Housing for everyone?!

What if we turn personal housing into animal crossing. Give us a virtual neighborhood of whatever city state (because currently most neighborhoods are dead, or empty houses with a striking dummy). Acquire a small house through an npc that gives u a debt to pay, when ur done u can upgrade the size of the house, and ur debt gets larger and larger. Give us virtual neighbors that we care about rather than the current ghosts that haunt the houses around us. They can have random requests like “visit my house” or “make/ give me x item” and build relationships with them. Eventually they pop in your house, and during seasonal events they can make something nice with it. Fc housing can continue in the current wards that’ll be fc only.

Everyone gets a house, a neighborhood to costumize and guess what?! Actually interact with!

I think the main issue is some core coding problem, I highly doubt the Devs sit in a circle and think to themselves: "You know what would be great? If we didn't add more houses so people couldn't enjoy the content, FC left out to pale in comparison to FC that have them, and so they wouldn't purchase more items off our cash shop - that'd be really great! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha" lol.

Onto your idea though, sounds fun :). I'm a big sucker for things that change visually overtime, even though it's just donating gil I'm having fun wandering around Doma as I upgrade it.. I just like those things. I look forward to Ishgard because of that.

Back when I pushed instanced housing harder I was into the idea that FC housing would become a zone wide control of the current ward system (so instead of a guildhall in some MMORPG it's more like a Guild City), in that you'd have a headquarters in the main building (like Windmill for Goblet) and then you would fill the rest of the houses with relationships you've built up over time like Dark Cloud mechanic (so like animal crossing). The relationships being things you'd work towards as a team to gain new bonuses (like Delivery NPCs for your FC, who'll come to your city and you can upgrade them further then and gain more features, like goblin blueprints or Slyph automatically caring for your gardens). Then the new personal housing system would be like Wild Star but the lore would be the crystal mother has created a pocket of aether for you in her bossom (which is why you can control so many visual features of it, and teleport to it from anywhere). Also some people prefer humans as neighbors, so if you change content entirely under their feet they wont be impressed lol - better to add something than change/remove.

But..... Unfortunately... I still think regardless of how many cool ideas come about that having full powered instanced housing (like what we have now, but without limits) is just beyond the current ability of the system and probably some deep core issue blocking an easy change to that system.

That said I do think we might be able to suggest ideas that dodge some of the memory concerns and thus become possible. For example if you take away the high customization of a sole house, I believe, you could absolutely have a city you help grow - so like the Dark Cloud/Animal Crossing features but without the ability to place 500+ items down. Because storing ~20-40 npc, what house they're in, and upgrade state is a lot less memory consuming than 500+ items that have multiple values stored with each.

That is why I tried to come up with Airships as a system that might actually be possible while still lending to some nostalgia and give a homely/customized feeling. Not that I'm opposed to instanced housing with full placement support (that'd be awesome), I'm just concerned at this point that it's not feasible or at least so far it's such a hard problem to fix. They've not been able to fix it so far and might not be able to without substantial redesigns to underlying systems (they may need to drop another dalamud lol).

I agree that they aren’t planning not to please people lol, which is why we try to come up with suggestions to help it :)
The issue currently according to yoshi p is rendering all the houses in a ward. And increasing wards means increasing servers which is cost and resources blah blah
However if it was instanced with say 2 npc houses next to you, then slowly you invest in your neighborhood and make it larger with more npc houses around u and maybe open a market stall or a an aquarium hall, or museum etc, things that make u costumize your neighborhood your way would be more fun and less taxing on servers.

And people who prefer to be next to other players would still have the current wards, except that it’ll be an fc house only system.
Seriously most neighborhoods are empty anyways, another dalamud fell already! No one’s here xD empty houses everywhere

Why not just play Animal Crossing if you want a neighborhood all to yourself without any social interaction outside a chat window?

Maybe I'm luckier than most, or maybe it's because I put a little effort into making my house a social venue. I do see my neighbors occasionally, especially since there's a large active FC in the ward that has several members I know from the server's hunt community and they're frequently running around the ward. I invite others to my house on occasion - we had gatherings there both nights of the JP FanFest for live streaming and sat around in the yard chatting about what was being revealed in. If friends go through Eternal Bonding, I invite them to use my house for a reception after if they want since it's next to the beach in Mist. And of course anyone is welcome to stop by and look around any time as long as I'm not in the middle of redecorating, at which point I "lock the door" to work undisturbed.

Certainly there's room for a lot of improvement in housing but I don't see your suggestions as a positive step for housing in a MMO. It would isolate players into a single player experience instead of increasing player interaction. I wouldn't want to see developer and server resources wasted on NPC neighbors that aren't real when those things could be going toward developing and hosting content that promotes player interaction. When I want a solo player experience, I go play a game designed to give it and not a MMO. MMOs are for the social experience.

