A possible solution to the housing system that wouldn't be too hard to do, maybe...

[wereotter]

or they could create free company islands with their own plots and locations that would create alot more room

This could actually be implemented pretty nicely into the game. Maybe the small islands in the Sea of Clouds into a housing location. One standard sized island that anyone can buy, no neighbors, just a house. This could be a nice way of doing the apartment or FC room style system as the exteriors won't need to be rendered into everyone's neighborhood so they can add far more housing than adding more wards currently can.

Maybe have some drawbacks to this to make the other wards still have value, like no market board on your private floating island?

[Shougun]

I think the problem is they just don't have the memory techniques available to them to do so (meet enough houses for the demand, in any type of system), not that they're in love with people not having a house.. Their old structure, without massive changes, unable to afford the space needed for all their players. Like how they mentioned issue with having every mogshop item being account bound might stress their system.

I personally believe instanced housing like Wild Star would be best housing system as then you could be significantly empowered in your designs (and everyone could take part in the system), but am not a huge fan of pulling the rug from underneath people who like content (even if I think it's inferior).. so you'd have to design two systems (instanced zone vs neighborhood ward). Although I imagine over time most would go to the instanced one just because it's more powerful. Also to add the ward system isn't that unique of a concept, LotR online has it too but theirs grows auto-magically when one becomes full (they there will always have enough houses) - so technically you don't need two systems (of course).

As I said though I don't think any solution that entails a true house like we have now, instanced or not, would work until they fix that data issue which they've gone on long enough without doing so either it's really deep coded issue or they find it's not worth the time (so I don't think they'll fix it).

I did create a suggestion I do believe gets around their data issues though and allows everyone a /home/ (not a house) in the idea of Airships. Here you could upgrade and decorate in themes and sections but because they're in core pieces rather than little units the amount of data space is a lot less. Something like 500 items placed in x y z placed in a zone of other 500 x y z pieces (current housing) vs a ship segregated on a very tightly controlled system and the pieces while have some customization do not create the issue of 500 items (core type y, color 5, theme 6, rooms 1 = z, etc etc, this could describe an entire palace of a ship before reaching half of 500). People who just want a home that grows with them satisfied (that has all the features a house could have, given upgrades), people who want a physical house can keep it, and both systems can work together. That was a vague summary though, wrote a lot more on it here.

[Eriane_Elis]

I really like the ideas being thrown here and am pretty open to these ideas as wild as they may be. The airship idea is fun and brilliant, I'd love to have an airship I think that if they would permit people to relocate without essentially re-purchasing an entire plot, it would make a huge difference especially if it's only permissible to wards that have a lot of open plots. The problem with the ward system is that almost nobody cares to visit different wards to see what houses people have, it's typically only just friends or FC mates. Additionally, wards become empty very fast or full very fast. I remember being one of the only 3 in my ward for months until they stopped demolition.

Another problem with wards is that you can't have your entire FC move to said ward, I mean you can but it would be difficult to accomplish. I assume there will be two more housing locations in stormbringers; Ishgard and Ivalice or somewhere around there. With the the demolition timer re-enabled, it will be very empty until we get hundreds of thousands more WoW refugees, but even then I don't think their servers can support that many people in a single world so it might be empty regardless.

Also I think some people here are misunderstanding what I'm suggesting. You won't lose your house, and you won't get relocated anywhere with my idea. You would simply merge everyone on plot 21 or whatever and there would be a list of say 40 people sharing that plot. When you approach the sign in front of the house, you can change the instance and the house will fade into another house.

But, as Shougun said, they might not be able to do that due to software limitations in their engine. Something absolutely must be done and more wards will not help. The demo timer should be gotten rid of and an earlier post had a good suggestion about how to deal with this. BUT, they are relying on the demo timer for monthly dues because people don't want to lose their house or well, mansion if that's what they have. You don't just lose the house and lot, you lose all the items in it. My cottage has over 100-200mil worth of items and a lot of it can't be obtained anymore. At some point when I will want to take a break for a few months I will have to figure out how to store almost 400 housing items. :P

[Dustytome]

Also I think some people here are misunderstanding what I'm suggesting. You won't lose your house, and you won't get relocated anywhere with my idea. You would simply merge everyone on plot 21 or whatever and there would be a list of say 40 people sharing that plot. When you approach the sign in front of the house, you can change the instance and the house will fade into another house.

But, as Shougun said, they might not be able to do that due to software limitations in their engine. Something absolutely must be done and more wards will not help. The demo timer should be gotten rid of and an earlier post had a good suggestion about how to deal with this. BUT, they are relying on the demo timer for monthly dues because people don't want to lose their house or well, mansion if that's what they have. You don't just lose the house and lot, you lose all the items in it. My cottage has over 100-200mil worth of items and a lot of it can't be obtained anymore. At some point when I will want to take a break for a few months I will have to figure out how to store almost 400 housing items. :P

I don't really care for the merged plot idea, because then you just have an absolute mass of people hanging outside the few premium plots in the ward. I get wanting to keep the wards, it just doesn't work well on so many levels. As for storage, getting an apartment just for permanent storage space will help (unless you couldn't help but decorate that too! ;D ) and a private room in your fc as long as it's not a private fc and you can absolutely trust them not to kick you or be inactive enough to lose the house.

[Shougun]

I really like the ideas being thrown here and am pretty open to these ideas as wild as they may be. The airship idea is fun and brilliant, I'd love to have an airship I think that if they would permit people to relocate without essentially re-purchasing an entire plot, it would make a huge difference especially if it's only permissible to wards that have a lot of open plots. The problem with the ward system is that almost nobody cares to visit different wards to see what houses people have, it's typically only just friends or FC mates. Additionally, wards become empty very fast or full very fast. I remember being one of the only 3 in my ward for months until they stopped demolition.

