genuinely thinking about quitting the game

[KayRadley]

Buy an apartment.

[Jojoya]

Sorry I don't find instance housing that appealing. I like walking into a neighborhood and seeing the rooftops of other houses. I've tried instance housing before, years ago. It was terrible and even guilds didn't even congregate in their own instance no longer than they had too.They always went to where players gathered. Here my FC, we are always in the yard, at the marketboards and summoning bells. We like waving at our neighbors too. Maybe that's why SE chose to do their housing in this way years ago.

Yeah RMT or cheaters wouldn't find any profit there, so they'd move onto something else in the game that they could abuse for quick gil. Like phishing, botting and more.

Sounds like you're getting lucky with the neighbors in your ward actually being around when you're at your FC house.

That hasn't been my experience in the ward with my personal house. I did a significant portion of my Expert crafting achievements while sitting in the yard of my house (probably about 200 hours of it). I saw other players maybe 3 times?

That wasn't my experience with my old FC's house despite going back and forth from the FC house to the Dappled Stalls MB or vendors fairly frequently. The FC was active enough, there would usually be at least a couple of members hanging around the house or more if we had some sort of event going on. Seeing neighbors? That was a real rarity.

It's not my experience when I go on random house tours to see what others have done with their houses. It is extremely rare for me to encounter anyone randomly in a ward.

I've encountered more players at the entrance to the apartment building where I have all the apartments for my alts as they're zoning in to go to their own instanced apartments than I have in the wards.

The wards fail as a "neighborhood" because only a limited number of players have reason to be in a specific ward. You have this massive space dedicated to 30 owners who are spread out within it. There's little reason for owners to travel within the ward - they get to teleport directly to their "front step" instead of having to walk through the ward to get there. If someone wants to get to a marketboard, it's just a few steps away because there are 7 marketboards scattered around a ward instead of having a single marketboard at a central location that would encourage foot traffic and random encounters between the few players with reason to be in the ward. That's of course assuming they're even online and in the ward at the same time. I might be at my house or apartment building daily but I spend far more time outside of housing doing other content than I spend at my housing.

SE should have designed the plots in the wards to be more like the apartment buildings. Imagine if instead of each plot representing a single owner, it represented 50 owners. You would be far more likely to see others coming and going, opening the door to random social encounters. They should have given wards just one, at most 2 marketboards so foot traffic would have to pass through the wards making them feel more alive. They should get rid of the aethernet shards so visitors have to pass through the ward to get to their destination, again promoting random social encounters.

By the way, just cruised by your FC house on my Aether alt since you're raving about what a wonderful active neighborhood it is. Totally dead. There was one person AFK at the Topmast marketboard and that was it.

[Arazehl]

By the way, just cruised by your FC house on my Aether alt since you're raving about what a wonderful active neighborhood it is. Totally dead. There was one person AFK at the Topmast marketboard and that was it.

I suppose it would be dead late at night on a Monday. People have to work, or have family to see off to school or work. Neighborhoods isn't a party 24/7. Unless it took you hours to type your extremely long post and share it at 2:41 am. Regardless I still don't care for instance housing from my experience with it in the past. Talk about dead. No thanks.

[LaylaTsarra]

I suppose it would be dead late at night on a Monday. People have to work, or have family to see off to school or work. Neighborhoods isn't a party 24/7. Unless it took you hours to type your extremely long post and share it at 2:41 am. Regardless I still don't care for instance housing from my experience with it in the past. Talk about dead. No thanks.

Yes supply is a big problem but this wards are empty argument gets old. People don't live in housing districts they work, they do other things in game. I'm personally in my house or garden daily and that is for all the houses I own on my main server and others. This constant attempt to try and justify taking peoples houses away or remove the ward system is nothing more than the have nots trying to remove things from those that do. On Crystal club events and a lot more are hosted in wards daily maybe people need to learn how to look to find tons of activity in them. Just check the party finder listings. And this isn't just on crystal.

Instant housing can be made alongside the ward system and probably the easiest solution is to drastically improve apartments with multiple sizes and layouts. I really don't understand why they haven't pursued this after having mentioned they were looking at it as a possibly back with 4.2 Shirogane, Island Sanctuary might be something to meet this demand but I'm not personally that optimistic. It is sure taking them a long time to clarify whether or not it's a form of instanced housing and given they haven't really pointed that out yet leads me to believe it won't be.

[Arazehl]

This wards are empty argument gets old. People don't live in housing districts they work, they do other things in game. I'm personally in my house or garden daily and that is for all the houses I own on my main server and others. This constant attempt to try and justify taking peoples houses away or remove the ward system is nothing more than the have nots trying to remove things from those that do. On crystal club events and a lot more are hosted in wards daily maybe people need to learn how to look to find tons of activity in them. And this isn't just on crystal.

Instant housing can be made alongside the ward system and probably the easiest solution is to drastically improve apartments with multiple sizes and layouts. I really don't understand why they haven't pursued this after having mentioned they were looking at it as a possibly back with 4.2 Shirogane, Island Sanctuary might be something to meet this demand but I'm not personally that optimistic. They are sure taking them a long time to clarify whether or not it's a form of instanced housing and given they haven't really pointed that out yet leads me to believe it won't be.

Oh I couldn't agree more, maybe Island Sanctuary will include a house. We'll have to wait and see. I like the neighborhood feel of the wards though.