Instanced Housing?

[Evogolist]

One of the things I never understood after the issues we had with housing is why the devs didn't choose to go with Instance housing for any and all future housing areas. While yes, there are a lot of small houses available, there are players who after a while, would like to upgrade to a bigger house. This being impossible due to the small amount of medium and large plots available.

Now sure, over the span of time, the devs have added more wards to the existing housing areas, but that only seems to be a band-aid to an ongoing problem. Something that I feel could possibly be solved by making any future areas of housing instanced. So my question to the community is, with the possibility of Ishgard housing may be finally happening in the 5.xx series, would you all prefer for it to be like what we have now with separate wards, or would you prefer for it to be instanced with the choice of upgrading to a bigger plot over time?

[Nuna]

They should have both. I don't really care about "showing off" my house (every ward is empty so LOL???). I'd give someone my plot if instanced housing were implemented.

[CazzT]

The way EQ2 did housing is one of the better ways to do it. Houses are spread throughout the main cities and they're accessed via the door on the building. They're instanced.

[Shougun]

Greatly prefer instanced housing as if it were your own zone. I think this would be great because then they could start you out really early on with basically a FFXI mog inn room, and over the course of the game and upgrading you could add floors, storage, exterior space, new features entirely, and perhaps at a certain point in the story it actually moves to an aetherial zone and then you can control the zone structure through basically creation magic (akin to something something spoiler spoiler).

Want your house in the Azim Steppe? Sure. House in Ishgard, Ul'dah lofts, or Idyllshire? Okay~ Need a floating base, yeah okay, just make sure to collect the aetherial essence of the Sea of Clouds to unlock Floating Island as a ground "base" and sky box option. Making room for gathering and /a lot/ of open world content, since you could go about and imprint/unlock content for the area. Want a chocobo farm? Yeah! Of course! Under the sea? The Kojin tribe has something for you. Final zone (of Shadowbringers) like environment, sure why not! For those not familiar with Wild Star it in essence gives players full control of objects, the skybox, and some ground terrain options and suddenly players can basically create their own zones and cities even.

Did you want to scale, float, and rotate objects however you wanted? Yes you can, why? Because it's your zone, its your creation magic, and if it's a terrible look you're not ruining the content for anyone else because they don't have to come to your space (your silly choices don't affect others, alternatively the extra creative control does allow other players to enjoy your amazing creations).

And you can still have people visit, it's not like just because you're not in a ward that you can't see each other. Could add a leaderboard with the content descriptions SE has been adding (like restaurant), people being able to visit when you're open and even have competitions weekly. Perhaps like the Ishgard system it will prevent someone from repeat winning, at least too often, so new places get a chance even if they're not "top top" (so like housing "seasons", pvp for housing lol).

Allowing players to buy new void spaces and perhaps some other features could even help monetize the system, just don't make it exclusive features please lol. Like if SE wanted they could release a Ishgard loft space "memory imprint" (for creation magic, the space being an empty area with Ishgard structure and a balcony exterior). Players could earn it part of the Ishgard restoration once the server has finished the project and after a while then it would be moved to the cash shop. A bit like seasonal, of course you don't even have to use that space you might rather choose- "Floating Island A and B base" place a house on one of the nodes of A, and a medium chocobo farm on B, decorate both floating islands, and then choose The Sea of Clouds weather pattern".

I really want lol. Houses should be a project that begins early, a project that grows with you, every single player gets one (or account at least), saved and protected if you take a break (I've heard quite a few people will not touch housing because you can lose it), and something that stretches that FF magic into your own world space in those magical FF environments. Like when you get keys to the world in single player FF games with your airship.. I feel housing should be that sort of moment.

Although I do want to say they might be able to find "instanced" and neighborhood in one bundle, such that each plot of land can be owned by multiple people and the server just sort of generates the ward based on rankings and or friends list- such that you're surrounded by your friends and the best houses. Of course you can walk up to any placard in that idea and "load" a specific house. Phasing would be interesting though lol, would need to party up with people or something to sync up- lots of conflict resolution needed (like the issues WoW had/has with phasing).

Still I think being able to have housing like Wild Star (or even like some of the other MMORPGs that let you buy locations up, like Swtor but with FFXIV decoration placement) would be better though, just because Final Fantasy games have such magical environments and you can have a much higher level of control and growth when the system is personalized. Though I'm not a fan of taking the rug from underneath people who do like the neighborhood system (and don't want to see it removed because of that). Yet personally I would sell it out in a heart beat for a different system lol (so "both" would be nice since I don't want others to suffer, but I don't think the neighborhood system provides pinnacle benefit and comes with a lot of cons).

[Keddera_StormMoon]

The way EQ2 did housing is one of the better ways to do it. Houses are spread throughout the main cities and they're accessed via the door on the building. They're instanced.

EQ2 did decorating better, I'll agree to that - but that is the only thing I'd take from it.

I'm not a fan of one door leading to 100 instances.

If people want instanced housing, you have two options in apartments and fc rooms.

[Nuna]

If people want instanced housing, you have two options in apartments and fc rooms.

People need to stop saying this, its stupid. You cannot crossbreed in an apartment or fc room. You do not have much space in an apartment or fc room either. They're lame and not a housing replacement. If se made them better then that argument would have weight.

[Evogolist]

Greatly prefer instanced housing as if you're own zone. I think this would be great because then they could start you out really early on with basically a FFXI mog inn room, and over the course of the game and upgrading you could add floors, storage, exterior space, new features entirely, and perhaps at a certain point in the story it actually moves to an aetherial zone and then you can control the zone structure through basically creation magic (akin to something something spoiler spoiler).

