Housing: Square Enix is failing to accomplish what Lord of The Rings Online did in 07

I really don't understand the need for toilets in a MMO house, they seem to be a waste of space and objects that could be better put to use, on nice things.

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Originally Posted by Shibi

I really don't understand the need for toilets in a MMO house, they seem to be a waste of space and objects that could be better put to use, on nice things.

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Nothing is really "needed" in MMO houses.
It all boils down to what people think is nice, and I think toilets are nice, so I don't go assuming my WoL sticks their hiney out a window when nature calls.

Housing is probably the issue I post about most often on this forum because I really like my house and I love decorating. That said, the shortage of supply has been a huge frustration for the entire time I've been playing.

There has been a shortage of plots ever since personal housing was introduced. There is still a shortage. The ward system is inflexible which means limits on the number of plots and limits on the outside furnishings.
They did introduce apartments in response to player demand for an alternative, but despite feedback asking for more space and an area where players can place outdoor furnishings, nothing has been done. I can't think of any other system in the game that has been left like this when there has been so much negative feedback. Diadem got reworked, Eureka major changes, housing which affects every single expanison, nothing beyond a few extra wards.

The only good thing the lottery has done has been to show how great the demand is and for what sort of housing. Going by my server, the biggest demand is for personal houses of all sizes, while FCs don't want small houses (I can see why, a small house fully furnished feels overcrowded with three people inside).
The ward system alone is never going to satisfy demand. Meanwhile individuals and FCs are accumilating gil and have nothing to spend it on. A house is a great gil-sink. More gil-sinks would be good for the game.
RMT and gil-trading for housing is still going on and while the shortage inflates the value to the extent it has, it will continue. If people are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a house, or even just eyewatering amounts of gil, you can be sure that someone is going to fill the demand and house hoarding is going to be an ongoing problem.

We've had band-aid after band-aid but no real communication from the devs as to what they intend to do about this beyond adding a few more wards. For me that's the biggest frustration of all.
People have suggested instanced houses over and over but there has been no response. Even a 'no' (ideally with reasons) would be better than silence.
The devs have said they have no plans to upgrade apartments (why?).
They have cited the weather as a reason you can't cross-breed plants in apartments and why they can't add balconies/allotments, but the weather in the housing district affects nothing more than the tend/water animation.
They are working on seeing if they can make blank interiors without pillars (Thank you!) but when so many people can't get a house, and on a busy server maybe can't even get an apartment, this is only going to benefit a small percentage of the players.

It feels like housing has been designed according to what the devs thought players wanted and then they doubled down on it, despite being aware there were major issues with supply.
The neighbourhood idea has been a failure. Yes, I know a couple of people regularly post in the housing forum about how much they love it and how they would hate an instanced house, but most wards appear dead most of the time. If people want social interaction, they go to Limsa!
The ward design is not great. There are a handful of really nice houses with great views that people really want and then there's all the rest, houses facing away from the beach in Shiro, houses that just look straight at the neighbour's or face a wall. If there wasn't a shortage the flaws would be more apparent, as it is, people are just grateful to get a house, any house.

I agree with the OP, it should be possible to create a better housing system than what we have at present. Other games have done it and I cannot believe that improvements can't be made here. There just doesn't seem to be the will to give the housing system the thorough overhaul it needs.
I'm not proposing tearing everything down and scrapping the wards, but bigger apartments and instanced houses running alongside them would do a lot to satisfy demand and give more players something to enjoy when they've run out of other content.

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Originally Posted by PirateRyanG

I can't help but feel square enix wants housing to be limited. It drives subs that are scared of demolition.

I can't imagine Ff14 tech is worse than Lotro which launched in 2007. I mean, I would hope not.

For those who are unaware, LOTRO has instanced wards, just like FF14.

