Fix Housing Megathread

[baobaosun]

How about flying turtles in the sky as instanced housing? We can build on the back of a floating turtle and it's part of a quest series about making a home on the back of an endangered species. Maybe have it take part in the MSQ for End Walker?

Or how about a moving house that you can call upon like a mount? Like Howl's Moving Castle, but Final Fantasy? Get to customize your own moving castle and have it show up when you blow into a whistle. Maybe make it look like a moggle, or maybe make it look like Zenos on all fours crawling?

[ItMe]

snip

Enhancing the sharing options could be a good way to get more mileage out of each house (as in, to be able to satisfy more players with each individual house). It's also cool because they could just change the housing rules, they wouldn't need more servers or wards for this to work.
We might need personal rooms in shared houses (like in FC houses) and a few other things (personal gardens?) to ensure that everyone can use the house for whatever it is they wanted a house for.

I'm not so sure about the increase in price though...
How would the game know you bought a house for you vs bought a house to share?

[SXTC]

I just mentioned the increase pricing to make sure only people get it that want it bad...
That way chances of FC's getting standalone housing would increase since FC's have many members often willing to cover the costs as a team.
But I suppose keeping the other options in mind this rise in price might not be required.

As for how the game would know you bought a house for yourself or to share.. the same can be said for a private house which is for you from the start, but can be shared at any given time.
When someone would buy a house for private use he would get the option to invite people (only a few more in my example). When someone buys a house for FC use however the sharing option would not be there.
But when you select an FC in game you would get an additional option.

Right now a member can use that FC info panel to send an application to join as a member.
I would add an option which relies on whether you own an FC dedicated house or not. If you have you could send someone an "offer estate sharing" button. If you did not have an FC house/plot that option would be "request estate sharing". If accepted that FC owner would get a similar function like someone sharing a private house where they can select what options to allow and which not. Each of those permissions should be adjustable for each FC you are sharing with "separately" in case you want to build trust first, and more options should be available with what you want to share such who can use the airship/subs and who can use the food inside the house (would be useful if you could assign a floor to an FC, but I doubt they can do that).

But once you start sharing your house/plot with another FC they could teleport to it just like any other member.

Same idea as a private house... if the main one becomes dead, other FC's can release themselves from the plot and find another active FC to work with.
And if no one enters that house in a while, the plot would get demolished.

[SXTC]

Enhancing the sharing options could be a good way to get more mileage out of each house (as in, to be able to satisfy more players with each individual house). It's also cool because they could just change the housing rules, they wouldn't need more servers or wards for this to work.
We might need personal rooms in shared houses (like in FC houses) and a few other things (personal gardens?) to ensure that everyone can use the house for whatever it is they wanted a house for.

I'm not so sure about the increase in price though...
How would the game know you bought a house for you vs bought a house to share?

Despite the fact that I answerd most questions, I see I overlooked 1 thing... the garden for private use.
I think that can be solved differently by adding a "back garden" (or a separate room) to the instance area where people can use exterior items on that specific spot.

[Juun]

I think a good solution would be to restrict FC from buying a house. This would open up many plots for players to buy a house and decorate it, like it should be intended. Rather then have FC houses that look empty and barren because they only bought it for the company workshop. They could give individuals an instanced place that replaces the company workshop so everyone could use it, this would also reduce the FC's with only one person in it.

[SXTC]

I think a good solution would be to restrict FC from buying a house. This would open up many plots for players to buy a house and decorate it, like it should be intended. Rather then have FC houses that look empty and barren because they only bought it for the company workshop. They could give individuals an instanced place that replaces the company workshop so everyone could use it, this would also reduce the FC's with only one person in it.

Are you suggesting to BAN community behavior on an MMO despite the fact that 90% of all privately owned housing is empty and barren? Forgetting that the people that take abuse and get a 1 man FC for the workshop are exactly the same people that want to own the house privately for them alone? In my opinion, FC's that take it serious and bring people together help SE get a more steady subscriber base and therefor more income so its only logical SE does not discriminate the very few people on the game that are grateful and try to give something back indirectly by making sure everyone has a good time (FC's decorate too, and at least more people then just you get to enjoy it).

To have a more friendly "non discrimination" approach, you could fix the issue by auto deleting every FC that does not at least have 16+ (more then 8, otherwise they'd just recruit their own alts with the help of a friend) people logging in once a month. That way you know you'd not be wasting houses on selfish ppl for private (ab)use. In my opinion they should add the additional apartments I mentioned above and give housing priority for FC's that are "active" or at least create a ward for FC's alone and one for private use alone (so you get one alive ward and one dead one to put it bluntly, keeping current private house activity in mind).

I think a house should be used by more then just 1-3 people, keeping into account that SE invested a lot of time and money in them so its only fair it gets shared by more subscribers who also pay to have fun.
But I believe the idea mentioned above should solve all those issues without having to result to discrimination.

