Can we please just have instanced housing already?

+1 for instanced personal housing all areas. I don't need want neighbors, hell make it like an apartment wether people can visit your house. If you can't give us instance housing at least give us Condos/townhouses with a yard/porch balcony in three sizes and accommodate the same amenities of houses. maybe make us overlook the wards the houses are in.

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Originally Posted by TheForce

Apartments ARE instanced housing, so are FC house rooms. Stop being picky. This "I want it my way and I want it now" attitude is getting really old.

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That is like saying Inn rooms and Squadron rooms are instanced housing. I think you might want to look up what house means. Or if you want to defend it make SE remove all outdoor aspects from the housing system and force the others to play the same. You also part of the point is that they didn't build an instanced housing system they reused assets to try to cover the fact the current design is inadequate. Because they just reused other game aspects they seem to be unable to deliver on any upgrades.



You know what is really old, when people line up to protect SE. The system is a joke and heaven forbid anyone call out the dev team. The same team that can't count how many copies of stormblood they sold and how many instances they would need, since they instance every quest at the start. It is always the players fault and never poor design. Maybe one day they won't admit they were wrong, but just change it. And we can all pretend like they didn't spend years pretending nothing was wrong.

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Originally Posted by Eldevern

Full agree with OP especially the last argument.

The excuse that pretends instancied houses are ressources consuming have always sound to me like a bad joke. Any Inn room already works like as an instance and guess what : one character can't be in two instance so it wouldn't change anything. SE excuses are really, really poor excuses. The worst : we can loose seasonal event items if we loose house and never getting them back since no PNC sell them, even thought we have the achievment.

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The devs have pointed this out several times. Housing before Shirogane was opened up was 2/3's the game space and it was asked at every Fan event. Since Shirogane opened they have also expanded ALL wards again. This just comes down to monthly drive space in a datacenter. That sort of infrastructure for the style of IT environment this game has is not cheap int hat scale of business. Even though we make look at a 3.84 TB SAS SSD and go that's more than an econo-box used car that could double as a skate, it cuts to deep in their profit margin to care. From my perspective, and I've run Data center for medical in hospitals that specialize in OB/Gyn... In 2014 the 54 tb of space I needed for 450,000 patients came down to a monthly cost of $2800 w/power per month over the 5 year period before. Granted things in this game will need much more than that; its a huge cost to SE. Before the data center was moved form Montreal to California; My companies backup center was moved to an upgraded space at a cheaper price as they needed more room for this game when they implemented housing as a result. what we associate to cost per TB in our PC vs their needs on an epic IT scale are extremely different.

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Originally Posted by Kuro_Mao

The devs have pointed this out several times. Housing before Shirogane was opened up was 2/3's the game space and it was asked at every Fan event. Since Shirogane opened they have also expanded ALL wards again. This just comes down to monthly drive space in a datacenter. That sort of infrastructure for the style of IT environment this game has is not cheap int hat scale of business. Even though we make look at a 3.84 TB SAS SSD and go that's more than an econo-box used car that could double as a skate, it cuts to deep in their profit margin to care. From my perspective, and I've run Data center for medical in hospitals that specialize in OB/Gyn... In 2014 the 54 tb of space I needed for 450,000 patients came down to a monthly cost of $2800 w/power per month over the 5 year period before. Granted things in this game will need much more than that; its a huge cost to SE. Before the data center was moved form Montreal to California; My companies backup center was moved to an upgraded space at a cheaper price as they needed more room for this game when they implemented housing as a result. what we associate to cost per TB in our PC vs their needs on an epic IT scale are extremely different.

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I don't suppose the reason that expansions to housing are requested so often has something to do with the fact that there are only enough houses for about 15-20% of the playerbase, assuming that everyone only has one house?

Does maintaining the space for housing cost money? Yeah. Are fluctuations in housing capacity going to increase this? Probably, but also probably not by much. As people like to keep reminding us, we have apartments already, so the game already allows everyone to have a private instance that they can furnish. A bare bones implementation of instanced housing would add a room or two, and an outdoor area for everyone.

I've rather enjoyed having a marketboard in front of my house for the past 5 years, and yelling at anyone who uses it to "get off my lawn".

Instance housing? No thanks.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

Apartments aren't instanced housing. They are open FC rooms. If they were truly instanced housing and not just some knock off of another in game asset don't you think it would have been easier to expand now. They keep throwing the bone out we are going to do X to apartments. It feels just like when someone says let me go to the back and look. It is just a routine both parties play to stay nice and dream.

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Originally Posted by TheForce

Apartments ARE instanced housing, so are FC house rooms. Stop being picky. This "I want it my way and I want it now" attitude is getting really old.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

That is like saying Inn rooms and Squadron rooms are instanced housing. I think you might want to look up what house means.

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He said "housing".

hous·ing

noun
1.
houses and apartments considered collectively.

Why would SE do that? The current system is an anchor to keep peoples sub active.

Once you buy a plot and put all the time into making a nice house you don't want to lose it so even IF you're not actively playing the game you keep your sub going and need to login once in a great while to go into your house.

