Alternative solving the housing crysis: Sanctuary AND wards

Looks like we won’t see the system fixed for a long time so might as well search for new solutions. The easiest one (baffling that they didn’t do it already) is to keep housing as it is and give a instances player house in island sanctuary. Everyone wins: all players have a private house and those who want to play with the ward system and have neighborhoods can have it and stay with the 45 days autodemo and stuff. I can’t see why we can’t have both as putting a player house in island sanctuary seems the easiest thing.

We've rehashed this idea a few times already, but the point is that you're putting ward people at a disadvantage because their house would be demolished if they don't enter it every 45 days while yours wouldn't (unless you want autodemolition in your island...) so it'd be unfair. No one would want to live in the wards because you risk losing your investment.


So far, some of us can somewhat agree on a hybrid system that places your house in your private island when first obtained/not in use and you can choose to keep it in that private spot as its own instance or move it to the wards at any time. If 45 days pass in which you don't use your ward house, it gets placed back in the island.


But there's still things to debate about it, like people who do not want to live in a tropical area, the lack of customization of the island, the issues that could crop up from this system...

My understanding is that the way they designed Island Sanctuary they genuinely CAN'T change it to allow housing without a complete overhaul, so the chances of that are unlikely. There's nothing to say they can't implement a NEW system, however.

I would propose instanced housing within the city-states themselves. Maybe somewhere near the various market districts for convenience to market boards. To get to one, you would talk to an NPC or a door similar to how you do apartments now. Your own would give you the option to go to your house, and to visit a friend or do a little sightseeing I'm sure we could arrange some kind of system to search for specific houses/names rather than flipping through endless tabs.

The instanced area would, by default, be themed on the city-state you purchased from, but there could be all manner of customization available. Perhaps you can change themes to other city-states (or even custom themes similar to housing skins) if you wanted to imagine an easter oasis in the desert for example. Or maybe you could specify if you wanted an urban style house where you have the equivalent of a penthouse suite with a rooftop garden rather than a traditional house and yard. The space itself would be roomy enough to hold the equivalent of up to a large house depending on how much you want to invest into it, and it would be easy enough to arrange it with a gorgeous view of whichever city-state you selected that shows NPC residents walking around doing their thing (I vaguely recall them mentioning once that it would be very hard to set up real-time views for instanced houses because of players, but I doubt anyone would complain too much about a view with NPCs moving around...).

You could even set the thing up with various amenities like purchasing a pool to swim in or a seasonal theme (snow, autumn leaves, etc.) or have various styles of floor-plans. There would be space for gardening and outdoor furnishings. Basically whatever we can imagine could be done. It would have all the same perks as a house without the wards or neighborhoods.

As for auto-demolition... I would propose instead that they expand ALL auto-demo timers to six months or even a year and apply them equally to everything, including apartments. Six months or a year would give a lot more flexibility for those times when life happens without completely removing the timer and thus making CPU-kun cry brokenly in a corner over all the information it needed to process. I would even suggest a way to, in-game, arrange for a hiatus if you know you're going to be gone for an extended period of time for any reason. It could put your data in a separate list that doesn't get loaded until either your hiatus period runs out and the house is demolished or you log back in and enter your house.

That's my two cents...

Interesting ideas, Kytrin, I like many of these!

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

It would have all the same perks as a house without the wards or neighborhoods.

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What worries me is that there is a clear "hierarchy" in the housing system, as in smalls are better than apartments, (offers a higher number of amenities/amenities that apartments can't provide), mediums better than smalls, larges better than mediums. If you popped your idea right in, where would it sit? What place does it have in the game, besides our dream version of housing? What do we do with the remaining housing, and everyone living there?
Because right now it sounds better than a large but without the amount of effort needed to win one, considering they're limited. The hierarchy will soon be weakened to apartment >>>>>> ANY plot with some limitations (garden, location, placement) due TARDIS housing, but it doesn't remove it entirely.
Either we're considering your idea costs exhorbitants amounts of gil, prevents you from having a ward plot, or something has to give. So here are my extra two cents!

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

I would propose instanced housing within the city-states themselves. Maybe somewhere near the various market districts for convenience to market boards. To get to one, you would talk to an NPC or a door similar to how you do apartments now. Your own would give you the option to go to your house, and to visit a friend or do a little sightseeing I'm sure we could arrange some kind of system to search for specific houses/names rather than flipping through endless tabs.

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Brilliant. Maybe an unused area a small walk away would be even better, with the intent of encouraging players to walk around town and see/get seen by others, thus encouraging this sense of community in a way? After all, isn't why many players sit in Limsa, watching people go by?

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

The instanced area would, by default, be themed on the city-state you purchased from, but there could be all manner of customization available. Perhaps you can change themes to other city-states (or even custom themes similar to housing skins) if you wanted to imagine an easter oasis in the desert for example. Or maybe you could specify if you wanted an urban style house where you have the equivalent of a penthouse suite with a rooftop garden rather than a traditional house and yard.

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You could even set the thing up with various amenities like purchasing a pool to swim in or a seasonal theme (snow, autumn leaves, etc.) or have various styles of floor-plans. There would be space for gardening and outdoor furnishings. Basically whatever we can imagine could be done.

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You almost had me there, but you lost me at the yard. I don't think you should have a yard unless you live in a plot, since you already have your Island Sanctuary to do outdoor decoration in. Although gardening may not be as lucrative as it used to be, by allowing a yard you either have to block them out from plot gardening or think of something else to not leave ward plots in the dust.

As for everything else, yes, 100%! Provided plots can get their own version of this, apartments too. Especially apartments, that currently can't even change their interior style like plots can't. I find it only fair, honestly.

