With regards to the possible upcoming housing relinquishments. . . . .

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Originally Posted by Kaiser-Ace

Not even close, Housing was always intended to be a group collaboration thing and was to encourage player made communities that resembled Root Towns. Instance doesn't accomplish this ideal because it's instanced.

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Which is hilarious because there is far more community in the housing systems of games I play that have instanced housing than there has EVER been in FFXIV's housing.

Since housing is very poor in FF XIV, there's no need to instance it, or else we will lose the only good point here.
SE has to implement more areas, so that more players / FC can get their plots. That's all.

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Originally Posted by Naunet

Which is hilarious...

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That's funny because I find it the exact opposite! Moghouse etc had absolutely no community in housing communities... Where as ArcheAge and ESPECIALLY DarkfallOnline had very tight knit communities!

In Darkfall Online the housing hamlets often signed Non Aggression pacts with their fellow neighbors and even protection agreements! When my clan attempted to raid a housing area smashing doors in and killing players inside etc to loot their stuff, we quickly found ourselves facing very real opposition of nearly two dozen players! We crushed them as we had nearly sixty people and were able to hit the city from 3 sides overwhelming the players and overrunning the city.

A bunch of them ran into their houses and even tried to hold the houses waiting on the other side of the doors as we siege hammered into it with their neighbors. Tell me for one second that WS has a tenth of that community and you'll be lying lol.

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Originally Posted by Naunet

Which is hilarious because there is far more community in the housing systems of games I play that have instanced housing than there has EVER been in FFXIV's housing.

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We get it, you've played other games where it worked in THAT WORLD and are a zelotous advocate of instaced housing.

But that's not the goal in FF14. The Devs want the Ward to be Player Root Towns and Cities where they interact with, assist, and socialize with each other just as neighbors would IRL. And Instanced housing does not meet this vision. So it will never be considered. Ever.

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Originally Posted by Kaiser-Ace

But that's not the goal in FF14. The Devs want the Ward to be Player Root Towns and Cities where they interact with, assist, and socialize with each other just as neighbors would IRL. And Instanced housing does not meet this vision. So it will never be considered. Ever.

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It can actually, because you can create a system where players can voluntarily connect houses into their own neighborhoods. The community feeling would be even stronger in that case, because this is a community everyone willingly created. More connection = more participation.

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Originally Posted by Valaska

That's funny because I find it the exact opposite! Moghouse etc had absolutely no community in housing communities... Where as ArcheAge and ESPECIALLY DarkfallOnline had very tight knit communities!

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I've never played FFXI, but I do know that the housing communities I participate(d) in for Rift and WildStar are incredible, active, creative, and engaged. WS especially, as the system really encourages visiting other people's plots.

Wildstar could not be anything else than instanced plots, since what you can almost do anything you want. I personnaly created a small town in my plot there. You will never see this on FF XIV.
And i can't agree with you Naunet, instanced housing doesn't promote encounters. On wildstar, if you're lucky, you can meet they guy who made the incredible house you are visiting. But most of the time, plots are empty when you visit them.

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Originally Posted by Babette

Wildstar could not be anything else than instanced plots, since what you can almost do anything you want. I personnaly created a small town in my plot there. You will never see this on FF XIV.
And i can't agree with you Naunet, instanced housing doesn't promote encounters. On wildstar, if you're lucky, you can meet they guy who made the incredible house you are visiting. But most of the time, plots are empty when you visit them.

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This is pretty much what I figured, I couldn't see how there would be communities etc unless you were in the same clan but never played it so I didn't comment.

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Originally Posted by Babette

Wildstar could not be anything else than instanced plots, since what you can almost do anything you want. I personnaly created a small town in my plot there. You will never see this on FF XIV.
And i can't agree with you Naunet, instanced housing doesn't promote encounters. On wildstar, if you're lucky, you can meet they guy who made the incredible house you are visiting. But most of the time, plots are empty when you visit them.

