For the love of god, add a priority system.

[Solowing]

A majority of people would still want ward housing, that person you quoted lives in some kind of a dream world in which people wouldnt mind being put in an entire ward alone with pre-decorated houses all around them completely soulless, instanced housing in any way it's provided would be a subpar housing system and ward housing will always be superior, there is no buts about it, it will always be, you have an actual world out there, with actual people, you have a proper garden that you can show others, they dont need to go through 3 loading screens to get to your so called "instanced house" which as I mentioned above is just a "nice looking" house in an absolutely soulless area full of pre-fabricated houses.

People are already alone/lonely enough in this game, this is not needed, I am pretty sure it will never happen, and I'm happy that it wont, it would also ruin the prestige of housing, especially S-tier plots such as LB41,S30,M35 amongst a few others.

Im not a fan of instanced housing ya know lol i like the unique housing format this game has lol

[Ayan_Calvesse]

Honestly I am kind of surprised SE doesn't relo FC houses into the FC only wards in the same plot. While I realize this is far from perfect the 2 big qualifiers I would use are.
1.If no one in the FC has a apartment/private in the current ward of the FC
2. Youngest FC moves first - once the slots are done the shuffle stops.

Not sure if that would help as much as hinder as I know many venues might get their address broken - but honestly I tend to see a lot of empty FC only plots.

Following that I would allow owners of houses to instantly relo to the FC ward - my logic being that some players would take the oppertunity to move their houses next to their friends in the same ward.

In general I think its apparent that FC's are not finding themselves without a place to settle - but rather they might have trouble if they are being picky (ergo only wanting a medium+)

[Themarvin]

With the new lottery system, square enix basically emulated a section 8 / low-income housing... but worse.

The lottery system is a pain, and has actually INCREASED the pool of people to combat with trying to find a house (which aside tangent, housing SHOULD probably be more reserved for the players that dedicate all their time ON FFXIV, but that's besides the point) which is painful. The pool of maybe 20 people all clicking on a sign at the same time has increased (at least in balmung) to 1000-2000 people searching for a house.

It's fine if you're going to add a lottery system, but PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD add a priority system.

That way if you didn't get picked for housing one week, then you get placed in a pool of higher priority for the next week. That way if you KEEP losing the lottery, EVENTUALLY THROUGH ENOUGH SUFFERING, you will EVENTUALLY be guaranteed a house.

Like I fail to see how this wasn't thought about before implementing this system. Your chances of winning is stupidly low, that you're better off not bothering. At least with a priority system, You can get your hopes up and hopefully get it the next time with higher priority.

In short it wont work other than in time everyone having that maxmum +3 bonus to large and medium housing.

So it would be wasted development time implenting it the same way as it was with Bozja/Zadnor content, which is way different from this.

[Reinha]

Im not a fan of instanced housing ya know lol i like the unique housing format this game has lol

Same. The only way I'd bother with an instanced house is if it was a castle twice as big as a mansion and had even more furniture storage space, but we all know that's not going to happen. They would have made apartments bigger if it was possible for everyone to have a huge house interior.

[Jojoya]

Same. The only way I'd bother with an instanced house is if it was a castle twice as big as a mansion and had even more furniture storage space, but we all know that's not going to happen. They would have made apartments bigger if it was possible for everyone to have a huge house interior.

Apartments were an almost straight copy/paste of FC private chambers. It was a low effort implementation, likely because SE didn't anticipate the true demand for personal housing and they were still uncertain about the game's future.

It's very possible for everyone to have a huge instanced area. Other MMORPGS were doing it before FFXIV relaunched. We all have our very own Island Sanctuary now after all. Even if you take into account just the Hideaway portion of the island where we are allowed to place outdoor furnishings, it is far larger than the combined interior plus exterior space of a mansion. Clearly it is possible.

I don't understand the pushback against a better instanced housing system for those who want it when almost no one is saying take away the ward houses. Those who have and want the ward houses can continue to have those. Those who would prefer the instanced housing could have that. If the access to the instanced housing was integrated into the wards in a fashion similar to the apartment buildings, it would potentially increase traffic within the wards so they stop feeling like ghost towns.

