Using housing from SWTOR as base for the housing system.

So I heard that the housing system of SWTOR would be a perfect base to update XIV’s housing without the limited option to decorated the houses. So think with the overhaul coming, would they pick SWTOR‘a housing as base to make improvements so that everyone can have a house of their own in their favorite location?

SWTOR is a very good example of why it is not impossible to have "a house for every player" in an MMORPG. But many other MMORPGs have also proven this with their housing systems, including WoW recently.

Moreover, SE themselves have proven that a "house for every player" is possible because Island Sanctuary, on a technical level, is a "garden for every player". Essentially the same thing, technically speaking.

I like the idea of a collection of player houses. The problem is the implementation is bad and they have failed to improve it in 13 years. The way to solve it is to disconnect houses from plots. If a house is disconnected from a plot, then you would teleport directly inside it as if it's instanced housing. The demolition timer could then merely disconnect houses from plots due to inactivity, and keep wards a reflection of active players.

This concept of disconnecting a house from a plot would then allow said house to be connected to a content like Island Sanctuary or other specifically-designed instanced area, in case of the event that no desirable plots are available.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

SWTOR is a very good example of why it is not impossible to have "a house for every player" in an MMORPG. But many other MMORPGs have also proven this with their housing systems, including WoW recently.

Moreover, SE themselves have proven that a "house for every player" is possible because Island Sanctuary, on a technical level, is a "garden for every player". Essentially the same thing, technically speaking.

I like the idea of a collection of player houses. The problem is the implementation is bad and they have failed to improve it in 13 years. The way to solve it is to disconnect houses from plots. If a house is disconnected from a plot, then you would teleport directly inside it as if it's instanced housing. The demolition timer could then merely disconnect houses from plots due to inactivity, and keep wards a reflection of active players.

This concept of disconnecting a house from a plot would then allow said house to be connected to a content like Island Sanctuary or other specifically-designed instanced area, in case of the event that no desirable plots are available.

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If that is the case, how would they avoid that problem?

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Originally Posted by Pimsan20

If that is the case, how would they avoid that problem?

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The running theory is that the way they set up housing to begin with was poorly implemented and now it would take a lot of man hours/resources to rip the whole thing apart and fix it to the scale of WoW/SWTOR/etc. It also runs the risk of pissing off people who are dead set on having ward housing, along with Yoshi specifically saying that he wants ward housing to exist because it was taken from one of his favorite games or something. So it's all unavoidable problems in my opinion until someone at SE starts allocating resources better and makes it a priority.

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Originally Posted by Pimsan20

If that is the case, how would they avoid that problem?

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I just explained how they would solve it. The exact details depends on their code, but I guarantee this: 13 years is enough time to learn to code and gain 10 years of programming experience. Moreover, programmers at a billion-yen company should be capable of achieving the feat.

Coding can be challenging, but nothing is impossible, and if SE ever says that then it is a mindset issue. Unreal 5's graphics are "impossible" yet programmers made it possible, because it is programmer's job to make things possible.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

I just explained how they would solve it. The exact details depends on their code, but I guarantee this: 13 years is enough time to learn to code and gain 10 years of programming experience. Moreover, programmers at a billion-yen company should be capable of achieving the feat.

Coding can be challenging, but nothing is impossible, and if SE ever says that then it is a mindset issue. Unreal 5's graphics are "impossible" yet programmers made it possible, because it is programmer's job to make things possible.

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And if it work, they can use the plots for free companies only.

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Originally Posted by Pimsan20

And if it work, they can use the plots for free companies only.

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They actually have Free Company-only wards already.

The issue with FC wards is people can use alts to get as many as they want. The issue with personal houses is at minimum that, due to fear of complete destruction of their house, many people login to keep their house then don't play at all for months/years. They would not have this fear if the house wasn't destroyed, but merely detached and moved to an instanced location.

I love SWTOR housing, my Dromund Kaas Apartment is so cozy with the rain and jungle in the backdrop. FFXIV chose Aion as its housing guide to the detriment of us all.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

SWTOR is a very good example of why it is not impossible to have "a house for every player" in an MMORPG. But many other MMORPGs have also proven this with their housing systems, including WoW recently.

