Now That The Game Is Getting A Housing Upgrade, When Are The Extra Wards?

[Solowing]

Why are you talking about RULES? What the hell are you even talking about? FFS, back to your dart board.

is the "logic trap" of the equity argument. By asking for an instanced system to exist alongside the ward system, proponents are essentially asking for a privileged tier of gameplay that bypasses the "fair" rules everyone else has to follow.
From your perspective, this is "unfair by design" for several reasons:


1. The "Double Standard" of Responsibility
If both systems exist, you create two classes of citizens in the same game:
The Ward Owner: Must pay their "rent" in the form of a sub and active play, or they lose their home to the auto-demolition timer. They are "punished" for being inactive.
The Instance Owner: Likely has no demolition timer because their house doesn't take up a physical "plot" on the server map. They get the same benefit (a house) without the same risk (losing it).
The Unfairness: Why should one person have to "earn" their house every month while the other gets to keep it forever?


2. The Devaluation of the "Equal" Struggle
If you can get an instanced house with zero effort or luck, the ward house stops being a "reward" and becomes a burden.
People who won the lottery "fair and square" feel screwed because they are now the only ones being "taxed" (by the demo timer and the lottery stress) for something that others are now getting for "free."
It turns the ward system from a "prestigious community" into a "punishment zone" for people who happen to like seeing their neighbors.

3. The "Pseudo-Equity" Shield
Proponents argue for "both" because it sounds like a compromise, but in practice, it’s a way to avoid the hard truth: they want the benefits of the system without the constraints of the rules.


They want the creativity of housing, but they don't want to deal with the scarcity that makes the current rules "fair."
By asking for both, they are trying to have their cake and eat it too—preserving the "neighborhood feel" for those who want it, while creating an "easy mode" for themselves.


The Bottom Line
When people ask for both, they aren't arguing for equality (the same rules for everyone). They are arguing for convenience disguised as fairness.
They are essentially saying: "I want a version of this game where the 'unfair' parts (luck and timers) don't apply to me, but I still want the 'fair' version to exist so the game doesn't feel empty."

[Calysto]

System & Transition idea :
-new instanced system
-possible 'private' neighborhood ward of 10 houses ; no auto-demolition but possible by vote for inactive plot (just move it to a solo instance)
-wards become legacy and will be deactivated 2 patches later. if any house would be demolished or is still on them at this point, they are moved to an instance.
Optional prestige thing :
-10 new public plots added directly to each main cities, requiring entry fee and either lottery or public vote weekly/monthly/patch~ly. (either with some restriction or a 'no-spoiler" display option 'on' by default for players that haven't reached the content for some furnishing, or just reviewed/locked by some GM at SE it patch~ly)

[MayuAmakura]

This entire topic has been turned to fest of "who has a better argument online". Post any solution and you get another reply of: "wouldn't look cool if everybody can afford the house!!!".

I don't understand why making sure that everybody can afford and get a house is suddenly a bad idea? Holy...

[Solowing]

This entire topic has been turned to fest of "who has a better argument online". Post any solution and you get another reply of: "wouldn't look cool if everybody can afford the house!!!".

Read the previous reply

Like I said, they could easily solve this problem by turning off the demo timer for everyone and give everyone going forward a instanced house....

But it either locks you out from the Wards, Or you have to deal with the demo timer, if to be fair its applied to everyone.

Or you apply rules for "Thee but not for me" so everyone gets the same large plot they want despite the rules being unevenly applied. Which is called Equity, right?

Blanket Solutions sounds good as long as you dont put it up to scrutiny. An Unfortunately Squares approach to the system given its limited nature actually holds up to scrutiny. Where players wanting a instanced system relies on emotional arguments and selective enforcement of rules and cant survive scrutiny without bending its own logic to justify it.

It’s a classic goalpost shift.
Initially, the argument is about accessibility: "Everyone should have the right to experience housing features." But as soon as you point out that a dual system creates a "subscriber tax" for one group and freedom for the other, the argument shifts to resource management: "Well, the wards are a finite server resource, so those people HAVE to be timed."

By shifting the goalposts, they avoid acknowledging the core hypocrisy you’ve identified. Here is how that shift functions:
The First Goalpost (Equality): "We just want what you have. It's unfair that we can't garden or decorate just because we lost a lottery."

The Second Goalpost (Justification): When the "unfairness" of a permanent instance vs. a timed ward is raised, they shift to: "You’re paying for the location, not the house. If you want the location, you have to accept the timer to keep the 'neighborhood' alive."