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Odd because I've had exactly the opposite experience. I engage with housing enthusiasts regularly outside of the game and inside of the game to share ideas, plots, inspiration. We chat in zone chat. We explore each other's houses, use them for harvesting Circles, or to farm challenges/expeditions. My group of friends regularly interacts across our housing plots, utilizing them for purposes from simply hanging out to popping over for bank access or a mailbox. We keep organized what challenges we have on our plots and help each other find the ones with the rewards we're looking for.And as I'm a roleplayer, there's an even deeper level of community added on top of all that where people have constructed entire zones, buildings, ships - just incredible structures all to serve as settings for rp. And with the upcoming Neighborhood system, I know of a lot of people who are planning to construct even more complex towns and military basis and centers for their guild/friends/whomever. Basically, I've gotten more interpersonal interaction in WS's housing than I ever got in the time I was with an FC with a house in FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Naunet

Odd because I've had exactly the opposite experience. I engage with housing enthusiasts regularly outside of the game and inside of the game to share ideas, plots, inspiration. We chat in zone chat. We explore each other's houses, use them for harvesting Circles, or to farm challenges/expeditions. *SNIP* Basically, I've gotten more interpersonal interaction in WS's housing than I ever got in the time I was with an FC with a house in FFXIV.

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Circles in WS make all the difference - Neighborhood system was scraped I thought? maybe it just got delayed?

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Originally Posted by Ayerinn

Circles in WS make all the difference - Neighborhood system was scraped I thought? maybe it just got delayed?

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Nope, not scrapped. Neighborhoods are coming in the drop following drop 6, supposedly. Were supposed to be in for this coming patch, but they pushed it back to work a few more features into the whole thing.

And Circles are basically Linkshells, so FFXIV's already got that framework.

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Originally Posted by Naunet

Nope, not scrapped. Neighborhoods are coming in the drop following drop 6, supposedly. Were supposed to be in for this coming patch, but they pushed it back to work a few more features into the whole thing.

And Circles are basically Linkshells, so FFXIV's already got that framework.

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Case in point, the housing system in FF14 is suppose to not need LSs and help even solo players co-operate with guilds large and small. As a person who soloed for a long time it took quite a while before I settled into an FC and even longer before I found the one I'm in now. Ironically run by a member of a LS I left a while back during my short stay on Adamantoise server.

A friend and I started a FC together and he purchased our FC house under his name. He has since left the game and I am now the sole master of the FC. Even though our FC is very much alive and still running, will we lose our house because the original purchaser is now considered an inactive? This will be very upsetting considering we all pitched in to get the house. :(

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Originally Posted by Naunet

Nope, not scrapped. Neighborhoods are coming in the drop following drop 6, supposedly. Were supposed to be in for this coming patch, but they pushed it back to work a few more features into the whole thing.

And Circles are basically Linkshells, so FFXIV's already got that framework.

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Point is you do meet your neighbors and things do randomly happen like FC's just raiding other peoples houses and hang out, heck I've met a bunch of DA2 friends because they had their house in the same ward as the FC I was in!

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Originally Posted by Valaska

Point is you do meet your neighbors and things do randomly happen like FC's just raiding other peoples houses and hang out, heck I've met a bunch of DA2 friends because they had their house in the same ward as the FC I was in!

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Visiting or "raiding" other houses can happen in an instanced design, people just have to click a menu. Sort of like someone in Ward 1 visiting their neighbor in Ward 2 in this game.

Running into your neighbors on the same zone is nice, but if my experience is any indication, it doesn't happen often enough with a significant enough result to justifiy effectively locking out the majority of the playerbase for the uncommon or even rare occurrence of any significant neighborly interaction. I don't mean just seeing 1 or a few people running by once in a while, i mean something useful...eventhough seeing people at all is also rare here in my experience.

Also, even if a massive uptick in community happens in the wards, the number of those groups/individuals is a minority compared to everyone who wants a house for legitimate use...even if they wipe every house and start over.

