First successful housing patch??

[Penthea]

Ideally SE would have dynamic wards that would flex with demand, generating the next when the previous filled completely.

That actually wouldn't be ideal given that loads of players would wait for someone else to buy the unwanted plots so when a new ward pops up they can get what they really want. Players would complain about a system that would force them to buy something they don't want just so something decent can become available in the new ward.

Imagine you or your fc don't want a cottage, but that's all there is left. Would you waste money on a cottage you don't want? Or would you wait for someone else to force a new ward to pop open? Sure you can relocate but that's an extra step, and of course it's extra cash. It would be better than what we got now, but not ideal.

Really they should have made all plots be equal. You buy the land, and based on what house you build you get a certain size house and garden. This would also allow players to upgrade or downgrade a house size without having to wait for a new plot to open. And if SE chose to make wards dynamic it would be less punishing to players who want a specific house size.

[Keridwyn]

That actually wouldn't be ideal given that loads of players would wait for someone else to buy the unwanted plots so when a new ward pops up they can get what they really want. Players would complain about a system that would force them to buy something they don't want just so something decent can become available in the new ward.

People are already doing this now. It went from 'SE, there are NO houses' to 'SE there are only SMALL houses'.

Imagine you or your fc don't want a cottage, but that's all there is left. Would you waste money on a cottage you don't want? Or would you wait for someone else to force a new ward to pop open? Sure you can relocate but that's an extra step, and of course it's extra cash. It would be better than what we got now, but not ideal.

I did 'waste' money on a cottage because any house was better than no house. Like a lot of people when 3.1 went live I counted 45 days from the patch and waited up on Christmas for the chance to get a cottage. I then upgraded in 3.3 when new wards were introduced by demoing my cottage and running to the closest medium to my friends. During the moratorium my friends moved to Shiro and since I no longer had all my friends around me (and didn't want to move to Shiro) I moved down on the beach instead. Eventually I want a large but I'm happy 'wasting' money on these side grades until the large I want becomes available either through the demo timer or through a future ward release. I don't need my dream plot to be able to enjoy housing.

Really they should have made all plots be equal. You buy the land, and based on what house you build you get a certain size house and garden. This would also allow players to upgrade or downgrade a house size without having to wait for a new plot to open. And if SE chose to make wards dynamic it would be less punishing to players who want a specific house size.

Honestly I don't disagree with you there, instanced plots or personal instanced housing would both be okay with me.

When I said 'ideally' I meant it. Imagine what our housing system would be like currently if dynamic wards had been in place since day one. Would we have a demo timer? Would we be limited to how many plots we can buy? No. Neither of these unpopular (or I guess semi-popular in the case of the purchase limit) changes would have happened. I think we'd still have seen the advent of the random timer to stop folks flipping larges and mediums (because you know that would have happened) but I don't think we'd have seen the housing crisis hit this scope. Housing wouldn't have been limited beyond how many people your server had. Nobody would have cared if you bought a whole ward, some might even have cheered you on. While I would have been a luxury good it wouldn't have been a limited one.

However, here we are. Dynamic wards are no longer feasible because of the newer changes to the system. Even instances plots like you talk about aren't either (even though I'd really enjoy it if it were) because SE doesn't want to mess with HOW the wards are set up. Apartments are hopefully going to end up bridging the gap. They say they're working on changes so we can hope that they expand apartments, add the option to upgrade your apartment to a larger size, and add some sort of indoor gardening ability (like perhaps an indoor box planter similar to the planter partitions or a window box).

So that's why I said 'ideally' because it would have headed virtually every other issue off at the pass.