The Case for Instanced Housing

[yukiiyuki]

So basically ESO housing.
XIV have unique thing for housing, its called neighbourhood. Killing even more social aspects of the MMO is bad idea.
Also, stop being naive, people keeping their subs for saving the houses, because it makes them special, not very smart idea from business perspective.
How about just give apartments some extend and call it a day.

[HadesNight]

So basically ESO housing.
XIV have unique thing for housing, its called neighbourhood. Killing even more social aspects of the MMO is bad idea.
Also, stop being naive, people keeping their subs for saving the houses, because it makes them special, not very smart idea from business perspective.
How about just give apartments some extend and call it a day.

Scarcity makes things more valuable. It's 100% a fact of life, you might not think it's smart but people literally keep paying their subs just so they don't lose their housing because they are rare.

I do think that they should upgrade Apartments as stated before or just create really lovely instanced homes in general.

[GeminiReed]

.. you might not think it's smart but people literally keep paying their subs just so they don't lose their housing because they are rare.

Feeling obligated to sub because of fear is pretty damaging. Losing one's house to a lapsed sub is a huge disincentive to returning. Even worse you have a limited time to claim any decorations and the demolition refund. Losing that is just a giant middle finger.

[HadesNight]

Feeling obligated to sub because of fear is pretty damaging. Losing one's house to a lapsed sub is a huge disincentive to returning. Even worse you have a limited time to claim any decorations and the demolition refund. Losing that is just a giant middle finger.

I completely agree with you, I think the autodem system is necessary with this style of housing. You HAVE to purge houses because they aren't instanced, but the fact that it keeps people paying is pretty messed up imo. People feel obligated, my point was that it's a fact of life, damaging or not that is something is scarce it feels valuable.

If I lost my housing for any reason I'd stop playing the game really. It's what I spend most of my time working on it.

But it IS keeping people subbed, so from a business perspective it is smart and at the end of the day SE is a business.

[GeminiReed]

But it IS keeping people subbed, so from a business perspective it is smart and at the end of the day SE is a business.

Sacrificing long term profits for short term gains is never good business. Services live and die on retention and vendor lock-in is a fantastic way to encourage your customers to look elsewhere.

[yukiiyuki]

Scarcity makes things more valuable. It's 100% a fact of life, you might not think it's smart but people literally keep paying their subs just so they don't lose their housing because they are rare.

I do think that they should upgrade Apartments as stated before or just create really lovely instanced homes in general.

You literally rephrased what I said.
>not very smart idea from business perspective.
To make housing for everyone, that what I meant.

[HadesNight]

Sacrificing long term profits for short term gains is never good business. Services live and die on retention and vendor lock-in is a fantastic way to encourage your customers to look elsewhere.

That definitely sounds good on paper. Writing it like that, of course you have a point but it's not aligned with reality of this game. The only power FFXIV players have is to vote with their wallets and the few people that actually leave the game (if any) over housing are quickly replaced with new subs. Despite how annoyed people are with housing, or viera and hrotgar being half finished, or not having enough inventory, or omg mogstation and paying for retainers, etc. etc. Players have not traditionally voted with their wallets on any major unified issue. SEs model was created when the game was smaller and they know they have to do something to fix it. Housing was side content. I literally have no clue when it became popular but it really wasn't something people as a whole cared about even 2 years ago.

Plus, I think (not saying you think this specifically) it's foolish for those that believe SE is trying to maliciously keep their subs and money with housing. It's a bad system but I don't think it was created as a way to keep people playing. As noted housing was literally not important 2 years ago to the majority of people and that's from living on original Aether in NA and each server used to have tons of empty plots at min deval. Shirogane really kicked up housing a notch for sure. So this current system was built in a way where since housing wasn't that important, and people could afford to just pick up another small for cheap if they came back, it wasn't that harmful to lose your plot and that allowed others to get it if needed.

This isn't SE sacrificing long term... this is a housing situation that no longer can be sustained because the game got much bigger than they hoped. Additionally, I'd love to see what other MMO is like FFXIV. You can get elements of FFXIV in other games and other games do them better but this story centric casual MMO is something special. People can leave but it's not the same. I tried WoW recently and ESO and Terra and nah...

I'd be super SUPER impressed if people actually left the game over a unified issue. But I don't see it happening.

You literally rephrased what I said.
>not very smart idea from business perspective.
To make housing for everyone, that what I meant.

Np then, it's not written in a way that conveyed that. But in that case I agree with you!

[GeminiReed]

XIV have unique thing for housing, its called neighbourhood. Killing even more social aspects of the MMO is bad idea.

That's just a "sounds good on paper" idea. The vast amounts of anecdotal evidence suggest that real interactions in housing is super rare. Outside of some pre-arranged RP events the only other time I see people is when a plot is up for sale.

Instanced neighborhoods would be an awesome feature. At the very least you'd a much better chance of having neighbors that would interact.

[Videra]

So basically ESO housing.
XIV have unique thing for housing, its called neighbourhood. Killing even more social aspects of the MMO is bad idea.

I would sure love for someone to point out where the social aspect of this exists. Because I have never once had a social interaction in my time owning a goblet house by direct association with the fact I have it.

[Packetdancer]

I would sure love for someone to point out where the social aspect of this exists. Because I have never once had a social interaction in my time owning a goblet house by direct association with the fact I have it.

It may vary from world to world.

I've been lucky with my house, inasmuch as a couple of my neighbors have similar play-times as I do, and I see them around. (They brought me housewarming gifts when I moved in! I have run roulettes with one of them.) I have a nice sitting area in my yard and I've found some of my neighbors chilling there before when I pop in. Several of my friends and I have chilled in the little cafe that one of my neighbors put together when we're waiting on a queue or on one more person to get online, etc. There's also an FC whose house is near my FC's house, and where folks from my FC bump into folks from that one at the marketboard outside our house; you start to recognize each other's names and wave when you bump into each other outside of that neighborhood.

But I also know people whose housing neighborhoods are basically empty and they can run around the whole place and never encounter someone else. And I will admit that even in the ward where my house is, or where my FC's house is, it's not like there are throngs of crowds running around.

Still, I tend to think the issue isn't with the fact that housing isn't instanced, as I said before; I think there are actually benefits to having a physical neighborhood and your house having an actual presence, as opposed to the 'exist only in your own bubble' reality of wholly instanced housing. And it's honestly probably fine that the actual houses are something of a commodity and difficult to get, if you want to make them an achievement.

But, as I noted earlier in the thread, it is a huge problem that participation in several entire systems of the game is gated on owning a house. An FC without a house can't use the company workshop and thus can't do airships or submersibles. Without a house, you can't garden (and without gardening there are materials you cannot get which you need to make potentially desirable things). At that point, the scarcity isn't just "I can't have a house to decorate and play with", but "I am prevented entirely from participation in these game systems by this scarcity".

And that, SquareEnix really needs to fix.