Why would a company change that system?

mmm...I don't mind the idea of another form of housing. I'm low key hoping they introduce farmhouses that can be decorated like a house but with a farm attached. I know they have only hinted at it so I am not going to hold my breath but if they do bring farms, that's how I want it to be. The other thing is (don't hate me), I wouldn't own the 3 houses I have now if my characters could share a house. I would literally move all characters to the same server to share the one house I like the most and let others have a chance at getting a house. But alas, this is not an option and it kills me on the inside that it isn't. But from every MMO I played that had unique housing issues, this one is actually not the worst I have seen.

Also, my last thing is I fully love the idea of us being able to buy like a penthouse that can have a real garden! Just the thought of being able to upgrade an apartment puts a smile on my face. Sigh, *shakes fist* c'mon, farmhouse or penthouse D;!

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Originally Posted by Kuro_Mao

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One time and again, most of us don't ask new wards but INSTANCIED housing. And that is pretty different. I know programming, I practiced both client side and server side.

They refuse instancied housing talking about instancied housing as is was adding some wards. People who ask instancied housing ask.. instancied housing, no "more wards". People, like me who understand the difference know too why we ask instances and no wards.

The technical pretext is a bad joke :

One player use one instance at time.
They added TRUST (a solo dungeon, then a solo instance)
They added housing storage
We can solo dungeons
We can be alone in Eureka
etc.

And instances are a problem?

Few players can own a whole ward and they have a problem for instancied housing... that are nothing else than a bigger apartement?

Seriously, the technical argument is a pretty bad joke.

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Originally Posted by Eldevern

One time and again, most of us don't ask new wards but INSTANCIED housing. And that is pretty different. I know programming, I practiced both client side and server side.

They refuse instancied housing talking about instancied housing as is was adding some wards. People who ask instancied housing ask.. instancied housing, no "more wards". People, like me who understand the difference know too why we ask instances and no wards.

The technical pretext is a bad joke :

One player use one instance at time.
They added TRUST (a solo dungeon, then a solo instance)
They added housing storage
We can solo dungeons
We can be alone in Eureka
etc.

And instances are a problem?

Few players can own a whole ward and they have a problem for instancied housing... that are nothing else than a bigger apartement?

Seriously, the technical argument is a pretty bad joke.

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The problem with asking for instanced housing is that SE has already given us that - apartments - and players have said they don't like them.

Players need to be asking for instanced house plots, a small but crucial difference. Or they need to be more specific why they don't feel that apartments are an acceptable alternative to a house in a ward and what changes they would like to see made so they would be acceptable.

Just clamoring for SE to add instanced housing isn't going to go anywhere when we already have it.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

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I understand your point. And that's right it leads to some kind of missunderstanding.

As soon as it is instancied, a house is not really different from an apartment since the visual effect is managed mostly client side.

People talk about house on island (something like the pirate island, for example) because it is not that different from an apartement. The graphical result for the client and what it is server side are really different matters. The 3D result the player see is is not calculated by SE on their server but in the computer or the console of the player.

What is common is the number of objects, their position but absolutly not the rendering. Where the wards are a problem is because it's a big instance with a lot of objects. An instancied house is not supposed to have the neighborood and it make it is pretty less ressource consuming.

I will tell this another way : If we consider the instance factor, since we can't see outisde of the houses or apartments, there no difference be it a house in a ward, an apartment or even an Inn room... (at least it is not supposed to be). All the problem comes from wards (gardens) and the neighborood : the outside.

And that's why people who are not looking for neighborood ask SE to add instancied house aka housing without neighborood aka bigger apartements with a balcony or a garden (thought it makes more sense, considering the ressources, to add instancied housing, especially on island, rather than a balcony that asks questions about the neighborood and the environment).

If we consider there are a lot of players in wards, wards should be less ressource consuming, but since they are pretty ghost lands, it become the opposite : it consumes too many ressources to compare to an instancied housing. That's why SE is so reluctant to add wards and why players finally, for a important part, ask instancied houses. SE should have keep wards for FC and (better) instancied housing for solo players.

The strange thing from SE is they are able to add an outside to Inn Room for Kugane or Crystarium and don't understand the point we try to explain about instancied housing.

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Originally Posted by Eldevern

The strange thing from SE is they are able to add an outside to Inn Room for Kugane or Crystarium and don't understand the point we try to explain about instancied housing.

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Jojoya is right that we should attempt to make our desires as clear as possible but I also wanted to echo this last point you have (confused that it generates confusion lol, more so in the forums than to SE).

When people say:

"I wanted instanced housing like X, that can do Y, and looks like Z" and then people say we already have instanced housing - "it does c b and a" it shouldn't be that confusing on what people meant and why they're disappointed (doesn't do what was asked, missing features). It shouldn't be a big google defines argument over what people meant, it's clear what people are asking for if you read what their intent was (almost always, lol) and that what we have is not what people want.

Though I believe that we should shift the wording a little as Jojoya is suggestion to make things smoother and more clear but that a lot of the "we already have it" arguments come from either misreading or worse a dishonest and or malicious arguments in a desire to "win" rather than understand (abusing word definitions to misrepresent and mislead the conversation). Usually it's safer and better to assume people are not attempting something malicious though (and just misunderstanding), but I still believe It shouldn't have had to be shifted... if people were joining the conversation with earnest to understand (by taking in the context cues they give) instead of joining a conversation for a simple win / deny.

