Legit curious...why are housing wards ghost towns?

[SamSmoot]

One reason is because of wards, Only 60 plots each split into two subs, so at most, you'd see 30 players out and about.
Plot instancing could improve this.

With instancing, you'd have only one ward, with an unlimited number of owners of each plot. When you arrive, your own house would be visible on your plot, and a random selection on the others. unless you pick a specific ones to display via the placards.

This way, you can tailor the appearance of your neighbor plots by selecting whose houses show there, and visit any house on any plot simply by picking one from a list on the placard.

Less desirable plots would get reduced in price over time to encourage more buyers in those areas.

So, instead of just 30 residents per subdivision, you could have thousands in each housing development.

Upon entering a plot though the front gate, you'd enter it's instance. No one would see you there from the street unless grouped with you.
Also, there would be a load delay when entering the plot instance, but not when you enter the house itself, because it would be part of the instance. Ideally, you'd still see everyone out on the street while on your plot.

[GomJabbar]

at most, you'd see 30 players out and about.

So, instead of just 30 residents per subdivision, you could have thousands in each housing development.

FC houses are a thing... You can already have thousands in each ward if you have a couple large FCs there.

[SamSmoot]

FC houses are a thing... You can already have thousands in each ward if you have a couple large FCs there.

I've been to my FC house about 4 times since I started in January, and at most, I see one other player there. Usually none.
Because of this, I figured that it's unlikely that an FC house would bring more than a few to the neighborhood.

[ERMITANYO]

I sometimes afk at the beach

[Jojoya]

I've been to my FC house about 4 times since I started in January, and at most, I see one other player there. Usually none.
Because of this, I figured that it's unlikely that an FC house would bring more than a few to the neighborhood.

Depends on the FC, the members and the design of the FC house. If there's no reason for members to visit the FC house, they won't.

We might be a small FC, but members do go by the FC house when they're online. We've got it nicely decorated and laid out so it's more convenient for everyone to go to the FC house than to a market district when they need just about anything other than a marketboard (which is still fairly close to the FC house). We also encourage everyone to keep their chocobos stabled there when they're offline so other members can help train them and provide the chocobo foods to do it (including the Thavnairian Onions when they're ready to rank up).

The house across from us also has players going in and out fairly often from what I've seen.

Get a few FC houses like that scattered in a ward, especially if a couple of them are larger FCs, and the ward is more likely to feel active.

But still - unrealistic to expect wards to always be filled with people when the majority of the game takes place in other zones.

[MOZZYSTAR]

Residential areas used to be super busy, though it might depend on the server. When I was in Jenova (I left Jenova... two years ago), FC people and house owners were generally hanging out in each others' plots and houses. I've even had neighbours come to my Eorzean wedding (one of them posted about it on their Tumblr, which I thought was cool!). When I moved to Cactuar, there were a few people here and there but not as many in Jenova. I mostly met people via raiding their houses (lol! I looove seeing how people decorate!) in Cactuar. In Diabolos, I've only seen one person in all the wards I've adventured into, though it could've been a timing thing (i.e. me visiting too early).

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I spend a lot of time inside my house. I hang out in my yard at times, especially when the weather is clear and sunny. I use the nearby market board fairly regularly as well. Very rarely, I'll take a ride around my ward or other wards to check out other people's houses. The thing is, I'm not sure there's much incentive to hang out in the residential wards outside of perhaps being on a heavy RP server. No events or quest happen in them. Housing really is just a status symbol and it probably should be instanced, but I imagine that revamping the currently housing system is probably a massive undertaking, and doing so without ticking off current home owners is probably not possible.

I'm torn on the subject.

I don't like the fact that if I take a long enough break from FFXIV I will lose my house. A revamp to instanced housing would likely remove that risk. I also feel bad for people who really want a house but can't get one due to lack of availability. Instanced housing would solve this.

At the same time, I love my little house. I love walking out the front door and seeing the beach and ocean. I love going inside of my cozy cottage and just hanging out in the personal space I decorated. I even put up holiday decorations as the holidays come around. A revamped instanced housing system might be worse than what we have, and it costs us the potential of interacting with neighbors and admiring our neighborhood.

I honestly feel like its APARTMENTS that need the revamp. They need to be bigger, they need to allow FC's to use them, and they need an instanced outdoor area (balcony garden to gain the same benefits of a cottage yard at the very least). Honestly they could have apartment equivalents for all three house sizes and use similar if not identical interiors along with the aforementioned instanced outdoor area. Essentially buying an apartment would give the owner two instanced areas, an indoor and an outdoor. FC's or individuals using an apartment should have access to the same amenities as non-instanced home owners and the owning a non-instanced home would truly be purely for bragging rights, offering no mechanical advantages.

[Raven2014]

The wards are empty because they let individual players in, when it was FC only it was much busier.

At the end of the day, there is only so much time a single person can spend online, and they're only going to spend a fraction of that time at their house. End result is you never really see anyone.

No, that's just revisionism. The whole reason why they allow Private Housing in the first place because when it was FC's only, it was even more underutilized. Not only Ward were a ghost town, they were ghost town with empty lots, now at least they have something built.

To answer the OP, it's because the way SE's original envision of housing is kinda go against the common practice of MMO. In MMO people need to see other players, that's why every single MMO need to have some kind of central hub so players can see each other. I'm not talking about interaction, they just have to "see" so it doesn't feel empty or a like a SP. This is even more critical for a game like FF14 with very few open world activities (most are instances). The reason Limsa is popular is not just because the MB is right there, but because the plaza also have a nice set up like a park/stage for people to socialize. Now, let's say it's possible to add something unique to housing and encourage people to hangout the house more ... what do you think will happens? Think about how many wards are on a servers, and how big each ward is. Even if you assume every single player belong to a house, even if you assume the server is full, and even if every players log in at the same time ... if you divide the population into all of those ward ... trust me, they'll still feel no less death as they are now.

[Silhouettic]

I do feel as though less people hang around houses than previously. When I first started playing my little FC on Tonberry had a Mist house on the beach, and we all hung out there. The house next to ours was a JP FC and we all hung out together and tbh just emoted at eachother all day but people just don't make use of the housing that much any more. I moved to a fairly large FC that usually had around 30+ people on at any given time and it was still rare to see anyone at the FC house. I don't think player housing had much of anything to do with that. There's also location preferences... my current FC had a plot 36 Mist house and everyone chilled here. We moved to a large in LB and suddenly... ghost town. I spend my time at my Mist house (I relocated into the FC plot when the FC relocated), or at my friend's house in Goblet if I'm not actively doing content. Each to their own, but I really don't think you can blame any one specific thing for people vanishing.

That was really rambly... I'm sorry >.<

[Jandor]

No, that's just revisionism. The whole reason why they allow Private Housing in the first place because when it was FC's only, it was even more underutilized. Not only Ward were a ghost town, they were ghost town with empty lots, now at least they have something built.

No, it isn't revisionism. You can still see it in effect even today, FC houses are busier than private ones and wards with more FCs have more activity.

The whole reason they allowed Private Housing in the same wards was because it was the quickest and easiest way to introduce private housing.

There were empty plots for quite a while in some wards because when it launched housing was actually expensive. Inflation has made housing cheap, but 1 million used to be a decent chunk of gil.