If you want a better social experience from housing, it's up to you to make it happen.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Why not just play Animal Crossing if you want a neighborhood all to yourself without any social interaction outside a chat window?

Maybe I'm luckier than most, or maybe it's because I put a little effort into making my house a social venue. I do see my neighbors occasionally, especially since there's a large active FC in the ward that has several members I know from the server's hunt community and they're frequently running around the ward. I invite others to my house on occasion - we had gatherings there both nights of the JP FanFest for live streaming and sat around in the yard chatting about what was being revealed in. If friends go through Eternal Bonding, I invite them to use my house for a reception after if they want since it's next to the beach in Mist. And of course anyone is welcome to stop by and look around any time as long as I'm not in the middle of redecorating, at which point I "lock the door" to work undisturbed.

Certainly there's room for a lot of improvement in housing but I don't see your suggestions as a positive step for housing in a MMO. It would isolate players into a single player experience instead of increasing player interaction. I wouldn't want to see developer and server resources wasted on NPC neighbors that aren't real when those things could be going toward developing and hosting content that promotes player interaction. When I want a solo player experience, I go play a game designed to give it and not a MMO. MMOs are for the social experience.

If you want a better social experience from housing, it's up to you to make it happen.

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Everyone plays mmos for a different reason, having 100% contact with people is not required in order to want to play one.

That of course is probably self evident, but I just say it because your post assumes people want a system that pushes players together vs a system that empowers you to develop your own piece of the world within a much larger social world (OP's idea). I don't care for the neighbors because I've almost never done anything with them or even seen them for that matter (and don't want to go out of my way to change that), even though I visit the large every single day (almost) on the largest server. More personal space in a large world for me > more people around my space.

I leave the house to go do dungeons and quests, then I want to meet people lol.

Like I said that, to each their own - but just wanted to disagree with "why don't you play that game then" as not being a great reason against OP's in an MMORPG. As nesting out a corner in a world much larger can be very enjoyable, different feeling than trying to do so in a purely solo world. I also see that argument quite a lot, but it's clearly not true to the devs due to how much solo content they add/allow. Alternatively to put a developer spin on it, Yoshida recently came out and said they added Trust system to foster that solo experience for those that wanted it. I would of course also argue that opposite isn't true, that people shouldn't be trying to turn an mmorpg into a 100% solo experience lol - just that there is room for balance and asking for one item one way or another doesn't kill the concept of an MMORPG (as some MMOs have done the housing like OP suggested).

Not a huge fan taking away beloved systems from others, so I'd hate to see neighborhoods destroyed, but I'd love to see them spend time on an empowered personal system rather than some of the limitations placed on the neighborhood one - if possible or at least unlimited wards/airship instanced houses/upgrade-able apartments. On a positive note of the neighborhood systems is that the cafes/spas ran by players are pretty dang cute (although they were there in Wild Star too, which was empowered instanced house for everyone).

Server costs money, they can only bring so many houses. They would have to create another monthly subscription for housing to make it work.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Certainly there's room for a lot of improvement in housing but I don't see your suggestions as a positive step for housing in a MMO. It would isolate players into a single player experience instead of increasing player interaction. I wouldn't want to see developer and server resources wasted on NPC neighbors that aren't real when those things could be going toward developing and hosting content that promotes player interaction. When I want a solo player experience, I go play a game designed to give it and not a MMO. MMOs are for the social experience.

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First of all, thank you all for replying and discussing this.
I’m 100% with you on that MMOs are generally for social interaction, however there are certain systems ingame that are for both types of players. Squadrons, trusts, masked carnivale etc are made as solo content.
I’m not asking to remove the social aspect of housing. The real social aspect of housing is FC housing (and you mentioned that thanks to that large FC near you, you see people running around. I run daily around housing areas and in 90% of the time there is no one, so yes you’re lucky!), and in my post I suggested that FC housing remains in the current wards we have for FCs to socialize, and removing personal houses and making them instanced would make more room for FCs.
On the other hand, personal housing is that “personal” and making it instanced would make it available to more players. If I want to invite people, then I should be able to of course, but the illusion of socializing with the empty houses all around these wards is sad. Inviting people over so we chat and spend time in the house isn’t content, it is me trying to spend time with my friends. We can chat while doing savage, we can chat while gathering/ crafting or while doing any other content, so that in itself doesnt make it content. Content is the actual decoration system, quests, house size progression system, neighborhood customization system and improvement similar to the enclave for example (I don't want it to be the size of the current ward lol, it should be much smaller.), maybe a system similar squadrons but civilians who live in these city states etc, the devs know how to be creative.

It would always be great to listen to different suggestions as well, surely I do not claim that I came up with the ultimate idea, but discussing it together will eventually help the devs make housing better for everyone

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Originally Posted by TenraiNagi

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I definitely would agree that improvements to the instanced housing we currently have are needed so everyone who wants a house could have one.

