The housing system in this game NEEDS A COMPLETE GD OVERHALL. Complete stupidity....

[Alestorm]

I'm all for instanced housing, but what would those who have a home now receive? Would I get (at least some) of my gil back and what about the furnishings/outdoor decor? If we could be reassured we'd at least get exact copies of our homes as they currently sit I'd be fine with it.

[Edax]

You're reasoning is purely selfishness with no thought on an actual solution to the housing problem. I'm not saying you're a bad person or anything but your thoughts aren't articulated well. While i agree that yes, having your own mansion to design to your personal taste is a delight, wonderful and a great achievement but by basically saying "I don't like the designs of FC housing" is not a solution. I'm viewing this problem from a non-personal and logical standpoint which is why i said FC's should have the bigger houses OR add more various house designs/sizes. There simply isn't enough houses for FC's or everybody in general. I just want enough housing for everybody. My FC is stuck with a medium house and they want a mansion. I can't do that because there isn't enough and everybody keeps buying them personally.

I wasn't suggesting a solution to the housing problem, I was merely pointing out that personal housing is a feature, not a problem. You're reasoning is also pure selfishness. Your FC wants a Mansion so you're suggesting depriving players of access to one of the game's best content so you can more likely get what you selfishly desire. Why do FC deserve exclusive access to the best houses? Your FC does not need a Mansion. You merely wanted it, same as I did before I upgraded. What's to stop me from suggesting that FC should be restricted to small houses? Maybe we shouldn't play this "you're pure selfishness" game and try to restrict each other's right to own homes in this game.

I agree there aren't enough houses for everybody, but I also somewhat view this problem like the Popeye's chicken sandwich. Someone's already been stabbed to death over one of those sandwiches, but what's driving this fanaticism is the lack of supply, at the end of the day it's just a sandwich not worth all this hysteria. Same with housing, I think what's driving so much of the hysteria is that there simply isn't enough to go around. I get the impression if everyone does get a house, suddenly most people will stop caring about housing. That's not to say everyone shouldn't get a house, but that all these hyperbolic rage threads about housing are simply hyperbolic.

[Shougun]

I'm all for instanced housing, but what would those who have a home now receive? Would I get (at least some) of my gil back and what about the furnishings/outdoor decor? If we could be reassured we'd at least get exact copies of our homes as they currently sit I'd be fine with it.

Tl;dr: Definitely should be some sort of 1:1 / non-feature killing change.

My thought on not destroying wards, and not to slam the ward users with "great you've taken my hard effort that I loved (or not) and non-optionally traded it in for a pile of chocobo dung- s u p e r" was to create a sort of Howel's Moving Castle mechanic or a Flower Girl teleport (in FFXI for mog rooms) mechanic.



Further described for those that know neither of those ideas, ward users will keep their ward space but when they interact with their door they may choose to go to their instanced space (instead of leaving the house like normal they can choose yard vs pocket space, like the above gif you see). You may lose your ward space if you're away from the game for a long time (because wards are for the neighborhood experience, people not playing doesn't help); however, your house and instanced space will not vanish even if you stop playing for a while (ward yard items will go into a retainer/calamity storage space if there isn't enough storage in your instanced area).

More detail on the instanced space- now be instanced pocket spaces that start out small and simple (and imo ideally that first step being free/low barrier access- as I think it helps flow of the game, investment into game, and makes seasonals better, but like it's just an inn room in size). Through MSQ and upgrading (gil/other costs) you will upgrade your space- gaining new features and spaces (like gaining new floors and wings to the house, basement, exterior and exterior upgrades). Having some gating on MSQ can also really help SE's servers as if someone quits the first hour into the game then SE doesn't need to sit on that data (also the lore can help build the concept, like at ShB final zone we could get some really mind bending tools to our housing such as scaling/floating objects in the air and controlling the environment of our pocket space).

Pocket spaces will be able to do things that are currently impossible in the ward system (doesn't need to be in a fixed space so freedom is only chained by the creative limit of the devs now), including things like huge objects, spoiler-rific objects, sub items (items that are building blocks, like a water stream), and larger houses and larger plots. Every feature that exists on the exterior of wards (ward yards) will be available in the instanced space, the difference from a instanced house users and a ward user will be just the ward yard and the fact that it has a physical visit-able address (gardens will not be duplicated, if your garden is in your instanced area then you don't get to also put one in the ward yard- it's a decorate-able front to your house). Because you don't need to load other player's objects (and the server too), and if SE was able to get the data-management inline then these instanced land areas would be MUCH MUCH larger (potentially, after upgrading) than our ward yards (like Wildstar, where iirc they had ~2000 objects just for your exterior). There will be an instanced world list that players can organize by events/types (bath house / etc), but you'd need to view the house finder to find instance spaces since they're not on a physical plane.

In this situation there is not a single feature (beyond the yard itself) that instanced users will miss out on, while ward users who actually wanted the physical address will not lose a single feature that the more powerful more creative and safer instances will provide. If you don't care about showing off to other people not having the yard shouldn't matter to you since you'll have plenty of space in the instance (and the yard offers no bonus feature beyond being a physical address).

Those who already own houses will have the first few stages of upgrading their land subsidized (they already have a house so the process wont be free, as a ward user you're only getting more from the idea- they don't get a new interior but their house stage whatever it is at currently "small, medium, large" maintains that state through gaining instanced powers). Objects in the yard can be moved into the instanced land, it's the same character/account after-all. Alternatively if you don't want to keep your ward yard you'll be able to gain some gil back and subsidize the upgrade process on top of that (all yard items will transfer to the land space). After a little bit of time I think it would be nice to give players free ward relocation (perhaps on a timer), so the wards can recombine and stay active/neighorhoodly (if any people left the ward this can let other ward lovers to fill those slots next to each other).

