The Housing problem and my proposed solution

[Sandpark]

Free company housing is guild housing content. It is not meant to be had by everyone. Think of it like Tera Skycastles. Self notion of entitlement does not grant access to everything. If you want to solo everything only, that is fine. Just don't expect to get the best raid gear. Want to craft only? Don't expect the best PvP gear in combat.

The problem is this free company content is not casual content but it has casual content locked behind it like chocobo stabling, decorating, and gardening. For things like that, there should be instanced personal houses available to everyone.

Hey you want airship crafting? Ask for personal airship crafting and content to use it in like Island exploration, airship pvp, etc. Or you want to craft magitek armor? Ask for for personal magitek crafting and content to use it in like battle/racing competitions or pvp combat or magitek riding dungeons. Ask for solo dungeons that actually give xp.

For larger non casual stuff, there needs to be guild and guild only content to breed community. Without community this game is just a lobby social media simulator.

[Kosmos992k]

Hmmm....

I agree that locking down the existing housing wards for FC only and letting the existing personal ownership of homes there decay over time is a good idea - as long as a viable alternative exists. I think the main thing I would change with your proposal is the use of the Inn room as the basis.

Rather than using the Inn room as a personal housing, I think it would be more fitting to expand on the Personal Chamber concept that we have from the Free Company house. I'm thinking in terms of a Condominium style complex in each Housing area that may be entered from the main square in the housing zone.

The entrance area should support some community features such as the market boards, message moogles and summoning bells, The main 'square' in each housing area would be ideal for this since it already has such things as well as an NPC who would be able to act as a concierge who you speak to to gain access to your home. It would certainly increase the foot traffic in these areas, creating a greater sense of community perhaps.

The starting 'home' would be about the same as the Personal Chamber but with the addition of a small 'outside' area that may be used for things such as a small garden, chocobo stable, and outdoor furnishings. The key point of the 'outside' area is that this personal housing should offer the same advantages to players that the existing personal housing offers, as a minimum standard. Start it out at 600,000 gil, that is a bit more than the 300k for a personal chamber, but the addition of an external space justifies the additional expense. The entry point price of 600K gil is also a whole lot more affordable than the existing homes meaning that most any player who saves the gil they gain through leveling quests could afford their own home (which was an originally stated goal for housing IIRC).

Adding options to your personal home as you describe is a very nice idea, larger floor plan, larger garden outside, second floor, etc...All good options. This way housing would be individually instanced, but separate from the Inn rooms which I feel should remain separate. To prevent overly much stress on the servers, I do think it may be necessary to reign in the idea of including basements/second floors and such, that may stress the instance servers. But a larger floor plan with attached 'outdoor' space' should not be beyond possibility.

Because the home is instanced, it will only 'exist' when the owner is there, if the owner is not there, then the instance closes - this will reduce server stress caused by operating so many housing instances on crowded servers. The main 'detraction' from this concept is that people would only be able to visit a player's home if they are there and if they have allowed guest access. If the owner leaves, any visitors would be relocated to the entrance in the main square. The exception to this would be any player who the owner has tagged as a co-owner. I think this is an important feature to allow couples and friends to share homes.

This builds on the private chambers, it re-uses that existing system, and has minimizes impact on the servers.

An additional option you could throw in here would be an enhanced instanced personal home that allows additional floors, complete redesign of the exterior, as well as an external landscape. Of course you could build a small, medium or large home in this special lot of land, and you would always have an outside space larger than that available to the owners of existing large lots. Essentially a home in a small 'zone' of it's own. This would be a paid housing service, players would pay a monthly fee similar to the retainer fee, but in return they gain a much larger lot of land, higher item counts both indoors and outdoors to allow greater customization and decoration. The item limit for such an enhanced house should be at least double what the limit is on large homes. The enhanced house should be available for visitors whether or not the owner is there, based on the guest settings of course.

Even though the enhanced lot would be a paid service and larger than existing housing lots, it would offer no advantage in terms of the number of garden plots, the additional item counts and size would not allow players an advantage over players who do not pay for the additional service. So although cosmetically a player could have a hugely opulent manor house, they would not be able to have more garden plots or anything of that nature that would provide a paid advantage over other players.

So you would have 3 forms of housing in the game plus the room at the Inn. The three forms being;

1. Instanced Personal housing paid for with in-game currency.
2. Neighborhood based FC/Personal housing paid for with in-game currency (limited to FCs going forwards).
3. Enhanced instanced Personal housing paid for by additional service fees.

[Edit] - By keeping the Inn room separate from this, all players have automatic access to a place of their 'own' in any of the main cities which maintains the universal, free access for players with a subscription to things such as the crystal bell, summoning bell and armoire. I'd like to see more done with the toy box to make Inn rooms stand out, but that is another discussion....

This would serve all types of player. Existing individual owners would not be penalized, all players would be able to have their own 'home' and players who want to, could spend a bit more actual money, to have a fancy place to show off to others. Free Company houses would still retain their use through the FC specific items and systems accessible through the FC house.

[Miscreant]

My only issue with the housing is that FC and Personal housing share the same Wards.

We will get new housing areas soon enough, just have to be patient.

[Makeda]

Sorry for my bad spelling today... on my phone and it's keyboard is small for me...

Can't find the edit post button on the Android version of the forums...

[Kosmos992k]

My only issue with the housing is that FC and Personal housing share the same Wards.

We will get new housing areas soon enough, just have to be patient.

That will not solve the problem at all. There are far, far more players in the game than the number of available lots. Adding a new housing area will only increase the tiny number of wards and lots by one third over the existing system - which doesn't even come close to denting the problem.

The existing system serves a miniscule number of players, that is the problem. Adding a fraction of a tiny fraction to itself results in a slightly larger, but still tiny fraction... Until you have a system that serves all players, you have a problem.

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.

A condominium style system with an entrance in the main square of the housing zones would take care of this.

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).

One thing I disagree with in this is that content such as the workshop and Airship ventures should remain FC exclusive, and not be linked to personal housing.

Sorry for my bad spelling today... on my phone and it's keyboard is small for me...

Can't find the edit post button on the Android version of the forums...

Watch out for the soft buttons immediately below the space bar on Android, they can swallow your post before you even send it if your finger happens to brush one of them when you are meaning to hit the space bar. Quite why they don't allow the user to move the soft buttons to a different location is beyond me.

[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...".

[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.

[Nadirah]

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.

EQ2's housing community is bigger than WildStar, without neighborhoods.

[Nadirah]

Sorry for my bad spelling today... on my phone and it's keyboard is small for me...

Can't find the edit post button on the Android version of the forums...

There isn't one, that's why.