If I say I want a carousel that has chocobos on it going up and down with music, and you deliver me a carousel like airports have... Then I'm upset you delivered not what I wanted and others say "but we have a carousel already, stop being a baby!" -- I feel given the context of the conversation that at best there was misreading or some awfully large assumptions (as often the context is given in the person who asks for instanced housing), though we do have a number of second language (third, fourth, etc) speakers who might have a harder time reading context and read far more literally while also missing info sometimes... which is why I ultimately agree with Jojoya that since our overlords are Japanese that it would be nice if we're exceptionally clear on intent. Still I feel a bit. . . sad I guess is the word that we have to word jump rope, webster defines, when almost everyone gives enough context to make it very clear that they don't mean apartments when they ask for instance housing ("almost" everyone that I see that says this has specified things that exclude apartments within that post or at least within the thread of discussion, it should be clear they mean NOT apartments).

Another example is if you had asked for housing to a realtor and they asked "okay great what are you looking for?" and you said "basement for crafting, garden and yard, multiple floors" and then they came back to you with no basement no garden no yard no multiple floors apartments and said "like this, even though it fails to do what you want, because it's google defines housing" - given the context of the conversation the realtor failed and you shouldn't have had to be like... "did you read all of what I said before you started to reply?".

Housing can mean apartment or house, but given the context of what people are asking for it's clear they don't want apartments (or that at least apartments in their current state are not satisfactory). So when they ask for that thing it's clear we don't have what they want. "I want these three things, two of them exclude apartments because they can't do that said thing" shouldn't be responded with "we have what you asked for" because we obviously don't have that which is desired... given context at least which seems to ignored for a short and blunt (but wrong "given context") answer. Still.. perhaps its better not to use that wording, at least as a leading statement/concept, to help reduce miscommunication (even though I feel if you read each person's post that the usage and intent should have explained itself, like in the carousel example).

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Originally Posted by Eldevern

The strange thing from SE is they are able to add an outside to Inn Room for Kugane or Crystarium and don't understand the point we try to explain about instancied housing.

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I suspect they actually do understand.

A lot of what players repeat about SE's views on housing comes from prior years and not recent months. Time will have given them some new perspective and likely changed their thinking. Players also misunderstand or twist what gets said about certain issues. YoshiP's explanation of why it's difficult to implement a glamour dresser for player housing got turned into "this is why we can't have instanced housing" by a few players and other players have parroted the same since (despite apartments and house interiors already being instanced).

During the EU FanFest Q&A panel at the start of this year, there was a question about why the balcony door in mansions can't be used to go back outside. YoshiP went into an unexpectedly long answer for what seemed a simple question. He mentioned they are working on developing technology that would allow players to see what's happening in the non-instanced outdoor portion of the plot from the instanced house "interior".

I can't believe they would be going to that much effort for the benefit of only a few thousand players who own large houses. It only makes sense for them to do if they have more things in mind for such technology, such as creating instanced house plots that will allow players to glimpse what is happening in the non-instanced area "adjacent".

We also got teased at the NA FanFest that there would be an opportunity for players to live in Ishgard following completion of the Reconstruction (which starts in 5.1) but they've said absolutely nothing about Ishgard housing since. If it was going to be nothing more than a new housing district, I'm sure they would have given us some information by now just as they gave us information about Shirogane before Stormblood's release. I think it's going to be something new for housing but they're not quite ready to reveal it to us yet.

I could be totally wrong about that, of course.

But I do know they aren't ignorant or deaf to players when it comes to housing issues. Like most game developers, they've learned to stay silent until they're close to implementation because players have a tendency to twist vague statements into specific promises that were supposed to be delivered yesterday.

I have advocated for instanced housing since it was first implemented.. There is no reason it cannot be, technology is there... Also apartments are instanced.
The excuse of "Community Feel" must stopped being used as well because while this expansion i finally see people in housing areas it has been dead otherwise

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Originally Posted by Maero

I have advocated for instanced housing since it was first implemented.. There is no reason it cannot be, technology is there... Also apartments are instanced.
The excuse of "Community Feel" must stopped being used as well because while this expansion i finally see people in housing areas it has been dead otherwise

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I'd rather not the wards be destroyed because we'll lose the community feel. Just a handful of people being in the wards is already infinitely more communal then a tiny empty instanced pocket world. This is a multiplayer game after all, it's nice to see the creations of other players next to my house or to see other players gathering at marketboards outside of cities. Unpopular opinion I know, but this very fact is why I like this housing system over the other ones I've encountered in other games. This system imo is superior to that even of The Sims 2 and 4, because FFXIV has a living breathing community, instead of tiny pocket dimensions.

The excuse of "the housing areas has been dead" must stop being used.

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Originally Posted by Edax

I'd rather not the wards be destroyed because we'll lose the community feel. Just a handful of people being in the wards is already infinitely more communal then a tiny empty instanced pocket world. This is a multiplayer game after all, it's nice to see the creations of other players next to my house or to see other players gathering at marketboards outside of cities. Unpopular opinion I know, but this very fact is why I like this housing system over the other ones I've encountered in other games. This system imo is superior to that even of The Sims 2 and 4, because FFXIV has a living breathing community, instead of tiny pocket dimensions.

