Can we please just have instanced housing already?

[Lycieus]

I think it is far past time that we did away with the inefficient and frankly archaic housing system that exists in this game.

The issues with the system, in case they need to be expounded upon for some reason, are not limited to, but include: The limited availability of housing, rewarding of furnishings from seasonal events that people without houses can't even use, the gating of game features behind housing, the issue of people selling their houses despite counter measures, the annoyance of said counter measures, and the conflict between FC and FC and between FCs and individuals all create a tremendous amount of strife and bitterness surrounding the system that are unnecessary.

Permit me to go ahead and counter some common arguments:

1. The neighborhood system fosters a sense of community.

I understand that some people like the feeling of community. Having been in several different FCs and having played since 1.0, I have never personally seen or experienced any sort of collaboration or interaction within a neighborhood. That is not to say such interactions don't happen, but there is no real way to get non-anecdotal data for this, and I would posit they are pretty rare and would further assert they do not outweigh the negative social impacts of the current system.

2. Instancing housing will draw people out of the world, and they still spend all their time in their home instance.


I don't know if you've been in the open world much in this game, but it's more or less dead anyway, and the systems Square implements actively exacerbate this issue. There remain no compelling reasons to spend time in the world itself.

That being said, why sit AFK at your house, which would ostensibly have no market board or other amenities, and would have no content within it other than your garden, your chocobo, and decorating?

3. Implementing such a system would be too resource intensive.

Many of the resources needed for instanced housing are already in use. In addition to housing within the neighborhoods, there are instanced apartments, and there are FC rooms, workshops, etc. all allocated on a house by house or person by person basis. In short, the resource creep would be likely, but it is not as extensive as SE stans like to claim and has already been done by companies with far fewer resources than a small indie company like Square-Enix.

[SamSmoot]

Actually, instancing, if done right could have many more players out in the neighborhood.
Don't put every player in their own private instance like in other games, where you don't see anyone unless you invite them in.

Keep the current housing areas, but instance the entire plots. Each plot could have 1000 different owners, increasing the chance that they'll be running around. When you first enter your development, you see your own house on it's plot, and the others are randomly filled with ones that currently have occupants. (May increase load times though.)

You could choose to see and tour any of the houses on a plot by selecting them from the placard. This would also allow you to select what houses appear near yours. If an owner is out in the yard of a displayed house, you see them there. On hidden instances, you'd only see the owner appear when they walk out into the street.

If you're outside in your plot, you see everyone out in the street or other common areas within view.

[Dustytome]

Keep the current housing areas, but instance the entire plots. Each plot could have 1000 different owners, increasing the chance that they'll be running around. When you first enter your development, you see your own house on it's plot, and the others are randomly filled with ones that currently have occupants. (May increase load times though.)

Considering my character has a temporary lockdown when a hunt train passes by, I don't think the servers would be able to handle that. Especially when multiple owners aren't just personal owners and you end up with multiple big FCs flooding their members in. I can just imagine the absolute meldown the servers that had to handle shiro plot 30 area would go through.

[Lycieus]

Considering my character has a temporary lockdown when a hunt train passes by, I don't think the servers would be able to handle that. Especially when multiple owners aren't just personal owners and you end up with multiple big FCs flooding their members in. I can just imagine the absolute meldown the servers that had to handle shiro plot 30 area would go through.

I think individual instances for each house are the only reasonable way. This is how every game with instanced housing does it.

Housing competitions and housing buffs are a decent way to get people to visit each other ala Wildstar

[YojimboM]

Considering my character has a temporary lockdown when a hunt train passes by, I don't think the servers would be able to handle that. Especially when multiple owners aren't just personal owners and you end up with multiple big FCs flooding their members in. I can just imagine the absolute meldown the servers that had to handle shiro plot 30 area would go through.

