We need private instance housing

The supply of housing will continue to be a problem for players as there will never be enough supply to ever fit the needs of the whole server. Realistically, SE can't afford to meet demand if they continue to keep the housing system as it stands.

What we truly need is private instance housing to fix this problem.

This can give us potentially an 'unlimited' supply of housing, giving players access to the joys of housing (chococbo stables, furniture, gardening etc.). I understand it comes at the cost of not being able to interact with your neighbours, but it's definitely a cost I'm willing to pay if I can pay private instance housing at a much lower and afford price and gaining access to all the perks of housing realistically.

Simply just have a small private instance map and allow your wedded partner, party members and FC members etc. to have access to this private instance; allowing to share and show your friends your house.

Yeah private instances for you private housing

and the neighbourhood system for company housing with 2-3 more added neighbourhood`s and all should just be fine....

I don`t understand why they added so much housing content when nearly no one especially new player can`t enjoy the content.

Its just frustrating and stupid

I totally agree. The housing districts should be reserved for Free Companies only and everybody else should be able to have their own private house if they want one and have the gil for it; it shouldn't come down to crossing your fingers that you are able to obtain a house once they make more wards available. I was only able to obtain a private house because I was on as SOON as the servers went up when new wards were added and I got on chocobo back to get the first (and one of the very few) small houses available. Not to be rude, but this is rather pathetic. Everybody should have access to it at their leisure.

In a perfect world, SE would give everybody a house of their own that starts off as a small shack and give players the ability to upgrade it into, ultimately, a mansion through crafting/buying upgrades and paying a fee.

For me, the 'American dream' is for me and my small FC to get a house so we can have an FC ship and do gardening. Sadly in big FCs that actually do own houses, you aren't given enough privileges to access these features. That's the main reason why I wanted to start an FC for myself so I can give all my personal friends access to housing features. However the cost is simply too high which is SE's way of filtering all those who should be allowed houses given their very limited supply. As more and more features of housing are added, players are simply forced to miss out on even more. We are already getting FC ships and even more yet the huge majority of us are forced not to enjoy such content.

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Originally Posted by ChocoChick

For me, the 'American dream' is for me and my small FC to get a house so we can have an FC ship and do gardening. Sadly in big FCs that actually do own houses, you aren't given enough privileges to access these features. That's the main reason why I wanted to start an FC for myself so I can give all my personal friends access to housing features. However the cost is simply too high which is SE's way of filtering all those who should be allowed houses given their very limited supply. As more and more features of housing are added, players are simply forced to miss out on even more. We are already getting FC ships and even more yet the huge majority of us are forced not to enjoy such content.

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ahhh the difference between those who actually work for it, and those who bought gil when the servers introduced housing xD gil buyers raped servers for housing, it blows, and frustrates me to no end :/

For example, Those who work for their money, have no house.

Gil buyers almost 70% of the houses are belonged to them. i met a guy who had no crafts AT ALL, and NO GATHERING, and he has a mansion with head of dreadwyrm.

This already exists. Its called a FC Room. If anything they might as well give the option to expand your FC room at a additional cost.

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Originally Posted by Liselsia

This already exists. Its called a FC Room. If anything they might as well give the option to expand your FC room at a additional cost.

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Nice try. The majority of FCs can't even get a house for their members to then get private chambers in. See the problem there?

Fully in agreement with the OP. We need a totally independent instanced housing system for everyone that can't get a plot in a neighbourhood.

I support upgradeable instanced houses 100%. It even gives more reason to be a crafter.

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Originally Posted by Liselsia

This already exists. Its called a FC Room. If anything they might as well give the option to expand your FC room at a additional cost.

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A room isn't quite the same as a house. Yes you put furniture in there which is one aspect of housing. But a room itself won't give you personal access to FC ships, gardening or stables.

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Originally Posted by ChocoChick

A room isn't quite the same as a house. Yes you put furniture in there which is one aspect of housing. But a room itself won't give you personal access to FC ships, gardening or stables.

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A personal house doesnt give access to a "FC" Airship either. Nor does it give access to FC crafting. Stable is pretty universal for FCs, but Gardening certainly is a problem. Although simple fix is just to introduce interior gardening.