The excuse of "the housing areas has been dead" must stop being used.

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Who said they wanted to take your "busy community " ward away? I seen most people mention to keep it but add the option of instanced PLOTS or are you choosing to just glance over those posts? Cool, you love you ward. Stick with it because I'm glad your ward is lively and that you love it. Don't assume most people who mention the ward they reside in is as lively as yours, or that they're all liars because your community ward is the greatest of all time. I'm sure if the wards were more lively the excuse of " the housing areas has been dead " will stop being used.

also to copy you, The excuse of " tiny empty instanced pocket world " must stop being used.

I had more people visit my ESO instanced house than my xiv mansion, probably. I'm sure most people don't go, " Hmm, guess I'll go check out houses in Mists ward15, subdivision because random! " unless you have a friend just coming to visit you in the ward.

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Originally Posted by Edax

I'd rather not the wards be destroyed because we'll lose the community feel. Just a handful of people being in the wards is already infinitely more communal then a tiny empty instanced pocket world. This is a multiplayer game after all, it's nice to see the creations of other players next to my house or to see other players gathering at marketboards outside of cities. Unpopular opinion I know, but this very fact is why I like this housing system over the other ones I've encountered in other games. This system imo is superior to that even of The Sims 2 and 4, because FFXIV has a living breathing community, instead of tiny pocket dimensions.

The excuse of "the housing areas has been dead" must stop being used.

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Out of curiosity would you think a wildstar community system better, worse, or equal to FFXIV's communal feeling? Pretty sure you read it before but just in case, thats a system where they've basically taken the land space of 5 pocket dimensions and stuck them together allowing 5 players with 5 very large plots (each almost being the size of the wards we have now) and 5 large houses (technically they're larger than ours now).

Or is it in part that you get someone who you don't know as a neighbor and you want to go learn and meet them?

I agree that for some people the wards are not dead, I think there are indeed a lot of dead wards though for a few different reasons. In this I actually believe instanced houses would improve the wards as those who don't care for the neighborhood experience would leave, giving room for those that do- also SE doesn't need to design new wards that could potentially shatter the wards in big moves. Meanwhile those ward users would also have a better housing experience since their instanced pocket world would allow them to design and upgrade to a much higher degree than previous (as said before I think even ward users should get the pocket world, and basically being a ward user is like having a physical address and a small yard on top of your pocket world).

I still strongly believe we can make a pocket space without killing the wards. Given that there are people out there like you who enjoy them, if you're the only one then it might kill them but then I think they should have died lol- also to be honest I don't think you're the only one and that's why I tried to think of things that wont kill them.

I did want to add though and Strywin kind of already said that instanced pocket world housing doesn't have to be dead, I'd argue Wildstar community was even more active than FFXIV's and it was exactly that (until communities, which then even made it more of a group thing).

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Originally Posted by Edax

I'd rather not the wards be destroyed because we'll lose the community feel. Just a handful of people being in the wards is already infinitely more communal then a tiny empty instanced pocket world. This is a multiplayer game after all, it's nice to see the creations of other players next to my house or to see other players gathering at marketboards outside of cities. Unpopular opinion I know, but this very fact is why I like this housing system over the other ones I've encountered in other games. This system imo is superior to that even of The Sims 2 and 4, because FFXIV has a living breathing community, instead of tiny pocket dimensions.

The excuse of "the housing areas has been dead" must stop being used.

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No the excuse of "Community Feel" must stop being used as a reason to not implement instanced housing, like i stated already wards have been for the most part empty anyhow.
I did not state the current system should be removed if you see any of my past threads i had stated i would like a instanced and non instanced mix

Don't know what this "community" people are talking about is. Every time I visit a housing ward it's pretty barren. Sometimes I see a few folks at a mb or attacking a dummy but that's about it.

Never hear anyone talk unless they share an FC.

Adding more apartment rooms would be nice. Maybe even give them upgrades like extra rooms, indoor garden, private workshop, etc

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Out of curiosity would you think a wildstar community system better, worse, or equal to FFXIV's communal feeling? Pretty sure you read it before but just in case, thats a system where they've basically taken the land space of 5 pocket dimensions and stuck them together allowing 5 players with 5 very large plots (each almost being the size of the wards we have now) and 5 large houses (technically they're larger than ours now).

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I've heard you mention Wildstar many times, but not having played the game, I don't have the context with which to make an opinion.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I still strongly believe we can make a pocket space without killing the wards. Given that there are people out there like you who enjoy them, if you're the only one then it might kill them but then I think they should have died lol- also to be honest I don't think you're the only one and that's why I tried to think of things that wont kill them.

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Any instanced system that leaves the wards alone would be fine by me.

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Originally Posted by Maero

No the excuse of "Community Feel" must stop being used as a reason to not implement instanced housing, like i stated already wards have been for the most part empty anyhow.
I did not state the current system should be removed if you see any of my past threads i had stated i would like a instanced and non instanced mix

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No, the excuses that the "wards are empty" must stop.

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Originally Posted by TwiibieTwuu

Don't know what this "community" people are talking about is. Every time I visit a housing ward it's pretty barren. Sometimes I see a few folks at a mb or attacking a dummy but that's about it.

