Ishgard Housing Details are Out

[Johners]

Even on the current housing implementation, the lottery system isn't just for the real of Ishgard housing. It'll be for future waves of housing becoming available on existing home worlds once they finally reimplement auto demolition (which hot take should already be back in post-Endwalker release). More importantly, it'll be important when they add new home worlds.

For European players, Light & Chaos will be expanded from 6 to 8 home worlds this summer. That means 7200 plots of all sizes, not including apartments, per home world per datacenter. On top of that, SE have also mentioned adding an additional data centre for European players during summer 2023 which means 8 new home worlds with a total of 57600 new plots of all sizes (again not including apartments).

Beyond the discussion of islands sanctuaries or instanced housing, they're adding a ton more housing already over the next 12-18 months without just bloating the number of wards. I'd appreciate a proper redesign or overhaul of the housing system in a future expansion but how does one manage that without potentially alienating the existing player base that's already spent time building up houses and wards?

[Jojoya]

FCFS never required you to sit at a placard when new housing was released. You just walk to a house and buy it.

That assumes you have the luxury of being able to log in when the servers come online and the luck to be at the front of the log in queue instead of at the back.

The majority of players do not have that luxury and few had the luck. The 5.35 wards sold out within an hour. Anything left was already subject to the purchase timer because it had already been purchased with the initial owner immediately relocating to a different plot they wanted more.

Beyond the discussion of islands sanctuaries or instanced housing, they're adding a ton more housing already over the next 12-18 months without just bloating the number of wards. I'd appreciate a proper redesign or overhaul of the housing system in a future expansion but how does one manage that without potentially alienating the existing player base that's already spent time building up houses and wards?

By improving the system so what they will be able to get is better than what they already have.

Give me a good instanced housing system and I'd be happy to give up my medium in Mist. I already redecorate 2-3 times a year as the mood hits me so having to decorate from scratch is not a deterrent. A good instanced housing system could allow me to do more than I'm currently capable of doing. Controls to place an item anywhere I want within the instance (backwards, forwards, left, right, up, down)? Heck yeah. Controls allowing me to resize items so I can make some of my furnishing lala-size? I'm in. Allow me to share my item limit across all furnishing types so if I want 100 outdoor furnishings and only 230 indoor furnishings, I can have just that. I'm sold.

If the rest of RIFT was not such a mediocre game at best, I'd be getting my housing fix there because what players are able to do with Dimensions is far and above what housing in this game offers. And there's no demolition. All my housing that I had back in 2017 when I quit playing RIFT was still there when I returned for a visit last fall while waiting for Endwalker. Most of it was exactly as I left it (a few items that created special effects within the Dimension had changed how they display their effects).

[Arzalis]

Beyond the discussion of islands sanctuaries or instanced housing, they're adding a ton more housing already over the next 12-18 months without just bloating the number of wards. I'd appreciate a proper redesign or overhaul of the housing system in a future expansion but how does one manage that without potentially alienating the existing player base that's already spent time building up houses and wards?

I have a large and would absolutely give up the front yard to switch to a proper instanced system where everyone can get a house. I'm sure I am not alone there, either.

Theoretically you could just instance the front yards too, but almost anything is better than what we have.

[Illmaeran]

I have a large and would absolutely give up the front yard to switch to a proper instanced system where everyone can get a house. I'm sure I am not alone there, either.

Theoretically you could just instance the front yards too, but almost anything is better than what we have.

I'd be happy with my apartments and FC rooms if I could buy a plot with just-for-looks house with a large yard to landscape.

[Raoabolic]

I'm not sure I agree. In all of the MMOs I've played, this is by far the one with the most customizable housing.

Let me show you EQ2's housing system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttbMFLNA4Xk&t=20s
THIS is what I want this game's housing system to be. I know it's a pipe dream but the biggest problem about EQ2's housing is the fact it's attached to EQ2. I haven't seen an MMO do housing this well.

[Arazehl]

Let me show you EQ2's housing system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttbMFLNA4Xk&t=20s
THIS is what I want this game's housing system to be. I know it's a pipe dream but the biggest problem about EQ2's housing is the fact it's attached to EQ2. I haven't seen an MMO do housing this well.

