Missed the Q&A with the LotRO developers? Here’s what you missed.
Hello everyone,
Yes, I took my time, but here’s finally the recap of the Q&A session held in early August with some of the Standing Stone Games team about LotRO Housing.
Scenario, Orion, and Cordovan were present to answer your questions for an hour, and here’s a summary of the responses.
I’ve left out some of the more common (or specific) questions (like “Can we have this chair as a decoration?”) and others that have already been answered many times.
So, without further ado, here’s what you need to know:
Q&A with Members of the LotRO Team
General
The Homestead Supporter Pack was widely loved for having a stable item, especially with its interior lighting. Any chance of a future pack that might be decor-focused?
It is highly likely that more decor-focused Support Packs will be introduced in the future!
Is it still on the table at all in the future to allow us to buy a secondary kinship house?
We want to allow you to own multiple kinship houses. Engineering support will be needed to make it happen. No ETA but we would love to do that.
Might in the future be added a Hobby for painting? (So, we could create portraits and other paintings, also including wall-surfaces)
That is something we have talked about internally, and something Orion already pitched years ago. There are technical issues. We do not have an effective way to allow you to do this within our engine scope – and there are other implementation and community-related concerns that we would need to have answers for prior to implementing such a system.
Hobby - also, would love a florist, some great deco possibilities!
Another interesting idea!
Any general systems related to housing or anything else meant to compliment RP?
This is something we are talking about internally, especially with Kinship Revamp. We have many ideas (community gardens?) but nothing set in stone.
Any chance could increase transparency on when homes become available in game?
Having mail/notification to inform you when a particular house is available is a good idea. We need engineering to assess if we can do that.
Can the current active address be shown on the tooltip for the housing teleport skills of "Premium House" and "Kinship Member's House" like it is on the classic personal house teleport tooltip?
Unfortunately, this is an issue that we have with our tooltip system.
Would it be possible to look out from inside a house, and watch the world go by - alternatively get a balcony/porch with chairs for that?
When I (Scenario) designed Rohan homesteads, I wanted to have that kind of functionality. Unfortunately, we do not have the technology to create a remote camera like you would see in other games. I considered creating a unique skybox for each house, but you wouldn’t be able to actually see what is outside of your house (no decoration in your yards, not able to see a friend in your yard, no day/night cycles, etc). The number of unique skyboxes plus the lack of any sort of dynamic presentation killed the idea.
Need to ask: can Orion and Scenario finally talk a little about their big housing endgame? I ask this every year, every stream; it is a tradition at this point!
We have so many plans for housing!
In the end, we want players to make their mark in the world we created by having their own personal space in Middle-Earth. Would that mean open world housing? No, but the Test Estate is the beginning of the direction we want to go and checking it out on Bullroarer can give you hints about the future we have planned for housing.
Hooks
Are the extra hooks that we could buy in the LotRO Store still a possibility?
A possibility but right now we do not really want to add more hooks for performance reasons.
Firepit hooks - could they be reworked to make it easier to click on things that are in that space? The hooks are visually so big that I often click on them when I'm trying to get to the light or ceiling or any objects I've placed in that area.
We can look at changing the size of the Firepit hooks box. Please send us a bug report for this!
Can we have universal hooks?
Furniture/Yard hooks are mostly Universal hooks since you can put Doormats, Furniture, Yard, and Floors items in it. We could also consider merging Wall & Furniture hooks in the future.
Can the range of exterior hooks be extended to reach all areas on the property?
Unfortunately, this is not something we can do for non-mobile yard hooks. We would love to be able to provide more yard hook flexibility but changing how standard yard hooks work changes their association with the housekeeper object and that means a lot of engineering work.
Deco Items
How difficult or easy would it be to scale the skin image on movable walls to match the scale of their corresponding wallpaper in original hobbit homes?
That would require a scale-able tech that we unfortunately do not have right now.
Can we please get 40m decorative fence items?
This is totally something that we could do when we have some time available to create those items.
Decorative walls- will we ever be able to paint them to match wallpapers?
