Optional Instanced Housing

[Maeka]

So, I know they want housing to be visible by everybody, but some people frankly don't care and would be perfectly fine with their housing being instanced and invite-only, and in fact, there are so many things that could be done with this, that it would open up a lot of doors.

Keep the current housing system to be sure, it's neat that there's non-instanced housing, but it's just too darn hard to get a house with the myriad of problems going on.

But for those players (like myself) who don't mind if their house is instanced, giving us optional instanced housing would be quite nice.

I know, I know, there are apartments and FC quarters, but those are tiny rooms compared to the mansions, or heck even a small house which is twice the size of an apartment without even considering the yard outside.

How this would work, is quite simple -- there could be an NPC standing near the entrance to the current housing districts that whisks players away to their own instanced housing, and this would be a single house near the current housing district in some sort of suburb or rural area, like a cottage in the woods near the Lavender Beds, or a house on the outskirts of the Goblet, or what-not. The player talks to the NPC and they get placed into an instance and the best thing about this is that the instance itself could be customizable (maybe like 2-3 different ones to choose from).

The player could invite anybody they want to see the place just like how apartments work, but at least they'd still have full access to a yard and other such things unlike how apartments work.

Maybe then those of us who just can't find a house, can maybe finally get one.

[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.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

So, I know they want housing to be visible by everybody, but some people frankly don't care and would be perfectly fine with their housing being instanced and invite-only, and in fact, there are so many things that could be done with this, that it would open up a lot of doors.

Keep the current housing system to be sure, it's neat that there's non-instanced housing, but it's just too darn hard to get a house with the myriad of problems going on.

But for those players (like myself) who don't mind if their house is instanced, giving us optional instanced housing would be quite nice.

I know, I know, there are apartments and FC quarters, but those are tiny rooms compared to the mansions, or heck even a small house which is twice the size of an apartment without even considering the yard outside.

How this would work, is quite simple -- there could be an NPC standing near the entrance to the current housing districts that whisks players away to their own instanced housing, and this would be a single house near the current housing district in some sort of suburb or rural area, like a cottage in the woods near the Lavender Beds, or a house on the outskirts of the Goblet, or what-not. The player talks to the NPC and they get placed into an instance and the best thing about this is that the instance itself could be customizable (maybe like 2-3 different ones to choose from).

The player could invite anybody they want to see the place just like how apartments work, but at least they'd still have full access to a yard and other such things unlike how apartments work.

Maybe then those of us who just can't find a house, can maybe finally get one.

I don't think it's realistic to ask for yet another instanced housing system when we have apartments. I'd say it would be better to ask for improvements to the apartment system such as adding the option to purchase bigger (and more expensive) apartments, increase the number of furnishings we can place in apartments, and to ask for indoor garden plots so that apartment owners can crossbreed seeds.

For whatever reason, SE has some issue with adding instanced, yet outdoor spaces for housing. Until that hurdle is overcome, yards for instanced housing is probably not on the table.

[SamSmoot]

Don't make it like other games' instanced housing where each player has his own little private world that no one else can see unless they're in a party with the owner. They need to keep the neighborhood feel or existing housing but enhance it by eliminating the wards.

Each plot would have multiple owners, and you can select which owner's stuff to display via the placard. Your house will always appear on your lot by default, but you could still visit the other owners' properties with the placard.

The current system of one owner per plot results in the deserted neighborhoods we have now. With instanced plots, you'd have hundreds / thousands of residents in the same area.
When you're on your plot, others can still see it if selected, but they can't see you from the street. Once you leave, you're on the street with everyone else that's "outside"
Another advantage is that the house would no longer be a separate instance, so you could freely move in and out, and even have rooms open to the outside.

[Jojoya]

Don't make it like other games' instanced housing where each player has his own little private world that no one else can see unless they're in a party with the owner. They need to keep the neighborhood feel or existing housing but enhance it by eliminating the wards.

Each plot would have multiple owners, and you can select which owner's stuff to display via the placard. Your house will always appear on your lot by default, but you could still visit the other owners' properties with the placard.

