Instanced housing issue revisited

Good morning all,

I'd like to address the housing situation again.

Why can we have instanced Islands yet not instanced housing after 10 years of development?

Is it just so the game ensures players keep a sub to keep their house rather than to play patch content?

The argument for a community feel seems pointless when most wards are quiet anyways with many keeping to themselves.

I say this as someone that has had no other reason for most of this patch cycle to be in the game after about a week or two of a patch drop beyond keeping a house going for the fc.

At this point I'm wondering if it's just to keep sub revenue coming in as it's more convenient to keep housing as an issue.

I'd love to be proven wrong and for Yoshi P or someone to talk about this again in the future rather than leave it as an accepted issue that many people hate. For a game that encourages taking a break it seems pretty detrimental to have scarce housing that penalises players from taking a break.

The longer this patch cycle has gone on the less excited I've become towards future content and I'm on the verge of leaving altogether.

Please share your thoughts on the situation :)

(This is not an attack at developers but rather a post to vent frustration and to provide feedback on how I'm feeling towards the housing situation atm and the responses developers keep giving)

[QUOTE=Strife_Elvedor;6483909]
Is it just so the game ensures players keep a sub to keep their house rather than to play patch content?

[QUOTE]

Yes.

Add a houseing plot on our [Island Sanctuary].
- Prob solved.

The point, at least from my perspective, is to keep people subbed during low interest patch content/drought periods. Implementing instanced housing would remove that. There's also the reality that Yoshi-P prefers the ward style housing (I believe it's based off one of his favorite games).

We've had two chances already to get instanced housing, instead we got:
- A lottery system
- Island Sanctuary

With Dawntrail we're getting Mirage instead of instanced housing.

At this point the devs are actively dodging giving us it and are slapping bandaids on the situation instead.

I honestly believe we need to stop arguing why instanced is better and start arguing how it can make Square more money/be beneficial for them. As of right now, it just cuts off a income pipeline so there's no incentive.

You are delusional if you think instanced housing is ever gonna be a thing. And Yoshi P has probably kept silent about it because he doesn't like to directly tell you guys you're wrong. You're really failing to understand the actual appeal of different housing districts. Housing will really lose its luster and it becomes not as desirable. I'd go as far to say that housing will be less popular if it was only instanced housing without housing districts. I will admit, I wish that the demolition timer wasn't too short. I would prefer at least 2 months of inactivity before someone loses their house. It is a sub trap that you choose to get into.

1. It's amazing to teleport to your own beautiful frontyard that you know you designed, before going into your house.
2. Getting to win the location that you want and being able to know that you you're chilling at a place with an amazing view is satisfying. Feels like you finally got something that a lot of other players don't have. It feels exclusive to you and a small percentage of other players who do have your same plot.
3. Most people prefer just chilling in their frontyard and just enjoying the sight of their own neighborhood that they choose to be a part of. It's also very immersive to see your own neighborhood.
4. People MUCH prefer being on their frontyard than being inside the house.


I reckon a lot of you are complaining about the actual wrong thing here. If I were to explain what is so crap about housing is that there should be an equal amount of small and medium plots. In my opinion, a medium plot is perfect. However, there's no way to give players an option to buy a piece of land and choose whether or not they have a small, medium or large plot to put onto their land. And I doubt they can implement it in the future because they would have to change the layout of ALL housing districts to be able to fit any sized plots, but it's gonna look WEIRD.

So it's just not gonna change. Housing districts was actually the main appeal of owning a plot. You have your own nice front yard, you have a location and scenery you know is exclusive to you, it feels like an MMORPG when you know the houses surrounding yours are owned by other players, and it's cool to feel like you own a piece of land. There is no way in hell the developers will make housing LESS cool.

My recommendation for people in crowded data centers is just to wait for new wards to open up and buy undesirable small plots first just to have a plot in the first place, and then go for the ones you actually desire, whether it is a small plot with a MUCH better location, or an even bigger plot. Kinda like real life at the moment. Your first house is gonna be difficult to get, but after that, you got over the most stressful step, now you need to be patient and get a better house in the future.

If new wards open up and you don't have a plot yet, but you choose to gamble for a medium plot against 10+ people, then that's pretty darn stupid, ngl.

Bro doesn't even communicate with the neighbors in his ward :skull_emoji:

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

I honestly believe we need to stop arguing why instanced is better and start arguing how it can make Square more money/be beneficial for them. As of right now, it just cuts off a income pipeline so there's no incentive.

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If it's truly an income issue, instanced housing can generate a good revenue stream.