[EaMett]

The problem with instanced housing is that it's a different philosophy. I'm with the devs on the concept of keeping housing limited and for it to be exclusive. It's hard to get currently but not impossible, it's just that people lose out to other players with more time, as it should be. They've always kept housing available to between 30-50% of server population depending on how populated your server is that's pretty fair.
IMO the only issue is the stupid placard spamming, that has to go it's ridiculous.

Not being able to get a house is as normal as not being able to get feast rewards for being in the top 100. Except it's easier to get housing than that, but people still complain because they don't understand it's pvp or are unwilling to accept it as a valid design.

[Catwho]

The easiest solution from an architectural standpoint is to

ADD
BIGGER
APARTMENTS

And add the biggest features people miss from the outside ward houses, such as gardening, to the apartments.

Multi-story layouts. Gardening. Outside lawns.

Create a Penthouse apartment for 10 million gil. Have a small "outside area" on the back end of the apartment with room for a box garden; call it the allotment. Like regular apartments, allow 500+ of them in each ward.

Make it a townhouse, with a second floor and a basement level, like the medium and large houses.

At that price point, it can be smaller than a medium house, but larger than a small. The allotment/garden area in the back yard could be accessed through a back door, same as the airships/FC room.

[Nix]

The problem with instanced housing is that it's a different philosophy. I'm with the devs on the concept of keeping housing limited and for it to be exclusive. It's hard to get currently but not impossible, it's just that people lose out to other players with more time, as it should be. They've always kept housing available to between 30-50% of server population depending on how populated your server is that's pretty fair.
IMO the only issue is the stupid placard spamming, that has to go it's ridiculous.

Not being able to get a house is as normal as not being able to get feast rewards for being in the top 100. Except it's easier to get housing than that, but people still complain because they don't understand it's pvp or are unwilling to accept it as a valid design.

Not making the top 100 of Feast doesn't lock you out of content such as crossbreed gardening, FC build projects, airships, and submarines.
If housing is to remain limited, then the content that relies on it should be made available to those who wish to take part.

[RyuSaarva]

Not making the top 100 of Feast doesn't lock you out of content such as crossbreed gardening, FC build projects, airships, and submarines.
If housing is to remain limited, then the content that relies on it should be made available to those who wish to take part.

everyone has access to gardening, you just need to become a tenant to someone and it's easy since pretty much nobody uses their garden, you need to be fc leader if you wan't to take part of level 2 ventures and getting a house is easy if you are, or you can just buy fcs with houses from party finder, they seem to be there daily.

[Nix]

everyone has access to gardening, you just need to become a tenant to someone and it's easy since pretty much nobody uses their garden, you need to be fc leader if you wan't to take part of level 2 ventures and getting a house is easy if you are, or you can just buy fcs with houses from party finder, they seem to be there daily.

Just....no.

Players shouldn't have to purchase houses from players - that crap is literally why there are ridiculous timers on purchasing properties now. There are FCs unable to buy homes - granted the 3 new wards helped to alleviate this, but once the moratorium is lifted those plots are going to fill and any new FCs are going to be left in the dust once again.
Also, no on the sharing property. People shouldn't have to rely on basically the kindness of strangers to enjoy content that shouldn't be locked in this manner. It's not as easy as you seem to think - not everyone wants tenants.

[EaMett]

Not making the top 100 of Feast doesn't lock you out of content such as crossbreed gardening, FC build projects, airships, and submarines.
If housing is to remain limited, then the content that relies on it should be made available to those who wish to take part.

You’re making the assumption that none of those features should be limited. Also, exactly how penalizing is it not to have them? And for whom? Fc owners? Members? How hard are the workarounds?

The players who absolutely need housing are few and far between and I guarantee you they found a way to get a house. For everyone else it’s a comfort feature.

[Alleo]

The problem with instanced housing is that it's a different philosophy. I'm with the devs on the concept of keeping housing limited and for it to be exclusive. It's hard to get currently but not impossible, it's just that people lose out to other players with more time, as it should be. They've always kept housing available to between 30-50% of server population depending on how populated your server is that's pretty fair.
IMO the only issue is the stupid placard spamming, that has to go it's ridiculous.

Not being able to get a house is as normal as not being able to get feast rewards for being in the top 100. Except it's easier to get housing than that, but people still complain because they don't understand it's pvp or are unwilling to accept it as a valid design.

On bigger servers it is probably quite impossible to get a house simply by the amount of players on it and the small amount of houses in turn. Time is also not something which counts here. You can barely spent any time looking for a house and just get lucky while the one that looked for it for a long time will lose out. And if new wards are coming you can take a break from work or be home without ever having spent time into getting one and get the nicest one while the other person will be locked out thanks to a server issue.

Also you forget that these 30-50% only includes solo players but people can also have FCs which can also buy houses. Suddenly its nost such a fair number anymore and will turn even more bad with increasing amount of players.

If the devs want housing to be limited then dont give out housing items as event and quest rewards..thats just mean imo. Here have something which you might never be able to use as a reward for doing that quests..

And lets not talk about top 100 in pvp..a mode which had enough people cheating in it..(though the same can be said for housing too..which people still owning whole wards because of playing the system and there is one guy who now also owns nearly two full wards in two districts..)