Housing: there has to be a better way

[ColeSlawter]

They should reduce to a single ward in each region. Eliminate the ability to decorate the yard/outside of the house. Each housing plot can be purchased by whomever wants it and entering the house takes you to your instance of the inside of the house.

Using this would keep the neighborhood, even making them more active, while also giving everyone the house they want.

Oh, but what about gardening, chocobo, decorations for your yard? How about they add backyard that you can decorate!

[aesteval]

They should reduce to a single ward in each region. Eliminate the ability to decorate the yard/outside of the house. Each housing plot can be purchased by whomever wants it and entering the house takes you to your instance of the inside of the house.

Using this would keep the neighborhood, even making them more active, while also giving everyone the house they want.

Oh, but what about gardening, chocobo, decorations for your yard? How about they add backyard that you can decorate!

-_- If you add a backyard you may as well add a front.

[Vahlnir]

Oh, but what about gardening, chocobo, decorations for your yard? How about they add backyard that you can decorate!

PS3 limitat- ...wait a minute.

[SanyaTsukiko]

I agree, something needs to be done with the wards and housing in general. I would say, as others have said, only one personal house per account. I mean, you can have all classes on one char, why be greedy and have multiple char's with multiple houses? If you have a house on your account, SE could make it so you can have your alts as tenants in the house you already own. That way, your alts have a personal house too :P Because you can always make your alts allowed to decorate the house etc.

They could f.ex warn people that in a month, f.ex, people that own more than one personal house, needs to choose one house and get rid of the other houses. That can free up a lot of plots I believe. They should do this first before adding new wards.

If a person have 4 houses on 4 characters f.ex, if they don't get rid of 3 houses before the new rule takes effect, SE will choose random 3 houses to get rid of for you.

Just my couple of cents

[Zojha]

I would say, as others have said, only one personal house per account.

I would say no personal houses at all until they come up with instanced houses for personal use.

With the advent of shirogane, we'll have 60x12x4 houses per server, makes 2880. At 66 servers, that's about 190k. We have 400k characters at 70 alone, FCs go extra. Even if we'd assume half of those are alts, that still wouldn't suffice and that's assuming players spread themselves entirely even among the servers regardless of preferences, friends, language barriers etc.
Conversely, if the wards were for FCs only, the average size of a FC would have to be 3 people for the houses to work out with the same assumptions. On Balmung in particular, it would require an average size of ~8 to work out and that can even include alts. That's a lot more realistic.

Personal houses are the main reason the current system is broken and also a big part of the reason most so called neighborhoods are ghost towns, as the less people share a house, the less likely you are to see one of the users around.

[SanyaTsukiko]

I would say no personal houses at all until they come up with instanced houses for personal use.

I don't think they will remove people from their personal houses until f.ex the instanced housing for personal use are Live. They would have to implement instanced personal housing first, then they can kick everyone from personal houses when that patch is in effect

[Paladinleeds]

I don't think they will remove people from their personal houses until f.ex the instanced housing for personal use are Live. They would have to implement instanced personal housing first, then they can kick everyone from personal houses when that patch is in effect

If they added instanced housing for personal houses at least (but then again, at that point you might as well add instanced housing for FCs too, the code will already be there), I'd be more than happy to be kicked out of my ward, so long as they gave me a house of the same size in the instanced housing (with a theme similar to what my house in the ward system was, so in my case a small house with a Gridanian theme, all furnishing and everything moved across and kept in the same position)

[Cylla]

If they added instanced housing for personal houses at least (but then again, at that point you might as well add instanced housing for FCs too, the code will already be there), I'd be more than happy to be kicked out of my ward, so long as they gave me a house of the same size in the instanced housing (with a theme similar to what my house in the ward system was, so in my case a small house with a Gridanian theme, all furnishing and everything moved across and kept in the same position)

This ^ I'd be all for it also if I knew a fix was coming that gives everyone a fair chance at getting a house if they want one.

[Penthea]

Personal houses are the main reason the current system is broken and also a big part of the reason most so called neighborhoods are ghost towns, as the less people share a house, the less likely you are to see one of the users around.

As an owner of a personal house I admit that this is true. But apartments and fc rooms have no outdoor space for decorating, they have extremely limited gardening and are a tiny indoor space. Until those are given a significant upgrade houses will always be much more desirable no matter how difficult they are to get.

[Nuna]

As an owner of a personal house I admit that this is true. But apartments and fc rooms have no outdoor space for decorating, they have extremely limited gardening and are a tiny indoor space. Until those are given a significant upgrade houses will always be much more desirable no matter how difficult they are to get.

Apartments should have been the size of the barracks and not the same size as a fc room. Or apartments should be tiered (small medium or large apartment) and able to be a shared estate (especially for bonded couples who can't afford a home). In addition to that, there should be an entrance (similar to the one you use to get to the workshop/rooms) that will take you to an instanced garden plot/balcony.