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

The space itself would be roomy enough to hold the equivalent of up to a large house depending on how much you want to invest into it, [...]

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So, we're assuming this prevents you from buying a ward plot? What if I want to move to a ward after buying your idea? Do I have to demolish, does my interior get transferred...? Can we go back to the original after being in a ward, or did I lose my spot now and would have to re-invest in the original idea if I wanna move out of the ward? Or can I then hog a house in a ward and also have another large in my pocket dimension by the markets? In what position does this leave the original apartments? Don't get me wrong, I like the idea, but something isn't adding up.

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

[...] and it would be easy enough to arrange it with a gorgeous view of whichever city-state you selected that shows NPC residents walking around doing their thing (I vaguely recall them mentioning once that it would be very hard to set up real-time views for instanced houses because of players, but I doubt anyone would complain too much about a view with NPCs moving around...).

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I would love this. Even better if, affected by the day and night cycle, there's different kinds of NPCs going about their lives. This would be an insane draw for apartments specifically.

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

As for auto-demolition... I would propose instead that they expand ALL auto-demo timers to six months or even a year and apply them equally to everything, including apartments. Six months or a year would give a lot more flexibility for those times when life happens without completely removing the timer and thus making CPU-kun cry brokenly in a corner over all the information it needed to process. I would even suggest a way to, in-game, arrange for a hiatus if you know you're going to be gone for an extended period of time for any reason. [...]

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I have to disagree on the autodemolition, mainly for one reason: 6 months to a year is an extremely long time. While it would benefit those who already have a home, what of those waiting for a plot to be vacant? How long do you expect them to wait? Even if they can get our idea of housing in the meantime, do you really expect them to wait for at least 6 months to have the opportunity to move to a ward if they wished? People would start tweaking.

However, I really like the hiatus idea, but there should be a draw-back of some sort, like having you on a shorter leash for a time to prove you're not just arranging hiatus after hiatus to keep your house forever. Because we all know people would do that and unsub for extended periods of time while blocking active players from engaging with the content. We already know how this went, just look at old threads before autodemolition was a thing.
Here's my ideas:

• After a hiatus period, the feature goes on cooldown for either a fixed amount of time or however long your hiatus was when it was requested. If you came back early, the CD will apply for the original amount of time to prevent abuse.
• A hiatus should have a maximum amount of time equal to a patch cycle at most. I believe this is plenty of time for most situations and prevents houses being frozen in time for extended periods of time, and most people would typically return every patch, so it is not as bad as it sounds like at first.

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

[...] It could put your data in a separate list that doesn't get loaded until either your hiatus period runs out and the house is demolished or you log back in and enter your house.

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Would this prevent people from visiting you? If you went on hiatus but your house was open for visiting originally, I assume you mean it would be taken off the list of houses available to visit by others, including your tenants? I am assuming here that none of this applies to FC housing, because otherwise it would lead to abuse like placing the house in stasis and preventing members from leaving because they can't empty out their rooms.
I understand the space of this list is not infinite and gets regularly cleaned out as people's hiatuses run out, but game devs have to consider extreme possibilites like, say, the majority of players going on hiatus at once. This is not necessarily our business to worry about, I know, but I like to consider these things when talking about ideas to see if they would even be possible to begin with. If CPU-kun is already getting bloodshot eyes as it was said, how would it be able to handle an infinite amount of houses, suddenly all going on hiatus or worse, coming back from one all at once?

do ehst wow did

Oh wow... you've given me a lot to think about! In my defense, I wrote up that idea at 2am this morning when my insomnia was being rude, so I definitely didn't think out all the details lol! I'll try to go through all of this point by point and see if we can flesh this out any better!

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Originally Posted by Shistar

What worries me is that there is a clear "hierarchy" in the housing system, as in smalls are better than apartments, (offers a higher number of amenities/amenities that apartments can't provide), mediums better than smalls, larges better than mediums. If you popped your idea right in, where would it sit? What place does it have in the game, besides our dream version of housing? What do we do with the remaining housing, and everyone living there?

Because right now it sounds better than a large but without the amount of effort needed to win one, considering they're limited. The hierarchy will soon be weakened to apartment >>>>>> ANY plot with some limitations (garden, location, placement) due TARDIS housing, but it doesn't remove it entirely.

Either we're considering your idea costs exhorbitants amounts of gil, prevents you from having a ward plot, or something has to give.

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I had not considered the housing hierarchy at all honestly. My general idea was that a player could build the plot from the ground up so like maybe you start out with something really basic like the equivalent of an apartment and invest more to upgrade it (assuming you don't just dive right in and buy all the things at once), but I never thought about it in that context.

I think how we equalize things between the townhomes and the wards (and where they fall in the hierarchy) would depend on exactly how the townhomes end up working. If they're houses that exist outside of wards, then yeah they should be subject to the demolition timer the same as ward houses, but also get at least most of the perks OF a house. If they're apartments, then they should be exempt from auto-demolition but also not as good as the ward houses and sit somewhere in the middle of that hierarchy.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

Brilliant. Maybe an unused area a small walk away would be even better, with the intent of encouraging players to walk around town and see/get seen by others, thus encouraging this sense of community in a way? After all, isn't why many players sit in Limsa, watching people go by?

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Thank you! I'm glad you liked that idea! :)

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Originally Posted by Shistar

You almost had me there, but you lost me at the yard. I don't think you should have a yard unless you live in a plot, since you already have your Island Sanctuary to do outdoor decoration in. Although gardening may not be as lucrative as it used to be, by allowing a yard you either have to block them out from plot gardening or think of something else to not leave ward plots in the dust.

