The Housing problem and my proposed solution

[Nadirah]

If your neighborhood has people in it.

The area my FC house is in is kinda dead.

I want a house *for* the outdoor stuff.

[FoxyAreku]

I find that hard to believe, Nadirah. My server is way less populated than Excalibur and we generally have people next to every housing market board all the time. Subdivisions are a little empty, but that's about it from my experience.

But yes the outdoor section of housing is nice.

[Nadirah]

We have one person that hangs out near the Bell/board that isn't in my FC.

I kid you not. Lavender Beds Ward 2 at that. Can't remember plot number. :/

[BunnyChain]

We have one person that hangs out near the Bell/board that isn't in my FC.

I kid you not. Lavender Beds Ward 2 at that. Can't remember plot number. :/

While checking a couple housing wards in Lavender Beds on my server, I found it to be more likely to find inactive players/FCs in the old wards.

[FoxyAreku]

Very strange, maybe your in an area with a lot of old FCs that have been abandoned. Hopefully that house relinquish system will come in soon and you'll get new neighbors. :3

[Nadirah]

What I need to do is find a plot to camp when they free those up.
How do you tell inactive houses anyway?

[Makeda]

Just make personal Housing instanced. Like both Wildstar and Everquest 2 do.
- There's a new MMO and a very old MMO - both having found a working solution. Compare them to see how a decade changes the concept, but keeps the basic notion in tact.

Instanced housing means you can have an unlimited number of them - and set them up to have whatever thematic designs are desired.

There are plenty of spots in all three of the cities that I could imagine one 'turning down an alley' to zone into their personal instance.

The Gridanian ones could be tree houses or clearing in a wooded area with a little stream by them.

The Limsa ones could be houseboats or lighthouse-like towers.

The Uldan ones could be back alley slums or towering minarets with a view of the city and desert below.

- And all of this could be tied to a quest one does somewhere between the level 15 'leave town' quest and the later 'pick a grand company' quest. With a fee to buy the house you plop on it, move it, etc. Players who already have personal houses could get some level of gil refund, and a special 'early buy in' house design only they get - as compensation for what they had to pay beforehand.

But whatever the specifics. Make it instanced individually. If we MUST have neighborhoods... take a page from the Sims and from what Wildstar is about to do... and let up to [x] people band together and put their plots into a neighborhood instance - with the ability to vote someone off the neighborhood (throwing the evicted person back to an individual instanced plot)... And these two, could be spun off in unlimited numbers based on demand.

Why they chose public access uninstanced for the housing, in a modern MMO... where we have long since learned why doing uninstanced personal content is a bad idea... I don't get. One only has to look at the history of why WoW started the instanced dungeon concept to know this... It was to solve the very people we see here in housing, that was killing Everquest's uninstanced Dungeons - too many people and not enough content leading to areas being unusable by paying subscribers. So WoW made instanced dungeons, and got to 11 million players, while Everquest at its height had maybe 100,000 to 300,000....

The limited instancing, as open zones, nature of housing in this game is going to kill housing - and the problem will get increasingly bad as the player population grows.

[JediShecky]

Just make personal Housing instanced. Like both Wildstar and Everquest 2 do.
- There's a new MMO and a very old MMO - both having found a working solution. Compare them to see how a decade changes the concept, but keeps the basic notion in tact.

I loved the instanced housing in EQ2. Huge houses, tons of furniture, vendors and being able to convert quest items so they can be displayed in your home was very cool too.

[Radacci]

if everyone in a FC, could have their own large room, the FC would realistically be the size of an entire ward...or are the rooms located in the sea of clouds? would be problematic if bismarck came and ate your room.