Video for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQbzx8AD4gI
I have plenty of experience in FFXIV housing.
In my FFXIV lifetime, I've "used" 4 different houses:
- A mid plot in Mist, which belonged to my old FC
- A mansion, which I owned in Lavender Beds, and I had stolen from me
- A small plot, which I currently own in Mist
- A mansion in The Goblet, which belongs to my new FC
I don't know about you, but I've never benefited from the "social" aspect of housing (i.e. having neighborhoods). I visited a neighbor's house -ONCE- and hanged around for like 10 min, because said neighbor was on my FC alliance.
My other social interactions are limited to doing a poke emote to the Lala who is near the markerboard, who has a 1% change of not being afk and emoting back. Other than that, all around me are neglected houses with furniture from 2 years ago, or empty neighborhoods because multiple houses belong to a single FC/player.
The last time I enjoyed FFXIV Housing wasn't because I was casually strolling through my neighborhood. Neighborhoods are useless. It was because I got an INVITATION (remember this) to a certain out-of-the way plot of land, maybe in a subdivision of a different server, to a cool concert, or play, or halloween party.
Enter Genshin Impact housing less than 1 month ago.
GI Housing is in an early state, with few furniture options. But usage already is so much better. First, I don't have to battle bots for 12 hours to buy a measly small plot.
EVERYONE gets THREE HUGE PLOTS of land with MULTIPLE areas, where you can build up to THREE MANSIONS, and you can even build a SMALL NEIGHBORHOOD AROUND YOUR MANSION.
Currently you get a huge beach area and build your mansion there. You get a huge mountain area and build another mansion there. And you get a huge celestial area and build another mansion there. In total, 3 little sandboxes where you can place multiple houses, pets, trees, furniture, etc...
Everyone gets this FOR FREE... and oh, yes, Genshin Impact is a MOBILE GAME.
Want to visit other player's housing area, or want them to visit yours? All you need is to right click on a name, and click invite. Two clicks. Yes, the system works using an INVITATION.
Let's say you're playing FFXIV, and someone is hosting a concert on X plot of land. You have to go to the right city, aetheryte, click housing, access the division, teleport, walk to the house... YAWN. Just let us right click and get the hell inside the party. I don't give a damn where the house is located or what is AROUND the house I'm visiting.
Final Fantasy XIV needs instanced housing, and needs to forget the messy, resource-greedy, bot-infested, house-abandoned, suscription-dependant, black-marketed concept of neighborhoods.
In 5.0 we'll be getting our little own instanced "farm island" with minions, gardening, and stuff. It's the perfect moment to enable instanced housing. Let everyone have their own huge house to play with. Get rid of bots, gil-sellers, housing blackmarket, and all that crap all at once.
Genshin Impact has better housing. Suggestion for 5.0 ...
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05-20-2021, 05:02 AMAdlerTakamuraGenshin Impact has better housing. Suggestion for 5.0 ...
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05-20-2021, 09:35 AMArielen
They already said that island sanctuary isn't a replacement for housing. It's its own non-competitive pet and gardening thing. It's possible that it isn't even customizable or supporting of decorating.
Also, Genshin Impact is a new game that doesn't have to deal with 10 year old relic code and existing features which conflict with any possible update. The only way they could offer instanced housing for everyone in the playerbase by using the current system would be to expand on the apartment system, and they'd have to figure out a way of doing that without nuking everybody's current apartment. -
05-20-2021, 09:47 AMBladehawk
They mentioned that bigger apartments would come at the expense of the number of wards we have. It doesn't sound like the current system only needs to be expanded, it would need to be totally replaced.
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05-20-2021, 10:02 AMArielenJesus, that's even worse.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bladehawk
Mind you, depending on the size of the apartments, I wouldn't mind having small/medium/large apartments over having more than 24 wards. Apartments don't expire; you can safely unsub and keep them, unlike standard housing. -
05-20-2021, 10:14 AMMilkieTea
GI made 1bil USD in 6months from the mobile revenue ALONE.
