Thread: In Regard to Housing in Patch 4.1

Hello Yoshi P. and FFXIV Devs, As someone who has supported FFXIV since its original launch and one who went to school for Game Development I'd like to take a few dozen minutes out of my day to give some suggestions that I hope you read so that maybe one of them will help you shape the world we all enjoy and love.

1) While the current housing scene is functional as a place where you can display furnishings and hang out with friends, it lacks the feeling that housing would typically have; Community. Far more often than not there is little to no engagement with your fellow residents and neighbors, making the purpose of an entire ward of houses rather than a completely instanced experienced rather unclear at best. With this in mind you would have two options to remedy the issue, either A) Do away with wards and shared area housing and opt for purely instanced based housing, which has the benefit of ensuring that 100% of players would be able to own a house, or B) Make the housing districts feel *alive*. To achieve this would be a somewhat simple task truth be told, and some of the techniques used in this could also make every other city and area feel alive as well. Option B is the option I will expand on as it has great potential and would improve the experience, not destroy it.

With this patch you added swimming to the areas, and along with it you added NPC's that randomly sit around in the water swimming. This is the launch points for this concept. NPC's play a crucial role in making the world of Hydaelyn feel alive. Adding in NPC's within city and sanctuary areas provides a feel of activity and liveliness, but having them stand in one spot while repeating a small loop of animations can create quite the opposite effect. Rather than this, if each NPC had a 24 Eorzea Hour schedule of actions, where they also disappear into buildings from time to time, this would create that aforementioned feeling of life. Add to this interactivity with NPC's, where at set times per Eorzean day they sell exclusive or discounted items, repair gear for a reduced price, affix materia for a reduced price, etc, players will engage with the zone more and travel around the estates for these boons, bumping into one another and perhaps chatting and meeting new friends.

Additionally, there currently lacks much of a point for players to go around to another player's housing and either tend to their crops, feed their chocobos, or simply engage any house that is not their own. The reason for this is that Players do not benefit from these actions in any way whatsoever. By nature the human species has a desire to not waste their own time, and while helping others is a great thing we all strive to do, if we obtain nothing for it then it is disadvantageous to spend time doing it. I would propose then that upon doing beneficial actions for other players, either by tending to or fertilizing other players crops, feeding and training their Chocobo's, or perhaps in new and other unique ways, players would then obtain an amount of tokens based on the action in question (actions that require the player to use items of their own would give a higher yield of tokens). You could then create an exchange system with the NPC's of the zone for exclusive items like I mentioned before, and use these tokens used as the currency (perhaps used for all exchanges between them?).

I am aware that based on lore there is little reason for NPC's to be in these housing districts as they are designed to be used by adventurers only, but that does not mean that NPC's can't have jobs that they work there, giving the Adventurers the quality of life that is expected in that area (for instance cleaning the walk ways, tending to the grass and plant life, selling cuisine, etc). If you were to utilize this system I can assure you that players would not only enjoy it, but use it immensely.

2) While I know not the limitations of your current servers I do know that players can load vast maps and effects on their home computers. As the years advance this will only become a more and more true statement. I believe that at this point players can quite easily load the housing areas and have a large amount of RAM, Video Memory, and Processing power to spare. That is why the limit of only 30 houses per ward is somewhat crippling. A residential area in the offline world is expansive and filled with many of the *same kind of house/area allocated per house*. While having three different sizes of house is appealing, I believe that in the current set up it strains the amount of players you can give housing in each ward as well as taking away from a feeling of progression with your house itself. The solution to this is separated into parts, but in this point I only wish to posit that there could and should be more houses per ward, perhaps even double the amount. If that means making a bigger and redesigned map, then so be it.

3) The second part of this then comes to the house sizes and what would happen to current residents if they were to be changed. First and foremost, as is currently the case the player should be buying a *plot of land*, but this should be separate from the size of the house. I would suggest that players are given the option of what size house they'd like to build on the land, which would also mean that *they can always upgrade to a larger house later on when they have more gil*. The sizes of the plots should be slightly larger than medium plots, but smaller than large plots, and all consistent and the same price (5 million gil?). Players would essentially be able to choose between having a large house and small yard, medium house and medium yard, or a small house and a large yard. There would then be gil prices based on the size of the house they desire, equating to the current price of houses in the end. This gives a great amount of customization to the players, customization I believe they would enjoy immensely.

4) With the previous two points in mind there would then arise the problem of the displacement of current residents. One could even call it the Housing Calamity. If in the event the team decided to change to this system, there would be a simply solution. Refund them 100% of their house's price, then allow them to purchase a plot in the same ward they were in before any other purchases are made. This "Reclaiming" period of time could be up to a month, after which the new houses go up for sale to all players. This would allow the new system to be in place while not neglecting nor upsetting the previous residents. Furthermore, it is a well known fact that fake/alt/secondary FC's and Alt characters acquire multiple the houses in the housing districts. To alleviate these issues, making a player only able to own *one house per world server per account* would free up quite a few houses to other players, while *making an FC's house demolish time limit shorter than single player housing as well as making a requirement of at least 10 players in the FC* would make it so that only active FC's with a good amount of members that require a house would be able to have one. As for whether a plot is single player housing or FC housing, I would make a small ammendment to my earlier statement that was intended to provide clarity of the idea, and introduce 10 plots per ward that are exclusive to FC's while the other 50 are single player only. The FC plot would be larger than the single player housing, perhaps by a magnitude of two. This would make sense as an FC is composed of many individuals, whereas single players are own their own or with a few other friends.

