Dead neighbours

Really... i wish my ward was active and actually had people around... But nooooo its these damn reseller and people buying it for trophys.. Or even worse.. People who just bought it and doing nothing..

To the real point; i wish people bought a house for their interest in decor..

Perhaps Zombies ate them..?

;)

Funny you say this, I was feeling the same lately. Now whenever I idle for a bit, I've been trying to do it in the public area of my Ward just to try and add at least a little to the sense of homeliness and neighbourhood. The few people I see are local though and usually just idle around crafting rather than sitting on any of the seats or whatever so it doesn't feel very engaged in the smaller things. I also noticed that a few of the houses, including mediums and some large have practically no decorations whatsoever. Inside or out.... and they've been like that for God knows how long. I mean, if you spent every little penny you had on your house that's fine... but there should be at least SOMETHING by now. If anything it makes me a bit suspicious, but mostly downhearted.

I think a lot of the social life of the wards were killed once they made the house interiors instances kicking people out into gardens whenever they play the game. It made the wards feel less welcoming, certainly the houses at least. Most people didn't see a value over the ward as opposed to any other given city or camp in the game and just stopped bothering specially warping there. Unfortunately this was a change that was needed for the longevity of the wards on a technical level but ruined the longevity of their use on a user end level. The only real thing that could save it at this point is to either make really good new incentives to visit houses. Not just your own but others as well. Or to completely revamp the housing system from the ground up. Sadly, I don't really see either being done in the future if ever.

We paid a huge price for having wards as opposed to instanced housing only.

was not worth the lack of choice, design depth imo. resulted in a very bland, and uncreative housing design overall. we cant even build anything lol.

busy wards would not make me enjoy housing more but a rift style design of actually building anything we can imagine sure would have :(

my wards are quiet both for fc in the lavendar beds and the personal home in the goblet and tbh thats ok. just not much point being there since furnishing takes about 45 seconds and we all share the exact same items to choose from...how original.

copy paste from home to home with very little difference and zero player creativity and nothing that is designed completely by the players, which is a real shame. :(

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Originally Posted by MistyMew

busy wards would not make me enjoy housing more but a rift style design of actually building anything we can imagine sure would have :(

my wards are quiet both for fc in the lavendar beds and the personal home in the goblet and tbh thats ok. just not much point being there since furnishing takes about 45 seconds and we all share the exact same items to choose from...how original.

copy paste from home to home with very little difference and zero player creativity and nothing that is designed completely by the players, which is a real shame. :(

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Unfortunately I doubt we'll ever have that level of detail in player housing even if they started over, simply because this game is tied to consoles. The leash might be loosened a bit if/when ps3 support is dropped, but it will still be much more limited than a non-console mmo.

I love the wards when there's activity, but I picked the house on the inactive side of my ward. This week a few of the neighbors finally switched from the default fence. Most houses have gardens they haven't used since day one... why would you buy a garden and not even use it once?!

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Originally Posted by Knahli

Now whenever I idle for a bit, I've been trying to do it in the public area of my Ward just to try and add at least a little to the sense of homeliness and neighbourhood.

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adjective, homelier, homeliest.
1.
lacking in physical attractiveness; not beautiful; unattractive

I had to, sorry. Lol

There are 3 houses across from me in the Lav Beds that were bought right after patch and never touched. Game needs to pay attention to resellers and deal with them justly.

Only 5% of the playerbase possesses a house, most of which are private owners, whose homes have no real features that provide time-consuming activities. It's safe to assume that anyone who got a house got it because they love decor, but you have to consider that decor is limited. You make the house the way you want it, update it when patches add furnitures you like, and there it ends.

If they added stuff like tomestone gear traders etc. in housing neighborhoods and other things, maybe you'd see more people there. But right now, they're areas dedicated to a minority.

Would love to see this Letblue. Gardening keeps my active on mine but only once per day as required. Sure I craft there too but that's not a requirement. The crafting tables were a nice feature that kept people using their indoors more often while leveling but some outside tools that you had to actively engage would be just awesome for neighborly interaction. That would introduce a distraction factor though so maybe not. Just brainstorming with you all.

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Originally Posted by Johaandr

.. Or even worse.. People who just bought it and doing nothing..

To the real point; i wish people bought a house for their interest in decor..

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I have a lot of interest in decor, the house I bought on 3.3 will be the 3rd house I decorated. Unfortunately, we have a severe lack of options without doing what every other house has done. I've more or less exhausted my ideas with what is available, so my new house is waiting for more furniture to be released.