Give players one housing slot included as part of their standard subscription. Sell them additional housing slots on Mogstation.

Player has a house build they're really happy with. But they've got a new idea they want to work on. They don't want to destroy the first build so they buy another housing slot. The second turns out great but now there's an idea for a third...

Those who want to keep their favorite builds can buy more slots. Those who feel it's an unnecessary extra expense can redecorate the slot they already have.

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Originally Posted by Edelgarde

You are delusional if you think instanced housing is ever gonna be a thing.

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It's already a thing in this game.

All players are asking for is it to be enhanced with more features/options.

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Originally Posted by Karious

Bro doesn't even communicate with the neighbors in his ward :skull_emoji:

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I'd be happy to communicate with the neighbors in my ward.

The only problem is that I never see them. Limiting owners per ward to 30 in a game that's online 24/7 (outside of maintenance and DDOS attacks) with the vast majority of content located outside of the wards makes running into neighbors very unlikely.

Since I don't get to see them, maybe I'd rather not have to see the Paissa and Gingerbread houses stacked with Namazu effigies they build as I travel through the ward to get to the vendors or go to the apartment building to check my mail.

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Originally Posted by Strife_Elvedor

Why can we have instanced Islands yet not instanced housing after 10 years of development?

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We have instanced housing in the form or Apartments and private/FC rooms.

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Is it just so the game ensures players keep a sub to keep their house rather than to play patch content?

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Separate houses on wards are limited because each ward is a separate area server. Separate area servers have to be setup manually and resources allocated. If you didn't have neighbors it wouldn't feel the same. Other MMORPGs will often isolate the house so you don't have neighbors and it's not the same.

Also, SE use physical servers, so actual drive space has to be manually added. It's not dynamically scaling like a Cloud server does. There are MMORPGs that just go ahead and use the cloud, but it's slower in certain aspects.

So since housing is limited for these reasons, they want players that actually play to have priority on houses, rather than 95% of players with a house being unsubscribed and this is reasonable.

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For a game that encourages taking a break it seems pretty detrimental to have scarce housing that penalises players from taking a break.

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I doubt most people even have their own house so that statement is true for most people.

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The longer this patch cycle has gone on the less excited I've become towards future content and I'm on the verge of leaving altogether.

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I hope a hard limit is put on the patch cycles rather than them continually growing. We've gone from a 5 month expansion gap after the .5 patch to 8 months or more for the last two expansions.

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

Add a houseing plot on our [Island Sanctuary].
- Prob solved.

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Bro we dont want solutions here, we want problems.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

I honestly believe we need to stop arguing why instanced is better and start arguing how it can make Square more money/be beneficial for them. As of right now, it just cuts off an income pipeline so there's no incentive.

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I bring this up every time, but they can measure the amount of people subbed versus house plots. What they can’t measure is how many people have unsubbed - temporarily or permanently - due to frustration with the housing system. If I know some, I’m sure everyone else does too. To say nothing of people who have entered every lotto since it started and still haven’t won anything yet. But rather than work on an instanced system, they’re making new worlds instead. Now I get those new worlds are necessary, and I’m sure people will be more appreciative of them when Dawntrail launches, but even if everyone who wanted a house was willing to move servers moved right now, there’s still not going to be enough plots for every player to have one. Which is ridiculous, being that we all pay a sub.

You bring up a good point though, the profit angle. Other games have a much wider variety of housing options with their instanced systems. And while most can be bought with in-game currency, there’s a few really elaborate ones that are sold via cash shop. I’m talking an actual estate, with multiple buildings and such to decorate. Plus you’re not limited to just one, and there’s no auto-demo. There’s no reason this can’t be added alongside the ward system, to offset the artificial scarcity and give every paying player an equivalent housing experience. As well as a lot more variety, allowing the development of new features and new places in the world that could be called home, because you don’t need to put down a whole neighborhood to make it happen. Just from a marketing perspective, other games have this already, so both the limited supply and the limited variety is costing them both subscription and cash shop money they could be making.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

If it's truly an income issue, instanced housing can generate a good revenue stream.

Give players one housing slot included as part of their standard subscription. Sell them additional housing slots on Mogstation.

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This is the issue that people have currently with multi-owning things and I don't see your suggestion fixing that problem, especially if now that option will be locked behind a paywall and not something that anyone can do with a couple of alt characters on a single account. It will directly benefit spenders/whales while leaving people who can't afford to spend on anything besides their subscription in the dust.