roughly 3x the amount xiv made in a YEAR, and over HALF of xiv's gross revenue for the entire LIFESPAN of the game. When XIV can make that much money, then we can compare the two's housing situation, because it's clear one can afford it and one can't. -
05-20-2021, 10:28 AMItMeHooooly cow.Quote:
Originally Posted by MilkieTea
Where did you find those numbers? -
05-20-2021, 11:46 AMMilkieTeahttps://www.forbes.com/sites/paultas...h=2e2235452b80Quote:
Originally Posted by ItMe
https://mmos.com/news/square-enix-re...es-and-profits
https://vgsales.fandom.com/wiki/Best...are-Enix_games
Mobile gaming is, unfortunately, becoming king. These companies can produce subpar gacha mmos and make millions to billions from inapp purchases, ad revenue, etc etc. (Not to say genshin impact itself is subpar but it's not even the biggest earner in the genre). They make their money by exploiting the addictive nature of children and teens who have access to their families credit cards. That Genshin Impact and other mobile games can afford to pay for the development costs of instanced housing or housing for everyone or prettier graphics and aesthetics means nothing other than they have more money.
Edit: Further discussion should be going: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ing-Megathread here
Any suggestions should be consolidated into that megathread. -
05-20-2021, 06:16 PMJojoya
Genshin Impact also isn't a MMO.
Certainly there's room for improvement in the housing system here but at least use housing from other MMOs as a comparison point to show what's possible. -
05-21-2021, 02:38 AMSotaris
Also can't really compare a 10+ year old engine with spaghetti code to a mobile game available on pc and consoles.
I agree housing needs improvement/overhaul but realisticlly I don't see it happening. -
05-21-2021, 04:05 AMDivinemights
I already mentioned several time on this Housing forum that overall Japanese server technology is way behind the standard.
SE is pretty much the best you can find among Japanese gaming companies (just look at the how bad Capcom's multiplayer mode in their games)
Chinese and Korean are far more advance than Japanese
Guess what?
Genshin Impact is made by Chinese.
I really don't know the purpose of this topic since Japanese never have the same technology and skill (requires time and experience) -
05-27-2021, 08:29 AMDyvidWell it's a numbers game really. If they can make more medium or large apartments that people would be happy with at the cost of fewer houses, I say go for it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bladehawk
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05-27-2021, 01:06 PMNafreyu
I'm still in the process of levelling in Genshin Impact, and I know at end game there's the opportunity to link up with others to satisfy that 'mmo feel' of playing with others, and would be more than sufficient for all those soloers out there and how they interact.
Pleased that there is at least an option For housing out there.
While I don't like the Ishgard housing style, i do LOVE the reduced footprint, and more space to use around the side of each of the S, M & L plots. That even the L has a second level to walk up to is fantastic.
I would love to see shorter house designs and smaller footprints being used. I would also like there to be an increase in Apartment and S internal space.
Between M & L, it's not that drastic a difference in size. But betweem S & M that isn't even remotely a halfway point to L. It's freaking huge, and is a huge indicator they need to at least have a much larger lower floor. -
05-27-2021, 02:17 PMBladehawkSo you would be ok with giving up your small personal house/fc house so someone else can upgrade their small apt to a medium sized one? Thats how the numbers game would work out with the current state of things. Not sure less housing for everyone so a few can have bigger housing is the way id like to see things go.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dyvid
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05-28-2021, 10:09 AMJojoyaNot certain why you think that would be the case. As far as I know, there's been nothing said to indicate changes to the apartment system would cause players to lose their ward houses.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bladehawk
All that YoshiP has said was that the apartment system was not designed to accommodate an expansion of an existing apartment (ie add on a second room to your current apartment). He also said at the time apartments were added that it would be far easier for them to add additional wings to apartment building if there was enough demand than it is for them to add new wards. That demand has never materialized since the current apartments are no better than a FC private chamber (other than no risk of losing the apartment) so no world has ever sold out of apartments.