As for everything else, yes, 100%! Provided plots can get their own version of this, apartments too. Especially apartments, that currently can't even change their interior style like plots can't. I find it only fair, honestly.

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I respectfully disagree. Townhomes, condos, and especially penthouse suites can and do have outdoor space in the form of balconies, terraces, patios (if you're on the ground floor), etc. The amount of space you have depends entirely on how much you're willing to shell out for it, but it's still there. Now, that said, the limitations on that space depends entirely on if you view townhomes as houses or apartments. If it's basically a house without the ward/ward view/etc. then yeah, they should have the ability to garden the same as any other house depending on their size. If they're apartments, then they should be subject to whatever limitations you have on apartments.

(The badly needed apartment overhaul is an entirely different subject lol)

Regardless, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a place to sit outside, plant a few trees and flowers to your taste, and enjoy that lovely view you admired so much above.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

So, we're assuming this prevents you from buying a ward plot? What if I want to move to a ward after buying your idea? Do I have to demolish, does my interior get transferred...? Can we go back to the original after being in a ward, or did I lose my spot now and would have to re-invest in the original idea if I wanna move out of the ward? Or can I then hog a house in a ward and also have another large in my pocket dimension by the markets? In what position does this leave the original apartments? Don't get me wrong, I like the idea, but something isn't adding up.

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Lol no assumptions here! I just hadn't thought of those logistics earlier. Again, I think this depends entirely on if a townhouse is considered a HOUSE or an apartment. If it's a house, then yeah, you can transfer between townhouses and wards, and back, the same as someone transferring from a small to a medium or large could and you absolutely cannot have both. If it's an apartment, then you still have to buy a ward house the normal way and you could have both the same way we can have a house and an apartment now. The difference is where we choose to have the apartment.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

I would love this. Even better if, affected by the day and night cycle, there's different kinds of NPCs going about their lives. This would be an insane draw for apartments specifically.

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It would! And I love the idea of the day/night cycle affecting what you see! That's great! We might could even go a little crazy and have seasonal versions for events like Starlight or All Saints.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

I have to disagree on the autodemolition, mainly for one reason: 6 months to a year is an extremely long time. While it would benefit those who already have a home, what of those waiting for a plot to be vacant? How long do you expect them to wait? Even if they can get our idea of housing in the meantime, do you really expect them to wait for at least 6 months to have the opportunity to move to a ward if they wished? People would start tweaking.

However, I really like the hiatus idea, but there should be a draw-back of some sort, like having you on a shorter leash for a time to prove you're not just arranging hiatus after hiatus to keep your house forever. Because we all know people would do that and unsub for extended periods of time while blocking active players from engaging with the content. We already know how this went, just look at old threads before autodemolition was a thing.
Here's my ideas:

• After a hiatus period, the feature goes on cooldown for either a fixed amount of time or however long your hiatus was when it was requested. If you came back early, the CD will apply for the original amount of time to prevent abuse.
• A hiatus should have a maximum amount of time equal to a patch cycle at most. I believe this is plenty of time for most situations and prevents houses being frozen in time for extended periods of time, and most people would typically return every patch, so it is not as bad as it sounds like at first.

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I put auto-demo at that long because I've seen one too many horror stories about people getting the short end because life events are a thing that happen and 45 days is REALLY short. I'll gladly compromise on a patch cycle though. That's reasonable for both normal demolition and hiatus. And you're right, most people are coming back for patches so they'll be logging in and can reset the timer.

You've also got a point about people going on hiatus indefinitely, so what about you can go on hiatus for the equivalent of one patch cycle (thus giving you both the normal demo cycle and a second cycle to take a break or whatever) every four cycles? So basically, you can take 8 months off (normal and hiatus) but you can't go on hiatus AGAIN for another 8 months.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

Would this prevent people from visiting you? If you went on hiatus but your house was open for visiting originally, I assume you mean it would be taken off the list of houses available to visit by others, including your tenants? I am assuming here that none of this applies to FC housing, because otherwise it would lead to abuse like placing the house in stasis and preventing members from leaving because they can't empty out their rooms.
I understand the space of this list is not infinite and gets regularly cleaned out as people's hiatuses run out, but game devs have to consider extreme possibilites like, say, the majority of players going on hiatus at once. This is not necessarily our business to worry about, I know, but I like to consider these things when talking about ideas to see if they would even be possible to begin with. If CPU-kun is already getting bloodshot eyes as it was said, how would it be able to handle an infinite amount of houses, suddenly all going on hiatus or worse, coming back from one all at once?

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Hm... I hadn't thought about people visiting you. The idea of a separate list was a thought to help reduce server load, but that's a good point. I'm not sure how best to work that. That's a problem someone with FAR more network architecture knowledge than I have would need to poke at.

That's definitely a NO on FCs abusing the system to force people to stay though. Whatever the answer, we don't want that.

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

Oh wow... you've given me a lot to think about! In my defense, I wrote up that idea at 2am this morning when my insomnia was being rude, so I definitely didn't think out all the details lol! I'll try to go through all of this point by point and see if we can flesh this out any better!

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Haha, no worries! I'm looking forward to fleshing out your idea, it's a cool one and I'm sure we can get a lot of juice out of it.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

Haha, no worries! I'm looking forward to fleshing out your idea, it's a cool one and I'm sure we can get a lot of juice out of it.

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Thank you! :)

Maybe if we can flesh out a workable enough system, Square will adopt it!

Personally, i think they should just leave the current housing as is. But give a new system for instanced housing one with much more customisation options. A realm in a teapot if you were. Tie some rewards to it and you have instanced housing as a brand new content type.

