Housing: there has to be a better way

[Theodric]

Adding instanced housing would only take away from the neighborhood feeling we get the way it is now. In the end it boils down to people wanting more plots, which is easily solved by adding more wards. Whether SE can do that or not is up to them.

Not everybody cares for the 'neighbourhood feeling', though. When I played on Balmung my house was surrounded by people using the gaudy chocobo and paissa houses which really ruined the area for me. None of my neighbours were particularly social, either - I don't recall ever seeing them even though I spent a lot of time in my garden.

More wards, are, of course, very welcome though.

[Aylis]

If I remember correctly its Wildstar.

Yep, it's Wildstar.

Of coarse there's always the way TERA handles limited housing areas. Want a house? Want to keep the house? Be ready to PVP and keep ranks. But anyway no I fear there's no real way to solve the issue. As someone else said SE shot themselves in the foot with housing in general. Sure there are ways to fix it like one house owned per account and such. Though SE doesn't seem to wanna act on any major revamps or rebuilds. Weither it's because they don't want to spend the money to rework whats already in place or they're afraid any major changes which causes people to lose any house will upset them to the point of unsubbing, we will never know. I fear its nothing but band-aid fixes and new wards every blue moon at best forever.

[Anzaman]

Adding instanced housing would only take away from the neighborhood feeling we get the way it is now. In the end it boils down to people wanting more plots, which is easily solved by adding more wards. Whether SE can do that or not is up to them.

I've lived in my small Mist house since patch 3.3 - and I've never even said "Hi" to my neighbor. All I care is my house, inside and out, and how my yard looks like.

Rest of the area might as well be automatically built houses, I'm not interested in the house owners.

For tomorrow, my dream is to somehow manage to upgrade to medium sized house in Shirogane, but sadly the amount of medium houses is very small compared to small sized houses.

[Xdark93]

unfortunately housing just isn't a major necessity in the dev's minds, they could easily devote time and resources to re-working it so that everyone can purchase and own a private living space of some kind without fear that they will never get 1 because of limitations. but as Yoshida mentioned before in an interview passed "if we were to go back and re-do old content then this would sacrifice the development of newer content." meaning that if we really want this to happen and be re-made we have to sacrifice a new raid,primal, dungeon, or other type of new content to make it happen.

[Stormfur]

I would absolutely give up a dungeon's development for more housing wards. I think most people would agree.

[Felis]

SE should just bring back the old plot prices from january 2014. Make housing for the rich again ^^

[anzamoni]

I would absolutely give up a dungeon's development for more housing wards. I think most people would agree.

Its not a development issue, its a hardware issue and no I do not think many people would sacrifice battle content in an mmo for wards they may not be able to get a plot in. No one wants the house for the neighborhood because no one uses it, they want a house because they like the appeal of decorating something to their taste or they want the company workshop/airship. Outside my FC members, yesterday was the first time I saw anyone else in my ward any they were just afk at the market board. Instance housing, make the 'back drop' a sort of furnishing like another poster suggested. You can make it look like your home is in whatever ward you prefer, or even underwater bubbles like Ruby Sea, what about an island in Diadem, etc.

If we continue to go the route of physical housing wards, there will never be enough housing without sacrificing a ridiculous amount of capital for infrastructure to host it. I would be curious as to how many concurrent housing instances could be supported on the same hardware it takes to support a single ward?

Again we have the ability to relocate housing starting tomorrow. Wards can remain, owners can relinquish their physical plot for an instanced plot for a gil refund and move their home to the instance. People owning a home in an instance can do the opposite, they can purchase a physical plot in a ward and have their instance home transferred to that plot. Instance housing should be at a pretty steep discount to warded housing to encourage its use, you have the same plot options of small, medium, large. This way all players and FCs can start progressing on a home even if it means starting with a small instanced home, upgrading it to a medium, and then finally purchasing a large warded plot and moving to it.

This also discourages the buying and selling of plots, it removes the demand for them because the NEED for it can be met with instanced homes. I specify 'NEED' because some people will still want the homes in the ward. Wants and needs are different, if the main issue is that housing is somehow 'gating people from a large part of content' then instanced housing solves that issue. I feel like I have to post this same reply every week because some new thread about wanting more wards crops up. They have added additional wards how many times now and the issue persisted, and with the game growing it will only become more obvious if we keep using the same solution. Its time to move on and away from housing wards.

[Krotoan]

I would absolutely give up a dungeon's development for more housing wards. I think most people would agree.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the problem. It's not dev time, it's resources like bandwidth and storage. More wards means allotting more equipment and bandwidth to deal with the increased amount of data storage and hosting. This is them taking on a recurring cost and needing maintenance people for the new equipment and traffic.

"ADD MORE WARDS" sounds very simple but I'm betting is far more complicated and expensive than you'd think.

I totally support more wards, it would help.. a little. But the AMOUNT of wards that need to be added to accommodate every single person who wants housing and FC housing.. AND another house for their alt and alts FC is an insane amount of extra load. They dont need to DEVELOP anything, it's all there already but the scale would have to be greatly increased. Probably far more than they're able to manage.
and before someone goes on with the "lookit the white knight for SE blappity blap blap.." I do agree, SE borked the pooch with the housing scheme. It's crazy under supply for something they KNOW most players want and causes strife and dissatisfaction for so many people. It needs to change if they want more growth. Who wants to play a game where the entrenched population sees newcomers as unwanted competition for this one thing?

Right now instanced housing seems like the only way everyone get's a house and I for one am in support of that.

Or perhaps a community greenhouse that's like an apartment except it's JUST a couple of 8 plot gardens in a glass house? And possibly an instanced Hangar for FC workshops that you can access after a certain rank has been attained for your FC?
It's important that nobody gets left out of progress able content JUST because they didn't get lucky on housing and something has to be done.

[Anemone_Valesti]

I would absolutely give up a dungeon's development for more housing wards. I think most people would agree.

Ummm Hell no ?

[ColeSlawter]

They should reduce to a single ward in each region. Eliminate the ability to decorate the yard/outside of the house. Each housing plot can be purchased by whomever wants it and entering the house takes you to your instance of the inside of the house.

Using this would keep the neighborhood, even making them more active, while also giving everyone the house they want.

Oh, but what about gardening, chocobo, decorations for your yard? How about they add backyard that you can decorate!