It seems like it should be possible to add new wings to the apartment buildings that would hold larger apartments (possibly with fewer apartments per wing). A player would probably need to relinquish their current apartment to buy the larger just as we currently need to relinquish to move to a different building. -
05-29-2021, 09:48 AMBladehawkDuring fan fest the question was asked about expanding the size/option of apartments that they told us they were looking into a long while ago. They replied that it was no longer being considered because it would limit the number of housing wards they could offer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jojoya
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05-29-2021, 09:58 AMNaletteDo you have a source for this? I can't find it anywhere.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bladehawk
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05-29-2021, 10:40 AMSeleniI’m not sure about fan fest one, but an email interview with Yoshi P listed similar response. I took the response to be more like it’d take an overhaul of the apartment system to accomplish and they’d rather spend that resource elsewhere.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nalette
Link to forum post on the subject of that interview:
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ight=Interview
There’s text version linked from the YouTube video description. It links to google docs:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19yU...WT6JCoB2g/view
Text excerpt taken from the doc:
Quote:
4. While new housing is planned with Ishgard in 6.1, I was wondering if any considerations have been made to enhancing apartments as well? For example, spending some gil or completing a quest to increase the size of the apartment.
Naoki Yoshida:
At least up through 6.1 we don’t have any specific plans to share on this topic. When it comes to apartments, memory allocation and other factors are designed utilizing the number of objects in small houses, so if we start making apartments with varying sizes, we will need to reassess the fundamental systems.
This is not to say that we won’t be doing something like this in the future, but there are other tasks of higher priority for housing, so we’re working on those first. This is because it’s of higher priority to provide more available plots of land to the players.
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05-29-2021, 11:36 AMJojoyaWhich would not mean taking houses away from players that have them, it just means not adding more.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bladehawk
Add in apartments with house sized interior options and you'll see a lot of players switching to them because they hate having a Paissa house for a neighbor or don't want to worry about demolition. That would free up existing houses for those who actually like the wards.
I'd agree that it sounds like he's saying they'd rather put dev resources into wards instead of into apartments since houses are more popular.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seleni
What he seems to be overlooking is that players mainly dislike the apartments because of the small size and want bigger apartments. Even most house owners are unhappy with the wards themselves because the wards are usually empty (though they're relatively happy with their larger instanced house interiors).
When do I see players in the ward? When I'm at my FC house and other members are hanging out there (sometimes with their friends). Am I seeing them away from the FC house and out in the ward? Very rarely (and that's always at the Dappled Stalls MB).
What they need to be doing is combining the best feature from both systems, which is the large instanced interior and making more of that available to players. Keep in mind that instanced housing doesn't have to be all interior. It can include exterior areas (like so many other MMOs using instanced housing) though it would mean changing how exterior fixtures work.
Imagine having a Blank Exterior Wall equivalent to the Blank Partitiion wall that is cottage, house or mansion shaped with an opening for a Door Partition, the window fixtures change to work like imitation windows, etc. You apply the exterior skin of your choice to the wall, add in the door partition of your choice and then you can walk directly into your house interior - no loading portal.
If the only instanced housing you're familiar with is what's in this game, go to YouTube and search "Wildstar Housing", "ESO Housing" or "RIFT Dimensions". That's all instanced housing and (art aesthetic tastes aside) it puts the housing in this game to shame. -
05-29-2021, 12:05 PMSeleniI’m not sure that’d be sufficient though. A lot of people also cited gardening (specifically crossbreeding) and house-sharing as the reason why they never bothered with apartments. ..Some referred to neighborhood as reasoning too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jojoya
I’m not doubting that instanced housing with exterior is technically feasible, at least in other games. However, for one reason or another, FFXIV opted not to take that route when they decided to provide personal housing, opting instead to open up ward houses to individuals. And they’d stuck with that stance throughout the years.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jojoya
Also, if they can’t easily provide multiple apartment sizes, I think a full instanced housing (exterior + interior) is probably even less likely, as that require even more system resources to run. -
05-30-2021, 02:52 PMJojoyaYet the majority of current house owners don't garden in general or crossbreed specifically. They lose interest once they realize that there's mandatory daily maintenance for anything with a 48+ hour grow time and the RNG involved in the more desirable gardening items (will I even get a seed 5-7 days later? will it even be the seed I want or will it be a seed only useful as 1 gil vendor trash ?). There's no use doing it (outside of shards or the occasional Voidrake/Althyk Lavender) if you are not logging in daily because what you plant will end up dying.Quote:
Originally Posted by Seleni
A tour of the wards show the large number of houses without a garden plot even placed or if it's placed it's empty. When there is one is use, it's generally for shards, Krakka Roots and other things that are easily grown in flowerpots inside a house. It's a relative handful of houses that are actively crossbreeding.
