Housing - Round 4

[Vahlnir]

Ended up winning my small in Empyreum as an FC plot. If anyone wants or needs a small, I would suggest coming on over. lol Diabolos' Empyreum is still littered with them. That may change with the next cycle or two though since all the mediums and larges are going to be gone. Granted these smalls are all FC plots, but hopefully SE will unlock these at some point for the general population. At the moment, they don't appear to be going much of anywhere.

[Ekoko]

There was so much hype around Island Sanctuary and we know absolutely nothing about it. We still don't know anything either. At the very best, I'm expecting an apartment style building and some outdoor space for minion activities and gardening. I'm really not expecting this to be the instanced housing dream some clowns are trying to sell.

Yeah, I've been following JP interviews and the like and there's hardly any information on either side of things so I feel it's a bit like the Versus XIII situation back in the day: lack of information led to people making assumptions and then this getting spread around as misinformation.

I can only hope people don't get angry with the development team if the players' expectations fuelled by assumptions and hope are knocked down. At the same time, I would hope the development team does at the very least make note of the reception to the content should they actually detail it properly in this PLL. Mostly given the PLL was titled "6.2 Part 1" which in itself, makes me feel a bit skeptical.

It would be great if people got what they wanted, but if it does then one would have to hope that they don't neglect the existing garden system tied to the housing system as well. Until they give us further information, we can only assume there's the potential overlap of the two systems and that it's unlikely in either event for the Island Sanctuary stuff to result in a feasible replacement or proper alternative for the housing system demand versus supply situation.

Honestly, I'm not expecting it to resolve it either and while I know I'm being a tad pessimistic, I've kind of gotten burned by getting my hopes up for various things with SQEX in the past. Would rather give the benefit of the doubt, but I don't want to jump to conclusions about it either.

With all that out of the way, I can at least say I've had solidarity with people on Cactuar doing /pdead as the results window of the lottery hit and it has been nice seeing people around the residential areas in such numbers. It would be nice if the numbers around the areas stayed this way, but unless they shuffle things around or somehow one or more of the 10 plots that were available this lottery were won by people relocating, only the FC wards will have this activity.

[Akira_Kojima]

Add instanced housing.
Add instanced housing.
Add instanced housing.
Add instanced housing.
Add instanced housing.
Add instanced housing.
Add instanced housing.
Add instanced housing.
Add instanced housing.
Add instanced housing.
Add instanced housing.
Add instanced housing.

The funny thing is SE already has instanced housing with the apartments. If they'd give us the option to increase the space to something similar to a medium then I'd be more than happy to give up my small house

[sagacious]

The funny thing is SE already has instanced housing with the apartments. If they'd give us the option to increase the space to something similar to a medium then I'd be more than happy to give up my small house

If they make a apartments better than a house why have small houses in the first place? If island has gardening and other perks again why have cottages at all? Island cannot be that good.

[Juun]

If they make a apartments better than a house why have small houses in the first place? If island has gardening and other perks again why have cottages at all? Island cannot be that good.

Because some people don't like instanced housing? I take my house over my apartment all day even if they increased the size of apartments/added instanced housing to be the size of a mansion with a yard.

I'd rather enjoy my neighborhood then be isolated.

[Vahlnir]

Because some people don't like instanced housing? I take my house over my apartment all day even if they increased the size of apartments/added instanced housing to be the size of a mansion with a yard.

I'd rather enjoy my neighborhood then be isolated.

Both should be an option. They probably won't be, but they should be.

[Avoidy]

If they'd give [apartments] the option to increase the space to something similar to a medium then I'd be more than happy to give up my small house

Agreed. If apartments had all the functionality of a house, then way less people would feel bad about just getting an apartment instead.

As it stands , apartments have a lower furniture cap than houses, less actual space to decorate in, and no outdoor area like a patio to house the outdoor furniture this game throws at us. And that's to say nothing of gardening or submarine management, which are just two more systems that most of the community is locked out of even trying.

In my dream world, we would be able to change our home decorations in the same way we change glamour plates. In this way, even when you decorate once, you can save your decoration and continue to be creative without losing anything. Please implement a way for us to save our designs so we can redecorate without losing everything. Doing this, and nothing else, would satisfy a ton of apartment-only types.

