I loved how in Morrowind you could claim any property as your own. Just kill the owner and set up shop! However, with the addition of house items in Oblivion/Fallout3 you were kind of restricted to only living in purchasable properties. In Fallout3 for example, there is really only one claimable property in the game (well, one for good and one for evil). You could buy all sorts of upgrades to the place like a healing station, jukebox, chemical lab, ect ect, which is awesome. But if you really wanted to live in say, the entire brotherhood of steel base, you would have to give up all that almost essential house equipment.

So how about this for Skyrim. Have a "home item" type of shop that sells furniture, storage containers, beds, ect. These "house items" would only be usable once, heavy, and fairly expensive. By using the item from your inventory, it would place that piece of furniture at your feat in front of you, which is now permanently in place. The idea is that you could claim any location as your home, then go buy some furniture for your new home. And by making these house items one time use and expensive, you would prevent these items from breaking the game (like for example, stocking up on beds and carrying them around for a quick full heal). Oh, and also have a cheap item in these shops that lets you destroy placed furniture, just in case a player wants to refurnish later on.

I don't know if an item like this would work in the Gamebryo engine that these games use, but it's worth suggesting.

Why would you be able to kill someone and live in their house? Have you tried doing that in real life? It doesn't work too well.

True enough in real life, however, that's exactly how it works in these games.

No, it's how it works in Morrowind. Changed in Oblivion, and rightfully so.

Wait. TES is real life?

If you kill someone you get their stuff. The guards interfere and they die. That's how it works with me.

As long as you don't get caught murdering the person you could live in there house no problem, but this is really not the point of the topic.

No, but it still doesn't make sense in the TES world that killing someone would give you rights to their house and all their stuff. Killing is frowned upon by the law, as is stealing, so I don't think it makes sense from either a crime system OR gameplay perspective to let you have any killed NPCs house and possessions.

Kind of. In real life however when the tenant of a property is killed or subsequently removed, a new tenant is promptly moved in. Its how the world works.

So what if you could upgrade any home you wanted to. If the tenant of a home was killed, the house went up for sale. If the PC doesnt purchase the home in a certain amount of time a new randomly generated person moves in. Could also be inherited if the NPC has family.

What doesnt make sense is a house remaining deserted for the rest of time just because its previous owner died.

Except when the people whom that murdered person knows start noticing he/she's not there, they check on the house, problems ensue.
Houses don't just get vacated and then resold or reacquired. Property-rights go to next-of-kin, generally.


As for the topic at hand, it'd have to come with some checks so that furniture doesn't end up half-in-walls, half-in-floors, half-in-other-furniture, etc, etc.

Well you know what, there are plenty of dungeons, empty rooms, and caves that could just as easily be claimed as a home as well. Ok? sheesh.

Definitely down with that.

Another thing though, why have the furniture non-removable by the player unless through some item? It could be like vampirism, where crouching and activating the object results in a menu asking the player what they want to do.

Oh my. You guys always get my hopes up for the future.

Why do you tease me Elder Scrolls Forums members?

It would be great to be able to completely customize every location with your own items, down to tables, chairs, cabinets, display cases, etc. If you could use these items everywhere and place them how you wanted.....I just dont know. It would probably take me 50+ hours just to make a home. Amazing!

Oh well.

Twould be like Minecraft, TES style.


Though I dunno how smoothly it would go; setting up tables and what-not on cave-floors might be a bit tricky in the implementation depending on how unleveled the ground is. And setting up a home in a dungeon would be nigh-impossible with respawning monsters, which I doubt they're giving up.

Would be a fun mod, though, and definitely doable. I remember being able to set up my own ashlander yurt in Morrowind, and I still drop a bedroll and fire-pit out in the wilderness thanks to Necessities of Morrowind.

It could be possible, but most likely would have to be a lot more limited than what we are looking for. I doubt Bethesda would risk doing anything that didnt look right, and like you said with leveled ground and clipping I could see there being major issues. We can dream though.

Im looking to play PC this time around so I can enjoy all the wonderful things the mods have to offer. :celebration:

Go to bank or owner of house and try to buy the deed with barter skils.

Or sneak into their house find out about their loan to buy the house and steal everything inside. Residents are kicked out and you have a good clink in your pockets from pawning their stuff and just enough to buy a hoiuse that was just broken into driving down the costs.

ECONOMICS!

I have an alternative (which might be essentially the same as itsgrady recommended above) which I think addresses the OPs core issue but also the concerns of some other posters. I have no idea how practical it is from a scripting/programming perspective though.

If a house owner dies, an investigation into the death should be triggered and then after a period, or after the investigation has concluded, the property becomes vacant and for sale. I think the investigation is important and conditions around the vacant/for sale trigger to ensure we can't just kill the owners of castles.

If it's actually how RadiantAI works, perhaps allow property to be inherited by relatives etc. The relatives can be killed, convinced to sell or perhaps move in themselves.

I think an investigation is important to add some potential consequence to the random murder of house owners and make it more challenging. Basically, if the neighbours meet Doofus at his house one morning, see me go in the same afternoon and he's found dead that evening, I don't think I should just be able to start buying furniture and make myself at home. I think visiting neighbours and friends should be included in NPC packages if that's practical.

No it isn't. Arena, Daggerfall, and Oblivion never allowed this. It only worked in Morrowind... and that's hardly a representative of "these games" (which I assume is TES series).

In fairness though, in all of TES games you could kill a houses owner, and then take over the residence as your own if Im not mistaken. The only difference is respawning containers and customization am I right?

In Arena and Daggerfall, there was no killing of any interior NPCs allowed, at all. In Oblivion, that was the case. In Morrowind, that was the case with non-respawning containers, instead.

Hmmm....well that kind of svcks. Id hate it if I simply couldnt kill someone for a reason like that. Some of the posts regarding home re-ownership in this thread make better use of that if you ask me.

But if home ownership is improved from previous games Im sure Ill be satisfied. We just want a little bit of creativity thats all. I know for a lot of players including myself, my home or stronghold is actually pretty important. I love to collect weapons and armor, as well as many other items like jewels, skulls, lanterns (MW), skooma/moon sugar/pipes. Its meaningless sure....but I dunno I just love it.

Personally I dont spend much time in my home other than decorating it, so the more options the better.