Please give us instanced housing.

[Rhysati]

Apartments is the instanced housing. people should stop asking for instanced housing and ask for improvement of the apartments system, like in house gardening or more choices of apartment size and so on

And what do people do when their server's apartments are all taken and it's the exact same problem that housing has?

[Juun]

We have instanced housing its called apartments. If you dont care about everyone sharing the same enterance as you its perfect!

[Fayt1203]

And what do people do when their server's apartments are all taken and it's the exact same problem that housing has?

Seeing that Apartments and Fc rooms is instanced and are limited wouldn't that suggest that instance housing would be limited too. instead of making same system that could just as well have the same limitation it would be better to expand the apartment system

[Arzalis]

We have instanced housing its called apartments. If you dont care about everyone sharing the same enterance as you its perfect!

If you could upgrade the size of apartments this would honestly be fine, I think.

That said, some servers legitimately have no apartments left either. So even apartments kinda fail to do their job. The entire housing system is just a mess.

[DanielNegreanu_Adamantoise]

My take will be unpopular but I think they should get rid of all housing because it makes the game feel smaller.
I come from older mmos where communal service centers for things like cooking, smithing, etc existed.
When people did something, they were out in the world doing it. You see them. They see everyone else.
Then they add housing aka private game instances for convenience.
Then people start doing the most convenient thing, privately in their gated communities.
You take this to the extreme and you can have an “MMO” like warframe where everyone has their own private instance ship with all services you ever need there.
MMOs over time are only getting less and less social.
Alone, isolated in your room irl, alone isolated in your MMO gated community.
And the public facilities of the MMO eventually go quiet and vacant, the occasional sprout running through every once in a while. How mmos die~

[Wolf_Heartnet]

I think you misunderstand. The deed itself is expensive but once you turn it into a property then that's that. I don't think there was a parchment for it that you would have afterwards. What I was saying is that if you're looking for a place to build a house and you get PvPd, you could lose your deed if the other player steals it. Meaning, the plot of land you have yet to purchase. Sorry if I didn't explain it right.

My bad for misunderstanding. That does in fact suck regardless.

[KizuyaKatogami]

Kind of baffles me how willing people are to basically bend over backwards for Yoshi P/ the devs and just say well because they said we can’t have it we can’t have it or they don’t want it. Are we not the paying customers lol. You’d think we’d have some say in the way things work considering we are quite literally funding the game. As other people have said if they are that adamant about their “neighborhood feeling,” why not just keep the houses that are there now and expand a section that is purely instanced housing. It’s honestly ironic because instanced housing seems like it would fix most housing issues people have. We’d get a higher item count for different sizes,everyone would have access to gardens etc. Just seems like unnecessary gatekeeping all for the sake of…”wah i don’t want it.”

[Shougun]

My take will be unpopular but I think they should get rid of all housing because it makes the game feel smaller.
I come from older mmos where communal service centers for things like cooking, smithing, etc existed.
When people did something, they were out in the world doing it. You see them. They see everyone else.
Then they add housing aka private game instances for convenience.
Then people start doing the most convenient thing, privately in their gated communities.
You take this to the extreme and you can have an “MMO” like warframe where everyone has their own private instance ship with all services you ever need there.
MMOs over time are only getting less and less social.
Alone, isolated in your room irl, alone isolated in your MMO gated community.
And the public facilities of the MMO eventually go quiet and vacant, the occasional sprout running through every once in a while. How mmos die~

A lot of people like the ability to interact with the world but also have their own personal space, for example to me when you speak negatively of the warframe system I think "damn, I wish we had that" (I still absolutely love FFXIV's objects though, I just think the housing system is a huge participation and opportunity cost with only a benefit for a small portion of the community who use the emergent opportunity, while most of us don't). Like in Warframe I do enjoy going out and playing with others, but I have no feeling of loss because someone isn't in my ship all the time. I understand some do, but I feel a lot don't / wont- especially if you can invite them if you wanted (the system doesn't demand you be social but will facilitate it if you want). I've read many posts of people who say "I own a house, but I would give it up in a heartbeat if I could have an instanced personal space instead- I /do not/ care to be in the ward".