The issue also becomes more extreme if they integrate the workshop into these instanced houses, at that point it's just: "how big is your wallet?" in terms of how much gil you can make and makes the process easier for those who sell gil/who wish to sell gil to generate it.

Saying it's for profit reasons is giving them too much credit. They can't even make it easy for people to pay money for subscriptions and overcomplicate the account system with different platforms, codes, etc. Yoshi-P has deliberately not pushed the mog station in the game and also recently explained how he believes it needs to be "trust first, business second" and that endlessly chasing profit doesn't lead to a good place.

The house demolition is supported by many players on the basis they want the house over the people who are not even playing the game. The lack of housing availability is just more on the competency of SE rather than some sort of profit thing. That's just giving them too much credit as I said.

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Originally Posted by Zeastria

Add a houseing plot on our [Island Sanctuary].
- Prob solved.

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I have been thinking this is a great wrap up for Island Sanctuary. It'll make it more desirable still after people get done with leveling their island up to 20.

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Originally Posted by Karious

Bro doesn't even communicate with the neighbors in his ward :skull_emoji:

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Player

Strife_Elvedor's AvatarJoin Date
Nov 2021
Posts
3
Character
Strife Elvedor
World
Omega
Main Class
Arcanist Lv 90
Firstly, check out my lodestone. I don't have a house on this character specifically so you don't know if I talk to others in my ward.

I have 2 other characters. One is in a lala fc that own most of a ward and are very social. Another has a house and recently had neighbours (entire fc) leave because pf is dead on Omega and they moved to Light for a more active experience due to the content lull making people leave.

Rather than trying to make personal digs because I criticise something within the game. Why not add to the discussion being discussed.

Secondly, good or bad feedback can help drive the direction of the game so I would always encourage voicing your opinions regardless of whether I share them or not.

Hence I am not attacking people on here that disagree with my own.

This game is not really setup for instanced housing but rather in a community setting. Personally I think the lottery system fixed most of my complaints with bots and people hoarding houses.

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Originally Posted by Lemuel81

This game is not really setup for instanced housing but rather in a community setting. Personally I think the lottery system fixed most of my complaints with bots and people hoarding houses.

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If scarcity wasn't an issue then I'd agree with you. However, there are limited medium and large plots available on data centres. I don't think without instanced housing the game will ever be able to supply enough housing for the demand of players especially as the community grows. :)

Having housing available would definitely be nice, the current landscape is not good at all with the multi-owners, some people owning entire wards to themselves, and the abuse of shell FCs swalowing up any shared private/FC wards.
Probably the biggest issue I have with the housing system in the game is how absolutely hard and expensive it is to even try out the feature, it's a long commitment to something that you might not even want or enjoy.

And that's not even touching the issues with the in-game economy and gil value that shell FCs, gardening plots, and subs cause, effectively being money printers for a few lucky rich players, and inflating the cost of everything else so the other people get screwed over.

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Originally Posted by Strife_Elvedor

Why can we have instanced Islands yet not instanced housing after 10 years of development?

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Because they're "instanced duties" versus "one instance world" + "one instance duty.

Like I'm not sure if you've ever tried to visit someone's house when "everyone" was on and people inside had to be told to unsummon their minions so more people can fit in the interior instance.

The Island Sanctuary is basically the same as going to Eureka. It's not unique. The Island contains one tiny data blob of what the buildings are configured as, and uses an entirely separate copy of your character. Like go to the Island and yeet yourself off a cliff, you don't even take damage. That's because the "combat" isn't running. Where as both inside and outside the housing, you can take damage.

The problem is people don't really understand the difference between the various instances the game has. The game can have unlimited "interior" instances because they are only instanced when someone is inside it. Where as the exterior has to always be running since people have to walk to the house and see the exterior. Basically the same mechanism that they use for the Island and Combat instances is what they use for the inside of the building. The exterior meanwhile a special zone that is configurable.

Like the fairest way to deal with housing is to just collapse the housing system (Eg no wards) entirely, let players go up to any lot that they want, buy it, and then when "they" are in the housing area, they see THEIR house, and THEIR FRIENDS/FC's houses, in the places they expect them to be, and the rest of the lots just show the most recent public-accessible house the instance was invoked for. If there is a collision (Eg two friends have the same lot) then you click the placard and it swaps who's house you see in that lot. And if you don't know where someone's house is, search for it like you do now, right click on their name and go "go to house".