[Reinha]

Clearly it is possible.

I disagree. We've had large solo instance maps before, but how much they can be customized with item placement and rotation is the limiting factor. The island only holds 90 housing items which is fewer than an apartment does (100 placed, 100 stored). And you can't actually put those furnishings there, only copy their appearance. I wonder if that's yet another technical limitation or a way to keep people paying for extra retainers.

I don't understand the pushback against a better instanced housing system for those who want it

Are you confusing me not bothering with an instanced house with pushback? Or me not believing we'll get it? I'm not the one preventing people from getting instanced housing. The devs are.

almost no one is saying take away the ward houses. Those who have and want the ward houses can continue to have those.

Quite a few are suggesting to either take away ward houses or to gut them, for no other reason than "I don't like it and that's why it should be nerfed." I've seen people asking to delete people's houses, remove or nerf housing features such as submarines and salvage, convert fc houses to a basic looking fc hall at the GC and to hide ward houses by loading instanced houses on top of them. They definitely don't want ward house owners to continue to have their fun.

If anything, instanced housing would be a perfect way to shut people up when they start yet another whiny thread about how to ruin ward housing or the lottery system. That's why I would welcome it.

[Stormpeaks]

Apartments were an almost straight copy/paste of FC private chambers. It was a low effort implementation, likely because SE didn't anticipate the true demand for personal housing and they were still uncertain about the game's future.

It's very possible for everyone to have a huge instanced area. Other MMORPGS were doing it before FFXIV relaunched. We all have our very own Island Sanctuary now after all. Even if you take into account just the Hideaway portion of the island where we are allowed to place outdoor furnishings, it is far larger than the combined interior plus exterior space of a mansion. Clearly it is possible.

I don't understand the pushback against a better instanced housing system for those who want it when almost no one is saying take away the ward houses. Those who have and want the ward houses can continue to have those. Those who would prefer the instanced housing could have that. If the access to the instanced housing was integrated into the wards in a fashion similar to the apartment buildings, it would potentially increase traffic within the wards so they stop feeling like ghost towns.

Literally over 50% of yall asking for this instanced housing system want ward housing to be gone, some even wanting for it to be "transfered to instanced over night so people dont have a choice" as a good example of it (taken from an actual post on GD)

let's not pretend here lmao, multiowners are just existing and having their fun but the other side of it which is the people agaisnt it are the absolute most toxic part of this community I have ever seen

"There's houses on Dynamis, but I want them to take away the multiowners houses !!!! they're taking people's houses SE!!!!" meanwhile there's thousands of houses open with 0 bids.

Same was for Sagi on EU which was an empty wasteland, but apparently I was "taking other people's houses" somehow.

or the good old

"multiowners should have all their houses taken away and only get to keep one !!"

and so much more

same vibe goes for this instanced/ward stuff, it's all just peak toxicity of wanting to take things away from people because they cant get it.

In the end, it's all in the hands of the JP community, and they dont want it, they literally have no need for it as they have ample available housing, so the devs dont want it either, yall can keep yelling on the EU/NA forums, they really dont care.

[Neoyoshi]

We had a Priority system, it sucked. It was ruled by plaque clicker bots and the houses were legit being sold on grey markets for real world money.

This is the better system; we just need more plots or more people willing to move to other servers to take ownership of barren housing wards.

The real solution would be to have housing attached to some sort of mega-server that could functionally share small slivers of each individual server so folks wouldn't feel that far detached from their respective home realms. That may be the dev's intention if they can get Cloud tech to work in their favor.

[Veritas-Ancora]

The real solution would be to have housing attached to some sort of mega-server that could functionally share small slivers of each individual server so folks wouldn't feel that far detached from their respective home realms. That may be the dev's intention if they can get Cloud tech to work in their favor.

That's a very interesting thought on the cloud servers. I was trying to figure out how/why they would be used.