Working as intended: Lessons from the history of MMO housing.

I just thought this article might be of interest to some.

It covers a variety of points, including how land rushes cause issues and actually favor RMT, among so many other problems. FFXIV is used as an example alongside ArcheAge of how not to do player housing. Pretty interesting read, if you've got the time for it.

I wonder if being used as a modern day Titanic tale will be enough to get Gil-P to change his stance? I kind of doubt it, but who knows!

It is interesting, though I feel the author is ridiculously biased and doesn't attempt to understand actual developmental issues. Learning from history and 'knowing' how to do something doesn't mean that development can actually pull it off. Ever.

I also feel that XIV housing passes the first two points, and doesn't apply to the third (as it isn't open world). There's no land rush, as there aren't that many people that can afford it at, or anywhere near, release, and housing is only 'temporarily' prohibitively expensive, thus spreading what would otherwise 'be' a land rush out over a long period of time, and eventually allowing people to afford housing just fine.

We absolutely still have to work for it, especially with personal housing, and it is somewhat disappointing that personal housing wasn't scaled down in size (and therefore price) from FC housing, but in this way, a house is a house I guess. It's vanity, status, and completion, and something you have to work for in order to attain.

SE might eventually change the whole setup to better support it, but I wouldn't expect that before 4.0, at least, as it'd be a massive system alteration to do any good. Until then, this is our housing. Accept that, or accept that you may be in the wrong game for what you're looking for.

I disagree about a lot of it not being applicable. While it's easy to say "FFXIV isn't open world!", space is limited in exactly the same way as an open-world game. But there's no decay/upkeep limitation, no limitation on how many houses a person can buy, and... we very very much had a land rush. All small plots gone within minutes XD (That is, admittedly, a bit different from an at-launch land rush that the author mostly talks about). Though, it seems acquisition of mediums and larges will be spread out over time.

The author is a bit biased, but it is an editorial.

As for not being able to pull it off... well, yeah, development is hard. That's a given. I feel one of the author's main points was that some older games do it better, and some newer ones' developers don't seem to have learned from that.

In any case, thanks for sharing your viewpoint constructively.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZephyrAM

Accept that, or accept that you may be in the wrong game for what you're looking for.

---

Personally, that's something I've been spending a lot of thought on lately. Haven't decided one way or the other yet.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ZephyrAM

There's no land rush, as there aren't that many people that can afford it at, or anywhere near, release, and housing is only 'temporarily' prohibitively expensive, thus spreading what would otherwise 'be' a land rush out over a long period of time, and eventually allowing people to afford housing just fine.

---

I agree with most of your post, but this quoted bit actually isn't true; it depends on the server. Legacy servers, for example, ran out of small houses within a couple of minutes, no exaggeration. That's my sole qualm with this housing system. It's not exactly fair to the players who have worked hard to save up, only to be denied because they couldn't dash quickly enough to the placard.

Making prices more affordable does not makes sense, because if that happens, all slots will be sold in first minute of server open on ALL servers, event the ones with low economy.

The thing that have to be really fixed, is players and FC owning multiple houses, thanks to 'sister' FCs and alt characters. Limiting housing to ONE house per account is a step forward, imho. Multiple account owners are fine, they are paying multiple subs so each account have its deserved housing rights.

About sister FCs, the only solution I can see is limiting to ONE FC membership per server: you cannot join a new FC if you have character in the server already enlisted on a FC. But this have so many side effects that have to be fine evaluated by devs.