How to fix housing in 2 steps

[Jojoya]

Apartments aren't housing, they're just an FC room you can't lose. (I wouldn't be surprised if that's part of the reason they can't be upgraded.)

Full stop.

hous·ing
/ˈhouziNG/


noun
1.
houses and apartments considered collectively.

Yes, apartments are housing. The moment you claim otherwise you've lost the debate.

What you should be doing is talking about why an apartment is not the housing you want.

Are they smaller with lower item limits? Yes.

Can you still place interior furnishings? Yes. There are approximately 890 different indoor furnishings to choose from versus 212 outdoor furnishings. That means you still have choice from 80% of all furnishings.

Do you get access to a Chocobo Stable? Yes. It's included with apartment purchase and doesn't use up a furnishing slot. A house owner needs to buy one for an additional 125,000 gil and it will use up one of their outdoor furnishing spaces if they want access at their home

Do you get access to a teleport to your apartment. Yes. It's included with apartment purchase and doesn't use up a furnishing slot. A house owner needs to buy a Miniature Aetheryte that will use up one of their outdoor furhishing spaces if they want to be able to teleport directly to their house.

Do you get access to a Delivery Moogle/Mailbox? Yes. There's one in the lobby of every apartment building that anyone can access even if they don't have an apartment in the building. A house owner needs to get a mailbox that will use up one of their outdoor furnishing spaces if they want a mailbox at their house.

Do you get access to general gardening? Yes. Any seed can be grown in flowerpots including seeds that can't be grown in outdoor garden patches. Flowerpots do take up a furnishing space.

Do you get access to intercross gardening? No. That requires weather, which does not exist in instances (why you can't do it inside of a house interior either). But considering less than 90% of house owners participate in intercross gardening because it's an RNG mess that has a mandatory daily log in requirement, it's not an issue for most of those who want a house.

Weather in instance should not be a technical problem, it is as production priority problem as budget is not an infinite resource and how SE manage its validation process

Not trying to claim it should be a problem but with how SE created the instancing system for housing it is. And your explanation shows out why it's not easy to fix, which was the point I made. Budget is a struggle even for a billion dollar company.

House owners shouting down at non house owners.

Most of us support the desire to get a house and would like to see change in the system.

Statements like "apartments aren't housing" won't get SE to make those changes.

[Sairys]

Full stop.


Yes, apartments are housing. The moment you claim otherwise you've lost the debate.

What you should be doing is talking about why an apartment is not the housing you want.

Are they smaller with lower item limits? Yes.

Can you still place interior furnishings? Yes. There are approximately 890 different indoor furnishings to choose from versus 212 outdoor furnishings. That means you still have choice from 80% of all furnishings.

Do you get access to a Chocobo Stable? Yes.

Do you get access to a teleport to your apartment. Yes.

Do you get access to a Delivery Moogle/Mailbox? Yes.

Do you get access to general gardening? Yes.

Do you get access to intercross gardening? No.

This is a really good list showing how they're not the same as houses which furthers that point that they're not houses, it doesn't particularly matter if some of those differences are, slim, benefits.

• You have to get a free aetheryte, stable, and mailbox because they're missing features of the housing system that would let you access them.
• Given they're not mutually exclusive, those that have houses have all the benefits of apartments as well. While you'd still want an aetheryte, house owners can also skip stables and mailboxes then just use their apartment ones.
• You get most of the furnishing options yes, but you don't get all of them. Outdoor includes rewards, rare drops, convenient striking dummies, etc.
• Given one of the arguments for wards is the "neighbourhood" feeling, outdoor furnishings are better at showing off and a well done yard can encourage people to take a look inside where you can show off even more.
• Participation rates on outdoor gardening also don't really matter, it's a system you get locked out of and don't have a choice about. It also makes sense for it to be low priority to address the issues with it given so few people can access it

Relying on the definition of housing is a matter of semantics and ambiguity, that definition is for the real world and we're talking about systems in a game. The systems are similar yes, but apartments have much more in common with FC rooms to the point that they're not particularly meaningfully distinct depending on your permissions and what your fc has bought.

[Netaie]

Not trying to claim it should be a problem but with how SE created the instancing system for housing it is. And your explanation shows out why it's not easy to fix, which was the point I made. Budget is a struggle even for a billion dollar company.

To be honest, most of the time when you see status quo on a simple problematic feature it is more about leadership control which implies decisions bottleneck than a real budget issue. Heavy/Long process validation is not always a good thing. I can guarantee you that some designers and programmers at SE already made some proposals or prototypes. They can be as frustrated as players about a blocking situation. But the thing is, as long as leadership will consider the situation good enough there will be no change, even the smallest one

[Jojoya]

1) Add instanced houses to the instanced apartment systems. Some (most?) of us just want an exterior and gardening space.

In the past, SE has told us that intercross gardening is not possible in housing interiors because it's tied to weather that does not exist inside of instances. (interiors always show Fair Skies as a placeholder regardless of what the weather condition in the ward is)

Intercross gardening is one of those features that is "you think you do but you probably really don't". There's a reason why you can tour wards and find few gardens in use, and even fewer set up for intercross. Most players who give it a try will abandon it since it requires daily log in and gets quite annoying with RNG depending on what seed you're trying to obtain.

If you just want the general ability to grow things from seeds, that can be done with flowerpots. Any seed will grow in a flowerpot, including the decorative flower seeds that can't be grown in garden patches.

[bhffs]

In the past, SE has told us that intercross gardening is not possible in housing interiors because it's tied to weather that does not exist inside of instances. (interiors always show Fair Skies as a placeholder regardless of what the weather condition in the ward is)

That sounds extremely easy to fix. Simply choose a home location for your instanced house (for example, Empyreum), and the instance inherits the weather that is happening there.

[Jojoya]

That sounds extremely easy to fix. Simply choose a home location for your instanced house (for example, Empyreum), and the instance inherits the weather that is happening there.

If it was that easy to fix, housing would have been designed that way from the start.

What I'm interested in seeing is just how weather is going to work on Island Sanctuary. Is it just going to be a placeholder skybox the way it is in any other instance, or have they figured out a way to give it actual weather. If they've given it actual weather, then maybe they're close to a solution for weather in instances in general and housing specifically.

[Netaie]

If it was that easy to fix, housing would have been designed that way from the start.

It does not work like this. In game development, you must manage with budget (time/person allocated) and quick iteration to provide something which can be tested as early as possible. So sometimes you release something but:
1. can be broken by player
2. do not work as much as you wanted but budget limited you

So for 2. you hope you will have more budget for an improvement in the future. Thing can be done well in the first draft if budget is here. It is about managing priority and clearly, housing is not a top priority for the moment and it is easily understandable

What I'm interested in seeing is just how weather is going to work on Island Sanctuary. Is it just going to be a placeholder skybox the way it is in any other instance, or have they figured out a way to give it actual weather. If they've given it actual weather, then maybe they're close to a solution for weather in instances in general and housing specifically.

Weather in instance should not be a technical problem, it is as production priority problem as budget is not an infinite resource and how SE manage its validation process

[Yshtola_Cat]

How to fix it in one step: bring back the 2.1 price chart

[Elevin]

House owners shouting down at non house owners.

[Divinemights]

The only resolution (not fix because nothing is broken to begin with) to address this supply vs demand is not to add more ward
I think it is time for SE to expand the datacenter from 8 servers into 9 or 10.
Any other request such as copy other game's instanced housing isn't really optimal.