Housing: Square Enix is failing to accomplish what Lord of The Rings Online did in 07

[Midareyukki]

I mean... this is elaborate for me...

That's alright. But for me, for example, I want to use as much detail as I can And some stuff you just plain can't do with apartments.

This is the bath room I made for a friend's house. It's in his upstairs floor, because I had to float partitions and those large beds through the roof. Without an additional floor, I don't know how anyone can pull this off. I don't know of any glitch that lets you float things down. But I really wish Square would let us!!



Apologies for the Hrothgar "nudity". The inspiration was "Roman bath house", so I tried emulating the Greco-Roman statues.

A lot of sweat, tears and pulled-out hair went into making this @w@;; I hate floating. So much.
Please disregard the clipping. It's disgusting and I hate it and it makes me want to tear the place down, but he keeps having to tell me "it's fiiiiine" when NO IT'S NOT FINE GRRR.... T_T why can't Square just make things fit!?

Did you know there's a limit to those ponds? If you float them too high, they go through the roof. And if it's the top roof, you're F'd and need to start over and get them through the furniture list. AM I HAVING FUN YET?

[Shibi]

AM I HAVING FUN YET?

You did a great job! It's awesome in style and the statues are perfect for it.

[Midareyukki]

This is my experience with housing. So feel free to disagree and to dismiss it as you wish. However.

Housing in terms of availability in this game is an absolute disaster. It isn't something you can just up and get, you need to wait for there to be space for you. Odds are, you'll get a Small. A Medium is super rare, and a Large is downright impossible unless you're there when the raffle is still going and manage to somehow win. Then, you need to compete with people who likely also want a house. Money is a detriment for some people, but if you can fork between 3m to 50m, you're fine. If not, good luck. The alternative are apartments, which... on one hand are convenient if you want quick housing. On the other hand are limited in number as well, and if you play in a high-density area (Balmung?), you're sh*t out of luck.

Then you have the furniture that you can place. There are, or at least there were, limitations on how many aquariums and NPCs you could place depending on the house's size. The 300 furniture number is too arbitrary. It's fine for a Small. It's somewhat tight for a Medium if you want detail. And a hindrance to Larges. Though I suppose this is to accomodate low-end computers? And finally, some furnitures are FREAKISHLY huge. Some are nice and compact, and then suddenly you have a giant mammoth furniture. This poses a two-way problem.
1 - If you're living in a Small or even a Medium, you can't afford too many large furnitures due to how much space they take up. The space very clearly isn't kept in mind when designing these things, and houses are laid out like arse anyway (am I the only one who finds the entry floor of a medium too narrow?). Sure, the solution is "less large stuff then", but some of it really does blend well. Some stuff you just can't pull off without having that one piece, because there isn't anything like it. Even worse if you're going for a theme...
2 - If you play a standard-sized race or a small race like Lalafell, there's quite a lot of space for you. I speak from experience as a Highlander, Xaela and Sun Seeker before. But the moment you go for a plus-sized race, not only are the furnitures not form-fitting, the space you once worked with has to be redesigned. It's really easy to have a Roegadyn clip their head through the roof if you add lofts to split a floor in two. That bath room I made? It's not very spacious, it only accomodates the two bathtubs and that's it. It's cramped. Just fine for about any race except for Roes and Hrothgar.

Plus, you also have the fact that Apartments cannot place Exterior Furniture, making it moot.

Lastly, the decoration system is ludicrously limited. You borderline need two floors to get detail in. You cannot float stuff down in the game, meaning apartments suffer tremendously. I understand that it might have to do with memory allocation. But it's still a clear disadvantage. Apartments are an appetizer of actual housing.
They could expand it vertically for a higher fee. Though I doubt they would.
And\Or they could rework the way their decoration system works. Allow for people to place things more freely. Resorting to glitches is an awful experience. Grid Snap is a lie, because it's based on your camera's position when you open it. Allowing people to remove the wall fixtures (pillars, windows, rails...) and letting them place things vertically would really help.
As well as how some stuff is just not uniform at all. If you find a house that's designed, try to clip through the furniture to see what's around. You'll find protruding beams and stuff like that all over the place, because a lot of the furniture just doesn't fit the rest of the house. I'd LOVE to have more of those partitions with windows... but they take up more space than the actual partitions themselves. And that size isn't exact either. It doesn't take up 2 partitions or 1 partition and a half. It's either more or less, and even if it did, where would I find "half a partition" to hide the size issue to begin with? As well as furniture clearly meant to be behind walls, but are CURVED for some reason, thus clipping through walls anyway! And these inconsistencies add up with the lack of space thing, it's not just an aesthetic flaw.

...rant aside, these are why I think we should either rework the system entirely, or have better instanced housing. And why, even if a necessary evil to have the countdown on houses, you lose quite a lot if you let it go over. It doesn't feel like I'm allowed to "take a break".

[FireMage]

So because someone disagrees with you, you immediately call them a troll?

Maybe look up their topics and do some basic research?

[vanaii]

Lord of the Rings Online charges an upkeep fee to keep your estate. It's enough to add up if you don't monitor it, and they do limit how far in advance you can pay.

In contrast, Square keeps turning off demolition every time a fat cat eats another can of tuna.

[Midareyukki]

You did a great job! It's awesome in style and the statues are perfect for it.

Thank you.

[Deveryn]

Lord of the Rings Online charges an upkeep fee to keep your estate. It's enough to add up if you don't monitor it, and they do limit how far in advance you can pay.

In contrast, Square keeps turning off demolition every time a fat cat eats another can of tuna.

I had forgotten about upkeeps. EQ and EQ2 also charge upkeep on housing.
In 1: There's a weekly upkeep on housing. If you leave, your stuff gets packed up in a box for when you return.
In 2: Guild Halls require lots of cash plus status (an alt currency) to keep the doors open. You could spend some of their company currency on personal housing. You get an amount for free if you keep a subscription.

I'm sure other games have their own versions of this.

So, none of this is new. The demolition is just a more extreme consequence.

[Midareyukki]

I had forgotten about upkeeps. EQ and EQ2 also charge upkeep on housing.
In 1: There's a weekly upkeep on housing. If you leave, your stuff gets packed up in a box for when you return.
In 2: Guild Halls require lots of cash plus status (an alt currency) to keep the doors open. You could spend some of their company currency on personal housing. You get an amount for free if you keep a subscription.

I'm sure other games have their own versions of this.

So, none of this is new. The demolition is just a more extreme consequence.

Hmm... so access to the housing is what other games mess with. FF14 does the demolition timer because there isn't enough supply and there were too many hoarders back then. Do the other games have a limited supply as well?

[Aword3213]

It looks awesome

Great Job

[Shibi]

In 2: Guild Halls require lots of cash plus status (an alt currency) to keep the doors open. You could spend some of their company currency on personal housing. You get an amount for free if you keep a subscription.

Yep, absolutely!

I ran a guild with a large FC hall off Freeport for long time. A lot of grinding to buy the hall (uses status to buy) and status for upkeep. Even though they were instanced areas, if you didn't pay, the door was locked until you did. It was a way to ensure that the guild remained active, when it no longer earnt enough status, then the hall was packed away.

After I gave the Large to my officers and went to play - Rift I think - for a while, I ground up a personal small there in Timerous Deep in my spare time. I went back recently, paid the status and the hall was back in a few moments. Just archived off for maybe 5 or 6 years.