Island Sanctuary as a housing solution ?

Although nothing has been said about this, that building in the background gives me hope! Adding instanced housing there would solve the housing problem.

This was my hope too, and this would be one of the smartest things they could possibly do. But I do not foresee them using this as instanced housing sadly.

Which is going to be one of their biggest missed opportunities in a long time.

Right ?? I mean the instances are already being made. I'm fine with having to clear space out, i'm fine with still having to fork over the gil. I'm just tired of camping a lot for 18+ hours only to have someone swoop in, transfer, then transfer out 30 minutes later. This crap is rampant on Cactuar.

It's extremely likely, I feel.

Island sanctuary seems to be Harvest Moon / Stardew Valley style gaming brought to ff14. Those two titles and almost all games like them feature housing on your farm.

I imagine this is the long awaited solution to both 'instanced yards, please' and 'crossbreeding for instanced housing, please.' Island sanctuary seems meant to make up for all of the apartment system's shortcomings and then some.

It may be rolled out in stages, perhaps beginning as a garden patch with a chocobo stable and little else, slowly expanding to include more features.

Indeed. That windmill/house/light house thing gives me hope. I'm beyond tired of camping lots. I survived Shirogane ex, but lost it due to downtime.

Honestly if they did introduce a decent instanced housing area in this content I would let my mansion reclaim in a heartbeat. I hate the ward system. I have had a house for my fc and personally since they became available respectively and have only once had a good experience when a neighbor came and sat in my house to chat with me for a bit. Outside of that I have had issues with ppl using my house to rp and erp in, having my wonderful sea view be blocked by or just having to stare at those god awful housing skins SE keeps introducing and just dealing with the limitations that are inherent in such systems.

It was a great idea, but in a game where they have taken multiple steps to avoid ppl having to be social, forcing socializing in the housing system was a strange choice from the get go.

Pretty much every server will have enough housing once Ishgard housing comes out regardless though.

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Originally Posted by Arielen

Pretty much every server will have enough housing once Ishgard housing comes out regardless though.

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But for how long? As far as I'm aware player population hasn't stopped growing. I'm pretty sure EU will be fine for the most part, but I have my doubts about NA.

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Originally Posted by Arielen

Pretty much every server will have enough housing once Ishgard housing comes out regardless though.

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What makes you think that? There's a pretty big gap in population between the lowest population worlds and the highest population worlds but every world will have the same 7,200 houses. Sure, it will be easy to get a house on a JP world that only has 8,000 active players. Not so easy on a NA world with over 20,000 active players.

Demand is not just from individual players wanting a house. There are FCS who also want a house. Those evidently make up 30% of house ownership right now, which would reduce the number available to individual players to about 5,000. Suddenly even the low pop JP worlds may have a shortfall depending on what percentage of players want to own a house.

Then there are the players who play on multiple worlds and have houses on each of those worlds. There are the player who have multiple shells FCs for access to more workshops and gardens. That further reduce the number of houses available for players who do not have a house.

Ishgard housing is not a solution unless SE will be making additional changes to how the ward system works that they have not shared with us.

I really hope they do allow you build houses on the island. The apartment situation is a not a solution imo. No outside to decorate. But with island sanctuary everyone could have That mansion if THEy wanted.

That, and unless you are in a social FC, or one of the RP ones, or one that puts on plays and the like, housing is *NOT* a primarily social thing. Even if that is the angle, *you can go visit instances easily, since you can already do that for housing*. If they are already allotting more storage space for something as big as an island (however big it is) plus all the "in-depth" stuff, surely it would not be THAT much more to add? I know one issue is how much data the client/server sends back & forth, and I totally understand that from a cost/storage perspective, but it is a bit silly to have advertised content that most players will never have.

I'm hoping it's a plot you can build upon and then eventually make bigger. It'd be nice to have a larger space than my apartment :D

I still really like the housing system in FF I just wish it was easier to get a plot and that the plots would auto-demo much sooner. Like if you've not entered your house in a month, I think that's enough to warrent you don't use it.

Though I think maybe switching the Island Sanctuary to be player housing and the housing districts to be FC housing might server a better purpose and community.

It's not a housing solution but it makes alternatives to plotted housing like Apartments and/or FC rooms a bit viable in terms of the farming aspect, set-up one or both of those housing alternatives and you can chill while in the city-state then if one wants to farm crops and take it easy just port to the personal island sanctuary.

If nothing else, it will give players who don't have access to housing a means to grow crops the same way they could with a house.

Then maybe people will start thinking about getting apartments and quit clogging up the housing forum with the same threads repeated ad nauseum.