It's the scope of the additional content you propose to add to that instanced housing that I don't agree with. Like it or not, developer time is limited and working on one project means time not spent on another. Do we have to start losing dungeons, beast tribes and other content so a relative handful of players can have pretend neighbors?

You would also be walling off that content and its potential rewards behind a large gil barrier. Not everyone player is going to want to pay millions of gil to buy instanced housing they don't want to get access to content they do want to do. There's no reason why such NPC interaction couldn't take place in the open world for all players to enjoy regardless of house ownership.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

I definitely would agree that improvements to the instanced housing we currently have are needed so everyone who wants a house could have one.

It's the scope of the additional content you propose to add to that instanced housing that I don't agree with. Like it or not, developer time is limited and working on one project means time not spent on another. Do we have to start losing dungeons, beast tribes and other content so a relative handful of players can have pretend neighbors?

You would also be walling off that content and its potential rewards behind a large gil barrier. Not everyone player is going to want to pay millions of gil to buy instanced housing they don't want to get access to content they do want to do. There's no reason why such NPC interaction couldn't take place in the open world for all players to enjoy regardless of house ownership.

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I'd also suggest if SE did ever make some big content like you discussed, if it's under the instanced system at least, that they add upgrade paths such that small rooms are very cheap or free even but the larger upgrades get progressively more difficult (and especially make them fair to those who bought the real houses, so it's not like 10gil to buy a large instanced house and 60 million for a non-instanced one).

For how much an instanced system is worth I'd say to me quite a lot, since I adore the Wild Star system (the best in any mmo ever, imo), and I think OP's idea is cool but it doesn't have to be that to me. I think even just getting apartments to the point of being upgrade-able with size, balcony, garden, and some sort of exterior would be great. Also make sure FC get all the features a house provides in any method possible. Then add more housing content for everyone, because I think homes are a wonderful concept in MMOs (and shouldn't be exclusive, ever, imo, because of that - although I strongly believe in long upgrade paths, like FFXI mog room).

I did personally attempt to make a compromise system (avoids the memory consumption houses have, would absolutely be less than apartments even) via an airship content piece that everyone (including current home owners) could utilize. Although I wouldn't be opposed to it being fully functional instanced housing either, just thought I should write an idea that doesn't cost the devs an entire rewrite of their memory systems and could be content everyone could enjoy.

Totally understand your point though, if someone was like "lets divert 50% of the game's resources to DoL (gathering), because I want these 20 new systems" I'd be like... "but that sounds really boring and I'll miss a lot of stuff I'd like" lol.

So personally I still hope for some deep additions to housing, some of those may be content that isn't helpful to everyone (unlimited housing or something like it, like the airship I suggested as compromise), and hopefully a lot of the changes are things that work out for everyone. Like if we took OP's idea for FC, where the FC had these big neighborhoods that they had to work as a team to upgrade - that might turn out to be a lot of team value. I would find value with it being a solo experience too but I just wanted to say for example, adding a huge team cooperation component to FC could be good.

Although I would want to add the hardest part of OP's idea is probably not the personal neighborhood itself, the data to store some delivery NPC/quests would likely pale in comparison to the house that every player would be allow to have (500+ items with multi-coordinate details vs 20 slots with a few variables). That's actually where my argument for the airship space saving comes from, depending on how the options come out you could drastically reduce the info being stored/sent.

Good luck to all our happiness, may we all get the content we want :D.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

It's the scope of the additional content you propose to add to that instanced housing that I don't agree with. Like it or not, developer time is limited and working on one project means time not spent on another. Do we have to start losing dungeons, beast tribes and other content so a relative handful of players can have pretend neighbors?

You would also be walling off that content and its potential rewards behind a large gil barrier. Not everyone player is going to want to pay millions of gil to buy instanced housing they don't want to get access to content they do want to do.

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That’s a lot of talk I never said.
I never said it should be a housing expansion 6.0... but little upgrades at a time. And housing is content that a ton of players want hence housing plots disappear like hot cakes, in comparison to mah-jong for example. So those handful of players that want personal housing more accessible is clearly larger than those playing mah-jong or lord of verminion.
To be honest you make it sound like gil is actually this precious thing that we currently have and it’s hard to get. People don’t care to make gil because there is no use for it. The prices to upgrade your personal house could simply stay at the same prices we have now for these respective houses, or it could be cheaper to make it more accessible, it wouldn’t matter and that’s beside the point. It would give people incentive to make gil to improve on their homes (and if they do not want and enjoy their small house, that’s fine!)

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There's no reason why such NPC interaction couldn't take place in the open world for all players to enjoy regardless of house ownership.