5) Even though this would be an improvement on the current housing system, it still leaves many without the opportunity to purchase a home. That is where Ishgard would come in. There's no housing district for Ishgard because they are opposed to outsiders, perhaps less so in recent times yet still enough to not desire a flood of adventurers into their city. But what if they didn't have to? As we all know, not all that far from Ishgard are certain lands that are more unique than most. I talk of course about the Sea of Clouds and Churning Mists, where land floats within the sky. Perhaps if Ishgardeans were to stumble across a large amount of floating rock and shear it into large plot sized land, players could reside on them! Indeed, this would be beneficial to all and form the phased instance housing. Just like apartments there can be a vast amount of these houses, all independent of one another. FC's and single players alike would be able to purchase a floating slab of land to build upon in their respective sizes. You could visit the houses just like apartments to ensure that players in this "district" would be able to accumulate the benefit tokens without traveling to one of the other four housing areas. This would create a way for a vast amount of the player base who miss out on buying or being able to afford a house in other zones an opportunity to still become the proud owner of a place they can call home.

6) Finally I come to my last main point. How would players and FC's be purchasing houses? To this I only need say one word, Auctions. If houses were to run on an auctioning system it would give all players a chance to snag their favourite housing plot. It is a simple system to create would make a great deal of players extremely happy, even if only because it allows them a chance rather than having to deal with post patch login issues and losing their chance altogether. Ishgard and Apartments, as well as FC Private Chambers, could still follow an instant purchasing model, as the amount of these available is already vast in size.

Overall I of course do not expect all nor any of these ideas to be implemented, but if any of you on the development team read this I would implore you to consider them and to use them in your creative process to find the ideal way in your own eyes to improve the housing in the game going forward into the years.

Happy Adventuring everyone and may Hydaelyn's light always guide you.

OMG!! Thank you! I'm glad your willing to hear your fans out and work on a resolution!

Originally Posted by Aldotsk

I am inclined to agree, but the question is:

How are they going to handle all of those people who already own 16 plots or 30 plots in one ward division? Like will they refund the houses? What if they are inactive for a while and so forth?

What if this system started once you logged in? For example tomorrow they implement 1 FC and personal house per account you have 30 days to decide but then let's say you didn't log in before the implemention for say 2 weeks that 30 day timer doesn't start until the next time you log in.

I agree that the most logical solution is instanced housing. But I also understand that there's a desire for that whole 'neighborhood' feeling. I haven't actually seen that anywhere, but I can see why people want the option.

So, IF the decision is to keep on with things as they are, I would suggest a 3-phase roll out process on new wards.

Phase 1 - Relocations only, and to same size plots only. This has a net loss of zero, you end up with exactly the same open plots after the relocations.

Phase 2 - Relocations only, to different sized plots. This has a net loss of zero total plots, though the number of different sizes will shift.

Phase 3 - New purchases only. No relocations allowed, the new buyers have access to the same number of plots as were open at the beginning of phase 1.

This should keep some of the mad scramble down, gives a bit of a bonus to people who have already owned land, and still allows all the new buyers a crack at the same number of open plots.

Originally Posted by Khalithar

If you have the gil, you should be able to get a house size of your choice, no matter what

Part 1 - Instance and Ghost housing

(Instance house/or plot housing)
Have an NPC that sells ghost plots. Meaning paying for a plot that doesn't exist in the game. So long you have the money you can just pay it.
Pros: Zero randomnesses and 100% availability so long you have the GIL.

[If instance]
Then once it is paid, you will immediately receive the plot

[If normal plot]
Then once it is paid, you wait for the next "Ghost housing implementation patch day" where Square Enix will launch those houses for people used the NPC to buy the house. That way there will be no oversupply and won't stress the server. You will get it eventually maybe wait for a month or two instead of never getting it. This will also give you (developers) time to put in plots/wards that will balance out demand/supply. Everyone will get a house, so long they can pay for it.

Originally Posted by Khalithar

If you have the gil, you should be able to get a house size of your choice, no matter what.

That is the only acceptable outcome.

One hundred times this.

Originally Posted by Arallell

'neighborhood' feeling

Change apartment to Condominium

The condominium will be a duplex type condo meaning there will be two floors and will be the size of a small house. A balcony can be purchased as an upgrade for gardening.

Condominium utility which everyone in that condo unit can share these utilities:

1) A gym - training dummies for everyone to use
2) A SWIMMING POOL (So people can swim and stuff)
3) Workshop (Where people can use crafting station for a small fee
4) BBQ pit! People can buy food there and be a gather spot for people to chill and meet with her condominium owners!
5) ChocoPark (Carpark) where you can park your chocobo there and do Chocobo stuff
6) Condo transport to people to Exploratory Voyages.

These will help because you will then eliminate the need for people to get their own house because they can do everything in it!~
PLUS IT IS AN INSTANCE thus helping with the server stress if any.