Why is this not the solution?

[PredatoryCatgirl]

They didn't stop to think what makes real world neighborhoods feel active and populated then incorporate those things into the wards to keep them busy.

Wards don't feel like neighborhoods. They feel like abandoned towns. I'd be happier living in an isolated part of the countryside than living in a suburb where no one else goes.

The original intent wasn't to have 30 players in a neighborhood, but 30 FCs. They should have never made wards open to players, and instead made instanced housing for them.

[Nepentha]

The original intent wasn't to have 30 players in a neighborhood, but 30 FCs. They should have never made wards open to players, and instead made instanced housing for them.

I hesitated a moment, but yeah, I think you're right. Instanced housing for individual characters and neighborhood style housing for FCs would have been more ideal.

[Lihtleita]

The original intent wasn't to have 30 players in a neighborhood, but 30 FCs. They should have never made wards open to players, and instead made instanced housing for them.

in another timeline there are restricted fc neighbourhoods that arent occupied by 4 alt fcs, and individual player apartments that are a decent size and link to the city states properly through those gates that were never used.

thats a happier timeline

[Jojoya]

The original intent wasn't to have 30 players in a neighborhood, but 30 FCs. They should have never made wards open to players, and instead made instanced housing for them.

They did make instanced housing - apartments - even if it came an expansion later. But players don't want to own a room. They want to own a house.

SE could have kept the wards FC only but they would have remained empty wards. What they didn't think about is that FCs aren't rich. They have no way to make gil without a house. It's the individual players that are rich, and they aren't going to donate millions of their personal gil to a FC when they're not going to have control over what's done with that gil.

SE designed things backwards. They should have given FCs ways to earn gil then added houses as a way for FCs to spend what they earned. Instead, they designed it so FCs could only earn gil once they had purchased a house. Of course there were few FCs buying. That's led to the shell FCs being used by players to get rich through the gardens and workshops while blocking access to house ownership for other FCs and players who simply want to have a house, not a gil-making machine.

SE isn't accomplishing anything by sticking to a system that isn't serving the player base needs the way it should. They should have stopped all the way back in ARR and gone "This isn't working as we intended. What should we be doing to meet player needs?" and moved to a different system instead of continuing to pour money into this system for another 6 years.

[Arielen]

SE could have kept the wards FC only but they would have remained empty wards. What they didn't think about is that FCs aren't rich. They have no way to make gil without a house. It's the individual players that are rich, and they aren't going to donate millions of their personal gil to a FC when they're not going to have control over what's done with that gil.

SE designed things backwards. They should have given FCs ways to earn gil then added houses as a way for FCs to spend what they earned. Instead, they designed it so FCs could only earn gil once they had purchased a house. Of course there were few FCs buying.

Agreed. They wouldn't have had the problem in the first place if credits were usable to buy a house at something like that. They seem to think that people would deposit a bunch of gil into the chest to pitch in for a house as a group, but that's rarely what happens.

[Dewslam]

They did make instanced housing - apartments - even if it came an expansion later. But players don't want to own a room. They want to own a house.

Aside from the fact that apartments are, functionally, still not as useful as having a house (as there are mechanics gated behind an FC house); a lot of apartments were snapped up by people who owned FC plots and private plots already. People want rooms, they want apartments, but they can't because most of them are taken up by greedy people who already have FC's, private plots and apartments and want more and more and more.

The way I see it, there are three solutions. One, the least likely of all, is that they just add more servers until everyone can have a house. This will never happen: the game keeps getting bigger, servers are expensive and there's a shortage. Square also has shown almost no interest in this despite having had literal years to do this and the problem only growing exponentially worse. Two: instanced housing. Give everyone their own house in their own private plot. If they care so much about neighborhoods creating that lived-in vibe they could let people choose who their neighbors are so the game will load up your friends houses or whatever when you leave your house to hang in your lawn and you can visit their house like you would an apartment (knock at the door, instance into it) so people can decide if they want to live next to their best friends, the coolest looking houses - or just live alone. This even allows for a brand new avenue of revenue and itemization in the form of customizing our private plots, taking a page out of PSO2's housing system! Add a new item - let's call them memory crystals or something. You shove one in to your private home's little allegan terminal or whatever and suddenly the terrain looks different. They could use this as a means to add unique styles and designs during events, story missions or even on the mog station (I'm sure people would pay a good few dollars to have their home plots look like nice renders of their favorite FF locations...) Finally, and most radically of all, the third solution is to simply limit housing. Account-wide one plot per-person. It is absolutely dire that we're at a situation where some people can own entire wards, that people who already have plots are vastly more likely to be double or triple dippers while the vast majority of players can't even get a single one. If square can't get their shit in order the least they could do is straighten out their own janky mechanics on this front, set a date and reimburse the players for whatever plots they have to give up.

[ICountFrom0]

Things started like that, sort of.

They started at a completely unreasonable price, and started to tick down towards sane prices.

[Ardox]

Lets assume for a moment that instanced housing will never happen. All we'll ever have is the ward system, and a limited number of houses for a much larger playerbase.

Houses' primary function aside from being a feature of the game is to serve as a gil sink, to combat inflation. So why aren't we using a bidding system when a house goes up on the market?

New house goes up for 3M gil. Great, put in your bid. Someone else has 12 hours to put in a bid of 3.3M in order to get the house. If they do, the next bid is 3.63M. Bids are always 110% of the current offer to prevent any auction from being dragged out forever. If no one beats your bid for 12 hours, then you get the house.

Yeah, its not a perfect system, but its better than standing there clicking for 24 hours, or for it being totally random who gets the house. Plus, it removes more gil, and that keeps market prices lower for everyone.

It won't work; you'll quickly see the rise of bidding bots who would stand in front of the plot you want and outbid you 1 gil at a time

[IckeDerTyp]

We'll get more, dedicated housing servers eventually.

I really hope so atleast! Until then we'll have to wait and sip more tea! ^^

[True-to-Caesar]

With your system, resellers will be more fat than the lazy nobles from Eulmore.

Instances is the more sensible thing to do to get rid of the supply problem, which led to RMT, resellers etc.

There’s a single individual owning a whole ward on Chaos.
Do you really believe money is an issue for them ? They’d win every auction of yours.