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Originally Posted by KayRadley

If nothing else, it will give players who don't have access to housing a means to grow crops the same way they could with a house.

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Except we don't know that the crops will be the same or that the process will be the same. If someone wanted access to gardening specifically to get Thavnairian Onions without buying anything off the marketboard, they might be out of luck. It could be the new system requires even more maintenance than current gardening, and there are already players who complain about having to tend their garden once a day instead of being able to have their retainers do it.

We know little about what Island Sanctuary is other than it's inspired by Harvest Moon type games. People need to get their expectations in check before they end up massively disappointment when it's not what they and others have envisioned. Hopefully there will be a lot more detail made available at the digital FanFest in May.

It's harvest moon ffxiv style :D and i hope as discussed in the video the content will incorporate doman enclave/ishgard restoration elements but solo.:cool:

https://youtu.be/qKteqdeK59c

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Originally Posted by cr2032

Although nothing has been said about this, that building in the background gives me hope! Adding instanced housing there would solve the housing problem.

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if you like to live in the fields and dung, I guess that's a solution.

Sure if it costs 2-300millions to buy.

I wonder if the push back on this idea is coming from the lucky players that managed to get a house. The housing system is woefully inadequate and this could a ways to alleviating it. Unless they want to open enough wards so everyone can purchase a house in a ward. Then they run into the issue of but we all want large houses. This solves that issue unless you specifically want to in a housing ward.

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Originally Posted by Feidam

I wonder if the push back on this idea

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What pushback? The only non positive responses have been:

"Ishgard should give every server the plots they need"
Likely incorrect, a 20% increase in housing will leave folks wanting. As someone said, once the wards are full, the new problem will be that two thirds of all houses are small.

"Curb your expectations, they haven't said it would be housing"
No, they haven't. It could be rolled out in stages, or it could simply be an instanced garden. But I don't think our theorycrafting is entirely off base. Only time will tell.

"Ew, manure house"
I mean, it's no secret that of the 4 housing zone, every player has a favorite. You either love the beach, the woods, or the east. Or you're a tusken raider in the goblet. People have said "If Ishgard is instanced, housing is fixed" and I've said "Instancing one of five housing zones won't help the people that want the other 4." Similarly, an instanced farm house isn't going to be enough for people who did want to share in the wards system and enjoy a full neighborhood.

I'm not sure any of these are meant as pushback, they just seem to be people thinking through the idea.

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Originally Posted by Feidam

I wonder if the push back on this idea is coming from the lucky players that managed to get a house. The housing system is woefully inadequate and this could a ways to alleviating it. Unless they want to open enough wards so everyone can purchase a house in a ward. Then they run into the issue of but we all want large houses. This solves that issue unless you specifically want to in a housing ward.

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Oh, I would love for Island Sanctuary to turn out to have housing.

I just don't believe that is SE's plan for it. If it was going to be instanced housing, it's only to SE's benefit to state that clearly and upfront considering the current housing situation. That they did not tells us it's not going to be housing.

I don't want to see people disappointed by going "finally I can have my own house" just for there to be no house.

I do want SE to take the time to fix the house supply problem so every can have a house instead of wasting that time creating band-aids that don't fix anything. Island Sanctuary appears to be its own separate content form and that's fine. If it's supposed to be a replacement for those who can't get a house but it's still not providing customizable housing, that's bad.

I want a non-instanced house with neighbors, period. They need to dynamically add housing wards; if one ward fills, another gets added and so on. Island Sanctuaries would just split the community even more between the "haves" and "have-nots".

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Originally Posted by Kaiproberts

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Hello person who just joined the forums and this is your first post.

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Originally Posted by Kaiproberts

They need to dynamically add housing wards; if one ward fills, another gets added and so on.

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1. Not possible, the way it was coded.
2. The super obvious exploit that opens up.

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Originally Posted by Kaiproberts

I want a non-instanced house with neighbors, period. They need to dynamically add housing wards; if one ward fills, another gets added and so on. Island Sanctuaries would just split the community even more between the "haves" and "have-nots".

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And you could still have a non-instanced house with neighbors even if they improve the instanced system. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Wards could remain the "elite" housing for those who want to fight for the prestige factor while instanced housing would be for those who want a space to decorate and don't care about neighbors.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

And you could still have a non-instanced house with neighbors even if they improve the instanced system. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Wards could remain the "elite" housing for those who want to fight for the prestige factor while instanced housing would be for those who want a space to decorate and don't care about neighbors.

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Doesn't sit well with me because it gives them a reason to focus less on adding more wards. The problem is the divide in the community.