But the bigger issue, the one everyone clearly avoided discussing is the effect of this decision. It is a logical conclusion that if Personal Housing was made instanced, be it via Mega-FC Room or Instanced housing this would also imply the demolition of all current non-instanced personal housing. This would give wards back to the Free Companies. I am not really oppossed to that idea but it would cause a riot. It is so beyond the realm of posibilities, to point where fantasizing on instanced housing is almost delusional. I am not saying on paper your idea isnt good, but the ramifications of it would send shockwaves. SE already poked the housing bear with all the drama in 2.0, I imagine they would be terrified of doing it again.

Why would it cause a riot? No one would lose anything, it would just be shifted into the "private" instances. This whole idea that people are building their entire gaming experience around seeing a handful of strangers running around a ward is a little disturbing. People would get over it. Keeping a large percentage of the population from experiencing content just because the small percentage likes their "neighborhoods" isn't a good enough reason.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

Why would it cause a riot? No one would lose anything, it would just be shifted into the "private" instances. This whole idea that people are building their entire gaming experience around seeing a handful of strangers running around a ward is a little disturbing. People would get over it. Keeping a large percentage of the population from experiencing content just because the small percentage likes their "neighborhoods" isn't a good enough reason.

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So much this!!!

I have some questions for those who are requesting instanced housing. Would instanced housing include the exterior part of the house, like the yard and view? Or would it be instanced interior only? I do like having a yard, and looking out to a neighborhood of houses, even if it would be a static and fake neighborhood.

If instanced houses included the yard, I'd be all for it, especially if it would open up more space for others to enjoy housing. For those who want to keep wards, why not create one common ward? We could zone into and out of our plots from/to the ward, and no one would complain that their ward is empty. And for vanity's sake, when you walk up to your plot, you'd only see your version of your house on the plot. Other houses could be static in appearance. Just an idea. :)

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Originally Posted by Lenne

I have some questions for those who are requesting instanced housing. Would instanced housing include the exterior part of the house, like the yard and view? Or would it be instanced interior only? I do like having a yard, and looking out to a neighborhood of houses, even if it would be a static and fake neighborhood.

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If they actually did instanced housing (and I really hope they do), it would make sense to have a fake backdrop beyond the borders of your yard. And the yard is a big draw given the need for stables and gardening.

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Originally Posted by Liselsia

But the bigger issue, the one everyone clearly avoided discussing is the effect of this decision. It is a logical conclusion that if Personal Housing was made instanced, be it via Mega-FC Room or Instanced housing this would also imply the demolition of all current non-instanced personal housing. This would give wards back to the Free Companies. I am not really oppossed to that idea but it would cause a riot. It is so beyond the realm of posibilities, to point where fantasizing on instanced housing is almost delusional. I am not saying on paper your idea isnt good, but the ramifications of it would send shockwaves. SE already poked the housing bear with all the drama in 2.0, I imagine they would be terrified of doing it again.

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The current interior of your personal house already is an instance. Take the current player housing instance and expand the borders out to include a yard (the door would work as a door rather than a trigger to change instances) and the yard would be included as part of the house. Make the instance border your garden gate and there you go.

If they were able to take existing housing and convert it, there would be very little blowback (someone would complain. Someone always complains) and it would free up those housing spots.

The issue may be that the servers couldn't handle every level 50+ having the possibility of their own instance. That's what, I think, caused SE to change to the ward option and caused the blowback. The smarter thing for them to have done if that was the case, would have been to tell us that there was a delay while they got it right. It would have caused less drama.

I'd love this! It's a good suggestion.

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Originally Posted by Konata_Izumi

ahhh the difference between those who actually work for it, and those who bought gil when the servers introduced housing xD gil buyers raped servers for housing, it blows, and frustrates me to no end :/

For example, Those who work for their money, have no house.

Gil buyers almost 70% of the houses are belonged to them. i met a guy who had no crafts AT ALL, and NO GATHERING, and he has a mansion with head of dreadwyrm.

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There are two ways in MMOs to make golds ingame:

1 - To gather and craft;

2 - To play the market.

I've met some who play the market in other MMOs and they were zillionaire. One in particular in Guild Wars never really played the game, spent his time in the main cities buying and reselling, and he was quite rich, and there were no place in Guild Wars like auctions houses to buy/sell stuff.

