My Housing system ideas

Bit presumptuous of me but I figured I might as well try. The housing system as it stands is clearly not favorable. First let's go over the issues regarding the current housing system:

1. The lack of housing for the current number of players.
2. The disparity between a player owning one house versus a player owning multiple.
3. The value brought by the house being owned by an FC vs being owned by an individual.
4. That an FC house can be occupied by only 1 player.

These singular issues bring about some issues that occur as a result of a combination of these issues.

1. Because of the value generated by FC Housing, a single player owning multiple FC Houses can generate a vast amount of additional wealth as compared to a player with no access or limited access, in comparison, to the same systems.
2. Because of the value generated by FC Housing, an incentive to own multiple houses locks individual players out of owning their own.

I feel I've seen four specific solutions proposed by the majority of players here on the forum and elsewhere.

1. Add additional housing wards
2. Instance housing entirely
3. Enforce hard rules to limit each player to 1 house
4. Introduce a rent based system which costs players gil or resources to keep their house

These solutions all have their advantages and disadvantages.

Additional housing wards does give players an opportunity to get new houses, but it also gives players an opportunity to gain even more houses over what they already have, which only further compounds what the majority of the issues listed.

Instanced housing removes the limitation of players not owning a house at all, but does nothing to address any of the other issues specifically.

Enforcing a hard 1 house limit could address all of these issues, but a hard rule change would make many players feel unjustifiably targeted, and would have plenty of sympathizers, not to mention the actual difficulty of enforcing the rule across multiple account holders.

Introducing a rent based system only hurts the more common player, as the ones who have multiple FC houses have more than enough gil and earn more than enough to maintain and still make further income than what it costs.

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This is why I unfortunately feel that the best way to tackle this issue is a combination of changes, the most excruciating of which for many players would be to make profiting off of FC housing much more difficult to do for smaller FC's.

Currently to maintain a house of any sort, only one player is needed. In order to garden, only one player is needed. In order to send airships and submarines on exploratory voyages, only one player is needed. In order to build these airships and submarines multiple players are needed (4), but only 1 has to actually be a member of the FC itself.

I believe that having an FC house as a means of profit is part of the spirit of having an FC at all, for a group of players to build their group together. Removing the system completely does not appeal to me in that regard, but restricting it to a larger number of players seems reasonable and necessary, as well as a larger time commitment. This would also encourage smaller FC's to grow their player count, as well as try to encourage their members to participate as a group. I believe Diadem was meant to be one kind of method to this, but didn't go all the way, and failed. Some sort of system that involves a time commitment of at least 4-8 players, with the profits of those 4-8 players in mind, seems ideal.

The secondary change I would implement is instancing FC housing entirely, while keeping individual housing in wards. I believe housing in FFXIV was designed for players to experience their neighbors unique ideas and inspiration for their housing decoration. Instancing housing entirely, because of this, seems like the wrong idea for me.

Currently new wards restrict new purchases to FC houses. It's clear that the developers wish for FC's to have full access to FC functions, and so having them instanced would eliminate the competition for them entirely. They would still be able to decorate their instanced house and use it as a central hub for their members to gather. Using the current relocation system it should be possible to move all current FC's into these instanced houses without much issue.

Locking 1 account on one world to 1 individual house seems ideal. The idea has been presented before for alternate characters on an account to have access to a house owned by another character, and this would fall in line with the 1 personal house limitation. The combination of moving FC houses into instances, and locking personal houses to 1, should clear up the wards by a fair amount, and give most, or all players, access to their own personal house.

And finally gardening need not be restricted to housing. With the other changes, however, many more individuals should have access to gardening, and therefore it might not be a problem in itself. A single account could still have more than one garden in each of their characters instanced FC houses, however. Removing gardening from housing entirely would overcome this issue, and could be account wide outside of housing as well.

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These are the changes I believe are necessary in order to solve most or all off the current dilemmas faced by the housing system as it is today. Some of these I believe are incredibly simple for SE to implement, and others may be more difficult and tedious. Perhaps SE wouldn't consider it to be worth it to implement any of these changes. Perhaps further changes would have to be made in order to make these successful entirely. Personally I think implementing some of these changes would save them time, effort, and resources, over the strategy of constantly adding new housing wards.

Like, comment, and subscribe if you agree.

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I believe housing in FFXIV was designed for players to experience their neighbors unique ideas and inspiration for their housing decoration. Instancing housing entirely, because of this, seems like the wrong idea for me.

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Housing in 14 was designed specifically for FC's.