Moreover, SE themselves have proven that a "house for every player" is possible because Island Sanctuary, on a technical level, is a "garden for every player". Essentially the same thing, technically speaking.

I like the idea of a collection of player houses. The problem is the implementation is bad and they have failed to improve it in 13 years. The way to solve it is to disconnect houses from plots. If a house is disconnected from a plot, then you would teleport directly inside it as if it's instanced housing. The demolition timer could then merely disconnect houses from plots due to inactivity, and keep wards a reflection of active players.

This concept of disconnecting a house from a plot would then allow said house to be connected to a content like Island Sanctuary or other specifically-designed instanced area, in case of the event that no desirable plots are available.

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I wonder if disconnecting the house from the plot would allow for glamour dressers to be placed in houses without crashing the server.

The ward system is bloated, archaic, and a waste of system resources.

Housing interiors are already entirely instanced and don't use up resources when not in use, as seen when Island Sanctuary was added and people couldn't get into their homes when the housing server was overloaded. Wards on the other hand, remain loaded all of the time, regardless of whether there is anyone in the instance, meaning server resources are potentially being wasted. This is part of why SE struggles to add enough wards to keep up with housing demands, the other part being that they can't seem to add more or less wards on a server by server basis.

Fully instanced housing on the other hand, doesn't have the same wasteful overhead as ward housing does. Aside from a small data storage imprint when not in use, there would be no additional server load unless the home was actively being used by a player. This makes fully instanced player housing significantly more scalable to player demand, and would allow far more players to access the housing system. And as mentioned by Jeeqbit, there would also be no justifiable reason to add demo timers to them because they're not taking up finite plot space in wards if a player decides to take a break from the game.

I get that some people prefer the ward system, and I don't necessarily think it should be removed from the game. But like with countless other past game systems in FF, ward housing is outdated and holding the game back. The best path forward would be to add a new system in parallel that doesn't have to be restrained by the same poor design choices so that more players can better enjoy the housing aspect of the game.

If you're going to propose XIV takes another games housing system, you should describe the system in full since not everyone will have played the game you're referencing.

To another players point. Fully instanced housing has it's perks. But I've found in other games that have it, it doesn't get the same engagement or value put into it that wards do. I'd like to see SE take steps to open up plots by taking gil farm via subs out back and shooting it. And honestly I think a lot of the housing woes would die with it for quite some time, as many people have an excess of FC houses for that purpose. Private housing across many servers has excess supply. I just bought another house on chaos DC with no other bids. Plenty went through the lotto with zero bids and are still sitting there today. Even medium houses had only a couple bids each for the most part. I don't think we would see a housing pinch across most servers till the games population ticks back up significantly and the new worlds have empty wards sitting there ready for it.

Adding some more life into wards would be my preference. Not shoving housing away further out of the game world in instances and behind players inviting you to their homes as in other games. We see how little engagement island sanctuary got in terms of visitors. You can decorate there and make some really lovely islands, but nobody is visiting other islands much at all. An instanced based ward could be interesting, where you go into the ward and each plot's placard can let you select whose home to visit. So the ward itself is still shared amongst people and you can still roam and visit other people's homes seemlessly without needing invites. That could be interesting, I'd still rather see the changes I'd mentioned first since I really don't see the latter happening.

If they're going to copy anyone's homework for housing, it should be WildStar's, which was more or less instanced housing and Island Sanctuary by default.

https://wildstar.fandom.com/wiki/Housing

You start off with simple designs and can build them up into more desirable designs with different features, the inner outer, walls, roofs, doors, windows, wallpapers and furniture can all be changed or added onto your home. Items in your home such as furniture are not restricted by physics, you can make chairs, tables, flower pots, shelves and everything else float.

You can scale items inside the house to be five times bigger or smaller, and have up to a plethora of items in your house.

Around your home is an area of land which you are able to build facilities on, these are called sockets. The things you build on top of them are called plugs. You can build Mine sites and farms which you can harvest resources from. Additionally you are able to create craft stations on your land. Your plugs will give you daily quests which you can complete for rewards.

