They could use this Ishgardian restoration idea and....

[AnimaAnimus]

Use it to give us personal instanced housing.

I would love for them to allow us to build our own little spaces. Have us come in and invite others in to help us, build our own little areas. You could have the same concept of turning in supplies and have small "quests that mimic the rebuild fate, and maybe even incorporate our retainers into the mix for once.

They could put the instances in little field zones instead of the residential zones, we have tons of spots that are blocked off for potential zone lines in the ARR zones especially, so there are plenty of entrances available. And there are all kinds of little unused, but look like there should be something there, areas in the HW-SB-ShB zones, so put them to use. Yes that means houses in the field, but think of it handled like ESO handles it.

The area could grow, so after you say, get done with phase 1 you have a small house with a small area around it, then you could upgrade it to a medium and finally a large in other phases if you choose to keep growing it. They could even add "extras" like the ability to til a garden space instead of using those ugly plots we have with those ugly little scarecrows, maybe a waterfall or a little pond area. Something fun.

Yes, it would require you to craft and/or gather. But it would otherwise be free. And I can already hear the "BuT I dOn'T wAnT tO CrAfT" I know, I know Twelve forbid that someone needs to put effort into something, esp if they don't really like it, but...well...its a free house, you can always have the residential zone ones. Also since its no-gil-involved, it wouldn't be a new RMT opportunity.

Anyway, I think this would be a fun little thing for people to be able to do. It just needs to be doable solo, not like those awful FC crafting recipes. Thoughts?

[Belisaire]

Unfortunately it looks like its just going to be another ward... that said, I do hope they are doing something else on the side (players who put X amount of effort in get a small private instanced house or something) but I dunno if they'll do that.

But at the moment it looks just like a regular ward.

[Kidria]

It looks like a regular ward, and several times on my server there's been jokes of how we're banding together now only to kill each other in the housing war later.

But after crafting my 300th collectable, I can't help but feel like those who have put into the resto get something besides items you can ultimately buy/sell and therefore doesn't exactly feel like an achievement. What with the server swarms at FATE times, it doesn't really feel much like a competition either as it just does like a crafter's Eureka.

Yes, I know, leaderboards and all that. But even those who don't place top (esp those who can only play for so long but nonetheless put in quite a bit, ie hundreds of collectables which are thousands of points) there's gotta be something. I'd give up my personal house if I got a guaranteed equivalent in Ishgard, even if it's instanced and I lose outdoor facilities, as a reward for the time and effort put in.

[Kytrin]

I'm not opposed to this idea at all, but I doubt they would implement something like that. They'd have to very carefully develop each area and work out stressors on the system and all that on top of fine tuning quests and quantities so it's difficult and time consuming but not impossible.

I expect it's far more likely that they'll roll with more places like the Ishgard Restoration with traditional wards being the ultimate reward. Now that they've put a stop to people maxing out the Firmament it's going to be much easier to participate in that, and I think if the idea is popular they'll start setting us up to restore or build other places. Which, honestly is pretty cool too imo.

[Noitems]

Personally, I'm hoping this idea does get reworked into something better for like Ala Mhigan housing if this all works out well.

Most people won't go into it but I would gladly give up my Shiro house for that shit in an instant.

[Kytrin]

Personally, I'm hoping this idea does get reworked into something better for like Ala Mhigan housing if this all works out well.

Most people won't go into it but I would gladly give up my Shiro house for that shit in an instant.

An Ala Mhigan house would be interesting, and there's quite a bit over there that needs reconstructing.

[GojuSuzi]

They have said definitely no to instanced housing (although they also said definitely no to personal housing being the same as FC housing, so...). So I don't see it happening.

What I'm hoping is that Stage 2 of The Firmament Restoration is a Community Garden. Given it introduces Gathering hand ins, it'd be nice to focus that above Crafting to balance Stage 1 being primarily Crafting only. We gather plants, rocks, fish, and use it to build up a Community Garden area, within which are Allotments, similar to Apartments but coded as outdoor instanced areas. Everyone can purchase the rights to an Allotment, where they can garden with crossbreeding, and maybe even slap up a few outdoor decorations.

This would add the only aspects of Personal Housing not covered by Apartments (gardening and outdoor furniture placement), so the only 'need' for non-FC housing would be for more space/greater item limits. And it'd be less stressful in terms of load than instancing entire houses, since it effectively is only doubling the Apartment allocation (each Allotment is a single 'room', so just an outdoor Apartment) rather than adding infinite houses of multiple zones (outdoor, private, multiple floors). Given the number of folk who want a house purely so they have access to a single garden plot and/or somewhere to put their handful of outdoor event furnishings, and would happily give up the extra housing space in exchange for getting that without a demo timer, it could be a great way to reduce demand on housing whilst also giving folk more functionality (as well as making the introduction of Skybuilder Gathering for the restoration effort as special as the crafting version was rather than just a delayed add-on).

Bit late to suggest that now I guess, as they surely have it all planned and in progress, but I'm hoping someone on their side had the same idea back when it was all still being theorised.