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Originally Posted by Kaiproberts

Doesn't sit well with me because it gives them a reason to focus less on adding more wards. The problem is the divide in the community.

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More wards just perpetuates the problem of people not being able to get a house. The cost of running sufficient ward servers so every player and FC could have a house would be prohibitive, especially if the player base takes another jump in size next expansion. There will never be enough wards.

What they need to be doing is giving players an incentive to move out of the wards so more plots are available for those who want to be in the wards. Lack of demolition is one such incentive but clearly not enough when most players seem to value space and larger item limits over other features. Good instanced housing would be that incentive.

I don't understand your objection to instanced housing when all house interiors are instanced and other MMOs use instanced housing quite successfully. Have you seen videos of what players have done with the housing in games like ESO, Wildstar and RIFT? When I was playing RIFT, I literally built a small town in a single Dimension. It had 6 houses, 4 public buildings (school/library, restaurant, town hall, workshop), a central square, a small park with a pond large enough for small boats, an underground sewer area that housed a refugee camp, and a trader's dock for seagoing ships. Then there was another Dimension where I rebuilt the Stormwind Park District (from WoW, this was before Blizzard rebuilt it for Legion). I had another where I built a massive treehouse on the limbs of one of the tree furnishings I increased to maximum size.

Would I give up my ward house here if it meant having access to something that size with that versatility again? Heck yeah. The rest of RIFT was bad to mediocre at best (why I stopped playing it) but the housing was fantastic fun. Give me good instanced housing where I can really stretch my creativity. You can then have my medium plot in Mist.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

More wards just perpetuates the problem of people not being able to get a house. The cost of running sufficient ward servers so every player and FC could have a house would be prohibitive, especially if the player base takes another jump in size next expansion. There will never be enough wards.

What they need to be doing is giving players an incentive to move out of the wards so more plots are available for those who want to be in the wards. Lack of demolition is one such incentive but clearly not enough when most players seem to value space and larger item limits over other features. Good instanced housing would be that incentive.

I don't understand your objection to instanced housing when all house interiors are instanced and other MMOs use instanced housing quite successfully. Have you seen videos of what players have done with the housing in games like ESO, Wildstar and RIFT? When I was playing RIFT, I literally built a small town in a single Dimension. It had 6 houses, 4 public buildings (school/library, restaurant, town hall, workshop), a central square, a small park with a pond large enough for small boats, an underground sewer area that housed a refugee camp, and a trader's dock for seagoing ships. Then there was another Dimension where I rebuilt the Stormwind Park District (from WoW, this was before Blizzard rebuilt it for Legion). I had another where I built a massive treehouse on the limbs of one of the tree furnishings I increased to maximum size.

Would I give up my ward house here if it meant having access to something that size with that versatility again? Heck yeah. The rest of RIFT was bad to mediocre at best (why I stopped playing it) but the housing was fantastic fun. Give me good instanced housing where I can really stretch my creativity. You can then have my medium plot in Mist.

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I want a fair and equal housing community. Period. Either let everyone have a 'real' plot or get rid of all the 'real' plots in favor of instanced housing for everyone. My whole point is that everyone should be on equal ground when it comes to housing in a video game. Real life is already so skewed. People play a game to escape some part of real life. Housing problems and inequalities in a video game are completely dumb and go against the entire point of the game to begin with.

Well adding wards automatically would be nice let's see if ishgard housing will be like that should it be a ward system or if it's an instanced form. Also, having an instanced house doesn't necessarily mean one is a have-not, just on the waiting list for buying a plotted house (and not stressfully waiting). Having absolutely nothing as an alternative or choosing not to avail of available alternatives makes one a have-not.

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Originally Posted by ERMITANYO

let's see if ishgard housing

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Um. The live letter said outright that Ishgard is standard wards. It's a 5th housing zone. Nothing more complicated than that.

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Originally Posted by Catstab

Um. The live letter said outright that Ishgard is standard wards. It's a 5th housing zone. Nothing more complicated than that.

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I'm just hoping they add more wards OUTSIDE of Ishgard. To me, it is hideous.

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Originally Posted by Kaiproberts

I'm just hoping they add more wards OUTSIDE of Ishgard. To me, it is hideous.

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Nobody's forcing you to live there if you don't like it, bud. Its mere existence means more diversity which, in turn, means more open plots and more housing vacancies (it won't impact it to a large degree, but any change is better than no change)

Just sayin'.

