Optional Instanced Housing

So, I know they want housing to be visible by everybody, but some people frankly don't care and would be perfectly fine with their housing being instanced and invite-only, and in fact, there are so many things that could be done with this, that it would open up a lot of doors.

Keep the current housing system to be sure, it's neat that there's non-instanced housing, but it's just too darn hard to get a house with the myriad of problems going on.

But for those players (like myself) who don't mind if their house is instanced, giving us optional instanced housing would be quite nice.

I know, I know, there are apartments and FC quarters, but those are tiny rooms compared to the mansions, or heck even a small house which is twice the size of an apartment without even considering the yard outside.

How this would work, is quite simple -- there could be an NPC standing near the entrance to the current housing districts that whisks players away to their own instanced housing, and this would be a single house near the current housing district in some sort of suburb or rural area, like a cottage in the woods near the Lavender Beds, or a house on the outskirts of the Goblet, or what-not. The player talks to the NPC and they get placed into an instance and the best thing about this is that the instance itself could be customizable (maybe like 2-3 different ones to choose from).

The player could invite anybody they want to see the place just like how apartments work, but at least they'd still have full access to a yard and other such things unlike how apartments work.

Maybe then those of us who just can't find a house, can maybe finally get one.

I don't want to jump in and curb any enthusiasm you have for this idea, BUT..

There are costs associated with this type of system, programming etc. It is my belief some higher up committee within Square Enix is banking that the cost of implementing this idea exceeds what they are projecting as profit, or the profit is so negligible that this will not come to pass any time soon. They probably take into account "longevity" and up/down trends based on the current mmo market, and might have a "bad" feeling about investing in the housing system as opposed to trying to fixing the problems listed with healing/tanking as myriad threads are blasting off constantly and affect more people than those interested in housing.

That being said, I do hope they bring about some form of instanced housing that greatly exceeds what is available now with an Apartment. Even a larger "apartment" with no yard would please a lot of folks, but finding some way to implement gardening in these cases may prove to be difficult or impossible for whatever reasons they will pose. I've read somewhere that gardening was tied to the weather/day and night cycle withing the wards so it is not possible in its current iteration to be replicated indoors. (that is what I think I read). Best wishes and I hope you receive your wish.

~~Edit.. It would; in my opinion; be wise of them to clue us in more to what the end result of the Ishgardian Restoration will be.

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Originally Posted by Maeka

So, I know they want housing to be visible by everybody, but some people frankly don't care and would be perfectly fine with their housing being instanced and invite-only, and in fact, there are so many things that could be done with this, that it would open up a lot of doors.

Keep the current housing system to be sure, it's neat that there's non-instanced housing, but it's just too darn hard to get a house with the myriad of problems going on.

But for those players (like myself) who don't mind if their house is instanced, giving us optional instanced housing would be quite nice.

I know, I know, there are apartments and FC quarters, but those are tiny rooms compared to the mansions, or heck even a small house which is twice the size of an apartment without even considering the yard outside.

How this would work, is quite simple -- there could be an NPC standing near the entrance to the current housing districts that whisks players away to their own instanced housing, and this would be a single house near the current housing district in some sort of suburb or rural area, like a cottage in the woods near the Lavender Beds, or a house on the outskirts of the Goblet, or what-not. The player talks to the NPC and they get placed into an instance and the best thing about this is that the instance itself could be customizable (maybe like 2-3 different ones to choose from).

The player could invite anybody they want to see the place just like how apartments work, but at least they'd still have full access to a yard and other such things unlike how apartments work.

Maybe then those of us who just can't find a house, can maybe finally get one.

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I don't think it's realistic to ask for yet another instanced housing system when we have apartments. I'd say it would be better to ask for improvements to the apartment system such as adding the option to purchase bigger (and more expensive) apartments, increase the number of furnishings we can place in apartments, and to ask for indoor garden plots so that apartment owners can crossbreed seeds.

For whatever reason, SE has some issue with adding instanced, yet outdoor spaces for housing. Until that hurdle is overcome, yards for instanced housing is probably not on the table.

Don't make it like other games' instanced housing where each player has his own little private world that no one else can see unless they're in a party with the owner. They need to keep the neighborhood feel or existing housing but enhance it by eliminating the wards.

Each plot would have multiple owners, and you can select which owner's stuff to display via the placard. Your house will always appear on your lot by default, but you could still visit the other owners' properties with the placard.