...least you guys have a home =\ they was goobled up on Gilgamesh within mere minutes. Even with being 400th in server queue to log in.

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Originally Posted by RayneLittlewinkle

...least you guys have a home =\ they was goobled up on Gilgamesh within mere minutes. Even with being 400th in server queue to log in.

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Most of my frustration comes from the fact that I get the impression that some of these people don't even use their homes and leave the likes of you out to dry. The Medium plot I referenced earlier still has nothing going on. All that there is to be found is an aethernet shard, and then inside, a summoning bell and a repair person. Everything else, inside and out, is default. Am I to understand that this person really bought a plot just for the convenience of teleporting straight to said amenities cheaply? And not just a plot, but a Medium-sized plot?
I'd like to think no-one would actually do that and this person somehow scraped together a shed-load of gil from friends and such but otherwise is useless at earning any in a timely manner on their own to do much other than what I am seeing now.

Even ignoring those cases, my concern is that people just bought up a house and decorated it. Nice and fun, how wonderful that was while it lasted. Oh well, I won't visit it anymore - why bother after all? Obviously I can't say for sure if many people are doing such a thing, but the empty wards don't leave a whole lot to be levied against such an idea. FC's spending more time indoors would make sense but personal homes would be more lonely in general, so you'd expect to see more activity in the gardens or general ward. Older wards are one thing, but am I really being led to believe that all of this hype and outcry for plots over the past while culminated with most people who were lucky enough to snag one simply losing interest within a couple of months?

I think it goes in cycles Knahli. My house is mainly used regularly for the garden and a calm place to do my crafting with my choice of music. I redecorate once in a great while and usually it's just a small addition or change. In the case of dead neighbors, I actually ran into the person that has the house above me for the first time in about 6 months yesterday. I was quite excited! You are right though, I think a lot of people got their house and did the initial decorating then left it be. If you aren't gardening there is little reason to visit daily especially if you aren't crafting.

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Originally Posted by OliviaJ

I think it goes in cycles Knahli. My house is mainly used regularly for the garden and a calm place to do my crafting with my choice of music. I redecorate once in a great while and usually it's just a small addition or change. In the case of dead neighbors, I actually ran into the person that has the house above me for the first time in about 6 months yesterday. I was quite excited! You are right though, I think a lot of people got their house and did the initial decorating then left it be. If you aren't gardening there is little reason to visit daily especially if you aren't crafting.

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Ah, I wouldn't expect people to visit it that religiously from now and until forever or anything, but it's always the same people that I see around and the same set of houses with little-to-no activity going on around them. I don't garden myself but like you it's just a place to feel at home at in the game; somewhere to craft in peace, sit around while chatting and just a place to go to as opposed to afk'ing in the cities somewhere for a bit like I used to. You're right that there's much less incentive for people who don't garden or possibly even craft but...... ahh, I don't know. I don't want to begrudge the people who did get homes because I'm sure the majority of them appreciated and enjoyed it a lot, even if the honeymoon phase has already passed for them, but it does make me feel legitimately sorry for all the people who missed out that would have had a much longer term investment toward it(as far as enjoying having and using it regularly goes that is). Admittedly I am probably in the minority as someone who gets excited over the smaller, meaningless things like seeing people making the maps feel alive - even if it's just as simple as using benches or fishing together instead of just standing around lifelessly - but if there were just more people such as yourself that found some good and personal use for visiting it regularly then I think it would all feel much nicer and "deserved" in my mind.

I feel the same way you do. Honestly I don't like spending time in the larger cities. Rarely do I go afk but it's typically in my yard sitting by the fire, in my bed (not that anyone is going to see me in there but W/E, rp'ing and such) and once in a while on the bench by the MB. I wish the wards were more active for sure. I saw someone the other day hovering around on the ball mount just going everywhere. I actually took time out of what I was doing to try to chase them down and see what they were up to. Never did catch them.

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Originally Posted by OliviaJ

I feel the same way you do. Honestly I don't like spending time in the larger cities. Rarely do I go afk but it's typically in my yard sitting by the fire, in my bed (not that anyone is going to see me in there but W/E, rp'ing and such) and once in a while on the bench by the MB. I wish the wards were more active for sure. I saw someone the other day hovering around on the ball mount just going everywhere. I actually took time out of what I was doing to try to chase them down and see what they were up to. Never did catch them.