This is all academic, but if a significant increase in community is SE's intent for using this neighborhood set up, then that housing vision has severely failed on my server...even back when all houses were active and not owned by the same player. It's not unheard of for developers misjudging their playerbase, it actually happens often. Although it's rare to see devs of a game to publicly admit it until long after the game has shutdown.

I'll try checking other servers' peak times to see if it's any different...maybe the japanese servers?

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Originally Posted by mathastora

A friend and I started a FC together and he purchased our FC house under his name. He has since left the game and I am now the sole master of the FC. Even though our FC is very much alive and still running, will we lose our house because the original purchaser is now considered an inactive? This will be very upsetting considering we all pitched in to get the house. :(

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As far as I'm aware, the GM "owns" the FC house - not necessarily the original purchaser.

The 3.1 update that will boot inactive players won't solve any issues really.
In a high population server like Hyperion, I would bet that players will be setting their alarm clocks for the update's release, foot race to the nearest housing ward, and purchase all the available land in a matter of hours. And then we would be back to more complaining...

The system that was put in place had a novel idea, and I do like being able to walk around different neighborhoods and see how everyone decorates their houses. However, with an ever-growing population, the system isn't sustainable.

And probably the biggest offense of them all, there is real content locked behind this housing feature that a vast majority of players will never get to experience.
Coloring your chocobo, gardening, exp crafting benches, and airships, with bigger and better plans to expand these airship expeditions in the future...


I had mentioned in a thread before about a system that reconciles instanced housing with the neighborhood feel.
- Perhaps if one wanted to have their house in their own little instanced world, one would choose solitary instanced housing. Just you alone with your cottage on a beach. Or an Uldahn waterfall.
- If you wanted to live next to your free company friends, everyone would choose a "link" feature that put all your free company's houses in one ward. So all your neighbors are your own friends, along with the actual free company house at the top of the hill to have weekly meetings and work on airship stuff.
- And if you liked the whole neighborhood feel, you would "link randomize" which puts you in a ward with other random players who chose the same thing. Everyone around you actually wants that neighborhood feel, and would be more willing to socialize in the streets, hang out at marketboards, etc.

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Originally Posted by Kaiser-Ace

Case in point, the housing system in FF14 is suppose to not need LSs and help even solo players co-operate with guilds large and small. As a person who soloed for a long time it took quite a while before I settled into an FC and even longer before I found the one I'm in now. Ironically run by a member of a LS I left a while back during my short stay on Adamantoise server.

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You don't need Circles to do anything in WS's housing, just like you don't need Linkshells to do stuff. The person I was responding to was referencing "gathering circles" which are popular in WildStar as a way to share resources grown on your plot with other players. A player can lay down a garden, a mining operation, or whatever, and set harvesting permissions to be either private, open, or neighbor-only, as well as what ratio of resources you want to split (100%-0, 75%-25%, 50%-50%, etc). Neighbors are kind of like a second friends list for housing only - just another level of control. So it became popular to set up gathering Circles where the people who join are then allowed access to a player's neighbor list and thus can harvest their resources. The harvestee can receive some materials when the harvester comes through, depending on the ratio they set. The circle isn't really necessary, though, as you can neighbor anyone.

Just thought I'd clarify that, as I think you may have misunderstood.

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Originally Posted by SQBoard

Visiting or "raiding" other houses can happen in an instanced design, people just have to click a menu. Sort of like someone in Ward 1 visiting their neighbor in Ward 2 in this game.

Running into your neighbors on the same zone is nice, but if my experience is any indication, it doesn't happen often enough with a significant enough result to justifiy effectively locking out the majority of the playerbase for the uncommon or even rare occurrence of any significant neighborly interaction. I don't mean just seeing 1 or a few people running by once in a while, i mean something useful...eventhough seeing people at all is also rare here in my experience.

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That's pretty much been my experience, too. And that was on Balmung, a supposedly extremely populated server.

regardless of when or how this happens, I'm glad its happening. I look forward to having active neighbors again instead of a ghost town ward.

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Originally Posted by Naunet

Just thought I'd clarify that, as I think you may have misunderstood.

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You're right. I thought you were saying you could only communicate via the circles.