Never hear anyone talk unless they share an FC.

Adding more apartment rooms would be nice. Maybe even give them upgrades like extra rooms, indoor garden, private workshop, etc

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I've only seen a ward active once, and it was only part of the ward in any case. My FC got lucky with our new neighbors one day who decided that they liked hanging out with us at the MB. The rest of the ward was deader than a doorknob though. Since I've moved FC's I haven't encountered that feeling since then and part of that is because over the years personal housing has by and large become more popular. The current ward I'm in with my new FC has an 85/15 ratio in favor of personal houses, with most being locked. The ward is barren whenever I run around it waiting for queues with the sole exception of the FC next door, but the people in it are extremely quiet and barely talk to us.

As a roleplayer and someone who genuinely likes the /look/ of the wards I don't want them to go away, I love RPing in the Mists especially for that beautiful beach, but I absolutely want all housing going forward to be instanced. Or at the very least for the next ward expansion to be /purely/ for FC's only for the first month with no personal relocations allowed until after.

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Originally Posted by Enla

I've only seen a ward active once, and it was only part of the ward in any case. My FC got lucky with our new neighbors one day who decided that they liked hanging out with us at the MB. The rest of the ward was deader than a doorknob though. Since I've moved FC's I haven't encountered that feeling since then and part of that is because over the years personal housing has by and large become more popular. The current ward I'm in with my new FC has an 85/15 ratio in favor of personal houses, with most being locked. The ward is barren whenever I run around it waiting for queues with the sole exception of the FC next door, but the people in it are extremely quiet and barely talk to us.

As a roleplayer and someone who genuinely likes the /look/ of the wards I don't want them to go away, I love RPing in the Mists especially for that beautiful beach, but I absolutely want all housing going forward to be instanced. Or at the very least for the next ward expansion to be /purely/ for FC's only for the first month with no personal relocations allowed until after.

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After owning my house for over a year I finally saw a nieghbor for the first time a week back or so. Sure is populated, these wards lol. I'm the only person at my mb at all times. I think ppl, on my server especially, hang around Limsa. Lately there has been an awesome bard playing music at the aetheryte making going to my house an even more lonely ordeal. I go to decorate and tend my garden, mostly.

So ya... how about the devs make instanced Ishgardian housing.

I've owned my personal home for over 4 years now and my FC home for almost 2. The only players that I consistently see are the ones that I share houses with. In the almost 2 years since I bought my FC home, I've only ever seen one stranger around and that was only once. For my personal I've seen people around less than 10 times total. I'm a crafter and I spend most of my time by the retainer bell in the housing areas so this isn't a case of never using housing or anything like that. Only times I see a lot of people gathered in the housing areas is when I visit a friends that belong to big FCs, and then it's mostly just a bunch of members of the same FC hanging around together.

I had this dream once where houses were in instanced areas. To get there players were put in a very short queues while things were set up (couple of seconds at max) Once teleported you were put in the instanced housing island with other players were currently actively using the same system. Just a few houses located around a marketboard/retainer bell, but all with active/online players. You also had the option to "lock" certain houses to create a private instanced island of sorts that could be shared with friends. Anyway, not saying that this is what SE should do because it was just a dream and I don't even know if something like that is possible. But I wanted to share it anyway because I think something like instanced housing could actually be really cool and good for the community/neighborhood feeling depending on how they implement it.

Exactly^^^ You are all re-inforcing my points which Edax does not get which looks like we are on same server so idk....
I only state "Community Feel" because it is SE that said those exact words a while back.
There is no community feel if there are no players around, lol

At most i only have seen 5 or 6 players max in my area and i visit other areas. Also really only this expansion, past expansions it has been a Ghost Town.

In hindsight I wonder how hard it would have been to make eureka sized housing areas? Like just a giant map filled with houses that isn't warded. It definitely would be alive because it would basically be Limsa but with personal houses and multiple areas all about the size of eureka.

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Originally Posted by Maero

Exactly^^^ You are all re-inforcing my points which Edax does not get which looks like we are on same server so idk....
I only state "Community Feel" because it is SE that said those exact words a while back.
There is no community feel if there are no players around, lol

At most i only have seen 5 or 6 players max in my area and i visit other areas. Also really only this expansion, past expansions it has been a Ghost Town.

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I live next to a FC and see many people right next to my house everyday.

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Originally Posted by Maero

No the excuse of "Community Feel" must stop

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I'd have to ignore what's in front of my eyes everyday for this nonsense to be true.

well… duh. of course if your house is next to an FC house, the members of that FC would use it. But how many times do they stop to chat or make parties for this community feel to happen? My guess is those people just go in and out the house doing their own business and outside of that little corner, the ward is a ghost town. So is the ward where my personal house is. I never ever see people. Wards ARE ghost towns so ya… the nonsense is true. I say port all wards onto their own server machine and just make them instanced already

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Originally Posted by SoleilAlphi

well… duh. of course if your house is next to an FC house, the members of that FC would use it. But how many times do they stop to chat or make parties for this community feel to happen? My guess is those people just go in and out the house doing their own business and outside of that little corner, the ward is a ghost town. So is the ward where my personal house is. I never ever see people. Wards ARE ghost towns so ya… the nonsense is true. I say port all wards onto their own server machine and just make them instanced already

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I'd rather have people in my neighborhood then not.

