Instanced housing? Why not BETTER APARTMENTS?

I am a fan of this idea. I got a personal house in order to take advantage of gardening so my basement is a mess and the top floor is really all I need. I'd gladly move into a duplex like the one you described. Workshops seem like a feature that should be exclusive to houses and would free more of them up for FC's.

I'm such a fan of this idea that I feel disappointed that this isn't in place.

From my understanding, apartments are instanced like inn rooms (might be wrong here). This would definitely be possible, since there's no outer world lot tied to an apartment. My biggest complaint when I had an apartment was the lack of garden, so I would love something like this.

Why not just make the house instances include the exterior and allow people to pick the size of their house and its view. The costs of the house could be based on size and as a trade off the size of your yard. Basic views could be free with specialty being crafting items, mog station or seasonal events. Besides the Aetherite crystal you could have an entrance in the common area of each housing district where the shops and MB would be located. It would also allow for a place for guests to select your house to visit or advertise open houses, etc.

This would be so awesome to have. Even if it resulted in the apartment expansion space (the whole "we could do up to 512 per ward but we're starting off with 90" thing) being eaten up, at least then six eight THOUSAND more people per server could still have the indoor and outdoor housing experience. That's nearly half the active population of overpop servers - it would maintain some exclusivity that makes people covet it like the devs seemingly want while still allowing like quadruple the population in on it. If 1,000 of those were penthouses, 3,000 duplexes, and 4,000 lofts that would make a lot of people happy.

I could see people actually wanting to have a nice balcony view overlooking the housing area below (though probably not that actual ward, just a static "default" one to reduce load) - I would. The smallest one could have a balcony just big enough for a round garden plot and a table set/bench/whatever, so that it isn't too little but still enough to make you want to save up.

I love having actual neighborhoods for houses and would hate to have instanced-only personal housing, and this would be a great compromise between server issues and people wanting more - if it came with the addition of players only being allowed a personal house *or* an apartment. Being able to have both right now is whatever, but if apartments were upgraded to something people genuinely wanted nearly or as much as houses, then people with houses shouldn't be able to have both. This would create more available plots or apartments, depending on each player's choice, and if they created a more interesting common area people actually wanted to hang out in there would be no benefit to an actual house. They may still mostly go for housing because it's more exclusive, but if I had a choice between a penthouse overlooking Mist and a medium plot in Shirogane, with no downfall to choosing the penthouse...I'd be pretty torn.

This is what I've been saying; the apartment feature is basically what we need but it just needs to be improved upon and it needs to be infinite. There is absolutely no reason why apartments should have a cap on them and no reason why FCs couldn't own them.

I think your idea is perfect and for anyone who doesn't care about the housing within the wards it would be a wonderful solution. Many people could care less about that and just want a place to decorate, have easy access to convenient vendors, stable their chocobos, garden and do FC workshops.

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Originally Posted by AlexionSkylark

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I fully support this idea, however, I think everyone should have an apartment by default and you should be able to pay for upgraded size and utility.

In regards to FC Houses, let's give every FC a 'base' that's instanced like the Sky Pirates in the Void Ark quest line. Once you hit level 8 as an FC, you do a few quests and then your GC awards you, the associated FC with a 'base' for peace keeping in the area or whatever. Make a few unique bases in a few different areas and let the players chose. You'll get a base you can customize, everyone will get access, it'll be instanced, and no FC will be left without the utility that comes with property ownership.

This will leave the wards open to private housing. Allow only one private house per account and give all characters on the account admin access.

Everyone wins and everyone gets the utility of housing.

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Originally Posted by GirthQuake

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I would support this if FC bases followed the same thing as your apartment idea. Every FC gets a small base with everything they need, but they can still buy housing in the wards. I'd personally prefer mansions be FC-only, with small and medium homes for personal or FC. Free Companies add too much life to the wards with all their members coming and going to not be a part of them imo.

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Originally Posted by Keydah

I would support this if FC bases followed the same thing as your apartment idea. Every FC gets a small base with everything they need, but they can still buy housing in the wards. I'd personally prefer mansions be FC-only, with small and medium homes for personal or FC. Free Companies add too much life to the wards with all their members coming and going to not be a part of them imo.

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I absolutely agree with you about that FC's give life to wards, but I feel that this would be the best solution. The primary reason for people to own private houses seems to be the utility of it for the solo player (Why there are solo players in an MMO, I'll never understand), but FC's actually have even more utility. Because of this, if we need to have instanced FC bases (that yes, I'm absolutely for them being upgraded. Start with something small and then grow it up from there, maybe even add a separate building for member housing or whatever), in order to give all FC's the utility that they deserve, then so be it.

The best part of housing imo is decorating your yard, not the inside...so, apartments even with a balcony would be meh. This is why I really wish we got more than 20-40 slots for the outside :(

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Originally Posted by Ayerinn

The best part of housing imo is decorating your yard, not the inside...so, apartments even with a balcony would be meh. This is why I really wish we got more than 20-40 slots for the outside :(

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It's about everyone having a slice of a cake. While it's not perfect, at least everyone would have access to the utility that is so claimed to be needed by individual house owners. Furthermore, why not have your balcony be decorated? I suppose that the issue is more-so allowing others to see said yard and how it's decorated, but having a piece of things, instead of nothing at all, is still better.