Your proposed idea would make it harder to do any of the things people use FC's for (Have fun trying to get multiple people to sit around in the workshop every time you want to send out ships/subs, especially if you arent sending them all to the same place, no matter how large your FC is) and solve more or less none of the issues the housing system has.

FC's arent struggling to find houses, FC's are struggling to find Large houses.



Make everything instanced, keep one ward of each housing district as the hub zone for those instances, populate it with more vendors to turn it into a true hub city, make garden patches usable inside and bam, you fix almost all the problems housing has.

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Originally Posted by Freyt

[*]Instance housing entirely
Liek, comment, and pay my sub if you agree.

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I dont liek the idea of instanced housing. there is a feels good sensation of owning a house where the others can not. i'm sure yoshida understand my feelings...

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Originally Posted by Tomoebi

I dont liek the idea of instanced housing. there is a feels good sensation of owning a house where the others can not. i'm sure yoshida understand my feelings...

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I own a medium. I would give up my ward plot in a heartbeat for an instance to call my own as long as I can expand it and decorate the inside and outside how I wish. Even better if it means my friends can now also do the same. Judging by the fact Yoshida and the team continually add more wards, compromised the FC only Ward system to include player housing, have taken steps to limit the number of houses one can own as well as making plots vacate if you're not active to let new owners buy them...no I don't think your viewpoint is one the devs share. Maybe one they consider when taking their actions but all signs point to making housing more available and not less.

I'd be down for instanced housing personally.

I just got a small, transferred to a better spot on a different ward and now I've found myself in the middle of no-men's-land. Like ... I have been out here messing around with the yard for a week straight and I have only seen 1 player. Made me figure "whats the point of this system if everyone's just gonna AFK in LL or where ever and not engage with the housing system?"

(Yes, I know this may be a strange ward and not every ward is a ghost town full of houses people prob visit once a month to keep but yeah ... might as well try to make a hybrid system for people who want a small/ med/ large to make up and invite people to yet are ok with not having a community around them if that's easier to do. IDK their code)

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Originally Posted by Barraind

FC's arent struggling to find houses, FC's are struggling to find Large houses.

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FC's don't need Large houses, no more then single players need them. With exception of gardening the only major added value is more rooms to decorate for the home owner (in this case the FC leader). Very, very, very few FC use them to hold meeting and there are no other (valid) added values for a FC to have a large house.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

Your proposed idea would make it harder to do any of the things people use FC's for

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Yes, that's the idea. Explatory voyages don't make sense for an FC when only one person in the FC has to engage with it at all.

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FC's don't need Large houses, no more then single players need them. With exception of gardening the only major added value is more rooms to decorate for the home owner (in this case the FC leader). Very, very, very few FC use them to hold meeting and there are no other (valid) added values for a FC to have a large house.

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I agree.

And gardening doesnt need to be tied to housing size anyway.

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Yes, that's the idea. Explatory voyages don't make sense for an FC when only one person in the FC has to engage with it at all.

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Which is why your idea is awful.

If SE were to restrict a certain kind of housing (FC vs individual) to the wards it should be FC in the wards and individual to instance. I wish they would implement instance housing that isn't restricted to one room (looking at you apartments). Make it so you can have any size house you want and a yard - I know a lot of people who would turn in their ward house for an instance option such as that (so long as they allow you to let your friends visit your instance house which I imagine SE would since you can do that with apartments).

As for forcing small FCs to grow their member count for some housing, that is silly. Some people like being in large FCs and others do not. Those who choose to have a small or medium FC member count for that close-knit community feel shouldn't be penalized for it in regards to housing.

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Originally Posted by TalithaSolarien

FC's don't need Large houses, no more then single players need them. With exception of gardening the only major added value is more rooms to decorate for the home owner (in this case the FC leader). Very, very, very few FC use them to hold meeting and there are no other (valid) added values for a FC to have a large house.

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My FC has given almost everyone the ability to decorate the FC house. We all contribute and so we all have the ability to drop in new furniture. We also use our War Room for meetings.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

Which is why your idea is awful.

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I don't think you understand the scope of the issue at hand. Otherwise I think you might agree with me.

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Originally Posted by Arillyn

If SE were to restrict a certain kind of housing (FC vs individual) to the wards it should be FC in the wards and individual to instance. I wish they would implement instance housing that isn't restricted to one room (looking at you apartments). Make it so you can have any size house you want and a yard - I know a lot of people who would turn in their ward house for an instance option such as that (so long as they allow you to let your friends visit your instance house which I imagine SE would since you can do that with apartments).

As for forcing small FCs to grow their member count for some housing, that is silly. Some people like being in large FCs and others do not. Those who choose to have a small or medium FC member count for that close-knit community feel shouldn't be penalized for it in regards to housing.