Believe what you will then and that is fine however... . when most have been indicating same thing as i have been.. I have seen housing since it has been implemented and never have wards been full ever, maybe several people at a given time max and that is this expansion only like i indicated above.
Like did you not read where i had indicated a mix of instanced and non instanced? Housing has always been an issue and some instanced housing would very much help alleviate this.
Those that still want to see neighbours outside (if any) can and those that simply want a house but cannot under the current system will also be able to have a house. Options is a nice thing to have

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Originally Posted by Maero

Like did you not read where i had indicated a mix of instanced and non instanced?

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Originally Posted by SoleilAlphi

I say port all wards onto their own server machine and just make them instanced already

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Did you not read this recent opinion that wants to make it all instanced? This is what I'm fighting against.

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Originally Posted by Edax

I've heard you mention Wildstar many times, but not having played the game, I don't have the context with which to make an opinion.

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Just one of the more straight forward examples I can link videos to and pretty much the sole reason it lasted so long as it won awards (top housing sort of awards), and kept a whole community alive around that content for quite a time. Things like the devs overly fixated on hardcore content made it suffer (one of the few very common references to issues that game had, bumpy launch being another). Rift is a semi-similar house system, not that I'm saying they need to be exactly like those two systems. Mostly just imagine your yard and house specifically that you have in the wards but it's about 10x larger with a larger item maximum (and instanced of course lol, pocket world as you said is a fairly good description), a space everyone can obtain (though there are a lot of gil sinks in it), and because it's your own space you can scale objects (increase or decrease size) or place at any height (no glitches needed). As well since it's in your own area you get access to silly things like floating water, rocks, skybox (change the sky/weather), etc, which can turn into not so silly things (like you can use all of those creative powers together to make hand crafted sky islands with waterfalls that rains and has a misty cloudy sky, just because you can).

When I say community/communities in reference to wildstar it's a specific concept Wildstar came up with that took that large personal pocketworld described above and seamed it together with 4 other pocket worlds (5 total, making a huge zone basically), like if you imagine any other instanced pocket world housing system in another game but now you've got hand picked neighbors in a very large space (technically up 20 could control stuff within, just that 5 master plots from 5 different players are used as a groundwork).

https://i.imgur.com/UNUmwPP.png
(image of the community map, the 5 (very large) plots are outlined but you can decorate in-between them as well)

That's the massively too long didn't play the game description lol.

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Originally Posted by Edax

Any instanced system that leaves the wards alone would be fine by me.

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I would like to give ward users the power of the instance too, since I think it would be unfair to ward users if they don't get the new toys (keeping value in the ward investment also being an important concept to me, and allowing those to take advantage of new stuff that can't fit into the wards like towers or other structures like perhaps the final zone objects in Shadowbringers), so yeah- I don't want to see the wards destroyed.

To me that'd hurt like seeing your job become limited out of no where. "You play Gunbreaker? Yeah well we made that limited job now, no DF". OOF... XD

Did you enjoy deep dungeons? Yeah we removed that. . . lol.

Also thanks for saying this, I am more clear now then ever on your position- one which is mostly annoyed at people who say everyone thinks it is bad or worried people will remove it on you. Not saying we'll always agree (more literal person than I am lol), but I am clear on where you stand, and why, and that we're not really at odds (you're allowed to like what you like! that's totally fair) and so long as I don't come in trying to wrecking ball your content it's not the end of the world to you then (which is also a pretty fair concern lol).

I was getting that feeling before but I wasn't honestly sure if you were more on "I don't want you to have it even though it might not hurt me, just want to humbug say no" (which some people are, and I don't find that a super compelling argument lol) or in the "I don't want whatever you're asking for to hurt what I enjoy, and stop telling me what I like is trash". Might have been clear before but I haven't stalked all your posts to know 100% what you were about. Obviously on the later part about disparaging the system itself while I'll not say trash just because I don't feel like I need to say that to say I don't like something or think it's as good as it can be. . . but I'd be dishonest if I said I particularly had a love for the ward system lol, but I'm fine if others like it and I hope we can get something more that everyone can take advantage of without losing something in the process ;).

Thing is they can absolutely mix instanced housing with the idea of a neighborhood. You can have a centralized 'lobby' area for each ward area that has the marketboard, vendors, and more, and that has several 'gates' that lead to individual housing instances. Or even integrate what Black Desert does and have facades of houses that you buy into that lead into individual instances from the lobby. There's a lot of ways they can make instanced housing work that could include a community based feel. Heck if they do Airship housing they could make the lobby area a genuine terminal where you 'dock' your ship before going out to the skies.

Again I personally would prefer the current wards be grandfathered in, but I don't think exploring other ideas would be a bad thing.

This thread is interesting, I will agree with Edax, that I like the wards. I want that to stay but I also don't mind instanced housing being added, as long as we keep the wards. My thing is to everyone who keeps saying their wards are so dead is; have any of you tried to invite people back to them? On Crystal, I always occasionally see party finder ads of people holding events or inviting people to their house after they redecorate for upcoming holidays. Basically, the people here keep their wards alive by actively inviting people to them for whatever reason. It's not SE's job to keep them active.