EQ2 housing was terrible in many respects. Sure you had more ways to customize and unlimited use of the number of housing items, but because of that, the lag and load times were horrible. Each instance was huge and players would fill them to the brim with decorations, but at the same time you could feel the pull on the servers engines inside the instance as well as outside. There was no limit restrictions in place and also no limit set on how many you owned or what you could put in them. I would never want something like EQ2 had, because it was way too overboard and cause it's own set of issues. I know because I was a player and a Senior Guide for the game for years.

[Jojoya]

EQ2 housing was terrible in many respects. Sure you had more ways to customize and unlimited use of the number of housing items, but because of that, the lag and load times were horrible. Each instance was huge and players would fill them to the brim with decorations, but at the same time you could feel the pull on the servers engines inside the instance as well as outside. There was no limit restrictions in place and also no limit set on how many you owned or what you could put in them. I would never want something like EQ2 had, because it was way too overboard and cause it's own set of issues. I know because I was a player and a Senior Guide for the game for years.

Yet there's a lot of room for a middle ground between what FFXIV offers and what EQ2 or ESO or RIFT do, and Wildstar did offer.

Also don't forget that tech has improved significantly since EQ2 was released over a decade ago. One thing I noticed with RIFT was that they had significantly increased item limits in many of their Dimensions, with some of them doubling. One of my Dimensions I had basically capped out at 499 out of 500 items when I was actively playing now has a limit of 1000, and can even be increased to a maximum of 1600 (though it would require use of cash shop currency, no thanks).

This is a video of the Dimension I'm talking about when it is undecorated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTr-rWgkvM8

This is what I ended with.






Part of it looks absolutely nothing like the original but I was able to do it using their default housing tools, which include Z axis placement, full rotation and resizing items. Because some items I was able to resize to several times their normal size, it reduced the number of items I needed to place in some cases.

There is a middle ground to be found that would improve our housing system immensely while avoiding some of the pitfalls you experienced.

Yes, players using older hardware are going to lag compared to players with newer hardware. There's nothing new about that, some players already have noticeable lag in housing that they don't experience in other places in the game. I've got a better computer now than I had 4 years ago so the lag and rendering issues I used to experience in RIFT Dimensions no longer occur for me. They probably would occur for someone who's using a 10 year old PC.

Instanced housing would allow players to customize their own housing to what is reasonably tolerated by their hardware. Nothing says someone has to use up every bit of an item limit. There would be no heavy lag trying to load into a ward that's bogged down by the need to render items placed by multiple players. If they know they experience lag in other houses that are at item limit, they can choose not to enter another player's housing.

[Arzalis]

Wildstar really had a great system. Not only did you have an instanced house with placement that is similar to FFXIV (plus an unlocked height axis), you could link it up with other people and make your own little mini-ward.

The game had it's own issues, but housing certainly wasn't one of them.

I'd love to see FFXIV adopt that sort of ward system in the long run, but just personal/fc instanced houses is the only thing I ever feasibly expect.

[Divinemights]

Wildstar really had a great system. Not only did you have an instanced house with placement that is similar to FFXIV (plus an unlocked height axis), you could link it up with other people and make your own little mini-ward.

The game had it's own issues, but housing certainly wasn't one of them.

I'd love to see FFXIV adopt that sort of ward system in the long run, but just personal/fc instanced houses is the only thing I ever feasibly expect.

Do course housing isn’t going to be an issue for them because they barely has ability to sustain enough subscription to even keep the game alive.
Once player population reach a certain threshold, they too is going to have issue

[TwistedTea]

Do course housing isn’t going to be an issue for them because they barely has ability to sustain enough subscription to even keep the game alive.
Once player population reach a certain threshold, they too is going to have issue

There's a reason most MMORPGs with player housing choose fully instanced housing.

It's a superior scalable solution compared to limited housing like XIV's ward housing.

XIV's ward housing is a failure in terms of accessibility.

It requires far more server resources to keep the existing ward houses and to add additional wards to servers.

Using XIV apartments/FC chambers as an example of instanced housing, we can see how much better they scale. However, they're let down by the fact that we can't upgrade them for gil into larger spaces.