By doing this, they stop advocating for equal treatment and start advocating for conditional access. They are essentially saying: "I want the benefits of your status without your risks, but I still want you to keep your risks so I have a chance to take your spot later if I change my mind."

[Greyhawk]

Yeah, I see the problem now. You are advocating against rules for a two-part system, when no one is asking for that, or has asked for that. We are talking about a replacement of the current system. Not your fantasy rule-based 'Good for me but not for thee' offspring of drivel. Get rid of the crap we have, and replace it with instanced housing. Period. Existing housing users with appropriate sizes that were purchased can be easily accounted for, and they get that returned back to them as if nothing happened. Anyone else that doesn't have a house that wants one can then purchase their instanced housing. Everyone wins, instead of having to deal with this 'zone into an instance, to go into another instance, to go into another instance' trash, strenuous server system with no expansion.

There's still no change in your holier than thou ruleset. You still pay for a house, you pick the size, you pay the same as everyone else has and does.

[Turtledeluxe]

is the "logic trap" of the equity argument. By asking for an instanced system to exist alongside the ward system, proponents are essentially asking for a privileged tier of gameplay that bypasses the "fair" rules everyone else has to follow.
From your perspective, this is "unfair by design" for several reasons:


1. The "Double Standard" of Responsibility
If both systems exist, you create two classes of citizens in the same game:
The Ward Owner: Must pay their "rent" in the form of a sub and active play, or they lose their home to the auto-demolition timer. They are "punished" for being inactive.
The Instance Owner: Likely has no demolition timer because their house doesn't take up a physical "plot" on the server map. They get the same benefit (a house) without the same risk (losing it).
The Unfairness: Why should one person have to "earn" their house every month while the other gets to keep it forever?

Your replies seem well thought out but you are missing that this is false equivalence. No matter what you do to instanced housing, its physically isolated, while the paid house is not. You're paying for the actual neighborhood, apartments and other amenities like beaches, hot springs and saunas, and roads that any given player can also access freely.

[Batbrat]

I think the main problem here actually is that anytime no matter what the thread is about-every single time someone makes THEIR OWN THREAD about a VERY SPECIFIC THING THAT THEY ARE SPECIFICALLY ASKING FOR, a lot of you show up and derail it.

The title/body of this thread that OP started was specifically them asking for more housing wards.
Therefore, the majority if not all comments should have been in relation to that. The discussion was supposed to be more housing wards.
As usual though, someone derails by bringing up some sort of system we dont have, which turns the thread into a useless pile of arguments for or against this thing that honestly shouldn't have been in the thread to begin with. This isnt a "what ways can we improve obtaining a house?" thread. This is a thread asking for additional housing wards, which is completely fair, as XIV has fallen behind on delivering wards for literal years now. We went from 1 ward patch per year, to no ward patches in 3 years and 4 months. The argument over what else could be done instead of adding more wards should have been made into its own separate thread. This whole subject really belongs in the Housing part of the forum anyway-but regardless of where it is!!! I just think its always super rude when people show up and do that lol. Genuinely never understood why doing this is so popular. If the goal is to flood the thread to get it closed and ignored because you just hate the topic in general, then I get it, but..

[Greyhawk]

I think the main problem here actually is that anytime no matter what the thread is about-every single time someone makes THEIR OWN THREAD about a VERY SPECIFIC THING THAT THEY ARE SPECIFICALLY ASKING FOR, a lot of you show up and derail it.

The title/body of this thread that OP started was specifically them asking for more housing wards.
Therefore, the majority if not all comments should have been in relation to that. The discussion was supposed to be more housing wards.
As usual though, someone derails by bringing up some sort of system we dont have, which turns the thread into a useless pile of arguments for or against this thing that honestly shouldn't have been in the thread to begin with. This isnt a "what ways can we improve obtaining a house?" thread. This is a thread asking for additional housing wards, which is completely fair, as XIV has fallen behind on delivering wards for literal years now. We went from 1 ward patch per year, to no ward patches in 3 years and 4 months. The argument over what else could be done instead of adding more wards should have been made into its own separate thread. This whole subject really belongs in the Housing part of the forum anyway-but regardless of where it is!!! I just think its always super rude when people show up and do that lol. Genuinely never understood why doing this is so popular. If the goal is to flood the thread to get it closed and ignored because you just hate the topic in general, then I get it, but..

You don't put out a burning building by adding gasoline to the fire.