Island Sanctuary as a housing solution ?

[Jojoya]

I wonder if the push back on this idea is coming from the lucky players that managed to get a house. The housing system is woefully inadequate and this could a ways to alleviating it. Unless they want to open enough wards so everyone can purchase a house in a ward. Then they run into the issue of but we all want large houses. This solves that issue unless you specifically want to in a housing ward.

Oh, I would love for Island Sanctuary to turn out to have housing.

I just don't believe that is SE's plan for it. If it was going to be instanced housing, it's only to SE's benefit to state that clearly and upfront considering the current housing situation. That they did not tells us it's not going to be housing.

I don't want to see people disappointed by going "finally I can have my own house" just for there to be no house.

I do want SE to take the time to fix the house supply problem so every can have a house instead of wasting that time creating band-aids that don't fix anything. Island Sanctuary appears to be its own separate content form and that's fine. If it's supposed to be a replacement for those who can't get a house but it's still not providing customizable housing, that's bad.

[Kaiproberts]

I want a non-instanced house with neighbors, period. They need to dynamically add housing wards; if one ward fills, another gets added and so on. Island Sanctuaries would just split the community even more between the "haves" and "have-nots".

[ItMe]

snip

Hello person who just joined the forums and this is your first post.

[Catstab]

They need to dynamically add housing wards; if one ward fills, another gets added and so on.

1. Not possible, the way it was coded.
2. The super obvious exploit that opens up.

[Jojoya]

I want a non-instanced house with neighbors, period. They need to dynamically add housing wards; if one ward fills, another gets added and so on. Island Sanctuaries would just split the community even more between the "haves" and "have-nots".

And you could still have a non-instanced house with neighbors even if they improve the instanced system. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Wards could remain the "elite" housing for those who want to fight for the prestige factor while instanced housing would be for those who want a space to decorate and don't care about neighbors.

[Kaiproberts]

And you could still have a non-instanced house with neighbors even if they improve the instanced system. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Wards could remain the "elite" housing for those who want to fight for the prestige factor while instanced housing would be for those who want a space to decorate and don't care about neighbors.

Doesn't sit well with me because it gives them a reason to focus less on adding more wards. The problem is the divide in the community.

[Jojoya]

Doesn't sit well with me because it gives them a reason to focus less on adding more wards. The problem is the divide in the community.

More wards just perpetuates the problem of people not being able to get a house. The cost of running sufficient ward servers so every player and FC could have a house would be prohibitive, especially if the player base takes another jump in size next expansion. There will never be enough wards.

What they need to be doing is giving players an incentive to move out of the wards so more plots are available for those who want to be in the wards. Lack of demolition is one such incentive but clearly not enough when most players seem to value space and larger item limits over other features. Good instanced housing would be that incentive.

I don't understand your objection to instanced housing when all house interiors are instanced and other MMOs use instanced housing quite successfully. Have you seen videos of what players have done with the housing in games like ESO, Wildstar and RIFT? When I was playing RIFT, I literally built a small town in a single Dimension. It had 6 houses, 4 public buildings (school/library, restaurant, town hall, workshop), a central square, a small park with a pond large enough for small boats, an underground sewer area that housed a refugee camp, and a trader's dock for seagoing ships. Then there was another Dimension where I rebuilt the Stormwind Park District (from WoW, this was before Blizzard rebuilt it for Legion). I had another where I built a massive treehouse on the limbs of one of the tree furnishings I increased to maximum size.

Would I give up my ward house here if it meant having access to something that size with that versatility again? Heck yeah. The rest of RIFT was bad to mediocre at best (why I stopped playing it) but the housing was fantastic fun. Give me good instanced housing where I can really stretch my creativity. You can then have my medium plot in Mist.

[Kaiproberts]

More wards just perpetuates the problem of people not being able to get a house. The cost of running sufficient ward servers so every player and FC could have a house would be prohibitive, especially if the player base takes another jump in size next expansion. There will never be enough wards.

What they need to be doing is giving players an incentive to move out of the wards so more plots are available for those who want to be in the wards. Lack of demolition is one such incentive but clearly not enough when most players seem to value space and larger item limits over other features. Good instanced housing would be that incentive.

I don't understand your objection to instanced housing when all house interiors are instanced and other MMOs use instanced housing quite successfully. Have you seen videos of what players have done with the housing in games like ESO, Wildstar and RIFT? When I was playing RIFT, I literally built a small town in a single Dimension. It had 6 houses, 4 public buildings (school/library, restaurant, town hall, workshop), a central square, a small park with a pond large enough for small boats, an underground sewer area that housed a refugee camp, and a trader's dock for seagoing ships. Then there was another Dimension where I rebuilt the Stormwind Park District (from WoW, this was before Blizzard rebuilt it for Legion). I had another where I built a massive treehouse on the limbs of one of the tree furnishings I increased to maximum size.

Would I give up my ward house here if it meant having access to something that size with that versatility again? Heck yeah. The rest of RIFT was bad to mediocre at best (why I stopped playing it) but the housing was fantastic fun. Give me good instanced housing where I can really stretch my creativity. You can then have my medium plot in Mist.

I want a fair and equal housing community. Period. Either let everyone have a 'real' plot or get rid of all the 'real' plots in favor of instanced housing for everyone. My whole point is that everyone should be on equal ground when it comes to housing in a video game. Real life is already so skewed. People play a game to escape some part of real life. Housing problems and inequalities in a video game are completely dumb and go against the entire point of the game to begin with.

[ERMITANYO]

Well adding wards automatically would be nice let's see if ishgard housing will be like that should it be a ward system or if it's an instanced form. Also, having an instanced house doesn't necessarily mean one is a have-not, just on the waiting list for buying a plotted house (and not stressfully waiting). Having absolutely nothing as an alternative or choosing not to avail of available alternatives makes one a have-not.

[Catstab]

let's see if ishgard housing

Um. The live letter said outright that Ishgard is standard wards. It's a 5th housing zone. Nothing more complicated than that.