Housing for everyone?!

[TenraiNagi]

What if we turn personal housing into animal crossing. Give us a virtual neighborhood of whatever city state (because currently most neighborhoods are dead, or empty houses with a striking dummy). Acquire a small house through an npc that gives u a debt to pay, when ur done u can upgrade the size of the house, and ur debt gets larger and larger. Give us virtual neighbors that we care about rather than the current ghosts that haunt the houses around us. They can have random requests like “visit my house” or “make/ give me x item” and build relationships with them. Eventually they pop in your house, and during seasonal events they can make something nice with it. Fc housing can continue in the current wards that’ll be fc only.

Everyone gets a house, a neighborhood to costumize and guess what?! Actually interact with!

[Shougun]

I think the main issue is some core coding problem, I highly doubt the Devs sit in a circle and think to themselves: "You know what would be great? If we didn't add more houses so people couldn't enjoy the content, FC left out to pale in comparison to FC that have them, and so they wouldn't purchase more items off our cash shop - that'd be really great! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha" lol.

Onto your idea though, sounds fun . I'm a big sucker for things that change visually overtime, even though it's just donating gil I'm having fun wandering around Doma as I upgrade it.. I just like those things. I look forward to Ishgard because of that.

Back when I pushed instanced housing harder I was into the idea that FC housing would become a zone wide control of the current ward system (so instead of a guildhall in some MMORPG it's more like a Guild City), in that you'd have a headquarters in the main building (like Windmill for Goblet) and then you would fill the rest of the houses with relationships you've built up over time like Dark Cloud mechanic (so like animal crossing). The relationships being things you'd work towards as a team to gain new bonuses (like Delivery NPCs for your FC, who'll come to your city and you can upgrade them further then and gain more features, like goblin blueprints or Slyph automatically caring for your gardens). Then the new personal housing system would be like Wild Star but the lore would be the crystal mother has created a pocket of aether for you in her bossom (which is why you can control so many visual features of it, and teleport to it from anywhere). Also some people prefer humans as neighbors, so if you change content entirely under their feet they wont be impressed lol - better to add something than change/remove.

But..... Unfortunately... I still think regardless of how many cool ideas come about that having full powered instanced housing (like what we have now, but without limits) is just beyond the current ability of the system and probably some deep core issue blocking an easy change to that system.

That said I do think we might be able to suggest ideas that dodge some of the memory concerns and thus become possible. For example if you take away the high customization of a sole house, I believe, you could absolutely have a city you help grow - so like the Dark Cloud/Animal Crossing features but without the ability to place 500+ items down. Because storing ~20-40 npc, what house they're in, and upgrade state is a lot less memory consuming than 500+ items that have multiple values stored with each.

That is why I tried to come up with Airships as a system that might actually be possible while still lending to some nostalgia and give a homely/customized feeling. Not that I'm opposed to instanced housing with full placement support (that'd be awesome), I'm just concerned at this point that it's not feasible or at least so far it's such a hard problem to fix. They've not been able to fix it so far and might not be able to without substantial redesigns to underlying systems (they may need to drop another dalamud lol).

[TenraiNagi]

I agree that they aren’t planning not to please people lol, which is why we try to come up with suggestions to help it
The issue currently according to yoshi p is rendering all the houses in a ward. And increasing wards means increasing servers which is cost and resources blah blah
However if it was instanced with say 2 npc houses next to you, then slowly you invest in your neighborhood and make it larger with more npc houses around u and maybe open a market stall or a an aquarium hall, or museum etc, things that make u costumize your neighborhood your way would be more fun and less taxing on servers.

And people who prefer to be next to other players would still have the current wards, except that it’ll be an fc house only system.
Seriously most neighborhoods are empty anyways, another dalamud fell already! No one’s here xD empty houses everywhere

[Jojoya]

Why not just play Animal Crossing if you want a neighborhood all to yourself without any social interaction outside a chat window?

Maybe I'm luckier than most, or maybe it's because I put a little effort into making my house a social venue. I do see my neighbors occasionally, especially since there's a large active FC in the ward that has several members I know from the server's hunt community and they're frequently running around the ward. I invite others to my house on occasion - we had gatherings there both nights of the JP FanFest for live streaming and sat around in the yard chatting about what was being revealed in. If friends go through Eternal Bonding, I invite them to use my house for a reception after if they want since it's next to the beach in Mist. And of course anyone is welcome to stop by and look around any time as long as I'm not in the middle of redecorating, at which point I "lock the door" to work undisturbed.

Certainly there's room for a lot of improvement in housing but I don't see your suggestions as a positive step for housing in a MMO. It would isolate players into a single player experience instead of increasing player interaction. I wouldn't want to see developer and server resources wasted on NPC neighbors that aren't real when those things could be going toward developing and hosting content that promotes player interaction. When I want a solo player experience, I go play a game designed to give it and not a MMO. MMOs are for the social experience.

If you want a better social experience from housing, it's up to you to make it happen.

