Instanced Housing

[Palin]

Once again, that's an improvement to certain people, but not for everyone, that's your opinion that it would be an improvement for everyone.

Improvement for everyone is not possible, but I consider this new system to be an improvement for more people that sticking to only ward system could ever be.

What part of housing isn't working as intended?

I never meant any actual house decorating or functional systems to be of issue. You know what I meant: the way houses are acquired is plagued by artificial scarcity. The housing as we see it now was actually designed to be for free company only. That means any house was meant to be used by several to even hundreds people at once, generating traffic and creating this mythical “neighborhood feel”. Allowing individual people to purchase plots is what drove the demand through the roof and made the housing miss its mark.

Every other gameplay feature where you acquire something is either “fulfill any demands or requirements and you will be guaranteed the item”(such as buying mounts or glams for currency) or “you can drop this item with RNG chance but you can try and try again one after another for how long do you want”(like dungeon minions). Either way there is always an basically infinite supply of rewards for anyone and they are all equal. Meanwhile housing never guarantees when or even if the spot you desire will be available again. It’s an outlier that should not be a thing.
I also don’t think that a housing mirage will be the answer that people seek(i don’t think it will be what most people hope it would be). At best it will be good enough that people will claim all houses available on a few more servers, making it have the same shortage problems as NA servers and make people wait for band aid solutions in forms of dropping new wards every few years. And people will still fight over locations with the best outdoor views.

Also I don't think you understand what I mean with “That thousands of people around the world should have their houses deleted from the game” when my whole intention is to give everyone the ability to have any house they want. And despite what my messages might imply i don’t think wards should be removed as a thing, but exist alongside it. Consider ward housing as “adventurer houses” and instance housing as “warrior of light house”

Unless the backend of those "other MMO games" are identical to this one your comparison is completely irrelevant.

I understand why people are salty about getting a larger house but "jUsT Do InStAnCeD hOuSiNg" is a non-starter.

You don’t need to have an identical backend to achieve similar results. And they did give us instanced islands where you can place outdoor furnishings. It’s not exactly the same with the system copying the items but it’s going somewhere.

[Divinemights]

Why wouldn't you call ESO successful? It's hitting its 10 year anniversary this year (only a year behind this game if you start with ARR instead of 1.0) and still going with new content continuing to be added.

It would be same reason that I will not refers FF11 a successful MMORPG.
It is a love letter to FF franchise fanboy and a game hold up by fanbase.
I admit I had a good time in FF11 but the fact does not change.
FF11 is not a successful MMORPG title. (SE only refers it as best selling FF title)
ESO falls into same category.
The Bethesda fanboys will keep it alive just like how they in denial that Starfield is a boring game.
If ESO is successful as you claim it is and it it had better instance housing then why FF14 and WoW are the go-to MMORPG for players want to enter this genre?

We also had same conversation 4 years ago, any luck on your push for instanced housing.
You clearly don’t understand the Asian culture and expect a non Western company like SE to bow down to noisy minority.
It is not going to happen

[Reinha]

At best it will be good enough that people will claim all houses available on a few more servers, making it have the same shortage problems as NA servers and make people wait for band aid solutions in forms of dropping new wards every few years. And people will still fight over locations with the best outdoor views.

First of all, thank you for the in depth answer! I don't deny that people will fight over the best plots until the servers shut down. However, having to compete doesn't mean the system is faulty and it is not a reason to put development resources into a second housing system when we already have one. Well, three if you count apartments and the island, but almost no one uses those (ironic considering they are much closer to instanced housing). Auto-demo ensures there is a constant supply of empty plots so there will be no shortages. The game's population is going down, not up.

You know what I meant: the way houses are acquired is plagued by artificial scarcity. The housing as we see it now was actually designed to be for free company only. That means any house was meant to be used by several to even hundreds people at once, generating traffic and creating this mythical “neighborhood feel”. Allowing individual people to purchase plots is what drove the demand through the roof and made the housing miss its mark.

A house can be used by dozens or hundreds of people even now. It happens everywhere when people choose to join massive free companies or visit venues that host events. It works exactly the way it was designed and the traffic is there if for anyone who wants it. Houses can also be owned by small free companies. My fc had neighbors like that back in ARR and I never saw them. This doesn't conflict with the original design as the devs have always known the majority of fcs are on the smaller side. Neighborhoods are a mix of quiet and noise.

