It’s pretty obvious many players don’t want other strangers wandering on their property. Instanced Housing is completely clientside, so you don’t have to worry about that.
  
  
• All hail privacy. Can you only build a wooden box house and don’t want others to judge? Say no more! Instanced Housing gives you that privacy so that way no one can see your box house!
  
  
• Instanced Socializing! Since Housing is entirely clientside, you can invite friends to join and even live with you in your house! Create an epic guild hall where you will rally your guildmates to hold your ceremonies, or live with friends or your special someone in peace.

These are the primary key fixes that Instanced Housing provides for us. But how do we obtain these plots? What about features? What can we do with our housing, and what will it provide for us?

(NOTE: Numbers are just examples and are subjected to change.)

Obtaining & Moving a Plot



A player can have a maximum of 3 Housing Plots. The first plot will cost 16 LE, the second is 32 LE, while the final is 64 LE. Each plot is the same size, approximately 25x25. These plots are account-bound, meaning once you buy the plot, you don’t need to buy them again for your other classes.

Having multiple plots serves to allow the player to have a main house and a secondary house, with the secondary house serving as more utility to the player. They are free to turn this into a “public” invite-everyone-here plot, a small shop, a GoodWill store, or just another storage unit. They can use their first plot for their personal needs if they wish.

Players can only buy a plot once they reach level 68. This is to set some sort of boundary for new players from buying a plot right off the bat if they somehow accumulate the money to buy one. It will also give them something to work forward to in the later levels aside from new spells. Level 68 is not a very high level to work towards, and is obtainable by all as long as they work hard.

Where do you buy these plots? Wherever a Plot is! Simple as that.

So onto moving your plots around the world. It’s safe to say that although this is instanced, it would absolutely suck to have it in 1 place all the time. No one wants to go to Ragni just to sit in their house to roleplay or something.
So, this is probably one of the key and most interesting features of this Housing version: When you buy a House Plot, you can move/summon your plot ANYWHERE in the world where there is a Plot spot. This means you can buy your House Plot in Detlas, then move it to Llevigar at NO COST. This won’t override other plots already existing there, as, well, your house is instanced! This basically converts it into a moving fortress of solitude.

House Plots can be moved wherever a Plot is at. These Plots can be placed anywhere in the world. A common place would most likely be cities and towns, but perhaps next to dungeons or even Legendary Island would be nice too so that way players are able to do some stuff before entering a dungeon.

Clientside Building




I’m sticking with Clientside building as I didn’t want to go through the trouble of creating pre-builds, but technically Clientside pre-builds/schematics would work too.

Housing will be entirely built BY the player by hand. It allows for the highest level of customization and allows for creativity to flourish. Players will have access to Plot Blocks, which are blocks that allow you to build your plot. These are of course common blocks you find in the normal world, such as logs, cobblestone, etc.

You can acquire Plot Blocks by buying them from vendors. Most common blocks will be accessible for free, but for unique blocks such as Beacons, you will need to beat a Dungeon. This is a 1-time ordeal, so you don’t need to clear Eldritch Outlook 3 times for 1 Beacon Block.
Buying from vendors also introduces a new money sink into the game. While the blocks aren’t pricey, they will be commonly used and do introduce a new way to remove money from circulation.

And finally, when you obtain a new plot, you will be given a set of Plot Blocks for free to start with. You will also be given a free House Plot Teleportation Scroll, which will teleport you to your plot wherever you have assigned it.

Ya, I know the typical response to this is “Wynncraft is an RPG! There shouldn’t be any building in it or else it will become a build server!” From my standpoint, Wynncraft is a game inside Minecraft. I’d really like to see Wynncraft use some of the fundamental features that Minecraft offers, and building houses yourself is one of those.
I also highly doubt it would become a build server. Even if the average player just only places armor stands and chests on their plot, that can still work. And like I said, builds are instanced, so only you and other residents of that house can see it.

Here's more information from @JaydonTheWarrior

Don’t like Clientside Building regardless? Like I said, preset schematics or builds that you can link to each other can work too. I just did Clientside building as I didn’t want to learn how to do schematics.

