The Housing problem and my proposed solution

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

There isn't one, that's why.

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In Chrome, open the Chrome menu and choose "Request desktop site". The page will refresh with the full version, as long as your phone has a decent screen, you can zoom as needed and the Edit post button will be there. Firefox does this as well, not sure about the native browser on older versions of Android, but as long as you can run Chrome or Firefox, it's not an issue.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Not to pick on you specifically, as there are many, many posters who do this, but.... Do you think one day it will be possible for people to discuss aspects of this game (FFXIV), without referring to other games as a reference point? I mean, other than people who have played whichever game you reference, no one knows what you're talking about. Perhaps it would be more helpful to describe what you want them to do instead of simply saying "But, <insert other game name here> does it better...".

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Don't worry about "picking on". xD I've described it quite a few times, but to clarify: In WildStar, the housing system works as individual plots in their own instances. Each plot has an exterior (currently with an item limit of 1,000, though in the next patch that limit will be going up to 2,500), and you can choose to place a house if you want that has a separate interior (with its own item limit of 1,000, soon to be 2,500).

Housing plots can be set as private, neighbor-only, or public. (Neighbors are basically people you grant special invite access to.) You can customize the ground, the skybox, the exterior and interior of the house, and the lighting inside, as well as the music that plays (can be different exterior and interior). With the large item limits and robust decor placement (you can manipulate an item on XYZ axes, as well as resize it), you can pretty much create anything you can dream of. There are also pre-arranged "fabkits" that you can plug into slots on the plot, many of which come with interactive challenges or even scalable instances. A future incoming feature is "neighborhoods", where players will be able to link up multiple plots to create one massive... well, neighborhood.

It's hard to fully describe the level of customization and how absurdly awesome the housing community is. xD Google up some housing plots if you wanna see what people can do with a housing system that actually works for them, instead of something that... does the exact opposite, as we have here in FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

In Chrome, open the Chrome menu and choose "Request desktop site". The page will refresh with the full version, as long as your phone has a decent screen, you can zoom as needed and the Edit post button will be there. Firefox does this as well, not sure about the native browser on older versions of Android, but as long as you can run Chrome or Firefox, it's not an issue.

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I dislike desktop sites on my phone. Using a Moto G LTE, smallish screen and my vision's kinda crap.

They *have* the option to add the edit button, it's just one of those things they don't have enabled. I'm fully familiar with the forum software they're using. They don't have a lot of features for the mobile version enabled and it's infuriating.

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Originally Posted by Nadirah

EQ2's housing community is bigger than WildStar, without neighborhoods.

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Wildstar? Is that like a rock band mmo or something? I've never even heard if before this thread. Does anyone play that? No, SE does not to be taking ideas from some not so well known game.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Not to pick on you specifically, as there are many, many posters who do this, but.... Do you think one day it will be possible for people to discuss aspects of this game (FFXIV), without referring to other games as a reference point?

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In school, you will learn to form arguments to reference to related analogies to either prove or disprove a point. In law school it was the entirety of what we did. 1000 years of analogies to past analogies, and if you took one of the visiting Italian professors, you got the joy of adding in some Roman case law as well.

Comparing to other MMOs is a perfect way to discuss a point. You can look at what others did right or wrong, break it down, and consider how it could apply in the cuurent game.

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Originally Posted by Sandpark

Wildstar? Is that like a rock band mmo or something? I've never even heard if before this thread. Does anyone play that? No, SE does not to be taking ideas from some not so well known game.

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Jingoism is never a good form of argumentation...

The idea that you should just ignore examplesfrom the outside or smaller communities is exceedingly foolish.

Take ideas anywhere you can get them, and then improve them.

SE is a bigger company with a bigger game and bugger budget. So it should be able to do better at this than Carbine, the makers of Wildstar. It should be at least as good as Sony's 10 year old Everquwst 2 version. At least in the sole term of accessibility...

