The Case for Instanced Housing

[kaynide]

It's been said a million times..but hear me out. If housing is such a point of contention, perhaps it is time for an overhaul.

*Disclaimer: Especially because I am 80% sure Ishgard will be player housing, I'm sure this is not going to be a thing..but still...*

Points for it:

1. Everyone will have access.
2. I assume better data storage/organization (since it's per character and does not need to be loaded as much as current neighborhoods)
3. Consolidate things!
4. Gil sink/Progression tied to money.

Concept:

1. Upon completion of 2.0, PC (Being the warrior of light) will be granted a piece of land in one of the three countries as a reward for service. At this point, no building, no real services. Maybe a campsite.
2. PC is introduced to an NPC who will get things built for gil. Yes, very Tom Nook.
3. There will be a variety of buildings/features that can be constructed.
4. Utilize the system from the Beast tribe village progression to "evolve" your camp to a working base of sorts. Nothing too complicated, but think along the lines of the Parrock in Heavansward.
5. As the story progresses, new regions become available for your house. This is more about changing the background you see beyond your base than actual functionality. For example, Gridania might be surrounded by trees, Sea of Clouds is a floating island, Azim Steppe might be a plateau top overlooking the steppe.
6. Specific layout of buildings might change depending on which region your base is located. (Gridania more chaotic/sprawling, Ul'dah more orderly?)
7. Moving to new locations requires a relocation fee (gil sink).

Example:
A small island of sorts with several areas to upgrade (upgrades cost gil)

• A should be obvious, but this is a space that will gradually expand from an S size to an L size House.
• B appears as a garage or warehouse. It's our workshop. Possibly with one of our airhsips/subs parked outside it if not in use.
• C are not accessible buildings, just facades where our retainers work out of. In game it'd be where they store our junk.
• D Replaces the barracks in each Grand Company by level 50. Possible some alternatives like a Tavern.
• E Has a lot of different upgrades, like the Aetheryte. An idea is to have a sort of Dressing Room area with haircut, glamour, armoire and retainer bell.
• F Exit via ship/airship/dinosaur? to major cities and possibly connect to where your house is (eg. exit to Azim).
• ?? Not on the image, but obviously can expand this to do things like gardening, fishing spots, possibly small farm area (leather/meat gathering).

Thank you for your time! Long post!

[kaynide]

Update: You can’t really hold SE to anything they have said on this issue. Because they might have said or hinted at X at any point, does not mean X is locked in forever.

Some examples:
(TY Daniolaut)
Source 1:

While I cannot give a specific date on when personal housing will be implemented, I can say that prices will be completely separate from free company housing, and, naturally, far more affordable.

Source 2:

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.

Common Points for Neighborhoods:

• Social Hub: some players have become very attached to their neighbors/have events with neighbors. Others have never met neighbors.
• Pride: Some players have spent a fairly large amount of time decorating and showing off their homes, even winning official contests. They like being visible to outsiders. (think bonsai or rose garden)

Common Requests or Current Grievances:

• Account wide home/shared with alts
• Needs access to friends. To a certain degree I think this could be alleviated by allowing players to visit homes based on their friend list or maybe even just knowing a person’s name.
• Needs to feel “alive”. I personally have never met my neighbors, but this is an important part of home ownership to many players. NPCs could be utilized to give life to an instanced area (again think Animal crossing, but maybe squadron members sitting in chairs/walking/interacting with things).

[Theodric]

I'd love to see instanced housing for various reasons. The most prominent being the major boost to the economy that it'd bring - especially in relation to furniture.

[EaMett]

The issue with instanced housing isn't that it's a bad design. It's just that it's not what SE wanted for housing. And what SE wants is for it to be a limited, difficult to get resource. If you want to debate that instance housing is better than limited housing then you will need to get meta because "people are unhappy they can't get a house" is the whole point of the current design.

Honestly, at this point you would need to demonstrate that they would make more revenue with instanced housing and that it's SO much more money that it could justify the, most likely, very high cost of (re)designing the entire feature. That's a steep hill to climb.

Oooor, people could bite the bullet and spend that time farming for a house.

[Eldevern]

...

