Can we have instanced housing please?

[Brixy]

1. Add instanced housing so EVERYONE can obtain a house if they want one. Make small, medium and large layouts buyable.
2. Allow people to then transfer those instanced houses to plots when they become available.
Easy solution to fix both sides of the problem. Not everyone that has/wants a house even cares about it being part of a neighborhood. Some people just want to decorate and have a place to do so. Most wards are dead of activity anyways so it's a moot point at best. If that's truely the reason the developers are holding back then this would fix a huge majority of the problems while retaining the dead neighborhood aspect that's currently there.

[Illmaeran]

I've said it elsewhere so I may as well say it here too.

Outdoor landscaping is my favorite thing about housing, but I would gladly give up the option via a Ward house if I could get an apartment with the same floor plan as a house and use the Island Sanctuary for non-enterable buildings and outdoor landscaping. One place to do interior decorating and another to make a killer yard to hang out it in would work just fine for me.

[Raim]

They are fully aware of the lack of housing. They literally cannot add individual housing to the game in its current state.

[Evogolist]

With how popular the game has become over last what...six months to a year? And the massive exodus of WoW players to here, the devs are going to have to do something. I know that a lot of people have stated that Sanctuaries are not going to be instanced housing, but the demand for housing has grown significantly while the supply for them has gone from bad to worse. And instead of fixing the issue which would be said instanced housing, they keep throwing on these band-aid fixes, causing them to fall behind severely on this issue.

Apartments were meant to be and could have been an ample solution, but they're so many limitations on what players can do with them, that people really don't care for them. One solution for at least apartments could be somewhere along the lines of giving players the option of purchasing different sized apartments, much like the normal houses are, and maybe even adding a patio so that people who can't really afford actual houses can use those outdoor furnishings as well.

[VerdeLuck]

They are fully aware of the lack of housing. They literally cannot add individual housing to the game in its current state.

They absolutely can, they already have Apartments, which are just instanced house interiors. Though, even apartments aren't immune to this issue as a quick peek at the housing section of the forum shows they've had multiple times where they just flat out run out of apartments in a server and anyone who wants to use the housing section of the game is out of luck.
It shouldn't be this hard, games that came our 10-15 years ago have solved this issue and it's pretty bad to keep a large chunk of content entirely out of reach of the general playerbase like this.

[Illmaeran]

They absolutely can, they already have Apartments, which are just instanced house interiors.

Sharlayan needs large blocks of Townhomes/Brownstones/Condos (cough, instanced houses, cough) instead of wards. What self-respecting researcher wants to take the time out of his/her day to maintain a yard and what sort of non-tenured professor can afford an actual house? None, I say. None!

[Snorky]

They absolutely can, they already have Apartments, which are just instanced house interiors. Though, even apartments aren't immune to this issue as a quick peek at the housing section of the forum shows they've had multiple times where they just flat out run out of apartments in a server and anyone who wants to use the housing section of the game is out of luck.
It shouldn't be this hard, games that came our 10-15 years ago have solved this issue and it's pretty bad to keep a large chunk of content entirely out of reach of the general playerbase like this.

I agree, something needs to be done. A very large portion of the players want to have one.

[Reality23]

They are fully aware of the lack of housing. They literally cannot add individual housing to the game in its current state.

Understand something, there is no such thing as "literally cannot do this" when it comes to an MMO since your dealing with a video game and they can code whatever they want, and go back and change and expand old code.

Typically if they say they cannot do something, what they are doing is lying, and are basically saying they think it would take too much effort as it might require substantial alterations to the game's basic structure and architecture. It also also be a case where there is old code involved that nobody wants to try and figure out because the people who originally made it left the company and now work somewhere else. I have seen entire game sub-systems removed from MMOs because of old code like that, the most damning examples being with Cryptic Studios (Neverwinter, Champions Online, Star Trek Online) who removed their entire foundry/player created content system due to losing the people who made it, and not wanting to take the time to figure it out. They also never finished and outright removed the exploration system from Star Trek Online for similar reasons.... This despite being a company that even after all this time has a community that will drop $30 on a space ship and $200 on an extended package of cosmetic items.

At any rate my guess would be that they don't think adding the individual housing to the game is worth the investment of manpower and finances given that other games have demonstrated it mostly doesn't get used. ESO, RIFT, SWTOR, etc.. all have extensive instanced housing that they invested a lot in and most players do nothing with it except maybe decorate a house or three and otherwise forget it exists. Except for perhaps guild events, few people visit each other's houses. The few players who DO trend to use the housing systems tend to be RPers and ERPers and they are a small minority within the communities. Saying "we can't do it" is a lie to keep the peace probably due to the fact that saying "it's not worth it, given how little use it will see" could be seen as saying "the people who would use it are not worth it" and offend some people.

[juicybug]

+1
I hate living in a neighborhood. The only players I see are the same 2 people crafting in front of the market board. I think there should be an option to have both neighborhood and instanced housing to appease both crowds. although due to the way that enix engine is set up it's likely a hassle to deal with but it can be done.

I'd rather be surrounded by trees / mountains and natural landscape of an instance and not have to deal with 2 eyesore neighbor houses/yards. I miss Wildstar housing and decoration.
I don't think that instanced housing will be a thing in this game just like the lackluster character creator that looks more like it came from 2004 and not 2010 and we are to suffer with what we have + limited housing ugly neighbor houses that don't match the theme of the map, and bots winning the lottery when it's implemented, and be stuck with probably one of the worst housing decoration systems in any MMO.

[Shibi]

They are fully aware of the lack of housing. They literally cannot add individual housing to the game in its current state.

US$45,000,000 extra profit from FFXIV in 2021 says they can, if they loosen the purse strings and hire some more people.