Quote Originally Posted by Raige View Post
In the realm of how they designed the housing system, I agree with you.
They initially only released housing for FCs. It wasn't until much later that the doors were open to individuals.

I do however think that once they saw the demand for private housing, it should have been made instanced.
Now we're 10 years into it and it is what it is. Maybe in their next mmo. Stay tuned.
I agree that having some kind of instanced personal "housing" is a good idea for the game. It should be either free or have a fixed price, and give players some reasonable space to work with and enjoy most of the decorative conveniences of a full FC house.

Which is basically apartments.

Aside from outdoor furnishings (which are a tad overrated) and gardening, players already have their instanced housing. So to my mind the solution was never to make personal housing, but just to build out apartments. And it appears that Island Sanctuary may be another sort of instanced "outdoor" housing that will fill in the gaps not covered by apartments, so imo we may not even need apartment buildouts.

Here's the thing about personal and instanced housing. Most personal housing are very insular fantasies that players buy and then barely use. They like the idea of having the aesthetics of a personal house, but few take advantage of it in a social manner, i.e. inviting other people over frequently or interacting with their neighbors. And if you made it all instanced then that completely defeats the purpose of having neighborhoods. The ward system is quite antithetical to personal housing, so I don't know why players want to shoehorn personal or instanced housing into it when it functions much better as what it always intended to be: social hubs.

I will note that there is a category of personal housing that is actually well utilized in a manner similar to FC houses, and that is players who actually build out their house for public use. They make bars, lounges, cafes, restaurants, bathhouses, etc. etc. And so far that is the only manner I have seen personal housing that isn't a cancer on the community. Because it is using personal housing to create community infrastructure instead of being self-saken and masturbatory. So I might be in favor of *commercial* licenses being available for single-player housing if we could get around the botting market problem, but seriously I don't know why all these narcs just NEED a personal house.