I'd like to take an extended break from the game, but...

[Hasrat]

I think keeping the neighborhoods we have and adding larger apartments (like deluxe condos) without population limits (at least on the big servers) would be the best solution.

I'm going to guess that these requests and suggestions never get anywhere because it only affects such a small number of servers. You lot are all complaining that even your apartments are full, meanwhile, plenty of other servers still have housing available, or at the very least (I presume) haven't yet exhausted their apartments.

The housing solutions are not the problem. Overpopulation is the problem. So why are all the suggestions intended to encourage further overpopulation?

I have no contribution to the auto-demolish feature.

[Texa]

You lot are all complaining that even your apartments are full, meanwhile, plenty of other servers still have housing available, or at the very least (I presume) haven't yet exhausted their apartments.

The housing solutions are not the problem. Overpopulation is the problem. So why are all the suggestions intended to encourage further overpopulation?

1. I don't play on a big server, I'm on Diablos. It's medium sized and I have my own house.
2. People are going to play on the server they want to play on and their opinions are still valid even if they're on a big server. It's still a sizeable amount of the playerbase that's affected.
3. "Complaining" isn't trying to take the experiences of other players into other account to come up with a workable solution for both the op and other severs, it's posting in a thread just to talk down on people who play where they want to and saying you have nothing to contribute to the actual topic.

[Hasrat]

I agree that it's something that affects a good chunk of the playerbase. But it has to be admitted that that chunk is disproportionately distributed to a small chunk of servers.

So devs are left with trying to strike a balance. Do they spend time and resources on features that only a few servers will ever need? Or do they take a more moderate approach that satisfies the needs of most of the servers?

Personally, I feel suggestions such as instanced housing are only "fixes" for the overpopulated servers, without providing any benefit to the rest, or even risking being largely unwanted. If we want to come up with ideas for the "housing crisis," it should probably be something that's good for every server, or at least not just the few (I presume few, does anybody actually know how many this affects?) that are most vocal. In that regard, I just can't really see a good reason to spend more on housing resources.

Again, this is all still only tangential to the auto-demolish. Maybe devs hoped housing would help balance servers, and thought, in an ideal world, they wouldn't need an auto-demolish. But, given the situation, it doesn't seem like such a bad thing to have. Unless, of course, you're a player that wants to take a break. Then it's a punishment. But to anyone constantly checking for free plots, it's at least a glimmer of hope.

[Zojha]

Maybe devs hoped housing would help balance servers, and thought, in an ideal world, they wouldn't need an auto-demolish.

Then the devs are sooomewhat bad at math >_>

Right now, we have about 140k plots available across all servers - JP, NA, EU etc. All of them. JP alone almost has that many characters at endgame. Those are just the most active characters.
A quick lodestone search for free companies with the letter A gave over 100k free companies. Those share the housing pool with singular characters. So you'll be distributing 140k slots among roughly 400k candidates. That can't work out, even in a perfectly even spread. Even if only a half of the candidates even want one. Even if you don't account for free companies at all. As such, I'd imagine most of the servers suffer from housing scarcity to some degree - Some more some less. Mateus for example is the smallest server we have and only has like 100 more endgame players than housing plots - I can imagine it's not a big issue there.
(Edit: Talking of bad at math: It's actually 600 more plots than endgame characters on Mateus. We have 12, not 8 wards now. I did it right when calculating the total, tho >_>)

Just looking at the numbers, they probably should have just left the wards for free companies and made personal housing instanced - Those numbers would have worked out nicely. By putting personal housing into the wards they created too much competition for the existing plots. Auto-Demolish is a bandaid fix for that mistake. Love it, hate it - it's what it is.