The Housing problem and my proposed solution

[Preypacer]

Budget has nothing to do with ingenious creation but everything to do with creating more of the same. Taking an idea and reshaping it is different from copy pasting.
I was being honest not being in jingoism. I've never heard of the game WildStar. FC are for guilds not soloist. SE should create a smaller version of housing for people not into community but the former should not be dissolved.

Other MMOs have managed this by simply having houses of different sizes. Small, Medium, Large, Huge, etc. The prices for the largest ones are such that you pretty much would require a Guild's participation to make it possible - not only in terms of buying the plot, but in crafting the house itself. I think Horizons/Istaria handled it this way, as did Vanguard (not 100% on VG, though). You could actually happen upon a Guild's house that was in the process of being built, with players going out to contribute materials and work on it more - similar to how airship crafting works now.

It was a real, true community effort.

[Ruenis]

-snip-

All I see from your example is crappy graphics.

[Nadirah]

All I see from your example is crappy graphics.

All i see from your statement is something that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that other games, including FFXI, have been doing the housing thing better than FFXIV for almost 20 years now.

[Ruenis]

All i see from your statement is something that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that other games, including FFXI, have been doing the housing thing better than FFXIV for almost 20 years now.

All I see from the example people throwing off are, if I want better housing feature, the trade of is to having shite graphics. Which I don't want.
I don't have house now, even though I crave for one. Do I want to trade of Mist/Lavender/Goblet housing plot with barren housing from vanguard Just so I can get one ? Hell No.

Besides, MMORPG, 20 years ? lol

[Anova]

One of the biggest deterrents to housing is that there is no communal space to entice players to stay there instead of in a town.

Some neighborhoods are also healthier than others, although that has more to do with the player community wanting a place of their own and putting in the effort to build that socialization.
For example, my FC maintains a fairly friendly relationship with our neighboring FCs and our crafters were often chatting with each other next to the marketboard. That's changed a little thanks in part to the airship workshop and forcing everyone in to an instanced room now, but it is an argument against instancing.

Instead, I'd really like to see giving people with a house the chance to really enhance the public works in their neighborhoods. Let them invite NPCs from Rowena trading company to sell tomestone gear and crafting mats to the public. Maybe a customized park players can add. Of course, there's no profit from this, but it lets players turn the residential areas in to a customized community instead of a showcase.

[Preypacer]

All I see from your example is crappy graphics.

Well, then it's a good thing graphics have nothing to do with my post, or my examples, isn't it?

[Preypacer]

All I see from the example people throwing off are, if I want better housing feature, the trade of is to having shite graphics. Which I don't want.

Who said anything about having 'shite graphics'?

Who said anything about a 'trade-off'?

The graphics of those games is based on their age/tech and/or their particular art style (which you may or may not like). Older games are going to have older looking, less impressive graphics (by modern standards).

Regardless, none of that has anything to do with the underlying housing systems themselves, which is what we're talking about here.

And anyway, why would you assume they couldn't pull off something better, more versatile and more accessible than what we have now, without sacrificing graphics quality? Do you have that little faith in SE to accomplish such a thing? Tsk tsk.

[Anova]

Prey, Reunis, can we not off-track the discussion and focus on something constructive rather than these personal attacks please?

Obviously, Prey is comparing a feature in another game she thinks did housing really well. The video highlights it well, but could you please tell us specifically what we're looking for? As far as I can tell, it's about how players can buy plots designated as housing spots and build houses there. There's some obvious differences in graphics and house size, but as far as I can tell, it's not anything different from the current housing system.

The current system is this: You have a plot of land you see is available for purchase and you choose to buy it. You then pay additional money to build the house, and use materials to customize it to your liking.

Rheunis, despite his tone, is correct that there's nothing particularly different from the current building process with what was shown in the video. He is also getting hung up on the graphics, which is fine. Some people can't actually handle the analogy of using another game as a prototype. Move on. There are others here who are following the conversation and maybe our examples will make more sense to Rheunis.

If it helps both of you, just imagine everything is Lego. It's a lot cheaper than paying a development team 6 months worth of salaries to code the damn concept and then having to spend 1 year to recode any changes we make.

Now, can you please explain how the video you showed would be different and help address the problem (chiefly housing space), Prey? I'm honestly not seeing it.

[Colorful]

snip

The housing systems in those games are far more complex, [I]while/I] also being able to accommodate every, or close to every player. As for the graphics, yes the graphics are going to be dated, they're dated game. What's your point? If in 5 years time they still haven't fixed this system, are those graphics going great? No, they're going to look even worse than Rift is to us now due to the quicker advance visuals in games, and the lack of incredibly dated hardware support. Rift's system allows any single character to own 20 dimensions, that's 20 fully custom housing areas to do with what you wish. 2 of them are free IIRC, and the other 18 are paid for through the store, or through in game gold. This is perfectly acceptable for a game without a subscription fee. The point is, FFXIV's housing system is not only incredibly lackluster, but also lacks availability. They should have invested far more time into it, especially if they're going to keep updated it while those issues remain.

[Nadirah]

All I see from the example people throwing off are, if I want better housing feature, the trade of is to having shite graphics. Which I don't want.
I don't have house now, even though I crave for one. Do I want to trade of Mist/Lavender/Goblet housing plot with barren housing from vanguard Just so I can get one ? Hell No.

Besides, MMORPG, 20 years ? lol

Yes, 20 years.

And you realize that a) Everyone's taste in graphics is different, b) there are people out there that think FFXIV looks like shit, and c) graphics don't matter to some people, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online September 24, 1997 original release date

and the very first MMORPG: http://www.meridian59.com/

December 15, 1995

One of the biggest deterrents to housing is that there is no communal space to entice players to stay there instead of in a town.

Some neighborhoods are also healthier than others, although that has more to do with the player community wanting a place of their own and putting in the effort to build that socialization.
For example, my FC maintains a fairly friendly relationship with our neighboring FCs and our crafters were often chatting with each other next to the marketboard. That's changed a little thanks in part to the airship workshop and forcing everyone in to an instanced room now, but it is an argument against instancing.

Instead, I'd really like to see giving people with a house the chance to really enhance the public works in their neighborhoods. Let them invite NPCs from Rowena trading company to sell tomestone gear and crafting mats to the public. Maybe a customized park players can add. Of course, there's no profit from this, but it lets players turn the residential areas in to a customized community instead of a showcase.

One of the reasons that game communities do *not* want fully fleshed out guild housing, etc, is because the towns end up empty.

You *need* to have a reason for people to be in the cities rather than than inside houses. Typically guild oriented housing does this more so than private housing, but there are exceptions.

EQ2 wasn't so bad until they added guild halls. Now everyone just hangs out int he guild halls with all the vendors, the broker(market board), banker, teleporters, etc all there.

WoW doesn't have guild housing, but instead they added personal garrisons that act as your base of operations for this expansion. It's so tightly drilled into the quest experience you can't ignore it.... and it's turned the landscape into a dead zone.