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;A; Maybe it was just a phantom then ;

As a minor update - of sorts anyways - the houses I mentioned in this topic have had no changes to them whatsoever - neither the Large nor the Medium. I did see the owner of the Medium one time a month or two back doing some Fate Farming so they are apparently still playing but obviously have little-to-no interest in their home. I'm honestly really annoyed. Balmung is notorious for it's housing shortage considering the demand and yet there are people like this snatching them up? I hope they lose their home in 3.4 and someone deserving actually gets it, I really do; though honestly I bet that won't even happen.

My neigbors are all lvl 1 alts who just log in to keep their mansion. :l
Literally empty.

I would like to be able to buy a mansion, because I love to decorate, but most mansions are bought by people who did not even change the walls.
I have only watched a neighborhood of Mist and Lavender Beds, empty (and closed) houses.

http://imgur.com/8uOXYyD.png
http://imgur.com/oOB5yEI.png
http://imgur.com/2nQjkm8.png
http://imgur.com/lOAZMa1.png
http://imgur.com/SCHIxfn.png
http://imgur.com/61zWgYd.png
http://imgur.com/5SY6wJq.png

You need to do something about this!
We are many people that if we like to be in our homes, but they seem ghost neighborhoods! thanks to these people who are not interested in having a house

Yas you might rethink that mansion thing. I just upgraded to a medium and it's actually quite tough to come up with a good design all on my own. Those plots that have little to nothing done to them make me sad. They are scattered here and there on every server I'm sure. Some people buy them when the opportunity presents itself and then put off decorating for when they run out of content though. Not all of those might be abandoned.

So far, I have been fairly lucky with my neighbours.
Had a great neighbourhood back in the Mist with our tiny FC house, pretty much all houses around were active and we always met up at the market board :)
The friends I made there are now my best friends ingame as well as the FC I joined after I left the old one.

Last Christmas I bought my own house in Lavender Beds, and while it is a lot calmer and my neighbours aren't funny crazy people anymore that I can spend hour upon hours with,
I have met them and talked with all, and we sometimes visit each others houses. I see them at least once per week at the local MB, although I think I'm the only one who spends 99% of her non-instance playtime in her garden/house :rolleyes:
It's fine though because my friends - despite having their own houses somewhere else - always hang around my house, even when I'm not there, so it still feels fairly lively^^

Then again, whenever I go around for inspiration and see that half of the new wards are still completely empty (except for maybe an aetheryte or a repair NPC), it really saddens me :(
Like...there are so many people who want a house - if you are not going to use it, leave it for those who really want one and would actually do stuff with it!

At least you guys have houses. I cant play the game to its fullest extent because ship building/exploration/framing is locked out to people with houses. ((ヾ(≧皿≦ﾒ)ﾉ))

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Originally Posted by LalafellDown

At least you guys have houses. I cant play the game to its fullest extent because ship building/exploration/framing is locked out to people with houses. ((ヾ(≧皿≦ﾒ)ﾉ))

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Actually that's specifically locked to FCs with houses. Personal houses don't get a company workshop which houses all the airship building/deployment areas.

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Originally Posted by Dustytome

Actually that's specifically locked to FCs with houses. Personal houses don't get a company workshop which houses all the airship building/deployment areas.

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I know, I have a FC, but no house. Still doesn't explain why release content for a limited resource. Why have personal housing anyways that make it even more limited.

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Originally Posted by LalafellDown

At least you guys have houses. I cant play the game to its fullest extent because ship building/exploration/framing is locked out to people with houses. ((ヾ(≧皿≦ﾒ)ﾉ))

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The reason it annoys me is because it impacts people like you who have none.

As for the Airship thing, I honestly think that should have been made a public feature accessible via Ishgard or something and it's availability through FC estates treated as a QoL alternative.

The housing demolishing started again, so maybe the situation will improve eventually... or maybe the apartments will make it more lively.

The main issue is that there is like nothing to do in the wards. The second SE creates personal MB there would be no reason for me to even leave the house - as I mainly use it for the crafting. And so I can imagine that non-crafters have no reason to go there at all...

But maybe fish in the new aquariums will need to be fed eventually "Oh noes forgot to feed my fish!" ^^

I think if people looked at my house they would see it as empty. I would actually like a haunted house style, but I have not found all the items I want as of yet. So at present I only has about 5 items inside.

I also wish we had an actual furniture preview window I hate having to look up each piece on google to see if I like it before purchasing. Also some actual real reason for going to the housing area would be nice too. Most of the time I just pop in to make sure the timer is reset.

The housing areas should have the stuff that starter cities have in them equipment shops and item shops. I would even go as far as to say the tomestone npcs etc make these places additional hubs.