What would you do to improve/'fix' housing?

Lets imagine that you are sitting across from Yoshi.P, he asks you what you would do to make housing better. What would be your suggestions? :confused:

Take the millions they make from subs and from Mog Station and purchase servers that can handle the influx of players logging in at the same time. Those updated servers would also allow for more wards.

Instanced housing. The only thing my FC's neighbors' houses were ever good for was jumping on their roof.

I would scrap, or repurpose, all the wards then make housing plots instanced.

The wards are dead lifeless places anyway.

Just remove housings from the game solves everyones problems Hellluuuuuu

Remove housing and focus on actual content.

Honestly, I'd love to see a mix of what we have now, and instanced housing. I like the neighborhoods (I've made friends, and gained FC members, event started a business, that way!), but the limited availability of housing is a serious problem. I'm thinking:

A) Player choice: Keep the current wards, BUT also have the option of private instanced houses. That way those who enjoy their neighborhoods can keep them, and those who wouldn't otherwise get a house can.

B) Split between individual and FC homes: one in wards, and one private. FCs and individuals competing for the same limited housing just isn't fair. :(

Well first, I'd separate personal housing from FC housing. Create an equal number of wards for personal housing, and if a player has a house in LB in plot say... number 7 ward 8, then that house would be moved to private ward 8 plot 7 from company ward 8 plot 7. Keep FC housing and personal housing separate.

Next, set the system to generate new wards when 97% of the existing wards are filled. This way, everyone can have a shot at a house. Housing costs can remain as is.

1) Preorder Houses, have players talk to NPC to confirm type of house, personal or FC, put down the down payment and then be given a random location from the choice of S/M/L. Sure you may not get Shirogane 30 if you say L but you will get an L.

2)Create at least 3-4 different types of Ward designs. First being the (all are S/M/L) 20/7/3, 2nd being 0/30/0, 3rd 0/20/10 and last being 5/10/15.

This way you have a healthy amount of Medium/Large houses in the mix.

3)If servers space limits the amount of wards you give FC 24hr head start to purchase land, this way those who are trying to do workshop have the ability to do so, after that it's anybodies game however any FC's made in a 48hr period of new wards introduction will not be eligible to purchase a house.

4) if all else fails create unique instances for all 30 spaces that is just the bar bone size of the house. When they can add in a new ward they will place the house that's in said void into the ward along to any others that can fit into said ward.


This way everyone can buy the size/location they want but they won't have the same immersion til SE adds in more wards.

Law Abiding Citizen approach- tear down the entire system. Rebuild it.

Final Fantasy XIV
Housing reborn

Have FC purchase their own instanced ward like current one, and spend company credits to add more subdivisions each time.

Let small plots be upgrade-able to medium to heavy.

Or just heck, make 100-200 wards. Or have system automatically generate new 10-20 wards every two weeks whenever plots get completely filled up.

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Originally Posted by BillyKaplan

Instanced housing. The only thing my FC's neighbors' houses were ever good for was jumping on their roof.

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Instanced house doesn't solve anything, the houses are already an instance. The problem of the houses are the amount of data generated by a single house, due to the amount of customization the houses have.

In order to accomodate their existing system, but try to solve the issue, what I would propose is have wards scale dynamically based on the current consumption. If 85% of all wards are full, add another ward. If the server is running on something like AWS, spinning up a new instance would be quick and easy and could be done real time, and everything else should just be a database update (max ward = X+1). IF they aren't on AWS or a system where such could be spun up on the fly as such, then every time the servers come down (or at least 1/month) perform said check.

1- Limit only one house per account. However all characters in that account have access to the house. Most reasonable one, I think this would help alot

2- Separate Personal from FC housing. They never should have been together in the first place.

3- Just make them instanced. The whole "neighborhood Feel" doesn't do anything since they are ghost towns most of the time. I barely see anyone on there. At first when the houses are fresh maybe you'll see some movement but that wont last.