Now, I'm not interested in camping this thread, so I'll just address the replies I'll get right now, since it's always the same replies:

>submarine management is group oriented, don't make it a solo activity
Maybe in your rare FC it is somehow, but please go look at the thousands of FCs where submarines are managed by 1 guy while the rest of the FC doesn't even know what it is. Or the armies of shell FCs built just so 1 person can take advantage of that system and have complete control over it. Or the literal RMT farms where they have dozens of shell FCs running subs at the same time in the background while they actively bot and ruin the game. This notion that subs are an FC activity is a joke and has been for a while. If you actually want FC-oriented activities, look at how other games do guild missions and then ask yourself why this game has nothing similar at all.

>gardening is nothing! I have a garden and the system sucks lmao
Congrats, you had the luxury to try it out and decide it wasn't for you. Meanwhile, most people playing the game and paying the same sub as you every month don't even get to really see the whole system. Also passive gil income is awesome, plants are cool, and micromanaging different timers activates happy chemicals for a lot of people. Just because none of these things appeal to you, doesn't mean the system isn't appealing for others.

If you make apartments good, then my house loses value or something
The worst take, yet I always see it. You, a homeowner, are capable of also owning an apartment. Your home also gets to keep that special neighborhood appeal you care about so much. You still have things apartments don't; apartment owners just get to enjoy basic functionality. I always hear this reply from people who purchased a home not for decorative purposes, but because it seemed rare and they wanted to lord its functionality over everyone who couldn't get one.

[Imora]

Because some people don't like instanced housing? I take my house over my apartment all day even if they increased the size of apartments/added instanced housing to be the size of a mansion with a yard.

I'd rather enjoy my neighborhood then be isolated.

My FC house has no one around. None.

It's old plot also had no one. Houses sure, but anyone not in fc nearby? Nope.

Neighborhood feel works when there's people about.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

If they make a apartments better than a house why have small houses in the first place? If island has gardening and other perks again why have cottages at all? Island cannot be that good.

Gil being a big one. Many people aren't in such an amazing gil situation that they can sink 20/50mil into an apartment if the prices were equalized up to match the prices of Medium/Large plots, but they could sink 500k into an apartment, or maybe even 1-3 mil for an add-on expansion of a basement to make them identical to smalls.

There's also just the luxury of having an outdoor plot to decorate and show off that is impossible with apartments, being able to make someone a tenant so you can share the plot and decorate it together, many people would enjoy the idea of owning an actual house than being crammed into the same building with hundreds of others, etc. Small plots would still have their uses & appeals that apartments cannot replicate even if people were given the option of getting bigger apartments.

As far as the topic, while I won it on the previous round, I had to laugh when I logged in and found out I won the last large on Gilgamesh in Empyreum, with like 300 contestants. I actually hit no on the finalizing the sale prompt since I had assumed I lost and was mashing through the text boxes and was so confused why i hadn't gotten my refund, before I checked and read it the 2nd time around and realized I had actually won lol.

[Johners]

Because some people don't like instanced housing? I take my house over my apartment all day even if they increased the size of apartments/added instanced housing to be the size of a mansion with a yard.

I'd rather enjoy my neighborhood then be isolated.

Housing wards are mostly dead and ultimately a waste of server resources because of it. The most action there's wards see is when a streamer walks around or people turning up to one plot for an RP event, aside from that they're categorically a waste of server resources. Each ward is two zones, one for plots 1-30 and the other for plots 31-60, which is multiplied 24 times for each district and then five times for total number of districts. That's 240 unique zones, per home world, for player housing and they're mostly dead.

I really don't see why just making the entire plot an instance and then having a single version of each district, per server, would be a bad idea. You'd take a massive amount of server load off from having empty zones that someone might visit into having a single zone with more versions of every house. Currently each apartment building has 90 apartments so I don't see why you couldn't then have 90 instances, minimum, of each housing plot per district. For example, you'd own The Mists Plot 1 Instance 1 instead of The Mists Ward 1 Plot 1.

You could make the districts feel alive but rotating the visible appearance outside, say every weekly reset, with one of the instances of that plot. That way someone who wanted to walk around their housing area could still see the area evolve overtime but you also avoid ending up like the majority of wards now, entirely static with no activity. I've seen many of the housing districts on Light and aside from the most recent housing area added in Endwalker, the vast majority of houses haven't changed their exterior decorations at all in the last year. They might redecorated their interior but then that's just an instance anyway so instancing the entire plot doesn't make a difference.