Another problem with wards is that you can't have your entire FC move to said ward, I mean you can but it would be difficult to accomplish. I assume there will be two more housing locations in stormbringers; Ishgard and Ivalice or somewhere around there. With the the demolition timer re-enabled, it will be very empty until we get hundreds of thousands more WoW refugees, but even then I don't think their servers can support that many people in a single world so it might be empty regardless.

Also I think some people here are misunderstanding what I'm suggesting. You won't lose your house, and you won't get relocated anywhere with my idea. You would simply merge everyone on plot 21 or whatever and there would be a list of say 40 people sharing that plot. When you approach the sign in front of the house, you can change the instance and the house will fade into another house.

But, as Shougun said, they might not be able to do that due to software limitations in their engine. Something absolutely must be done and more wards will not help. The demo timer should be gotten rid of and an earlier post had a good suggestion about how to deal with this. BUT, they are relying on the demo timer for monthly dues because people don't want to lose their house or well, mansion if that's what they have. You don't just lose the house and lot, you lose all the items in it. My cottage has over 100-200mil worth of items and a lot of it can't be obtained anymore. At some point when I will want to take a break for a few months I will have to figure out how to store almost 400 housing items. :P

One of the few core (there were about three or four) ideas of the airship, besides obviously getting around memory issues which we both agree are unfortunate but may be a serious hamper on any "housing" content, was that "I wish we could have more backgrounds". In that I mean imagine you like a zone and just want to log out there or whatever, just park your airship in the area and get on deck... "oh look I have an Ishgard view", "oh I'm floating above Azim Stepe", etc, etc. Some areas would require more thoughtful placement of where the ships hang out but nothing I think that is beyond SE.

The other main part was actually as you point out with FC issues. If a FC gets stuck in an area they don't love with a house size they don't love or worse.. no house, now they can put all their effort into the airship instead. Put it where they want, have the theme of what they want.

I don't think you were suggesting me in the misunderstanding but I definitely got you, the idea was to stack players on a plot meaning fuller wards in appearance because technically the system would make sure every neighborhood was full. The issue being if you wanted it to be consistent but of course they might be able to add the voting systems like suggested. So the best houses are the ones shown to you outside of your own of course.

You bring up another good point I didn't think of though, which I might add when I edit the airship thread sometime in the future.. If they cannot figure out how to make sure every single player gets a house then they must keep the auto demolish system on.. and this means you can't take a break without massive loss. Now SE might think of that as ingenious but that, imo, sounds a bit corrupted if purposefully a system was like "you can leave, but you will lose hundreds of hours of work HAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA" lol. An airship system might be the peace of mind and gil sink people want if they're not sure they'll play consistently then. Also if people who just wanted a home go for that then we might find less people using the housing systems just because they don't need it, which means a higher chance auto-demolish doesn't need to be turned on (if lots are empty by default, at least on some servers).

I don't really care for the merged plot idea, because then you just have an absolute mass of people hanging outside the few premium plots in the ward. I get wanting to keep the wards, it just doesn't work well on so many levels. As for storage, getting an apartment just for permanent storage space will help (unless you couldn't help but decorate that too! ;D ) and a private room in your fc as long as it's not a private fc and you can absolutely trust them not to kick you or be inactive enough to lose the house.

Or lock you into the FC by not letting you demolish your property lol. I really wish the FC rooms get a re-look.. The idea that one of your homes is bound to a FC membership is perturbing to me, and that it can be used as a way to prevent leaving is even worse XD. Maybe if they can get over their memory issue for apartments (such that there is one for every player), they could use FC upgrade as free teleport between FC and your apartment and a one time upgrade to your apartment scale (balcony, etc, etc - one time as in if you leave the FC it isn't taken away, but of course the teleporting aspect would be).

[SamSmoot]

Dear SE,

Please create a solution that doesn't punish people with houses currently. I love the wards system, I worked hard for my existing home and don't want to lose it to instanced housing..

You wouldn't lose it. You'd still walk up to your plot, see your house, and enter it as usual. Plus, if someone has an ugly house next door, you could just click the placard for that plot and pick another house to appear there.

[Saccharin]

Idea:
They could have each house as an instance where the exterior becomes whoever you went there last and the sign post at the front lets you change the house to whoever else lives there.

They would essentially have to rewrite the housing (but that's not entirely a bad idea.)

I prefer Black Desert Online's method.

The houses are part of the world not instanced however when you enter you are then seamlessly (almost) transitioned - no loading screens! - into your private instance. You can have five houses in the world per account.

There's no limitation as everyone could have a certain house and that's not an issue as it's instanced. You can also visit other people's houses.

[TaleraRistain]

I'd love instanced housing. I loved it in EQII. I have multiple houses there - a lodge in the snowy north, a quiet place in the trees, some rooms among the lizards, even a castle I got as a veteran reward. There were still wards so there was more than one entry point to avoid congestion. You could control access to your house and you could have pets wandering around. My froglok ranger's house is like a zoo.

[Valdima]

While i agree everyone should have a chance for a home, my only concern with a change is that i'd lose my current home with no compensation.

[Enla]

Honestly I'd be happy if they just let us have apartments that use the interior space for medium and small homes; and or access to a new 'garden' interior space and a workshop. Personally I think that's a fair way to test interest in viability for an instanced housing area. Of course upgrading to a larger apartment size should come with a SIGNIFICANT gil sink - as should unlocking extra features like a small gardening terrace or small workshop. However I don't think you'd find too many people that upset with having to save a million or two more gil for the extra space and amenities.