Housing Roulette was an absolute trash idea.

[Brightamethyst]

So legit question, no snark as I am not a game developer and don't know how things work. People have argued that instanced housing for everyone isn't possible due to things like server space, but then they give everyone an island sanctuary.

My brain can't parse this just due to my own ignorance on the subject, someone mind explaining?

Wards vs instanced housing was an intentional design choice. It's not that they couldn't make instanced housing -apartments and FC rooms prove that- but that they wanted the open world neighborhood feel.

You have to understand that nine years ago when housing first came about the population was MUCH smaller, gil was much more scarce, and housing was FC only (they didn't open houses to individuals until later.) The ward system was fantastic for that game at that time. The system clearly hasn't aged well but at this point it's too late to change it.

[Corvus_V]

Wards vs instanced housing was an intentional design choice. It's not that they couldn't make instanced housing -apartments and FC rooms prove that- but that they wanted the open world neighborhood feel.
. The system clearly hasn't aged well but at this point it's too late to change it.

It isn't too late to change it because owning a plot of land isn't meant to hold any economic value outside of its use as a potential company workshop, so that's incorrect. Trading houses is against ToS, so houses are valueless to other players financially and their scarcity is completely arbitrary.

In terms of neighborhood feel, it's also basically completely dead; so this was all nonsense from the start. Allowing players to teleport to their homes removes any sense of "passing through and seeing people who live by you," as you'd have to deliberately walk past another players house while they're there knowing that in order to have any kind of interaction with them. Essentially, every ward is a glorified gallery, not a neighborhood. Even if you run an RP venue, people just head directly towards it without doing anything else. Depending on the type of venue, that may even be a good thing.

Please try not to give Square Enix too much credit for thinking of everything. They haven't, and none of this was necessary.

[Zebraoracle]

Wards vs instanced housing was an intentional design choice. It's not that they couldn't make instanced housing -apartments and FC rooms prove that- but that they wanted the open world neighborhood feel.

You have to understand that nine years ago when housing first came about the population was MUCH smaller, gil was much more scarce, and housing was FC only (they didn't open houses to individuals until later.) The ward system was fantastic for that game at that time. The system clearly hasn't aged well but at this point it's too late to change it.

Been playing since 2.1 and I understand wards were a choice. Even then, I don't remember housing wards ever being particularly active, especially considering how dead they are now with a larger population.

[Corvus_V]

Been playing since 2.1 and I understand wards were a choice. Even then, I don't remember housing wards ever being particularly active, especially considering how dead they are now with a larger population.

I don't believe anyone who has ever worked on this game has walked through the housing zones in NA.

What's funny is the wards technically had more people in them on average when placard spamming was a thing

I think at this point we should have just necro'd one of the old threads last time we had a housing roulette. Because so much of what's being said here is verbatim what's been said before there.

Big agree. Though it'd be nice if the people who were insistent on housing sucking for everyone just stopped antagonizing everyone for no good reason.

If there were an instanced house megathread or something I'd let this one die because its title isnt the most constructive. Either way, it's not like people are going to go through all the pages, so they're bound to repeat stuff regardless.