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

I think how we equalize things between the townhomes and the wards (and where they fall in the hierarchy) would depend on exactly how the townhomes end up working. If they're houses that exist outside of wards, then yeah they should be subject to the demolition timer the same as ward houses, but also get at least most of the perks OF a house. If they're apartments, then they should be exempt from auto-demolition but also not as good as the ward houses and sit somewhere in the middle of that hierarchy.

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Lol no assumptions here! I just hadn't thought of those logistics earlier. Again, I think this depends entirely on if a townhouse is considered a HOUSE or an apartment. If it's a house, then yeah, you can transfer between townhouses and wards, and back, the same as someone transferring from a small to a medium or large could and you absolutely cannot have both. If it's an apartment, then you still have to buy a ward house the normal way and you could have both the same way we can have a house and an apartment now. The difference is where we choose to have the apartment.

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I think it makes sense to make it be a housing interior that can be moved around, which is more or less what I mentioned in one of the first messages of this thread as something that's been discussed before. In that sense, I love the idea!! This basically fixes the main conundrum we were having in previous conversations about not everyone wanting to live in a tropical island in the middle of nowhere. In that sense, I believe having it occupy the same "slot" as a plot house would be best, especially considering townhouses sound like a premium version of an apartment in the town, but not as fancy as say, a mansion with its garden. Which leads me into...

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

I respectfully disagree. Townhomes, condos, and especially penthouse suites can and do have outdoor space in the form of balconies, terraces, patios (if you're on the ground floor), etc. The amount of space you have depends entirely on how much you're willing to shell out for it, but it's still there. Now, that said, the limitations on that space depends entirely on if you view townhomes as houses or apartments. If it's basically a house without the ward/ward view/etc. then yeah, they should have the ability to garden the same as any other house depending on their size. If they're apartments, then they should be subject to whatever limitations you have on apartments.

(The badly needed apartment overhaul is an entirely different subject lol)

Regardless, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a place to sit outside, plant a few trees and flowers to your taste, and enjoy that lovely view you admired so much above.

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No, you're absolutely right, I was so into talking about this hierarchy stuff that I failed to mention I fully agree that it's not an unreasonable ask and that it sounds great! Buuuut here's my next batch of questions: When you transfer to a ward plot, does this mean you keep this interior garden portion despite also obtaining an outdoor garden, or does it poof out of existence? If it isn't gone, would ward houses be able to upgrade their interiors with yard space, or would they be forced to invest in a townhouse first, then move it over to a ward plot?

My solution is quite simple: Give these interior yards, or maybe more accurately for my idea, Balconies to apartments instead! This will make them more desirable, with unique layouts that townhouses/plot houses can't have because they already got their outdoors + gardening. I would say, to keep things fair, to not allow gardening in your balcony (due to having downstairs neighbors and such...) but the amount of flowerpots you can place scales up with how fancy your place gets. You can place outdoor furnishings in this balcony normally, but now we're reaching our next problem: How in the world would the game understand apartment vs. balcony space? As we know, indoor and outdoor furnishings are clearly labeled and stored separately... maybe we need a third category for balconies? I would imagine they wouldn't let us plant a whole tree in your balcony, so some things might not make the cut (but I imagine most things should)

If we're seriously insistent about having it for townhouses/ward plots, I think a terrace would be the most appropriate. But considering you'd be able to move this place between the city and the housing district, maybe the view would change based on we're you're currently settled? Tons of work for sure, but I can't resist a beautiful view... and I already imagine our floated items glitching into our terrace floors if it's directly above our top floor lol

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

It would! And I love the idea of the day/night cycle affecting what you see! That's great! We might could even go a little crazy and have seasonal versions for events like Starlight or All Saints.

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ABSOLUTELY. If we can go insane, we can even consider weather changes! NPCs with umbrellas! (our compass always marks sunny weather while inside a house regardless of the outside weather, so they'd need to apply the same weather table for housing for this to work, I assume? This would likely also affect light levels inside the house, making for some seriously cozy rainy evenings...)

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

I put auto-demo at that long because I've seen one too many horror stories about people getting the short end because life events are a thing that happen and 45 days is REALLY short. I'll gladly compromise on a patch cycle though. That's reasonable for both normal demolition and hiatus. And you're right, most people are coming back for patches so they'll be logging in and can reset the timer.

You've also got a point about people going on hiatus indefinitely, so what about you can go on hiatus for the equivalent of one patch cycle (thus giving you both the normal demo cycle and a second cycle to take a break or whatever) every four cycles? So basically, you can take 8 months off (normal and hiatus) but you can't go on hiatus AGAIN for another 8 months.

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That's understandable. There's a very difficult balance in making a feature useful for those who need this accesibility yet hard to abuse for those who don't...
My idea intended to stop people from going on such long breaks as 8 months. It would be 1 patch hiatus, 1 patch you have to be there and it alternates. I think longer hiatuses could potentially be arranged, but to prevent abuse they'd have to appoint a GM to it and of course, to keep track of it since it's a special exception.

Unless it is my turn to be sleepy and I am misunderstanding?

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

Hm... I hadn't thought about people visiting you. The idea of a separate list was a thought to help reduce server load, but that's a good point. I'm not sure how best to work that. That's a problem someone with FAR more network architecture knowledge than I have would need to poke at.

That's definitely a NO on FCs abusing the system to force people to stay though. Whatever the answer, we don't want that.

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I think they could have this system only affect personal housing to begin with. FCs have a much easier time maintaining their house because every single member contributes to resetting the timer, but this is not the case for tenants, and if we pair it with the idea of separating the workshop from the housing ward competition should be more even between people moving in and out of wards and FCs who actually want a house for the house itself and not the workshop occupying spots. This would also be more in line with YoshiP's idea of wards being this communal space for multiple active FCs to mingle + some personal owners who have also proven they use/care about their housing enough to maintain a ward plot.

