The Solution to the Housing Dilema

[mauiestlauiest]

And you'll probably never make back the price of a housing plot by growing stuff there.

LOL. This is so incredibly incorrect. The real gardeners know exactly what you need to grow in order to make millions of gil a week.

[MistyMew]

Neighborhoods have been pretty much DOA. Been saying that from day 1 of housing.
Wasted space to use neighborhood design IMO..

Please expand apartments into S,M. L sizes to equal homes, with quadruple current item limits of all home sizes and with NO demolition thievery from SE . Interior gardens and an "attached chocobo stable door as well"

[ijuakos_xqwzts]

No thanks. I like the neighborhood feel to the wards.

Found Yoshi-P's sock puppet account.

The only people I ever see in the wards are people looking for houses, people who lost their houses and are getting their money back, and people who just won houses. Everyone congregates in the capital cities, not the wards.

[Kytrin]

Everyone congregates in the capital cities, not the wards.

You're not wrong at all. Personally, I would like to see apartments moved to the capital cities for exactly that reason. They don't need to be stuck out in the wards when they're already instanced. Use the space in the wards to put something else in there, maybe another large plot since that seems to be what most people are frothing at the mouth over, and let the rest of us have a nice space in the ever bustling cities.

For the apartments themselves... I've literally lost track of how many ideas and clever innovations people have had to make apartment living more desirable... purchasing upgrades for size, purchasing new floors, purchasing a balcony area and upgrading it so it holds a few outdoor items, just to name a few. I've even seen ideas about how to recreate that 'neighborhood feel' Yoshi-P is so hung up on, but I've never seen anything even acknowledging such ideas from the devs.

I know part of their reticence is due to the fact they would have to redesign apartments from the ground up to implement even half of those features we keep begging for, and they don't want to spend the time, effort, and money needed to do that. I think they might have to bite the bullet and do it anyway at some point though. There are ways, many ways, they could make it work if they put their thinking caps on.

Balconies and other outside areas giving you fits because you can't resolve the conflict between having an instanced area plus a balcony? Why not simply make the view a generic one of the city's npcs moving around and no players? We won't mind, I promise.

Not sure how to handle size upgrades? I could point to SO MANY ideas on this, but probably one of the simpler ones would be to give everyone the equivalent of a penthouse space, but you unlock areas as you go. Want an upstairs? Pay the gil. Want an indoor garden? Pay the gil. Want access to the rooftop? Pay the gil. And so on and so forth. You could still decorate the areas you have unlocked as you see fit, and simply add the features as we go.

Not sure how to handle item limits? This one's harder since we've all been screaming for more limits for literally ages... but I'd say set everyone at a large's 400. That should cover most people. Particularly if the space isn't as big as an actual large. That would also, handily, make a nice incentive for people to want to move from private houses to the new apartments.

Not sure how big you want these things to be? Again, tricky, but I imagine that if you could ultimate upgrade to something about the size of a medium, or a little larger, not counting outdoor areas, most of us would be perfectly happy.

But what about the wards? Wards are a touchy subject. Some people like them, some people don't, and some don't care at all. Some think they should be FC only, some don't. FCs on larger servers cry about not being able to get a house of any size for their FC while people on medium or smaller servers are just staring at the vast fields of open small plots and laughing at the idea an FC would even deign to touch such an insignificant space. Some even laugh at the idea that their entire population could even fill the wards available. Personally, I say don't worry about it. The apartments are an option. The wards will figure themselves out in time.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. It CAN work if done thoughtfully and with care. You've even hinted at exactly that for housing on the moon with the whole remodel of the residences. Or, as an alternative, you could break down and make the Island Sanctuaries capable of housing the way people have been hoping for since those were announced. Yes, it would be a pain in the backside to do, but at this point I think you would have more to gain than to lose. I would cheerfully move to an upgraded city apartment or my Island Sanctuary and not look back, and I expect a lot of other people would as well.

[Toutatis]

In the meantime:
FC rooms & Apartments also need to be priced evenly & expanded upon by increasing their size & adding rooms/ floors and introducing a roommate option as well as a garden if someone wants it
The new house Wards when they are eventually added, need to be made fully private wards

There’s a reason why apts and fc rooms are not priced evenly: it is easy to lose and fc room. Some FCs kick people very easily if they don’t show up for a week or two (they don’t ever go on vacation?), the FC may end up not to your liking, it may be disbanded etc. I have no problem with my FC as I’ve been playing FF and another MMO with thr same people since years but it is a reality of guilds/FCs and people can be hesitant.

Now, that being said they should have two sizes, including one with a garden space (balcony, indoor garden). The “vision” of the devs is nice but only as long as they are able to and take the means to meet demand. It shouldn’t come down to pure rng as to who can own not a house or not.

[IckeDerTyp]

The only thing they need to do but really don't want to, is spend money on it!

Or something like "spaghetti code" but...

Here's hoping they'll spend more money on 14 once 16 is done! ^^'

[FossilPunk]

I get the impression that some people feel that it's the buildings and not the people who live/work in those buildings that create a neighborhood.

They feel how they feel, can't argue that even if you don't feel the same way.

It's still not a reason to justify a system that doesn't allow every player to get a house if they want one.

To be honest, with instanced housing that feeling of the buildings doesn't necessarily have to disappear. Just have some prefab houses showing outside the instance entrance and once you enter it you see all the fancy decorations they've done to it. You could also add a menu similar to player search to choose/filter for which instance you want to go to.

[Eris4494]

Instant housing is only way to fix this problem. If don't see the housing problem fixed by 7.0 don't think me or my friends will stay with the game and move to another MMO that has instant housing. The lottery system to me is another big fail on their part.

[Jojoya]

To be honest, with instanced housing that feeling of the buildings doesn't necessarily have to disappear. Just have some prefab houses showing outside the instance entrance and once you enter it you see all the fancy decorations they've done to it. You could also add a menu similar to player search to choose/filter for which instance you want to go to.

I still love RIFT's instanced housing system (Dimensions). Almost every Dimension is a literal slice of the game world with the NPCs and some of the object decor removed. There's a huge Dimension that completely empty except for ground stretching into the distance for those who want to completely form their housing from scratch,

Want your housing to be in a city? Get a city themed Dimension. In a rural village? Get a village Dimension. Desert? Get a desert Dimension. Forest? Get a forest Dimension. Under water? Get the water Dimension. Want to start completely from scratch? Get Dimension: Anywhere which is a completely blank slate other than dirt ground stretching to the horizon.

It has a good search tool for finding Dimensions owned by other players so it's not like your housing will go unnoticed if you want other players to see it.

Instant housing is only way to fix this problem. If don't see the housing problem fixed by 7.0 don't think me or my friends will stay with the game and move to another MMO that has instant housing. The lottery system to me is another big fail on their part.

You might want to think twice about randomly quitting just over housing.

There's a reason I'm here and not still playing RIFT. The rest of RIFT is rather mediocre. Not terrible, just not that good. Housing alone does not make for a good MMORPG experience, though certainly it adds greatly to the overall experience.

[Eris4494]

Think going to try out New World Online.