Instanced housing is a necessity when demand is this high

[Pablomaldito]

There were 360 personal houses up for grabs. Let's make a conservative estimate of 10 bids per house. That means that there were 3600 bidders. If all houses had been allocated properly without the 0 roll bug, that would leave 3240 bidders without houses. This was during the opening of a housing district. We are not going to see this many personal houses available again for a very long time. When houses are coming up 1 at a time, there will be hundreds if not thousands of bids per house.

With the current neighborhood system, it is safe for the majority of losing bidders to assume that they will never get a house. That isn't pessimism. It's not having a negative attitude. The numbers simply say that your chance of getting a personal house is going to be 0% for all intents and purposes.

[Hurlstone]

It does boggle my mind a little how instanced housing is not really an aspect of the game. I suppose the idea is to have a more ‘lived in’ world but, I feel it harms the game more then enhances. Its such a shame that such an interesting aspect of the game, which many people enjoy, is locked out for the majority of players. It kinda feels rather antithetical to how they are trying to make the game feel, what with making solo player feel more comfortable with duties and such. The Apartment feature is nice, but still blocks of things like gardening and outside furnishings. So many times my retainers have brought back such items and I have had to store them away in the hope that one day I can have a pond of my own, or sell on. Sure, its not too hard to get an FC which has its own estate, but not everyone feels comfortable joining a FC and sharing such a space is still VERY different then having your own creative palette to work with.

If we must have open houseing worlds, I would say make just FC Wards open, so people can have a community feel and watch the naked Au Ra guys run around the neighbourhood etc, but have estates that are instanced for players who want to have housing as an activity for themselves. It could be that Island Sanctuary is going to be this, but we know so little about how customisable that will be. Either way, I feel housing needs some sort of big overhaul, otherwise its juts going to continue being an unfortunate thorn in the games side.

[BingleNingle]

Or better still, they'll complain because their neighbor dared to build a paissa house. But the moment someone without a house wishes for instanced housing so they can just decorate and garden in peace, these homeowners who never utilize their neighborhood do this weird 180 and suddenly care about preserving the integrity of a zone they're never even in.

My opinions on the subject at hand are not strong enough for me to argue one way or another, but I couldn't read this without laughing out loud. This is some HOA bullshit! Why act like the worst middle class people cosplaying as rich people in a game? Worst wish fulfillment ever!

[TaleraRistain]

I think neighborhoods were a valid experiment, but they didn't turn out the way intended. Maybe with doing FC wards they're trying to bring back that idea of FC houses as gathering places. Maybe (after the bugs are fixed) that might come to pass. Maybe it won't. I know right now even with other FCs in the ward my FC house is in, the zone is a deserted wasteland. It's also possible there are code reasons that prevent instanced housing.

I'm definitely in the camp that supports it. Unless they can revitalize the neighborhood idea, then I think it's something they should consider a failed experiment and work on implementing instanced housing.

[Nihility]

apartments are instanced housing. People just don't want them because they're perceived as lesser.
Even if the island is a fully functional mansion the fact that the wards exist will make a huge chunk of people think of it as lesser. It's not limited, it's not premium, it's not special, etc etc

there is no way to win

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

One of the weirdest things to me about the XIV community is their ability to keep suggesting things that turn out horrifically terrible. I would think by now that some of you would realize that with every wish you managed to get granted, the monkeys paw will curl. You're going to get what you asked for!! And you're going to hate it even worse than what you had before. You wanted a raffle. We have a raffle. It cost us the majority of personal houses, but you got your raffle you all begged and pleaded so much for. Now what. Instanced? You'll get your instanced house and probably have some weird unfortunate limit on how many people can visit which will effectively ruin things like RP venues-I'm just calling it now. Because there's no way that will be implemented and NOT be a disaster somehow. SOMEthing will go terribly wrong and here we'll be yet again saying how it should instead be something else.

How about we stop blaming players for the utter incompetency of the development team when it comes to implementing basically any new systems to alleviate this broken sack of **** they call housing?

How about we hold a multi-billion dollar corporation's employees responsible for doing their jobs properly instead of saying "you asked for this, don't complain!" to the players?

[HisShadowX]

How about we stop blaming players for the utter incompetency of the development team when it comes to implementing basically any new systems to alleviate this broken sack of **** they call housing?

How about we hold a multi-billion dollar corporation's employees responsible for doing their jobs properly instead of saying "you asked for this, don't complain!" to the players?

Don’t worry guys he goes from thread to thread to attack people. He claims to hate this game but is still here to get his fill off righteous indignation

[Strywin]

I prefer physical neighborhoods tbh. Instanced housing would make the game feel even more single-player-ish than it already does.

Go hang out in a city-state then. Neighborhoods are mostly dead and quiet, hanging out in one sure feels single player. Yes, instanced has been asked for many years but we are stuck with bland apartments.

[TaleraRistain]

apartments are instanced housing. People just don't want them because they're perceived as lesser.
Even if the island is a fully functional mansion the fact that the wards exist will make a huge chunk of people think of it as lesser. It's not limited, it's not premium, it's not special, etc etc

there is no way to win

The problem is they are lesser, though. There are functions you can get with houses that you can't with apartments. I've seen many people on this thread who say they would be fine with apartments if they allowed the same functions as you get from a house. So that would be gardening and outside decorating, and number of rooms internally. I also don't recall if apartments allow crafting stations and if the number is the same as a small or not. Until apartments are at least up the same functionality as a small house, they will be lesser and limited.

There are people who will always see it as lesser no matter what, as you say. But there are some places they could compromise that would work for a lot of people that aren't served well by the current system.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

Don’t worry guys he goes from thread to thread to attack people. He claims to hate this game but is still here to get his fill off righteous indignation

At least my posts are coherent, and don't sound like insane ramblings.

I'd also like to see where I ever claimed to hate the game; in fact, I've said the opposite many times. I've played this game for almost 10 years and love it dearly, but just because you love something doesn't mean you can't see the massive faults riddling it and the very concerning direction its taking in both quality and communication. It doesn't mean you can't ask for improvements where they are sorely needed.

I also don't see how it's "attacking" someone to point out that maybe, just maybe, we should be expecting the developers to implement properly QA tested systems in - rather than blaming the players for asking for said system (or something akin to it, as is usually the case).