Houses were pretty bland in previous games, let's face it. sure I spent hours trying to make it look pretty, but after that then what?

I think the great people over at Bethesda should make more things to do in your house. Things like, gambling, having friends over ( being able to have anybody you persuaded into liking you come over. Every NPC should have this option. Having 'close' friends come over too. *wink* wink*. Having more than one person over too would be great. Everyone partaking in conversation, and having hearty amounts of mead.

I could go on forever....

Tell me your ideas.

Yeah I want to be able to [censored] my wife in my house. Or eat a steak dinner at the table for once, instead of just sitting there all still like.

Sounds to me like what the Tavern is for to be honest.

Houses to me are for sleeping, eating and storing my stuff, perhaps adding a training room... Gosh if I could have Battlehorn Castle in Skyrim I'd be happy..

Yeah sitting there doing nothing making you look schizophrenic is kinda creepy.

And yes, that is what the tavern is for, but we all like our evenings differently.

This would tie into the underwear threads quite well: lingerie parties, extra tax-free income for a real use of mercantile, ie it into necromancy by having it in an ancestrial burial tomb, and definitly raise your reputation! Now all I need is a hearse and the Fonz..

Or...

It'd certainly be intersting to have parts of quests or plot development take place in your own home like you've stated. Could a home be more than just a base of operations and a big closet?

But

If there are multiple options for living quarters, how would those encounters get put in, or would they be programmed for each residence?

Oh I know! Everyone could come over for Nirn-quake parties since all of the objects would be on the floors anyways

At the very least the player needs to be able to do something in their house that either requires a great expense to do elsewhere or can't be done elsewhere. One of the advantages the DLC homes had over their normal counterparts is that they provided services to their owners, and depending on which house, could eventually provide a positive return on the investment.

Houses in Oblivion seemed fairly pointless to me. There was a slight feeling of getting more wealthy/powerful becuase you owned several houses etc but it was a slight feeling. Sure the only practical use a house could give you was being able to store items in them and sleep in them, but you can sleep in any guild building, you can put items in the fighters guild masters chest etc.
I'm pretty sure they'll have houses in Skyrim but I really hope there is more to them this time. Perhaps rather than a house you could have some sort of stronghold or fort you could build up bit by bit. Buy fortifications, or hire guards. It could be a side quest.

:facepalm:
Great...now they'll put all upgrades in DLC

It'd be intersting to move the furniture about if the world in interactive

Skyrim just gave me a unique idea, we should 'activate" fireplaces, or stoves to actually cook things. After all it is chilly there. A armory would also be nice to have in the basemant.

If there is a better way to customise ones home, have it be more than just a storage locker, then yes, bring it on :toughninja:

Buying furniture, and placing it where you please is also a great idea. Simply enter a mode to move things, like the Sims.

... no not like the sims. This isn't the sims so lets not make it more like it.

Make it something of its own, make it unique.

Yes Elder Scrolls-asise it.

Buying and moving furniture would be awesome, hated how what the house had when you bought it was basicaly what you where forced to have.

Themes like Fallout would be great! Black Marsh theme, Traditional Nordic theme... Just to give a taste of the other regions instead of waiting 6 years for the next ES game to see what it'd be like in say Black Marsh. Instead you already got a little bit of it in your home!

the only cool thing i could do was kill my servant woman and place her in a chair... i think it would be sweet to be able to have a family and such like in fable

Family would bring a whole lot more to the table too, especially based around you home environment. Good Idea!

Geez, go play fable if thats what you want.

Games prior to Oblivion didnt have purchasable homes and it was fine. IMO the purchasable home is just taking up space that could be used for more npcs or stuff just in case you MIGHT want a home there.

The strongholds in Morrowind and Factor's Estate were tied in to the house guilds/quests and were much more interesting to get because the building of them was a process, and with the mark/recall spell, could easily become your teleportation hub + adventure/loot stash. They were an unforseen reward (the first time you played) It was more than just. Oh heyz I want this house. Oh darn I need to impress said annoying Count. *Goes on required quest* *Spends huge amount of money to complete house*

And if they kidnapped your family member...great quest line.

Or

If they killed your dog, it'd tie into the more music thread and you could right a country song about it :thumbsup:

Oh you see here i thought this was the elder scrolls: Skyrim, not the elder scrolls: Normal Boring Life.

Why would anyone want to have NPC's come over to their house? Or spend time gambling. I'd rather go out exploring or at the very least kill an annoying piss-weak mudd-crab. It's beond me why people would want a game where they can do things they do every day.

I made the fatal mistake of buying GTA IV thinking it would be funn, but every [censored] 10 min. it makes me drive to an jamacian pothead and play pool with him. What i really wanted to do was the things i cant do in real life, like stealing a car and smashing it into a police car. Insted of buying GTA IV i could infact just go out with my friends to a bar and play pool.

Infact maybe we could hope for Bethesda to make us take a wiz every 30min and alert us when we have to give the plants water. Hopefully we have the option of cleaning our own house to. :banghead:

This is a genrall response to everyone who wants the game to very realistic, Sims-like etc. I'm not saying [censored] realism, but i only want it for an certain extent. Like lets say having to repair your sword after smashing it into armor etc. But for the love of god Bethesda please dont use your energy and money into pointless and boring options like having friends or "friends" over at your house, or more ways to decorate houses. Time is better spent picking your nose. Please make this a fun game, not normal boring life.

And have them trash your house, find them get revenge, and war reparations for repair? lol

Armour Stands like the one in the Priory of the Nine where you could your favourite armours and weapons when you don't need to use them. It always bugged me that when I wasn't wearing an important armour set that it couldn't be put on display properly and would have to be dropped on a shelf or placed in a chest. If I've got a badass armour/weapon set I'm not using, it doesn't necessarily mean I want to dump it straight into a storage chest, especially if it looks good.

Also some sort of in-game tool for buying and placing furniture or even creating extensions for the house. E.g. being able to buy a tower and having it gain extra floors if I sink enough gold into it and then being able to choose what purpose those floors serve. Obviously for people that don't have the patience to customise their own house fully there could be an auto-build option that slaps on the extra floors and just dumps furniture into them where appropriate, for example having a basemant that operates as a bedroom, a first floor that has armour stands, second floor armoury, third floor dining room, fourth floor additional storage and top floor a library.

Adding ornaments and items to your home really needs to be easier or have its own control interface as well, the only reason I ever used telekinesis spells in oblivion was to position my ornamental weapons.

I like the add on to building feature. Adding a tower to your house, attics...etc

finding your kids and wife slaughtered in your home and going out for revenge only to find it was the very organization that you had been working for that had them killed would be awesome.... or maybe I have issues

I'll get to trying to find something to do in my house as soon as I locate the toilet...