The Housing problem and my proposed solution

[Dree-Elle]

"Instanced" housing will *never* be worth what I paid for my house, "refund" or no. "Instanced" plots would all have the same look and view, to save on server stress and resources, with no individuality save for the building and minor landscaping. "Instanced" housing has no neighborhood feel. People can't be assed to scroll through the lists we have *now*; what makes you think anyone would bother to scroll through a list of thousands of players to find one individual "instance" to visit?

If an idea like this were to go through, I say instance ALL of it, not just personal housing. Free Company and personal housing are together now, let it all be together (alone) in instancing. Let the FCs suffer, too.

I have my home, in order to both see and be seen. I would quit the game (and I think others would too) if I lost my plot in favor of some "pocket dimension". Kick the inactives, and take their land. They're not paying rent (sub fee), they lose their home, just like in real life.

[Ferr]

.

People that can't have a house don't care about how much you wasted in your house
Just face it, things lose value. Same can be said about any expensive crafted pentamelted gear that gets outdated the nextpatch.

Even if you kick all of the inactives houses, that makes what.... houses for like 10% of the population without a house? What about the rest, fuck them, right?
And be sure that a lot of these new free houses will be for alts from rich people.

Let's face it, there's no solution to the housing problem other than:
- instancing
- a shit ton of plots for everyone (really hard to do).

The neightborhood is silly IMO. Neightborhoods are empty and even if they're full, people won't socialize (like what already happens in cities). At that point, seems like you only want a neightborhood just to brag about your house.

[Snugglebutt]

Even if you kick all of the inactives houses, that makes what.... houses for like 10% of the population without a house? What about the rest, fuck them, right?

10%? Total number of plots in this game equates to less than 1% of the playerbase, if just opening up inactive houses that's a tiny fraction of that already low 1%. On the topic of how active neighborhoods are I tend to see around 1-3 players from time to time that are from other FC's near our FC house which is not much. There is usually a few from our FC around there too, one of which is normally me and I might be seeing more present than most players at their homes do because ours is right next to the marketboard and summon bell.

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

This idea I like a lot, you get town personal house of various sizes with land and you also get to pick and choose who your neighbors are which creates your own neighborhood instead of being stuck next to inactive and dead/unused houses or bad neighbors. Not sure how the linking would work though in practice.

[Bishop81]

Probably apples and oranges but ...

Trove (effectively Minecraft Online) gives entire island to Clubs and you can do with it as you wish. You can build all sorts of fantastical things, e.g. floating islands, hollowed out floating sphere (i.e. like Cocoon), underwater hubs ... etc.

And they can provide such for every club in additional to every player having their own portable personal plot of 16x16 land that serves as their spawn point, wherever they drop it, when they die - but strangely enough, you can't drop it on the club island.

FFXIV housing while a ton more detailed graphically is quite a lot more restricted - and it isn't due to the graphics; EQ Next is also voxel based and is pretty detailed. You can't even change the layout of your house ... Heck, you can't even move the stupid light fixture in the center of the room, making partitioning a pain in the butt - not to mention that lighting is key to atmosphere; can't control the lighting, you can't control the "look" of the place.

Not asking for Minecraft level of construction. But The Sims level of construction I believe would be reasonable.

[TheUltimate3]

I'd like to for them to do what Log Horizon had shown (which from what I understand, is basically what Wildstar did, ala Makeda stated) and have a single (or four considering we have four major cities) central location with instanced housing in each. Don't care about the size (could be the size of an Inn room for all I care), but the key thing being instanced for people who cannot afford the legit neighborhood housing with the lots and everything. I would also provide a small public stable outside the capital cities for chocobo raising (in these public stables you can only tend to your own chocobo, and the experience gained lower than the ones in personal housing), and perhaps a small potted plant or something in the rooms to allow for some gardening (You can only plant at most 1 or 2 things.)

As stated, leave the current housing lots as is, if someone can drop the gil on buying it then more power to them. I personally would have made the houses far cheaper, but added a maintenance fee to keep the house standing. After the first month of not paying, the house is set to "condemned" and you can't go inside it until you pay the gil to reopen it. Go two months without paying it, and you lose the lot, with all of the stuff inside the house being moved to some sort of storage for safe keeping, but the lot is lost and free for someone else to purchase and build on.