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I've harped on about what LOTRO did 15 years ago anytime I get into a conversation about the lack of housing in FFXIV. However, you also need to compare apples to apples. In LOTRO, outside furnishings had slots, sort of like the Island Sanctuary. You could place something like... 2 small items, 1 medium and 1 large item. There was no rotation and no custom placement. There were only a few areas to place items. If I recall, interiors were similar as well. You had slots and items could only go in those specific locations. So maybe you had a table and chairs, but you could ONLY have a table and 4 chairs and these could only go in one room and in one particular spot.

In other words, the customization was lacking.

With that said, given that we are 15 years out from a game that figured out how to spin up instanced housing on demand, I'm not entirely sure why FFXIV hasn't done something similar. I think many (not all) players that want housing would accept an interior-only solution. I've always envisioned such a solution akin to what EQ2 did. They had instanced housing within the city-proper. Imagine in the corridor outside of Sapphire Avenue in Ul'Dah there were doors that led to instanced housing, similar to apartments. You interface with that to enter your house. But your house doesn't have a front yard since it is in a city.

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Originally Posted by Shibi

I really don't understand the need for toilets in a MMO house, they seem to be a waste of space and objects that could be better put to use, on nice things.

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It depends whether your aim is purely "beautiful space" or whether you want to construct something with all the rooms and necessary features of a house someone would actually live in.

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Originally Posted by Shibi

I really don't understand the need for toilets in a MMO house, they seem to be a waste of space and objects that could be better put to use, on nice things.

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immersion.
I wanna sit there for 3 hours just browsing on my tomestone

Please someone design a litterbox for the miqo

The irony of FireMage calling other people trolls.

Anyways, yes LOTRO housing at its base is kinda similar to FFXIV. The main difference is;

A.) LOTRO is a dead game with literally only a few hundred people playing on each server.

B.) The customization of the housing is significantly more limited in LOTRO. You basically have pre set hooks on where you can place stuff and that's it.

I'd say the core problem with FFXIV being unable to emulate housing wards expanding automatically in the way of LOTRO style though is purely a limitation in the games engine being initially designed to work on the PS3 (and yes the ps4 now is also holding the game back.) FFXI ran into similar issues which they eventually got around by simply ending console support completely. Obviously FFXIV can't do that, but fortunately once the ps4 support ends and they move completely to the ps5 for console support the memory limitations should be relaxed a bit, but we're probably 3 or 4 years away from that being a possibility. There's also the simple physical limitations of storage which again leads back to the whole population thing whit XIV being significantly more active than LOTRO.

There's also the simple fact that the dev team clearly never meant for private ownership to be a thing. When housing was first introduced, its intent was purely meant for houses to be shared with players within a FC. Opening it up to private ownership within the same wards was a mistake.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

There's also the simple fact that the dev team clearly never meant for private ownership to be a thing. When housing was first introduced, its intent was purely meant for houses to be shared with players within a FC. Opening it up to private ownership within the same wards was a mistake.

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You are right about it being a mistake, Ransu. Mistakes should be fixed though, especially in this case when it turns out that a large number of players want private houses and demand from FCs still looks to be relatively low.
The devs made several mistakes when they introduced housing, the first was pegging FC house prices way too high for most FCs, leading to near empty wards.
They then made the second mistake of assuming private ownership would be equally unpopular. Anticipated Result - a few personal buyers move in to fill the gaps, an underutilised resource would be used and everyone would be happy.
Alas! They had not done their research, demand for personal houses far exceeded what they expected. Actual Result - a mess!

But all that happened a long while ago. By now, they should know what players want and they should be working to change the housing system to better reflect that.

As to the PS4 holding housing back, I don't think that's an issue. In fact I hope it isn't, because Japan is notoriously slow to adopt newer hardware. It could be much longer before they drop support. However, I think the issue is that the wards are perpetually up and that takes a lot of resources on their end. That's why we have such low outside furniture limits.

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Originally Posted by hagare

immersion.

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I don't recommend immersing yourself in a toilet.