Storage & Interactables




So you built this cool house. What the hell do you do with it? Well, House Plots can also use Plot Chests, which are essentially your standard 3-row 27-slot chests to hold items. A plot can only have 6 Plot Chests existing.

While Plot chests can serve as extra storage, they also serve as the idea of long-term storage, meaning storing items that you don’t really touch in your bank on a regular basis. These include collectibles, materials/ingredients, and old items.
A cool functionality about Plot Chests is that you can easily move Plot Chests around. When you destroy a Plot Chest that contains items, it is sent into limbo. When you place a new Plot Chest down, you are given the option to declare it a new Plot Chest (If you haven’t reached the limit yet), or assign it an existing Plot Chest that’s in Limbo. You can also swap the inventories of Plot Chests for easy organization.

However, Plot Chests are somewhat costly. 5 LE for 1 Plot Chest for a total of 30 LE for all five chests. This is essentially because it’s more storage other than your Bank. You can also deem the Plot Chests “public” or “private,” and all chests are defaulted to the “private” status. This concept will be used in a later section.

Other than Storage, House Plots can also contain the following interactables:

• Build Stands. These are Armor Stands, but will hold your weapon, armor, and accessories. They will also copy the amount of Skill Points you have assigned. When you equip the build again, the build off the stand will be automatically equipped to you with the Skill Points assigned, while your current set will be swapped onto the Build Stand.
  
  
• Crafting Stations. These are the Crafting Stations used for professions. However, you can only have 4 Crafting Stations in 1 House Plot. The costs estimated for these should be around 12 LE, totalling 48 LE for a full set.
  
  
• Bed Spawnpoints. This one is a bit more complex to explain. In your House Plot, you can have your Spawnpoint be at your Bed. This spawnpoint is also moved whenever you move your house. For example, let’s say you set your spawnpoint in Detlas, move your house to Corkus City, and die in Legendary Island. You will have the option to either respawn at the nearest global respawn point, or respawn at your Bed in Corkus City. You can only have 1 House Plot define your Bed Spawnpoint, so you can’t have 1 Bed Spawn in Ragni, and the other in Ahmsord.
  
  
• Furniture. Fairly standard stuff. Chairs you can sit in, armor stand decorations, etc.

Visitors & Residency



Some of you in the back of your mind may be screaming “CAN WE VISIT OTHER PLAYER’S HOUSES!?!?!?” Of course you can. What the hell is a Housing System without visitation?

Visitation & Residency is the more complex part of this Housing Suggestion, so I’ll try to explain this as best as possible.

There are 5 Levels of Residency a player can obtain for a House Plot:

• Owner (Level 4) - Owns the house. All permissions. Can move the house at will and also accept plot moves. This Level cannot be transferred or given.
  
  
• Housemate (Level 3) - Co-owns the house along with the Owner. Can build/destroy blocks and invite Visitors.
  
  
• Trusted (Level 2) - Can request plot moves and open private Plot Chests (Private Plot Chests are only accessible to Trusted and above).
  
  
• Keyholder (Level 1) - Can visit the house at anytime.
  
  
• Visitor (Level 0) - Invited by the house owner. Can only access public Plot Chests. Once they leave the plot, they cannot come back unless re-invited.

The Owner and their Housemates can invite Visitors to their plot. In order for the player to be able to invite a Visitor, they must be at least within 50 blocks of where the Owner has placed their plot. From there, the Owner can promote the Visitor to whatever rank they desire.

All Residents, regardless of level, can only visit the house if they are at the Plot the Owner has assigned the plot to. However, Trusted and above can request a “plot move” in case they need to access the Owner’s plot for some reason. For example, Player A can request a plot move to Alumj, and Player B, the owner of the house, can accept it. The house will then be moved to the Alumj plot. Player B can then move the House Plot back to Detlas when Player A is finished, or they can leave the House Plot there.

Visitors and Keyholders can only have access to public Plot Chests, while Trusted and above have access to private Plot Chests. This allows for things such as shared storage among friends, or even a small shop for others.
Trusted serves mainly for those best friends you have, while Housemate serves as for your bestest friends, or maybe that special someone you have in your life.

Other Minor Features

• While inside your plot, you gain significant increased Health Regen.
• If you log out inside your plot, you will generate XP bonus. This effect lasts longer the longer you stay logged out.
• You cannot cast spells while inside a House Plot.