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Instancing FC housing is so that every FC can have a house, without a member count requirement. The member count requirement comes from earning actual profit from the FC itself. My proposal benefits most real FC's, and only serves as a detriment to single player FC's. What often seems to be the case is that those single player FC's stand to gain much more as an individual player because of it, and that needs to be balanced. If they have to grow in order to profit, or if they have to join another FC, the point of FC's isn't to play alone.

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Originally Posted by Freyt

I don't think you understand the scope of the issue at hand. Otherwise I think you might agree with me.



Instancing FC housing is so that every FC can have a house, without a member count requirement. The member count requirement comes from earning actual profit from the FC itself. My proposal benefits most real FC's, and only serves as a detriment to single player FC's. What often seems to be the case is that those single player FC's stand to gain much more as an individual player because of it, and that needs to be balanced. If they have to grow in order to profit, or if they have to join another FC, the point of FC's isn't to play alone.

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How ironic of you to tell someone they don't understand the problem because they don't agree with you, when Square Enix disagrees on your vision of what an FC should be.

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I don't think you understand the scope of the issue at hand. Otherwise I think you might agree with me.

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I understand exactly what the situation is with airships and subs.

I understand that it took an act of god, 50 discord pings and 5 hours of time to get -4- people out of an FC of 73 to sit in a workshop for any length of time every 3 months.

I understand that its easier to pay random people a few hundred k to afk in a workshop than it is to try and get people who dont care about anything house/workshop related to do it.

I understand that new housing wards on most servers have more small houses open than claimed.


Ive created, decorated and submarined out more FC's and personal houses by myself than most people you'll talk to about housing have done as part of a team.


Its a terrible system that a number of your suggestions would only make worse.


Instanced housing? Yeah, im with it. I've given a few robust ideas on how they could actually do that and make it feel similar to the current system.

Expanded gardening? Yeah, that was supposed to be a 5.0 thing. I'm eagerly awaiting it. I dont want to have to make more fc's to get more crossbreeding. I already bought houses for anyone on my friends list who wanted one just so I can use their yards.

speaking about gardening
i would like to see an instanced BIG garden at gridania near botanist guild. but a real looking garden instead of ugly patches of deluxe soil here and there with glittering light. like harvest moon/story of seasons thingy, a full blown garden as big as a large house. this probably will crash the marketboard for a while tho...

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Originally Posted by Big_Bap

How ironic of you to tell someone they don't understand the problem because they don't agree with you, when Square Enix disagrees on your vision of what an FC should be.

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I never claimed that his disagreeing with me was the reason of anything. That's circular logic, and I think you want to distract from the overall point.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

Its a terrible system that a number of your suggestions would only make worse.

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So Submarines are a terrible system, but.... You DON'T want to get rid of it or change it? If your problem is that you can't be bothered to do something small, than what about something bigger? Something that all the FC members would want to take part in and much more often?

Just for arguments sake, how does any of what I propose make any of the things you described any worse? Is it only that it would be hard to get fc members on board?

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Originally Posted by Freyt

I don't think you understand the scope of the issue at hand. Otherwise I think you might agree with me.



Instancing FC housing is so that every FC can have a house, without a member count requirement. The member count requirement comes from earning actual profit from the FC itself. My proposal benefits most real FC's, and only serves as a detriment to single player FC's. What often seems to be the case is that those single player FC's stand to gain much more as an individual player because of it, and that needs to be balanced. If they have to grow in order to profit, or if they have to join another FC, the point of FC's isn't to play alone.

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Housing was originally for FCs only. An individual couldn't even buy a house and there were no apartments. The wards were meant for FCs so they would be lively. Granted many wards are not. Many more houses are owned by individuals vs. FC in a lot of wards, especially when you look at the wards implemented later as the game has aged. I think there would be enough room for FCs to own a house if the personals were only allowed in instances and the wards would probably be livelier for it. But make it an option for FC - have a ward house or an instance then any FC who wants a house will always be able to have one. As for the profiting off of a FC house, I don't understand why it matters if it's a huge FC or a small, even 1 person FC (having a one person FC is something else and not what I'm debating - just the fact that large FCs can, and some do, operate the same way in regards to profiting as a 1-person FC). There are large FCs with a house who don't share the profit with their members. The only one who makes a profit is the FC owner and MAYBE 1 or 2 others in the FC. What's the difference in that vs a 1-person FC?

EDIT: Actually I would prefer if they would just add instance housing in addition to the wards. The instance housing allowing any size house you want plus a garden plus people can visit. That way FC and individuals have options.