It's possible some bought houses with bought money. But just because someone has no gathering and crafting skills does not mean that they bought gils from gil sellers, it's highly possible they're legit players who play the market well.

I totally agree with the OP.

If instanced housing is not possible, at least let everyone have a room in a INN for example, because even if you can have a room in a FC house, what if your FC does not have a house?


We already have a "useless" room in the INN, why not create a real INN in the center of the housing district and let everyone buy a room in it? (a instanced room with a little garden, balcony or whatever) like this they would also have access to the "neighbourhood". This would please everyone!

I like that they want you to be in an FC to get all the stuff, but even being in a free company isn't enough. You need tons of gil and a lot of luck(or a low pop server) to get it. The gil isn't as much of an issue to me as the lack of ability to buy a house. They need to make housing reflect the server population so that every server has "enough" housing. Maybe not enough for every single player on the server to have their own house, but at least more than 8 districts worth.

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Originally Posted by Teryaani

The issue may be that the servers couldn't handle every level 50+ having the possibility of their own instance. That's what, I think, caused SE to change to the ward option and caused the blowback. The smarter thing for them to have done if that was the case, would have been to tell us that there was a delay while they got it right. It would have caused less drama.

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I really hope that isn't the case, because somehow they made it work on XI and those servers weren't anything special. Blizzard managed to give everyone their own entire personal city. So their servers can manage it with their populations.

SE needs to have some better reasons than just "but servers" because it's just unprofessional to keep blaming hardware.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

I really hope that isn't the case, because somehow they made it work on XI and those servers weren't anything special. Blizzard managed to give everyone their own entire personal city. So their servers can manage it with their populations.

SE needs to have some better reasons than just "but servers" because it's just unprofessional to keep blaming hardware.

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I agree and it's lame that it's the go-to excuse for so many things (okay, they haven't said that the au-ra horn thing is because of hardware, but maybe that's because we haven't given them enough time). Items in your house or yard? Server limitations. Inventory? Server limitations. I need to search the dev tracker and Q&A for more. I know I've heard more.

I was going to make the point that they must have accounted for everyone having an instance with the free company private rooms, but even there they put some pretty sizable gates up: 1) Level 50, 2) having had enough sense to be able to save 300k, and the biggest 3) have a free company lucky enough to have a house. That last one was the real limiting factor.

There must be something about some of the underlying design choices that beat the hell out of the servers. That or they are REALLY paranoid and don't let anything even remotely affect server side performance.

...to be honest I'm just at the point where I've just completely given up on getting a house. And I've been looking forward to it since 1.friggin0. It's a broken system, it's a very broken system, and there is no intention at all to fix it in any way. (From what we know so far.) Just....meh. Not worth it. :/ Yeah, instances would be nice, but it's not happening. :/

Think of WoW's farms. You look at it from outside you see yours. You walk in, you get yours.

All they need is the ability to let others click the signpost and visit others if the permissions are set.

And EQ2 had instanced housing. And a super huge housing community. There are folks that will build and design/decorate *for* you for in game money ffs.

I agree that there needs to be some sort of solution found for people who want housing but can't get it. One of the main things that drew me to this game was the robust housing system and not even being able to aim for that is maddening. I have no problems with saving up the Gil for a plot but having to check constantly to see if someone in PF is selling or if there is magically a plot abandoned is pretty awful.

I think there are a few measures that can be taken to mitigate this problem significantly:

• After 90 days of not being subscribed you are evicted from your house, which demolishes your house, and sends you by mail (or some other system) all the items inside and frees up the plot for anyone to buy. This could also refund the Gil the person spent on the house if people would prefer that.

• A system for the dynamic creation of wards, when there are (under 5%? under 10%? depending on the internal numbers) plots left, a new ward should be created for people to buy houses in. Likewise if a ward is almost empty wards should be able to be merged (this may end up being difficult because what if 2 wards are filled exactly 50% but they have 1 plot with an owner in it and it cannot be merged?) I have read Square have said that the problem with wards is the server space/processing power is quite significant for them, so this may not be an appropriate solution.