We have a request for Engineering to look at it. We would like you to be able to paint your decorative structures the same way you use the dye system for cosmetics.
Is it possible to make doors in some of the structural walls?
I have been prototyping decorative doors. So that may be something you will see someday!
About Firepits - could we get more deco for that hook? Something hobbity would be fantastic, but also the ability to move these and maybe resize them.
Having more firepits is something we can do in the future, when we find some time to create them. And yes, it may be possible for us to create smaller firepits that match Lyndelby houses (we also recently added the ability for you to use Firepits hooks for Furniture items).
With Legacy of Morgoth coming, please add many statues and NPC decorations of evil characters. Sauron, Morgoth?
When we originally made the housing system, we did not want players to make an ugly house or have too many evil things. That position has softened over the years. We might not allow players to go full evil, but we could offer more decorations that lean into that kind of style.
Any hope of being able to resize housing items? Like having 3 sizes (x0.5 x1 x1.5)
This is something we would like to do in the future. We would need to have some engineering work done before to allow you to resize shapes and textures though.
Has it been thought of for changing the texture and colors of the Ceiling in your house? Like we can with walls/floors.
This is something we could do, but it will add more hooks and weight to the server. Because of that, it is not something we are actively working on.
With limited time and resources would it be possible to integrate community build assets like a hobbit fireplace into the game (based on restrictions of course, like in other games like Sims or Cities Skylines)? There are many talented artists out there and some might be able and passionate to contribute this way.
This is not something we can do due to the nature of the IP and many other legal aspects.
What's the deal with no-water coming out of the Umbari fountain in the latest Reward Track rewards? Can water eventually come out?
This is mostly an issue with the water effect not being attached to the fountain asset. A new asset would need to be created with the water plane integrated into it.
Would it be possible to have more items like the Harmelak’s Desk?
Over the past few months, I have been working on consolidating assets for housing items. You have already seen a few of these and more will come. It is always a matter of time when creating those items.
Homesteads
Is there anything about the premium elven homesteads that you'd want to share today?
Nothing new to share at this point. We usually work on new neighborhoods when we have our “lab” times, often between an expansion release and following updates. The developer who has been working on Rivendell housing had to stop working on it to fully work on Update 42. Once their work is done with Legacy of Morgoth, work can continue on Rivendell housing.
This is also why we tend to not put new housing homesteads on the annual Roadmap.
Are you considering to create future homesteads with mobile yard hooks only?
We have tested the mobile hook system with Erebor, in a closed environment, and Lyndelby, in an open-world area.
We are now considering what we could do for the next neighborhood. We still want to be sure that people are not too seriously impacting their neighbors' experience with wildly unconventional designs. But we also want to allow you more flexibility. So, we will see!
Is there any way to add horse pet hooks to original hobbit houses? What is the challenge here?
The challenge with adding those new hooks into older neighborhood is mostly time. It takes a lot of work to port back to basic housing such as music, dayfiles, mount hooks and fences. And with features such as music and dayfiles, those older neighborhoods were not built very “squarely” which makes placing those volumes difficult.
Will there be an Umbari homestead in the future?
Probably! Umbar and the Shield Islands are beautiful places to live.
When we developed Umbar, Severlin asked us if we could create some kind of “Boat Housing”. Unfortunately, developing a housing neighborhood on a ship is not as easy as it might sound. We have also got ideas for a couple of other Umbari-themed neighborhoods beyond boat-based housing.
My biggest Rivendell housing question: will the roofs be red like in the rest of Rivendell or more importantly, Falathlorn?
The textures and assets we’re going to use in Rivendell housing are TBD at the moment.
Can we have the ability to collectively fund a premium kin house? It can be costly when left to the kin leader.
This is something we are looking at while working on Kinship Revamp. But we don’t have an answer for you yet.
And that’s it for the recap! I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who attended this session, and of course, I deeply thank Orion, Scenario, and Cordovan for giving us an hour of their precious time to answer our questions about LotRO Housing.
Unless there’s another opportunity (Rivendell?) to do another Q&A before then, I’ll see you next year for another session. 😉