Apartment windows with a (nice) view

[Beckett]

I'm no expert, but I think that making a window, with a proper view that reacts to the time of day and the weather, would essentially take the same effort to make as a balcony. Either way they need to make a new (if limited) outdoor area. The only difference would be that with the balcony, you could walk a foot out into it.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the balcony was actually easier to develop, since you would have to click on a door and travel from your apartment instance and into the outdoor instance, as opposed to having the outdoor area in the same instance as the apartment. There's probably a reason why even inn rooms and NPC rooms just have white windows that shine or dim depending on the time of day.

[tinythinker]

I'm no expert, but I think that making a window, with a proper view that reacts to the time of day and the weather, would essentially take the same effort to make as a balcony. Either way they need to make a new (if limited) outdoor area. The only difference would be that with the balcony, you could walk a foot out into it.

In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the balcony was actually easier to develop, since you would have to click on a door and travel from your apartment instance and into the outdoor instance, as opposed to having the outdoor area in the same instance as the apartment. There's probably a reason why even inn rooms and NPC rooms just have white windows that shine or dim depending on the time of day.

For a balcony you would have to go to an instance through a door as you say, because the current apartment building structure doesn't have localized, fixed spaces of realistic size mapped out for the rooms "inside" of it. So that means building a whole new instance, with all of the attendant art and animation. And then every time someone visits their balcony, a new instance must be created and tracked on the server for each unique visitor, including any items placed there or interactions performed, as we would all want our own balcony. That's quite a bit of work to do for creating the balcony and having it work live on the servers.

For the window, you essentially need a painting of a view that is animated, with the animations responding to day and weather cycles. The window view would the same for every apartment in every district in the Mists. And another window view would be the same for every apartment in the Lavender Beds. And so on. No need to be instanced, just show the same asset in every apartment. Unless they wanted to offer options feom which view you could chose for The Goblet, or for Shirogane, etc. But even then, if you choose "Shirogane Window 1" as opposed to "Shirogane Window 2" it would be exactly the same view as everyone else who chose "Shirogane Window 1".

I can't say which is harder for the team to develop, an instanced balcony or an animated window, but the former could add to server load. As I am also not an expert on these matters I can't say whether such additional load would be significant. Either option though would be nice to have compared to the current situation.

However, as I mentioned at the start of the thread, I don't think this is a priority issue for housing let alone a high priority. Just something that would be greatly appreciated and value to the apartment option. Either the window or the balcony would help apartments feel more connected the zone in which they are located rather than like some random box people put their stuff inside of.

As to why the windows are the way they are at the moment -- that option was easier than either the instanced balcony or the animated window.