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Originally Posted by Makeda

In school, you will learn to form arguments to reference to related analogies to either prove or disprove a point. In law school it was the entirety of what we did. 1000 years of analogies to past analogies, and if you took one of the visiting Italian professors, you got the joy of adding in some Roman case law as well.

Comparing to other MMOs is a perfect way to discuss a point. You can look at what others did right or wrong, break it down, and consider how it could apply in the cuurent game.

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All fine debating points, but also all utterly unhelpful.

In a discussion that really comes down to proposals of ideas or concepts to improve something, specifics are important. Simply making an empty reference to another source that is known only to a minority of participants in the discussion is unhelpful at best.

It's far, far more helpful to explain the concept or idea that you wish to be considered for discussion followed by a statement such as "similar to how <insert game concept> was handled in <insert alternate game>". Referencing a point that may be unknown to the majority of participants does nothing to advance the discussion.

P.S. throwing in references to law school, Italian law professors and Roman law certainly establishes you as a Philidelphia Lawyer, but I am not sure what else it does for your line of argument.

I think a lot of people are going to completely abandon housing once the next patch hits. There really isn't a point to spending gil on an in-game house that you can lose if you aren't around. It will free up a bunch of plots in the wards, but it remains to be seen how populated they will be afterwards. This will make the larger, stable FCs more popular for sure, if just for the FC room.

I'm of the opinion that housing in XIV could use a complete overhaul. Call it Housing 2.0: "A Housing System Reborn".

I don't know the specifics, but it seems to me that there was some kind of a bigger idea they were going for, and wound up painting themselves into a corner. Perhaps it was limitations of dealing with consoles. Or, if it's a product of SE's penchant for introducing complexity into things that really don't need, nor benefit from it. They have a habit of doing that. Again, I don't know.

I do know that this is one of the least flexible and unfriendly housing systems I've seen in a MMO in a very, very long time. With how popular housing is in MMOs among many people, and the kinds of communities that develop around it, I feel like SE really botched a great opportunity here.

There are MMOs like Rift where people receive a plot of land, and can build pretty much anything they want on it.

Though it's aging, EQ2 has had a much more flexible and accomodating housing system for years now... for guilds and individuals, of all levels of wealth. Players can get seriously creative with the decorations, too. Could almost call their use of certain decorative pieces as "emergent" lol.

LoTRO's system is rather close to XIV's, in terms of instanced neighborhoods and specific plots. Except houses are already built, and you simply purchase one and then pay an upkeep. You can decorate the interior, and the yard, though placement of items is restricted to specific spots, which isn't as interesting.

Even Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, for all its other problems, had a pretty advanced and powerful housing system.


And for one other example, Istaria (formerly Horizons), has a very nice housing system as well, where, along side biped characters, Dragons could create their own cave-based dwellings, and expand on it, etc. Can't find any good videos really showcasing Istaria's housing, unfortunately.

Point is, there were, and still are, numerous places SE could have drawn ideas from to create an accessible, flexible, powerful and of course fun housing system for their players to really dig in and get creative with. Again, I don't know what they had in mind when they set out to design/develop XIV's housing. Maybe their reach exceeded their grasp on this aspect.

Still, I think - instead of putting band-aids and trying to find ways to work around the current setup's limitations and problems, they should just go back to the drawing board and start again. Keep the current system in place in the meantime, maybe add more wards if they can. But in the meantime, begin anew on a better system. Ensure that players/FCs who already owned a plot/house would receive a new one of equal - or maybe even better - value when the new system launches.

Will this happen? I doubt it. However, I definitely believe it should.

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Originally Posted by Makeda

Jingoism is never a good form of argumentation...

The idea that you should just ignore examples from the outside or smaller communities is exceedingly foolish.

Take ideas anywhere you can get them, and then improve them.

SE is a bigger company with a bigger game and bugger budget.

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Budget has nothing to do with ingenious creation but everything to do with creating more of the same. Taking an idea and reshaping it is different from copy pasting.
I was being honest not being in jingoism. I've never heard of the game WildStar. FC are for guilds not soloist. SE should create a smaller version of housing for people not into community but the former should not be dissolved.