The current system of one owner per plot results in the deserted neighborhoods we have now. With instanced plots, you'd have hundreds / thousands of residents in the same area.
When you're on your plot, others can still see it if selected, but they can't see you from the street. Once you leave, you're on the street with everyone else that's "outside"
Another advantage is that the house would no longer be a separate instance, so you could freely move in and out, and even have rooms open to the outside.

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Originally Posted by SamSmoot

Don't make it like other games' instanced housing where each player has his own little private world that no one else can see unless they're in a party with the owner. They need to keep the neighborhood feel or existing housing but enhance it by eliminating the wards.

Each plot would have multiple owners, and you can select which owner's stuff to display via the placard. Your house will always appear on your lot by default, but you could still visit the other owners' properties with the placard.

The current system of one owner per plot results in the deserted neighborhoods we have now. With instanced plots, you'd have hundreds / thousands of residents in the same area.
When you're on your plot, others can still see it if selected, but they can't see you from the street. Once you leave, you're on the street with everyone else that's "outside"
Another advantage is that the house would no longer be a separate instance, so you could freely move in and out, and even have rooms open to the outside.

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Even if they went to instanced plots (exteriors), I think house interiors would remain instanced separately.

Adapting current exterior layouts to an instanced system would save a tremendous amount of work and time because they could use copy/paste for the art/model assets and players could continue to use existing exterior/interior fixtures. Creating an instanced plot where interior and exterior were part of the same instance would mean rebuilding most of those assets. A couple of the current house walls make no sense compared to the interior layouts (one Glade exterior wall displays the house as being raised off the ground with no way to get into the basement area). Some exteriors are noticeably smaller than other exteriors (evidenced by the amount of space between the house wall and fence.

ya know if they ever change the ratios of how many small, medium and large there are. i think that medium is the one that they should up. If anything large ones have too much space for the item allowance , thus they feel really empty or people end up closing off a floor, meanwhile mediums are perfect you can even make additional floors with the glitches and stuff. its a shame that i rarely see fully made ones, we got too many cafes where i am at =.=

To be honest, ignoring all of the financial costs it'd have and all the issues SE would need to iron out to get a system like this working..

I'd be all for it. While I am wholeheartedly on the "neighborhood" feel of the ward houses, I am aware that plenty of people just.. Don't care for it and just want a house to try out the building system, yet at the same time, adamantly refuse Apartments, even though the Apartments would give them all the space and ability they need..

Having Instanced Housing be an Optional choice (maybe cost a bit more, due to the extra server-side data, etc.) would alleviate a lot of the stresses from the housing system with.. Almost little to no change. We can but only dream, though. Since SE is locked into the neighborhood style and don't seem to want to budge.

I know that the ideas here kinda fall on deaf ears but I would love to get mine out there.

I really like the idea of the whole "neighborhood" thing, but I feel that it's not being executed as well as it could be. As someone mentioned before, being able to change which property you see at the placard in front of the house would be a good idea for that.

However, what I would really love to see, is condos. Just like the apartments, they'd be instanced housing, but they'd be multi-room or multi-floor apartments, maybe with a balcony to add some outdoor furniture or garden plots or something. They could even include there being small, medium, and large sizes.

I've also heard the idea of instanced airship housing which would also be cool, but i think much harder to implement. Like, the idea of it would be that you could decorate the deck and still have a rooms to decorate as well. I am, however, more on board with the idea of the condos, but this would still be cool.

I think either of these could help solve the XIV housing issues. But that's just me and things I would enjoy

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Originally Posted by Kenky

To be honest, ignoring all of the financial costs it'd have and all the issues SE would need to iron out to get a system like this working..

I'd be all for it. While I am wholeheartedly on the "neighborhood" feel of the ward houses, I am aware that plenty of people just.. Don't care for it and just want a house to try out the building system, yet at the same time, adamantly refuse Apartments, even though the Apartments would give them all the space and ability they need..

Having Instanced Housing be an Optional choice (maybe cost a bit more, due to the extra server-side data, etc.) would alleviate a lot of the stresses from the housing system with.. Almost little to no change. We can but only dream, though. Since SE is locked into the neighborhood style and don't seem to want to budge.

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The primary issue with apartments for people who just want to play with housing design, is the limit on the number of furnishings you can place. At only 100, which is half the amount a small house can have (and many small house owners will tell you that 200 isn't enough unless you entirely close off the basement), you can only do so much decorating, and have to curtail most fancy/glitchy designs due to the limit of objects. Increasing the amount of furnishings one can place in an apartment to at least 200 would help in this regard.

