An idea for the housing system.

Preface

I'm going to preface this with: I do not like the current housing system. It is expensive, exclusionary and broken. Players should not be fighting over basic housing; this being the ability to place your own furniture, plant some veggies and give your chocobo a place to call home. Yes, there are free company housing personal chambers, and that's great, but it's not the solution to this issue. Lastly, the following are my opinions and you're welcome to dispute them, criticise them or agree with them at your own discretion.

How do we solve the issue of availability?

It is ridiculous to think that the current system would be able to provide decent housing to the vast majority of the player-base. There is no possible way, within current technology, to actually have that many houses within its own zone. The only possible way to make enough available housing is for the base housing model to be fully instanced. So, my proposal is to add a fourth housing "size", which would be similar to a free company chamber, but made available to those who prefer to play solo.

These personal rooms would be made available from any of the three adventurer's guilds in the three main cities. It would function, in essence, like the current inn rooms that are available in the game right now, but would have the functionality of personal chambers in that you would be able to modify the layout of the room.

What about chocobos and gardening?

Whilst I am not going to pretend that I know anything in the slightest about game development or Square Enix's server structures or development methods, I will say that they need to put some development effort into making gardening and chocobo raising available to the masses.

There have been many ideas floating around for gardening: in-room potted plants, community gardens etc. These are all valid ideas and the development team should definitely be looking into ways (and if I remember correctly, they are) to make this available to players.

As for chocobos, there have again been ideas for how to implement chocobo raising for the masses. One idea was to have a community stables near your grand company. Another was to have chocobo porters make training available in their menus. Both are great ideas, again. If the idea I expressed above about personal rooms being made available from the adventurer's guilds were to come to fruition, a community chocobo stable could be made available outside each of the buildings (or at the least, nearby) so those who own a room would be able to stable their chocobo and take part in that area of content.

What about the pricing?

As I said in the preface, I do not agree with the current pricing model for personal housing, and I think it was ridiculous to implement the exact same system that is in place for free companies, especially the pricing.

Pricing for the personal room idea should be similar to (if not the same as) personal chambers in the Free Company housing. Simple and affordable for those who want their own slice of Eorzea.

For those who want to spend a bit more and have something more to show off, the current housing system would work, but in its own wards, with different pricing (70,000,000 is a lot of money for one person to make!). I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert when it comes to the economy of FFXIV, so I'm not going to comment on what I think the specific pricing of the current housing should be, just that I think it should be more affordable.

Conclusion

To conclude this rather lengthy post (I apologise) I just want to say, the development team has the ability to do amazing things, as documented from the complete turn-around that happened from version 1 to version 2 of the game. Yes, they'll make some bad decisions (first implementation of The Hunt and now personal housing) but I'm sure they'll work their hardest to fix the problems that people are having with this current system.

Exclusive systems shouldn't even be considered for MMOs, in this day and age. They're not fun, and (as it says in the name) exclude a vast majority of the player-base and only generate bad feelings towards each other and the development team.

Please feel free to agree, disagree, feel indifferent, like, love, bash, get angry at or just plain hate me for my ideas expressed above, as is your right. Thanks for reading!

100% agree the current housing isn't good, i'm new-ish to the game our fc tried to get a small house after us grinding 5 mil to purchase, myself and a friend spent 14 hours spamming the purchase alongside 8 other people, and still we and 7 other didn't win so we all wasted 14 hours of what could have been enjoying the game trying to get a small house.

I personally feel fc's should get their own instanced streets where it only is shown to those in the free company and others who are specifically invited to visit. I love this game I have come from 15 years on World of Warcraft with my wife to ff14 and gameplay I am in love with as well as it's community but this (although not seen as massive to most people) is a feature that I feel hasn't been looked at well enough. Fingers crossed something gets done about it.

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Exclusive systems shouldn't even be considered for MMOs, in this day and age. They're not fun, and (as it says in the name) exclude a vast majority of the player-base and only generate bad feelings towards each other and the development team.

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lol no that's not how this works, that's not how any of this works

That said, housing needs to jack its prices up considerably by becoming "real" auctions. This nonsense with placard camping needs to end, and the apartment system needs to be expanded to include penthouses with a garden balcony.

The only reason why you're seeing so many people needing to sit at placards for so long is too few of them have been priced out of the market.

Upkeep prices also need to be a thing so only players that play semi-actively can afford to hold onto their house. No more of this logging in once every 40 days thing.'


Keep in mind the prices the game charges you for a small/medium/large estate do not reflect their true value. A small is worth far more than 4 million on most servers, and a small on a congested server could potentially be worth a large on an empty server. The housing market does need to be exclusive to maintain its status, but the apartment system should be enhanced to cover all game mechanics (minus the ward) a house might provide at the penthouse level.

A discount on FC housing is acceptable, as it is currently, due to the transient nature of the property.

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

The thread is from 2014.

