Can we have instanced housing please?

[ForteNightshade]

Anyone who played during early-mid EW release around non dead hours is likely familiar with this message (or something like it, I never took a screenshot of the actual message it displays whenever it happened to me) if they tried to enter their home, due to the sheer volume of people afking in houses/apartments away from peering eyes.



and it's why ultimately fully instanced housing isn't going to happen. It's pretty clear on the backend, housing can only support a finite number of open instances before it prevents anyone else from opening an instance. Instanced housing is irrelevant in FF14 if the instance cap gets hit when only a fraction of the total playerbase even has a house, could you imagine how ridiculously hard it'd be to enter your house if the entire playerbase had a house with only enough instances to handle like, <2% of them? I actually wouldn't be surprised if this error message begins popping up more often come Ishgard, unless they can do small scale modularity for the number of instances that can be open.

Except this error doesn't occur with apartments, which are essentially the same thing: instanced housing. In fact, Yoshida himself has stated they could generate an infinite number of apartments on demand if necessary. Unlike other instanced areas like Inn Rooms, Company Barracks and etc, apartments are fully customizable. There's little reason to believe they can't implement a similar system with housing. What likely causes the congested error is the wards having to maintain everything for every character all in perpetuity whereas apartments don't. They only exist if someone is inside them, and only that client has to load all the data. Simply put, they're similar to our characters. Your alt doesn't exist unless you actually log into them.

Why they don't want to do instanced housing is likely due to the sunken cost fallacy. They've already invested a significant amount of time, money and resources into the ward system and don't want to either scrap it entirely or split resources into something else. Not to mention, houses ensure players will maintain their sub as getting one is nearly impossible. And finally, I wouldn't rule out sheer stubbornness. The dev team is notorious for hanging onto ideas despite vocal criticism. Just look at jobs like Monk, White Mage and Dark Knight. Hell, the healer design as a whole has been extremely divisive but they refuse to budge. Yoshida has expressed his preference for a more socialized housing feel even if his vision doesn't actually exist.

[Beytran70]

It really must be a server or coding issue at this point, because as others have said, games as far back as Lord of the Rings Online in 2007 have had progressive instanced housing where new wards automatically come into existence when required. I hope SE invests some of their record profits into some serious back-end overhauls for FFXIV going forward.

[Nanne]

It really must be a server or coding issue at this point, because as others have said, games as far back as Lord of the Rings Online in 2007 have had progressive instanced housing where new wards automatically come into existence when required

But even in that game they ran into issues where they couldn't add more when the population got too high.

[LisSquid]

I still think an elegant solution is to expand on apartments and add in the gil sink that 14 needs (the mounts are.. okay).

Apartments are they are now:
Buying your apartment would give you exactly what we have currently. You'd have one room, 100 item slots, and it will never disappear due to inactivity.

Upgrading your apartment with "rent":
For a monthly fee of gil you may increase the size and item slot allowance. These can be done in brackets as SE's servers can handle i.e. studio, loft, condo, etc. Because apartments are interiors, they are only loaded when a character enters them. Unlike wards which need to be loaded in at all times (this is why housing is so taxing on the servers. It's the yards.)

What if you miss a payment?:
Talking to the Housing Caretaker, you would have the option of entering the apartment as the standard room with all furniture being shuttled into storage, or you can pay the monthly "rent" when able to return to its upgraded state. You wouldn't be able to enter the apartment until one of these options are chosen.


We don't need SE to build a whole new system to satisfy the housing needs of the community. They just need to expand upon what we already have, and since we have spent the last few expansions giving the ward system attention it is only reasonable that they give apartments a good looking into.

[technole]

People don't really like apartments that much just like how FC rooms aren't really too popular either. People want houses for their newly formed FC, to have parties, privacy. The fact is your perception of the game changes immediately once you get a house, your subscription is the mortgage. They know this trap is real and why there is major incentive to keep chiseling more housing in the game.

You can argue with more housing there would be more FCs and diversity in the game. It'd be healthier because we all know there are people who won't leave FC because their friends might have an FC that's homeless. A lot of things can improve for people overnight with more housing. So I've never been against more housing, just against instant housing which I said previously they don't agree that's the way to go. It's better to just put more resources into building more wards and more city housing like Ishgard. It's hard at the same time as it does require more resources but the results have been there for years, people want it.

[Skivvy]

People don't really like apartments that much just like how FC rooms aren't really too popular either. People want houses for their newly formed FC, to have parties, privacy. The fact is your perception of the game changes immediately once you get a house, your subscription is the mortgage. They know this trap is real and why there is major incentive to keep chiseling more housing in the game.

You can argue with more housing there would be more FCs and diversity in the game. It'd be healthier because we all know there are people who won't leave FC because their friends might have an FC that's homeless. A lot of things can improve for people overnight with more housing. So I've never been against more housing, just against instant housing which I said previously they don't agree that's the way to go. It's better to just put more resources into building more wards and more city housing like Ishgard. It's hard at the same time as it does require more resources but the results have been there for years, people want it.