4- Make it an "upgrade system" the more you put in the more you get. maybe start on a small plot, and over time you can grow your plot as it levels up and maybe tie it to activities like gardening. You slowly unlock features. And you can add a basement at a certain level, a 2nd-story to the building and so on.

5- If it all works out please remove the demolition timer. I understand it since there is a shortage. But hopefully once thats fixed they get rid of it.

Remove houses for accounts who own multiple houses. Create strict requirements for free companies so players cannot own houses by taking advantage of the system. Give players the option of 100% refund for housing, returning their in house items back unbound or have the option for a transfer ticket. Ticket will be used for purchasing housing at latter time to buy single zone housing. (Ref: Garrisons from World of Warcraft)

They just need to find a way to make new housing wards dynamically as the current ones fill and manage it in a way that doesn't stress the servers too much. It's been done before and it is the single optimal solution to make sure that there will always be a chance for people to get a house once they can save up the money to do so, and does so without punishing anyone who currently has a house. This will also completely wipe out housing scalpers as they will be irrelevant.

Housing wards should be created dynamically based on server demand. See my proposal post here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...mes-to-housing

In time for the Garlemald expansion I bring you, buying your own Garlean airship! Get your own as large as a mansion flying mobile home where you can reside up in the sky where there's no such thing as 'limited space'. Decorate each section of the ship with different items and change each quaters to suit different purposes including growing crops. Also use your airship to travel to any of the continent!

Anyone can buy one but it will be expensive as all hell and you will have to contribute to the building of it by searching for and collecting valuable materials for its construction.

I would have two versions of housing. "Classic Plots" which would be what we have now and "Personal Plots" which would be instance housing seen by other MMOs. For the "Personal Plots" cost would be the same to get the land and build a house except you'd have no neighbors. You can invite friends but they must be in party or in an FC. This prevents random people from going into your instance. Now lets say a plot becomes available in the old "Classic Plots", this is where someone with a Personal Plot can transfer their house to provided it is the same size as the plot they are transferring to.

In this way a player can save up for whatever size they want and can move to the Classic FF XIV housing area with neighbors and what not. They wouldn't have the limitations of the personal plot and would get equal chance like everyone else. They can choose to even stay in their personal instance with the limitation that only those in their party or FC can visit them.

Expand apartments to feel like the viable alternative they were initially pitched to be. This can only be achieved if we're permitted both gardens that can do crossbreeding, room sizes and multi-room layouts, and tenant use. They can still remain small and yet give players the home base they want.

Instanced gardening for apartments. Just one plot for each apartment.

Just my 2c ...

For FC housing they should open up FC only areas where-ever Roweana goes. Ties in with lore. So FC only wards in Mor Dhona, Idyllshire, Rhalgrs Reach. Provide castle grade where you can place Market Board at.

For Apartments, make green houses inside the wards, require players to own an apartment, you are allowed to plant 1 seed, 2 if you are the first. Others can plant next to yours to cross them.

Personal housing should be in City State areas. There should be additional areas by now, a different style of existing ones.

- Dynamic Wards up to 20 (needs to dynamic cause you dont want empty wards)
- 5 styles of each area (100 wards, 6000 houses per City State)

Or Dynamic Wards, detach from "server" make it Data Center scaling.

i would remove private houses completely. people will get the gil back, furniture goes into the new storage. the houses will be FC-only again.

private housing will be different, like they promised us a few years ago... i would remove the apartment buildings from the housing districts and relocate them directly into the city. so all apartments, wich are now spread out over the different districts, will be all in the same house. this house will get a way bigger lobby, with marketboard and retainer-bell inside, so basically a place to meet other people.
the apartments will be bigger, the size of a small house, will have 2 floors and a balcony with gardening for crossbreeding.

If they can't double/triple the number of wards currently available, apartments should at least have gardens and the company workshop needs to be accessible from the apartments, as well.

Locking several items away from players who don't have a house is dumb.

I'd leave the current mix of personal and FC housing alone. I mean, the popularity of housing probably wasn't anticipated as they grew from 1.0.

