Housing for everyone?!

[Nalien]

We have instanced housing, everytime you enter a house or apartment, it's an instance. Only the wards are zones that take place in the world server maps.

What's your point, exactly? I'm clearly talking about the exterior plots here, which are not instanced... If they were instanced, SE could hopefully get around the ridiculous server limitations they currently impose and as such offer people far more plots than is currently possible...

As far as I know, right now every plot in every ward is constantly taking up server resources, whether anyone is in those zones or not, because they're not instanced. Interiors and apartments on the other hand, the server doesn't need to load them if nobody is using the instance, so it saves space and doesn't load them, thus allows us to; 1) have far more of them, and 2) place far more furniture in them. Apply that to the plots themselves and end this ridiculous scarcity that only exists because of woefully poor planning on the developers part.

Seriously, there is no point in plots being the way they are. Literally nothing is done with this concept. Housing wards themselves are dead, people basically only sit in their own plot/the nearest market board. I'm sure some enjoy walking around the wards, heck I do sometimes, but it really doesn't justify the ridiculous limitations it imposes on the housing system... Can even keep that concept in part by just locking off the plots and making them instanced, you could still walk around Lavender Beds, you'd just need to zone into a plot rather than seamlessly walking into someones garden. I really don't think that feature is worth also saying "Only X number of people can own a mansion" because we're limited on how many can be added as a result of it...

Heck, instanced plots would arguably make the wards feel more alive. Rather than one person occupying plot 1, you'd have multiple people occupying the instances there... The market boards outside would feel much more lively as a result, since you'd be drawing a greater number of players there. More socializing. More people talking about their houses. Better than the few groups hovering around the market boards we currently get...

[Dyvid]

What's your point, exactly? I'm clearly talking about the exterior plots here, which are not instanced... If they were instanced, SE could hopefully get around the ridiculous server limitations they currently impose and as such offer people far more plots than is currently possible...

As far as I know, right now every plot in every ward is constantly taking up server resources, whether anyone is in those zones or not, because they're not instanced. Interiors and apartments on the other hand, the server doesn't need to load them if nobody is using the instance, so it saves space and doesn't load them, thus allows us to; 1) have far more of them, and 2) place far more furniture in them. Apply that to the plots themselves and end this ridiculous scarcity that only exists because of woefully poor planning on the developers part.

Well from my understanding our game is divided into two pieces on the data center. The Server world which contains world zones and all things that go along with it including outside wards towns. Then you have our instances which we call the DF which creates and contains all the things that require an instance like Dungeons, Trials, Raids, Stormblood's Raubahn, and the interior of all houses and apartments. Currently instance houses are a square floating in a blank space, simple to save and reproduce without too much strain on resources. But when you add the outside environment with sky, lighting, weather, so on and so on; it's starts adding up. In fact when housing first came out, there was problem in the DF server similar to SB Raubahn bringing the change that you can't log back into your house but rather in the ward. Unfortunately FFXIV architecture is built and the devs have to navigate within that design. So to sum up my reply, making a instance housing area on the DF server would only move the problem from one area of the game to another. The last thing we want get boot from a raid and hit with error codes because of housing or vice versa.

P.S. I do agree that the wards are empty right now and wish SE would add things to make them more lively.

[Jojoya]

So to sum up my reply, making a instance housing area on the DF server would only move the problem from one area of the game to another.

Not really. The difference between the wards and instanced housing is the wards are always loaded and running even if there are no players present. Instanced content is loaded only when a player wants to enter it.

When people talk about more fully instanced housing, what they're asking for the exteriors of our plots to be joined to the interiors (which are already instanced). You would no longer be able to see what your neighbors have done with the exterior of their houses, being replaced by walls or some sort of backdrop to represent the neighboring houses. Exiting the instance of your house would put you back into a shared common area like a zone.

Instead of having 144 always loaded zones per server just for housing, SE could reduce it to 4 (one for each housing district). You could walk up to a plot and interact with a menu similar to the apartment menu to pick which house you which to visit. There would be far less of a drain on server resources that way.

[Shougun]

Not really. The difference between the wards and instanced housing is the wards are always loaded and running even if there are no players present. Instanced content is loaded only when a player wants to enter it.