Instanced housing wouldn't bring people together but further separate everyone into their own instances. If the devs' intentions for housing were to make it a social feature, instanced housing would actually go against that. People don't pay a designer to design their island sanctuary or hire staff and organize an island sanctuary venue, but they do both in ward houses. The apartment building door is not exactly a prime gathering place and there is no reason to assume the gateway to instanced houses would be any different.

I don’t think wards should be removed as a thing, but exist alongside it. Consider ward housing as “adventurer houses” and instance housing as “warrior of light house”

I'm actually not against separate instanced housing. People can keep asking for it obviously but I don't believe it's ever going to happen. Instanced housing carries none of the benefits ward housing does and doesn't offer any new gameplay to people who already have a house.

Ward housing keeps people engaged whether it's by the allure of submarines that require daily logins or the creative and social aspects that draw people together. Even the hated scarcity/FOMO element benefits the game: people have to stay subscribed in order to participate in the lottery or to keep their house from being auto-demoed. That may be all they do with their subscription, but if any of those people also decide to message a friend, visit the market board or do some content while subscribed, the game gains activity directly because of those two features. Incentivizing logins is the goal of every feature in an MMO and the current housing system achieves it.

[Palin]

First of all, thank you for the in depth answer! I don't deny that people will fight over the best plots until the servers shut down. However, having to compete doesn't mean the system is faulty and it is not a reason to put development resources into a second housing system when we already have one.

I thank you as well for your answer! In regards to competition, the problem is that it still crashes with the rest of the game where players mostly don’t compete with each other but rather cooperate. The only outlier would be pvp where you still get compensated with exp, tomes and gold even if you lose. The most extreme case is competitive crystalline conflict, but even here you have safety nets (if you reach a certain rank you cannot fall below it) and you get aforementioned rewards. In general the idea is, whenever you put your time and effort in, you will get something in return. Compared to that housing lottery or placard clicking feels like a waste of time. In regards to other options, apartments are small boxes where you can put at best 90 items and island sanctuary only allows outdoor furnishings (thus only fraction of furniture) and is hidden behind finishing endwalker. While you can have fun with those it’s purposefully limited potential

Instanced housing wouldn't bring people together but further separate everyone into their own instances. If the devs' intentions for housing were to make it a social feature, instanced housing would actually go against that.

The thing is that I (and probably others who want instanced housing) do not consider it a social gameplay feature and don’t consider lack of guests a dealbreaker. Point is to have a larger space one can decorate for ourselves. Wards could remain for those who want venues and social gatherings but many simply don’t care. So it’s not a problem to consider when having such a system.

[Palin]

I'm actually not against separate instanced housing. People can keep asking for it obviously but I don't believe it's ever going to happen. Instanced housing carries none of the benefits ward housing does and doesn't offer any new gameplay to people who already have a house.

Instanced housing can have many new gameplay features if properly untangled from wards. We could have houses in places where there could be no wards at all(since they seem to be tied to market boards and need to be connected to any main hub for a given expansion). We could have seamless outdoor/indoor transition without loading screens. A bigger outdoor and possibly side buildings we can decorate. There can be an entire storyline about acquiring a house and then upgrading its size (housing grind similar to relic grind).

Ward housing keeps people engaged whether it's by the allure of submarines that require daily logins or the creative and social aspects that draw people together. Even the hated scarcity/FOMO element benefits the game: people have to stay subscribed in order to participate in the lottery or to keep their house from being auto-demoed.

Problem with such a system is that a person that loses their house, especially if it was a prized location or congested server might go “welp not doing that again” and be much less likely to come back to the game at all. Also it again clashes with “you can take a breaks” design of the game, while other mechanics (such as gearing up) tend to go along with it.

If ESO is successful as you claim it is and it it had better instance housing then why FF14 and WoW are the go-to MMORPG for players want to enter this genre?