It just sounds a little suspect for me to see people complaining about that when you probably didn't even try to keep the ward alive. It's almost like people trying to suddenly take over a dying FC even though they never contributed.

P.S. In case it came off as me being rude, I was not trying to be. Just trying to get a better understanding of things o/

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Originally Posted by AngeliouxRein

This thread is interesting, I will agree with Edax, that I like the wards. I want that to stay but I also don't mind instanced housing being added, as long as we keep the wards. My thing is to everyone who keeps saying their wards are so dead is; have any of you tried to invite people back to them? On Crystal, I always occasionally see party finder ads of people holding events or inviting people to their house after they redecorate for upcoming holidays. Basically, the people here keep their wards alive by actively inviting people to them for whatever reason. It's not SE's job to keep them active.

It just sounds a little suspect for me to see people complaining about that when you probably didn't even try to keep the ward alive. It's almost like people trying to suddenly take over a dying FC even though they never contributed.

P.S. In case it came off as me being rude, I was not trying to be. Just trying to get a better understanding of things o/

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I think, at least speaking for myself and whoever thinks similarly, that you could simply respond to "it's your job to keep the neighborhood alive" with "okay, and I can do that in an instance" lol.

I mean what would be the difference from being able to create an invitational event on the party finder that leads to a physical address and one that leads to an instanced? Especially if SE set up a system that allowed you to search a catalog of listed public instances (or create invitational cards for the party finder that hotlink to your instance if you join). Join X server, Y location, Z ward vs "search my name in the instanced house catalog/right click or whatever" or even better yet vs "click on the invitational teleport inside the party finder event" (this invitational card idea could be added for ward housing too to be honest).

Also I'd probably say that while I'm happy some people like to inspire that neighborhood feeling I don't think when people say their neighborhood is dead that they're speaking out of sorry as much as they're saying something between "can't even do what it intended and cost me in other features* for that thing it can't do" and for some maybe "it failed it's purpose so just kill it and give us this instead, I actually wanted this thing anyways". Now to be fair as you've said and Edax has said there are some who do like it and don't agree, but just saying that not everyone who says it is dead is saying it like "oh noooooOoo this system would be great if it was functional" but more "I dislike it, I don't even think it does what it's meant to do- we need a new system and this current one doesn't justify itself in my opinion". Level of politeness to rudeness varying from person to person of course lol (my vague generalization/concept of what people feel when they say that and are pro-instanced houses/pocket worlds/upgraded apartments).

*Features including things like:

• Full feature availability, most instanced systems built that way from the start are able to meet the demand presented to them and present all options at the same time
• New features, if housing is a smoother access system then new features are easier to add, unlike right now where if you add something to FC housing then FC without housing are out of luck and generates a huge bummer
• Choices, like where you want to be, what you want to put down, size and height of objects, more freedom on objects because the space isn't shared and you can't lore break others on accident lol (so being able to control the weather and sky adding a huge level of control, like underwater sky and a dome object- now your house is an underwater house~~!)
• Potentially much faster development of locations and objects- especially locations, instead of SE having to make an entire ward open and make that server space at once they could re-purpose an area already made or re-purpose assets for people to use in their pocket worlds, like Azim Steppe platform which seems to be a nearly perfect housing spot or giving weathers and objects of the final Shadowbringers zone and letting players create one from their own tools
• Whatever your imagine limits/etc, these examples are why I reference Wildstar a lot since that's an example where people literally did all that, making floating islands, crashed space ships, markets, underground towns, jungles, etc (some other MMORPGs have wild housing too, Rift being similar to Wildstar I just find Wildstar an easy example and like that housing was easily one of the major features that kept it from dying instantly lol- proving that people really loved it).

Some of the features fading in or out depending on how far someone wants to go, some people just want one more floor to their apartment lol. I think stopping so short would be a shame especially with the grand power our characters have and some of the lore we also have, such grand power at our disposal and the best our characters can do is a two floor apartment or desperate house hunting..? I don't think so! lol. I'm going to will power in an entire floating island chocobo farm with my aetherial might by level 90 thank you very much XD.

Personally I believe people who found it enjoyable (that they feel it has neighborhood value to them, not to me, but I believe their own experience), but I also believe the game would have a great benefit from having an (powerful) instanced system and have difficulty thinking this current ward system was for the best for the type of game (theme park) and type of theme (high fantasy, incredible magic / grandiose powers) this game is- which is obviously an opinion but one I am prepared to defend lol. Want to double state though that I've no interest in the wards dying and I think we can have both, we can even have the wards empowered by the new system (like making sure ward users aren't left out of the new power, but not removing their wards either).

+1 for the P.S. at the end :D

@Shougun For me, it just seemed like a poor argument against the wards. If they are dead now then what are the odds that a hub for housing would change that? That's how I was seeing it. I'm not going to act as if I go out of my way to make my ward busy and yea, oftentimes (even with the FC across from me) I am the only one there. But this sort of thing never bothered me about housing, I just simply like seeing all the houses around. Other arguments like saving space for the system I get. It's just the whole argument about wards being dead, didn't seem like a good argument, especially if SE suddenly started paying attention to this thread.

