Optional Instanced Housing

[Sauteed]

I don't want to jump in and curb any enthusiasm you have for this idea, BUT..

There are costs associated with this type of system, programming etc. It is my belief some higher up committee within Square Enix is banking that the cost of implementing this idea exceeds what they are projecting as profit, or the profit is so negligible that this will not come to pass any time soon. They probably take into account "longevity" and up/down trends based on the current mmo market, and might have a "bad" feeling about investing in the housing system as opposed to trying to fixing the problems listed with healing/tanking as myriad threads are blasting off constantly and affect more people than those interested in housing.

That being said, I do hope they bring about some form of instanced housing that greatly exceeds what is available now with an Apartment. Even a larger "apartment" with no yard would please a lot of folks, but finding some way to implement gardening in these cases may prove to be difficult or impossible for whatever reasons they will pose. I've read somewhere that gardening was tied to the weather/day and night cycle withing the wards so it is not possible in its current iteration to be replicated indoors. (that is what I think I read). Best wishes and I hope you receive your wish.

~~Edit.. It would; in my opinion; be wise of them to clue us in more to what the end result of the Ishgardian Restoration will be.

[iiTzSeb]

Everybody that's on this thread who has said some form of statement against the addition of instanced housing seem to not actually understand just how easy it would be for Square to implement.

Even F2P games like MapleStory 2 have instanced housing and they pull in FAR less money than FFXIV does, the bare minimum monthly sub to this game is $11 USD and we just hit 20 million accounts created, no more "SE can't afford it" excuses.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

Everybody that's on this thread who has said some form of statement against the addition of instanced housing seem to not actually understand just how easy it would be for Square to implement.

Even F2P games like MapleStory 2 have instanced housing and they pull in FAR less money than FFXIV does, the bare minimum monthly sub to this game is $11 USD and we just hit 20 million accounts created, no more "SE can't afford it" excuses.

I don't think anyone is really against instanced housing.

I do think you might be underestimating the technical hurdles SE would have to work through to implement it in a way people would find satisfying. Remember FFXIV:ARR, and all subsequent expansions, is built on the skeleton of the original FFXIV. There's a lot of shortcuts and slapdash coding that was done to bring ARR into a workable and acceptable state. The limitations encountered now are the consequences of that.

I also don't think anyone believes SE can't "afford" it, more like SE has other priorities for their money. Every dollar FFXIV does not go back into the game's development. Far from it, most likely. Yoshi-P and the dev team gets their budget, which is likely much smaller than any of us would like it to be, and have to make do with that regardless of how much money FFXIV actually makes.

[Jojoya]

Everybody that's on this thread who has said some form of statement against the addition of instanced housing seem to not actually understand just how easy it would be for Square to implement.

It's not a matter of difficulty. House interiors were always instanced. Apartments were added - they are instanced. Clearly instanced housing is possible with their technology (though dynamic weather in it might not be).

It was a design choice. They wanted a neighborhood feeling for housing. They wanted players to be able to stand outside their house and see other players moving around their own houses.

I don't think they had anticipated the increased demand for houses over time, especially as the player base rapidly grew in size, or the problems that the ward system would introduce when it came to meeting that demand. They probably didn't anticipate how empty the wards would end up feeling either. Unless you have a house by a very large and active FC, you're not likely to see anyone else in your ward on a regular bais.

At this point, we need to wait and see what's coming with Ishgard.

[Hikari_Kishimoto]

I've read somewhere that gardening was tied to the weather/day and night cycle withing the wards so it is not possible in its current iteration to be replicated indoors.

That's why people came up with the idea of a balcony, what I would really appreciate.
I'd not only do gardening there, but also chill, bathe in the sunlight, wait for dungeons/raids to pop up etc.
So pls SE, make this a thing.

[Jojoya]

That's why people came up with the idea of a balcony, what I would really appreciate.
I'd not only do gardening there, but also chill, bathe in the sunlight, wait for dungeons/raids to pop up etc.
So pls SE, make this a thing.

The problem is that balcony would still be within an instance and lacking weather since housing instances don't have weather.

To be honest, I doubt that day/night sky conditions exist within instanced housing either. All we get is the window lighting effect that is tied to the Eorzean timer.