Quote Originally Posted by SassyAssassin View Post
Yeah cute in theory definitely but after years of being proven wrong, you’d think he’d get over his vision and actually listen to what the playerbase wants.
I don’t care for neighbours, in fact I’d personally be happier without, game has a lot of social places we can hang out in, there’s no reason to have strangers in your front yard.

The majority of people play with their fc or friends, and getting houses close to eachother or even in the same ward is rather difficult, I’ve never seen any ward where people hang out together or are even online at the same time, its a system that makes no sense, especially in Japan. I remember playing on the JP servers, you’d rarely ever see anyone regardless of time, let alone interact.

It’s time to stop spending resources on daydreams and actually do something that would benefit everyone in the end. Sure leave some wards for those few people that actually care for neighbours, but don’t limit the majority of players for a failed ideal.
I agree with you, Sassy :s The issue is that there -are- a few people in these threads that do want the neighbourhood thing. Even when I point out that it's honestly very rare that that sense of community exists, and it's just as rare for people to interact that often. I myself only ever saw FC interaction once or twice between FC's in all the years I've played. And not for a lack of trying, they just don't really do that.

Problem is... sure, it's lovely, it really is and it can be true that that sentiment is working for those people. I can't tell you if they're a majority or a minority. But regardless? This system is causing issues at a design level. And we could honestly deal with housing in much better ways than what we currently have. It's not that the people who like this are wrong. Rather that this design is getting in the way of people being overall satisfied.

And it's not like we can't have some form of exterior decoration or community interaction. It won't be the same, but it is possible.

In PSO2 you have an instanced room for yourself with a vista for the outside that you can customize. And that vista is a relatively large area with even preset environments.
Now... this works in PSO2 because their technology is literally Star Wars-like, so what you're seeing is a hologram inside a space ship. So naturally, we'd have none of that. BUT we could repurpose the idea and make it work for Eorzean standards. Have the apartment idea that people wanted in another thread, with a view for the outside that we could customize somewhat. FCs would have a larger area, like a proper medium\large house.

For the community bit, we could have a sort of instanced "plaza" or "ward" as well for people to gather around if they wanted to. It wouldn't be the wards, and we'd have to be careful with instance-player limits. This would allow us to explore the ward at will, take pictures and communicate with other house-owners outside our FC. And around the borders and such there'd be houses as fixtures which gave us access to the instanced houses.

I know, I know. It's not the same. It really wouldn't be, and that's unfortunate. I'm not even saying what I'm suggesting is perfect in any way!

But this system also ain't it. Because in order for us to have all this, we're choking availability and how many people can actually get a house.