[Shougun]

Why not just play Animal Crossing if you want a neighborhood all to yourself without any social interaction outside a chat window?

Maybe I'm luckier than most, or maybe it's because I put a little effort into making my house a social venue. I do see my neighbors occasionally, especially since there's a large active FC in the ward that has several members I know from the server's hunt community and they're frequently running around the ward. I invite others to my house on occasion - we had gatherings there both nights of the JP FanFest for live streaming and sat around in the yard chatting about what was being revealed in. If friends go through Eternal Bonding, I invite them to use my house for a reception after if they want since it's next to the beach in Mist. And of course anyone is welcome to stop by and look around any time as long as I'm not in the middle of redecorating, at which point I "lock the door" to work undisturbed.

Certainly there's room for a lot of improvement in housing but I don't see your suggestions as a positive step for housing in a MMO. It would isolate players into a single player experience instead of increasing player interaction. I wouldn't want to see developer and server resources wasted on NPC neighbors that aren't real when those things could be going toward developing and hosting content that promotes player interaction. When I want a solo player experience, I go play a game designed to give it and not a MMO. MMOs are for the social experience.

If you want a better social experience from housing, it's up to you to make it happen.

Everyone plays mmos for a different reason, having 100% contact with people is not required in order to want to play one.

That of course is probably self evident, but I just say it because your post assumes people want a system that pushes players together vs a system that empowers you to develop your own piece of the world within a much larger social world (OP's idea). I don't care for the neighbors because I've almost never done anything with them or even seen them for that matter (and don't want to go out of my way to change that), even though I visit the large every single day (almost) on the largest server. More personal space in a large world for me > more people around my space.

I leave the house to go do dungeons and quests, then I want to meet people lol.

Like I said that, to each their own - but just wanted to disagree with "why don't you play that game then" as not being a great reason against OP's in an MMORPG. As nesting out a corner in a world much larger can be very enjoyable, different feeling than trying to do so in a purely solo world. I also see that argument quite a lot, but it's clearly not true to the devs due to how much solo content they add/allow. Alternatively to put a developer spin on it, Yoshida recently came out and said they added Trust system to foster that solo experience for those that wanted it. I would of course also argue that opposite isn't true, that people shouldn't be trying to turn an mmorpg into a 100% solo experience lol - just that there is room for balance and asking for one item one way or another doesn't kill the concept of an MMORPG (as some MMOs have done the housing like OP suggested).

Not a huge fan taking away beloved systems from others, so I'd hate to see neighborhoods destroyed, but I'd love to see them spend time on an empowered personal system rather than some of the limitations placed on the neighborhood one - if possible or at least unlimited wards/airship instanced houses/upgrade-able apartments. On a positive note of the neighborhood systems is that the cafes/spas ran by players are pretty dang cute (although they were there in Wild Star too, which was empowered instanced house for everyone).

[Windwalker]

Server costs money, they can only bring so many houses. They would have to create another monthly subscription for housing to make it work.

[TenraiNagi]

Certainly there's room for a lot of improvement in housing but I don't see your suggestions as a positive step for housing in a MMO. It would isolate players into a single player experience instead of increasing player interaction. I wouldn't want to see developer and server resources wasted on NPC neighbors that aren't real when those things could be going toward developing and hosting content that promotes player interaction. When I want a solo player experience, I go play a game designed to give it and not a MMO. MMOs are for the social experience.

First of all, thank you all for replying and discussing this.
I’m 100% with you on that MMOs are generally for social interaction, however there are certain systems ingame that are for both types of players. Squadrons, trusts, masked carnivale etc are made as solo content.
I’m not asking to remove the social aspect of housing. The real social aspect of housing is FC housing (and you mentioned that thanks to that large FC near you, you see people running around. I run daily around housing areas and in 90% of the time there is no one, so yes you’re lucky!), and in my post I suggested that FC housing remains in the current wards we have for FCs to socialize, and removing personal houses and making them instanced would make more room for FCs.
On the other hand, personal housing is that “personal” and making it instanced would make it available to more players. If I want to invite people, then I should be able to of course, but the illusion of socializing with the empty houses all around these wards is sad. Inviting people over so we chat and spend time in the house isn’t content, it is me trying to spend time with my friends. We can chat while doing savage, we can chat while gathering/ crafting or while doing any other content, so that in itself doesnt make it content. Content is the actual decoration system, quests, house size progression system, neighborhood customization system and improvement similar to the enclave for example (I don't want it to be the size of the current ward lol, it should be much smaller.), maybe a system similar squadrons but civilians who live in these city states etc, the devs know how to be creative.

It would always be great to listen to different suggestions as well, surely I do not claim that I came up with the ultimate idea, but discussing it together will eventually help the devs make housing better for everyone

[Jojoya]

Snip

I definitely would agree that improvements to the instanced housing we currently have are needed so everyone who wants a house could have one.

