Instanced housing is a necessity when demand is this high

The amount of money that Square has spent on Bandaid fixes at this point has to be astronomical. Massively expanding wards has upfront hardware costs to keep these persistent housing districts up and running at all times. A lottery system was engineering time spent by developers, coders, and the UI team.

But... adding in an entirely new housing district only gives you 1000 or so houses, in a game that has exploded in popularity. The lottery system, in many cases for older housing districts, presented an 0.5% chance to win a home.

Both cost money and have costed money. Both cost and have costed development time. Both end up only applying a bandaid to the problem.

I struggle to think about why we haven't gotten instancing yet for the housing system. To my knowledge, aside from sandbox games where you're meant to compete for land, I don't know of a major MMO that has implemented a housing system and not had it instanced so everyone can have one. Heck, even EverQuest II had one back in 2004, and they were running on their own internal data centers in San Diego. Their system is also much more robust than Final Fantasies. That was coming on 20 years ago.

Major counterpoints i've already heard are:

1.) It is server intensive: I'm not sure I buy this, unless the netcode is just.. wonky. Again, a ten year old game managed this. Elder Scrolls Online manages this and lets your character own every house in the game. I'm not even suggesting you go that far. One instanced house per character shouldn't bloat the server's database too much, right?

2.) It hampers community interaction. And... eh... go to a housing ward, and I don't see neighbors talking to neighbors, people hanging out like a true "neighborhood" would allow. Their FC's will sometimes come out to the market board together, but that's non-inclusive interaction. Finding and visiting other houses to look around is also doable with instancing.

So.... why are we still here? Why have we not seen a reliable fix to this done? Why is anything other than a realistic, long term solution to what is coming on a ten year problem being green lit by management at CBU3? I'm genuinely curious.

I prefer physical neighborhoods tbh. Instanced housing would make the game feel even more single-player-ish than it already does.

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Originally Posted by Demetri_Delethorn

I prefer physical neighborhoods tbh. Instanced housing would make the game feel even more single-player-ish than it already does.

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or just make some wards instanced

Yea instance will be great, others want the neighborhoods. Sure you can be the ones to bid for those if you want. I rather just have instance, single player feel whatever. Just want a house is all.

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Originally Posted by Demetri_Delethorn

I prefer physical neighborhoods tbh. Instanced housing would make the game feel even more single-player-ish than it already does.

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It wouldn't, quite the opposite, if the entrance to a given house is somewhere in the overworld or in a city, it'd be bustling.

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Originally Posted by Demetri_Delethorn

I prefer physical neighborhoods tbh. Instanced housing would make the game feel even more single-player-ish than it already does.

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I'm sure you knew this was coming, but anyway, it's not much of a neighbourhood if it's a "neighbourhood" of one. Doesn't matter if it's a single person or FC, the neighbourhood is a lie.

They already made instanced housing with apartments. So I do not want to hear a single excuse about how they can't do it for x reason. You can do it cause you already did do it.

Now make the apartments have options to be medium or large sized exactly as the houses are.

The only reason not do so is because of some nonsense vision you have of what you wanted. But what you wanted doesn't even work.

You want a whole neighborhood full of people?

WE CAN'T EVEN LOAD THAT MANY PEOPLE ON THE SCREEN AT ONCE!

People have been asking for instanced housing since wards were first implemented. Its definitely not going to happen at this point.

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Originally Posted by Demetri_Delethorn

I prefer physical neighborhoods tbh. Instanced housing would make the game feel even more single-player-ish than it already does.

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Housing wards are the deadest zones in the game. Of the time people spend with their houses most of it is spent inside, which is instanced.

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Originally Posted by MsQi

Housing wards are the deadest zones in the game. Of the time people spend with their houses most of it is spent inside, which is instanced.

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This. People are out here like "I wanna keep the neighborhood feel" and then they idle 95% of the time in Limsa/Balmung uldah and only return to their neighborhood to straight up hide in their house and never speak to their neighbors. Or better still, they'll complain because their neighbor dared to build a paissa house. But the moment someone without a house wishes for instanced housing so they can just decorate and garden in peace, these homeowners who never utilize their neighborhood do this weird 180 and suddenly care about preserving the integrity of a zone they're never even in. I stand around in my FC house's front yard and visit the nearby marketboard constantly and at best I'll see like one other guy zipping by on a mount. That's it. This "bastion of community" is the argument players use for why instanced housing would be a bad thing. I can accept "server limitations," but I cannot accept "muh neighborhood" when they're literally the deadest zones in the entire game.