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Originally Posted by Freyt

The secondary change I would implement is instancing FC housing entirely, while keeping individual housing in wards. I believe housing in FFXIV was designed for players to experience their neighbors unique ideas and inspiration for their housing decoration. Instancing housing entirely, because of this, seems like the wrong idea for me.

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Instancing in other games ends up with private houses, only visible to others grouped with the owner. Not good for visiting / ideas.

FFXIV instancing possibility:
Each plot has many instances. Players can choose which one displays via the placard, which makes that plot's contents appear on all successive visits.
Owner's plot contents appear on arrival even if a different one was selected on a previous visit to the area.
All other non-chosen plots are randomly populated with other owner's contents.. (This would probably create a long load screen upon arrival)
With hundreds of owners per plot, you would be far more likely to see other players out in the neighborhood.

One big problem though... Up to 400 items in each house, along with the data required for the positioning if each item, multiplied by hundreds of thousands of new owners would require a lot more server storage, which SE would have to buy..

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Originally Posted by Tomoebi

speaking about gardening
i would like to see an instanced BIG garden at gridania near botanist guild. but a real looking garden instead of ugly patches of deluxe soil here and there with glittering light. like harvest moon/story of seasons thingy, a full blown garden as big as a large house. this probably will crash the marketboard for a while tho...

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Runescape had something like this.. Garden patches scattered around the world that players could plant and tend and harvest. Players would only see their own crops in the patches. I don't think FFXIV's engine can do this open world no-load instancing though.

FC housing needs to be completely different than personal housing. Personal housing should consist of what we have now. FC "Housing" should be separate instances that house "Fort's", "Outpost's" or "Castle's", etc., with many various designs. FC "Houses" should be bigger than the mansions that we have now. And instead of the Airship/Submarine being inside the FC house in a room, they should be placed outside connected to the FC house as separate entities. FC "Houses" should be areas where members would love to hang out at instead of it being barren or swarming the latest tome hub Eulmore.

That's my idea. FC housing should have some more "Bam!" to it.

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Originally Posted by Arillyn

I don't understand why it matters if it's a huge FC or a small, even 1 person FC (having a one person FC is something else and not what I'm debating - just the fact that large FCs can, and some do, operate the same way in regards to profiting as a 1-person FC). There are large FCs with a house who don't share the profit with their members. The only one who makes a profit is the FC owner and MAYBE 1 or 2 others in the FC. What's the difference in that vs a 1-person FC?

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That's exactly what my plan addresses. By forcing the profit to come only at the addition of members means that FC's have to plan and communicate with their member base. They may keep it down to a select few they want, but people will inevitably talk about it, and the rest of their members can address it how they will. Not to mention that if those select few are not all available when someone wants to use this profit method, they'll have to rely on their other members or fail to take advantage of it.

The problem with small FC's isn't that small FC's should or shouldn't be able to profit, but that a single player can have 8 small FC's on one world, 40 per account, and if all of those have FC houses, then all of them are potentially earning just as much as any large FC, but for one individual only, as well as taking up 40 plots across the entire XIV game per account.

The current housing system indeed WAS at first intended for FC's only. I propose that they get a new system entirely, instead of sharing what they have with individuals. It can be exclusive to FC's. As it is you would still have the richest individuals owning 8 plots per world for each of their 8 FC's, and the problem wouldn't be solved even if you cut personal housing entirely.

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Originally Posted by Freyt

That's exactly what my plan addresses. By forcing the profit to come only at the addition of members means that FC's have to plan and communicate with their member base. They may keep it down to a select few they want, but people will inevitably talk about it, and the rest of their members can address it how they will. Not to mention that if those select few are not all available when someone wants to use this profit method, they'll have to rely on their other members or fail to take advantage of it.

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But FC members can already do that now and if they don't like how an FC is run or that profit isn't shared they can leave and go to another FC. SE did stop multiple FC house ownership until they realized that if someone is in an FC that owns a house, even if the member wasn't the FC owner or even a leader, that if they had an alt in another FC (again not even the FC owner) that didn't yet own a house, that FC couldn't buy one. Which was a problem.

I understand where you are coming from regarding the multiple FC house owners. If there was a real option of instance housing that FC or individual could own yes that would fix the issue and everyone can have a house.

Bottom line this isn't really a player issue. This is an SE issue they created by limiting housing. They just need to open up instance housing (not apartments, real housing).

