(09-19-2014, 02:44 PM)Titor Wrote: Aside from that, most other games with housing are able to support player-owned houses easily. I really wished it would have been an instanced plot that you can invite friends or whatever over with (Maybe with an ACL), and I was REALLY hoping for the ability to expand/build on my house. Build new wings, build new floors, build new structures, whatever. That would have been really awesome. It would have been a great gilsink too since more expansions would be more money, and SE could always add new expansions on. Make the base house like 100k, then have 80 mil worth of different upgrades if they wanted to dump that much. IDK.
I have had a long-standing position that SE went in the exact wrong direction they should have when designing their housing system, by placing the massive goldsink as a barrier to entry when it should be placed in the enjoying of one's home. It is this very fundamental flaw in XIV's housing that is at the root of pretty much every complaint. They threw up a barrier of money and a barrier of limited space, while providing an extremely bare-bones housing experience, with the intent that most of a player's effort would go into the obtaining of the house, rather than decorating and improving upon it.
I'm with you all the way in that I was oh so very much hoping for instanced housing so that we could maybe actually enjoy a fully fleshed out system. Take WildStar as a great example. I have spent far more gold and far more time in housing in that game than I have in any other aspect of the game, because the system is just that well-designed. The barrier to entry is almost nonexistent (get to level 15), and then the sky is quite literally the limit. SE wants a gold sink? They've apparently forgotten the number one rule in making people spend as much money as possible: you make them spend it in numerous small amounts over time, not one big lump to wall them off from fun. I can pretty much guarantee they would sink more gil if they expanded the decor system and brought it up to snuff with other MMOs in terms of customization, than they do nowadays with people just purchasing houses.
And hearing SE continue to gripe about server space just further cements the notion that they are running on some seriously outdated and horribly coded tech. Each individual plot in WS will soon (as of the next patch) have an item limit of 2080. Not long after that patch, they intend on implementing communities, which are somewhat smaller versions of the Wards we have in XIV, except you get to pick who all of your neighbors are, as well as guild neighborhoods. I just can't wrap my head around any explanation for SE's decision to go with the housing system they have other than 1) they are just that blind or 2) their equipment sucks. I can understand the motivation of wanting to create a living player-driven neighborhood, but really... if you can't pull it off without the extreme restrictions that XIV has, I'm not convinced it's an appropriate design decision.
The whole thing is disappointing. I'd been juggling coming back to poke at personal housing, but now it's pretty much guaranteed that I'm not touching the game again. Forum RP only for me. ;.;
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