-Instanced housing- (Apartment expansion)

I was talking about this in my FC and was told that I should write something up about it.

So basically this is a list of all the features I would love to see added to apartments to make them a viable option compared or even maybe better then home ownership.

1. The ability to purchase addition rooms and floors for apartments for a set amount of gil up to a set number of max rooms per floor.

Example A: Add one small room the (north/south/east/west) of current room for 300k gil.
Example B: Add staircase leading to the (second floor/ basement) and a small room connecting for 800k gil.
Note: Type and size or stairs available dependent on starting room size, small could be base stairs or spiral while large rooms could have a grand stairway
Note: Apartments that have been upgraded could be called Halls and ones purchased by guilds could be called Company Halls.
Note: Additional rooms can only be added a given amount of times west/east, south/north well as up and down however the Hall does not need to be symmetrical allowing in more personalization.

2. The ability to increase an apartments room size for a set amount.

Example A: Change room size to (small/med/large) 150k gil.
Example B: Combine 2 adjacent Large rooms to form one super room for 200K gil.

3. Ability to change a rooms type.

Example A: Set current room as an (outdoor/indoor) space. 200kgil
Example B: Outdoor rooms would have no ceiling on only have walls that are adjacent to indoor rooms giving the appearance of going back inside.

4. Ability to chance the view for the apartment.

Example A: Set apartment to (water/garden/street/river/market) view.
Note: Said view could so activity in the distance like NPC's walking the street, swimming in the water, fishing in the river and ect. These views would be determined by the city state the Hall is located in

5. Unlock special view locations by completing certain special conditions..

Example: Clear HoH under certain conditions to receive "Above the clouds" view.

6. Unlocks special walls ,connectors or rooms conditions.

Example: Watchtower rooms, Zen garden rooms, pool/hot spring rooms, theater rooms, workshop.
Option: Some rooms may give additional effects.

These are most of the ideas I thought up and wish to get out of my head. This id probably nothing but a pipe dream but it would be a wonderful alternative that might even be better and could be expanded into instanced FC airships that could be upgraded and docked at different locations but that rant is for another post.

.....half of this suggestion...defeats the purpose of an "apartment"..however, you've created a concept for something along the line of like, a condo or something.

This is pretty cool. I really like the idea of paying for additional space.

While we're just sort of here dreaming up nice things, I'd love it if home decor setups had a glamour plate loadout system for saving and reapplying decor you've worked with in the past. So let's say it's halloween and I decorate my apartment for that holiday. Obviously I don't want it to be halloween all the time in my apartment, but I still spent lots of time and gil making it look that way. So I open my "apartment-glamour-plate window" and "save" the halloween setting in plate 1. Then I can tear it all down and begin decorating for, say, Thanksgiving or Christmas. Next year comes and it's halloween again. No problem. I remove all the furniture currently in my apartment. Then I open my apartment glam plate window again, toggle over to plate 1, press "apply," and the halloween glam from last year is reapplied: every piece of halloween themed furniture is placed into my apartment in the exact same spot as last year.

In this way, housing is given far more replayability. Because after you finish decorating once, you can save it and decorate again without worrying about losing everything. I notice a lot of people get their dream home, decorate it once, and then just kind of leave it that way -- and for good reason. Decorating is tough, and the more intricate things like floating, etc. can take a lot of time and trial/error. Tearing it all down is heartbreaking. Under this dream system, you wouldn't ever have to. Of course this would apply to homes as well, not just apartments. But if I had it in my apartment, I would never want for a home. Because I just want to decorate. And under this system, I could decorate a lot more. Even if we only had 15 "plates," that basically means each apartment owner gets 15 apartments to decorate, minimum.

I'd also like an outdoor patio area so I can use all this outdoor event furniture the game throws at us. Really rubbing salt in the wound with that shit.

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

This is pretty cool. I really like the idea of paying for additional space.