When people talk about more fully instanced housing, what they're asking for the exteriors of our plots to be joined to the interiors (which are already instanced). You would no longer be able to see what your neighbors have done with the exterior of their houses, being replaced by walls or some sort of backdrop to represent the neighboring houses. Exiting the instance of your house would put you back into a shared common area like a zone.

Instead of having 144 always loaded zones per server just for housing, SE could reduce it to 4 (one for each housing district). You could walk up to a plot and interact with a menu similar to the apartment menu to pick which house you which to visit. There would be far less of a drain on server resources that way.

Personally still wish for Wild Star (because then you can have a much larger customize-able area) but I want to defend/add to this point that not only does it require less places to be loaded up at once it also removes the restriction on small/medium/large and adds a lot to neighborhoods.

Meaning you've potentially just unlocked a lot of large houses for players, a lot.

Because everyone is on a shared ward space it means that a neighborhood would be MUCH MORE active, like... a lot more people lol. Also they could add some NPC preset houses for plots that are empty, stored client side. Such that the whole ward is never abandoned looking even if for whatever reason a server has no people on smalls anymore or something like that (but I think that would be unlikely for a long while).

[ERMITANYO]

Wild star instanced housing areas, with FFXIV housing architecture and furniture, and the player can select which view they like...middle of the uldahn desert, forrest scene in gridania, island in limsa lominsa, or kinda swallows compass mountains by the sea in kougane

[TenraiNagi]

I really like the suggestions made in here.

Definitely an instanced housing system would ease on the servers as instead of loading the wards 24/7, it would only load those being accessed by players at that time. I checked out wildstar’s housing system, and it basically is what I’m suggesting, but adding a few of npc houses to the mix to make it look inhabited and not empty, while it’s still customizable by the player to add structures in etc. The idea of adding a shared entrance type area infront of the instanced housing access area with a market board and the npc shops in those wards is great and surely would make people interact more in those areas.
The idea of integrating housing with the seasonal events sounds great, but the problem is that many these houses are empty. So if they make it dependant on furniture placed by other players, then it’ll be pain to go around endless wards just to see if people actually placed them in their gardens/ houses (unless there is a marker for those items on the map or something)

In my original idea, I imagined the personal instanced housing to be similar to the enclave in size, with the player small house being in the middle and areas of the neighborhood closed off (similar to how the enclave was), and Like 2-3 npc houses. While you progress, you choose what to place in the new parts unlocked, if you want to put a park (or beach area, water park, snow playground etc) there with different themes to choose from depending on housing region, mount/ minion area where you can place them for display, a farm/ greenhouse like gardening area, aetheryte, inviting more npc’s if you want, zoo where you can capture and put mobs you want in there with varying difficulty of doing so (maybe tie that with beastmaster), monuments of the twelve or primals/ dead or important npc’s to the storyline/ other, etc etc the list goes on and they can be as creative as they can be.
The npc’s around could have a like/ dislike relationship with the player, some are nice and some are mean (you can’t please everyone). They have weekly requests like displaying certain furniture, showing them certain minions/ mounts, loaning them gil, gardening a certain flower/ plant, asking for a certain piece of gear/ glamour etc, and out of helping them you get to know them better and their back stories and see them improve on their houses too (An npc asks you for a loan just to go upgrade their house before you xD)

[Shougun]

I checked out wildstar’s housing system, and it basically is what I’m suggesting, but adding a few of npc houses to the mix to make it look inhabited and not empty, while it’s still customizable by the player to add structures in etc.

Have you played Dark Cloud (old playstation games)? In that game you had this neighborhood that you would organize about, it was kind of neat that in NPCs had personally favored locations and neighbors.. So behind each NPC bringing some special look to that node you put them on they also would interact a bit with people around them based on position and environment. Some of what you said reminds me of that too.

Guild Wars 2's GUILD housing system reminds me a bit of some of what might describe some of what you're asking too. Not the player stuff, specifically the Guild's. In that game every guild has a zone and many locations they'd upgrade to gain bonuses for the guild, you could also decorate it. Of course instead of like a garden, tavern, or mine shaft you'd have like an NPC.

