3 L-sized patches of land

[Shougun]

If it does work that way, then down the line you're going to start seeing instances with just 3 L-sized houses and nothing else. What about the other sized spots? I'm curious if they also must fill up first before the new instance is created.

I was worried about this too :/

Or another pattern (All M houses full). @Anyone: Never played LOTR what happened in that case?

[Enma]

I really hate the idea of having to camp land. The price? I don't mind, I can start saving and such. But if I spend months farming and when I get there all L-sized patches of land are sold out? Doesn't seem fair.



SE might say this, but its obvious that people with capped gil will be able to buy them before other plays. And if the amount of land is limited... its basically you have the money on release, or you lucked out.

Yoshi speaks of Instances, that is how housing will be managed. Each one will have its own limits on number of houses, players inside and so on. It's easy to understand that there won't ever be just 9 L-size Houses in all of Eorzea. (3 for each city)
But each instance will do, so that inside it you will see a more realistic pattern with S-M-L Houses all together. It's a supposition but probably if you have enough money you can always buy an L-size House.

P.S.
Keep in mind also that this is just a traslation with possible mistakes, and surely don't contain all the infos about housing that all of us want.

[Liadan]

I think you all need to re-read the Q&A, as you seem to be missing the point that the larger tracks of land are marketed towards free-companies. So yes, they are going to take a ridiculous amount of gil because they are not expecting just one character/player to foot the bill. They basically came right out and said that housing as a whole is going to be focused more towards free-companies at first, rather than individual players.

Q: Will houses be personal or shared?
A: First it will be joint housing. A house of this size is going to require everyone to dish out some dough. It’s pretty expensive.

You can make furniture available to people of the same free company, or, if you want, you can set permission levels so all of your friends can use the furniture and what not. There are quite a few settings.

The reason why we’ve decided to establish them as free company bases first is because inside of the houses there is a new kind of system that involves parks and towers.

Parks would give a bonus to everyone in the free company, like an extra 25% to experience points earned. It could make crafting faster to level, or maybe give success bonuses for HQ crafting. It's a system that allows members to add things that will give boons to the entire free company. You’ll be able to increase the size of your house, and also your company can rank-up through free company points, allowing you to place more parks and towers around.


I’d first like to create a strong community within FFXIV. When new members join, you’ll be able to get more points, and we’d like to establish a system that encourages people to support new players coming into the game. Once the community has had time to come together we will then allow players to have their own private housing and branch out from there

Even for an MMO, I believe it’s nice to have a place to call home.

[Griss]

The thing i wonder about is how they will handle players who have a house and then quit playing.

It would suck to buy a plot and house and then a couple months down the line be all alone in a ghost neighborhood.

[Mjollnir]

I was worried about this too :/

Or another pattern (All M houses full). @Anyone: Never played LOTR what happened in that case?

Housing instances are generally used for storage and trophies; it's rare you'll meet anyone there for your personal house, however the Kinship (ie FC) houses are a bit busier.

In LotRO, there are 16 standard, 7 deluxe and 4 kinship houses per instance. When the game was more popular, all of the deluxe houses would sell out first and spawn a new instance. Just checked online now and there isn't really anyone with a deluxe house. There are a decent number of standard houses. Most zones have three to four Kinship houses in. There are about two-hundred named instances (must have been someone's fun job coming up with all those unique names), but that's for one 'nation' as it were. Presumably, the other three nations have a similar population.

An important point is that you can't 'buy' a property, you can only rent it, so you have a weekly upkeep to pay (gil sink - I don't like this, but hey). Irregular players can easily afford a standard house. Regular players can afford their own Kinship house (if they have a Kinship that meets the pre-reqs). I don't think for an instant that there are 2,400 active kinships on a random EU LotRO server (more like 24..?), so I'm presuming that individuals pay for the huge space to display personal trophies and increase their storage capability. If you fail to keep good on the upkeep, your kit goes into an escrow NPC and you lose your particular house.

So it sounds like the FFXIV housing instance idea will be like this, but with purchase and not rent.

The thing i wonder about is how they will handle players who have a house and then quit playing.

It would suck to buy a plot and house and then a couple months down the line be all alone in a ghost neighborhood.

I see your point, but I doubt people will be spending too much time in their own gardens. Even if I logged on to do some gardening, crafting and chocobo raising for an hour every day, I'd still be off gathering, levelling, exploring, hunting for the majority of my play time. If I wanted to hang out with the general populace, I'd still hit the city.

All I mean is, if you have fifty (pulled that number out of my ass as a high estimate) people with property in your instance, the likelihood you'd be there at the same time as them is quite low, let alone being in sight of them to wave hi, or generally make it feel like the neighbourhood is 'alive'.

The point that I'm laboriously getting to is that, even at the game's peak, housing instances may well seem like ghost towns anyway due purely to the amount of time a given player would hang out in them.

[Abriael]

Housing zones will be sharded and created on demand. They already confirmed this.

[Shougun]

Housing zones will be sharded and created on demand. They already confirmed this.

We dont have to share :P, but you'd have to be pretty rich.

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Yeah that's what I thought LOTR did, tax/rent. Not something I'd be excited to see >.>

Hopefully they found some efficient way to store the data so they wont consider a system to bump out house owners. Also would probably good to have some way to merge housing districts since when the game slows down I'm sure some people are going to be alone lol.

[Abriael]

We dont have to share :P, but you'd have to be pretty rich.

SharDed

[Nuinn]

I actually prefer the tax/rent system in LotRO. . . . I just can't remember (haven't played in a looooong time) what happens to your house once you fail to pay for the upkeep. I "think" my house got locked, last time I checked, and to reclaim it I had to pay a certain (big) fee. . . . but not sure if it eventually became available for other players to buy (since I obviously had no further intent of ever getting back to it). I seriously hope it went back onto the market, as then my neighbour won't be forever stuck living by a house that's never ever going to be inhabited again. I really, really hope this, or closely to this is how housing is handled in ARR. I don't want people quitting and having empty, yet claimed(!!!) lots or houses next to mine, when a friend could easily buy the unused space :/

[Shougun]

SharDed

:O! Damn lol. Misread ftw.

Another question is when your FC puts there house down in a zone can you move your house to that zone? (Create a neighborhood) Or is there a fast travel to house option? Imagining your house in one zone and then the FC is in a whole other zone (like different housing theme area).

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Couldnt they just make an AFK housing feature where if you dont log on in X time the house gets kicked to an AFK lot.