Conclusion

Well, that’s it for my version of housing. Now you can add this to whatever “Housing Suggestions” list you have (Hello @Bart (MC)), copy-paste your House hate-rant (Looking at you @captainganon), or add it to the housing video (Your time is now @ExertKarma).

I know that this isn’t the “perfect” housing suggestion. There are probably still some factors that I missed, such as how this will work across servers (I was honestly too lazy to even think about that…), and I will be happy to address them if you ask.

Housing has always been a suggestion that I’ve liked and wanted for Wynncraft, but there was always so much hate and memes circulating around it that it just became irrelevant. I wanted to do my best to help clear the atmosphere for housing and try to put it into a better light.

Shoutout to the following who helped out with this (If I forgot any testers, please DM me on the forums or Discord):

• AlteredStars (@StarDraco123) - Opinions, Ideas, Testing, Video Aid
• NagisaStreams (@NagisaStreams) - Loads of testing. Thanks for finding out how to crash the server.
• wage_c**k (@wage_cuck) - Terraining the Whisperwood Plot, Building Houses, Video Aid
• FortniteGamerGod (@Corpe _) - Moral Support
• Neodymeowm (@Neodymeowm) - Moral Support
• Bart_MC (@Bart (MC)) - Testing, Video Aid
• Tiger_ (@_Tiger) - Testing, Video Aid
• Leg_ (@_Leg) - Testing, Video Aid
• Iboju (@Iboju) - Testing, Video Aid
• Filorial (@Filorial) - Testing, Video Aid

Thanks for reading! And as always, feedback is appreciated! (Please be nice…)

________________________________

ACC (Addressing Common Concerns)

No doubt there are still some concerns you may still have, even after reading all of this. Please read these if you have them before you post something.

Housing file sizes will be gigantic! It will take forever to load them!
Actually, file sizes were less than 1 MB, in fact most were under 350KB. All Housing files are loaded ONCE on server startup, so it’s a 1-time load. It also doesn’t take much time at all for the files to load themselves up, and even if it does eventually, they can always be loaded on an async task after server startup to load while the server is still able to function.

This doesn’t seem very performance efficient. Wynncraft already has bad lag!
This is why houses load/unload block-by-block instead of instantaneously. Instantaneous is very performance-heavy on the server, while progressive loading is much easier on the server. To compensate for this, the loading/unloading effects are extremely satisfying to watch.
But, if you really want to make sure it doesn’t lag or crash the server, I could make it load/unload instantaneously with some async tasks… But in my opinion I like pretty load animations. :)
Also, the clientside blocks are sent once when needed (loading, building, destroying), not every tick. That would be disgusting.

Seems to be a lot of work to implement this. Bugs are a big issue too!
Unfortunately I can’t entirely comfort you and say this took 3 days to make. But regardless, any housing suggestion would be difficult to implement into the game. This one I believe only requires programming time, but even then it would take some work to make as Wynncraft’s code is significantly different. GMs and Builders don’t need to spend a lot of their time setting up premade builds and such. There are some eases on the implementation, but it will still be difficult.
As for bugs, I highly doubt any game breaking ones exist here (Thanks Testers), but of course there’s always some lingering around. But, that’s why QAing before launching exists.

Housing does not make sense in the world, even if it is doable. We’re mercenaries/soldiers, not citizens!
I don’t see the player that way actually. If we really were just soldiers or mercenaries, why do we have access to an expandable bank right off the bat? Wouldn’t we also get some of our expenses paid too? Not to mention the player is ALSO a citizen of Troms later in the game.
In my opinion, we’re more of adventurers doing good, and while the lore does say that we are soldiers from Fruma, it doesn’t mean we’re not citizens of Wynn at this point. And the argument alone is a bit stretched and seems like more of a way to shut down Housing suggestions.

