How would have implemented housing in XIV?

[Ruf]

Wow...how lame would that be..."Warrior of light, you have now completed this quest and you can own an instance house. Buy it, decorate it and live in your own dimension....so sorry we can't expand Eorzea to accomodate millions of players housing establishment....what a fun game that would be.

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Better than the feel of you & others trying to decoy community away from acting as one solid voice over a CURRENTLY NON FAIR HOUSING SYSTEM.

I would take a housing revamp for everyone over a new expansion.Anyday~

[Ruf]

[QUOTE=Ruf]the fact that we cant do crap with the houses like turning them around & place them where we want on the plot[/ QUOTE]

Why should we be forced a square position that we cant move on the plots to begin with? How come cant we choose which way its facing? Its an empty piece of land to begin with. How come we cant choose which size we want for building the house? (Having less land for a bigger house would be fine by me & no i dont think chocobo stable is a valid argument because heck id have it sleep inside for as much as i care) Afterall we are allowed different skins which for some players block nice views that they initially had.Some players do not even like the skins & want simpler designs. I personally would take base shirogane house look over a skin, but again i wouldnt skin a house like shirogane outside of shirogane but thats preferences. The fact is, that system was never made to be allowing customization that a lot of players would like. Even if you could get the dream plot like ppl speak of "perfect spot" it does not mean that it could not be any better if we had more options.

P.s: Yes I quoted myself & this is not even about win or lose upon acquiring a plot.This is a lack of consideration upon allowing players to get more customization which is one of the thing that makes housing in this game currently a failure "In my opinion".

[Ing-Dono]

Instanced and what we have now.

If you just want a house, get an instanced one, and you can relocate it to a ward later if you want to have neighbors (and you manage to get your hands on a plot)

Or buy one in a ward if you want neighbors from the start. (again, if you can get your hands on it)


Server load could be an issue though... seeing how much trouble Square has with instances.

[Claviusnex]

I am going to take a slightly more practical approach. I would keep and freeze the current ward system to allow those players who are willing to live with its limitations an opportunity to live there. For everyone else I would create a parallel instanced housing system that included a seamless exterior/ interior environment and removed the hard furnishing caps. I would allow for an upgrade/downgrade path in housing size on a common size plot. Furnishings would be determined by available space. For example someone might fill their plot with gardens leaving no free areas for other items. Where as someone without any garden might have room for 150 small footprint outdoor things. I would give access to the house to all alts on the same server. The house would be accessed by a common area with MB, shops, etc much like the barracks and hotel room are accessed in the cities. They could also be accessed directly via an aetheryte as is done today. I would also allow the house instance to select what it sees such as your neighbors, a beach, waterfall, etc.

[Anya_Nya]

Have a combination of both instanced and none instanced housing. You would still have existing housing plots just like how they are now, but in each zone, there would be one added plot that would be instanced to you. Similar to how garrisons work in WoW, when you go near that plot, it would automatically display how you decorated it. It would be a large plot of land which you could slowly unlock, starting with a small house on the large plot, which you could unlock as a medium house and eventually a large house.. through a combination of money and quest line. This way if you didn't care if people saw your house, you could just stick with this instanced house.. If you like to show off your decorated home, you would go for one of the public houses. I know they have this with apartments, but one tiny room just isn't enough.. maybe even expand apartments to have several roomed versions that you could purchase. Luxury apartments that have several rooms and even different "views".

[Anya_Nya]

A more complicated, but much cooler solution would be to make housing zones dynamic.. Keep the same housing plot layout as now, but it would auto populate the rest of the zone randomly with the houses of those on your friends list. If you have more friends then the number of plots, then which friends would be shown would be random each time you go in. If you have less friends then the number of available plots, then those slots would be filled by other random players. This would still guarantee you to have a house, but also still keep that social element allowing you to browse others houses.. and even better because all your friends houses would be nearby. They might look slightly different of course because if they decorated for Lavender beds and you live in the Myst, but it would only be your person view that would see it.. for your friend in Lavender beds, your Myst house would be in a forest setting. But I like the idea of having all your friends or guildmates nearby.

[MPNZ]

I would probably focus on increasing the number of apartments and their utility with a terrace/balcony that would either be a separate instance or add a room outside of the main apartment that would use special slots similar to our equipment screen for outside furnishing. And, then later make it so players could increase the size of their apartments via a quest similar to the Moogle and Ananta beast tribe's. And, then limit ward housing to FCs, and match the aesthetics to look similar to main-street and down town areas or mead halls to match the image of guilds better. I would also make wards like Mist and LB as limited single player luxuries with high requirements to unlock them.


Also, more furnishings would be less comically huge (loom>sewing machine) with necessities like normal sized bathtubs, kitchen furnishings (actual kitchen counters), toilets, sinks, bathroom floors, et cetera.

Edit: BTW, If you upgrade the Mist apartments would make the the wall opposite of the door a glass wall leading to the balcony/terrace that would have a view of the ocean and coastline.

[Dustytome]

I read the question as how would you do housing from the start vs adjusting current housing, so I'd probably do everything instanced. There would be different plot styles/layouts for FCs (FC Keeps) and for personal homes. Various terrain/skybox options with a decent sized area, but probably more of a larger than mansion sized editable area for the player with something similar to WoW/Wildstar where you could plug in different things to other areas of the landscape (Barn, Garden Patch, Workshop, Squadron station, etc) which can be adjusted as needed as there wouldn't be need to worry about the lot side limitations from other houses. Allow the house to be placed anywhere in the editable portion and there would be a much larger outdoor item limit (no other houses' stuff to load up). There'd be an airship dock too for personal airships as well as something bigger in the fc keep area for fc ships. Gardens would be account locked (house sharable or you can get more for alts), but you can upgrade the harvest area a few times. Fixtures like wallpaper and such would be 'learned' and bound to your account. Not sure if I'd make it owner-only for using the decor (restriction null for fcs, but fixtures return to defaults if the person that placed it leaves) or active tenants too. Much more tenants allowed. Seasonal items would come back with each event, but be available year round from the mogstation so if you don't want to wait you can grab it for cash, but if you're strapped for cash you can still wait for the next round to get a chance at items. Alternatively go for the available-one-holiday thing we have now, restrict placement to active members/tenants (items/fixtures removed if person leaves fc/no longer a tenant) and make the items unlocked for the account.

Marketing / management would then dig their claws in and maybe an ounce of that would make it to live without being cash shop biased or scrapped due to whatever they've done with the servers.