Others players are able to visit your Housing plot if the Visitor Rules (Private, Neighbors Only, Roommates Only or Public) permit this. In addition rules can be set allowing players to harvest your gardens and resource nodes. If they do this you can choose to either have the materials send to you by mail, to share with the person who gathered the resources or to let that player have all the resources they gathered.

Houses can have expeditions; a type of mini expedition that you enter on your own or with your friends, which will scale accordingly. Housing Expeditions also have their own unique decor rewards which cannot be obtained elsewhere.
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They even had their own ward-like system, albeit player-made and maintained.

https://wildstar.fandom.com/wiki/Communities

Communities are mega Housing plots in which five actual player housing plots can be placed. In addition Communities have a shared area between the five plot which can be decorated as well by Community members who have the relevant permission.

The Community skyplot is a massive plot of land in which five actual character plots can be placed. Each plot is marked by distinct borders on the skyplot. It is however possible to build over the edges of the borders to some extend to create smooth transitions.

The owner of each plot is able to edit their own plot within the Community. With the relevant permission it also possible to edit the shared space between the plots which makes it possible to merge the individual plots and the Community area together as one.

It is possible to invite alt characters to a Community allowing players to fill up an entire Community with their own characters. Invites sent to an alt on the same account will automatically be accepted as long as the alt meets the requirements for joining a Community.

The Community itself has its own crate with 5000 storage capacity, up to 4000 decor from the crate can be placed in the shared area between the character plots. The player plots present on a Community retain their own decor limits (upgradeable by Store purchases) and vary from 500 inside and another 500 outside up to 2500 inside and another 2500 outside. In total the exterior decor count for a Community can be as high as 16,500 decor. The Community itself has no interior and as a result the amount of decor which can be placed in the interiors depends on what the players involved have unlocked as their own decor limits. Collectively the interior decor counts can, theoretically, be up to 12,500 decor. This brings the absolute maximum of possibly placeable decor for a Community to 29,000 decor.

Admittedly, WildStar's housing had lower decor limits before you upgraded (and off-hand I can't remember if this was a purchase made with in-game currency or real money as WildStar did have a F2P phase) and Communities were small in scale (20 members but only 5 member plots can be showcased at a time), but Square-Enix could decide to go higher if they wished and one would certainly hope they would use an in-game method of upgrading decor limits, in fact they already sort of plan to do that with the upcoming interior update.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

If they're going to copy anyone's homework for housing, it should be WildStar's, which was more or less instanced housing and Island Sanctuary by default.

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Why not just use WoW as a base?

WoW's housing now already can do almost everything what Wildstar and SWTOR does, and it's also a good balance between community and private instance.

Including every item not limited to physics and scale.

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Originally Posted by Hycinthus

Why not just use WoW as a base?

WoW's housing now already can do almost everything what Wildstar and SWTOR does, and it's also a good balance between community and private instance.

Including every item not limited to physics and scale.

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"Please understand that our servers cannot take this as we struggle to display more large houses in districts so we had to make sure that they are on small number. Also understand that by following these changes, we would have to remove sub-mandatory thing from the housing. We cannot do that."

Yeah exactly the answer you'd get I'm pretty sure. They hardly even went with this housing update of increasing slots because "our servers just crash when we do". My bet is that they'll just try to increase slots by a bit, give ability to get large / medium inside but not outside ('cause servers crash lmao) and call it a day. Never again will housing updates come. I wouldn't be surprised if 7.5 comes and we see yet another: "sorry, we delayed housing again. It will be in 7.8 for sure!".

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Originally Posted by Hycinthus

Why not just use WoW as a base?

WoW's housing now already can do almost everything what Wildstar and SWTOR does, and it's also a good balance between community and private instance.

Including every item not limited to physics and scale.

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I'm not too familiar with how WoW's housing works because I haven't gone looking it up, I'm only acquainted with WildStar/SWTOR/LOTRO and of the three I liked WildStar's the most.