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Squadrons and trusts are not NPC interaction in the open world, however they are systems available for all players. How is personal housing different?
House ownership would be open to everyone, so it’s content proposed to the whole playerbase who would enjoy housing. And those that don’t care, can enjoy the other stuff the game has to offer


@Shougun
I love that airship idea btw, it would be great to have something like that ingame :)

I really like this idea, though I think it's unlikely that they would implement it due to the development resources required. I like the idea of an instanced housing system alongside the current wards (kind of a 'best of both worlds' option) and I've often thought about how versatile instanced housing could be. You could purchase upgrades without needing a free plot, and they could continue to build on it, adding all kinds of cool stuff that just wouldn't work with wards right now based on how they are implemented. It'd be amazing to have something like this but in a small, expandable neighborhood, where your friends could still live nearby. Really, that would be the dream.

I'm holding out some hope for Ishgard right now. If there is a housing system, it's going to be tied to the endgame content for crafting and gathering somehow. Unless that content is some kind of server-wide effort, having it unlock the same old wards feels... awkward. It would make more sense to me if we get to a certain point with the restoration and were given the opportunity to build and/or purchase a personal house that's instanced. But we'll have to wait and see.

I'd love some way to get everyone at least a small plot. Or even a small plot that can be eventually upgraded to a larger house a la Animal Crossing, with the ability to easily visit houses open to the public so that RP events can be held easily in them.

Unfortunately I don't expect this to happen, but maybe they'll do something with Ishgard.

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Originally Posted by Brynne

I'm holding out some hope for Ishgard right now. If there is a housing system, it's going to be tied to the endgame content for crafting and gathering somehow. Unless that content is some kind of server-wide effort, having it unlock the same old wards feels... awkward. It would make more sense to me if we get to a certain point with the restoration and were given the opportunity to build and/or purchase a personal house that's instanced. But we'll have to wait and see.

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It would be interesting if the housing in ishgard was related to the restoration of the city but I doubt it. In my opinion, Ishgard will turn into a large “enclave” like project with different ways to advance in its restoration because it would need DoH/ DoL classes. And housing will drop like it did in Shirogane. My doubt stems mostly from the idea that they won’t do something unique to Ishgard without applying the same rules to the other housing areas as that will cause player outrage lol, but as you said we’ll have to wait and see and hopefully pleasantly surprised :)

Ishgard housing will most like be a ward based system but I suppose we could be surprised. I wonder if they are planning to update apartments. They did seem to say awhile back that they were considering small, medium and large versions where you could upgrade them as you go. Those are probably the closest we'll get to instanced housing. It would be nice if there were options for gardening and the like. They really haven't said much about housing since they released Shirogane and one can hope we'll get some news in a live letter soon.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

Ishgard housing will most like be a ward based system but I suppose we could be surprised. I wonder if they are planning to update apartments. They did seem to say awhile back that they were considering small, medium and large versions where you could upgrade them as you go. Those are probably the closest we'll get to instanced housing. It would be nice if there were options for gardening and the like. They really haven't said much about housing since they released Shirogane and one can hope we'll get some news in a live letter soon.

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I do hope that upgrades for apartment housing becomes a reality from the small studio type to a medium 1 bedroom, and a large 3 bedroom, all with balcony for some outdoor items atleast, that way it will be somehow enticing to own an apartment.

I honestly think they just need to make plots instanced... Just have one version of the Lavender Beds/etc, and lock off the plots so you cannot enter the building space anymore (maybe add a gate to the fence), instead you zone into the plot by selecting the placard or something. That way SE should be able to do two things; Provide more plots and remove the scarcity players hate. And increase the cap on how much garden furniture we can place, since it would now be instanced... Heck thinking of it, you could do away with the garden/indoors concept completely and just let us walk through the door instead of zoning into the house, maybe make use of that upstairs balcony door...

You'd just be able to walk around the housing zones, maybe the plots themselves display randomly selected plots players have made. That keeps the whole neighbourhood concept we have going, right? Honestly not even a concept worth having at this point IMHO, SE did nothing with it... We basically had one Christmas event that sent you to interact with peoples furniture and that was it... I honestly think most seasonal events should have something like that, and not just once and then never again, make it an every year staple of the seasonal event... Trick or Treating at Halloween? An Easter Egg hunt in the housing wards? There are a lot of fun ideas you could do with the system we have...

Perhaps I'm mistaken that instanced housing would be a panacea to cure all housing demand issues though... Honestly though, I'd prefer just having 1 Lavender Beds/etc. than the current 36 mirrors of it we have... Not a great deal of reason to visit those other 35 versions... If it was just the 1 zone, with the plots randomly selecting which house to display when I enter? I'd see a lot more peoples houses, probably...

Either way, I think housing needs a complete rework in this game... It's too good a reward to have crippled like this with limited availability... Turns what is, in my opinion, one of the better aspects of this game, into a huge frustration for most of the playerbase... Drop a Dalamud on the housing wards and rework the concept from the ground up, please... Everyone should be able to have the plot they want... If adding more housing servers is too much of a cost to be viable, rework the system completely...