This to me solves the major issue with housing offered in this game.

1) It allows players who want housing but can't drop 30 million gil on the lot a nice bit of personal space to play around in, while not stepping on the toes of the people who DO have the 30 million gil to drop on a lot.

2) It makes sure things aren't gated either by Free Company or having massive amounts of gil. A person in the apartments can still raise their chocobo and will still be able to grow plants, just naturally not to the extent of someone who did drop 30 million gil on a house.

3) Still encourages those who drop the gil on a house with the benefits, but adding a tax would at least open lots up so people can't buy a house, quit for 8 months and come back expecting their house still standing.

Finally, it would only be natural that if someone had already bought a house before this system was put in, the new price of the house would be taken and the rest would go into maintenance. So like, 30 million house, maybe half would go into the actual lot, and the rest would go into maintenance, giving them i don't know like a 6 months or a year buffer before they would have to start paying for it.

[Kydi]

Housing is a concern for anyone just joining the game.

Myself and several other friends from other MMOs have just joined the game on a busy server. We have a FC now, but our only way of getting a house will be to purchase one from someone else at an inordinate amount of money.

My suggestion, expand on Airships. Rather than gate behind FC crafting, allow purchase of an instanced airship. It could be limited in terms of decoration - for instance a general bridge area inside and personal rooms for individual FC members at low cost. Chocobo stables could be made available through purchasing an additional room in the airship, as could gardening plots etc. I'm envisaging this to be the sort of size of the Tantalus airship in FF9. It would be accessed through the Airship Landing of each major city, or could otherwise be teleported to using an Aetheryte as with a house. In terms of size, it would only ever be a similar sort of size to a medium house if everything was unlocked - an officers room and bridge deck (for everyone), an exterior deck and a cargo bay or something like that. Chocobo stables would go in the cargo bay and gardening on the deck. Set the cost to ~20m gil or so for the basic, and charge 5m gil per extra room. Personal rooms would be same cost as in a house (300k gil?).

It would open up a social area to newer Free Companies, wouldn't devalue having a house as they would still be exclusive and the only permanent areas for FCs and solve the housing crisis (IMO) in one.

[MistyMew]

Housing...ugh.....

Some servers wards may have some activity for sure...but its not a lot in a good chunk of them. (Im in the lav beds), and there may be some people running about but thats more in the first few original wards..anything beyond that, I may see 2-3 people ( if I went searching), but most times I see none.

Mind you Im cool with that needing to see others is last on my priority list for housing....dead last.

Neighbors aside though..the current system is too limiting. They are thinking far too small for every aspect of housing (except cost and the number of limitations)

If some people just want a house to have it "seen" for a strange form of epeen boost or arousal lol then thats a totally personal issue that needs some counselling imo. Theres being proud then there's...just plain being odd.

I for one want to enjoy the home itself, my area...what I create > trying to impress anyone else. Besides the current system doesn't allow for any uniqueness anyway we all use the exact same furniture in the exact same homes, the only difference is where to plop it down .
Theres no reason to go see anyone elses, we are all basically carbon copies , anyone who cant see that has never experienced what unique housing is like, or what being able to create can result in.

I always hyped a housing system like Rift dimensions and will never give up that goal, as it has so much more to offer all of us! It is by far leaps and bounds ahead of ffxiv.

Affordable, instanced, a zone...not a plot, item limits in the thousands, 100% player controlled and built , can still be visted and seen for those that are here just for a "look at what i did" mindset.. its vastly superior to this gamesin every possible way except graphic quality. It's disheartening considering Rift is so much older yet pulled off such a superior design, hands down.

Instanced could allow for the purchase of a large area .... a zone at least the size of an entire ward...sheesh! O.o

If they designed similar to Rift, we could control the weather, the time of day, bgm, and can literally build a floating castle as a home or rustic log cabin, a replica of any zone in-game... and fill it with not only the beautiful things SE has made but ANYTHING we choose to build....its endless, engaging, and the dreaded "f___" word...you know, that word so many cant quite grasp ....Fun!

The only limit would be the players /fc imagination. A truly customizable and 100% creative design for everyone. Now THATS something to be proud of.