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Originally Posted by Kaiproberts

I want a fair and equal housing community. Period. Either let everyone have a 'real' plot or get rid of all the 'real' plots in favor of instanced housing for everyone. My whole point is that everyone should be on equal ground when it comes to housing in a video game. Real life is already so skewed. People play a game to escape some part of real life. Housing problems and inequalities in a video game are completely dumb and go against the entire point of the game to begin with.

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Don't assume everyone else's motivations and desires are the same as yours. People play games for a multitude of reasons, including so they can do real life things they are unable to do in real life for whatever reason.

The fastest way to kill a theme park MMO is to put everything on rails so every players gets the exact same thing. Not everyone wants the same thing.

There is room in this game for both ward and instanced housing. It does not have to be one or the other.

If you really want to escape reality, playing a MMO is not the way to go. When you've got to deal with other real people instead of NPCs, reality is going to intrude.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

What makes you think that? There's a pretty big gap in population between the lowest population worlds and the highest population worlds but every world will have the same 7,200 houses. Sure, it will be easy to get a house on a JP world that only has 8,000 active players. Not so easy on a NA world with over 20,000 active players.

Demand is not just from individual players wanting a house. There are FCS who also want a house. Those evidently make up 30% of house ownership right now, which would reduce the number available to individual players to about 5,000. Suddenly even the low pop JP worlds may have a shortfall depending on what percentage of players want to own a house.

Then there are the players who play on multiple worlds and have houses on each of those worlds. There are the player who have multiple shells FCs for access to more workshops and gardens. That further reduce the number of houses available for players who do not have a house.

Ishgard housing is not a solution unless SE will be making additional changes to how the ward system works that they have not shared with us.

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Where are there 20k active players? Because the largest server (Gilgamesh) lists 14.5k, and it's worth noting that 'active' doesn't mean currently playing, it means "characters that have finished 5.0". It's doubtful there are actually 14.5k people currently playing on Gilg.

(5 residential districts * 24 wards) * 60 plots = 7200.

That's literally more plots than the entire active population of Spriggan and Twintania. 7.2k plots is enough for every FC on the vast majority of servers + a large chunk of personals.

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Originally Posted by Arielen

Where are there 20k active players? Because the largest server (Gilgamesh) lists 14.5k, and it's worth noting that 'active' doesn't mean currently playing, it means "characters that have finished 5.0". It's doubtful there are actually 14.5k people currently playing on Gilg.

(5 residential districts * 24 wards) * 60 plots = 7200.

That's literally more plots than the entire active population of Spriggan and Twintania. 7.2k plots is enough for every FC on the vast majority of servers + a large chunk of personals.

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Unofficial census had Gilgamesh at 24k last summer. Player populations do rise and fall over the course of an expansion.

Your math is bad if you think 7200 houses will be enough for 14k players and all the FCs looking for a house, not to mention that the player population will have exploded upwards again by the time Ishgard housing is opened next year thanks to the release of the new expansion.

Not sure why you're bringing up the two worlds with the lowest population in the game. That does nothing to help the highest population worlds. Why should NA players be shortchanged when SE controls the number of worlds per data center and thus the number of houses available to players in those data centers?

Add in enough worlds to NA so we've got the same average populations as the JP data centers and we'd be okay. I don't see SE increasing the number of NA worlds from 24 to 40. Do you?

Set the ward system up so it expands dynamically by need per world and we'd be okay. Considering SE has already said they can't do that, I don't see that happening either.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Unofficial census had Gilgamesh at 24k last summer. Player populations do rise and fall over the course of an expansion.

Your math is bad if you think 7200 houses will be enough for 14k players and all the FCs looking for a house, not to mention that the player population will have exploded upwards again by the time Ishgard housing is opened next year thanks to the release of the new expansion.

Not sure why you're bringing up the two worlds with the lowest population in the game. That does nothing to help the highest population worlds. Why should NA players be shortchanged when SE controls the number of worlds per data center and thus the number of houses available to players in those data centers?

Add in enough worlds to NA so we've got the same average populations as the JP data centers and we'd be okay. I don't see SE increasing the number of NA worlds from 24 to 40. Do you?

Set the ward system up so it expands dynamically by need per world and we'd be okay. Considering SE has already said they can't do that, I don't see that happening either.

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That's 14k characters all-time that have finished 5.0, not that have finished 5.0 and are playing right now. The number of subbed players can be presumed to be much lower than that. According to this, there are only about 813 FCs with 10+ players (sorry, couldn't narrow it down to 4, it's either 1 or 10 lol) with rank 6 or above on Gilgamesh. So if we assume there are 10k people currently subbed and playing on Gilg and that every single one of those FCs is active, yes, that's a house for every FC and a house for 60% of the playerbase once Ishgard comes in. I'd say that's pretty reasonable.

