An idea for obtaining houses.

[Niwashi]

No just no, hell no. Dont we have enough rng already?
Its already a lottery by the way. Will you be at the head of the que? will you not be kicked out when new wards are added?. When will that plot be released, will i gamble that it will be a while or in the next hour, ergo can i sleep or not Isnt all that enough of a lottery for yyou?

I think you (and several other people in the thread) missed the whole point of what the suggestion is. All those problems you mentioned are exactly why an actual lottery would be better, it's because it's already the same RNG. This doesn't introduce any more.

This would neither increase nor decrease anybody's chances of getting a house. Those would remain EXACTLY as they are with the current system. For every house that's available, one player or group will get it and the number who want it minus one will fail to get it, so your chance is determined by how many want it. The only thing that would change is how much effort and frustration it takes to get your (exactly equal to now) chance. If success is chosen by lot, then all you need to do is submit your name (along with the gil to prove you can pay for it) once, and wait for the result. No spamming the purchase hoping you can beat everyone else doing the same, no lost sleep, no worries about badly timed disconnects, no rush to be there the moment things open, etc.

Okay, let me register a full account of characters on a single plot to increase my chances of winning along side members from multiple FC's doing the same thing to compete against players who maybe entering the lotto with one character.

That would be pointless, as your other characters would be competing against your main, not helping your main to get a house. Most people who want a house want it for the character or FC that they actually play. If you only want to go in and wander around your alt's house pretending it's yours, you can probably find a stranger's house where you can do that and save yourself the gil. Your main character wouldn't' be able to do anything with it besides hang out there either way.

[KisaiTenshi]

If done right though it could provide outdoor space (more than we have now), additional furniture slots outside, the ability to upgrade to the housing size you best want with the locale you desire without waiting months/years and even allow for additional features to be implemented on the land itself without an idea being shot down because you can't put something like a barn in because the other houses can't be shuffled around. The ward system is extremely limiting and when resources aren't being used (empty plots), that can cause stagnation of further district development because it's essentially burnt money to the company.

There's no point to instanced housing because it's simply a loading-instance shell game. Have fun in your house that only you use, can see, and nobody can find from the list of houses.

Intanced housing should be little more than what already exists as the Inn and Apartment. If you want to have a garden, barn, stable, well, dog to tell you timmy fell down the well, etc That's a completely different game (see Stardew Valley.)

Mabi's homestead was also a mess. I play the game. I got to have lots of fun when my inventory filled with the item needed to make one, which you can't destroy or drop.

But difference here is that, Mabi's free, and run by a company that has a reputation of being extremely greedy. I mean... It took them over 10 years to change the font that was causing everyone's game to lag. I think Square, a company with more money, for a game that gets a constant in money, can handle it.

I used to play Mabi up to G17. Mabinogi has always been a mess, and the more instancing they did to work around that mess, the more infuriating it was to play.


The end goal should be to remove all instancing from the game. I think the "ward" system is stupid, but I don't Archeage's system or even UO's original housing system are any good either.

A proper, housing system would do three things:

1) It would define an entire biome (eg Ul'dah would be Desert, Gridania would be forest, Limsa Lomina would be Sea, Shirogane would be Tropical) , with a "center" city hall type of building, surrounded by
2) The minimum businesses required to build the surrounding buildings (eg roadworks, soil, plants, building materials (stone and wood), doors and windows, utilities (marketboard, aetherytes, mogmail, retainer access), and then
3) Allow players to build a road out to the "house" on their large equal-sized plots of farmland.

So you can either maximize the house size (a la sims-style housing building), or you can build a tiny prefab house and maximize the land size to do gardens or entire farms.

Instead of instance after instance of cookie-cutter homesteads like Mabi, or clones of each wards which have further instances for the house and each private room like FFXIV presently has, you have a seamless grid or circular track layout that just "gets bigger" as more houses are built, but quietly passes you between each sector of the map so you never actually encounter loading time. You can walk to each house in succession, or you can teleport from the center to any house you've been to before, or have friended the owner of. That way the housing area is never larger than it needs to be. Every house can be a shop, or only houses that build a "storefront" can be.

Build the house out of the wrong kind of materials, the house decays faster, and has to be repaired more frequently. If it completely decays, it becomes a "haunted" house that has to be purified before becoming repairable or replaced. A farm that is unmaintained starts to become overrun with weeds and wild animals that increase the decay rate. Players can go around and hunt mobs on players properties that are "open" and keep the land from decaying.

But like I said, that's a completely different game.

What we have is basically 18 copies of a player-run community per area. That's basically just tiered instance housing already, only the insides of the houses are instanced.

[Elamys]

There's no point to instanced housing because it's simply a loading-instance shell game. Have fun in your house that only you use, can see, and nobody can find from the list of houses.

Again, other games have done instanced housing just fine and people still enjoy visitors coming to see them or events. Wards are dead anyways.

Limited housing doesn't. Work. There's no way you can make the plot system work so that everyone who meets the requirements can own a house.

[Aylis]

That would be pointless, as your other characters would be competing against your main, not helping your main to get a house. Most people who want a house want it for the character or FC that they actually play. If you only want to go in and wander around your alt's house pretending it's yours, you can probably find a stranger's house where you can do that and save yourself the gil. Your main character wouldn't' be able to do anything with it besides hang out there either way.

Pointless how? Alt or main it would still be mine either way. If I was that interested in having a house it wouldn't matter at all to me which character I would have it on. I'd be able to make things work either way whatever character I have it on. Weither it be lounging on any character or using the functions on my alt and transferring the results to my main and vice versa.

[OMega_ARcane]

there was someone who said housing was like PvP, as someone who LOVES PvP I have to thank you, that made my day and made me laugh out loud while at work

[Dustytome]

There's no point to instanced housing because it's simply a loading-instance shell game. Have fun in your house that only you use, can see, and nobody can find from the list of houses.

Intanced housing should be little more than what already exists as the Inn and Apartment. If you want to have a garden, barn, stable, well, dog to tell you timmy fell down the well, etc That's a completely different game (see Stardew Valley.)

Yoshi mentioned animal raising before I believe, though haven't heard anything more than a mention for months so maybe that was scrapped. For me it's that outdoor yard space that makes/breaks housing. I don't really need the neighbors, but I do enjoy seeing what people have done. Instancing never stopped me from checking out other plots in Wildstar and worked out really well. I'm sorry that Mabinogi did instanced housing so horribly, but that's just an example of what not to do with it.

[Maero]

Or something i have said a hundred times, instanced housing or a instanced and non-instanced mix
Housing like that of ESO though i have not been on much since housing was added but it seems to work well? And others can visit you and yes you do get a yard

[Claviusnex]

Or something i have said a hundred times, instanced housing or a instanced and non-instanced mix
Housing like that of ESO though i have not been on much since housing was added but it seems to work well? And others can visit you and yes you do get a yard

That's what I say too. There is no reason that SE couldn't keep the ward based housing system for players that are willing to put up with all of its drawbacks and restrictions and create a fully instanced parallel system to meet the needs of the majority of players.

[Dustytome]

There is no reason that SE couldn't keep the ward based housing system for players that are willing to put up with all of its drawbacks and restrictions and create a fully instanced parallel system to meet the needs of the majority of players.

Money. That'd be a lot of resources going towards multiple systems that could be one system. Of course money is probably also the reason we will never get an alternative to the wards.