The Housing problem and my proposed solution

[Jynx]

Good day forumites! With the news that the development team is finally considering having a decay on the current housing system it's become a bit of a hot topic on the forums.

Personally I find that this is something that is needed, but is a bandaid to a broken system that needs to be re-worked from the ground up. But first we need to identify the main problems with the system as it stands.


The problem!

• Housing is limited and in extreme demand
• Players can retain housing no matter current subscription status or even banned
• Players can buy MULTIPLE houses
• Individual Players share the same space with free companies
• Rapid inflation of gil means more and more players can afford housing further increasing scarcity
• Players in general treating the game as a solo endeavor rather than a group.
  

Currently due to the haphazard release of personal housing the housing situation has only become more and more dire as time has passed due to the lack of being unable to revoke housing plots of inactive players. Problems also arise regardless of this fact due to the popularity of housing in general, there is no way to accomidate every single player with their own plot of land in a housing in a ward. Fact of the matter that if it were possible without being cost prohibitive to Square Enix you wouldn't be reading this right now.


The solution is obvious but the implementation of it is stiffled by only what seems to be Square Enix's refusal to admit they underestimated demand and released the personal housing system without actually doing anything to forsee the obvious result that players have told them about from Day 1 of the expansion of the system from Free Company to Personal.


The Solution!

Let's face the facts there will never be enough plot space for the players who want housing as it exists, we need to remove personal housing from the company wards. What SE will do about currently owned personal homes I don't care if they allow current owners to keep them as long as the upcoming decay system is in place the number of currently owned Personal houses would remain static and only decline as time moved forward freeing up space for companies to use.

Personal Housing needs to be as easy to obtain as possible yet be able to expand as the player themselves grow, I suggest that all personal housing be moved to the Inn room that players start the game with (Early in the storyline at least). by doing this the developers can use an allready existing system that allready is tagged for almost ever single player in the game.

I suggest that the inn rooms you have at the start of the game and your personal company room become interlinked (Keep the 100k fee if you want and explain it as a maintenance fee to change your rooms connection)

This room should start out as the exact inn room your start with as your base furnature, but as time went on you would be able to purchase or upgrade your personal room in different ways.


-Larger floor plan
-Multiple floors
-Larger item capacity
-purchase a small plot of land for outdoor furnishings
-Modular rooms you can interconect


Some of these upgrades should be good gil sinks, others can be amazing rewards for ingame acheivments.

The point is that the players room can become something that grows with them as their character grows and expands, these rooms would be linked to your character and not your free company the only thing you would loose in the event of company departure is your 100k connection fee to be repayed when you join a new Free company (Your room will always be accessable from the inn, for this purpose)

The Lore! (Because we know someone will be against this for lore reason)


Look, Square Enix has allready giving themselves an easy out on any insane thing they want to make sense in the FFXIV universe.

ALLAGANS

Let's face it like another game series Metal Gear Solid has Nanomachines to explain everything from a omnipotent weapons net to a unkillable vampire Square has the perfect easy out lore explination for everything.

The ancient wisdom of Allag layed to waste to give you etherial access to Allagan Housing units. Available from your inn room and transferable to your personal room in company housing.

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Don't like the Ancient Allag? In XI moogles were integral parts of the players personal housing. Introducing MMS (Moogle Moving Services)

[Fenral]

I'm against this because screw Allagans!

Jokes aside, I sort of feel like linking personal rooms to FC housing was kind of a waste. You had a personal inn room in 1.0, so they could totally have done something with that, and justify it with some kind of Moogle moving service that transfers your stuff as-is to wherever you set your personal room location to be.

[Canadane]

ou had a personal inn room in 1.0

We still have this.

[Fenral]

We still have this.

The lore justification and underlying idea are different. You also can't set your inn room in a specific city as a secondary return point anymore, and the fact remains that the other systems we have in place of that are locked to a finite number of plots per server.

[Nadirah]

Not to mention the inn rooms aren't exactly "housing", but a central point of stuff that people tend to use elsewhere.

Only thing I go into the inn room for is the crystal bell, and even then, if I could use it outside there, I would.

[JeniLinsky]

As far as I can tell, the only advantage that the current housing system has over FFXI's mog houses is the outdoor / gardening stuff. If I don't actually care about outdoor furniture, and don't really care about gardening, can I have my mog house back, pretty please?

[FoxyAreku]

So instead of people getting a house, they just get a customizable inn room? Am I understanding this correctly?

Because if so that's terrible. Having a room isn't near as fun as a whole house, and I'd certainly never trade my personal house for a room.

As far as I can tell, the only advantage that the current housing system has over FFXI's mog houses is the outdoor / gardening stuff. If I don't actually care about outdoor furniture, and don't really care about gardening, can I have my mog house back, pretty please?

The advantage is it not being instanced. The neighborhood feel is very nice.

[Naunet]

The advantage is it not being instanced. The neighborhood feel is very nice.

Instanced housing + voluntary linking of homes to create neighborhoods... it's been done before.

That is what Wildstar does. You csn set access to private, friends, neighbors, or public.
Neighbors is determined in some method I'm not knowledgeable on.

Everyone gets a plot at level 14 (of 50), for free, and you have to buy the building, furniture, trees/landscaping. But the basic buildings are cheap.

Neighbor status is basically an invite status. You can also set people as "roommate", which lets them edit the housing plot.

Honestly, WS's housing system is the best out there. More MMOs could stand to emulate it.

Obviously tou never played Wilsstar.
Hint: the housing deaign community is larger than the raiding community.

Indeed. If the housing system is good enough, a community will form around it. It's one of the biggest communities in the entire game in WildStar.

[Kosmos992k]

Indeed. If the housing system is good enough, a community will form around it. It's one of the biggest communities in the entire game in WildStar.

Not to pick on you specifically, as there are many, many posters who do this, but.... Do you think one day it will be possible for people to discuss aspects of this game (FFXIV), without referring to other games as a reference point? I mean, other than people who have played whichever game you reference, no one knows what you're talking about. Perhaps it would be more helpful to describe what you want them to do instead of simply saying "But, <insert other game name here> does it better...".

[Naunet]

Not to pick on you specifically, as there are many, many posters who do this, but.... Do you think one day it will be possible for people to discuss aspects of this game (FFXIV), without referring to other games as a reference point? I mean, other than people who have played whichever game you reference, no one knows what you're talking about. Perhaps it would be more helpful to describe what you want them to do instead of simply saying "But, <insert other game name here> does it better...".

Don't worry about "picking on". xD I've described it quite a few times, but to clarify: In WildStar, the housing system works as individual plots in their own instances. Each plot has an exterior (currently with an item limit of 1,000, though in the next patch that limit will be going up to 2,500), and you can choose to place a house if you want that has a separate interior (with its own item limit of 1,000, soon to be 2,500).

Housing plots can be set as private, neighbor-only, or public. (Neighbors are basically people you grant special invite access to.) You can customize the ground, the skybox, the exterior and interior of the house, and the lighting inside, as well as the music that plays (can be different exterior and interior). With the large item limits and robust decor placement (you can manipulate an item on XYZ axes, as well as resize it), you can pretty much create anything you can dream of. There are also pre-arranged "fabkits" that you can plug into slots on the plot, many of which come with interactive challenges or even scalable instances. A future incoming feature is "neighborhoods", where players will be able to link up multiple plots to create one massive... well, neighborhood.

It's hard to fully describe the level of customization and how absurdly awesome the housing community is. xD Google up some housing plots if you wanna see what people can do with a housing system that actually works for them, instead of something that... does the exact opposite, as we have here in FFXIV.