Now wait!...I am aware of the massive effort it took to have what we already do!..Im not blind to the work they have done, but why any game would design such a bland and limited idea on purpose is mind numbing. If they couldnt offer a complete and fully engaging design then dont implement yet, don't introduce it until its exceptional and at least at the same level as other games.
It could have been so much more

They focused too much on the "perks" and the false sense of a lolneighborhood, and very little on the enjoyment of creating something unique which is (imo) 3/4 of what housing should be.

Focusing far too much on hoping we see a person run by instead thats couldnt care less about what you are doing btw, instead of giving us room to breathe and the freedom to create on a personal level or as a group with a fc area something that is stunning and worth noticing or visiting.

I dont want a room as my "home" as some have suggested, no..that's what the inns are for.

Players shouldn't have to settle for the design like ffxi either, that is a terrible design. For its day it was fine!! but today, housing should be a lot more then a glorified room. If you are gonna do it..dont go 1/2 way se.

My mog house in ffxi currently is full and we even have a second floor now but the design cant even remotely compare the the standard and depth of Rift. (and I am sure other games out there)

Why should we settle for something subpar? This game is relatively new and yet housing feels and plays ancient and so darn small. Its nothing beyond, basic..nothing.

I understand they wanted that "sense of community" when in the wards but at what cost to the majority of the players is the seeing that 1 person run by?

A severely limited design that only a few can enjoy?

If that's the case, then the cost was too high. Far far too high.

The "neighborhood" isnt worth all the enjoyment so many are missing...not even close to being worth it. I would trade a "neighborhood" in a heartbeat for a engaging housing design. And a design that is available to everyone.

Availability has to be #1 for them now. I feel so bad for those that haven't had the ability to buy a home yet. even with the endless limitations.

As times goes on I have seen players lowering their standards more and more just to have a piece of something "even a room will do...an apartment!" That's very sad and it should never have reached this stage imo.

SE needs to do whatever it takes to accommodate all their players....a year ago would have been nice.
We would have no leg to stand on if it was a ftp game, but it isn't , we pay and are trying to support the business....our voices and satisfaction should count. Its a 2 way street . Supply from their end should be sufficient now for old players and new alike and a revamp would be a godsend

Upgrade, redesign..completely revamp...whatever it takes.

Players settling for less should never be the solution or even a suggestion.

Not gonna get that from me anyway.

[Waeksyn]

Instanced housing could be as varied and exciting as development budget will allow. Think of having 20+ different options (for different prices) when you purchase your instanced home - each with different building design, overall landscape theme and amenities (garden plots, stables, etc). They could feed into a "lobby" area that has things like MB and bell and housing related NPCs (things that you need to leave your current house to access in the wards now) to preserve a "community" gathering place.


The only thing that would be missing is the ability to show off your house to the general public and even that could be included (I'm thinking the ability to set "open house" to invite the public to tour your house, or to restrict access to those in your party, FC, LS, etc.). I think that would be a fair trade-off to enable EVERYONE that pays a subscription to have access to housing and all of the content that is gated behind housing (gardening, stables, workshop, airship ventures, etc).

[Makeda]

Instanced housing

The only thing that would be missing is the ability to show off your house to the general public and even that could be included (I'm thinking the ability to set "open house" to invite the public to tour your house, or to restrict access to those in your party, FC, LS, etc.). I think that would be a fair trade-off to enable EVERYONE that pays a subscription to have access to housing and all of the content that is gated behind housing (gardening, stables, workshop, airship ventures, etc).

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.

[Makeda]

"Instanced" housing will *never* be worth what I paid for my house, "refund" or no. "Instanced" plots would all have the same look and view, to save on server stress and resources, with no individuality save for the building and minor landscaping. "Instanced" housing has no neighborhood feel.

Obviously tou never played Wilsstar.
Hint: the housing deaign community is larger than the raiding community. Tthere is a crafting profession that makes furniture and its the only still valuable profession (they failed to boost crafting in their tier bumps, but everyone needs a chair and new walls).

People make custom houses, gardens, even recreations of starship bridges and etc.

Housing contests and showings are a huge scene there.

And the upcoming patch will add instanced neighborhoods.

You are thinking EQ2. The difference is 10 years of MMO history.