But what would be wrong with instanced FC housing? An instance can be made to have a courtyard, a view, a whole map, an interior, an exterior, all sorts of things. It doesn't have to be just like an apartment or FC room which are fairly bad.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Except this error doesn't occur with apartments,

That we're aware of. Apartments might just have a higher ration of available instances because of a higher expected average number of users and we just haven't seen the cap yet. Hence why I mentioned they might have small scale modularity based on average users of housing/apartments given in any month, and the server divies them up accordingly.

In fact, Yoshida himself has stated they could generate an infinite number of apartments on demand if necessary.

Of course they can generate infinite numbers of stuff. Adding another ward for more houses & apartments is just a single instance, non-existent for the servers in the grand scheme of things. But just because they can generate more houses/apartments infinitely, doesn't mean the server can handle everyone going into them at the same time, as the housing instance caps proves. Similar to how they can generate extra inventory space for people who are willing to pay $ because only a small fraction will actually own that extra inventory space, but they know full well giving it to everyone would cause major complications on the backend.

they only add as much as they know their server hardware can handle with an average expected user interaction; and when that interaction goes over limits, you run into the congested issue like early EW showed.

Unlike other instanced areas like Inn Rooms, Company Barracks and etc, apartments are fully customizable. There's little reason to believe they can't implement a similar system with housing. What likely causes the congested error is the wards having to maintain everything for every character all in perpetuity whereas apartments don't. They only exist if someone is inside them, and only that client has to load all the data. Simply put, they're similar to our characters. Your alt doesn't exist unless you actually log into them.

That's exactly the same way houses work. The only thing persistently loaded with wards is the ward itself; the inside of houses aren't loaded until you go into them either. That's why you get kicked out if you log out inside a house, since the instance closes the nanosecond no one's inside. If the congested error can happen with houses, it can theoretically happen with apartments. It's just more likely as I said above, they have small scale modularity on the backend that divies up available instances based on average expected player use, with an average higher divy in favor of apartments due to the sheer number of them.

Why they don't want to do instanced housing is likely due to the sunken cost fallacy. They've already invested a significant amount of time, money and resources into the ward system and don't want to either scrap it entirely or split resources into something else.

Considering the code for the ward system is fully complete and at this point adding more wards/apartments is likely as trivial as editing some internal tables and changing the ward HUD a bit, there's no more resources being thrown into it dev wise anymore. While sunken cost fallacy is 100% part of it, I doubt its the primary reason. Considering my own times working on server scaling projects, I'm very convinced its a technical issue in the backend. Whether some foundation coding limitation, or the lack of hardware to support an infinitely scaling system.

[Jojoya]

People don't really like apartments that much just like how FC rooms aren't really too popular either. People want houses for their newly formed FC, to have parties, privacy. The fact is your perception of the game changes immediately once you get a house, your subscription is the mortgage. They know this trap is real and why there is major incentive to keep chiseling more housing in the game.

You can argue with more housing there would be more FCs and diversity in the game. It'd be healthier because we all know there are people who won't leave FC because their friends might have an FC that's homeless. A lot of things can improve for people overnight with more housing. So I've never been against more housing, just against instant housing which I said previously they don't agree that's the way to go. It's better to just put more resources into building more wards and more city housing like Ishgard. It's hard at the same time as it does require more resources but the results have been there for years, people want it.

I don't think you understand what's possible with instanced housing. Here's a fairly recent housing build created in RIFT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCjJC5XZ3rY

That's instanced housing. You buy a Dimension Key, which opens up a copy of a location in the game world with landscaping/furnishing decoration removed. You then add housing items of your choice to the Dimension to build what you want. That player chose to add a replica of a famous Frank Lloyd Wright house to their Dimension. Another player might have chosen to create a military fortress or a park or a gladiator arena.

One player owning a specific Dimension does not limit how many other players can own that same Dimension if they want it and put in the effort to obtain the Dimension Key.

Here's a player in ESO doing a tour of housing in ESO. It's all instanced as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_c297tyQUc

There is no demolition with instanced housing. I hadn't played RIFT in about 4 years when I revisited the game last fall waiting for Endwalker's release. All my Dimensions (13 across 5 characters though I could have had more if I wanted) were still intact. My revised replica of Stormwind's Park District built on top of an island with a lighthouse was still there. My park with water slide built in what is a busy city trade district in the game world was still there. My small village with trading harbor built in what is a desert prison in the game world was still there.

Compare that to this game where not everyone can get a house plot let alone everyone get the same house plot. Where if you take a break for just 45 days instead of 4 years, you come back to nothing.

We don't need more wards. What we need is a good instanced housing system where every player can buy the location they want without locking out another player from owning the same location.

Of course they can generate infinite numbers of stuff. Adding another ward for more houses & apartments is just a single instance, non-existent for the servers in the grand scheme of things. But just because they can generate more houses/apartments infinitely, doesn't mean the server can handle everyone going into them at the same time, as the housing instance caps proves.

If it was a problem, we'd be frequently seeing that error message occurring when trying to enter housing.

We're also never going to hit a point where everyone is trying to enter their own house at the same time because this isn't a housing focused game. The majority of players will always be doing content in other zones or other instanced duties. There's probably far more players going through instanced solo duties at a given moment than are sitting inside their house or apartment.

[Skivvy]

That ESO housing looks pretty spiffy! Quite a lot of variety.

[Beytran70]

Just remember, kids: The Goblet is for broke-arse bonzes.