Don’t tease the Content Team like this. Just because you can make it doesn’t mean it’s easy for them!
Never said this was easy to make, in fact it was incredibly hard and I had to perform some black bovemist magic to get some of this to work.
Similar to that of the Actor System, the reason I actually made the Housing System was because I needed to know and show the following:

1. It’s a housing idea that is within the realm of possibility. An idea like this, especially on this scale, is hard to convince people, including myself, that it’s possible without showing some proof-of-concept. This is also probably one of the primary issues with most Housing suggestions before this. It was more talk and tell than show. However, I do know that many do not have access to the tools that I do, which is completely understandable.
2. Showing is better than telling. A 14 page essay on a Housing idea is not as easy to understand as images and videos on how it works and what it looks like.
3. Builds hope and possibility for Housing as a whole. I don’t really care if this suggestion never gets implemented. As long as I can show people that it’s within the possibility of Minecraft, it’s good enough.

 

first


edit: this was fun to record. hope y'all enjoy the suggestion.

 

oh no

 

a housing thread? heresy! let me just click "nope" and skip the entirety of it!

 

What the frick

 

0/10 not enough disagreements for a housing suggestion

also i was here pogu

 

I appreciate all of the effort you've done for this, I really do and approchaing the lag and whatnot, but I don't really like the idea of summoning your house in certain zones or anywhere you want(?!) if that's what you're saying. But I don't like having to summon it in certain areas as surely they would all just be taken up by people in the cities. Also, the chests are too expensive for what they are, many le for a chest isn't really worth it to be honest when you have the bank. I do like the suggestion though, and this is definitely my most favouritestest ever housing thread!

 

You missed a key point, housing is clientsided. You can have an infinite amount of houses inside of one plot (Like nova can be building his house and meanwhile im at the same coordinates but I won't see his house)

 

-yes, you would have to summon it in specific housing plots. but its 100% client sided. they wouldn't be "taken up" by other players all the time.
-the chests are optional, and just act as extra storage. in fact, its even cheaper than bank pages once you get to a certain point.

 

Housing is clientside, so you don't override other people's houses at all.

 

Ohhh I get in now, thanks

 

gamer momentum

 

Even if the whole housing thing will never make it into Wynn, atleast give us something like these stands to embrace collecting sets and armor pieces.
Salted please think about the COLLECTORS

But either way, this is a well crafted thread and system that is absolutely worth considering adding, especially after the high request for such a feature.

 

this smacks of trove...

Nova will you go through and remake all of the memed on and awful suggestions to be actual good ones?
I'd love to see your take on the Necromancer

 

+1 this is amazing

 

At 1:45 in the video you can see what I mean about it loading other plots, you can see us in a house then nova loads one even though we have one already

 

Addressing this, there's a principal in adventure game design, mainly about building familiarity, and then adventure into the unknown.
Its a design largely taken from the Hero's Journey, but it basically means that the first town (Or other hubs) becomes home. A good example of this would be Monster Hunter World's hub.
Imagine starting a game like this in the middle of the woods, the unknown becomes normal, and adventuring into it would be rather boring.
Wynncraft already tries to do this with its hub design, however, I think this suggestion could add another layer of this.
That, however, would require you to limit it to mostly hub cities, like Detlas, Ragni, Troms.

Here's another thing to consider, certain area's are specifically not meant to feel like home, the question then is, should houses be there?
I think you can bring this point to an extreme with the Silent Expanse, which is literally meant to feel like a horrible thing? Its meant to be uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and uncertain; Adding housing to this area could lower that a lot, which is worth considering.

Note: What I just said isn't against this suggestion, and instead is meant to point out that where they decided to place plots would be rather important.
It can build more familiarity, which is good for hubs, but bad for areas of horror, unknown, or adventure.

As for anyone who says this, it's insanely important for a game to offer breaks from its main gameplay loop.
A constant bombardment of the same activities can grow endlessly boring.
Here's another insanely important game design tip, simply, pacing.
I'm not going to write a whole essay to explain why you should consider pacing, because it's one, very obvious as to what it is, and two, there's a really good video by Game Maker's Toolkit:

 

No... It can't be...

An actual good Housing Suggestion???

 

I really really really really like this idea. Like really. I don’t care what anyone else thinks, Nova you are a genius, I have a few questions and suggestions though.
What if gathering materials, such as wood and ores, could be used to build your house? That would be neat.
Where would there be room for the housing? Most cities are pretty compact.
What do you mean by “generate xp bonus” while logged out in the housing area?
Anyways, +1 to the idea