Why does a looter shooter have better housing than FF14?

[Silverbane]

Is it obvious?
I have no idea what resources Square had available but since Island Sanctuary is a completely new system requiring new assets and since it is not restricted like housing but is available to every character, then it's pretty obvious they've sunk an awful lot of resources into it.
Who is to say they couldn't have given players decent instanced housing instead?

A significant property of Isalnd Sanctuaries is that it's not just instanced: it's isolated.

You can't use or make gil there, because it has its own currency.
You can't use or make items (e.g. Thav onions) useable in the "out-world" there.
You can't trade the items you make or use there with other players, who can only interact with your Island Sanctuary as look-don't-touch tourists, so no gil-for-IsleBucks trading.
And odds are, your out-world crafter and gatherer progression will be useless on the island.

So any features (or bugs, which is often the same thing) in Island Sanctuaries won't have any effect on the non-Island game economy. It won't affect supply or demand for anything.

The only link between the out-world and the Islands is, apparently, your minions, who can roam the Island, and your FC and friends list, which determines who can visit it. This means that it is very unlikely that Islands will screw up progression or screw up the game economy. And don't underestimate how important not screwing up the game economy is.

So why does this high degree of isolation make the Islands easier to implement than instanced housing?

Because in complex systems, a big source of gotchas, and often the biggest source of schedule slips in development, is unexpected interactions between components. The more isolated the components are, the less you have to worry about it.

Furthermore, in software development, the bigger the team that has to work together is, the more problems you're going to have because of miscommunication and interpersonal conflict. But because Islands are so isolated, the team that is coding (and doing the art) for it is probably working in isolation itself.

So, you might ask, why not do a similar thing with housing? But would most people want that: housing with only furnishings and goods you could not buy for gil, could not craft and sell for gil, and could not trade with other players? I wouldn't.

[lorthera]

the fact that club penguin has a somewhat better housing system than ffxiv (in regards to housing just being accessible to everyone out of the gate and it being easy to visit other player's housing, not necessarily decor systems) is something in itself. lol.

[Besame]

Why would you either give deco/housing rewards or availability@npc out at EVERY event or new project when not everyone can get housing???? Pleased Panda: "Oh look at the cute inside and outside housing decorations I won at the seasonal event!". Sad Panda: "Oh gee , I cannot get a house to display it in"... Shame, shame, shame SE.

[Darthgummibear]

Sorry, but yes, it is. You just need to think for just a moment and look at things Square very obviously struggles with.

They don't have a problem with making assets. They generally don't have a problem with making instances. What do they have a problem with? Inventory. Glamour dresser and plates. Armoire. Portraits. Furniture slots. There is one common thing here - data. And before someone shows up and starts screaming how they can fit instanced houses for entire server on their 2 TB SSD - storing a lot of data is easy. Storing a lot of data and actively manipulating it back and forth between thousands of clients and the server is not.

I don't know why. There is something about their backend that makes data package size very restricting. Yoshida mentioned as much on multiple occasions. And no one in their right mind will argue that simple hook system is much less data intensive than free placement.

Even if what you just said were taken at face value, absolutely none of it justifies being forced to settle for the stupid ward system instead of instanced housing. A situation does not exist where you could say that relaying placement/customization data for dozens of homes per ward to EVERY PERSON ENTERING THE WARD uses less resources than one home for one person at a time.

[Shibi]

There is something about their backend that makes data package size very restricting.

The comments around say removing belts to give more rings is related to the fact the game design is those things are carried with you and sent to everyone else in view everytime you teleport into Limsa while you get everyone elses. That's part of the descision to model and render unique rings, necklaces and wrists, while other games use a generic model.

When it comes to housing, the data sent is actually quite low, and it's generally NOT multicast either.

I don't buy the technical limitation much any more, Island Sanctuary blows it from the water. The reason is simply that Yoshida doesn't want it.

[Siniztor]

A significant property of Isalnd Sanctuaries is that it's not just instanced: it's isolated.

You can't use or make gil there, because it has its own currency.
You can't use or make items (e.g. Thav onions) useable in the "out-world" there.
You can't trade the items you make or use there with other players, who can only interact with your Island Sanctuary as look-don't-touch tourists, so no gil-for-IsleBucks trading.
And odds are, your out-world crafter and gatherer progression will be useless on the island.

So any features (or bugs, which is often the same thing) in Island Sanctuaries won't have any effect on the non-Island game economy. It won't affect supply or demand for anything.

The only link between the out-world and the Islands is, apparently, your minions, who can roam the Island, and your FC and friends list, which determines who can visit it. This means that it is very unlikely that Islands will screw up progression or screw up the game economy. And don't underestimate how important not screwing up the game economy is.

So why does this high degree of isolation make the Islands easier to implement than instanced housing?

Because in complex systems, a big source of gotchas, and often the biggest source of schedule slips in development, is unexpected interactions between components. The more isolated the components are, the less you have to worry about it.

Furthermore, in software development, the bigger the team that has to work together is, the more problems you're going to have because of miscommunication and interpersonal conflict. But because Islands are so isolated, the team that is coding (and doing the art) for it is probably working in isolation itself.

So, you might ask, why not do a similar thing with housing? But would most people want that: housing with only furnishings and goods you could not buy for gil, could not craft and sell for gil, and could not trade with other players? I wouldn't.

This made me laugh sorry..talk about screwing the ecomny? umm world visit crashed smaller servers... data center now will crash all servers to a base price...
You have 3 type of people

1- (me) lazy buys whats on my servers mb
2- people who check every server for best price
3- people who use plugins to get prices so they dont have to travel to each server..

They screwed the economy long ago.. Just depends on what side of the fence your on...Large server will say they made the economy fair, wile smaller servers saw world visit as crashing there economy..I know personally how bad item prices drop with world visit cause i was on a small server

[Gunbladesman]

Oh? You want 800 freely placeable items? This is where we obviously run into some issues.

The multibillion dollar company just prioritizes things differently. The amount of people who will unsub because they can't get a house is so greatly offset by the amount of people who will buy fanta after fanta and whatever the new mogstation mount is. So it's just a monetary issue. They CAN fix these issue they will take time but they CAN fix them. Will they probably not because it's just not monetarily worth it to fix them. SE can do so many things right by the community but at the end of the day they are a business here to make money.

[Themarvin]

Been messing around in Warframe's dojo system which is guild housing for all intents and purposes.

The amount of freedom and creativity allowed is astounding. You can build and add on rooms in a layout you control. Free float and clip decorations through walls to make them look like completely different objects. Change the colors of walls, lighting, ambient glow and just make it look how you want. They have a large variety of room designs to choose from ranging come blank slate rooms to elaborate themed ones like underwater caves and Japanese gardens.

Game was released in 2013. Same as ARR. And it is not an MMO. It is a lobby based looter shooter.

FF14 needs to find some new developers who have a passion for what they are doing. This is supposedly one of the most community driven and social MMOs out there. But that does not seem to be what the devs want for this game.

Because FFXIV is not really designed for housing at all, and if you want housing that much and it is a need, there is much better options with alot of other games, that goes for all who seem desperate for housing, if you don't like the FFXIV game as it is an housing is the only thing, then FFXIV is not the game for you or anyone at all.

[Shibi]

"Go play another game then" is a bad answer.

[LaylaTsarra]

The problem with housing is it's limited availability. The issue of improving apartments would do a lot to reduce the demand for a ward house. The issue of why they don't do that is really puzzling.