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Originally Posted by Anvaire

Personally, i think they should just leave the current housing as is. But give a new system for instanced housing one with much more customisation options. A realm in a teapot if you were. Tie some rewards to it and you have instanced housing as a brand new content type.

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That'd be lovely, don't get me wrong, but we're back to the same issue as before... why would I ever bother maintaining my medium in a prime spot that costed me 20M and over 7 months of bidding, then? Do I get to have both at the same time, or what's the catch?

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Originally Posted by Shistar

I think it makes sense to make it be a housing interior that can be moved around, which is more or less what I mentioned in one of the first messages of this thread as something that's been discussed before. In that sense, I love the idea!! This basically fixes the main conundrum we were having in previous conversations about not everyone wanting to live in a tropical island in the middle of nowhere. In that sense, I believe having it occupy the same "slot" as a plot house would be best, especially considering townhouses sound like a premium version of an apartment in the town, but not as fancy as say, a mansion with its garden. Which leads me into...

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Yes, that would very neatly solve the problem of people wanting to live in different places/climates. Which is completely understandable.

I will say that the whole townhome idea isn't really meant to be a 'fancy' apartment. It's genuinely meant to be an alternative to ward houses for those who don't care about the whole neighborhood aspect that Yoshi-P loves so much, and I would very much like to see apartments themselves get a much needed overhaul where you can upgrade space, floor plans, add balconies, etc. The issue is that instanced housing puts us automatically in mind of current apartments, so we're pulling elements from both and need to more clearly define things.

How about this...

Apartments get an overhaul where they can upgrade to the equivalent of something around a small in size, and can add features like floor plans, balconies/yards, etc.

Townhomes can upgrade to the equivalent of something around a medium in size and can ALSO add floor plans, balconies/yards, etc. Their premium location makes them more expensive (perhaps approximately the cost of a small or medium house to purchase and more spent on upgrades?) but they also get all the same perks as having a medium size ward house and are on the auto-demolition timer.

Ward Houses remain the only housing option that allows for a full upgrade to a large size and can have all the current perks of housing plus automatically getting whatever is coming in the pipeline.

Would that be a reasonable balance?

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Originally Posted by Shistar

No, you're absolutely right, I was so into talking about this hierarchy stuff that I failed to mention I fully agree that it's not an unreasonable ask and that it sounds great! Buuuut here's my next batch of questions: When you transfer to a ward plot, does this mean you keep this interior garden portion despite also obtaining an outdoor garden, or does it poof out of existence? If it isn't gone, would ward houses be able to upgrade their interiors with yard space, or would they be forced to invest in a townhouse first, then move it over to a ward plot?

My solution is quite simple: Give these interior yards, or maybe more accurately for my idea, Balconies to apartments instead! This will make them more desirable, with unique layouts that townhouses/plot houses can't have because they already got their outdoors + gardening. I would say, to keep things fair, to not allow gardening in your balcony (due to having downstairs neighbors and such...) but the amount of flowerpots you can place scales up with how fancy your place gets. You can place outdoor furnishings in this balcony normally, but now we're reaching our next problem: How in the world would the game understand apartment vs. balcony space? As we know, indoor and outdoor furnishings are clearly labeled and stored separately... maybe we need a third category for balconies? I would imagine they wouldn't let us plant a whole tree in your balcony, so some things might not make the cut (but I imagine most things should)

If we're seriously insistent about having it for townhouses/ward plots, I think a terrace would be the most appropriate. But considering you'd be able to move this place between the city and the housing district, maybe the view would change based on we're you're currently settled? Tons of work for sure, but I can't resist a beautiful view... and I already imagine our floated items glitching into our terrace floors if it's directly above our top floor lol

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So see above for my thoughts on apartment upgrades and who should get balconies/yards lol. I think instead of scaling the flowerpots (which fundamentally grow different things than the garden patches) it might be better to say that once you hit the maximum upgradable size, you can then put down 1-2 garden patches if you want.

For the outdoor vs. indoor space separation, we could probably resolve that by having a door you can exit through to get to that space or something. My inspiration for the whole idea is the Inn in Kugane where you can look out the window and see the lovely rock garden beyond and some of the other Kugane buildings where there are clearly yards and other such green spaces in what are obviously penthouses. We can clearly have space like that in an instance, so surely we can actually go out there and customize it however we like without it affecting our neighbor any more than glitching stuff in our apartments currently affects our neighbors.

Also, don't forget that when you move all of your stuff is put back into storage and none of your current decorating remains up. You'll have to do it all over according to wherever you've moved to.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

ABSOLUTELY. If we can go insane, we can even consider weather changes! NPCs with umbrellas! (our compass always marks sunny weather while inside a house regardless of the outside weather, so they'd need to apply the same weather table for housing for this to work, I assume? This would likely also affect light levels inside the house, making for some seriously cozy rainy evenings...)

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Lol I don't think lighting levels in the house would be affected any more than rain outside keeps my windows from being full sun inside now. We'll still have to have some separation between the two spaces to keep things clean. Love the idea of NPCs with umbrellas and such depending on the weather though!

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Originally Posted by Shistar

That's understandable. There's a very difficult balance in making a feature useful for those who need this accesibility yet hard to abuse for those who don't...
My idea intended to stop people from going on such long breaks as 8 months. It would be 1 patch hiatus, 1 patch you have to be there and it alternates. I think longer hiatuses could potentially be arranged, but to prevent abuse they'd have to appoint a GM to it and of course, to keep track of it since it's a special exception.

