Instance Housing as Alternative Option to Wards

I'm in favor of this, since housing seriously needs a makeover. The current structure is just not able to support the vast majority of people who all want a house. Heck, as someone who owns a personal house, I wouldn't mind trading it for an instanced one if I kept my yard, since a vast majority of my time is spend there. And as someone who chills in their yard, I rarely see anyone else. Sometimes one or two people nearby at the summoning bell/marketboard, but thats all. I never talk to or see my neighbors, so there isn't any community there. Instanced wouldn't ruin or break the lack of interaction.

I also think it would work as a much better gold sink too, since that way a vast majority of players could actually BUY the houses/upgrades instead of sitting on their gil waiting for a plot to open up, and hoping their fast enough to purchase it.

So adding the option of instanced, and not forcing it on to people, would really help I think.

So long as neighbourhoods are not removed, then I think that adding more instanced houses is a good idea. I think option 2 (upgrading the size of apartments) would be the most feasible ^^

I don't want there being too many different types of housing.

Working with the current system, I would:
1) Increase the number of tenants to private homes so that each plot can be enjoyed by more people
2) more wards / plots of course
3) garden instance for apartments + QoL for gardening interface and timer tracking

I agree with this. Adding more wards will not resolve the issue and it will be again stressful for both the players and SE servers because it will end in another rush for people to get a house.
I think instancied housing would be the best to go to allow every player to get a house and to kill the blackmarket of people buying several houses in order to resell them for ridiculous and insane high prices.
Moreover that would be a way to have houses with no demolition timers too (like it is already the case for the apartments) which is cool because players would be able to do a pause with the game without fear of losing their houses and I think it's the way it should be !

A good thing that has already be mentionned is the ability to upgrade the houses. Houses to buy would all have the same size (small) to allow every player to get one for a reasonable price at first and then allow people to upgrade the house sizes without moving.
Upgrading the size of your house could be done by buying expension permit in gils (NOT MOGSTATION) like the housing permit to buid the house.
It would be fair for everyone and will let the chance to have the house we want without having to fight for a medium/large house or having moving feature failures too dependant of the traffic server.

I agree with this. I was recently lucky enough to obtain a Small plot in the Mist after over a year of trying to find one. But truth be told, I don't know any of my neighbours at all. If apartments were expandable internally like OP's Option 2, I would have been quite happy just doing that, and I wouldn't have "taken away" the plot I'm using from someone who might have enjoyed the neighbourhood more.

I'll also add that I'd love some sort of balcony for apartments (where the view is just a generic backdrop, a la the view from Admiral Bloefhiswyn's command room - canyon view for Goblet, forest landscape for LavBeds, ocean view for Mist). Until I got my Small, it was pretty sad always collecting these outdoor items from seasonal events and knowing I'd almost certainly never get a chance to use them.

Here are my thoughts on how they SHOULD do apartments!

Small(Cost: 500,000 gil) It is literally just the apartments that are available now.

Medium(Cost: 1,000,000 gil) This apartment has 2 rooms with pre set up walls separating them and a door. Each of those two rooms has the ability to have different floors, walls and Ceiling lights. The amount of spaces for items could be bumped up by 25-50 spaces, this would also be the same for storage. Perhaps for special items like Planters, give them the ability to have 3 instead of 2.

Large(Cost: 1,500,000 gil) This apartment would have 3 rooms that have preset up walls separating them and doors. Each of these rooms has the ability to have different floors, walls and ceiling lights. The amount of spaces for items could be bumped up by 50-100 spaces, this would also be the same for storage. And for special items like planters, allow the ability for 4 planters instead of the 2.

Cheers!

Assuming the instanced reference is in reference to housing being completely instanced (as it is already partially instanced - for a demonstration of this simply try using /shout inside your home and see if anyone standing outside in the yard can hear you):

SWTOR had completely instanced housing. Out of everyone who owned housing on the Ebon Hawk server (one of the game's most populated), only 4 groups ever bothered using those instances for any kind of content production. The VAST majority sat empty, consuming server resources and not contributing any content.

Static neighborhoods have a better chance of producing content for the game's players (as well as the content producers themselves) because there's a much higher chance of actually running into one of your neighbors than there ever would be in completely-instanced housing.

(con't)

(from prev)

Granted, as a whole we players don't do NEARLY enough with what we've got to work with here, but the lack of content at this point is not the fault of the system so much as it is ours for not taking advantage.

As such, complete instancing will not solve but one "problem" - a perceived lack of equity in a playloop that encourages artificial scarcity to simulate certain real-world conditions. It wouldn't solve the problem of empty wards or lack of player-created content. Matter of fact, complete instancing would only serve to exacerbate those two particular issues.

I would encourage everyone discussing the matter - regardless of viewpoint - to keep in mind more than one facet of a many-faceted problem. Solving for one facet may not solve for the rest.

Regardless of whether or not it can be said that we "got what we asked for" that doesn't mean the way that the housing wards were implemented wasn't flawed. For example, several players have an issue with an individual player owning multiple homes. That is something that should have been addressed right from the start, but now they can't address it without doing one of two things: Screw over newer players by disallowing the choice previous players used to have or literally taking homes away from players that own more than one. Neither of those are a good thing because someone is going to be punished. The only alternative is to keep allowing for players to own multiple homes, but then they must address the issue of limited availability.

There is also the issue with the way housing wards were designed from the ground up with a limited availability for large, medium, and small houses. Let's imagine a scenario in which wards were unlimited. Whenever a ward fills up, a new one is automatically added and that will continue indefinitely. We would then have several players who will choose not to purchase a house because the latest ward only has small houses available. They'll wait until people give in and take up all the small houses so when the next ward opens they can rush for a large or medium house.

Now let's imagine that every single property could be upgraded to a large house. People would be a lot less picky and the idea of an individual owning a large house wouldn't be frowned upon by some unless they want to advocate for wards to be only for Free Companies. To even allow for houses to be upgraded in this fashion it would be necessary to completely redesign the housing wards because currently there isn't space available for a small house to suddenly become a large. Then we will also hear SE talk about how, since large and medium houses have a higher outdoor furnishing capacity, they won't be able to support that many large houses unless they cut down on the number of houses available in each ward.

The point is, the current housing system has a lot of flaws, and quite frankly those flaws won't be addressed by the 4.2 patch. At most, we should expect a few additional wards with restrictions pertaining to how houses are acquired or who is allowed to purchase them. Since the entire system would practically need to be rebuilt from the ground up in order to meet player demands, now is the time to consider the viability of alternative options.

Change apartment to Condominium

The condominium will be a duplex type condo meaning there will be two floors and will be the size of a small house. A balcony can be purchased as an upgrade for gardening.

Put fun into getting a condo, you can add Condominium utility which everyone in that condo unit can share these utilities, these utilities would be:

1) A gym - training dummies for everyone to use
2) A SWIMMING POOL (So people can swim and stuff)
3) Workshop (Where people can use crafting station for a small fee)
4) BBQ pit! People can buy food there and be a gather spot for people to chill and meet with her condominium owners!
5) ChocoPark (Carpark) where you can park your chocobo there and do Chocobo stuff
6) Condo transport to people to Exploratory Voyages.

This will somewhat encourage community as well because of some shared services