Want your house in the Azim Steppe? Sure. House in Ishgard, Ul'dah lofts, or Idyllshire? Okay~ Need a floating base, yeah okay, just make sure to collect the aetherial essence of the Sea of Clouds to unlock Floating Island as a ground "base" and sky box option. Making room for gathering and /a lot/ of open world content, since you could go about and imprint/unlock content for the area. Want a chocobo farm? Yeah! Of course! Under the sea? The Kojin tribe has something for you. Final zone (of Shadowbringers) like environment, sure why not! For those not familiar with Wild Star basically give players full control of objects, the skybox, and some ground terrain options and suddenly players can basically create their own zones and cities even.

Did you want to scale, float, and rotate objects however you wanted? Yes you can, why? Because it's your zone, its your creation magic, and if it's a terrible look you're not ruining the content for anyone else because they don't have to come to your space (your silly choices don't affect others, alternatively the extra creative control does allow other players to enjoy your amazing creations).

And you can still have people visit, it's not like just because you're not in a ward that you can't see each other. Could add a leaderboard with the content descriptions SE has been adding (like restaurant), people being able to visit when you're open and even have competitions weekly. Perhaps like the Ishgard system it will prevent someone from repeat winning, at least too often, so new places get a chance even if they're not "top top" (so like housing "seasons", pvp for housing lol).

Allowing players to buy new void spaces and perhaps some other features could even help monetize the system, just don't make it exclusive features please lol. Like if SE wanted they could release a Ishgard loft space "memory imprint" (for creation magic, the space being an empty area with Ishgard structure and a balcony exterior). Players could earn it part of the Ishgard restoration once the server has finished the project and after a while then it would be moved to the cash shop. A bit like seasonal, of course you don't even have to use that space you might rather choose- "Floating Island A and B base" place a house on one of the nodes of A, and a medium chocobo farm on B, decorate both floating islands, and then choose The Sea of Clouds weather pattern".

I really want lol. Houses should be a project that begins early, a project that grows with you, every single player gets one (or account at least), saved and protected if you take a break (I've heard quite a few people will not touch housing because you can lose it), and something that stretches that FF magic into your own world space in those magical FF environments. Like when you get keys to the world in single player FF games with your airship.. I feel housing should be that sort of moment.

Although I do want to say they might be able to find "instanced" and neighborhood in one bundle, such that each plot of land can be owned by multiple people and the server just sort of generates the ward based on rankings and or friends list- such that you're surrounded by your friends and the best houses. Of course you can walk up to any placard in that idea and "load" a specific house.

Still I think being able to have housing like Wild Star (or even like some of the other MMORPGs that let you buy locations up, like EQ / Swtor) would be better though, just because Final Fantasy games have such magical environments and you can have such a higher level of control and growth when the system is personalized. Though I'm not a fan of taking the rug from underneath people who do like the neighborhood system (and don't want to see it removed because of that). Yet personally I would sell it out in a heart beat for a different system lol (so "both" would be nice since I don't want others to suffer, but I don't think the neighborhood system provides pinnacle benefit and comes with a lot of cons).

I love your example. I think for those that want to show off their plots to their friends and others, there could be something like we have now with the privacy option. Also, I agree, I would like for the current housing wards to stay as like you stated, there's a number of people that like the current neighborhood housing. However, just like there are those who would probably stick with the current housing system, I believe there are quite a number of people that would move to the instanced housing area if it meant getting the size housing area they wanted and in the spot they wanted, if going by your example. With all the housing furnishings that exist in the game, it's a shame that one can't decorate their plots the way they want simply because of plot size limitations.

[Evogolist]

EQ2 did decorating better, I'll agree to that - but that is the only thing I'd take from it.

I'm not a fan of one door leading to 100 instances.

If people want instanced housing, you have two options in apartments and fc rooms.

Only that apartments and FC rooms are only instanced in a sense, but still contain the same limitations and problems that the current housing situation presents. Also like the current housing situation, apartments and FC rooms suffer from the issue of availability. While a FC House may never run out of rooms since I doubt there's a FC out there with over 200 members, but for the sake of argument, let's say there is a FC with over 200 members. What happens when there's no more space available for any member 201 and up? Same thing with apartments. I don't think any ward has had a situation with apartments filling up yet, but each ward has a set amount of apartment rooms available.

Saying that if a person wants instanced housing they should just stick with FC Rooms and/or apartments is a slap in the face to many, especially when some of the housing features and furnishings are only available to those who own actual plots. Imagine wanting to decorate the house and you can't because you don't have permission from the FC leader? You can't change any furnishings around nor can you access gardening. You're basically stuck shuffling stuff around in your little box.

When implemented, FC rooms were a band-aid/temporary measure until personal housing was made available. Again, same with apartments. They're a band-aid/temporary measure until they can figure out what to do with housing. Which is sad since the player base has long since figured out how to fix it and yet the devs choose to keep going with the neighborhood design instead.

[CazzT]

EQ2 did decorating better, I'll agree to that - but that is the only thing I'd take from it.

I'm not a fan of one door leading to 100 instances.

If people want instanced housing, you have two options in apartments and fc rooms.

I would rather have random buildings with doors throughout the city than two in an instanced housing neighborhood which can only be accessed via an instanced building.

If I could have my druthers, I would want a few very large (think Ruby Sea zone size or bigger) neighborhoods scattered around the gaming world that you could have open houses (don't have to zone into them). Then again, I'd prefer to have no load screens at all beyond logging in. But until computers and servers can handle such insane amounts of data, we're stuck with instanced housing.

[savageink]

they need to make apartments expandable. kind of like swtor. Pay an extra amount for a greenhouse or balcony where you can garden....if they are not going to add pots that can crossbreed.