The Housing problem and my proposed solution

[Nadirah]

@Preypacer, on top of it, EQ2 has an incredibly large community of folks that do nothing *but* interior decorating for in game money.

it's pretty crazy. Norrathian Roadshow, ho!!!

Edit: For the love of the Gods, stop trying to connect housing even more into FCs.

I don't have a room, and never will, because I don't want my house attached to my FC.

[Nadirah]

The wards are instanced - that's why there is a loading screen. But I believe they never "unload" from the server even if there is no one in them, hence the "need more servers" answer from SE.

Stupid design IMHO.

In EQ2, if there aren't a certain number of people in the house(even guild houses) after 30 minutes of inactivity(go afk) they boot you outside and close the instance for stress reasons.

[Anova]

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

Those are some fun and interesting case studies.

Anyway, I did suggest those features as public works, and not as private. I envisioned those npcs being in the plazas and marketboards of the residential areas and not stuck in the FC houses. Sorry, I forgot to explicitly mention that those npcs would be public or where they'd be placed, but there you go. The goal is to turn the neighborhoods themselves in to hubs for players to congregate and socialize. It's a way to at least make a devoted server for the wards worth more than it is currently.

[Farah]

They should have never shoved personal housing in with FC housing. They were supposed to be separate and Square Enix went back on their word.

I would suggest having neighborhoods for FC's only, and other neighborhoods for single players. This might leave the solo neighborhoods empty, but people barely use them now. They could also make instanced houses with a yard. Also, have the option of having something like the inn rooms for players who only care about decorating the interior.

For stuff like chocobo's, make training and such available from the chocobo trainers in bentbranch. Pay a fee and they board your chocobo (like how you board horses in rl). That will give people the ability to dye and train their chocobos without having to own a home.

For gardening, they could make indoor pots/planters that you could grow stuff in. That way it is both decorative and functional.

Tada, most problems would be solved.

[Preypacer]

@ Preypacer
The graphics do look bland on those videos and the building look very basic with not much details. Ok let's say those do housing itself better than FFXIV according to you.

Graphics are not a Housing System.

You're looking at games that are upwards of 10+ years old, built for older systems, with much lower hardware specs... running hardware (servers, broadband connection speeds, etc) that were also much lower. Yet, those older MMOs managed to pull off what they did, for all characters. Meanwhile, SE can't pull off what is really a pretty basic housing system, without leaving many players and FCs waiting and hoping for the chance to get one.. somewhere down the road. If they're lucky.

The bigger question is:
What purpose do those houses serve besides decorating?
Is there any content that can only be done from those houses like Skycastles or FFXIV guild airships?
Can large groups of people hang out in the same area or do they have to zone into different instances?

Well, your questions are completely besides the point, and are not at all the big question. More of a deflection from the main point, really.

All of those things being tied to FC housing are great.. if you're fortunate enough to be in a FC that has a house, or are able to get one yourself. But many can't.And that is the key problem here, which some people seem determined to argue around, make excuses for, or otherwise avoid addressing.

However, regarding what you can do in those housing systems.. I'll cover EQ2, in particular, at least as much as I remember from last time I played...

Well, for starters, in EQ2, if you want a house, you can actually get one. You can get up to 25, if you want. That alone sets it apart, without even getting into anything else.

However, you can have crafting stations, a huge variety of housing items (walls, stairs, etc), decorations that can be rotated and scaled, to suit your likes/needs, expanded storage (which you can increase significantly by using large storage boxes), NPCs to buy/sell goods, Market Boards to sell your wares from (and others to come buy directly from, to avoid broker fees), you can have teleports between all your houses (up to 25 of them), making hopping between them very easy. You can have furniture that lowers the upkeep cost (of course, only relevant because EQ2 has them).

And of course, there's the same reasons many people enjoy housing in any game - it gives them a way to express themselves creatively, and to give them a place "of their own" online. In EQ2, you can also have pets in it, which will interact with you, and with each other. There's a very large, and very active community that's developed around EQ2's housing, such is its importance and relevance to the game, and its players.

EQ2 has had all of that stuff for up to a decade or longer... and it's been available for every single character created in the world since the beginning.

Let's look at some other possibilities for guild based content for Free Companies shall we?

-Airship Guild Vs Guild(Battle Airships designed and controlled by FC possibility)
-Submarine exploration(Designed and controlled by FC)
-Lunar expeditions(Spaceship designed and controlled by FC)
-Magitek Armor crafting( Designed and controlled by FC for guild vs guild wars)
-Magitek Battle/Racing circuits(Designed and controller by FC, Nascar type race teams(FC teams), think pod racing in Star Wars), with rankings, rewards, achievements,etc.

Hypotheticals are never the basis for a debate or meaningful discussion. However, all those things, if they were implemented, would be separate systems, apart from the Housing itself, and could be accessed from outside a FC House, and without the need for a FC house, if SE decided to implement them in such a way. SE is already making this possible with airships and chocobo stables... both of which have been announced as becoming available even without a FC house at some point in the future. This is one of the concessions it seems SE has had to make, as a result of their poorly designed/implemented housing system. If everyone were able to get a house, such limitations wouldn't have been an issue to begin with.

[Preypacer]

Well, I'm not certain, but I have a suspicion that some or all of the housing system in those games operates at the client or peer to peer level rather than running entirely on the server side. FFXIV has adopted the much more server centric architecture as a countermeasure to cheating. Games that use more client side processing or peer to peer networking are open to cheating, even on the consoles.