My bad. Misinterpreted that a little bit.

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Originally Posted by Xerius

They haven't kept you waiting. You procrastinated and decided you wanted a house once they were all taken up.

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As many others have pointed out, no empty plots have been available for months and many people joined long after that occurred.
Here on Sargatanas there are hundreds of level 8 FCs which have NEVER been able to get land due to this issue. Over half of the paltry 1440 existing plots have been scooped up as personal houses, not FC houses.
I hope to god any plots which are reclaimed by SE are sold ONLY to FCs. I also hope they check to make sure the entire FC roster is not comprised solely of BLMs with suspicious naming practices. We have tons of those kind of FC

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Originally Posted by T2teddy

As many others have pointed out, no empty plots have been available for months and many people joined long after that occurred.
Here on Sargatanas there are hundreds of level 8 FCs which have NEVER been able to get land due to this issue. Over half of the paltry 1440 existing plots have been scooped up as personal houses, not FC houses.
I hope to god any plots which are reclaimed by SE are sold ONLY to FCs. I also hope they check to make sure the entire FC roster is not comprised solely of BLMs with suspicious naming practices. We have tons of those kind of FC

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I wish that they had made FC/Personal Housing separate wards; however I can understand what they were trying to achieve by combining them. If there were separate wards for FC's vs. Personal scenarios would arise where there could be vacant housing in FC wards that just sit and sit (assuming the need for FC houses peak's and slows down). The need for personal housing will likely only ever increase and as this happens players would be locked out from purchasing vacant homes in FC wards; this doesn't fully utilize the server space those wards reside on. Additionally they wanted to build more community based hubs with a mix of personal and FC homes.

I think a HUGE part of the problem with houses is that SE never implemented a 1 house per account per server rule and you have players making alt FC's and alt characters taking up multiple houses in wards.

Right now for example a single player could have 8 characters on the same server, all with personal houses and all with an FC house; that's 16 houses per server that could potentially be consumed by one account.

If they addressed this issue and backdated a "1 Personal and 1 FC" per server rule I think we would see a lot of plots opening up.

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Originally Posted by Kaiser-Ace

We get it, you've played other games where it worked in THAT WORLD and are a zelotous advocate of instaced housing.

But that's not the goal in FF14. The Devs want the Ward to be Player Root Towns and Cities where they interact with, assist, and socialize with each other just as neighbors would IRL. And Instanced housing does not meet this vision. So it will never be considered. Ever.

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Which is silly because the amount that people do interact and socialize is so minimal...its almost laughable.

Instanced would open up months and months of creativity potential for the players, whereas as it stands now, 1 person may run by your home and not even look your way.

Limiting housing to the 1/10 level it is now isnt worth the 1 person who may run by or be at the lolmb. It was a bad decision on se part, and we have a terribly limited and simpleton housing design because of it, one of the worst I have seen yet. :(

Granted I do not expect them to change their ways anymore, I expect no improvements in any area of the game, they are far too short sighted to do so, but initially it was huge disappointment to see the wards with extremely small lots, lolcopycat homes, lolcopycat furniture, which takes 2 minutes to furnish since there is 0 creativity for players and 90% of the time, barren.

yeah the "atmosphere" was really worth it /lol (not)

They are happy with a substandard design so there isn't anything I can do about it. I vastly lowered my standards and don't spend much time in the wards past the 1 minute to send out airships, since there's nothing to uniquely create/design...............at all. :(

Actually I've been having some nice little run ins and chats in Lamia, back in my old FC a few friends raided other FC's houses and we chatted the people up! Made buddies, silly comments about weird interior decorating and such. Current one I see people running about here and there but haven't gone on any house raids yet.

Making a whole instanced house leads to decay and loss of money, despite this one person who keeps trying to say WildStar is the best game ever making tons of money... Despite its "amazeballs" housing system people leave the game in droves and their team was downsized, sold off equipment etc. SE would have to dedicate a team just make a whole new housing system etc... A mog house system might work though since they have FC rooms but whole exterior houses floating in space... Ehh both tacky and unlikely.

