Automatic Housing Demolition - A Suggesstion, a Compromise. Let's talk about it.

[MomomiMomi]

With the recent hysteria of people possibly losing their houses, seeing the fear they have of losing it, I have taken a step back to take another look at FFXIV's housing system. I'd like to share my thoughts on the subject and answer one question that's been on my mind:

How can we make this better?

Before I get to that, I'd like to try to get everyone on the same page. So, please bear with me.


What is the Housing System?

Before we can improve the housing system, we must first understand what we have to work with.

The goal of FFXIV's housing system appears to be to provide a neighborhood feel; a community. To that end,they have created a series of wards in which we can find a house we like, purchase it, and live next to our neighbors. Whether we're lounging around in the yard, gardening, practicing our rotations on a dummy, our perusing the market board, this design allows us to communicate with any neighbors who happen to be nearby. Maybe you'll just say hello once in a while, or perhaps you'll become fast friends.

The interior of the houses, unlike the exterior, is instanced. While nobody is in it, the interior of your house is not actively there. It is saved elsewhere, only to be loaded up once someone actually decides to go inside. However, since the exterior isn't instanced, it isn't a fully instanced system.

Love it or hate it, this is our housing system. This is how it is, and, in all likelihood, this is how it's going to remain.

With that in mind, I'd like to ask that you please put aside any wishes that they scrap the housing system entirely and just give us instanced housing instead. It's probably never going to happen. If you feel strongly that this is what they should do, feel free to make a thread about it. But my intent with this thread is to discuss how we can improve what we have, and to share how I feel the developers can do that.

So, let's get to it.


What's Wrong with the Housing System?

I think we can all agree, the housing system has one major flaw: housing is a limited commodity. Not everyone can own a house. You can have enough gil to purchase one, but if one isn't available, you're out of luck.

This brings with it a lot of smaller issues, but the worst one, in my opinion, is that it pits player against player. Players now covet what the other has, and this led to the request for houses to be taken away from those who were not using them. This was essentially players asking for other players to be punished. To have what they worked hard to obtain snatched away from them because they weren't utilizing it enough. This is wrong.

Yes, inactive houses should be taken away from inactive players to make room for the active players, but 45 days is not much. Let's be real about this. Look at the past 45 days; how much content have they given us to keep us occupied in those days? Right now, that pretty much means Eureka: Pagos, and Heaven on High. Heaven on High isn't exactly content that lasts very long, and Pagos is... well, Pagos. Don't like the content? Want to take a break from the game? Tough. You better come back in 45 days or your house is kaput.

"But, Momo, I think that 45 days is more than enough."

I have seen both sides of the argument more than enough times. 45 days is too short. 45 days is long enough. So let's compromise.


Existence is Reasonable, Let's Make Things Better

Let's roll with the fact that some people think 45 days is enough. Even if we leave this part of the system in place, I believe the system can be improved. Here is my proposal.

We can keep the 45 day system in place just the way it is. What I would like to see improved is what comes after.

At the time of demolition, your house should get saved just the way it is. All of the furniture in it and its placement. Save it, just the way you keep it saved now. When a player's account goes inactive, you keep their character data saved somewhere, yeah? Save the house with it. I don't know how long you keep character data, but keep the house data just as long.

Replace the 80% gil reimbursement with the House Relocation system. When you go to purchase a new house location, that 80% gil gets applied toward the purchase of the new house location. The player never receives the gil back; it's credited to their next house purchase instead.

I will post a quote of the house relocation process as an example; however, I'm changing 30% for 80%.

Cost of Relocation

When purchasing a plot for relocation, 80% of the minimum value of your old plot will be applied towards the price of the new one.

(Cost of Relocation) = (Destination Plot Price) – (80% of Old Plot Price)

* In the event reimbursement for the old plot exceeds the price of the destination plot, the cost of relocation will be waived. Please note, however, you will not receive gil for the amount that exceeds the cost of the destination plot.

In the event that the new house is of a different size than the old one, shove all the furniture into the house storage. Otherwise, keep it as it was before.

With this proposed system, a player never loses their house; only the house location.

"But, Momo, that's going to cost SE money!"

I'm going to bring up another game I've brought up before. The Elder Scrolls Online.

In ESO's housing system, every player can own 5 inn rooms, 3 apartments, 10 small houses, 12 medium houses, 12 large houses, and 5 manors. I'm not including houses that can only be bought with real money.

Every player can own these houses. They can own every one simultaneously. The position of all of your furniture is saved in every single one of these houses. And they are never taken away from you. Sounds pretty nice, right? But that's not even the most impressive part.

The real kicker? This is all possible in a F2P game.