Yes the housing system has many problems, yes we need them fixed, but, when comparing alternatives and trying to pull from those alternatives possible modifications or additions to the FFXIV housing system, we all have to be careful to remember that whatever is implemented will be done on the server side. The key point being that the load imposed by housing is real and no matter how much hand waving and assuming people indulge in; the truth is that there are real limits imposed by operating server side. Those limits exist both in terms of what a given server can handle, and also in terms of the bandwidth between the server and client (and/or the cummulative bandwidth inbound and outbound from the server itself).

In other words, consider the load on the servers of any changes to the housing system and try not to scoff at the concept of server load being an issue.

They already have instancing in place that handles who-knows-how-many players, across who-knows-how-many dungeons and other instanced areas at any given time. They can clearly handle high-stress, high-volume instancing scenarios.

If it is a case of them keeping everything server side, well, then that's a problem for them to work out. And I have full faith that they could and would, if they felt it was important enough to address. They'd have to change things up, reallocate resources and such, but I'm confident they could do it.

Generally speaking...

At this point, with how much SE has accomplished with this game, that some people are still so quick to believe they can't do something, simply because they haven't yet, is mind-boggling.

People thought 1.x could never be improved enough to be playable, or worth a subscription to anyone. SE turned around, improved 1.x, and managed to not only get people to pay a sub, but tripled the number of players playing besides (all those names in the credits of 2.0 are not all of them; not everyone got their name in the credits).

People thought 2.0 could never happen. That a MMO could never get a second chance, and that SE would never succeed with it; that it would crash and burn a second time. Yet, they did the impossible, and didexactly what most everyone said they couldn't.

People insisted that large, sprawling open areas could never be done "because PS3 limitations". SE turns around and delivers us Heavensward, with massive open areas, that you can see clear across from some vantage points.

And so on.

Yet, here we are again with people quick to assume SE can't perform improvements/changes to a housing system - which are greatly needed - for whatever reasons.

I can be skeptical about things... Very skeptical. I was one of the people who believed 2.0 would crash and burn for a time (specifically around its final betas and launch). Still, even I reached the point where I had to acknowledge that what seemed "impossible" to me (and others), was quite within SE's capacity to do... if they set themselves to doing it. At some point, you have to start giving them benefit of the doubt, I think.

I don't buy for a second that turning the housing situation around completely is a matter of "can they do it". I believe it's a question of "will they do it".

[Naunet]

Wildstar? Is that like a rock band mmo or something? I've never even heard if before this thread. Does anyone play that? No, SE does not to be taking ideas from some not so well known game.

Wow, this post...

Good ideas are good ideas. WildStar's housing system is brilliant, and it would be awesome if everyone copied it. Here are some examples of the kinds of things you can accomplish in a fully realized housing system.

[Kosmos992k]

I don't buy for a second that turning the housing situation around completely is a matter of "can they do it". I believe it's a question of "will they do it".

Oh no, don't misunderstand, with sufficient time, resources and infrastructure I am sure practically anything can be done. However, rearchitecting systems or subsystems pretty much from the ground up while they are in place and operational, is easily the most expensive way to affect change. They'd be better suspending further work on housing as it is and starting over on housing 3.0. In terms of realities and practicalities, there are thing than can be done, and things that cant realistically, or practically, be done at this time.

I'm not defending SE here, I think the housing system we have makes sense for free company housing, but absolutely fails at addressing personal housing. I also think that blending personal housing into the FC wards as they have both dilutes the worth of housing to a free company, and offends those FCs unable to obtain a plot because someone bought a medium(or small, or large) lot for personal use and subsequently quit... That doesn't even begin to addrsss how badly it fails the vast majority of players.

Actually, I'll go one further, the housing system as it is fails both gatherers and crafters as well. Instanced personal housing within the reach of any active player would have stimulated the market for furnishings and related items creation much more cash flow in the economy. Howver, as it is it became nothing more than a property bubble and the economy as a whole suffers from that.

I aleady made my suggestiojs on fixing things;

• Create 'condominium' style system with an entrance lobby accessible from the main square in each ward.
• The homes are expanded versions of personal chambers with an outdoor area.
• The starter unit costs twice the amount of a private chamber in a FC house, but is larger.
• The starter unit also has a back yard outdoor area permitting indoor and outdoor furnishings and things such as garden plots and chocobo stable.
• The existing wards are locked for future purchase by FCs only.
• Abandoned lots in exitsting wards are actively recovered and offered for sale to Free Companies.
• Additional expansion of the personal house would be added through in game purchaseable items using gil.
• The homes are instanced, but visitors can enter them the instance only exists while an owner or guest is present.
• A premium version of this is also available for a small additional monthly fee expanding, similar to the retainer fee.
• The premium version has a full outside instance with a home and larger yard.
• Item limits would be doubled (except for gardn plots and the like) within a Premium house.

This makes housing available to all, provides a potential revenue stream from people who want a bigger and better personal home and preservesthe existing system intact without unduly penalizing existing owners of personal homes. It makes use of existing systems in the game and can be developed in parallel to the existing system without impacting that system negatively - IMHO of course...

[Naunet]

[*]A premium version of this is also available for a small additional monthly fee expanding, similar to the retainer fee.[*]The premium version has a full outside instance with a home and larger yard. [*]Item limits would be doubled (except for gardn plots and the like) within a Premium house.

While most of those are decent suggestions... holy crap, no. We do not need to be asking SE to charge even more on top of their sub. The added monthly fee thing is one of the most disgusting practices they've introduced. Just think about how much that will cumulatively cost you one year, two years, or more from now. Let's not bring this into housing, please.

[Reaperking386]

As Yoshi P. once said..."too much for the servers."