I appreciate the reply though, it gave me a better perspective. And like I said, I am not against the idea of instanced housing. I personally wish the Inn area at the Crystarium was some sort of instanced apartment or something that wasn't just a hotel. And your welcome for the P.S. lol.

@AngeliouxRein

I can't talk for everyone but I can at least explain my approach of the housing matters. Let's tryin'

My first grievance is we can lose our house. An instancied system as apartment shows we could avoid that. But that's a minor point.

We can consider there are more or less three categories of players interested in housing :
1. The ones who consider it like a trophy
2. The ones who use it for RP
3. The ones who want to use it as a way to express their creativity.

For the first category, the wards and the neighborood are the ideal, they can "show off".
For the second category, the wards and the neighborood are the ideal because of the immersion feeling
but for the last category, the current system suffer of big lacks.


What are these lacks?
Apartments and house are to little, the comparison with, for example Wildstar, hurts. The current system in FFXIV is far from the current "State of Art"
We can lose house and events items and there's no way to get them back to an NPC's, we are forced to go to the mogstation
We are forced to use glitchs to obtain certain effects without guaranties it will work or last.



I maybe forgot points. But let's talk about "neighborood" feeling. First, I was already in the game when they added housing, then I've seen the evolution.


When it was only an FC's area, the neighborood feeling was so-so.
After the opening to individual, it became worst.
Why?
It's mathematic : there are less players in a wards if they are individual owners rather than FC.
If individuals can own their own house, a significant part of players will use it's own house rather than the FC one especially when they want to be quiet (crafting, for example)


Why I think instancied housing could make neighborood feeling rise?
If you create a shared place, a "centrale" aetheryte with all the shops surrounding this place, more player could meet others. If SE keep the individual etheryte, people who want" escape" the crowd will still be able to do. But if people want to meet other players, centrale aetheryte and marketboard will allow that.


The current ward system will never get more neighborood. I don't ask they delete it but if they consider adding houses, instancied housing is a better way and I tend to consider they should have reserved the wards to FC's and make instancied system for individual.


The mix of FC's houses and individual houses "empty" the wards even more that a FC reserved ward and individual instancied housing would do because FC... are FC : a group of several players that individuals, solo players, are not. If you gather FC houses, it doesn't sound unreasonable to think it would allow to make wards more lively.

That's my thoughts.

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Originally Posted by AngeliouxRein

Basically, the people here keep their wards alive by actively inviting people to them for whatever reason. It's not SE's job to keep them active.

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It basically is their job as game designers to keep their content active though.

When players have to try to find ways to artificially make dead content active, it's poorly designed. You want content to naturally be fun.
They intentionally chose wards over instanced housing to create a neighborhood feeling (which is really nice), but if no one is interested it's a wasted idea. They should look into adding activities to Wards.

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Originally Posted by Edax

Did you not read this recent opinion that wants to make it all instanced? This is what I'm fighting against.

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Which is fine because i would be against that also but i want option of instanced or non instanced so more players have opportunity at housing. Under the current system it is of issue.
It had taken me over 3 years to finally a house so i want others to be able to enjoy it as well

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

It basically is their job as game designers to keep their content active though.

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I disagree. It's a game's job to give us content. Sometimes it's bad and they ignore it forever because no one likes it or does it only the bare minimum to get a reward, like Lords of Verminion. Sometimes it's so bad pretty much no one touches it ever, like Diadem. Sometimes it's not great, but people keep demanding it, so they keep trying new versions, like PVP.

It is not the developer's job to keep people active and interested in content they made. It is their job to keep trying new content to keep things interesting and listen to feedback. If the feedback can be used to adjust existing content for the better, by all means, they should try it. Forcing people to go to random wards so they don't look like ghost towns isn't going to do anything to make the game or the wards better. If no one is in the zones except to go to their house, the system isn't working.

They should have started with instanced housing and expanded if they had cool, workable ideas. Instead they went with a hugely intensive neighbourhood model that never worked well and taxed them heavily. It would make far, far more sense to have Wards more like Central Parks/Gardens that people logged into like a small, beautiful zone, with ample room to socialize and amazing screen shot and gpose potential. They could have a little stage area, orchards in Gridania, cacti and succulents in Ul'dah, a tropical get away in Limsa. From there you could have instanced housing, with outside space. Heck, you could even have some houses in the "distance" that you can't get to but would randomly show off people's instanced plots that change every day, or 12 hours, or whatever. Add in the "go straight to FC lot", "go straight to _______ party member's lot", and "go to specific lot" and you're aces.

You get a central social area with a purpose and you get the less taxing instanced housing.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

They should look into adding activities to Wards.

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The problem with that is there are so many wards. Put the activities in the wards, and which of the 144 do players choose to go to? There's only so many players online for a world at a time, and they all have something they want to be doing (probably not whatever the housing activity is). If the goal was to make the wards feel populated, the activity ends up failing to do it unless the players all agree to go to the same 2 or 3 wards - and that makes the other wards feel that much emptier.

Getting players to visit the wards really relies on the players who live in those wards so the other players will be present when they are.