While we're just sort of here dreaming up nice things, I'd love it if home decor setups had a glamour plate loadout system for saving and reapplying decor you've worked with in the past. So let's say it's halloween and I decorate my apartment for that holiday. Obviously I don't want it to be halloween all the time in my apartment, but I still spent lots of time and gil making it look that way. So I open my "apartment-glamour-plate window" and "save" the halloween setting in plate 1. Then I can tear it all down and begin decorating for, say, Thanksgiving or Christmas. Next year comes and it's halloween again. No problem. I remove all the furniture currently in my apartment. Then I open my apartment glam plate window again, toggle over to plate 1, press "apply," and the halloween glam from last year is reapplied: every piece of halloween themed furniture is placed into my apartment in the exact same spot as last year.

In this way, housing is given far more replayability. Because after you finish decorating once, you can save it and decorate again without worrying about losing everything. I notice a lot of people get their dream home, decorate it once, and then just kind of leave it that way -- and for good reason. Decorating is tough, and the more intricate things like floating, etc. can take a lot of time and trial/error. Tearing it all down is heartbreaking. Under this dream system, you wouldn't ever have to. Of course this would apply to homes as well, not just apartments.

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THIS is an AWESOME idea...

S.E. wink wink, hint hint

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Originally Posted by XiaoShengwu

.....half of this suggestion...defeats the purpose of an "apartment"..however, you've created a concept for something along the line of like, a condo or something.

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The difference between a condo and apartment has to do with ownership and occupancy, not layout. A townhouse, which is layout based, can still be an apartment.

There's nothing wrong with the OP's suggestions for apartments in general, though YoshiP has told us that the apartment system memory does not allow for expansion of apartment size. SE would need to create an entirely new apartment system to allow upgrades and if they were going to go that route, might as well invest the time and resources into a full blown instances system for houses.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

The difference between a condo and apartment has to do with ownership and occupancy, not layout. A townhouse, which is layout based, can still be an apartment.

There's nothing wrong with the OP's suggestions for apartments in general, though YoshiP has told us that the apartment system memory does not allow for expansion of apartment size. SE would need to create an entirely new apartment system to allow upgrades and if they were going to go that route, might as well invest the time and resources into a full blown instances system for houses.

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would just be better over all to make new apartment system if that's the case, not instanced housing. Yoshi p doens't want instanced housing he wanted large active housing communities. instanced housing goes primarily against his concept.

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Originally Posted by XiaoShengwu

would just be better over all to make new apartment system if that's the case, not instanced housing. Yoshi p doens't want instanced housing he wanted large active housing communities. instanced housing goes primarily against his concept.

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You don't create large active communities by segregating the community into small groups where players may not even be online at the same time, or if they are online they are in a different area doing other content.

You create large active communities by bringing together a large number of players at the same time for a common purpose.

That is why the wards fail. The closest the wards come is when one of the RP venues is open, and those events could be accomplished in a good instanced housing system just as much as a ward system.

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Originally Posted by XiaoShengwu

would just be better over all to make new apartment system if that's the case, not instanced housing. Yoshi p doens't want instanced housing he wanted large active housing communities. instanced housing goes primarily against his concept.

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It’s ok if they are able to answer demand but they don’t. Players who pay their sub should have access to all advertised content and not be penalized because it doesn’t suit a “vision”. It shouldn’t come down to a lottery with a 1/40 to a 1/500 chance to access such content. In any event, the only people I’ve seen around in private housing wards the past weeks were people looking for plots. In the meantime, fc wards in Empyreum are a ghost town and there’s lots of plots in FC wards in other cities left vacant by both FCs and private owners who
moved laterally.

I would be happy if they had 2-3 apartment/instanced housing sizes. Regular loft as we have atm, 2Xcurrent size + balcony and penthouse with an outdoor terrace or an indoor garden.

Why not complement the offer with some townhouses (or walled houses/mansions like you find in many countries) with the same facade that would be midway between this “community” feel and a single big apartment building? They could have an instanced outdoor area. Each external door could lead to several units (10-20+) to save space and make it easier to integrate in the town’s layout. That way you wouldn't end up with empty wards either because empty wards are not very exciting.

