housing conundrum: there needs to be a better way.

[VerdeLuck]

People always suggest instanced housing but it's not going to fix the issue while there's still ward housing. Ward housing would be superior and you would have people fighting over ward houses since they have an actual permanent place in the server as opposed to being loaded in from a server.

It could maybe work if they added unique features to instanced housing and cut off access to it if you had ward housing already, or if they just converted all ward houses to instanced.

For some of this it feels like they're really held back by 10 years of bad designs and committing to things from the past. Things like relying on wards only and committing to never removing any houses from those with multiple since they're grandfathered in make the situation worse and harder to solve.

[SophiaDL]

People always suggest instanced housing but it's not going to fix the issue while there's still ward housing. Ward housing would be superior and you would have people fighting over ward houses since they have an actual permanent place in the server as opposed to being loaded in from a server.

It could maybe work if they added unique features to instanced housing and cut off access to it if you had ward housing already, or if they just converted all ward houses to instanced.

For some of this it feels like they're really held back by 10 years of bad designs and committing to things from the past. Things like relying on wards only and committing to never removing any houses from those with multiple since they're grandfathered in make the situation worse and harder to solve.

Let people believe that instanced housing will be the "savior" and will fix housing, watch just as many bids in ward housing when it comes out. Instanced housing isnt the savior people think it will be. It will always be inferior to ward housing.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Let people believe that instanced housing will be the "savior" and will fix housing, watch just as many bids in ward housing when it comes out. Instanced housing isnt the savior people think it will be. It will always be inferior to ward housing.

To some people, yes. But Instanced housing could free up more ward housing for those who prefer it. How many houses do you see in your neighborhoods that are empty? How many that look like literal storage lockers? Instanced housing would appeal to the FOMO crowd who holds on to a house because they might want to play with it in the future. It would give those using housing storage as just another inventory a way to do so without taking up a ward house and leaving it essentially unused. And since instanced houses don’t need to be permanently loaded, they wouldn’t need to be subject to auto-demo, so they’d also appeal to those more casual types who don’t want to be chained to a sub every other month. (And it also opens up the possibility of your house being converted to an instanced house instead of actually being demolished should your timer expire…) Instanced could also let you choose your house/plot size, so you could have a large without having to wait for one of the 6 per ward to open and test your RNG luck. Add to that the people who don’t care about having a “prestigious” address or location, and just want a creative space to decorate, and I think overall instanced housing solves a lot of issues, the main one being scarcity. Not to mention the possibility of additional features that they can’t add to the permanently loaded ward houses because of the massive amount of lag and/or server drain they’d cause.

[PercibelTheren]

Let people believe that instanced housing will be the "savior" and will fix housing, watch just as many bids in ward housing when it comes out. Instanced housing isnt the savior people think it will be. It will always be inferior to ward housing.

What's so amazing about ward housing anyway? I've literally never seen any of my neighbors. They may as well not exist. And visiting someone's instanced house isn't exactly impossible, other MMOs have done it before.

[VerdeLuck]

To some people, yes. But Instanced housing could free up more ward housing for those who prefer it. How many houses do you see in your neighborhoods that are empty? How many that look like literal storage lockers? Instanced housing would appeal to the FOMO crowd who holds on to a house because they might want to play with it in the future. It would give those using housing storage as just another inventory a way to do so without taking up a ward house and leaving it essentially unused. And since instanced houses don’t need to be permanently loaded, they wouldn’t need to be subject to auto-demo, so they’d also appeal to those more casual types who don’t want to be chained to a sub every other month. (And it also opens up the possibility of your house being converted to an instanced house instead of actually being demolished should your timer expire…) Instanced could also let you choose your house/plot size, so you could have a large without having to wait for one of the 6 per ward to open and test your RNG luck. Add to that the people who don’t care about having a “prestigious” address or location, and just want a creative space to decorate, and I think overall instanced housing solves a lot of issues, the main one being scarcity. Not to mention the possibility of additional features that they can’t add to the permanently loaded ward houses because of the massive amount of lag and/or server drain they’d cause.

It's not going to free up ward housing. At best it will just be +1 to the house count of the people who already have multiple. They aren't giving up their ward house unless SE says you can't have both at the same time.
You're too trusting in that people will be nice, play fair, and share a limited resource. The fact that people own entire wards to themselves and have continued to for half a decade while housing has been ridiculouly hard to get a house for new players shows that is not going to happen.
SE has to put hard limits on pretty much everything in this game to prevent greedy players from snapping up more than their share of limited resource and locking others out.