We have instanced housing, everytime you enter a house or apartment, it's an instance. Only the wards are zones that take place in the world server maps.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

We have instanced housing, everytime you enter a house or apartment, it's an instance. Only the wards are zones that take place in the world server maps.

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Probably could use more clear wording than just simply "instanced housing" but I think it's pretty clear what people mean when they ask it though, especially given context of what people ask for. Unlimited instanced housing, or more particularly an instanced house available for every single player and FC (don't need more houses than there are people who could possibly use them).

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

We have instanced housing, everytime you enter a house or apartment, it's an instance. Only the wards are zones that take place in the world server maps.

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What's your point, exactly? I'm clearly talking about the exterior plots here, which are not instanced... If they were instanced, SE could hopefully get around the ridiculous server limitations they currently impose and as such offer people far more plots than is currently possible...

As far as I know, right now every plot in every ward is constantly taking up server resources, whether anyone is in those zones or not, because they're not instanced. Interiors and apartments on the other hand, the server doesn't need to load them if nobody is using the instance, so it saves space and doesn't load them, thus allows us to; 1) have far more of them, and 2) place far more furniture in them. Apply that to the plots themselves and end this ridiculous scarcity that only exists because of woefully poor planning on the developers part.

Seriously, there is no point in plots being the way they are. Literally nothing is done with this concept. Housing wards themselves are dead, people basically only sit in their own plot/the nearest market board. I'm sure some enjoy walking around the wards, heck I do sometimes, but it really doesn't justify the ridiculous limitations it imposes on the housing system... Can even keep that concept in part by just locking off the plots and making them instanced, you could still walk around Lavender Beds, you'd just need to zone into a plot rather than seamlessly walking into someones garden. I really don't think that feature is worth also saying "Only X number of people can own a mansion" because we're limited on how many can be added as a result of it...

Heck, instanced plots would arguably make the wards feel more alive. Rather than one person occupying plot 1, you'd have multiple people occupying the instances there... The market boards outside would feel much more lively as a result, since you'd be drawing a greater number of players there. More socializing. More people talking about their houses. Better than the few groups hovering around the market boards we currently get...

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Originally Posted by Nalien

What's your point, exactly? I'm clearly talking about the exterior plots here, which are not instanced... If they were instanced, SE could hopefully get around the ridiculous server limitations they currently impose and as such offer people far more plots than is currently possible...

As far as I know, right now every plot in every ward is constantly taking up server resources, whether anyone is in those zones or not, because they're not instanced. Interiors and apartments on the other hand, the server doesn't need to load them if nobody is using the instance, so it saves space and doesn't load them, thus allows us to; 1) have far more of them, and 2) place far more furniture in them. Apply that to the plots themselves and end this ridiculous scarcity that only exists because of woefully poor planning on the developers part.

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Well from my understanding our game is divided into two pieces on the data center. The Server world which contains world zones and all things that go along with it including outside wards towns. Then you have our instances which we call the DF which creates and contains all the things that require an instance like Dungeons, Trials, Raids, Stormblood's Raubahn, and the interior of all houses and apartments. Currently instance houses are a square floating in a blank space, simple to save and reproduce without too much strain on resources. But when you add the outside environment with sky, lighting, weather, so on and so on; it's starts adding up. In fact when housing first came out, there was problem in the DF server similar to SB Raubahn bringing the change that you can't log back into your house but rather in the ward. Unfortunately FFXIV architecture is built and the devs have to navigate within that design. So to sum up my reply, making a instance housing area on the DF server would only move the problem from one area of the game to another. The last thing we want get boot from a raid and hit with error codes because of housing or vice versa.

P.S. I do agree that the wards are empty right now and wish SE would add things to make them more lively.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

So to sum up my reply, making a instance housing area on the DF server would only move the problem from one area of the game to another.

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Not really. The difference between the wards and instanced housing is the wards are always loaded and running even if there are no players present. Instanced content is loaded only when a player wants to enter it.

When people talk about more fully instanced housing, what they're asking for the exteriors of our plots to be joined to the interiors (which are already instanced). You would no longer be able to see what your neighbors have done with the exterior of their houses, being replaced by walls or some sort of backdrop to represent the neighboring houses. Exiting the instance of your house would put you back into a shared common area like a zone.

Instead of having 144 always loaded zones per server just for housing, SE could reduce it to 4 (one for each housing district). You could walk up to a plot and interact with a menu similar to the apartment menu to pick which house you which to visit. There would be far less of a drain on server resources that way.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Not really. The difference between the wards and instanced housing is the wards are always loaded and running even if there are no players present. Instanced content is loaded only when a player wants to enter it.

When people talk about more fully instanced housing, what they're asking for the exteriors of our plots to be joined to the interiors (which are already instanced). You would no longer be able to see what your neighbors have done with the exterior of their houses, being replaced by walls or some sort of backdrop to represent the neighboring houses. Exiting the instance of your house would put you back into a shared common area like a zone.