However, I would suggest:

1) Creating "Elite" wards with only mansions for FCs only - who have reached rank 6 and have 10 or more active members (members who have logged on at least once in 30 days) - this prevents the "one man FC" from owning an elite home. In order to entice FCs to move, perhaps they'd get something like a workshop upgrade or an extra airship or something really nice that's beneficial to all members.

2) Create more wards with medium and small houses across all current areas (Goblet, Shiro, Lavender, Mist)

3) Create additional wards in new places like Sea of Clouds - you can buy your own private island but it's only one per account and bought through either mog station or with your achievement points.

We can't just tell them to rip out wards and create an entirely new system, because that could take a long while so I'll try to work with the current system -

1. Prices need to be higher. There's too much gil in the economy thanks to a number of reasons and it's pretty easy for someone who's a bit dedicated to make enough for a large house in a matter of a month or so. FCs can do it in a day if the members just pool their money together. When housing launched, houses were around 200mil on Balmung to try to get the money off the server - and houses sat for months empty because no FC could afford them. Nowadays? 200million can be done by one dedicated FC in a matter of a few weeks.
For that, I'd raise the price to match the economy. Yeah everyone who has one now would have to be grandfathered in, but it's the only way for this to work. Larges should move up to 250-300mil. Mediums to 75-100mil. SMALLS on the other hand, since they aren't as desirable by the "Look at how rich I am" crowd or FCs, should hover around 10-15 mill - enough for most people to grind up money but not cheap enough so the impact on the economy is nil.

2. Let people put houses on the AH. Scalping would be an easier pill to swallow if you could legit put the house on the auction house and buying it meant you get the land immediately when the other person confirmed the trade instead of the current system of paying someone millions for the chance to spend millions on the land. This would also keep housing at a pretty consistent price range. Putting a cap on the maximum value is optional.

3. Lock it to one house per account. One FC house, one personal per account. This will keep people from having all their alts with houses and making a bunch of fake FCs to get more houses. Tell people who currently are doing that they have 30 days to clear out their home, give them their money back plus some, then get rid their ownership.

4. Add Wards more than once a year. The last time Wards were added was 3.3! This makes people panic when housing DOES come out because they think "It's now or never" making the housing rush WAY worse. How do we know the next time wards will be added won't be till 5.0 or 4.5b? We don't. Past experience dictates we may only get wards once a year. That's unacceptable. It will still be somewhat iffy about getting a house, but adding 6-7 wards per patch will stop that "Now or Never" panicked feeling. I mean... houses came out in 2.1 and personal homes were rolled out in 2.3. Then subdivisions in 2.4 then... nothing till 3.3? Then NOTHING AGAIN till 4.1? Statistically, people's best shots of getting a home was in 2.x - when most people didn't even play the game. As population went up, housing openings went down.

5. FC and personal housing wards should be separate going forward. I'm not against personal homes, in fact I liked mine before it got demolished due to me moving. But FCs need to have either first dibs or their own wards. Currently Shirogane on Balmung is about 90% personal, 10% FC. SE constantly talks about how important FCs and it's housing are so I hope this is a harsh lesson for them. Open up 4 or 5 wards in each housing area at each patch for FCs, then four or five more for personal - that way these two VERY different markets aren't competing with each other.

There are two reasons why everyone can't get a house:

1. The space. Square made wards, and in those wards, a limited amount of houses. This was made it seems because Square wanted to give players something more than a house, they wanted to give us a small town, a neighborhood, something more organic than instanced, lonely houses.
2. Character data. FFXIV seems to have to handle a lot of data per character. From inventory, gear, glamours, stats, settings, Companion's looks and stats, retainers' stats and appearances. Between this there is also house data, including furniture positions, color, and instances.

Right now, a character may store data for one apartment, one FC room, a FC house and a personal house. Of these, the FC and personal houses are the more valuable and loved because the benefits, the customization, the space, and how they look.

My suggestion is that SE get rid of Wards. SE should also get rid of FC rooms and apartments. This should allow the servers to handle the character's data so everyone can have a house regardless of its size.