*eyeroll* Way to blow my statements way out of proportion. And I think it's pretty obvious I don't expect houses floating in space in FFXIV. Don't be absurd just to try and twist my words.

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Originally Posted by Voldemort

- Perhaps if one wanted to have their house in their own little instanced world, one would choose solitary instanced housing. Just you alone with your cottage on a beach. Or an Uldahn waterfall.
- If you wanted to live next to your free company friends, everyone would choose a "link" feature that put all your free company's houses in one ward. So all your neighbors are your own friends, along with the actual free company house at the top of the hill to have weekly meetings and work on airship stuff.
- And if you liked the whole neighborhood feel, you would "link randomize" which puts you in a ward with other random players.

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That would take so much more work, servers and development time/resources... Interesting idea but not very feasible. You gotta understand this game is not coded the same as others and there are unique issues to this than others.

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Originally Posted by Naunet

*eyeroll* Way to blow my statements way out of proportion. And I think it's pretty obvious I don't expect houses floating in space in FFXIV. Don't be absurd just to try and twist my words.

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Which is even harder! Now you want each of these houses to have a backdrop unique to it too...? You're running up server assets girl! Data Data Data! A moghouse system would be the most possible, so take the inn room and make it have customization. Other than that you are racking up those MB's of data.

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Originally Posted by Valaska

Which is even harder! Now you want each of these houses to have a backdrop unique to it too...? You're running up server assets girl! Data Data Data! A moghouse system would be the most possible, so take the inn room and make it have customization. Other than that you are racking up those MB's of data.

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Sorry if this sounds like nitpicking, but backdrops are basically art assets and/or animation which are stored/processed from the client not the server...unless it's patch day when those assets were added to the game for the first time or after reisntalling the game.

Unique backdrops is not that unusual...sort of like a beach, forest or desert backdrop here and would be treated like say a limsa ward with a beach backdrop except with only 1 house instead of 30. But if there's only 1 house, then the max item cap for housing items could be made a lot higher because it doesn't need to compensate for the other 29 house's items.

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Originally Posted by SQBoard

Unique backdrops is not that unusual...sort of like a beach, forest or desert backdrop here and would be treated like say a limsa ward with a beach backdrop except with only 1 house instead of 30. But if there's only 1 house, then the max item cap for housing items could be made a lot higher because it doesn't need to compensate for the other 29 house's items.

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Indeed. @Valaska: Look at Rift's Dimension system.

Though you still misinterpreted my words. A "unique" backdrop is not necessary. They already have environment assets - the art for the housing zones themselves. Use them. Place invisible walls to certain point around the outside of the house. Bam.

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Originally Posted by Naunet

Indeed. @Valaska: Look at Rift's Dimension system.

Though you still misinterpreted my words. A "unique" backdrop is not necessary. They already have environment assets - the art for the housing zones themselves. Use them. Place invisible walls to certain point around the outside of the house. Bam.

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And unless these are stores COMPLETELY client-side and you load them each time from your appdata, they take up server space. Putting them client-side means longer loadtimes and a lot more taken up space in your computer!

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Originally Posted by Valaska

And unless these are stores COMPLETELY client-side and you load them each time from your appdata, they take up server space. Putting them client-side means longer loadtimes and a lot more taken up space in your computer!

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Not sure what you mean. The game servers don't render graphics, that's the client and those files are already on your system unless someone is reinstalling or first time install. That's why you have gigabytes of files in the install folder.

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Originally Posted by MistyMew

Granted I do not expect them to change their ways anymore, I expect no improvements in any area of the game, they are far too short sighted to do so, but initially it was huge disappointment to see the wards with extremely small lots, lolcopycat homes, lolcopycat furniture, which takes 2 minutes to furnish since there is 0 creativity for players and 90% of the time, barren.

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You seem very unhappy. :-( I'd just like to get a plot/house for our FC on Zodiark. Simple or not, it'd be nice to be able to participate in a part of the game we seem artificially locked out of.