Please stop asking for "instanced housing"

I wonder... if Island Sanctuaries is a test to help players get their own houses separately without needing a ward?
Like, everyone gets their own island, you do it up, iron out some bugs that happen, then later on in another expansion we all have our own house - maybe have a place to put multiple houses down and create our own ward.
Hmm. Just think of the possibilities.

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Originally Posted by AlenyaElizabelle

I wonder... if Island Sanctuaries is a test to help players get their own houses separately without needing a ward?
Like, everyone gets their own island, you do it up, iron out some bugs that happen, then later on in another expansion we all have our own house - maybe have a place to put multiple houses down and create our own ward.
Hmm. Just think of the possibilities.

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I have been wondering this as well and was about to reply with something similar. My hope is that Island Sanctuary is a test to see how such a big instanced thing works out with everyone, how we like it, etc. So far none of the housing (the buildings you can place) look like how actual houses work outside of IS, but the possibility is there.

I know we all definitely don't want our instanced house (inside, outside, and all) to just be a pre-set thing. It can only look a certain way. Decorations can only go in pre-designated areas, can't use actual housing items in IS from what we saw (but who knows they never reveal full details until the day of), etc. But if it's a test to potentially implement the idea on a larger scale for all housing that would be amazing. Probably not all the harvesting, monster collecting, IS type stuff, but just working out the kinks for how a fully instanced house and yard would work on their systems would be a truly best case scenario. We'll be able to visit friend's and FC member's islands as well so it's hopefully a matter of time before anyone can visit. In the case of the RP venues an instanced area would be pretty awesome cause then you wouldn't need to get a ward based house in order to host events with non-FC members and friends.

i'd like to think the people suggesting this is a 'test-run' for instanced houses are right, but I've got a nasty feeling that the devs are hoping this will be an acceptable substitute.

They are putting features into the Island Sanctuary that people have asked for in housing: minions roaming free, gardening with a one click waters everything mechanism, gathering etc..
My feeling is that having given us all these things we asked for, but in a completely different context, they're going to be very surprised when the demand for houses remains high and people continue to complain about the shortage.

Of course I could be wrong about that, maybe they are testing for instanced houses or maybe people will feel the Sanctuary is a good enough substitute for a house and the pressure on the wards will ease, though I very much doubt it.

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Originally Posted by Solarra

i'd like to think the people suggesting this is a 'test-run' for instanced houses are right, but I've got a nasty feeling that the devs are hoping this will be an acceptable substitute.

They are putting features into the Island Sanctuary that people have asked for in housing: minions roaming free, gardening with a one click waters everything mechanism, gathering etc..
My feeling is that having given us all these things we asked for, but in a completely different context, they're going to be very surprised when the demand for houses remains high and people continue to complain about the shortage.

Of course I could be wrong about that, maybe they are testing for instanced houses or maybe people will feel the Sanctuary is a good enough substitute for a house and the pressure on the wards will ease, though I very much doubt it.

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I doubt they believe that it's an acceptable substitute since YoshiP has stressed it is not intended to be a substitute for housing.

But they may be hoping that some players will decide it offers what they had been looking to get from housing. The problem is that even if some players end up occupied by it for now, if more houses became available on their current worlds, they'd go back to trying to get a house because there's nothing to stop players from having both.

People actually can't get into their homes today because too many people are on islands. Islands are affecting houses. This strongly implies that the islands share the same resources as the homes/neighborhoods.
Before today, the prevailing argument for "why can everyone get an island, but not a house?" was that islands were wholly divorced from the housing setup. "It's a new system!" they said. "It's not anchored to the housing system!" they said. "It utilizes different resources, less resources!" they said. Yet here it is, clearly sharing the same resources as the homes and neighborhoods, since too many people in islands = people can't get into their houses.

Days like today are why I want Square to actually say why we can't have instanced housing. Players can guess at the reason all they like, but it's obvious that none of us know a thing about the inner workings of the game, and square's limitations seem to change with the wind. "Not enough resources!" say the people who don't even represent the company or know what's going on behind closed doors. You say "stop asking for instanced housing." I'd say "stop pretending to know why Square can or can't implement content." Let the 2 billion dollar company speak for itself.

The real answer is the $6bn company has realized they dont need to reinvest in that area of the game because people will keep playing, but they're not just going to say that because bad PR can hurt profit.

Game companies generally don't speak for themselves on unsettled matters because people will twist literally anything they say.

It's certainly presumptive to argue that it can't be a resource problem when we've now hit the instance cap on populated servers three patches in a row, though.

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Originally Posted by Sindele

Game companies generally don't speak for themselves on unsettled matters because people will twist literally anything they say.

It's certainly presumptive to argue that it can't be a resource problem when we've now hit the instance cap on populated servers three patches in a row, though.