Then, every house should be instanced. Lonely, pretty houses with some nice, non-reachable landscape around it. This should solve the space problem. No wards, so no space limit. Every player can have a house. Only one house per character, and a FC Leader's house is also a FC House.

Finally, allow players to setup Neighborhoods. Just like making a party, a player can invite other players or FCs and become Neighborhood leader. A player can only be in one neighborhood at time. SE has some experience with procedural estructures with PotD, so they shouldn't have many problems by making a procedural neighborhood. It doesn't have to be so complex, just a line, or a grind based on the amount of houses. Imagine, some can make alliances with various FCs, or a bunch of friends can be on the same neighborhood. A couple can be on their own personal town, or you may find neighborhood related with some themes.

It may not be as organic as before, but it would solve this issue in a very interesting way.

Embrace instanced housing. Short of that, they could borrow from The Sims 4 and create pseudo-neighborhoods with say, five houses between each instanced. Thus, the community aspect is retained for those who value it but less load is placed on the servers to better accommodate players. If even this were too much an undertaking, then simply expand Apartments. Why not allow multiple rooms similar to a FC door? Increase the size equivalent to something like a New York styled loft and add a balcony for outside decor.

There are plenty of alternatives. They simply refuse to explore them.

It doesnt even need to be instanced... theres things they could do right now that would solve most of the problems.

Stage 1: Destroy the 'house flipping' market.
1) One personal house allowed per account. The house is listed as owned by the character that purchased it, but all characters on the account will have ownership and permissions as if they the owner. This will prevent players from purchasing houses on alts and stockpiling the plots to sell. Single person FC's will still be an issue however. At first login after this change, players with multiple houses will be required to pick one characters house to save, all the rest will be demolished with all furniture/decor returned to the player (even things that would normally be destroyed, as this is a special circumstance)
2) Have a 'cooldown' period on the plot. Once a house has been demolished, that plot cannot be purchased by anyone for a set amount of time. Maybe 15 days, or 30. Enough time to where people would not want to risk buying the house from a flipper in the first place, as they wouldnt be able to immediately buy it. Also, dont display the timer of the cooldown. That way random people walking the neighborhood will not know when the plot will be free, just that it will eventually be free.

These two steps alone will stop the house flipping market, or at least do damage to it. With that out of the way, we can move on to the next stage.

Stage 2: Make apartments more Desirable.

Apartments as they are, are not an adequate alternative to houses. They are the size of a FC room with basic features. If they want individual players to gravitate to the apartments, they need to make them more desireable.

1) Offer different sized layouts, for different prices. You can a have a Studio, the standard fc sized room to start with. Next size up would be a Classic, the size of a medium house (instead of stairs leading to the basement, just have a second adjecent room thats the same size as the medium house basement.) And the third option would be the Townhome, the layout of the medium apartment but with stairs leading to a large second floor.
2) Add features that houses have, although limited. For starters, each apartment would have a decent sized patio. That patio could house exterior decorations and furnishings, and could even have a spot for a small gardening plot (so that people could garden and cross breed). The bigger the apartment layout, the bigger the patio. You could even have a view of the Ward from on the patio (A static view that doesnt show any player characters or anything. just a background.)

With players being unable to purchase multiple plots per account, and apartments being made a little more desirable for the individual would-be home owner, we can move on to the final stage.

Stage 3: increase the availability of houses and wards as demand increases.
This has been suggested in this thread already a lot, and thats because its a solid solution. With the first two stages hopefully freeing up some plots, the demand will still be a little more than the servers can handle, but it shouldnt be as chaotic. That being said, they should have a check happen a week before every patch. That check will scan the wards and determine if any of them are at or above 95% capacity. If they are, a single new ward will be generated during the patch. This will be a slow process, but it will guarantee that the housing demand will eventually be met, without having the server costs and stress of adding ten wards all at once.

I believe that with all of these things in place, the housing crisis will eventually settle down, and people will be able to have houses as needed.

