Social interactions suffer for lack of demolition of apartments

[Archaell]

The issue: Apartment buildings are a ghost town where majority of players doesn't play - not even speaking about someone actively visiting the place.

The cause: Apartments are not subjected to demolition.

The simple fix would be to introduce demolitions, but considering it's drastic I propose to relocate inactive apartments to back-up server freeing up the space for active players while making it possible for returned players to restore the apartment somewhere else.

[Jojoya]

Demolition is not going to increase social interaction. Also, there's plenty of apartment space for active players right now. You may not get your choice of housing district for your apartment if you're on Balmung but you can still get one.

Many still can't seem to grasp why the housing system tends to generate very little spontaneous social interaction. The bulk of the game's content does not take place inside the housing wards; therefore few players spend the bulk of their time in the housing wards and when they are there, they're generally in the instanced portion of housing, not standing outside in the ward where they will be seen by others.

If you want to generate more social interaction in the wards, then you need to create a reason for more players to be passing through the same ward instead of being divided between 240 different wards/subdivisions per world.

If you feel like your specific apartment building isn't active enough, then find one that is more to your liking and move to that building.

[Archaell]

If you feel like your specific apartment building isn't active enough, then find one that is more to your liking and move to that building.

I would like to move somewhere else, main reason for the topic. Space is no issue, plenty of space everywhere in Phoeniex, it's just hard to tell which buildings are the most active. My current building has about 6 playing players out of 90. Were the inactive apartments relocated, I would have avoided the place like a plague. Apartments being sorted based on activity would make it much easier to find active places.

[Shibi]

Also, not nice to change people's addresses. Some people love living at 4/20.

[Archaell]

Bit greedy of you isn't it?

That people would lose their appartments because you want to see people walk in and out of their homes?

Yes. For the sake of active neighbourhood feeling I would be completely fine with that. Tho relocating the inactive apartments to back-up servers and having a feature to restore them somewhere else, would be more player friendly while achieving the same result.

[LaylaTsarra]

I personally don't think that would change much. Community used to hang out more at FC's in my view until the advent of personal housing which drew a lot away given they preferred to chill at their privates instead. Some FC's try and hold events while others don't. I just don't see Apartments being a good place for social interaction given their layout. Don't think many people hang out in the lobby or outside but i could be wrong.

Social interactions center more around events/club activities which are pretty popular nowadays one only has to check party finder regardless of server in the evenings. Unless SE does more to schedule events/activities that draw people into housing areas they'll always be lacking in interactions in my view.

[Avoidy]

Houses are generally subject to demolition, but the neighborhoods continue to be the deadest, emptiest zones in the game. Curious!

[Padudu]

It wouldn't change anything - I got an apartment in Empy with only 15 spaces. Hardly see a soul there lol, despite it being almost full now after taking a month or two to fill up completely. At least the lobby looks cute, I guess.

[Jojoya]

I would like to move somewhere else, main reason for the topic. Space is no issue, plenty of space everywhere in Phoeniex, it's just hard to tell which buildings are the most active. My current building has about 6 playing players out of 90. Were the inactive apartments relocated, I would have avoided the place like a plague. Apartments being sorted based on activity would make it much easier to find active places.

Have you tried asking friends and FC mates what things are like at their apartment buildings (if they have one)?

I know the building where I have the apartments for my alts has 33 or 34 filled rooms. While I don't always see someone there as I come and go, I usually run into another player there more times each week than I'll see anyone near my personal house in a year (short of friends coming specifically to visit and they do that as readily at one of my apartments as they do at my house).

Your best bet would be to focus on the apartment buildings in wards 19-24 plus any of the Empyreum wards. Those were the most recent additions to the game and so are more likely to have players that are still active. I'd also suggest looking for building with more rooms opened to visitors.

While I don't have anything against your suggestion about having "archival" wings or buildings for apartments of inactive players, I doubt SE would do it. Players would be pretty upset if they came back and their apartment wasn't where they left it with everything moved into storage. SE doesn't seem to have a way to store placement settings when housing is moved (or players wouldn't need to redecorate when relocating to another house of the same size).

What might help is if SE added more wings to apartment buildings as they once said they would be able to easily do if needed. That would help increase the number of players entering individual building, and thus increase the chance for social encounters.

[Oizen]

Are we still pretending there is a prominent social aspect to housing to justify its arbitrary scarcity?