The current system of one owner per plot results in the deserted neighborhoods we have now. With instanced plots, you'd have hundreds / thousands of residents in the same area.
When you're on your plot, others can still see it if selected, but they can't see you from the street. Once you leave, you're on the street with everyone else that's "outside"
Another advantage is that the house would no longer be a separate instance, so you could freely move in and out, and even have rooms open to the outside.

Even if they went to instanced plots (exteriors), I think house interiors would remain instanced separately.

Adapting current exterior layouts to an instanced system would save a tremendous amount of work and time because they could use copy/paste for the art/model assets and players could continue to use existing exterior/interior fixtures. Creating an instanced plot where interior and exterior were part of the same instance would mean rebuilding most of those assets. A couple of the current house walls make no sense compared to the interior layouts (one Glade exterior wall displays the house as being raised off the ground with no way to get into the basement area). Some exteriors are noticeably smaller than other exteriors (evidenced by the amount of space between the house wall and fence.

[HeulGDarian]

ya know if they ever change the ratios of how many small, medium and large there are. i think that medium is the one that they should up. If anything large ones have too much space for the item allowance , thus they feel really empty or people end up closing off a floor, meanwhile mediums are perfect you can even make additional floors with the glitches and stuff. its a shame that i rarely see fully made ones, we got too many cafes where i am at =.=

[Kenky]

To be honest, ignoring all of the financial costs it'd have and all the issues SE would need to iron out to get a system like this working..

I'd be all for it. While I am wholeheartedly on the "neighborhood" feel of the ward houses, I am aware that plenty of people just.. Don't care for it and just want a house to try out the building system, yet at the same time, adamantly refuse Apartments, even though the Apartments would give them all the space and ability they need..

Having Instanced Housing be an Optional choice (maybe cost a bit more, due to the extra server-side data, etc.) would alleviate a lot of the stresses from the housing system with.. Almost little to no change. We can but only dream, though. Since SE is locked into the neighborhood style and don't seem to want to budge.

[PortalNinjaChan]

I know that the ideas here kinda fall on deaf ears but I would love to get mine out there.

I really like the idea of the whole "neighborhood" thing, but I feel that it's not being executed as well as it could be. As someone mentioned before, being able to change which property you see at the placard in front of the house would be a good idea for that.

However, what I would really love to see, is condos. Just like the apartments, they'd be instanced housing, but they'd be multi-room or multi-floor apartments, maybe with a balcony to add some outdoor furniture or garden plots or something. They could even include there being small, medium, and large sizes.

I've also heard the idea of instanced airship housing which would also be cool, but i think much harder to implement. Like, the idea of it would be that you could decorate the deck and still have a rooms to decorate as well. I am, however, more on board with the idea of the condos, but this would still be cool.

I think either of these could help solve the XIV housing issues. But that's just me and things I would enjoy

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

To be honest, ignoring all of the financial costs it'd have and all the issues SE would need to iron out to get a system like this working..

I'd be all for it. While I am wholeheartedly on the "neighborhood" feel of the ward houses, I am aware that plenty of people just.. Don't care for it and just want a house to try out the building system, yet at the same time, adamantly refuse Apartments, even though the Apartments would give them all the space and ability they need..

Having Instanced Housing be an Optional choice (maybe cost a bit more, due to the extra server-side data, etc.) would alleviate a lot of the stresses from the housing system with.. Almost little to no change. We can but only dream, though. Since SE is locked into the neighborhood style and don't seem to want to budge.

The primary issue with apartments for people who just want to play with housing design, is the limit on the number of furnishings you can place. At only 100, which is half the amount a small house can have (and many small house owners will tell you that 200 isn't enough unless you entirely close off the basement), you can only do so much decorating, and have to curtail most fancy/glitchy designs due to the limit of objects. Increasing the amount of furnishings one can place in an apartment to at least 200 would help in this regard.

The other issue that comes up often is from people who want the inability to crossbreed plants for seeds. An indoor garden plot furnishing (with 8 slots), would address this issue.

The last complaint I see commonly is the desire for bigger spaces. That one's trickier for SE to deal with and while I'd like it to be added, it's not as quick or easy a thing to implement like the above two things are.

[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.