Instead of having 144 always loaded zones per server just for housing, SE could reduce it to 4 (one for each housing district). You could walk up to a plot and interact with a menu similar to the apartment menu to pick which house you which to visit. There would be far less of a drain on server resources that way.

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Personally still wish for Wild Star (because then you can have a much larger customize-able area) but I want to defend/add to this point that not only does it require less places to be loaded up at once it also removes the restriction on small/medium/large and adds a lot to neighborhoods.

Meaning you've potentially just unlocked a lot of large houses for players, a lot.

Because everyone is on a shared ward space it means that a neighborhood would be MUCH MORE active, like... a lot more people lol. Also they could add some NPC preset houses for plots that are empty, stored client side. Such that the whole ward is never abandoned looking even if for whatever reason a server has no people on smalls anymore or something like that (but I think that would be unlikely for a long while).

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Personally still wish for Wild Star (because then you can have a much larger customize-able area) but I want to defend/add to this point that not only does it require less places to be loaded up at once it also removes the restriction on small/medium/large and adds a lot to neighborhoods.

Meaning you've potentially just unlocked a lot of large houses for players, a lot.

Because everyone is on a shared ward space it means that a neighborhood would be MUCH MORE active, like... a lot more people lol. Also they could add some NPC preset houses for plots that are empty, stored client side. Such that the whole ward is never abandoned looking even if for whatever reason a server has no people on smalls anymore or something like that (but I think that would be unlikely for a long while).

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Not just that but with a fully instanced housing system, we could go back to every character owning a house if the player wanted each of their characters to have their own separate house. No more complaints about grandfathering in a few special players because everyone would have equal access (possibly even multiple houses per character).

I really like the suggestions made in here.

Definitely an instanced housing system would ease on the servers as instead of loading the wards 24/7, it would only load those being accessed by players at that time. I checked out wildstar’s housing system, and it basically is what I’m suggesting, but adding a few of npc houses to the mix to make it look inhabited and not empty, while it’s still customizable by the player to add structures in etc. The idea of adding a shared entrance type area infront of the instanced housing access area with a market board and the npc shops in those wards is great and surely would make people interact more in those areas.
The idea of integrating housing with the seasonal events sounds great, but the problem is that many these houses are empty. So if they make it dependant on furniture placed by other players, then it’ll be pain to go around endless wards just to see if people actually placed them in their gardens/ houses (unless there is a marker for those items on the map or something)

In my original idea, I imagined the personal instanced housing to be similar to the enclave in size, with the player small house being in the middle and areas of the neighborhood closed off (similar to how the enclave was), and Like 2-3 npc houses. While you progress, you choose what to place in the new parts unlocked, if you want to put a park (or beach area, water park, snow playground etc) there with different themes to choose from depending on housing region, mount/ minion area where you can place them for display, a farm/ greenhouse like gardening area, aetheryte, inviting more npc’s if you want, zoo where you can capture and put mobs you want in there with varying difficulty of doing so (maybe tie that with beastmaster), monuments of the twelve or primals/ dead or important npc’s to the storyline/ other, etc etc the list goes on and they can be as creative as they can be.
The npc’s around could have a like/ dislike relationship with the player, some are nice and some are mean (you can’t please everyone). They have weekly requests like displaying certain furniture, showing them certain minions/ mounts, loaning them gil, gardening a certain flower/ plant, asking for a certain piece of gear/ glamour etc, and out of helping them you get to know them better and their back stories and see them improve on their houses too (An npc asks you for a loan just to go upgrade their house before you xD)

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Originally Posted by TenraiNagi

I checked out wildstar’s housing system, and it basically is what I’m suggesting, but adding a few of npc houses to the mix to make it look inhabited and not empty, while it’s still customizable by the player to add structures in etc.

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Have you played Dark Cloud (old playstation games)? In that game you had this neighborhood that you would organize about, it was kind of neat that in NPCs had personally favored locations and neighbors.. So behind each NPC bringing some special look to that node you put them on they also would interact a bit with people around them based on position and environment. Some of what you said reminds me of that too.

Guild Wars 2's GUILD housing system reminds me a bit of some of what might describe some of what you're asking too. Not the player stuff, specifically the Guild's. In that game every guild has a zone and many locations they'd upgrade to gain bonuses for the guild, you could also decorate it. Of course instead of like a garden, tavern, or mine shaft you'd have like an NPC.

Also somewhat what WoW's Garrisons are, except you can't really decorate it at all lol. It's a bit like Dark Cloud. I think some of the features are quite neat and there is a lot of content in the space, but decorations are.. quite lacking. Improving the customization options would go a long way into making it more personal, but it certainly is a useful/intriguing place.


