I was thinking today building a dream home in skyrim on multiple plots of land sounded like a perfect thing for me when i was into skyrim sadly i only have my xbox one now. Anyways i was expecting more of like a Sims type of experience as far as building the homes go i mean maybe not as crazy but same idea. In retrospect how GTA 5 approached the pimping out cars, they had some in depth stuff reminded me of one of my all time favorite racing games underground 2 but they didn't go to far so that they could still control how crazy it got.

I guess the purpose of this rant is i would of spent probably hundreds of hours throughout my different characters and different homes i could build if it was a better experience. Would you guys and gals want to see a better experience to build a home i.e. hang things from the wallls, pick the furniture, chooose a theme for the house, color, rugs, etc.

I didn't want a sims experience i meant just the aspect of house building thats it.

No. That sounds too nitpicky for my personal taste,and all the individually rendered things could really slow down consoles.

Hearthfire was made so you can build a house of your personal preference and adopt children. It did these things,and it did them well. It was never meant to add hundreds of hours of gameplay.

Why in the world did you expect a sims experience in an RPG? They are COMPLETELY different styles of games.

I think there are things they could have done better to make it feel more expressive of personal taste.

For one thing, they didn't have to make all three houses the exact same shape. A totally unique layout for all three would have made each one feel unique and players might have felt more drawn to one than the others (just as they do with the vanilla player homes). I also think that some kind of simple color customization would have been nice, and maybe a allowing for a bit more artwork on the walls too, where they could have allowed the player to choose between a variety of paintings. I don't feel like that would require huge amounts of memory or resources, not like creating a full blown sims game within Skyrim, but little stuff like that would have helped the players feel a greater sense of creativity and ownership in their homes. As it is right now, it's perfectly nice, but for some reason I always feel like I'm leasing someone else's place.

Would have preferred some variety and more optional/blocking choices than just the wings, but then you take a look at it in the CK even compared to the "inspiration" BYOH mod and it is pretty complex placement etc. I was expecting better trophy options and more accommodation/quarters for your retainers & family too. On the other hand it was pretty cheap.

Hearthfire was more than enough for me.

you really expected something akin to the Sims?

Sims entire Engine is based around building a house... half its community doesn't even make families, just make houses..

.. I am not even sure Skyrims creation Engine could handle that type of placement ingame.. let alone the appropriate interface...



However, if you want to build a house more akin to the sims, your best bet is to buy a PC copy and make a mod.. however, it won't be nearly as User Friendly as building a house in the sims..

I completely agree with this. I liked Hearthfire a lot, but the lack of variety between houses was tragic.

I couldn't tell the houses from one character apart from another who built on a different plot of land without looking at the extra wings. It's too late now, but it would have been nice to have something to customize the different houses a bit more and make them unique from one another. Aside from the extra wings, of course.

There are several RPGs that would love to talk to you. For some, house designing is the center of their RPG experience.

Fable? Not housing mind you, but well you can buy and redecorate every single house, not to mention your spouse and children react to what you do.

I actually enjoyed the marriage and kid dialog from Fable 3, my king's husband once went to one of their little girls and said "If a bully gives you trouble tell your other dad."

I killed someone that was innocent, my daughter came up to me, "Dad, why did you kill someone?"

My point being is that I would have been happy with more dialog instead of the same two lines over and over again.

The houses seemed cut and paste. No game, I don't want the guest beds in the same room as the master bed, I have a perfectly empty room that I could put those beds.

I would have also enjoyed being able to put the furniture where I wanted!

I think it's important to note that Skyrim, at least to me, is much more of an aRPG - rather than a pure RPG itself. The perk tree system (in comparison to the more or less completely open ended perk system of the Fallout games), the limited dialogue options, the way many quests feel strangely impact-less - these are all hallmarks of a game where the emphasis is on action, combat and dungeon delving rather than players playing the game in any manner they choose and having a strong impact on their environment (games like Vampire: the Masquerade ~ Bloodlines and FO:NV are much better examples of that).

In light of all that, I don't think a Sims level of detail or house-building was appropriate or even relevant to the vast majority of the target market; and someone looking for that experience in vanilla Skyrim I'd say has unfair expectations. I only purchased Hearthfire recently have already purchased DB and DG when they came out, and I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed what was on offer and didn't really feel like loads more detail was necessary. However, as others have mentioned, some variation in the houses as well as some basic cosmetic changes you could make (re-ordering the furniture for example - or selection from a couple of possible layouts) would make HF a little bit better and probably wouldn't have been much of stretch to incorporate.