The other issue that comes up often is from people who want the inability to crossbreed plants for seeds. An indoor garden plot furnishing (with 8 slots), would address this issue.

The last complaint I see commonly is the desire for bigger spaces. That one's trickier for SE to deal with and while I'd like it to be added, it's not as quick or easy a thing to implement like the above two things are.

Everybody that's on this thread who has said some form of statement against the addition of instanced housing seem to not actually understand just how easy it would be for Square to implement.

Even F2P games like MapleStory 2 have instanced housing and they pull in FAR less money than FFXIV does, the bare minimum monthly sub to this game is $11 USD and we just hit 20 million accounts created, no more "SE can't afford it" excuses.

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Originally Posted by iiTzSeb

Everybody that's on this thread who has said some form of statement against the addition of instanced housing seem to not actually understand just how easy it would be for Square to implement.

Even F2P games like MapleStory 2 have instanced housing and they pull in FAR less money than FFXIV does, the bare minimum monthly sub to this game is $11 USD and we just hit 20 million accounts created, no more "SE can't afford it" excuses.

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I don't think anyone is really against instanced housing.

I do think you might be underestimating the technical hurdles SE would have to work through to implement it in a way people would find satisfying. Remember FFXIV:ARR, and all subsequent expansions, is built on the skeleton of the original FFXIV. There's a lot of shortcuts and slapdash coding that was done to bring ARR into a workable and acceptable state. The limitations encountered now are the consequences of that.

I also don't think anyone believes SE can't "afford" it, more like SE has other priorities for their money. Every dollar FFXIV does not go back into the game's development. Far from it, most likely. Yoshi-P and the dev team gets their budget, which is likely much smaller than any of us would like it to be, and have to make do with that regardless of how much money FFXIV actually makes.

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Originally Posted by iiTzSeb

Everybody that's on this thread who has said some form of statement against the addition of instanced housing seem to not actually understand just how easy it would be for Square to implement.

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It's not a matter of difficulty. House interiors were always instanced. Apartments were added - they are instanced. Clearly instanced housing is possible with their technology (though dynamic weather in it might not be).

It was a design choice. They wanted a neighborhood feeling for housing. They wanted players to be able to stand outside their house and see other players moving around their own houses.

I don't think they had anticipated the increased demand for houses over time, especially as the player base rapidly grew in size, or the problems that the ward system would introduce when it came to meeting that demand. They probably didn't anticipate how empty the wards would end up feeling either. Unless you have a house by a very large and active FC, you're not likely to see anyone else in your ward on a regular bais.

At this point, we need to wait and see what's coming with Ishgard.

They could easily create FC-based instanced housing for the FCs so that they can have a private neighborhood for them and their members which would free up slots in regular wards

They could make the plots a universal size and allow people to start with a small and upgrade their house size on said plots as they obtain more money so there wouldn't be mad scrambles for mansions/mediums

They could literally just add wards as the player population increases, even though the ward system is hands down the worst player housing system in modern MMOs

And for people who don't care at all for a player neighborhood feel they could implement private instanced homes where it's just a singular land plot with decorative buildings/scenery/NPCs to give it a nice home feel

There's a plethora of solutions but the stubbornness on SE's part with wanting a "neighborhood feel" and the subsequent fanbase defence of their poorly executed method to obtaining this feel is what will keep the situation from ever improving

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Originally Posted by iiTzSeb

They could easily create

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Woah now, mister! Do you work at Square Enix? Do you know the technical side of the servers and their engine handling data values?

Because otherwise, you can't really claim it's "Easy" to do this or that.Plenty of people continue to claim about how easy it is to just add more wards, like it's a flick of the switch. But there's a lot more behind-the-scenes that could snap. We don't know how many bails of hay we can put on the proverbial camels back before it breaks.

While making "instanced FC housing" and such would help and the entire shift from all ward to ward/instance hybrid (you get to pick which one you want, with varying levels of gil investments to make it fair) would certainly alleviate most, if not all the issues we have. But even then, more people would prefer Ward-styles to Instanced-styles. Or at least that's the theory, what with people refusing apartments on principle.

(I am aware that Apartments have issues of 'being too small' and 'no garden'. But those issues can't be remedied without an entire revamp of the Apartment complex as a whole.)