Totally not against this being for each player but I'm a big fan of the concept you mention about NPCs being used for FC because then FC have a desire to go out as a team and earn reputation. Like you know how you can have reputation with the GC (if you check your FC you can see what you ranks are)? Would be kind of neat if that allowed you to purchase buildings and services from those GC. Of course expand it to beast tribes and more. Like working with Cid's workship to get some neat airship docking space.

Funny thing for me is I think FFXIV is doing really great on the visual department of housing, some of the houses I've seen in this game are fantastic looking for any game - I just really... really.. am not a fan of the system itself, specifically the ward limitations, and restrictions involved. Like you - I think "why would I want to be restricted by the neighbor I don't care about when I could potentially have a zone to myself with visuals I love?". No desire to squish the space for people who do actually like it of course, but the power involved with going your own space >> being stuck in a shared space.

Also an aside on the seasonal thing, Wild Star had a pretty easy mechanic to visit other player's housing zones - I think you could incorporate seasonal events even in an instanced system. "Visit 5 players houses and capture all the gnomes running wild!". If a player doesn't want their house to participate just restrict it from random visits, there will be plenty of people going full blast design so there wont be an issue with the event like that. Personally I believe they should develop a series of FATEs for the housing districts, some common, some rare, and some seasonal, and just keep them rolling.

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Originally Posted by TenraiNagi

The idea of integrating housing with the seasonal events sounds great, but the problem is that many these houses are empty. So if they make it dependant on furniture placed by other players, then it’ll be pain to go around endless wards just to see if people actually placed them in their gardens/ houses (unless there is a marker for those items on the map or something)

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To clarify, I'm not suggesting the main quest of the event be housing related. Just that a side, repeatable quest (like the ones we get for naff stuff like fireworks usually) be placed in housing wards every year for people to do if they want. While it's true not everyone is going to place the Christmas tree from the last (and only) event we had like this, if the plots are instanced and thus more people are in a single zone that currently, it becomes something you can easily just shout for help with. Make the wards more crowded and more sociable.

Markers are a good idea as well. They could stick it on the same system as the new tags system. Place the Christmas tree, automatically get the Christmas tag. Make it a 4th special one we can't set ourselves or something.

Honestly, I mainly just want more reasons to go around an look at other peoples houses. Right now I can do that of course, but in a dead ward with most people offline and not really talking... Throw an event in? Lots more doing that hopefully, lots more talking... IDK, it's an idea I've had ever since that one Christmas event, and I'll admit that event itself was somewhat flawed (as I recall people just went to the nearest house?), but it's a concept I'd have loved to see built upon, rather than abandoned.

I have not played the original dark cloud, but I find the garrison’s from WoW lacking from a decoration standpoint as @Shougun pointed out and the guild hall from Guildwars 2 is kind of a different concept, since it’s more of a zone to place things in (people usually make their jumping games in them) rather than a house with with interior design being the major thing (and exterior for the garden ^^). So you get all these ground patches and mountains and outdoor structures to design the zone that won’t apply to our housing system. It’s more similar to minecraft in that regard.

The decoration system we have in ffxiv is great, even though I’d like them to make the glitching methods part of the normal way to place things rather than glitch them there, but overall it’s great. In my idea, decorations would be as we have them now, limited to the house and it’s garden (with the item limit increased ofc because it’s instanced).
So the player would have a decoratable house and a customizable pre defined neighborhood where the areas we unlock are fixed (similar to the enclave) but the player customizes what shall be placed in the unlocked area with preset structures. So if 2 players choose to place a beach area, then they would look the same (except the location might change depending on which unlocked area each player decides to place it on)

Any admins forwarding suggestions to devs. Inbox?

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Originally Posted by TenraiNagi

The decoration system we have in ffxiv is great, even though I’d like them to make the glitching methods part of the normal way to place things rather than glitch them there, but overall it’s great. In my idea, decorations would be as we have them now, limited to the house and it’s garden (with the item limit increased ofc because it’s instanced).
So the player would have a decoratable house and a customizable pre defined neighborhood where the areas we unlock are fixed (similar to the enclave) but the player customizes what shall be placed in the unlocked area with preset structures. So if 2 players choose to place a beach area, then they would look the same (except the location might change depending on which unlocked area each player decides to place it on)

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Wild Star. What was that? Wild Star.. Who's talking? Wild Star. Wild Star. lol. :D

You could scale things up and down and put them in silly positions in that system (allowing people to create statues and entire cities)! I agree if we had our own zone / space then having an unrestricted placement on the x, y, z axis with scaling / rotation would be A M A Z I N G. It's part of the reason why I think people who think they're fine with the current system would realize how green the grass could get when they're given their own zone and unlocked housing system. Where they can still easily invite people to come visit, social power doesn't die unless you don't care to foster it.. which is pretty much how the system already is anyways lol (people who go out of their way to make it social can do so, and for the rest of us it's about features and accessibility).