• 1 Plot per ACCOUNT and 1 Plot per FC(If that isn't already a thing i haven't been able to find it), i have seen 8/9 small plots being owned by the same person and most of them arent even built on, i have absolutely no idea why Square thought this would be a good idea, because people with loads of Gil will take advantage of those with little and jack the prices up 4x, 5x, while im sure this strategy would be appreciated in Ul'dah, in an MMO this means players are being restricted from content they otherwise would be able to access with a significant less amount of resources expended.

• Finally, they should look at games like Everquest 2 and Lord of the Rings Online (especially Everquest 2) on how to do Housing in a way that makes it accessible and avaliable for everyone who wants a house.

I understand that it is not a top priority right now to be sorting out the housing system, after all Heavensward just came out and i'm sure they have to concentrate on bug fixing right now, but this is a significant blotch on an otherwise fantastic game.

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Originally Posted by KamikazeMan

In a perfect world, SE would give everybody a house of their own that starts off as a small shack and give players the ability to upgrade it into, ultimately, a mansion through crafting/buying upgrades and paying a fee.

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^ I love the small shack turn into a mansion kind of deal XD I suggested something crazier XD RV like homes. So far fetched though. No worries for plot and the such. >.> Oh housing wards, you are driving me insane.

I really don´t understand why Square Enix choose this housing system for private houses...even if they would implement a system were abounded houses would get back to the market it would never be enough. And its kinda funny how some people on the forum wants to punish the players instead of putting the blame to the ones that created such a poor system.

A lot of examples for MMOs that have no problems with housing were already posted and its even more sad because one of it even comes from Square Enix...I mean if they really have all those problems with the servers already than I fear what will happen in the future with this game because there will be more an more restrictions. We do already pay a monthly fee and they make money from the cash shop and other merchandise so I really hope that they will put some of it back to get better servers.

Instanced housing for private houses would be the best way to go. If people want neighbors than they can still have them by having a FC house.

Like KamikazeMan said it could be that we start with a small instanced house and could work our way towards a mansion or maybe even something bigger. They even could implement it in the story as a quest from the GC leaders that want to thank us for our help against all those dangers we faced for them. I mean in the end we do so much for them but barely get anything back. So this would be a way to say thank you. With that we may choose a place for our house and it could be independent of your own GC so that people don`t need to change their GC if they want a house in another region.

After that we can make the housing plot bigger and bigger for example by helping a NPC with building up the “neighbor houses” that are only seen (but not really there) next to our houses to make things look livelier. There could have been some kind of natural disaster like a tsunami that hit Limas beach or maybe a dragon attack in Ishgard (if we have private houses there) and we can give them crafted items to help build them back up and in return gain points. And with these points we could buy rare housing items that are restricted to the housing place and buy new license to expand our instanced plots. With this we still have to do some work to upgrade our houses but at least everyone can own a mansion or maybe even an whole island in the end.

I would even say that you may be able to change the place of you housing plot. Like if you were in Limsa before but wants to go to Gridania than you can pay a big sum of Gil and with that your instanced house is changed to look like a house in Gridania.

Another change they need to do there is to increase the maximum of the items we can use in our private house. Because this is still to low. Maybe we could even have the instanced rooms the FC has to gain even more room (this would also cost 300k Gil to get the money out of the system) With that we would at least have rooms with their own amount of place able items. But in the end I would be completely happy if they just gave us our private instanced houses, I would even gave up my own private house for a FC if we can have instanced houses, because this would give me a chance to upgrade it without having to buy a medium house or a mansion (if they would make such a system) and I know that finally a FC can have their own house thanks to that.