If WoW's housing is already shaping up to be "WildStar+" then they're already on the right track and they're going to absolutely body FF14 when it pulls it off. The only concern I have is Blizzard's bad habit of abandoning content introduced in an expansion once the expansion is over. There was a time, for example, where they really hyped up Garrisons for Warlords (not housing, but "close enough" for some people), but the expansion wasn't even wrapped up when they announced they weren't going to do anything else with them and they were basically left behind on AU Draenor. (Or maybe they were torn down and removed? I can't remember exactly.)

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

The only concern I have is Blizzard's bad habit of abandoning content introduced in an expansion once the expansion is over. There was a time, for example, where they really hyped up Garrisons for Warlords (not housing, but "close enough" for some people), but the expansion wasn't even wrapped up when they announced they weren't going to do anything else with them and they were basically left behind on AU Draenor. (Or maybe they were torn down and removed? I can't remember exactly.)

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So far they are adding a new premium currency specifically for housing items and putting up Endeavors, which are themed seasonal 'tracks' that reward items specifically made for the theme, but you have to be active as a neighborhood community to unlock the items on the vendor.

They definitely see the value of housing as a good revenue angle, and play hard to drum up interest which seems to pay off for them.

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Originally Posted by Arrius

So far they are adding a new premium currency specifically for housing items and putting up Endeavors, which are themed seasonal 'tracks' that reward items specifically made for the theme, but you have to be active as a neighborhood community to unlock the items on the vendor.

They definitely see the value of housing as a good revenue angle, and play hard to drum up interest which seems to pay off for them.

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Okay, I think I'm convinced they're in this for the long haul, lol.

FF14 about to get beat up and have its lunch money stolen.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Okay, I think I'm convinced they're in this for the long haul, lol.

FF14 about to get beat up and have its lunch money stolen.

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It already has. Where do you think many of those 400,000 lost subscribers went? What do you think happened to a lot of those WoW refugees that didn't stick with the game long-term?

Not all of them chose WoW, but needless to say, things like the housing have won people over to it. They even took a shot at FFXIV on their blog, but it didn't reach the FFXIV team because Yoshi-P wasn't aware of WoW's housing until an interviewer brought it up.

Regarding your concern about them abandoning things once an expansion is over, they acknowledged that issue and moved away from the principle of always abandoning last expansion stuff, I believe. I don't play WoW but I watch their director talk sometimes just because they discuss having issues that I know FFXIV has also had.

Speaking of that, I watched the recent ESO stream (never played ESO) and they talked about having many issues that we also have in FFXIV. It's interesting the sheer crossover in problems that they've all had, such as item limits, inventory issues, homogenization, formulaic patches, etc. These MMOs have all been through these things at some point, or are going through them still, the complaints in these other MMOs are so familiar.

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Originally Posted by Hycinthus

Why not just use WoW as a base?

WoW's housing now already can do almost everything what Wildstar and SWTOR does, and it's also a good balance between community and private instance.

Including every item not limited to physics and scale.

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Depends on which aspects of WoW housing you want them to emulate. If you're only referring to acquiring a house and the controls for item placement/scaling, I'm on board. The rest of WoW's housing system is at best not an improvement compared to FFXIV and in some aspects is considerably worse. Far too many decor items are gated behind quests, achievements, and rep grinds from old expansions. Sure, you'll have a house but is it worth it when you're limited to decorating with a limited selection of vendor basics and the gold cost of those basics adds up quickly?

I disagree that WoW housing does anything for community. WoW Neighborhoods feel just as empty as FFXIV wards if not emptier because of the spacing between plots (I've got a house next to a friend and we usually can't see each other when we're both on the outside of our respective plots). You can't get into a Neighborhood unless you're in a party and the party leader has their house there, or you have a Battle.net friend that owns a house there. Endeavors do nothing to promote player interaction within housing since most are completed solo outside of the Neighborhoods, not in them.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Speaking of that, I watched the recent ESO stream (never played ESO) and they talked about having many issues that we also have in FFXIV. It's interesting the sheer crossover in problems that they've all had, such as item limits, inventory issues, homogenization, formulaic patches, etc. These MMOs have all been through these things at some point, or are going through them still, the complaints in these other MMOs are so familiar.

