Suggestions to help further smooth out the building experience!

To save a lot of reading, here is a brief(-ish) summary of each of my suggestions. Please be aware that in the rest of the post, I go into greater detail surrounding the issues I’ve highlighted, the benefits of the proposed changes, and (quite crucially!) specific examples of decor objects or scenarios in which these suggestions would help improve the housing experience.

  1. Make building keybindings more obvious as an option, including the Shift key modifier and how it interacts with these keybindings.

  2. Allow direct access to advanced placement when initially placing down decor, without having to place it then swap to advanced placement.

  3. Duplication for decor objects to avoid the tedious repetition of resizing and reorienting every piece for builds that use multiple of the same decor in non-default sizes/orientations.

  4. Preset rotations for objects, to allow instantly flipping an object upside down, and rotating it to predefined common angles (90°, 180°, 270°, 360°, etc.) without having to do so manually.

  5. Mirroring for objects, applicable to all, but particularly relevant for objects like curtains that do not already possess an opposite-sided variant.

  6. Reconsideration of decor limits, particularly in relation to room limits, to help eliminate the discrepancy between how large a house can be versus how detailed we can actually make it.

  7. Eased or at the very least, reassessed restrictions on indoor/outdoor placement, to allow greater creative freedom and ensure consistency between similar decor objects.

  8. Interactibility toggles for objects to allow greater freedom in using interactable decor to build in creative ways without the interactibility causing disruption to the design, or to its immersiveness (e.g. no more sitting on my bench shelves, transforming objects that can be prevented from changing on-click, and so forth).

  9. An undo/redo button!

  10. Option of recolouring the advanced placement arrows/rotation nodules to make each axis more visually distinct, and further clarify the hover-highlight glow to make it clearer which axis we have selected before we click to interact with it.

  11. Option to restrict movement of an object in advanced mode to purely the arrows (and the square where they all intersect, for freer placement on the X/Y axes that is currently available by clicking and dragging anywhere on the object) to prevent unintended movement of objects.


I’m an avid builder in many games, with thousands of hours of designing and experimenting under my belt, and whilst the WoW system is currently brilliantly intuitive, I have some suggestions to help smooth out the experience, especially for “advanced” builders.

First and foremost, the keybinding options for furniture placement are brilliant. Easy to use, and the precision they offer beyond the typical click and drag functions are excellent. However, I noticed that a lot of people were unaware of their existence when I was chatting in the PTR chat. This extended to functions like the Shift key as a modifier for the speed of the actions carried out by these keybindings, which I was unaware of myself until someone pointed it out.

I will give the caveat that I skipped the decor placement tutorial because of my own familiarity with building systems, and from watching enough alpha content to feel comfortable with WoW’s system from the get-go. However, even if the advanced movement keybindings were covered in the tutorial, their existence is not communicated anywhere else. And if they are not shown in the tutorial, then I would wager many players won’t ever come across them at all.

Expanding on keybindings, at least tangentially, I noticed that there’s a little bit of clunkiness in initial decor placement that I think could be remedied with the ability to enter advanced placement mode before the decor is first placed down.

What I mean by this is that say I pulled a wooden beam from my decor chest, and I already knew that I wanted this beam to stand vertically. As it is, the wooden beam item defaults to horizontal placement, and the only rotation option is also horizontal. This means that in order to reorient it, I have to place it down, swap to advanced build mode, select the item, swap to rotation mode, and then rotate from there. This makes the process of building a little more clunky than it needs to be.

The optimal situation would be if I were able to pull the decor from the decor chest, and whilst moving it around in Decorate Mode, I could press the Advanced Mode keybind, which would freeze the item in place, so to speak, and immediately allow me to manipulate it with Advanced Mode options. This means that I’d be able to orient it vertically straight away, without having to first place it down and re-select it first.

Leading on from that, a simple duplicate option would be wonderful. If I am, for example, building something that requires multiple of the same decor all sized and oriented in the same way, as it is right now, I need to individually do that each and every time for every new decor addition. When attempting to build structures like fences or otherwise, this ends up eating a lot of time and feels more frustrating than it needs to be.

An alternative to this (or, more ideally, something to be implemented in addition to the above) is either a keybind shortcut or a clickable button that will immediately flip a decor piece upside down, or rotate it to a selection of predefined angles (90°, 180°, 270°, 360°, etc.) to help reduce friction when building something that requires a lot of rotation or flipping.

Similarly, the option to mirror objects would be ideal. A key example of where this would be extremely useful would be the Elegant Tied Curtain, which is oriented in such a way that it’s clearly intended to be place on the right-hand side of a doorway or window. But it does not have a corresponding left-hand variant. Rotating it works, but not particularly well, as the back-side of the curtain lacks details that the front has (the additional fabric overhang at the top, the end of the rope tie hanging loose, and so forth). A way to mirror the object would solve all issues.

For both the directly-into-advanced-move and the duplication suggestions, I would urge looking towards how a game like Planet Zoo (or Planet Coaster) handles these types of building mechanisms. It is, of course, not the only game to implement advanced building techniques, but its creative freedom and piece-by-piece style, as well as the basic controls (albeit somewhat more advanced than WoW’s options, as detailed above) are very reminiscient of the new housing system.