[TwistedTea]

To have a more friendly "non discrimination" approach, you could fix the issue by auto deleting every FC that does not at least have 16+ (more then 8, otherwise they'd just recruit their own alts with the help of a friend) people logging in once a month. That way you know you'd not be wasting houses on selfish ppl for private (ab)use. In my opinion they should add the additional apartments I mentioned above and give housing priority for FC's that are "active" or at least create a ward for FC's alone and one for private use alone (so you get one alive ward and one dead one to put it bluntly, keeping current private house activity in mind).

I think a house should be used by more then just 1-3 people, keeping into account that SE invested a lot of time and money in them so its only fair it gets shared by more subscribers who also pay to have fun.
But I believe the idea mentioned above should solve all those issues without having to result to discrimination.

Yeah, no.

Your idea discriminates against all the small FCs of 4 or less.
Like a group of 4 friends, that has a member taking a break from a game.
Or a couple who are sharing the FC and a house.

Why should small FCs be forced to recruit additional members who they might not be compatible with just for the sake of keeping the FC and house?

Size of the FC does not determine how active it is.
I've been in all FC sizes and I find many of the smaller FCs are more active if we're using passive FC credit generation as a metric.

But more importantly, your idea will not fly because the Lodestone data shows that on JP servers,there are many small FCs.

SE prioritises their Japanese player base first.

[Almagnus1]

To have a more friendly "non discrimination" approach, you could fix the issue by auto deleting every FC that does not at least have 16+ (more then 8, otherwise they'd just recruit their own alts with the help of a friend) people logging in once a month. That way you know you'd not be wasting houses on selfish ppl for private (ab)use. In my opinion they should add the additional apartments I mentioned above and give housing priority for FC's that are "active" or at least create a ward for FC's alone and one for private use alone (so you get one alive ward and one dead one to put it bluntly, keeping current private house activity in mind).

Current FC I'm in would be able to do that (we're fielding 3 raid teams atm), but the prior one couldn't. Anything above 4 isn't going to fly as you need four players to create the FC, restrictions indicated you needed an FC of at least 4 to get the house, so you should only need 4 to keep it (preferably 4 active and unique subscriptions). IMO SE should action against the micro FCs because that also attacks the housing hoarders... but that's something that needs to be done carefully and (IMO) shouldn't happen until after SE has granted everyone access to gardening and the workshop through non-housing means.

[Nepentha]

Are you suggesting to BAN community behavior on an MMO despite the fact that 90% of all privately owned housing is empty and barren? Forgetting that the people that take abuse and get a 1 man FC for the workshop are exactly the same people that want to own the house privately for them alone? In my opinion, FC's that take it serious and bring people together help SE get a more steady subscriber base and therefor more income so its only logical SE does not discriminate the very few people on the game that are grateful and try to give something back indirectly by making sure everyone has a good time (FC's decorate too, and at least more people then just you get to enjoy it).

To have a more friendly "non discrimination" approach, you could fix the issue by auto deleting every FC that does not at least have 16+ (more then 8, otherwise they'd just recruit their own alts with the help of a friend) people logging in once a month. That way you know you'd not be wasting houses on selfish ppl for private (ab)use. In my opinion they should add the additional apartments I mentioned above and give housing priority for FC's that are "active" or at least create a ward for FC's alone and one for private use alone (so you get one alive ward and one dead one to put it bluntly, keeping current private house activity in mind).

I think a house should be used by more then just 1-3 people, keeping into account that SE invested a lot of time and money in them so its only fair it gets shared by more subscribers who also pay to have fun.
But I believe the idea mentioned above should solve all those issues without having to result to discrimination.

No. Good lord, no. FCs require 4 people in them to start an FC and buy housing. If they purchased a plot it'd be auto deleted before even putting down a house going by this suggestion. Small FCs are as much a part of the game as larger ones. My FC has 18 distinct accounts in it. But there's about 5 of us now actually active, the rest are taking a break from the game. 2 returned recently, before that there were 3 of us active. We weave in and out depending on what's going on with the game and with our lives outside the game.

We should have our FC house auto deleted because we have fewer than 16 active, distinct accounts at all times?

Yoshi-P encourages people to take breaks and spend time with family or play other games. Your idea punishes people for doing that.

[Illmaeran]

A fix/improvement I could get behind would be to sell condos in addition to apartments. For example, a Small condo would be the same size and layout as a Small house; a Medium condo would be two small houses stacked on top of each other, so four floors in tota,l aligned vertically with stairs going from the bottom to top floor. A large might be the same layout and size as a current Medium house.

Pricing would start at 1.2 million for a Small (twice the price for twice the size of the current apartments) with Medium and Larges costing the same relative amount to stand-alone houses in the normal wards. For example, if a Small house costs 5 million and a Medium costs 15 million, then a Medium condo would cost 3.6 million.

It would bum me TF out to not have a yard to landscape, but having the space of a home in the instance of an apartment is much better than nothing or the current single-room apartment/FC room.