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Originally Posted by EtherRose

FC housing needs to be completely different than personal housing. Personal housing should consist of what we have now. FC "Housing" should be separate instances that house "Fort's", "Outpost's" or "Castle's", etc., with many various designs. FC "Houses" should be bigger than the mansions that we have now. And instead of the Airship/Submarine being inside the FC house in a room, they should be placed outside connected to the FC house as separate entities. FC "Houses" should be areas where members would love to hang out at instead of it being barren or swarming the latest tome hub Eulmore.

That's my idea. FC housing should have some more "Bam!" to it.

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That won't change anything. People hang out in places like Eulmore because it's convinient (all traders, etc are there) or Limsa because it's social (lot's of players there). There aren't that many communications in a FC (at least from what I see), so few people gather at the FC house.

Theres no reason to hang out at a FC house instead of current_hub_city.

One of those has relevant vendors and turnin npc's, and one of those is an instanced zone that doesnt.

If we could get items for our houses that kept us from having to stay in those cities (similar to SWTORs system, where the only thing I CANT do from my apartment is daily quests) FC housing might be relevant.

You cant even log out and back in without being kicked outside.

Upon further review, as well as listening on on peoples thoughts in-game, it seems the problem is even worse than I realized, and demands a fix sooner rather than later.

A single person should not own over 70 houses on a single World.

I would regret owning a house in a Ward or Subdivision only for it to consist of one other player.

I suppose i'm in the minority who couldn't care less about owning a house as long as they gave everyone an equal opportunity to gardening.

Allow us to have 4 flower-pots in apartments or even inn's for all i care, just don't force someone to buy a mansion to maximize ones profits from crafting.

Honestly, I have a home to garden (though lately haven't been doing much of it). They have "instanced" housing by way of apartments and FC rooms, but they are incredibly small, limited, and offer no way to garden. If they gave me an option to say, upgrade my apartment from the small to something larger (not saying have a full blown medium sized house, but maybe like 4-6 FC room size, or like the first floor of a medium house) AND include a patio where I could garden, I would gladly relinquish my plot so that an FC can have it instead. I feel this would help out a lot in terms of the housing issue. Locking content behind home ownership knowing they would only have limited spacing available was a TERRIBLE idea.

I don't understand why they can't offer an option for those FC's without a home to say, "rent" a workshop so that they could still have access to the content, without having to have a home. Isn't that the main reason why one person buys up multiple plots to begin with? Stop locking the content behind home ownership, give those that have small apartments an option to upgrade their space AND include a patio. This will alleviate a lot of the problem.

EDIT: Thinking about it a little bit more now, instead of having a "patio" the apartments install a sort of "community garden" and ofc, you exiting out your patio leads you to your own garden so you can plant and crossbred whatever you like.

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Originally Posted by Suniva

I would gladly relinquish my plot so that an FC can have it instead.

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What if you're relinquishing it to an FC that already has 70 plots?

I have no idea how they would implement this but they need to "flag" FC houses that the group becomes inactive or the population becomes lower then 3 (the needed amount to start an FC), then send out a warning before demo. The neighborhood i own a personal medium in has a large house that sits and rots; it's not decorated and only two people are in the FC. But someone apperently logs in before timer runs out and refreshes it.

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Originally Posted by Freyt

What if you're relinquishing it to an FC that already has 70 plots?

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Please reread my statement and try again. I feel like you clearly missed the key point of my argument. Implementing a sort of NPC that gives access to the FC's without a home the content home ownership is locked behind will help deter the situation significantly, as it is typically the main reason as to why these individuals buy multiple plots to begin with. Will it solve the problem completely? Absolutely not, no solution is capable of that. The best we can do is try and find a way to make what we have with the current system work by providing suggestions, and we've been asking for these sorts of changes for years now.

When private home ownership became available, a lot of people were crying foul at the fact that FC content was locked behind home ownership, and were arguing that private individuals shouldn't buy houses so they don't hurt a collective group of people (that didn't go over well). Why SE simply cannot (or just adamantly refuse) simply just to implement these small changes that opens up the content to everyone is beyond me.

I also feel that, with Ishgard housing right around the corner, and the fact that many people are putting forth a lot of effort to gain access to these wards, that SE should find a way to limit the FC's that can transfer to the new wards. We know how SE does ban waves for bots since, by their logic, they do not want the botters to figure out why they got banned? I propose they do something similar, like making it so that in order for an FC to transfer to a new ward, that they have to have a certain amount of members, or points, a combination of the two or something, yet not announce it. I am sorry if my opinion is harsh, but FC's with 2 or 3 members shouldn't have access to the new wards once they come out. 90% of them are either bot or owned by a single individual.

Adding more wards is fine and all, but until SE is ready to start putting in a bit more work to try and counter these individuals' behavior, then adding more wards will simply continue to exacerbate the issue.