I have other suggestions that dig more into significant features of housing, which I understand may not be as “easy” (in theory, as I know none of this is particularly straightforward!) to implement. First and foremost is the odd disconnect between decor placement limits and room limits. As it stands, most of the default room options are pretty large, and when our houses are fully upgraded, I believe the room limit is so high as to be mansion-like, should a player choose to implement them all. But a decor limit of 800, when so many decor pieces eat up a significant amount of it, means that building a large detailed house is not really possible. I prefer to build smaller, to maximise the amount of detail I can implement anyway, but the discrepancy between room limits and decor limits exarcebate the problem. With numbers being as they are (or, rather, will be when we can fully upgrade our houses), the reality of any larger house will be one that is generally pretty sparse-looking in its design, especially if it incorporates decor pieces that eat up significantly more of the budget (platforms, flora, etc.) but can be pretty crucial in building custom structures. I recognise, of course, that these limits exist for performance purposes and may always change in future, but I would urge some sort of consideration for this potential problem.

Another suggestion is the removal or, at the very least, loosening of restrictions on the indoor/outdoor items. Right now, we have an odd situation where we are freely allowed to place flora like trees, grass and bushes indoors (which, by the way, is brilliant!) yet if I wanted a tent indoors, or a fountain, or the Cenarion Arch, I’m out of luck.

This restriction is further puzzling when we consider things like the Leather-Banded Wooden Bench, which is functionally and visually not too dissimilar to a great number of other benches, all of which can be placed indoors. Then, we have the confusion conundrum that is searching up “trellis” and finding that of all the many trellises available to us, the very basic Sturdy Wooden Trellis is restricted to outdoors only. Why can I freely place all others in my house (as it should be!), but not that particular one?

I completely understand the restrictions on things like interior walls not being placeable outside (though, I still think allowances could be made for some of these structural pieces, within reason, such as the simple wooden beams) but there seems to be little rhyme or reason to the rest of the decor. Why can’t I have a bathtub outdoors? Or the Grand Mask of Bwonsamdi? Why can’t I hang a Leather Valance on my gate, or have a Silver Hand Weapon Rack by my front door, or… perhaps most absurdly, a Slate Cobblestone Path? And if I can only place my Sturdy Wooden Trellis outdoors, why can’t I also place my Small Jagged Orgrimmar Trellis out there?

I recognise some of these may be oversights (especially the slate path and its associated pieces, for example!) but I would certainly urge a reassessment of the restrictions here. Unless there are glaring reasons that certain objects be relegated only to the interior, or vice versa, then more freedom would not be a bad thing.

Another suggestion is a toggle for interactability on objects like benches/chairs, or indeed, any other object that has a right-click function. The freedom offered by the advanced building controls means that we are able to use these pieces in ways beyond their immediate and obvious intent. An example I have from my own building is using benches for a different style of shelf, utilising the Bel’ameth Bench for a spice rack in my house’s kitchen. They work beautifully like this, but it does lead to the amusing side effect that myself and any visitors can now sit on top of my spice rack. Whilst it’s certainly no deal-breaker in using the benches like that, I see potential issues with items that have an interactive element that changes the item’s placement or visuals. Examples here include any interior doors, which could be used by players to build custom platforms or tables or suchlike, but have the obvious drawback that a simple right-click will “open” them, disrupting the player’s creative intent. Another one that’s a good example would be the Conjured Altar of the Guardian, which, when clicked, changes from a relatively flat stone circle, to a large glowy fountain-like structure. Whilst such an item is brilliant for a centerpiece, it means that its fairly unique original appearance cannot be used for any sort of creative building, lest a visitor click on it unknowingly.

I recognise this is a lot, and I certainly have more thoughts (such as implementing sources into the decor catalogue, but that feels a little pointless to mention because I assume it will eventually be included!), but I’ve typed a whole bunch.

I’m happy to discuss these ideas, particularly if anyone spots any oversights in what I’ve proposed.

If you managed to read this far, thank you so much and happy building! :two_hearts:


EDIT: How on earth did I forget the undo button? Probably because it’s so obvious and been suggested many times before. Even a one- or two-step undo/redo would make a world of difference. Particularly when it’s so easy to accidentally move something!

Anyways, while I’m here editing, here’s some other stuff I forgot to mention. Summaries have been added to the list at the top.

Currently, when in advanced placement mode, it can be very difficult to see which of the movement arrows or rotation nodules we have selected. The option for colouring them in the industry-standard red/green/blue or something similar would help make them visually distinct. Especially if the hover-highlight more significantly changed the colour or brightness of the arrow or nodule.

And while I’m on the topic of advanced placement, I think the ability to move the whole object across the X-Y axes should be restricted to clicking and dragging the small square in the intersection of all three arrows. Or, at the very least, this should be a toggle. And on that note, that small square should obviously be made larger and easier to click!

The reason I highlight this is that very often I was attempting to rotate the camera, and I accidentally moved the object instead. And without an undo button, this can be incredibly punishing for complex builds.

It took a bit of getting used to, in fact, that I could manipulate the placement of an object on the X/Y axes without having to click that particular little square intersection. It’s a fairly standard control scheme, so I didn’t expect WoW to deviate from it. So much so that I initially got frustrated at how small that square was (I kept accidentally clicking a particular axis arrow lol) until I realised movement wasn’t restricted to it. But I’d like it to be, or at least have the option for such, and if that was the case, I would therefore also appreciate an improvement to clicking the little square in the first place!

Okay, that’s all for now. I think.

7 Likes

Superb feedback! Just commenting so this gets traction! :heart_eyes:

1 up for this post, I only have one thing to add.

  • PLEASE, let at least the basic decor stack to 10 or just 5, when you buy from vendors.