Also somewhat what WoW's Garrisons are, except you can't really decorate it at all lol. It's a bit like Dark Cloud. I think some of the features are quite neat and there is a lot of content in the space, but decorations are.. quite lacking. Improving the customization options would go a long way into making it more personal, but it certainly is a useful/intriguing place.


Totally not against this being for each player but I'm a big fan of the concept you mention about NPCs being used for FC because then FC have a desire to go out as a team and earn reputation. Like you know how you can have reputation with the GC (if you check your FC you can see what you ranks are)? Would be kind of neat if that allowed you to purchase buildings and services from those GC. Of course expand it to beast tribes and more. Like working with Cid's workship to get some neat airship docking space.

Funny thing for me is I think FFXIV is doing really great on the visual department of housing, some of the houses I've seen in this game are fantastic looking for any game - I just really... really.. am not a fan of the system itself, specifically the ward limitations, and restrictions involved. Like you - I think "why would I want to be restricted by the neighbor I don't care about when I could potentially have a zone to myself with visuals I love?". No desire to squish the space for people who do actually like it of course, but the power involved with going your own space >> being stuck in a shared space.

Also an aside on the seasonal thing, Wild Star had a pretty easy mechanic to visit other player's housing zones - I think you could incorporate seasonal events even in an instanced system. "Visit 5 players houses and capture all the gnomes running wild!". If a player doesn't want their house to participate just restrict it from random visits, there will be plenty of people going full blast design so there wont be an issue with the event like that. Personally I believe they should develop a series of FATEs for the housing districts, some common, some rare, and some seasonal, and just keep them rolling.

[Nalien]

The idea of integrating housing with the seasonal events sounds great, but the problem is that many these houses are empty. So if they make it dependant on furniture placed by other players, then it’ll be pain to go around endless wards just to see if people actually placed them in their gardens/ houses (unless there is a marker for those items on the map or something)

To clarify, I'm not suggesting the main quest of the event be housing related. Just that a side, repeatable quest (like the ones we get for naff stuff like fireworks usually) be placed in housing wards every year for people to do if they want. While it's true not everyone is going to place the Christmas tree from the last (and only) event we had like this, if the plots are instanced and thus more people are in a single zone that currently, it becomes something you can easily just shout for help with. Make the wards more crowded and more sociable.

Markers are a good idea as well. They could stick it on the same system as the new tags system. Place the Christmas tree, automatically get the Christmas tag. Make it a 4th special one we can't set ourselves or something.

Honestly, I mainly just want more reasons to go around an look at other peoples houses. Right now I can do that of course, but in a dead ward with most people offline and not really talking... Throw an event in? Lots more doing that hopefully, lots more talking... IDK, it's an idea I've had ever since that one Christmas event, and I'll admit that event itself was somewhat flawed (as I recall people just went to the nearest house?), but it's a concept I'd have loved to see built upon, rather than abandoned.

[ERMITANYO]

Hmmmm......

Instanced housing in some island in the middle of the ruby sea or any other rural location

Huge apartments with huge instanced balconies, and beautiful landscapes and shops sorrounding the apartment building. With auto cleaning stables

And if possible an allotted 2 deluxe sized garden patch for each apartment owner.

[TenraiNagi]

I have not played the original dark cloud, but I find the garrison’s from WoW lacking from a decoration standpoint as @Shougun pointed out and the guild hall from Guildwars 2 is kind of a different concept, since it’s more of a zone to place things in (people usually make their jumping games in them) rather than a house with with interior design being the major thing (and exterior for the garden ^^). So you get all these ground patches and mountains and outdoor structures to design the zone that won’t apply to our housing system. It’s more similar to minecraft in that regard.

The decoration system we have in ffxiv is great, even though I’d like them to make the glitching methods part of the normal way to place things rather than glitch them there, but overall it’s great. In my idea, decorations would be as we have them now, limited to the house and it’s garden (with the item limit increased ofc because it’s instanced).
So the player would have a decoratable house and a customizable pre defined neighborhood where the areas we unlock are fixed (similar to the enclave) but the player customizes what shall be placed in the unlocked area with preset structures. So if 2 players choose to place a beach area, then they would look the same (except the location might change depending on which unlocked area each player decides to place it on)