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.

[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.

[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]

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.

Not being snippy at you, but this is part of the problem I feel.

While I agree in principle that getting housing should be difficult in order for it to be an accomplishment, all we really did to get our 6 or so houses in our FC was be in the right place at the right time. I did nothing special to get mine and believe any sense of superiority derived from having a house vs not having is artificial. It just so happened I was at home on a day off when something opened up.

[Eldevern]

...

It is easy since I do actually know both how 3D and programming work.

And I perfectly understand what they can reasonably do and what they can't. They can do an overhaul that is somehow an upgrade of apartements (and that's what I'm talking about). BUT I don't expect (neither ask) they do evolutive housing since, this time, it would require far more work.

The funny thing from my side is this worth that ends to lead to an empty dormitory city in many if not most wards. Many people are disppointed even after getting a house but they are to afraid too lose it. Then I understand SE behavior at some point but I see many players who have left the game despite they had a house. Then it doesn't keep that many people subscribing.

[EaMett]

It is easy since I do actually know both how 3D and programming work.

And I perfectly understand what they can reasonably do and what they can't. They can do an overhaul that is somehow an upgrade of apartements (and that's what I'm talking about). BUT I don't expect (neither ask) they do evolutive housing since, this time, it would require far more work.

The funny thing from my side is this worth that ends to lead to an empty dormitory city in many if not most wards. Many people are disppointed even after getting a house but they are to afraid to lose it. Then I understand SE behavior at some point but I see many players who have left the game despite they had a house. Then it doesn't keep that many people subscribing.

Sorting out collision boxes and in some cases adding a few extra assets is not on the same plane as instanced housing, not even close. If you're talking about something like replacing apartment instances with house instances then yeah maybe, but that has it's own issues. Also, the devs had to take it out of their own personal time to make the flying changes because SE had no resources for it. That's pretty telling.

As for the empty wards comment, again, it really depends on where you put the bar (and more importantly where SE does). Where's the value at? Is a busy ward a ward where people are constantly running around? One where you see a neighbor every day? One where you get to interact with a neighbor every week? every other week? Which is it and how do you decide which it should be?

At the end of the day, only SE know what their specs were, and only they know if they were successful.

Not being snippy at you, but this is part of the problem I feel.

While I agree in principle that getting housing should be difficult in order for it to be an accomplishment, all we really did to get our 6 or so houses in our FC was be in the right place at the right time. I did nothing special to get mine and believe any sense of superiority derived from having a house vs not having is artificial. It just so happened I was at home on a day off when something opened up.

Sounds like it's been pretty easy on you then. Most people need to put more effort into it and it takes them quite a while longer.

PS: We've kind of gone astray here. My original post was about how people should focus on demonstrating that instanced housing works better than limited housing rather than demonstrating that instanced housing is a viable idea.