I'm sure no matter what grand features you could introduce some will prefer it exactly how it is now (so I don't want any system to be destroyed) - like some people actually like the limited housing (that there are not enough larges for demand) but I just have to say "we will always disagree, forever" when it comes to if limited housing is a good idea or not. If I don't like having to balance 100 variables in real life to find a house I like there is no way I'm going to enjoy doing it in a video game where it's even more limited than real life lol (and is often a race). I can understand some people might like that, like some people might like perma-death in an MMORPG, that however is not me lol.

Probably one of the top items in things I wish FFXIV did differently (overall pleased and love the game so I like making suggestions here and there just as a fan, but this issue I talk about because it actively disappoints me with the "y tho" feeling lol). Makes me sad as well coming from FFXI where it seemed like they had the right idea ages ago where everyone get's a place to call their own and just needed to make it much better. Of course I assume that the problem is the whole 1.0 to 2.0 issues, and that if Yoshi-P / Programmers could snap their fingers that we'd have a lot less issues with the system. They had a chaotic building point to go from and an insanely short period of time to work with to get the ball rolling again, it's pretty great how they've done so far. Still even though I can imagine why we have the problems I find it worth demonstrating displeasure, in the off chance they decide to invest resources into solutions or even if team works on a new MMORPG (so they can not repeat the issues of this system).

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Originally Posted by ERMITANYO

Any admins forwarding suggestions to devs. Inbox?

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In a general statement they've both said yes and I feel like they do, on a more nuanced level I'm not sure what the exact protocol is for things to be forwarded. Not sure who does the forwarding either, I imagine it might be our community managers (mates with the cool avatars). Like I've heard they translate the top ten or so threads every week to be read by the team, but are there any specific posts or ideas that get translated or concentrated outside of that? No idea. I know there were a few old ideas I had wanted that I saw happen and they weren't exactly jackpot posts in popularity (could be because I described something already asked for by the Japanese community or was already a plan in development).

Wild star instanced housing areas, with FFXIV housing architecture and furniture, and the player can select which view they like...middle of the uldahn desert, forrest scene in gridania, island in limsa lominsa, or kinda swallows compass mountains by the sea in kougane

My idea: Allow players to purchase "rural plots", solo instanced housing plots (Like in WildStar, Elder Scrolls Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic) that there is not a limited supply of, and can be purchased for a fixed price. As the name implies, they would be out in the wilderness by themselves, and not in a neighborhood or district surrounded by other houses. Although instanced, you would still be able to invite friends and FC members to your house. Rural plots would also have no demolition timer.

The currently existing housing districts would still exist, and still work as before.

Personally, I really like this idea. I think FFXIV has some really likable NPCs and I'd love to get a chance to interact more with some of them, or even with entirely new ones that have fun personalities. To people who go on about "social interaction", I don't know about you all but every ward I go into is a ghost town 99% of the time. Maybe you'll catch the odd person AFKing at the market board every now and then...

This would give us more stuff to customize, more solo content which is honestly not terrible imo and more things to do during off times. Mayhap friends could opt to move into areas together too and in that case, some of the NPC housing will be used by other players instead.


I also like Feronar's idea of rural housing. Everybody's happy that way.

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Originally Posted by Feronar

My idea: Allow players to purchase "rural plots", solo instanced housing plots (Like in WildStar, Elder Scrolls Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic) that there is not a limited supply of, and can be purchased for a fixed price. As the name implies, they would be out in the wilderness by themselves, and not in a neighborhood or district surrounded by other houses. Although instanced, you would still be able to invite friends and FC members to your house. Rural plots would also have no demolition timer.

The currently existing housing districts would still exist, and still work as before.

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The similar part of our ideas is it being instanced. The difference is that in your idea it would consume less dev resources/ time since it is an individual plot in a rural area. And I think it would be great both ways, because it would give access to more players (whether they decide to go the more resource consuming route or not).

I bought an apartment a few days ago (there are a ton available which shows that people want a house with a garden rather than a simple apartment), but the infrastructure to instanced housing is all there, what we’ve been talking about. A shared area where people have shops, the MB, summoning bell et, AKA the lobby in the apartment building, and the instanced area which instead of it showing the apartment interior would instead show the whole housing plot.

Adding more wards, while surely gives access to a bit more players each time they area added, doesn’t address the issue that the majority of players don't have access to houses (they have access to housing with apartments but seeing how underutilized they are shows that they aren’t the solution...)
And since nobody is buying those apartments, can we remove the limit of one per player :p

Hmmmm......:)

Instanced housing in some island in the middle of the ruby sea or any other rural location :cool::cool::cool:

Huge apartments with huge instanced balconies, and beautiful landscapes and shops sorrounding the apartment building:cool:. With auto cleaning stables:cool::cool::cool:

And if possible an allotted 2 deluxe sized garden patch for each apartment owner.