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WoW housing also has those issues.

Here's an example - for exterior placement you're allowed a budget of 200 points. Each decor item has a value that's between 1 and 5 points (for now, they've hinted at items with higher point values being added later in Midnight). Trees are always 5 points, bushes can be 3 or 5, flowers are 1 or 3, benches are 3, tables are 3 or 5, fountains are 5, etc. The first day of early access, players were already complaining in Neighborhood chat that 200 is too low of a cap because they had barely placed anything before hitting it. Do the math and you see why. If you're using larger items that have a 5 point value to fill up the yard, that's only 40 items you can place. I did mess around in beta using mostly 1 point items with about a dozen 3 point items and got the yard filled up but it left the house looking like it was in an abandoned grassy lot in one design and a junkyard in another.

For interiors, you've got budgets for rooms that can be added in addition to item placement. Different sized rooms have different point values as well. The interior limits can be upgraded by ranking up the house through acquiring uncommon quality or better decor items for the first time and doing Endeavors but that's a slow grind. That same ranking system also adds in new room shapes and sizes as you go.

Want to use multiple of a decor item unlocked through a rep grind and purchased with a currency other than gold? Be prepared to spend a massive amount of time grinding through old expansion content to get the currency even if you already have the rep. Want multiple of a crafted item? Be prepared to spend several hours out farming wood that is Warbound unless you want to pay thousands of gold on the AH to have the crafter farm that wood instead.

Long time WoW players may appreciate having the housing now but it's will be a hard sell to those that don't already have several years invested in WoW, or that aren't prepared to invest most of their time into WoW going forward. As usual, Blizzard took something that could have been fun and turned it into full time job.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

WoW housing also has those issues.

Here's an example - for exterior placement you're allowed a budget of 200 points. Each decor item has a value that's between 1 and 5 points (for now, they've hinted at items with higher point values being added later in Midnight). Trees are always 5 points, bushes can be 3 or 5, flowers are 1 or 3, benches are 3, tables are 3 or 5, fountains are 5, etc. The first day of early access, players were already complaining in Neighborhood chat that 200 is too low of a cap because they had barely placed anything before hitting it. Do the math and you see why. If you're using larger items that have a 5 point value to fill up the yard, that's only 40 items you can place. I did mess around in beta using mostly 1 point items with about a dozen 3 point items and got the yard filled up but it left the house looking like it was in an abandoned grassy lot in one design and a junkyard in another.

For interiors, you've got budgets for rooms that can be added in addition to item placement. Different sized rooms have different point values as well. The interior limits can be upgraded by ranking up the house through acquiring uncommon quality or better decor items for the first time and doing Endeavors but that's a slow grind. That same ranking system also adds in new room shapes and sizes as you go.

Want to use multiple of a decor item unlocked through a rep grind and purchased with a currency other than gold? Be prepared to spend a massive amount of time grinding through old expansion content to get the currency even if you already have the rep. Want multiple of a crafted item? Be prepared to spend several hours out farming wood that is Warbound unless you want to pay thousands of gold on the AH to have the crafter farm that wood instead.

Long time WoW players may appreciate having the housing now but it's will be a hard sell to those that don't already have several years invested in WoW, or that aren't prepared to invest most of their time into WoW going forward. As usual, Blizzard took something that could have been fun and turned it into full time job.

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That does sound pretty unfriendly to new players, which would make it a wasted chance to pull in anyone fleeing from FF14 if they're dropping in to get a house and are met with hurdles beyond the initial acquisition.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

They even took a shot at FFXIV on their blog, but it didn't reach the FFXIV team because Yoshi-P wasn't aware of WoW's housing until an interviewer brought it up.

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Now this worries me more than anything else. If even the producer doesn't know what the competition is working on, that's really a bad sign.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

As usual, Blizzard took something that could have been fun and turned it into full time job.

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No surprise here. Blizzard's "corrupt a wish" stance towards basically anything they do in WoW has been known for years.

The hook system is inferior, but availability is superior.

I prefer RIFT or DCUO to SWTOR as far as decorating goes.

Both give everyone something and RIFT cannot be beat,