Square Enix, you should be ashamed that you won't let players keep even one house saved permanently.


I'd like to hear everyone else's thoughts on the housing system and how you think it can be made better. I have other ideas, but they're more controversial and I'll leave them for later.

Also, I don't have much time left on the forums, so sorry if I just disappear from posting.

[polyphonica]

I'm going to bring up another game I've brought up before. The Elder Scrolls Online. [...] In ESO's housing system, every player can own 5 inn rooms, 3 apartments, 10 small houses, 12 medium houses, 12 large houses, and 5 manors. I'm not including houses that can only be bought with real money. [...] The real kicker? This is all possible in a F2P game.

Well, although you already kind of addressed it... this is again related to the fact the houses themselves in this game (the exteriors) are not instanced. The house literally exists on a server running in real-time 24/7. So every house that's created isn't just storage on some giant drive array somewhere waiting to be called up, but is actively being processed all the time on some server in the farm and synchronized every tick. Doing what ESO does in this game, with how it works now, isn't really comparable; what ESO does (even allowing you to have so many houses per person) almost certainly costs less than the system in this game just due to efficiency. (You could easily argue that this is a good reason why a game should use the instanced approach for all housing... but as you said, that's out of scope. Incidentally, BDO is another F2P game that does housing mostly in the way you describe because it's all instanced.)

What you're proposing is a sort of "cold storage" that retains the exact settings of the lot (items, placement, etc.) but without actually being run in real-time, so it could be called back and plopped on a different plot of land. It's not a bad idea, but there are some complications:

1) Let's say your house is in cold storage and you come back to the game and there are no plots anywhere at that time. Can you get access to the items associated to the house while they're in this cold storage state to, for instance, use them in your FC house or in an apartment? If you can get items out of the house's cold storage without placing a house, what impact is that going to have to the layout of the house that you're trying to preserve "as is" for relocation? (The moment they touch any item, then just move everything into storage instead and you lose the layout?)

2) Relocation has different rules than purchasing related to relinquished plots. Let's say you return to the game after a long break and your house is in cold storage. Should you get priority access to housing plots the way a relocation would (and thus go ahead of the line compared to new players who want the land), or should you really be in the same queue as other new purchasers (and people who have "active" houses are the only one who have priority for relocation)?

3) At the end of the day, the reclamation system is also an incentive for people to remain subbed to the game. Bluntly, what motivation does SE have to spend money on making it more attractive for people to stop subscribing to the game, when the alternative is that people just stay subbed and login periodically even when they're on break? (You could argue that this would make it more attractive for people who have to go on break to want to come back, but at the same time it would also make it more likely that people who might not otherwise go on break do since they know all the housing items would still be there whenever they get back.)


In the end, the house reclamation system isn't great, and please don't interpret these comments as a defense of the status quo. But as you say, it's what they have to work with in this game, and it's unlikely to change anytime soon. It's a tough line to draw between "spending money to make it easier for people to take breaks" and "spending money to make it easier for people on breaks to come back."

[NolLacnala]

Alternatively they could fix their junk system by compressing all wards into one and making plots instanced. Neighborhoods are now alive and everyone can buy the plot they want. Walk up to a house placard and select which house you want to actually see (client sided) in a plot, so you can hide extra ugly houses and customize your locales.

[JunseiKei]

Should probably point out that the 80% gil returned and furniture reclamation is only available 35 days after the plot is demolished. It's data that's not even kept eternally. The thread hinges on the fact that it's continuously remembered forever, even if the player never comes back. That would also need to be changed before this idea could work.

Alternatively they could fix their junk system by compressing all wards into one and making plots instanced. Neighborhoods are now alive and everyone can buy the plot they want. Walk up to a house placard and select which house you want to actually see (client sided) in a plot, so you can hide extra ugly houses and customize your locales.

S'how BDO does it. Every house is purchasable by everyone. You default go into your own, but you can visit anyone's place anywhere easily. You just need to find the house.

[MomomiMomi]

1) Let's say your house is in cold storage and you come back to the game and there are no plots anywhere at that time. Can you get access to the items associated to the house while they're in this cold storage state to, for instance, use them in your FC house or in an apartment? If you can get items out of the house's cold storage without placing a house, what impact is that going to have to the layout of the house that you're trying to preserve "as is" for relocation?

2) Relocation has different rules than purchasing related to relinquished plots. Let's say you return to the game after a long break and your house is in cold storage. Should you get priority access to housing plots the way a relocation would (and thus go ahead of the line compared to new players who want the land), or should you really be in the same queue as other new purchasers (and people who have "active" houses are the only one who have priority for relocation)?