Last but not least I want to say something about the gardens and the chocobo stable. I do think that they would have a problem with instanced houses that have a gardens patch and and stable because both have a timer on them. But this would be no problem if they just create stables in the cities that anyone can use. You can go there, give them your chocobo and the items that are needed to train him and than you can take him away again when you want it. When you get there to take it back you than have to pay a specific amount of gil which depends on the time that it was there. With that it would be still cheaper to have a chocobo stable at you FC house but at the same time you can always train him even if you don`t have a FC with their own house and we don't need it in our private houses. The same can be said about gardening. We do have a gardening guild in Gridania and they could implement a NPC which you give the seeds, the necessary soil and pay them gil depending on the worth of the seeds and after a time you can get back to the NPC and get your goods. I am not sure if this can be done with all seeds or if they can use cross breeding but at least you can get some goods from it and you still have the chance for the other ones with your FC gardens. With this FC still matters but at the same time people can still train their chocobos and have some vegetables on their own. And it would be easier for SE with instanced houses because they now will only exist when we will go there and the stables in the cities and the NPC for gardening are much less than if everyone has its own ones in the instanced houses. I mean they already do something like that with the raising of a racer chocobo. We give them the license and after a time we go back to get our chocobo.

I don`t have knowledge about the technological side of it but since some other MMOs can do that why should SE not be able to do the same especially after it was possible in some way in the much older FF11.

Sorry for this long post but I wanted to post this idea for a long long time and hopefully someone may get some ideas from it. I hope you liked it. And sorry for my language its not my mother tongue.

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Originally Posted by CatelynMarigold

• After 90 days of not being subscribed you are evicted from your house, which demolishes your house, and sends you by mail (or some other system) all the items inside and frees up the plot for anyone to buy. This could also refund the Gil the person spent on the house if people would prefer that.

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You know I like your list :) make this something that is only for FC houses with private instanced houses for the other players and this could work really good. Like if nobody of the FC has logged in after a certain time than their house gets demolished and they can get their things back if they may log in again. Since this would only get the FC where no ones plays anymore and it would be not to harsh as a punishment because if they dont even have one person in the FC that can log in once in awhile than it seems like they really don`t need it while with personal houses this could be a little harsh because someone can have some rl problems thats keeping them away.

Some restrictions needs to be in place for FC houses because even if we may have instanced houses one day there still wont be enough for every FC. Maybe make it that you need a really huge amount of Gil if you want to demolish your house and maybe even a little ban from buying another house directly afterwards and this may stop some of those that just buy them to sell them to others.

The expansion depending on the need would be great but I fear that its sadly not doable by SE.


@edit: I totally hate this 1000 limit X_X

You make it sound so easy but I bet half of you don't even work with programming and engineering. It isn't that easy. Stop complaining.

(IT major)

Just posting to say I agree that private instanced housing should be a thing.

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Originally Posted by Gwyenne

You make it sound so easy but I bet half of you don't even work with programming and engineering. It isn't that easy. Stop complaining.

(IT major)

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Yes its true that I have no idea about programming and engineering and don´t know if its easy or not. Maybe as a IT major you can tell us why its so hard to do that instead of just telling us to not complaining.
Its just strange how other games have no problems with it. In RIFT you can have your own dimensions and in Final Fantasy 11 you can have your own instanced mog house. So why did they manage to do instanced houses in own of their own older game and yet it should be so hard to implement here..

instanced housing, yes!!
copy Rift 100% please and allow us to BUILD ..thats BUILD whatever we want =win

current system rates 1/10 for me, its bottom line basic, non interactive, lacks any creativity for players..and way way too limited in both availability and creative design. It could have been so awesome but...

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Originally Posted by Mindylou

instanced housing, yes!!
copy Rift 100% please and allow us to BUILD ..thats BUILD whatever we want =win

current system rates 1/10 for me, its bottom line basic, non interactive, lacks any creativity for players..and way way too limited in both availability and creative design. It could have been so awesome but...

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Or WildStar.

I don't know why SE chose to implement a system that is utterly subpar in pretty much every way.

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Originally Posted by Naunet

Or WildStar.

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WildStar is too frivolous in my opinion. I don't want to see robots made out of lampposts, ruins muh immersion.

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Originally Posted by Nyonmyan

WildStar is too frivolous in my opinion. I don't want to see robots made out of lampposts, ruins muh immersion.

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I'm pretty sure she didn't mean a rocket house. We already have floating islands in the sea of clouds. Why not have a house on a floating island (as an instance)?

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Originally Posted by Nyonmyan

WildStar is too frivolous in my opinion. I don't want to see robots made out of lampposts, ruins muh immersion.

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Er. What's wrong with being able to custom build whatever you want? You hate creativity? xD Not like I'm asking for WS's flavor of science fiction decor - just the system as a package. I like being able to build however I want.