It's the scope of the additional content you propose to add to that instanced housing that I don't agree with. Like it or not, developer time is limited and working on one project means time not spent on another. Do we have to start losing dungeons, beast tribes and other content so a relative handful of players can have pretend neighbors?

You would also be walling off that content and its potential rewards behind a large gil barrier. Not everyone player is going to want to pay millions of gil to buy instanced housing they don't want to get access to content they do want to do. There's no reason why such NPC interaction couldn't take place in the open world for all players to enjoy regardless of house ownership.

[Shougun]

I definitely would agree that improvements to the instanced housing we currently have are needed so everyone who wants a house could have one.

It's the scope of the additional content you propose to add to that instanced housing that I don't agree with. Like it or not, developer time is limited and working on one project means time not spent on another. Do we have to start losing dungeons, beast tribes and other content so a relative handful of players can have pretend neighbors?

You would also be walling off that content and its potential rewards behind a large gil barrier. Not everyone player is going to want to pay millions of gil to buy instanced housing they don't want to get access to content they do want to do. There's no reason why such NPC interaction couldn't take place in the open world for all players to enjoy regardless of house ownership.

I'd also suggest if SE did ever make some big content like you discussed, if it's under the instanced system at least, that they add upgrade paths such that small rooms are very cheap or free even but the larger upgrades get progressively more difficult (and especially make them fair to those who bought the real houses, so it's not like 10gil to buy a large instanced house and 60 million for a non-instanced one).

For how much an instanced system is worth I'd say to me quite a lot, since I adore the Wild Star system (the best in any mmo ever, imo), and I think OP's idea is cool but it doesn't have to be that to me. I think even just getting apartments to the point of being upgrade-able with size, balcony, garden, and some sort of exterior would be great. Also make sure FC get all the features a house provides in any method possible. Then add more housing content for everyone, because I think homes are a wonderful concept in MMOs (and shouldn't be exclusive, ever, imo, because of that - although I strongly believe in long upgrade paths, like FFXI mog room).

I did personally attempt to make a compromise system (avoids the memory consumption houses have, would absolutely be less than apartments even) via an airship content piece that everyone (including current home owners) could utilize. Although I wouldn't be opposed to it being fully functional instanced housing either, just thought I should write an idea that doesn't cost the devs an entire rewrite of their memory systems and could be content everyone could enjoy.

Totally understand your point though, if someone was like "lets divert 50% of the game's resources to DoL (gathering), because I want these 20 new systems" I'd be like... "but that sounds really boring and I'll miss a lot of stuff I'd like" lol.

So personally I still hope for some deep additions to housing, some of those may be content that isn't helpful to everyone (unlimited housing or something like it, like the airship I suggested as compromise), and hopefully a lot of the changes are things that work out for everyone. Like if we took OP's idea for FC, where the FC had these big neighborhoods that they had to work as a team to upgrade - that might turn out to be a lot of team value. I would find value with it being a solo experience too but I just wanted to say for example, adding a huge team cooperation component to FC could be good.

Although I would want to add the hardest part of OP's idea is probably not the personal neighborhood itself, the data to store some delivery NPC/quests would likely pale in comparison to the house that every player would be allow to have (500+ items with multi-coordinate details vs 20 slots with a few variables). That's actually where my argument for the airship space saving comes from, depending on how the options come out you could drastically reduce the info being stored/sent.

Good luck to all our happiness, may we all get the content we want .

[TenraiNagi]

It's the scope of the additional content you propose to add to that instanced housing that I don't agree with. Like it or not, developer time is limited and working on one project means time not spent on another. Do we have to start losing dungeons, beast tribes and other content so a relative handful of players can have pretend neighbors?

You would also be walling off that content and its potential rewards behind a large gil barrier. Not everyone player is going to want to pay millions of gil to buy instanced housing they don't want to get access to content they do want to do.

That’s a lot of talk I never said.
I never said it should be a housing expansion 6.0... but little upgrades at a time. And housing is content that a ton of players want hence housing plots disappear like hot cakes, in comparison to mah-jong for example. So those handful of players that want personal housing more accessible is clearly larger than those playing mah-jong or lord of verminion.
To be honest you make it sound like gil is actually this precious thing that we currently have and it’s hard to get. People don’t care to make gil because there is no use for it. The prices to upgrade your personal house could simply stay at the same prices we have now for these respective houses, or it could be cheaper to make it more accessible, it wouldn’t matter and that’s beside the point. It would give people incentive to make gil to improve on their homes (and if they do not want and enjoy their small house, that’s fine!)

There's no reason why such NPC interaction couldn't take place in the open world for all players to enjoy regardless of house ownership.

Squadrons and trusts are not NPC interaction in the open world, however they are systems available for all players. How is personal housing different?
House ownership would be open to everyone, so it’s content proposed to the whole playerbase who would enjoy housing. And those that don’t care, can enjoy the other stuff the game has to offer


@Shougun
I love that airship idea btw, it would be great to have something like that ingame