Unless it is my turn to be sleepy and I am misunderstanding?

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I may have been a bit confusing in my attempt to explain...

My proposal is that auto-demolition timers be lengthened to 4 months just in general. Then, once every 16/20/24 months (or whatever number divisible by 4 you prefer), you can ask for a hiatus that will give you an extra 4 months on your demolition timer. It wouldn't be something that people could just spam constantly.

But I do see where you're coming from. Though my question then is, how long do you think the auto-demolition timer should be under normal circumstances? 45 days is really too short for a lot of people when life kicks them in the face.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

I think they could have this system only affect personal housing to begin with. FCs have a much easier time maintaining their house because every single member contributes to resetting the timer, but this is not the case for tenants, and if we pair it with the idea of separating the workshop from the housing ward competition should be more even between people moving in and out of wards and FCs who actually want a house for the house itself and not the workshop occupying spots. This would also be more in line with YoshiP's idea of wards being this communal space for multiple active FCs to mingle + some personal owners who have also proven they use/care about their housing enough to maintain a ward plot.

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Yeah, okay... I agree with all of that. :)

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Originally Posted by Shistar

That'd be lovely, don't get me wrong, but we're back to the same issue as before... why would I ever bother maintaining my medium in a prime spot that costed me 20M and over 7 months of bidding, then? Do I get to have both at the same time, or what's the catch?

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Honestly it’s the “consolation prize” to make up for the fact that there’s not enough houses to go around. The “perks” of ward housing that everyone always lists whenever they say ward housing is superior should be enough to make up for the fact that someone else can have an equivalent housing experience, just on its own and tucked away behind a directory. And when I say equivalent, I mean an actual, fully functional housing plot, indoors and out. Generic scenery for the neighborhood, and eventually maybe they make more “background skins” with different scenery/locations, just like they add new housing skins every now and then. My reasoning for this is twofold: one, it’s easier for it to actually be accomplished if they can just copy/paste the existing system to create single instanced housing plots. No need to reinvent the wheel, creating a new system from scratch. Two, I don’t buy into any “hierarchy” or “prestige” when it comes to housing. It’s a game feature, not a prize won by any skill, and it’s only the artificial scarcity and RNG luck of the lotto that determines who gets a plot and who doesn’t.

Or to put it another way, the ward system has limitations that instanced doesn’t have… the ward plots will always be subject to auto-demo because they are taking up permanent space, making the lack of auto-demo a perk of the instanced plot. Those who want the ultra-rare M or L plot locations, high visibility and/or venues will prefer the wards regardless. Those who just want a place of their own to decorate would have it.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Honestly it’s the “consolation prize” to make up for the fact that there’s not enough houses to go around. The “perks” of ward housing that everyone always lists whenever they say ward housing is superior should be enough to make up for the fact that someone else can have an equivalent housing experience, just on its own and tucked away behind a directory. And when I say equivalent, I mean an actual, fully functional housing plot, indoors and out. Generic scenery for the neighborhood, and eventually maybe they make more “background skins” with different scenery/locations, just like they add new housing skins every now and then. My reasoning for this is twofold: one, it’s easier for it to actually be accomplished if they can just copy/paste the existing system to create single instanced housing plots. No need to reinvent the wheel, creating a new system from scratch. Two, I don’t buy into any “hierarchy” or “prestige” when it comes to housing. It’s a game feature, not a prize won by any skill, and it’s only the artificial scarcity and RNG luck of the lotto that determines who gets a plot and who doesn’t.

Or to put it another way, the ward system has limitations that instanced doesn’t have… the ward plots will always be subject to auto-demo because they are taking up permanent space, making the lack of auto-demo a perk of the instanced plot. Those who want the ultra-rare M or L plot locations, high visibility and/or venues will prefer the wards regardless. Those who just want a place of their own to decorate would have it.

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You've got some pretty good points there...

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

I will say that the whole townhome idea isn't really meant to be a 'fancy' apartment.

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Oh yes sorry I do understand that, I just used that term to describe where they would possibly sit in the hierarchy. Nicer than an apartment, but no outdoor garden/ward to go with it. So it's comfortably in the middle while being a very solid option.

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

Apartments get an overhaul where they can upgrade to the equivalent of something around a small in size, and can add features like floor plans, balconies/yards, etc.

Townhomes can upgrade to the equivalent of something around a medium in size and can ALSO add floor plans, balconies/yards, etc. Their premium location makes them more expensive (perhaps approximately the cost of a small or medium house to purchase and more spent on upgrades?) but they also get all the same perks as having a medium size ward house and are on the auto-demolition timer.

Ward Houses remain the only housing option that allows for a full upgrade to a large size and can have all the current perks of housing plus automatically getting whatever is coming in the pipeline.

Would that be a reasonable balance?

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That sounds very nice, yeah! I fully agree with this.

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

So see above for my thoughts on apartment upgrades and who should get balconies/yards lol. I think instead of scaling the flowerpots (which fundamentally grow different things than the garden patches) it might be better to say that once you hit the maximum upgradable size, you can then put down 1-2 garden patches if you want.

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The reason I brought up flowerpots is because it's the only method of indoor gardening we have, garden patches have always been exclusive to ward housing due to the outdoor yard. Maybe terraces could have a raised garden bed upgrade you can add? Or it could be simply an item you can place, so ward houses could also make use of it. I think that if townhouses can grow plants on the terrace, it should be at max two patches like you said, and most likely only unlocked after most of the expensive upgrades are paid for. My reason for the pushback on this is that outdoor gardening goes hand in hand with workshops, so you can imagine the market cropping up from people getting unlimited access to Voidrake and Althyk Lavender (among other useful crops).... we're just moving the RMT sellers from FC houses to townhouses if we allow this. And if townhouses are limited, we're back to square one on the accessibility issues...