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Originally Posted by iiTzSeb

They could easily create FC-based instanced housing for the FCs so that they can have a private neighborhood for them and their members which would free up slots in regular wards

They could make the plots a universal size and allow people to start with a small and upgrade their house size on said plots as they obtain more money so there wouldn't be mad scrambles for mansions/mediums

They could literally just add wards as the player population increases, even though the ward system is hands down the worst player housing system in modern MMOs

And for people who don't care at all for a player neighborhood feel they could implement private instanced homes where it's just a singular land plot with decorative buildings/scenery/NPCs to give it a nice home feel

There's a plethora of solutions but the stubbornness on SE's part with wanting a "neighborhood feel" and the subsequent fanbase defence of their poorly executed method to obtaining this feel is what will keep the situation from ever improving

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Doing what you suggest wouldn't easy. It would mean they would need to completely rebuild the house portion of the housing system from the ground up. That's a significant amount of development time taken away from other things. It would also likely require all players to give up their existing housing (including apartments) as the wards would have to be demolished to make way for the new universal plots you describe.

We know they've been working on technology that could have a positive impact on what housing is like in the future. It was mentioned during the EU FanFest Q&A,

If they get that technology working, it could allow them to add instanced house plots while retaining a negihborhood feeling (so the best of both worlds). But that's still a big if. We don't know what progress, if any, they made on it. Or maybe it's mostly complete and Ishgard housing will be when they unveil it.

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Originally Posted by Kenky

(I am aware that Apartments have issues of 'being too small' and 'no garden'. But those issues can't be remedied without an entire revamp of the Apartment complex as a whole.)

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I think size could be addressed without any major rework. They could add medium and large wings to apartment buildings. They did say when apartments were added that it would be relatively easy for them to add additional apartment wings to each building if they were ever needed (as compared the problems of adding new wards). Players would probably need to relinquish to get a different size instead of being able to directly upgrade/relocate but that's a minor concern.

What would definitely require a massive rework would be to add gardening function outside of the flower pots we already have. Weather doesn't currently exist in housing interiors the way it does in the open world zones and wards, and the current garden plots are tied to weather. I doubt SE would ever add it to the apartment system.

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Originally Posted by Sauteed

I've read somewhere that gardening was tied to the weather/day and night cycle withing the wards so it is not possible in its current iteration to be replicated indoors.

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That's why people came up with the idea of a balcony, what I would really appreciate.
I'd not only do gardening there, but also chill, bathe in the sunlight, wait for dungeons/raids to pop up etc.
So pls SE, make this a thing.

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Originally Posted by Hikari_Kishimoto

That's why people came up with the idea of a balcony, what I would really appreciate.
I'd not only do gardening there, but also chill, bathe in the sunlight, wait for dungeons/raids to pop up etc.
So pls SE, make this a thing.

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The problem is that balcony would still be within an instance and lacking weather since housing instances don't have weather.

To be honest, I doubt that day/night sky conditions exist within instanced housing either. All we get is the window lighting effect that is tied to the Eorzean timer.

Housing is definitely one of my favorite features in FFXIV (but loved it in DAoC already, Rift… TESO). DAoC back in time had a similar system than FFXIV - people camping, waiting for the prices to go down and buying when they could afford a house (not so much of stealing someone's future plot while camping, different times then). And you could upgrade your house from small into medium and so on. On Rift on the other hand only totally instanced housing but … so many possibilities ! Building blocs, placing objects, modifying the size, rotating… A dream, really. TESO has its own way with some awfully expensive virtual domains and instanced housing only but no shortage. If you want to play with a house, you can easily get a huge ground (for free) to test your ideas.

And then FFXIV - lovely districts, lovely objects, neighbours etc. Well yes, I love it and by no means I would like it to disappear. But then again there is a sever shortage of plots. The game is old. Folks stop playing for what ever reason, they come back, that is normal. What is not normal is that one of the game's features is so difficult to get your hands on. And no, I don't think it should be for only few, an exclusive high end thing. Imagine now the same housing system we have and add to it an instanced system as a supplement. "Houses" in different zones, different sizes, with deferent purposes. No limitations what so ever besides some criteria to access it (gil, quests, FATEs etc). You could have one of those instanced houses or several or non. With permissions : open to all, friends only, FC only… Gardens with more than 30 or 40 items to place with a small cottage in the middle ? A fishing hut on the shore ?

Maybe difficult to implement, how can I know ? But wouldn't it be lovely ? And wouldn't SE want to at least explain why not ? Why do we still have to struggle with this outdated and frustrating system, a disgrace to be honest ?