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-= still feel the way I feel below but uh, holy necro =-

Yoshida is a bit old school enjoying games like Dark Age of Camelot (he said, long ago), which also happens to have a very very similar ward system. I cannot recall the exact wording but I believe some of these issues are meant to be, like not everyone getting to enjoy housing equally. Although I also imagine the problem has expanded past that (ancient intentions vs changes and actions that've happened since then), like how they originally intended housing to only be a FC thing, as they kept adding houses and apartments on their system I think at this point it's clear they started at one point of design philosophy but shifted over time as they tried to correct for their repeatedly misjudging of the demand and desires and alternative options other games have successfully made - which is where we are now. Getting 'a' house, if you disregard the size, theme, and location that you want is not entirely impossible, getting a stripped down house (apartment) is even further possible. Neither are complements to the system, just a statement that they've slowly made things more accessible on the foundation I would simply call bad (wards as a side feature sounds neat for some players, wards as the core driver of the primary content just reeks of awful, imo).

Naturally and obviously I think that was a . . . bad idea given theme park design, but just wanted to add some history to it. Even the designer of the game that I'm fairly certain Yoshida was inspired by (DAoC) chose to use a different system in ESO (which I've recently heard people think is an awesome system). That some part of it was at least working as probably intended, especially when it was first launched - well it's just a reference point I wanted to share. Not saying "ayeee it's great" but priming you for "working as intended" or "housing isnt for everyone" posts. And that while there is some truth to that, I think a truth of it's original design but something they're making less and less true each time they step forward. In the end I absolutely never want to see the ward system as SE has made it again- at least as the primary driver of the system (say for example they had Wild Star communities, which are like a make your own ward system, or something like that which is akin to a ward but not the primary driver- then sure w.e okay, but the powerhouse of the system should never be SE's FFXIV wards again.. cause it's. .. ew. lol. I've no nice words for it and when I go into comparison mode I still almost have no nice words for it, bad on it's own, and often bad in comparison. The objects themselves are pretty cute though, but the system itself can go catch a Dalamud).

Of course shifting gears on such a system would require a lot of 'lost' work, in so much that instead of adding something new they're going back just to reformulate something old, and who knows if they've actually the knowledge base to implement it smoothly (may be a crash course lesson for whoever is set to work on it, or the person with that knowledge also has 20 other massively important tasks to do instead), so I can see how SE doesn't see it worth reinventing their wheel when they can just make players deal with their clunky mess instead and make other new things (but why I go out of my way to say "please don't use this as your base again", for their next MMO whenever that is 2-10 years from now lol). It's also why I've suggested sometimes systems that can go around and incorporate many of those features players are missing while not imploding the houses (like adding airships, or expanding the squadron barracks for more content, (mobile / content home base concepts w/o replacing houses), getting gardening and workshops in by other means, - things that would be fairly memory friendly and be useful to housing owners and not alike).

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Originally Posted by xxAtticusxx

PrefaceSo, my proposal is to add a fourth housing "size", which would be similar to a free company chamber, but made available to those who prefer to play solo. These personal rooms would be made available from any of the three adventurer's guilds in the three main cities. It would function, in essence, like the current inn rooms that are available in the game right now, but would have the functionality of personal chambers in that you would be able to modify the layout of the room.

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Sounds like you are asking for Apartments? They exist already. Stable for your choco outside the front door. You need to have one class at level 50 and be a second lieutenant in your grand company to purchase one.

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Originally Posted by Shibi

Sounds like you are asking for Apartments? They exist already. Stable for your choco outside the front door. You need to have one class at level 50 and be a second lieutenant in your grand company to purchase one.

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Apartment Rooms are smaller than a Cottage (Small House). Now, if we had an option to buy a bigger Apartment Room for more money, that would be better.

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Originally Posted by Shibi

Sounds like you are asking for Apartments? They exist already. Stable for your choco outside the front door. You need to have one class at level 50 and be a second lieutenant in your grand company to purchase one.

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The thread is from 2014.

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Originally Posted by xxAtticusxx

Preface... my proposal is to add a fourth housing "size", which would be similar to a free company chamber, but made available to those who prefer to play solo.

These personal rooms would be made available from any of the three adventurer's guilds in the three main cities. It would function, in essence, like the current inn rooms that are available in the game right now, but would have the functionality of personal chambers in that you would be able to modify the layout of the room.

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This already exists.
Personal apartments are available in every housing ward and are often not fully occupied as it is.

EDIT: ffs necro much?

EDIT 2: nice Styrmwyda, it's only 2 posts above this one...

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

This already exists.
Personal apartments are available in every housing ward and are often not fully occupied as it is.

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I refer you to this post https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5488181

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Originally Posted by Rilifane

The thread is from 2014.

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Yes, just noticed.

Darn, too tired harvesting diadem to examine. :)

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

EDIT 2: nice Styrmwyda, it's only 2 posts above this one...

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My point still stands.

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Originally Posted by Styrmwyda

My point still stands.

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I edited to avoid resurrecting this topic again but nevermind...

OP asked for apartments, single rooms, the exact same size as FC quarters. I said that's already in the game, because it is.
What you are asking for (and I don't disagree with in any way) is something entirely different, so I don't see why your 'point' is relevant to mine, to the point where you keep posting about it whenever it appears someone hasn't commented on it directly.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

I edited to avoid resurrecting this topic again but nevermind...

OP asked for apartments, single rooms, the exact same size as FC quarters. I said that's already in the game, because it is.
What you are asking for (and I don't disagree with in any way) is something entirely different, so I don't see why your 'point' is relevant to mine, to the point where you keep posting about it whenever it appears someone hasn't commented on it directly.

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Good point, sorry.