Considering they already have almost, if not all the libraries they need, there isn't that much work left. After all, they found time to make flying available in ARR maps (considering all the invisible walls on maps, flying appears to me like a bigger work).

What is currently mostly missing is :
Some kind of central aetheryte
Some houses and islands designs

but considering all the work already done, it is mainly to adapt the existing. Even considering databases, to modify the apartments mapping is far to be a nightmare.


Honestly, farming for a content, that limited, considering the current State-of-Art, you can lose, doesn't worth the time.

[Enla]

I wish they'd do this not just because I desperately want more space to enable my decorating obsession, but also because this game is in SERIOUS need of actual gil-sinks. It'd be a drop in the bucket for players who are already close to cap but for everyone else it might help the in game economy a little give how much money you can earn doing the bare minimum of effort these days.

[Stanelis]

The issue with instanced housing isn't that it's a bad design. It's just that it's not what SE wanted for housing. And what SE wants is for it to be a limited, difficult to get resource. If you want to debate that instance housing is better than limited housing then you will need to get meta because "people are unhappy they can't get a house" is the whole point of the current design.

Individual player housing as originally planned during ARR but got scrapped for hatever reason (probably a financial one). Housing isn't limited by design but by technical issues. The housing we currently have in the game was originally housing meant for free companies, and was supposed to be different from the individual player housing.

[Seraphor]

This would take away too much of what makes housing worthwhile. And considering we're still in the process of building an entirely new housing ward, they're not going to scrap it all any time soon.

A better option would be to upgrade Apartments, with the same size options as houses, and then have instanced gardens, and add a Workshop function to Grand Company Barracks.

You can then replicate all of the functionality of housing, but for those who want it all in one place within the setting of a housing ward, there's a premium option for it, and it doesn't involve tearing down everything people have already had for the past several years.

[EaMett]

Considering they already have almost, if not all the libraries they need, there isn't that much work left. After all, they found time to make flying available in ARR maps (considering all the invisible walls on maps, flying appears to me like a bigger work).

What is currently mostly missing is :
Some kind of central aetheryte
Some houses and islands designs

but considering all the work already done, it is mainly to adapt the existing. Even considering databases, to modify the apartments mapping is far to be a nightmare.


Honestly, farming for a content, that limited, considering the current State-of-Art, you can lose, doesn't worth the time.

Everything is easy when you're on the sidelines. The fact of the matter is that this isn't an asset issue to start with so talking about how they have most of the assets already is kinda pointless. I'm also a little amused that your go to "they have the time" example was them taking some 5 years to remove invisible walls from a handful of maps, lol. And if it isn't worth the time then why is it full? Evidently it's worth the time for some people.
I wasn't saying instanced housing was bad, I was just saying that the current system isn't bad either. It's just their flavor of it and, for all intents and purposes, seems to be working as intended.

Individual player housing as originally planned during ARR but got scrapped for whatever reason (probably a financial one). Housing isn't limited by design but by technical issues. The housing we currently have in the game was originally housing meant for free companies, and was supposed to be different from the individual player housing.

The original housing was released in 2.1 and then opened to individuals in 2.38. That doesn't leave much room for design and implementation. Odds are they never left the drawing board with it, or scrapped it from the start because they weren't pleased with the design.
And the devs have gone on record saying that they made housing difficult to get by design. The whole "sense of accomplishment" and "showing off your homes" memes originated from these comments, way back when.

[kaynide]

I wouldn’t be against real money for certain housing services (maybe real money to unlock certain locations or themes).

In game though, I am sitting on 2 large and 1 small house in Tonberry, with access to about...70 mil. I’d give up all 3 Houses in a heartbeat and they’re in prime beachfront spots.

Again not asking for something as big in scale as the guild wars guild halls/personal instanced house.. honestly more like Animal Crossing but scaled waaaay down.

Also, I’m of the mind that the housing wards should be limited to FCs only, and even then with rather strict requirements. Like for a Large house, I think it’s would be totally fair to require 8 different accounts (not characters) enrolled in the FC..and said 8 members have to have played in the past 45 days. Theoretically should be easy since larger FCs should have more than this 8 minimum. Make it 6 for medium and 4 for small.