Island Sanctuary as a housing solution ?

[Kaiproberts]

And you could still have a non-instanced house with neighbors even if they improve the instanced system. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Wards could remain the "elite" housing for those who want to fight for the prestige factor while instanced housing would be for those who want a space to decorate and don't care about neighbors.

Doesn't sit well with me because it gives them a reason to focus less on adding more wards. The problem is the divide in the community.

[Jojoya]

Doesn't sit well with me because it gives them a reason to focus less on adding more wards. The problem is the divide in the community.

More wards just perpetuates the problem of people not being able to get a house. The cost of running sufficient ward servers so every player and FC could have a house would be prohibitive, especially if the player base takes another jump in size next expansion. There will never be enough wards.

What they need to be doing is giving players an incentive to move out of the wards so more plots are available for those who want to be in the wards. Lack of demolition is one such incentive but clearly not enough when most players seem to value space and larger item limits over other features. Good instanced housing would be that incentive.

I don't understand your objection to instanced housing when all house interiors are instanced and other MMOs use instanced housing quite successfully. Have you seen videos of what players have done with the housing in games like ESO, Wildstar and RIFT? When I was playing RIFT, I literally built a small town in a single Dimension. It had 6 houses, 4 public buildings (school/library, restaurant, town hall, workshop), a central square, a small park with a pond large enough for small boats, an underground sewer area that housed a refugee camp, and a trader's dock for seagoing ships. Then there was another Dimension where I rebuilt the Stormwind Park District (from WoW, this was before Blizzard rebuilt it for Legion). I had another where I built a massive treehouse on the limbs of one of the tree furnishings I increased to maximum size.

Would I give up my ward house here if it meant having access to something that size with that versatility again? Heck yeah. The rest of RIFT was bad to mediocre at best (why I stopped playing it) but the housing was fantastic fun. Give me good instanced housing where I can really stretch my creativity. You can then have my medium plot in Mist.

[Lauren]

I'm hoping it's a plot you can build upon and then eventually make bigger. It'd be nice to have a larger space than my apartment

I still really like the housing system in FF I just wish it was easier to get a plot and that the plots would auto-demo much sooner. Like if you've not entered your house in a month, I think that's enough to warrent you don't use it.

Though I think maybe switching the Island Sanctuary to be player housing and the housing districts to be FC housing might server a better purpose and community.

[KayRadley]

If nothing else, it will give players who don't have access to housing a means to grow crops the same way they could with a house.

Then maybe people will start thinking about getting apartments and quit clogging up the housing forum with the same threads repeated ad nauseum.

[Jojoya]

If nothing else, it will give players who don't have access to housing a means to grow crops the same way they could with a house.

Except we don't know that the crops will be the same or that the process will be the same. If someone wanted access to gardening specifically to get Thavnairian Onions without buying anything off the marketboard, they might be out of luck. It could be the new system requires even more maintenance than current gardening, and there are already players who complain about having to tend their garden once a day instead of being able to have their retainers do it.

We know little about what Island Sanctuary is other than it's inspired by Harvest Moon type games. People need to get their expectations in check before they end up massively disappointment when it's not what they and others have envisioned. Hopefully there will be a lot more detail made available at the digital FanFest in May.

[Naoki34]

Although nothing has been said about this, that building in the background gives me hope! Adding instanced housing there would solve the housing problem.

if you like to live in the fields and dung, I guess that's a solution.

[Themarvin]

Sure if it costs 2-300millions to buy.

[Feidam]

I wonder if the push back on this idea is coming from the lucky players that managed to get a house. The housing system is woefully inadequate and this could a ways to alleviating it. Unless they want to open enough wards so everyone can purchase a house in a ward. Then they run into the issue of but we all want large houses. This solves that issue unless you specifically want to in a housing ward.

[Catstab]

I wonder if the push back on this idea

What pushback? The only non positive responses have been:

"Ishgard should give every server the plots they need"
Likely incorrect, a 20% increase in housing will leave folks wanting. As someone said, once the wards are full, the new problem will be that two thirds of all houses are small.

"Curb your expectations, they haven't said it would be housing"
No, they haven't. It could be rolled out in stages, or it could simply be an instanced garden. But I don't think our theorycrafting is entirely off base. Only time will tell.

"Ew, manure house"
I mean, it's no secret that of the 4 housing zone, every player has a favorite. You either love the beach, the woods, or the east. Or you're a tusken raider in the goblet. People have said "If Ishgard is instanced, housing is fixed" and I've said "Instancing one of five housing zones won't help the people that want the other 4." Similarly, an instanced farm house isn't going to be enough for people who did want to share in the wards system and enjoy a full neighborhood.

I'm not sure any of these are meant as pushback, they just seem to be people thinking through the idea.

[Jojoya]

I wonder if the push back on this idea is coming from the lucky players that managed to get a house. The housing system is woefully inadequate and this could a ways to alleviating it. Unless they want to open enough wards so everyone can purchase a house in a ward. Then they run into the issue of but we all want large houses. This solves that issue unless you specifically want to in a housing ward.

Oh, I would love for Island Sanctuary to turn out to have housing.

I just don't believe that is SE's plan for it. If it was going to be instanced housing, it's only to SE's benefit to state that clearly and upfront considering the current housing situation. That they did not tells us it's not going to be housing.

I don't want to see people disappointed by going "finally I can have my own house" just for there to be no house.

I do want SE to take the time to fix the house supply problem so every can have a house instead of wasting that time creating band-aids that don't fix anything. Island Sanctuary appears to be its own separate content form and that's fine. If it's supposed to be a replacement for those who can't get a house but it's still not providing customizable housing, that's bad.