Maybe because they put all the cool items in the cash shop, their writing is mid at best, the combat system can be confiusing for newcomers and requires basically an ascended glitch to perform at any respectable level and any form of endgame content requires constant meta chasing and character stat tweaking. Not something that could easly attract mass appeal

Still they have their audience, and even went on to win a few awards from community choice. I'd call it a fairly successful
Also does not mean they cannot do anything right and I still consider ESO housing to be a much better system and something similar in FF would go a long way.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Instanced housing can have many new gameplay features if properly untangled from wards. We could have houses in places where there could be no wards at all(since they seem to be tied to market boards and need to be connected to any main hub for a given expansion). We could have seamless outdoor/indoor transition without loading screens. A bigger outdoor and possibly side buildings we can decorate. There can be an entire storyline about acquiring a house and then upgrading its size (housing grind similar to relic grind).

This is one of the biggest points in favor of instanced for me… just think of all the things we could have added to housing that we’re not able to have because of the ward limitations! And as you’ve said, not everyone cares about the social aspect of housing, and the wards will still be there for those that do. Many of us just want a customizable space to decorate, and a friends or FC member only access like the islands have would be just fine. Can you imagine the Island’s outdoor furnishing system, only with an actual house you could decorate just like a ward house? Or maybe one of those open air cabins that we could actually decorate? Or any number of other things they could add… the trade off for the extra features could be that they’re more “generic,” with a handful of basic themes, the main difference between them is all in the creativity of how the owner makes it look. There’s a lot of ideas people here have had, and a lot of them are pretty good!

A big thing people really want to see is a plot that can be any size, so it can be upgraded (or even downgraded) at will. But a lot more than that just want their own house to decorate without having to move servers. And there’s no reason we couldn’t have ward and instanced alongside each other.

[Yuniko]

This is one of the biggest points in favor of instanced for me… just think of all the things we could have added to housing that we’re not able to have because of the ward limitations! And as you’ve said, not everyone cares about the social aspect of housing, and the wards will still be there for those that do. Many of us just want a customizable space to decorate, and a friends or FC member only access like the islands have would be just fine. Can you imagine the Island’s outdoor furnishing system, only with an actual house you could decorate just like a ward house? Or maybe one of those open air cabins that we could actually decorate? Or any number of other things they could add… the trade off for the extra features could be that they’re more “generic,” with a handful of basic themes, the main difference between them is all in the creativity of how the owner makes it look. There’s a lot of ideas people here have had, and a lot of them are pretty good!

A big thing people really want to see is a plot that can be any size, so it can be upgraded (or even downgraded) at will. But a lot more than that just want their own house to decorate without having to move servers. And there’s no reason we couldn’t have ward and instanced alongside each other.

Well said sweetie! <3

[DPZ2]

Well, three if you count apartments and the island, but almost no one uses those (ironic considering they are much closer to instanced housing).

Just wanted to disabuse the notion that almost no players "use apartments" (or their predecessors ... FC rooms).

There are more apartments "in use" than there are actual houses in-game. It's easy enough to see this on the populated servers, as there are 64 houses and 90 apartments in each ward. I'll agree that some players use them as lumber rooms, but a lot of other players who don't need a front yard purchase one at 500,000 gil (and no lottery) and then dabble in decorating.

I agree pretty much with the rest of this poster's thoughts here.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Just wanted to disabuse the notion that almost no players "use apartments" (or their predecessors ... FC rooms).

Yep! I have an FC room, an apartment, an island and a house, and I decorate them all.

Most people who want a house also have apartments and/or FC rooms as well. But they want a house too, and that’s perfectly understandable when we’re all paying a sub here.

[Divinemights]

Maybe because they put all the cool items in the cash shop, their writing is mid at best, the combat system can be confiusing for newcomers and requires basically an ascended glitch to perform at any respectable level and any form of endgame content requires constant meta chasing and character stat tweaking. Not something that could easly attract mass appeal

Still they have their audience, and even went on to win a few awards from community choice. I'd call it a fairly successful
Also does not mean they cannot do anything right and I still consider ESO housing to be a much better system and something similar in FF would go a long way.

Now there, you are just being salty.
When ESO is actually made by a company showing their greed on trying to gain money on free mods.

Again, I don't doubt ESO has an housing system you want, but it doesn't mean FF14 need to clone it.
Just because you want a large house and can't get it doesn't mean Ward is a failure, it is just not the style you want.
Takes Android vs IOS, each has their weakness and strength and you have freedom to choose, but it doesn't mean both platform need to be same.
Being noisy on a social platform doesn't makes you correct