Add in instanced housing that includes interiors the size of large houses and a lot of those with ward houses would happily make the switch if for no other reason than they won't have to worry about demolition. That would free up houses in the wards for those few players who will actually do the gardening and crossbreeding.
As for house sharing, think about why players want to do it. Many are doing it because they can't get a house of their own, they take breaks from the game so would be constantly losing a house to demolition, or they don't care about owning a house but do want to garden and their friend will let them garden at their house.
There's also no technical reason that precludes instanced housing from being shared. It was a design choice by SE. Other MMOs with instanced housing allow sharing. It's rather surprising that SE didn't allow it with apartments unless it was because apartments were built off the FC private chambers backbone (makes sense not to share those since FC members already share the house). Or perhaps they did it as one of their usual attempts to hinder the trading of housing furnishings that have been binded to a character.
Finally on the subject of neighborhoods, what neighborhoods? Neighborhoods are the people, not the houses. I'm not in a neighborhood when I almost never encounter another player in the ward. If all someone is looking for vacant houses to fill in a backdrop around their own house, that can be accomplished by creating such backdrops just as there are other backdrops in the game filling in vistas (please SE, no Paissa houses on backdrops).
And again those who really want those ward houses would still have the option to buy one over buying instanced housing. -
05-30-2021, 04:05 PMSeleni
I’m not the one that came up with gardening, sharing, and neighborhoods as responses to why people won’t consider apartments. Those were actual responses/statements from house hunters on this forum as why apartments were insufficient.
Until those players actually experienced cross-breeding, you’re not likely going to convince them that it’s really not that important. -
05-30-2021, 07:26 PMBesame
Absolutely not supporting anything made "over there". That is like licking the hand that poisoned you. SE housing has it's foibles and may never be a fully instanced model but I'll stick it out here rather than support something like that.
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05-31-2021, 01:06 AMThemarvin
No matter what, these houses and wards and whatever else will be empty and barely used or populated, there is no point hanging out there, when everyone hang out in the big cities.
Just saying, having a house is is more a status symbol than anything in this game, at least for some, and no I am not counting all those decorators and people here who actually spend time in the houses.
It is about time that SE does a couple of things, prevent 1 person FC's being an option, can only be FC leader of one FC per Server, remove grandfathering and adding in intensive systems and the likes, that make it less favourable to have a house, just for a status symbol or the likes, add tax onto housing or something or plot tax.
If an ancient game like Star Wars Galaxies, can have housing, where you put it where you want and even player cities... and 100% free way of where you want to put a piece of furniture.. and yes even rotate and bank angles... then why can a game like FFXIV not have it that was released around 10 years after.
IT is not the hardware that is behind in SE's favour that is and will be the least of the trouble, but having ended working on a borked engine... they yet have tamed pretty damn well and now fighting with limitations that they need to plug and find solutions for. -
05-31-2021, 01:34 AMDyvidNot Sure less housing for a few so everyone can have a bigger apartment is the way id like to see things go. *fixed that for you*. Clearly you don't understand the numbers game here. When Ishgard drops that means 1,440 housing on the market and 4.320 apartments not including what can be created in FC houses. Rather than make 5 new wards for a total of 300 house, maybe people would rather see larger apartments considering there are 4 times more (note apartments are fluid and numbers depend on demand per ward). Even if they could only make half apartments the size of small houses floor space, that would still mean 960 small houses per ward versus 2,160 in apartments.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bladehawk
So yea, I think SE should consider investing in making bigger apartments instead of adding more wards. They should also give everyone in 6.0 a one time pass to move to any server they like to help those that want a house can go to lower pop world. Maybe even add a buy back system for player that decide they don't want a house and can sell it back to the system for equal value.
Yea, it sucks. The truth is that most people won't be able to own a house in the current system. There is only going to be 7,200 (60 plots x 24 ward x 5 districts) houses per world when Ishgard drops, and if the ffxivcensus is to be trusted there is 114,000 characters on Diabolos with 10,000 active. The only other option I see is to bulldoze the whole damn thing and try to give every player a small apartment. So would you be ok with giving up your small personal house/fc house so everyone can have a small apt?
This is the best comment I've seen in a long time and so true. It irks me that SE isn't improving the wards because they have to be so focused on trying to make enough houses for everyone because that is what dominated the forum boardsQuote:
Originally Posted by Themarvin