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

For the outdoor vs. indoor space separation, we could probably resolve that by having a door you can exit through to get to that space or something. My inspiration for the whole idea is the Inn in Kugane where you can look out the window and see the lovely rock garden beyond and some of the other Kugane buildings where there are clearly yards and other such green spaces in what are obviously penthouses. We can clearly have space like that in an instance, so surely we can actually go out there and customize it however we like without it affecting our neighbor any more than glitching stuff in our apartments currently affects our neighbors.

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Okay, so by separating the indoor and outdoor through a door we're solving all the storage issues, yes. I do love the Kugane Inn a lot... I'm just thinking how would our outdoor furniture display exactly when looking out from inside? Do they not display? is our balcony window strategically pointing away from the area we would be able to furnish? Do they have to fully display at all times, even when there is no player there? What if there's a player inside and one outside? They wouldn't be able to see each other due to the issues mentioned before by YoshiP, so I'm just wondering if you had any specific ideas on how this would look like in practice.

The reason I was talking about items glitching through the floor was under the assumption it was all one instance with no separations, so disregard that. By putting a door, we're resolving pretty much all issues related to funky item placement.

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

Also, don't forget that when you move all of your stuff is put back into storage and none of your current decorating remains up. You'll have to do it all over according to wherever you've moved to.

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Agree. So having the balcony be separated by a door would keep both storage types cleanly separated.

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

Lol I don't think lighting levels in the house would be affected any more than rain outside keeps my windows from being full sun inside now. We'll still have to have some separation between the two spaces to keep things clean. Love the idea of NPCs with umbrellas and such depending on the weather though!

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Haha, true, I was just dreaming of more dynamic lighting than our on/off switch every 12 hours, with no in-between. Then again, I use my house to escape Lavender Bed's dreadful weather, so... maybe it is best it stays as it is.

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

I may have been a bit confusing in my attempt to explain...

My proposal is that auto-demolition timers be lengthened to 4 months just in general. Then, once every 16/20/24 months (or whatever number divisible by 4 you prefer), you can ask for a hiatus that will give you an extra 4 months on your demolition timer. It wouldn't be something that people could just spam constantly.

But I do see where you're coming from. Though my question then is, how long do you think the auto-demolition timer should be under normal circumstances? 45 days is really too short for a lot of people when life kicks them in the face.

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I think 45 days is too short, that is for sure. 60 days would be the bare minimum for ward houses in my opinion, since while we have to consider the possibility of the owner getting kicked in the face by life, we also have to consider the homeless player waiting for a house to open up... What about this?

Ward houses: 60-80 days - after that, the house would return to being a townhouse, automatically transported to the nearest town (eg. If your townhouse was originally Ul'dahn but you moved to a ward house in Kugane, upon demolition it'd become a Kugane townhouse - this is mostly to prevent people from wondering where in the world their house may have ended up in if they forgot their original townhouse's location before they moved). Ward houses are a finite resource, so keeping it on a shorter leash gives people a chance to see some movement.
Townhouses: 3-4 months is good for this, I believe. I'm leaning more towards 3 months if it's in line with ward houses being 60 days and 4 months if ward houses are 80 days. This leads me to my next question: If your ward house is demolished and it becomes a townhouse, does your timer reset back to zero, or does it pick up from 60-80 and continues counting? To me, it'd make sense if it resetted to zero, since it's technically moved, and gives us some wiggle space while keeping the autodemolition timer relatively short for those who are waiting their turn. This means that if you buy a ward house, you're essentially boosting your demolition timer by 60-80 days, which is an interesting added bonus to make them attractive for private owners.
Then again, if this is technically the instanced version, do we really need an autodemolition timer? What use would it serve if this type of housing were truly unlimited like island sanctuaries?
Apartments: Stay forever - but also a limited resource. Current behavior and it works well for all servers except extremely overcrowded, legacy servers such as Balmung. If anything, maybe apartments that go unused for 2+ years should be purged every new expansion? Most people come back every expansion, so provided you visit your apartment once during your resub time, you should be golden. Maybe this feature would only go in use in servers where there aren't any more available apartments and leave the rest as they are.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Honestly it’s the “consolation prize” to make up for the fact that there’s not enough houses to go around. The “perks” of ward housing that everyone always lists whenever they say ward housing is superior should be enough to make up for the fact that someone else can have an equivalent housing experience, just on its own and tucked away behind a directory. And when I say equivalent, I mean an actual, fully functional housing plot, indoors and out. Generic scenery for the neighborhood, and eventually maybe they make more “background skins” with different scenery/locations, just like they add new housing skins every now and then. My reasoning for this is twofold: one, it’s easier for it to actually be accomplished if they can just copy/paste the existing system to create single instanced housing plots. No need to reinvent the wheel, creating a new system from scratch. Two, I don’t buy into any “hierarchy” or “prestige” when it comes to housing. It’s a game feature, not a prize won by any skill, and it’s only the artificial scarcity and RNG luck of the lotto that determines who gets a plot and who doesn’t.

Or to put it another way, the ward system has limitations that instanced doesn’t have… the ward plots will always be subject to auto-demo because they are taking up permanent space, making the lack of auto-demo a perk of the instanced plot. Those who want the ultra-rare M or L plot locations, high visibility and/or venues will prefer the wards regardless. Those who just want a place of their own to decorate would have it.