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Yoshi speaks candidly in interviews all the time, though. Furthermore, I'm not saying it can't be a resource problem. I'm saying I'm tired of random dudes on the internet telling me why Square's not able to do things, while square remains pretty quiet on it for years or says things years ago that no longer seem to be the case today, making those points feel irrelevant now. Like several years ago they gave an interview where they talked about how there was a resource problem behind why we couldn't have better housing. Is that still a problem today? Some assumed it was. But now everyone's got a private island, so maybe they changed something or found a better way to do things. Who knows! You don't know. I don't know. None of us here know.

If anyone's being presumptive here, it's people who tell other users on a forum that they don't own or moderate not to post feedback to devs based on their own limited understanding of a situation (eg. the OP; and this isn't like a dig at the op, we ALL have a limited understanding on this, that's my point). I'll keep asking for instanced housing until we get a statement from people who actually work at the company, and it might annoy people or w/e but there's literally nothing anyone can do about it. If yoshi came out and said tomorrow "hey we can't do it" or they even briefly mentioned like "yeah the housing is screwed it cant be helped" in a live letter, I'd stop asking about it and just advocate for something else instead like more wards (since we've seen them add these in the past).

tldr i won't accept no from anyone but the people actually running the game

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

Yoshi speaks candidly in interviews all the time, though. Furthermore, I'm not saying it can't be a resource problem. I'm saying I'm tired of random dudes on the internet telling me why Square's not able to do things, while square remains pretty quiet on it for years or says things years ago that no longer seem to be the case today, making those points feel irrelevant now. Like several years ago they gave an interview where they talked about how there was a resource problem behind why we couldn't have better housing. Is that still a problem today? Some assumed it was. But now everyone's got a private island, so maybe they changed something or found a better way to do things. Who knows! You don't know. I don't know. None of us here know.

If anyone's being presumptive here, it's people who tell other users on a forum that they don't own or moderate not to post feedback to devs based on their own limited understanding of a situation (eg. the OP; and this isn't like a dig at the op, we ALL have a limited understanding on this, that's my point). I'll keep asking for instanced housing until we get a statement from people who actually work at the company, and it might annoy people or w/e but there's literally nothing anyone can do about it. If yoshi came out and said tomorrow "hey we can't do it" or they even briefly mentioned like "yeah the housing is screwed it cant be helped" in a live letter, I'd stop asking about it and just advocate for something else instead like more wards (since we've seen them add these in the past).

tldr i won't accept no from anyone but the people actually running the game

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Pretty easy if they would add the Houses which Balmongians demands and within their current setup likely 90% all of those Houses would be a wasteland on JP Worlds and even on EU Worlds. No one in clear mind would introduce wards and new housing areas which are going to stay empty for months or years.

Squares solution will be new DC. You may like the approach or not to spread the playercount through more worlds but Balmung and their even for NA unique situation is an anomaly.

Sigh. We should ask Daddy Yoshi to move Balmung and Mateus to a whole new DC with a forced split of the existing characters on those worlds decided by RNG and 1 year block from character transfer. Maybe the playerbase will be then spread out instead for all going "But mah RP" only to 2 worlds.

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

People actually can't get into their homes today because too many people are on islands. Islands are affecting houses. This strongly implies that the islands share the same resources as the homes/neighborhoods.
Before today, the prevailing argument for "why can everyone get an island, but not a house?" was that islands were wholly divorced from the housing setup. "It's a new system!" they said. "It's not anchored to the housing system!" they said. "It utilizes different resources, less resources!" they said. Yet here it is, clearly sharing the same resources as the homes and neighborhoods, since too many people in islands = people can't get into their houses.

Days like today are why I want Square to actually say why we can't have instanced housing. Players can guess at the reason all they like, but it's obvious that none of us know a thing about the inner workings of the game, and square's limitations seem to change with the wind. "Not enough resources!" say the people who don't even represent the company or know what's going on behind closed doors. You say "stop asking for instanced housing." I'd say "stop pretending to know why Square can or can't implement content." Let the 2 billion dollar company speak for itself.

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The same Notices talking about the instance congestion issues also points out that the NA and EU servers are seeing online populations in general reaching server cap yesterday. Everyone wants to see the new patch content so they're all jamming in at the same time.

Wait two weeks when everyone who has finished 6.0 MSQ and it won't be a problem until the next time there's a major content release with updates for Island Sanctuary and everyone wants to cram into their Sanctuary the same time. It's really no different from the log-in queues we get for expansion release. Things are crowded at first then gradually activity drops back down.

If people spread out into the new worlds being added, such problems are less likely to happen. I suspect those on the 4 new EU worlds weren't having this problem yesterday. Of course the reality is that few will move to a new world - most expect others to make the move so they don't have to.