It would be possible to do this in an efficient way. Other MMOs have housing like this. The main one I can think of is Black Desert Online, which allows you to own nearly any building in the game world as a house or property while thousands of other people simultaneously own it too. Imagine if you could buy a room inside Eulmore next to the Aetheryte, that would be the equivalent. FFXIV obviously would be limited to the housing wards themselves, but it is entirely possible to have instanced plots like that without being overly taxing.

[Nabril]

Actually, instancing, if done right could have many more players out in the neighborhood.
Don't put every player in their own private instance like in other games, where you don't see anyone unless you invite them in.

Keep the current housing areas, but instance the entire plots. Each plot could have 1000 different owners, increasing the chance that they'll be running around. When you first enter your development, you see your own house on it's plot, and the others are randomly filled with ones that currently have occupants. (May increase load times though.)

You could choose to see and tour any of the houses on a plot by selecting them from the placard. This would also allow you to select what houses appear near yours. If an owner is out in the yard of a displayed house, you see them there. On hidden instances, you'd only see the owner appear when they walk out into the street.

If you're outside in your plot, you see everyone out in the street or other common areas within view.

No, I like my yard. I would rather not lose it.

[Rasikko]

Tandy computer limitations.
PSX limitations.
PS2 limitations.
PS3 limitations.
PS4 limitations.
Steam limitations.
Future proofed PC limitations.
Limitations limitations.

[Sei_Konsetsu]

They could do something like a small area thats a cul de sac, so like 10 houses, but they can only all be medium houses. The area is instanced, so its only loaded when some one is in it, your house is spawned on a plot and is only there while you are there. Other plots are empty and you cannot walk in those plot areas unless someone else is decides to go to their instanced house.

When you chose to tp to your instanced home, the game will first check to see if someone is loaded into an instanced cul de sac and then try and place your home in one of the 10 slots, this is why the houses would need to all be one size only for it to work. And when ya leave, its not there, but timers and stuff for plants are still going.

The only other way i can think is to make it so you choose a size and its only the inside, no outside and anytime anyone from the people thats roomates or guild members access it, that is when its instanced. Also so people can do plants, add a green room thats another buyable room sor of like the barracks that you can put plants and maybe some outside things. Make it so the room has a view outside, but its still a "room" and its blocked so you cant just go outta the area

[Eldevern]

Full agree with OP especially the last argument.

The excuse that pretends instancied houses are ressources consuming have always sound to me like a bad joke. Any Inn room already works like as an instance and guess what : one character can't be in two instance so it wouldn't change anything. SE excuses are really, really poor excuses. The worst : we can loose seasonal event items if we loose house and never getting them back since no PNC sell them, even thought we have the achievment.

[Kuro_Mao]

Full agree with OP especially the last argument.

The excuse that pretends instancied houses are ressources consuming have always sound to me like a bad joke. Any Inn room already works like as an instance and guess what : one character can't be in two instance so it wouldn't change anything. SE excuses are really, really poor excuses. The worst : we can loose seasonal event items if we loose house and never getting them back since no PNC sell them, even thought we have the achievment.

The devs have pointed this out several times. Housing before Shirogane was opened up was 2/3's the game space and it was asked at every Fan event. Since Shirogane opened they have also expanded ALL wards again. This just comes down to monthly drive space in a datacenter. That sort of infrastructure for the style of IT environment this game has is not cheap int hat scale of business. Even though we make look at a 3.84 TB SAS SSD and go that's more than an econo-box used car that could double as a skate, it cuts to deep in their profit margin to care. From my perspective, and I've run Data center for medical in hospitals that specialize in OB/Gyn... In 2014 the 54 tb of space I needed for 450,000 patients came down to a monthly cost of $2800 w/power per month over the 5 year period before. Granted things in this game will need much more than that; its a huge cost to SE. Before the data center was moved form Montreal to California; My companies backup center was moved to an upgraded space at a cheaper price as they needed more room for this game when they implemented housing as a result. what we associate to cost per TB in our PC vs their needs on an epic IT scale are extremely different.