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Originally Posted by XiaoShengwu

.....half of this suggestion...defeats the purpose of an "apartment"..however, you've created a concept for something along the line of like, a condo or something.

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Err...what? “Apartment” is a generic term often but not exclusively used to describe a residential unit in a building that is rented out while a condo is privately owned. It’s the legal structure that’s different. The physical layout can be the same.

While I'm all for making apartments bigger and better, I don't see the point of having the game split that apartment into several small spaces. You can add walls yourself. They are called partitions and you can buy them from housing NPCs.

The only thing I may want to have separated by the game is a balcony although honestly, I wish they'd just get rid of the distinction between indoor and outdoor furniture and let us place what we want anywhere we want.

The one thing that apartments would desperately need aside from the ability to make them larger is more slots. A lot more slots. That's actually true for any housing type. The item slots are never enough.

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Originally Posted by not_ya_wify

The one thing that apartments would desperately need aside from the ability to make them larger is more slots. A lot more slots. That's actually true for any housing type. The item slots are never enough.

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Agree, especially if you want to hide those columns, cover existing walls and add new windows. Once you’ve done that you already have several slots gone. Should be 150 for current size (it could be more but it would be a significant improvement that would compensate for the redesign of the shell.

On the offhand chance this might turn into an apartment features Megathread...

If the system needs to be redesigned from the ground up, then the features I'd like to see are:

Move the apartments into the capitals - There's no real need for them to be out in the wards as far as I can tell, and if you're looking for a neighborhood feel, you won't get much better than inside the city itself. Even places like Kugane still have activity even if it's much reduced from when Stormblood came out. Between the players and the npcs moving around, you don't get any sense of lonely or ghost town there.

Make the apartments upgradable to something equivalent in size to about the size of a Medium or slightly larger - I think most can agree that a medium is a pretty decent size for an individual player or maybe a married couple. Sure, some folks like the vast space of the larges, but if we're going for an average, a Medium probably works, and it would be a vast improvement over the size of apartments currently.

Give apartments different room layouts (for a price) - No different from having multiple floor plans for regular apartments... give us some floorplan options for our apartments. Maybe one has an indoor pond and garden area. Maybe one is one massive space with an upstairs loft/balcony and an open center. Maybe one has two stories or three. Maybe some are full-blown apartment plans with bedrooms and a kitchen area and such. It would be a way to give apartments an internal 'skin' as a contrast to the external ones for regular houses.

Give us not just balconies, but upgradable ones (again, for a price) - I know this one has been asked for forever, and as I recall, the problem with balconies is other players. In a city apartment, however, it would be easily fixed by simply giving us a view of the city and its npcs moving around with no players in sight. That gives you the bustle without the headache of making parts of it non-instanced. Alternatively, our balconies could face an interior square or other view where you might see one or two npcs moving around but otherwise we get a lovely view of gardens or a beach or portion of the city or something else. The apartments themselves could even be relatively high up so you wouldn't necessarily see people much, but still get a great view of the city.

And make them upgradable. For a price, you can make your balcony larger so you can put out garden items and maybe set out a plot to do some gardening with. You could also go the route of it's a penthouse suite and you have access to turn the rooftop into a garden/yard area. There could even be space for a built-in pool or something. There's options for a lot of things.

Make the apartment item limit 400 - Okay, I get that increasing item limits in general is a problem. Player computers can cry painful, bitter, tears of sorrow if they're not on the top side of systems. And part of it is exacerbated by having a lot of items crammed into a single small space. That said, people can cram 400 items into a single apartment sized space in a large and people can still come and visit without too much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. I'm pretty sure we can afford to just blanket give everyone a 400 item limit without it making people's systems cry too hard. And for something approximately the size of a Medium house... 400 should be enough for most designs.

Overall, there are a ton of options, and people have been trying to suggest them for literally years, and with the current mutiny regarding houses, it's something that is overdue to be addressed properly. There are enough people that want this that we're happy for y'all to devote your time and effort on sorting things out so something like what I've mentioned could work. Or, you know, you could make the Island Sanctuaries housing opportunities as well. I imagine most won't object to that either.