[Musashidon]

It's not going to free up ward housing.

it frees up future housing wards though.

yes i know they will also sell out of course people are going to be greedy but there is a very large group of people who would take the instance housing and be sated sure there will still be complaints like with apartments guild rooms ect. but every player getting housing would solve the main problem of *i can't get a house*
course it doesnt solve it if players cant do what current housing can do aka outdoor furnishing and your gardening or things like sub/airship.

the reason people want instance housing is because overall it gets rid of the average players need of the current housing system, which they only try to be a part of because they have to. a real alternative to it is what players want.

like a suggestion instead of instanced housing how about expanding apartments and allowing tenants like housing does. let players choose the size and pay for it at the apartment like we already do and get a much bigger sized apartment with a padio that goes outside and can be bigger/smaller based on the size apartment you got which can hold outdoor furnishing and your garden. i will say once again it doesnt fix every issue but its a thought.

[VerdeLuck]

it frees up future housing wards though.

yes i know they will also sell out of course people are going to be greedy but there is a very large group of people who would take the instance housing and be sated sure there will still be complaints like with apartments guild rooms ect. but every player getting housing would solve the main problem of *i can't get a house*
course it doesnt solve it if players cant do what current housing can do aka outdoor furnishing and your gardening or things like sub/airship.

the reason people want instance housing is because overall it gets rid of the average players need of the current housing system, which they only try to be a part of because they have to. a real alternative to it is what players want.

like a suggestion instead of instanced housing how about expanding apartments and allowing tenants like housing does. let players choose the size and pay for it at the apartment like we already do and get a much bigger sized apartment with a padio that goes outside and can be bigger/smaller based on the size apartment you got which can hold outdoor furnishing and your garden. i will say once again it doesnt fix every issue but its a thought.

It's a thought that would take a huge amount of dev resources, but also doesn't address the failings of something like apartments. Having low player counts allowed inside instanced housing, worse menus to access it, it being cumbersome to visit and access, and in general it being much less useful for anything other than strictly personal use would make it always inferior to ward housing. If it was added and it was just straight up an instanced medium that you had to go through a half dozen menus to access like apartments, it would be in the same spot. We would still be arguing about access to ward housing because instanced would be inferior in most ways.
As long as ward houses still exist, nobody will want to use instanced housing, unless they add some specific feature to them that ward houses don't get.

[SophiaDL]

It's not going to free up ward housing. At best it will just be +1 to the house count of the people who already have multiple. They aren't giving up their ward house unless SE says you can't have both at the same time.
You're too trusting in that people will be nice, play fair, and share a limited resource. The fact that people own entire wards to themselves and have continued to for half a decade while housing has been ridiculouly hard to get a house for new players shows that is not going to happen.
SE has to put hard limits on pretty much everything in this game to prevent greedy players from snapping up more than their share of limited resource and locking others out.

They are actually delusional, they think future house owners or already settled in house owners will give up their house/give up on the idea of a ward house because of instanced housing, well I cant wait to see that when it does happen, because I am fully certain that it wont

[Musashidon]

As long as ward houses still exist, nobody will want to use instanced housing, unless they add some specific feature to them that ward houses don't get.

people want to use instanced housing but it doesn't actually do what the wards do there is content gutted out of it, thats the problem.

like i said most people participate unwillingly because they have to, not because they want to. the ward part is moot. people will take the extra steps if its worth it.

now i will say i used apartments as an example not as the cure all.

They are actually delusional, they think future house owners or already settled in house owners will give up their house/give up on the idea of a ward house because of instanced housing, well I cant wait to see that when it does happen, because I am fully certain that it wont

yea definitely people aren't going to get rid of their already bought homes just for a instance one.

i will use me as the direct example i have both a FC house (small) and a personal house (large) i also have my guild room and apartment both which i barely use. if an instance house was also offered i would buy one just to have one but not relinquish the personal ward or fc ward homes. so i agree people arent going to get rid of their home for any reason.

i mean there are people grand fathered into 10 or more houses on their alts from before there was a limit they will always keep them it's just how it is.

[Vahlnir]

I recently returned to the game, and I was gone long enough that I lost my personal and FC plot. Honestly, it's rather liberating to be free of this awful system. I made an encampment on my island. Just give me an outdoor bed and/or a cot and I'll be golden.