3) At the end of the day, the reclamation system is also an incentive for people to remain subbed to the game. Bluntly, what motivation does SE have to spend money on making it more attractive for people to stop subscribing to the game, when the alternative is that people just stay subbed and login periodically even when they're on break? (You could argue that this would make it more attractive for people who have to go on break to want to come back, but at the same time it would also make it more likely that people who might not otherwise go on break do since they know all the housing items would still be there whenever they get back.)

1. For simplicity's sake, and knowing how Square Enix tends to do things, I would say probably not. Ideally, it should be possible. But I'm being realistic here. We can't even take items out of our retainers when they're inactive, and that's a feature players pay for.

2. I don't see why the rules should be different even in the current system.

3. You already stated it makes it more attractive to come back. There are also more complex benefits, such as not having your players hate you.

There's also the fact they can save face every time someone brings this back up:

Q: Will there be any maintenance fees or other costs for housing, besides the cost of the land and house?

A: In older MMOs, such as Ultima Online, there was a house maintenance fee you had to pay weekly, but in FFXIV: ARR we decided against this system. Similarly, these older MMOs also had a system where your house would break down if you didn’t log in after a while in order to have you continue your subscription, but this is a thing of the past and we won't have any system like that.

[MomomiMomi]

Should probably point out that the 80% gil returned and furniture reclamation is only available 35 days after the plot is demolished. It's data that's not even kept eternally. The thread hinges on the fact that it's continuously remembered forever, even if the player never comes back. That would also need to be changed before this idea could work.

That's the whole point. To keep that data. That's the entire proposal.

They're obviously capable of it. They keep our character data around. They can keep that data as well. There's no reason not to other than to cut costs.

[Senn]

I say get rid of the demolition timer entirely.

Make it so that new wards are added as residential areas fill up.

If they have to, SE should temporarily shut down the housing servers. Have all home owners on a list or save their data or whatever. Then when the housing system is fixed, the home owners will still have their houses, and more wards will get added as residential areas fill up. I don't really care if housing servers are shut down for a year, two years, or more to get this fixed. SE needs to do something about the housing problem, and I don't think many people will be opposed to shutting down housing for a while to get this fixed - as long as they get to keep their houses when all is said and done.

[polyphonica]

3. You already stated it makes it more attractive to come back. There are also more complex benefits, such as not having your players hate you.

There's also the fact they can save face every time someone brings this back up.

I don't think they're all that worried about "saving face" from that old quote, because it was also players who asked for a reclamation system to be put in place to have some way to use all the abandoned plots. The circumstances changed and that caused them to change their mind. Of course that means circumstances can change again.

Really, so long as it remains a scarce resource, it's going to be problematic in one way or another. If they were going to spend time on this type of cold storage system anyway, might as well just allow you to instance the house from that cold storage somehow and be done with it. They already have a partial solution for instanced gardening with the flower pots, so the remaining problem is really just the chocobo stable.

I don't really care if housing servers are shut down for a year, two years, or more to get this fixed. SE needs to do something about the housing problem, and I don't think many people will be opposed to shutting down housing for a while to get this fixed - as long as they get to keep their houses when all is said and done.

I don't think there'd really be any need to shut anything down even if they were going to make some changes like that (it could be done in parallel), but it's still a big cost to do it, and it's not necessarily the case that demand is going to just keep on growing forever. It'd probably require some pretty major re-architecture to have dynamic scaling (since it'd probably involve spinning up new virtual servers, automatic provisioning, etc. -- this was a game designed before the "cloud").

[MomomiMomi]

Really, so long as it remains a scarce resource, it's going to be problematic in one way or another. If they were going to spend time on this type of cold storage system anyway, might as well just allow you to instance the house from that cold storage somehow and be done with it. They already have a partial solution for instanced gardening with the flower pots, so the remaining problem is really just the chocobo stable.

That would be fine if it didn't fly in the face of their whole design philosophy behind their housing system.

Which is why I'm keeping the whole thing in-line with how housing works in this game.

And they don't even really need to create a new system for storage. It's one they already use for apartments. They keep those indefinitely. They can do the same for our houses.

The only part that would need work is the transfer.

[polyphonica]

And they don't even really need to create a new system for storage. It's one they already use for apartments. They keep those indefinitely. They can do the same for our houses.

It's the same general idea in a very broad sense, anyway. The system for apartments is like the one they used for FC member rooms, but even though they're instanced, most likely the data is still housed on the actual housing world server where the apartment is. Here you'd probably store it on some other server, and you'd also have to accommodate the larger housing sizes and exteriors. And then, as you say, to take it out of cold storage for relocation.

But again, I suspect the real issue isn't whether it's technically possible to do, it's whether leadership would agree it's what should be prioritized.