Housing Reclaim Confirmed!

[Apocrypher]

After having thought about this for a few weeks after having snagged up an FC on Bryn that had a fully loaded mansion, I've come across a few things that actually make sense here:

Old thoughts: lorewise, we can't expect to have Ishgardian housing until a) the power-vacuum we created by at the end of the MSQ is settled & b) there's a grand company in-place to match the rest of the Eorzean Alliance. Remember, housing in itself is handled by the GCs themselves rather than the cities themselves.

New thought: due to the hardware limitations as SE's go-to excuse for the current situation, we could see a massive change in a patch or two after they've moved the EU servers to the new EU-located data center. If they only transfer all the server data digitally instead of hauling all the hardware from Montreal to the new site, that means they could use the old EU servers as a means to expand several in-game systems.

[Naunet]

The problem is that they wrote themselves into a corner with the way they instituted housing. It's resource intensive, and they really don't want to institute more housing, even if people want to have houses. They'd actually prefer we'd all just forget about housing, and let them quietly take it back out of the game.

I honestly think they'd be better just starting completely over with housing. Maybe leave the wards for FC houses if they must (but even then, there will never be enough space at the rate they add wards), but the only way to implement a fair housing system that can be enjoyed by everyone is to give everyone a house in its own instance.

[JubjubTubs]

Adding a bunch of new plots over and over... and over... and over again is a terrible approach. It's like putting a band-aid on an every growing wound. It creates more dull and dead neighborhoods. Having a lively housing ward with a bunch of active users is one of the better immersion sensations in an MMO. They need to find a way to dump all the dead houses/claimed-plots for new people. Only then... should additional wards be added if need be.

I have a ward 1 house... used to be lively. Several of us from different FCs in the hood would gather together. People have left for XYZ reason and now my ward 1 neighborhood is dead. I'd like the empty homes removed for fresh people to be able to purchase plots in my neighborhood. I don't want to see new wards open... cause this doesn't fix neighborhoods feeling so bland now. Why only fix one problem, when a different approach fixes several problems.

[Naunet]

Adding a bunch of new plots over and over... and over... and over again is a terrible approach. It's like putting a band-aid on an every growing wound. It creates more dull and dead neighborhoods.

The best way to make sure you have a lively neighborhood is to let the players create it. WS will be implementing a neighborhood system where up to 5 players will be able to take their plots and physically connect them to each other's. This pretty much ensures you will have people to socialize with, and it opens so many wonderful doors in terms of build creativity.

I think the "ward" thing would work well if we all had our own individual houses but then could voluntarily pick people to "merge" instances with into a neighborhood.

[Khalithar]

Snip

If I had to guess, the reason they want to free up the inactives first is for the very same reason you mentioned of creating lively neighborhoods and then after that's all settled down to see how active the neighborhoods become then. But this has it's own set of problems of course. In a perfect world, the new plots will only be bought by individuals and different FC's that want a house to use for whatever reason, gardening, chocobos, rp, or just because they like decorating for fun. Instead I have a feeling we're going to see a bunch of players with enough money buy up a bunch of plots so they can sell them off to those that are looking to get a house.

[Gwyenne]

Why can't they just give new wards to high population servers exclusively?

Because even low-pop servers are out of houses.

[Mindylou]

upgrade the quality of life before add more is a wise choice, imo. If you have enough money, the free up housing plot will give you a chance to get a house, if you don't have enough money, then add new houses now or later make no different

Not wise to me, they need to free them up + add a way for ppl to fairly sell plots they no longer want + they need to double housing lots all at the same time.


I guarantee you even that will not be enough for the populated servers but at least it would be a far better direction then the barely noticeable baby steps they tend to take when it comes to any improvements.

They also need to revamp housing 100% and make it instanced, customizable, engaging and fun > simply tying perks to owning one isn't even scraping the surface of what housing could have been.

They totally missed the mark of 1/2 the enjoyment housing could have been, the actual construction and player creation aspect.. very very sad, thought they were more insightful then that tbh.


(for the love of all that is holy ...remove the character limit!!!)

[JubjubTubs]

-snip-

Oh well. You know what isn't fair? Every thing in reality and Life. Predators eating babies is pretty standard for e-ole Mother Nature. The T-ball era in MMO gaming has had its moment... time to bring back some old school stuff, where the rich get richer cause they smarter... and the dumb don't get what they want cause they too stupid. If someone has earned themselves enough money to invest in real estate... good for them. Why should they be penalized for doing what others can't/haven't? What isn't fair is the people that do more and excel not having a chance to obtain even more through what they already built/accomplished. <--- what truly isn't fair. "I want what he/she has but I'm not going to work as hard as they did..." has to die already. It's bad for gaming, it's bad for society, it's bad for humanity as a whole.