Housing for everyone?!

[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).

[Jojoya]

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).

Not just that but with a fully instanced housing system, we could go back to every character owning a house if the player wanted each of their characters to have their own separate house. No more complaints about grandfathering in a few special players because everyone would have equal access (possibly even multiple houses per character).

[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.

[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)

[ERMITANYO]

Any admins forwarding suggestions to devs. Inbox?

[Shougun]

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)

Wild Star. What was that? Wild Star.. Who's talking? Wild Star. Wild Star. lol.

You could scale things up and down and put them in silly positions in that system (allowing people to create statues and entire cities)! I agree if we had our own zone / space then having an unrestricted placement on the x, y, z axis with scaling / rotation would be A M A Z I N G. It's part of the reason why I think people who think they're fine with the current system would realize how green the grass could get when they're given their own zone and unlocked housing system. Where they can still easily invite people to come visit, social power doesn't die unless you don't care to foster it.. which is pretty much how the system already is anyways lol (people who go out of their way to make it social can do so, and for the rest of us it's about features and accessibility).

I'm sure no matter what grand features you could introduce some will prefer it exactly how it is now (so I don't want any system to be destroyed) - like some people actually like the limited housing (that there are not enough larges for demand) but I just have to say "we will always disagree, forever" when it comes to if limited housing is a good idea or not. If I don't like having to balance 100 variables in real life to find a house I like there is no way I'm going to enjoy doing it in a video game where it's even more limited than real life lol (and is often a race). I can understand some people might like that, like some people might like perma-death in an MMORPG, that however is not me lol.

Probably one of the top items in things I wish FFXIV did differently (overall pleased and love the game so I like making suggestions here and there just as a fan, but this issue I talk about because it actively disappoints me with the "y tho" feeling lol). Makes me sad as well coming from FFXI where it seemed like they had the right idea ages ago where everyone get's a place to call their own and just needed to make it much better. Of course I assume that the problem is the whole 1.0 to 2.0 issues, and that if Yoshi-P / Programmers could snap their fingers that we'd have a lot less issues with the system. They had a chaotic building point to go from and an insanely short period of time to work with to get the ball rolling again, it's pretty great how they've done so far. Still even though I can imagine why we have the problems I find it worth demonstrating displeasure, in the off chance they decide to invest resources into solutions or even if team works on a new MMORPG (so they can not repeat the issues of this system).

Any admins forwarding suggestions to devs. Inbox?

In a general statement they've both said yes and I feel like they do, on a more nuanced level I'm not sure what the exact protocol is for things to be forwarded. Not sure who does the forwarding either, I imagine it might be our community managers (mates with the cool avatars). Like I've heard they translate the top ten or so threads every week to be read by the team, but are there any specific posts or ideas that get translated or concentrated outside of that? No idea. I know there were a few old ideas I had wanted that I saw happen and they weren't exactly jackpot posts in popularity (could be because I described something already asked for by the Japanese community or was already a plan in development).

[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