Housing abandoned plots, this is needed SE!!! Thank you!

[LineageRazor]

Folks keep bringing up Instanced Housing like it would be some miracle cure-all when, in fact, it would remove one of the biggest charm points about the housing system as it exists now: The ability to show off. Apart from gardening, showing off is pretty much the entire point of personal housing. You want people to see the homes you've built and decorated with your various trophies and adornments. You can't do that with instanced housing; you're the only one who can see it, unless there's some method for visiting another person's house in which case likely only your friends will ever bother.

Housing was instanced in FFXI. There were all kinds of furnishings and decorations you could put into your personal house, and it all felt terribly, terribly meaningless. Even after they added the ability to invite party members into your home, folks seldom did so and, at any rate, it's a lot more fun to impress a stranger than to impress a friend who already knows and respects you.

Instanced housing will fix one problem (housing shortage) and replace it with another (lose the fun of showing off your house). A decay system, where inactive homes are eventually released will also not solve the housing shortage problem to any meaningful degree, but it WILL solve another problem: Wards becoming ghost towns. The majority of players leave the game eventually, many without any intention of ever returning. Cleaning up the houses of folks who've left the game is something that should be done, so we don't wind up with wards full of houses but with only one or two active players there. It's not about the shortage - it's about keeping the wards alive with active players.

Tying house preservation to your subscription seems like a fair solution to me; if you value your home and think (or KNOW) you'll be coming back to the game someday, just keep paying your subscription. The fact that you're paying real money indicates that you're serious, both in your intent to eventually return and in your devotion to your home.

Someone brought up the point that hey, if you're gonna take their house, why not take all their gil and possessions as well? The problem is that your gil and possessions are not an active part of the game unless you're actually playing. Your house IS, whether you're playing or not. When you log off for the night, your house doesn't disappear. It's still there, anyone can visit in in the wards and even enter it if that's how you've set your permissions. When a player leaves the game, it's no problem for SE to make a record of their character and shove it into some dusty vault, never to see the light of day again unless you happen to resubscribe, in which case SE can dust it off and put it back into action.

[Ayerinn]

Folks keep bringing up Instanced Housing like it would be some miracle cure-all when, in fact, it would remove one of the biggest charm points about the housing system as it exists now: The ability to show off. You can't do that with instanced housing; you're the only one who can see it, unless there's some method for visiting another person's house in which case likely only your friends will ever bother.
*SNIP*

I can't imagine that adding new wards is any more stress on a server than having 1000 personal instances per server... we already have housing "instances" aka wards.
To your point, I don't agree with the housing "fashion" argument that would be "destroyed" by instanced housing - if you want to show off set permissions so that other people can openly visit your house instance (e.g. Wildstar)

[MageBlack]

Folks keep bringing up Instanced Housing like it would be some miracle cure-all when, in fact, it would remove one of the biggest charm points about the housing system as it exists now: The ability to show off.

Simple fix for this, allow people to be invited to your house or if you player search it and you leave your plot "Open" then people can come look. Regardless of how they "fix" housing, for the personal house side of things there either need to be enough housing plots so each account (or each player) can have one per server, they need to limit players in the amount of land they can hold (this buying land at 4 mil then selling it for 30 mil needs to stop), The bar for accessing this content should never be availability. I would sacrifice showing off in an instant if I could be guaranteed to get a house once I met the requirements. Showing off is what the FC Hall is for...

[Ferr]

Folks keep bringing up Instanced Housing like it would be some miracle cure-all when, in fact, it would remove one of the biggest charm points about the housing system as it exists now: The ability to show off.

I would say the priority now making a resource accesible to everyone more than "e-peen" showing.
I don't have a house , but I have a room. I care about showing it to my friends, but honestly, I don't give a fuck about strangers. Same as glamour, I do it for myself, not for others.
An instanced housing can have the option to invite friends, as you know from FFXI.
Also, housing is more than just showing, as you know, theres gardering and Chocobo stables.

Mind you, if you REALLY like to show, just do it with FC houses. I'm OK with FC houses being the way they are now, because I guess there's way less demand.

About wards... you know, they are ghost towns already. And it's not just because of people leaving,. Neightborhood idea is fine but no one is going to do any kind of social interaction there. People is either inside their houses or in Ishgard. No matter what you do the wards will always be ghost towns. Same as how Gold Saucer is now.