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Don't get me wrong, of course I'd love that... but it is unfair to those who have gone through the effort to obtain and maintain a ward plot. If you remove all the perks from a ward plot besides... existing in a ward, which forces them to maintain their house on a shorter leash... the hierarchy the game has established since the beginning would fall apart. And this hierarchy isn't only in housing, it rules the entirety of the game. Content is placed in a difficulty hierarchy (normal/MSQ -> hard -> EX -> savage/criterion -> ultimate), gear is sorted into iLVL, players are sorted into rankings of varying prestige. We can't escape the nature of the MMO structure, as much as we'd like to. Housing's limited nature has made it into a competition as we currently stand, but we're here to talk ideas for a solution that is realistic and fits within the game's established rules so we hopefully have a chance to see it added. Of course I want unlimited housing for all, I would only benefit from it! I don't win anything gatekeeping any of you from owning a house, but if we don't have it right now it's obvious they either can't or there is something else stopping them. It's impossible for them to have never considered instanced housing, so for now and until they prove otherwise, I will assume they have been reading us (or came up with the idea on their own) and either had to discard it due to limitations or they simply don't like the idea of leaving current house owners in the dust.

Those who only want a house to decorate and do not care for neighbors, placement, etc. etc. would have to pay for their benefits somewhere else, as all housing types currently do in one way or another. Otherwise we're just asking to place something on top of the highest point of the hierarchy, and make it basically free (because let's be real, gil is not really the problem here. I bought my 20M house from roulettes alone). I don't consider this a consolation prize at all...

So what we're proposing is placing instanced housing in the middle of the hierarchy between apartments and ward housing, benefitting from almost all housing features and being on a longer autodemolition timer, but faces some limitations one would only overcome by moving into a ward plot + they're tucked away from the rest of the world. This should be more than plenty for those who only want to decorate a nice place, as you can enjoy the grand majority of housing features to almost their full extent. If you're serious about housing, you also have an "endgame" in the form of ward housing for extra upgrades, bigger layouts, more gardening, etc.

My point is: Of course I want unlimited housing for everyone. But we would be smarter to think of a more realistic improvement to current housing since it is clear that, as we currently are, it is not possible. Otherwise they would have already done it!

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

My proposal is that auto-demolition timers be lengthened to 4 months just in general. Then, once every 16/20/24 months (or whatever number divisible by 4 you prefer), you can ask for a hiatus that will give you an extra 4 months on your demolition timer. It wouldn't be something that people could just spam constantly.

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Plot turn-over would stall. If its a limited supply thing. The demo timer has to be long enough to not feel overly restrictive, but also has to assure the plot is used on some level within reason, and if not it needs to go back into the pool of available plots.

But yea put a plot on Island Sanctuary, it trades the visibility for accessibility. Venue owner can have their invite only parties or use their Apt as venues until they come into a ward plot.

I get to have my little quiet neighbourhood, with people that can occasionally come and go. People who want to decorate their own little private domicle where they will not be harassed, and venue aspiring can work their way up through the ward system. From the Apts to a Plot.

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Originally Posted by Shistar

If you remove all the perks from a ward plot besides... existing in a ward, which forces them to maintain their house on a shorter leash... the hierarchy the game has established since the beginning would fall apart. And this hierarchy isn’t only in housing, it rules the entirety of the game.

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The difference is content “hierarchy” is based on personal skill, where access to housing is based on luck. As it is, it’s the design of ward housing that has backed them into a corner. If you want the premium location for in-game real estate, auto demo is the price you pay for that. Others having access to an instanced plot lacking that level of visibility and exclusivity get to opt out of auto-demo precisely because it takes nothing away from anyone else in order for them to have it.

Another feature I’d also like to see in an instanced system, is having auto “demo” for ward housing, instead convert your plot to an instanced plot, saving both your furnishing layout just as you left it, as well as the items, eliminating the need to claim them separately by the post-demo deadline we have now.

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So what we’re proposing is placing instanced housing in the middle of the hierarchy between apartments and ward housing, benefitting from almost all housing features and being on a longer autodemolition timer, but faces some limitations one would only overcome by moving into a ward plot + they’re tucked away from the rest of the world. This should be more than plenty for those who only want to decorate a nice place, as you can enjoy the grand majority of housing features to almost their full extent. If you’re serious about housing, you also have an “endgame” in the form of ward housing for extra upgrades, bigger layouts, more gardening, etc.

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The problem with making instanced “less than” in comparison to ward housing, is that instanced housing is functionally the better system. You can have more features with instanced than wards just by their very nature, with less server drain. It’s why we’re getting all these interior layouts and remodeling, because the insides of houses and apartments are instanced. And also why the island can hold so many more outdoor furnishings than a mansion plot can.

Again, the hierarchy here is based on luck, not any kind of skill or effort beyond simple persistence. By watering down instanced to keep wards “superior,” you’re essentially limiting the addition of new features to housing, many of which other competing MMOs already enjoy.

They have given us the wards and thus far they seem committed to them. But if they actually want everyone to have equal access to ALL forms of housing (as paying customers should have every right to expect), then their two options are scrap the ward system and redesign it in a way that allow for wards to be created on an as-needed basis, or keep the existing system and add an instanced option to supplement the lack of supply. Option 1 forces everyone to start over and requires a lot more development resources to accomplish. Option 2 allows them to future proof housing to scale with player demand, while basically using the same system they already have.

https://media1.tenor.com/m/OaqO-C4Tt...ring-today.gif
/somethingsomething

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Originally Posted by Kytrin

Thank you! :)

Maybe if we can flesh out a workable enough system, Square will adopt it!

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in 10-15 years maybe

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Originally Posted by NightHour

in 10-15 years maybe

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Hey now, let's not say the cynical part out loud lol. We all know the chances, but y'know... we can keep our fingers crossed anyway!