That's FAIR, but it devalues the housing itself. But now now lets people "move servers" without having to deal without losing the effort they put into their house. It goes with them. I just see why they don't do it, because it removes any "community" aspect a housing area might have. But isn't one of the reasons there are congestion issues in the first place, the housing itself? The interior itself is easier to deal with, the mechanism is already there. If we can have a cross-datacenter party finder and parties, we can clearly have a cross-datacenter housing interior.

An alternate scenario is to simply merge the housing system so the housing system itself is "another server" in the data center that is independent, so all housing exists, and you have to "transfer" to the housing server when you want to play on it. The housing server then runs none of the party finder, duty finder, and other combat instances. It's just a massive market that all the retainers run on. Any time you access the marketboard on any server in the DC, it is accessing this server. When you leave the housing area you are sent back to where you last were on the last server you were on. In this case, all the wards from all the servers exist as they are now, but they are just "one" housing area rather than dozens of wards per server world. This would unfortunately bring back the problem 1.0 had in the first place. Finding anything at all.

The situation we have now isn't perfect, but fit with the original server setup. Now that we can move servers and data centers at will, locking housing to just the home world creates a complicated problem for both the person wanting to keep their housing plot and the retainers on the market boards, and people who want to shop.

The original problem 1.0 had with the retainers is much the exact same problem we have with the player housing. It is impossible to find what you are looking for if you have to visit everyone's house on every world on every data center to find them.

Now I'm not proposing either solution as "good" solutions, only "a solution". What the fan base would prefer is to keep things as is, and play the lottery so they feel they earned that spot.

As for "why are houses auto demolished", I feel this is just the nature of the beast. By there being "real estate" in the exterior "instance", it costs money to persist (not "sub" level of moneys, but it does consume resources.) The interiors only persist when someone is inside. What would be nicer is for Square-Enix to actually "backup" the house if a player doesn't pay their sub, and when they come back, tell them which world has that space free, or plot that size of house fits on and offer them the option to rebuild it if they win the lottery or wait for a better location. In theory, every "ward" is it's own instance, but each plot is a data chunk itself, which is why they're so small relative to other maps in the game.

Housing and Retainers are excuses for players are "paying their sub" even if they haven't played the game. There are other things that seem predatory (like the app), which requires paying money to ... unlock half the chocobo saddlebag. Seriously? That's something you can cancel and not even remember you had it.

The neighborhood aspect IMO is overblown. Even on a busy server, I rarely see people around my ward. Maybe like, someone afk at the market board now and then. But these are not thriving, bustling communities.

When I was part of an active FC, I would specifically see people hanging out at the FC house sure. But not engaging with the overall ward as a neighborhood.

I have thought they could add housing itself to Island Sanctuary and it would immediately solve the issue. They can make the Island Sanctuary housing areas have multiple instances so they don't need an AFK timer to kick people out. I think this is about their easiest option to solve this in the future at some point.

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Originally Posted by Edelgarde

You are delusional if you think instanced housing is ever gonna be a thing. And Yoshi P has probably kept silent about it because he doesn\\'...

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It\\'s wonderful to see how many personal spokepeople of Yoshi-P always show up :))) can i see your contract ? Thanks :))

i see some disingenuous comments here as well as strawman arguments so let me set some things straight,

first instanced housing would not do anything to invalidate current systems or replace them in anyway the devs are well aware how much a "portion" of the games over all community feels about their ward system and know their would be repercussions if they outright removed it.

second, they add instances zones EVERY single expansion with each now having 3 separate copied "instances" to decrease congestion so explain to us how this wouldnt work for housing when the majority of the time every ward is near empty with usually only a dozen characters in one or two or even three of the wards at a time if not outright just afking in their homes/apartments if you dont believe me then next time you login go to the player search an check mark all areas that have housing and you'll see just how much those instances are used versus all the clogged up city state areas or endgame hubs.

and third, don't kid yourself if you don't think it can be done they are already proved it can thru out the games' lifespan thus far there are dozens of solo instanced only areas that load only yourself an whatever npcs are there at the time or just straight up end up being empty rooms with some visual touches, furniture, etc

the only thing as far as i can tell thats holding them back from doing so is planning and resources period. and now that they've stated they are investing into more quality server services hence the "cloud data center" test they held this just shows us that its more than possible for them to give us all our own little piece of land to customize an slap a house of any size we choose onto
and maybe if you haven't noticed it but i sure have they keep throwing dozens if not hundreds of housing items at us every seasonal event and just in general for completing content because they are keenly aware its a feature that people care about whole lot so for them to give people an entire instanced home to themselves would improve the feature further an boost the desire for more things to be added to it. and in turn generate them more profit to justify the cost of its implementation.