The next issue with housing will probably not be a lack of housing availability, but lack of medium and large homes. And that, there's very little to do for: they probably can't make houses 'upgradeable' to the next size up and adding new wards doesn't change the ratio of smalls vs mediums and larges.

That being said, we do need like 3ish more worlds per American and EU DC anyway. In terms of housing crisis, 8k 'active players' on the smallest servers in the game lead to an excess of housing: so few people there want it that larges get devalued. While this can be attributed to a variety of factors such as baby server with slow market and broke ass players, a lot of people also move there for housing.

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Those 14k characters include duplicates per account. So that's 14k characters, not 14k individual players.

More edits:

The 24k you cited cannot be possible. Reason being that I'm speaking to the devs of FFXIVCensus on twitter right now, and the current number dates back to April 2020. There have been no updates since. One of the other devs mentioned that they could scan for the minion obtained with the completion of 5.3, but there's no date of estimate for that yet. This is the relevant twitter thread for FFXIVCensus dev responses.

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Originally Posted by Kaiproberts

I'm just hoping they add more wards OUTSIDE of Ishgard. To me, it is hideous.

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Your best shot at a new house will be either now (with plots still being slowly opened up) or when the next exp hits with people transferring to ishgard.

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Originally Posted by Arielen

there are only about 813 FCs with 10+ players.

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What kind of cutoff is 10 players? Currently 64,000 houses worldwide belong to FCs too small for you to count.* So all the rest of your math starts from a useless number.

Currently, FC housing makes up roughly 25% of plots. So if you want housing for 10k players, you need about 13,500 houses. So 7200 is a still a far cry short.

Additionally, Endwalker will bring new and returning players and that 10k active players number will explode. So your assessment that only 13,000 houses are needed right now means absolutely nothing this time next year.

*source: https://www.xivhousing.com/free-company-census-2020

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Originally Posted by Catstab

What kind of cutoff is 10 players? Currently 64,000 houses worldwide belong to FCs too small for you to count.* So all the rest of your math starts from a useless number.

Currently, FC housing makes up roughly 25% of plots. So if you want housing for 10k players, you need about 13,500 houses. So 7200 is a still a far cry short.

Additionally, Endwalker will bring new and returning players and that 10k active players number will explode. So your assessment that only 13,000 houses are needed right now means absolutely nothing this time next year.

*source: https://www.xivhousing.com/free-company-census-2020

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The cutoff is from the lowest number other than 1 that I could pick on that same site that you linked.

Fair enough on the housing for 10k players based on the fact that FCs only make up 25% of plots, but that'd be 203 plots for FCs in this imaginary scenario of the 813 viable fcs exist, making 7500 plots needed for the 10k players on the server, no? Which, there's going to be 7200 plots in Ishgard, that means there's only a deficit of 500odd plots. Two new wards would be sufficient to cover it. I don't really understand where the "13,500 houses are needed" number comes from.

It's still worth keeping in mind that the number is entirely made up to begin with: 10k actively playing and running around seems quite high considering that Gilg has 14k characters that completed 5.0 in April 2020. And that's implying, of course, that all 10k of those players are interested in, can afford, and meet the requirements for housing. If there's such a big boom of new players, then they probably don't meet the reqs.

tldr I still don't think that it's fair to estimate that most servers will probably be fine.

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Originally Posted by Arielen

that'd be 203 plots for FCs in this imaginary scenario of the 813 viable fcs exist

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Possibly. I guess my only issue is that if 25% of housing is FC housing right now, that means at at present, 1,440 FC houses exist per server with 4,320 left for personals. I don't see that 1,440 average dropping at all unless a system is put in place to forcefully divest undersized FCs of houses, and this would be to widespread player objection.

I presume that if another 1,440 are added with Ishgard, FCs will buy some of them and leave players with closer to 1,080 of the houses. So (assuming no further ward expansions) in the Ishgard era, there will be 5,400 - 5,760 houses available for personal use. While not all players wish for housing, I do not anticipate that this will be enough.

If I had to guess, Ishgard will be immediately followed with a 6 ward expansion as Shirogane was. It may even come beforehand. If you recall the August 2020 announcement of 22-24, SE said that they would place as many wards as possible on existing servers, but could not follow with physical server installation due to travel restrictions. I think this means that as restrictions ease, we could see more ward expansions as we did in October 2020 and October 2019. If we did chance to get another 6 wards, that would put the houses per server at 9,000 with Ishgard's onset. Now that might cover everyone except for the largest servers.