I am of course absolutely aware there are people who want, who need, social systems, and I think they're worth making- but I also don't think in this game it's worth forcing people as I strongly believe and feel the evidence is self evident that most people are more along the lines of "want some social interaction, but I also want, or at least want the ability, to have my own stuff / space that I can control (which does mean friends being there, but also might mean no one but you)".

Say for example one suggestion I had for this, that isn't cheap, free or easy, because nothing to do with huge systems like housing will be, is to keep the wards but also make an instanced space akin to Wildstar (high customizability, place objects, etc, may also read Island Sanctuary with an extra helping of powerful housing features). All the ward owners would own their outdoor plot as they do now, but when they interact with their door they can choose to go to the outdoor space of their own instance or into the house. If you've watched Howel's Moving Castle, think that. If you've played FFXI with the flower girl quest completed on your mog room- you can think that as well.

Then the outdoor spaces wouldn't be aggressively created if there were empty spots, and you could lose them if you don't visit frequent enough, but the instanced space (including the interior of the house) would be your own even if you lost the ward slot. In this way those who really want the ward experience get it, and are surrounded by other people who also want that (which is important, because it's self evident many do not really care for it given how consistently dead it's reported to be- my multi-year experience of visiting every day for gardening says there is one house nearby that I can actually see people.. "sometimes"), and then finally both ward and non-ward users alike will get to enjoy the features of the system (so ward users are not punished). Because the system has a very low barrier to entry you can get people enjoying the idea sooner, with their little room (which can grow into a full large interior and exterior space, for a far smoother and better progression), when they get seasonal awards and stuff (increasing market ward and mog shop purchases I assume), but also incorporate a lot more progression and identity into the system. Like originally SE talked about buildings with functions, towers that you could build on your property for exp bonuses. Such ideas as cool as they were either died or are a huge annoyance to non-house owners. Now you'd never worry about that, we're all house owners at different stages of progression. A far superior opportunity for the system (I feel strongly). May see it basically like everyone can have a house (w/ interior of their size choosing, assuming they do the upgrade costs), everyone gets an 'island sanctuary', and people who pay a little bit more and are aware they're limited availability will also get a ward address. May also consider allowing players to bind their door to more locations (like the Howel's Moving Castle example), such that non-ward owners might appear at the apartment section, and people might bind them to inn rooms (also I think allowing players to decorate their room by pre-fabs might be nice, but that's a huge aside lol). Then perhaps add more housing events (seasonals for example), so everyone can go into the wards with reason.

[Riastrad]

So what happens when servers plateau and we begin to slowly lose players over time? Server merging is going to happen again one day. Who gets to keep their houses then?

You strive to achieve it just for it to be taken from you due to bad luck and being on the losing side of population wars you had no way of knowing you would lose and due to that your house *may* just go poof? Pathetic. And I played and completed 1.0. When the game was at its worst. Spaghetti code is a poor excuse millions (if not billions) of dollars later.

[Homicider]

So basically, anyone who doesn't currently have a house can just go pound sand, is what SE is saying. The message is "There is no housing available, and there never will be, so just get over it."

I'd like to meet the genius that thought having a small, finite number of houses in a game with (apparently) 20 million players was a good idea. They had to of known from Day One that it was going to cause nothing but ill-will, and now they've made it even worse.

This is insane. The only people who could even remotely think this is acceptable is, of course, the smug "I've Got Mine" jerks who think that since they're not facing this problem, the rest of us automatically lose our right to complain about it.

As for Ukraine: I know it's unpopular to attribute any sort of knowledge or competence to FFXIV's programmers, but how about they just delayed house destruction... FOR UKRAINIANS?

Or, of course, they could just not destroy any housing, ever- but instead release the Residential areas that are currently sitting empty. Or, just add more instanced Sections to the existing zones. I know, I know- how dare I accuse the game programmers of being able to accomplish such a thing? Grab the torches and pitchforks, somebody suggested that highly paid programmers for a massively popular game with tens of millions of players might actually be able to solve the housing issue.