The Housing Situation

[Quesse]

the problem with just adding new wards is that it will just create even more ghost towns...
I'd love to have a small house, but I don't want one in a ward where you rarely see anyone..
but that's probably the way SE continues

As a personal house owner I have a few thoughts.

First, I really love being in a neighborhood and would hate to see housing go instanced. Maybe I'm lucky but I have 3 close neighbors and the 4 of us are always at our market board / bell and frequently interact. I almost wish housing was a little more dense so that there would be more opportunity for this type of interaction. I'm in a subdivision so mainly it is Personal housing, not FC. In my FC neighborhood there are always 5-10 people standing around the market board or in nearby yards. It feels really active. I like it.


Second, I am really opposed to how personal housing was handled in general. The cost, the limited plots, and the mixing with FC Housing caught me completely off-guard. I felt like it was the opposite of what Yoshi had been promising all those months. Obviously they planned to do it one way then changed their minds without telling anyone and did it a different way. Even though I have a house I'm really upset about having to pay so much for it and that I can't expect to have friends move in at any time - because there are no S/M plots left. The way this was handled, for a subscription game, was insulting. Everyone is paying an equal amount for a sub and should have an equal chance at the content. Major content shouldn't run out. I was pretty sure, as well, Yoshi said they would continue to add houses but they added a couple wards and subdivisions and stopped there. Why? There has been no information on this.

Third, this issue could have easily been lessened by having more small house plots in the subdivisions. Making them have an equal ratio was a poor decision. There are quite a few large plots left at 40+ million each on my server. You could fit 5 or more small plots in this area.

For the most part housing is well done for what it is and instancing would kill some of the really best parts about it. SE just needs to step up and add more divisions.