One last tidbit though, I do believe that the demolition timer should stay, however It needs to be based on sub time and not stepping on the property. As long as you have an active sub, your plot will be safe. If you cancel your sub, the 45 day timer can start and after that 45 days if you havent re subbed to the game, your house will be lost.

Thats my three step system to fixing housing. Wasn't so hard honestly. This could be done. SOMETHING needs to be done.

Many have stated similar solutions but I will post mine as well to strengthen our stance.

Creating more wards and more houses creates less problems.
It does NOT solve the issue.

1. Leave the wards and current houses as they are

• it is not fair for current house owners to be affected by any future changes to how housing should be done

2. Give us instanced housing with customizable environment

• 1 house in a small instance where users can edit the environment (planting trees, creating waterfront, editing terrain)
• Allow owners to upgrade their current house size
• Allow friends to visit the house instance

You can create any number of wards and houses... Until SE realizes that one account holder can get 2 or more houses exasperating the problem, the amount of houses may never even meet the demand. Accounts should be locked to 1 house and 1 house only. If you have characters on different servers or multiple characters on one server, that's too bad. You pick one house to fool around with on whatever server you happen to get one on.

-Large houses should have some kind of restrictions that limit them to larger FCs. Using amount of members is sketchy due to alt character bloat but I'm sure SE could figure a way out if they tried. I say this as a member of an FC with 4 to 6 active players at any given time who is happy with their small house so don't think I'm saying this without any kind of regard to smaller FCs, but really just think about it. Why you need that large ass place for a few ppl to hang out. Just no.

-Large and medium plots can only be purchased by FC creators with other restrictions at SE's discretion.

-Anyone not in an FC or a low rank/pop FC should be limited to small houses.

This is assuming this current system continues.

let's see...

- I liked the Add a ward when a new ward fills up (might cause server stress, yes, but would keep the bloat and insanity from going on like this morning)
- I've seen plenty where it's 1 per acct. I can see 1 per world, where all your characters on that world share it. that's a good idea.
- The Multi-story Apartment with a "balcony garden" is also a viable issue.
- Having "FC" wards and "personal Wards" might help as well.




Other options would be
- Instancing them completely; that means no neighbors, but a lot more people can get them
- Actually doing housing more than once every 18 or so months. people save money, gather gil and wait for the housing. I know of at least 12 people (including myself) that saved up to buy a house, only to not have the patcher update...which means we spent half an hour to get the game to work. This is a big problem. yes, it is something people work towards, but when you work and in two "housing expansions" you miss out because of various things (game not patching, overload of people wanting to buy a house) there is an issue.


Limiting the house size based on how many active FC members (or limiting housing due to it being a personal house) can be a boon and a bane. my FC has times where people come on regularly, but then when they do all there is for the patch, they're gone until the next patch. doing that would be a discriminating due to various subjective things. Take the recent hurricanes. what if suddenly your FC was "Denied" a house because people weren't active...only because of a natural disaster. bad.

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Originally Posted by Sylfaein

B) Split between individual and FC homes: one in wards, and one private. FCs and individuals competing for the same limited housing just isn't fair. :(

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Honestly this would make sense, because then the FC buildings wards would operate more like a business district.

That said, that moves in the opposite direction the game is supposed to behave.

My suggestion is more blunt:
- Remove the instanced wards and go minecraft/landmark strategy where players have to claim land, rather than buy it (maybe a maximum size can be specified to avoid making super tall/wide buildings.) The more land claimed, the more services the FC has to provide or be penalized. (eg you can't build a house taking up space larger than a typical zone and have it completely empty, there has to be at least a path through the property), the more space taken, the more Retainer-NPC's on active subscriptions have to be hired to hold it.

- Algorithmicly generate more land on the periphery as the space gets taken up, and have the server dynamically swap out map segments the player doesn't visit to keep it playable. That way large servers like Balmung simply grow their housing areas while nearly-empty servers don't grow at all.

Just give us instanced housing and have the instance be 'unloaded' on the server when not in use. It's simple, not a straing on the servers, and basically what everyone else already does. We don't /need/ neighborhoods that are always dead.