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Originally Posted by Gwyenne

You make it sound so easy but I bet half of you don't even work with programming and engineering. It isn't that easy. Stop complaining.

(IT major)

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"It isn't that easy" and yet, somehow, plenty of other games have managed it without problem

lol

The saddest part is that houses are ALREADY instanced!!!

Whenever we access a house through the Glowing Entry Point we access a separate instance... The system is already build around an instanced house, but they just complicated everything with the housing ward deal. What really blows my mind is WHY SE don't just gets rid of the whole Ward deal which is only used to run around to the MB and the NPCs there (or leave it for players who want to live there, and open the option for non-ward housing).

Solution?

We already have the floating islands in Dravania, just give people a frigging house plot on a floating island and be done with it! SE wants to take GIL out of the economy, put a frigging price tag on the islands then.

How would it all work?

Place the silly caretakers and other housing related NPCs at any City-State next to the Aethernet Crystal. Cities are already player hubs, and there are MBs already in the same cities so players won't mind running to them.

When a player wants to go to a particular house they click on the Aethercrystal select an "Independant Houses" option and get asked for a 5 digit house address (and we already click numbers in the game at the cactpot deal so we know that can be done). That 5 digit combo yields for 99,999 individual houses (and no server has 99K+ players) so when you select an address you get whisked away into the house front yard, on a floating island where the house plot is.

And there, a self confined one-house plot on a floating island on its own isolated instance, surrounded by clouds and sky in a sphere of nothing. No neighbours, no houses next door to render, no nothing. Close the fence around the house so you can't walk/fly out and let people use the aethershard or /return function to leave.

Wanna build neighbourhoods? Give players the option to select a few neighboring houses and link their property to the others 5 digit addresses, so you can jump to the next house from their own front yard using those instance entry glowing orbs that SE loves so much.

Thats all there is to it. Move NPCs add a couple menus and create 3 floating islands of different sizes for the plots of the corresponding size. Is that so hard!? And don't tell me its so much data on it that it will stresses the servers or lag the game, its its own little instance, which will only be called from storage processed, exist on server memory and use bandwith while people are in it, once everybody leaves the place vanishes and does not consume resources other than storage disk space.

From there the houses will work exactly the same as they do now, you'll build, furnish and use the house in the same way, so no need to "overhaul" the whole system and piss players off, and no more "blame it on server stress" excuses. With less building cookie cutter wards that consume resources and go by unused and more separated spaces to satisfy player demand.

Simple and elegant, and far from imposible!

If I can come up with something like this I'm sure SE can come up with something even better.

SE just got to want it, and seems to me SE just doesn't want it.

^That's essentially what WS has. Everyone gets their own house - though I far prefer how they do it in that the initial plot is freely given to everyone (just unlock through a quest at level 14), while the gold sink is in buying housing upgrades and all the hundreds of decor possibilities, and with a 2,000 item limit on the plot, that adds up to a lot of spent plat...

Anyway, each house is instanced, and you can visit other players' homes by bringing up a UI and typing their character's name into it. Plots can be public, private, or "neighbor only" (basically an invite status). In the next big patch, they're also implementing communities, where up to 5 housing plots can be chosen to be combined into a single massive neighborhood plot.

Basically, SE took what could have been a really fun addition to their game and turned it into a nightmare.

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Originally Posted by Naunet

^That\\\\'s essentially what WS has. Everyone gets their own house - though I far prefer how they do it in that the initial plot is freely given to everyone (just unlock through a quest at level 14), while the gold sink is in buying housing upgrades and all the hundreds of decor possibilities, and with a 2,000 item limit on the plot, that adds up to a lot of spent plat...

Anyway, each house is instanced, and you can visit other players\\\\' homes by bringing up a UI and typing their character\\\\'s name into it. Plots can be public, private, or "neighbor only" (basically an invite status). In the next big patch, they\\\\'re also implementing communities, where up to 5 housing plots can be chosen to be combined into a single massive neighborhood plot.

Basically, SE took what could have been a really fun addition to their game and turned it into a nightmare.

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This right here. Housing also need attention.

Instant housing bump

Instant housing bump

Housing needs as much attention as well.