So, what now? Lotteries with 150+ bids until... when?

[ShantiiElorei]

Did the majority of the playerbase ask for the lottery system - another band-aid to the limited ward housing system or a proper solution to address the supply problem?

Secondly, the lottery system was not meant to address the supply problem but to address the consequences of the limited ward housing system. The placard camping system before the lottery did not respect a player's time and incentivized botting/3rd party tools.

The sensible players know exactly what they want; a long-term scalable solution:
A proper housing system with enough supply so that every individual player can get a house.

A fully instanced housing system which is a viable alternative to the limited ward housing system. Examples of good fully instanced housing systems, are Rift and Wildstar.

SE has already demonstrated they're capable of fully instanced housing with Island Sanctuaries since every player will be getting a massive island for free.

SE can also improve apartments. Let us upgrade them for gil into condos/penthouses.

If Islands/Apartments were viable alternatives to housing and the minimum baseline for every player - the demand for limited ward housing would decrease.

Limited ward housing could then be something for players who want to compete for "exclusive/flex" houses.

Did you miss all the requests over the years for fully instanced housing?

Yeah THIS is probably a safe bet for "what most players want" (at least most players who have been unable to get a house) regardless of which they prefer of the two systems we've had.

"Housing: Reborn"

Though really, the only question for me is about how wards actually fit. They'd get grandfathered in but you'd want people who don't actually care about being in a ward to move out so there's space for people who do care to move in. Aside from taxes, one thing would be making it so you can only have one house regardless of whether that's instanced or ward which would force the choice between being potentially stuck with a small in a ward or upgrading to a medium/large in an instance.

I like this idea! Keep the current wards with the current system, add instanced districts elsewhere, keep the limit at one house per person regardless of which type they get, and let people move from the non-instanced wards to the instanced ones (with the opportunity to upgrade to larger plots) to encourage people to help free up the existing wards for those who REALLY want non-instanced housing, vs. those who'd be happy with any kind of house.

Though one good exception to the "one per" rule might be: if you already have a FC house, you can still buy a personal instanced house? I dunno how people would feel about that. I don't run a FC so I'm not sure if those who do are sad they can't get a personal house if they have one for their FC?

[ShantiiElorei]

Question as someone who doesn't track all the dev comments and interviews and stuff and doesn't know if they check these forums, do we know if they're aware there's still a lot of frustration over the housing availability? I would assume/hope they do?

If they're aware it continues to be a frustration for a lot of players and that there's still high demand for better/more housing access, then I am hopeful it is something they are planning to address eventually, and that the lotto/new district was just a temporary band-aid (because a real solution is going to take a lot more time), rather than the devs mistakenly thinking this was a good enough fix and not planning to address it again.

(sorry for the double post, too many characters to put it all in one reply)

[Sairys]

Question as someone who doesn't track all the dev comments and interviews and stuff and doesn't know if they check these forums, do we know if they're aware there's still a lot of frustration over the housing availability? I would assume/hope they do?

If they're aware it continues to be a frustration for a lot of players and that there's still high demand for better/more housing access, then I am hopeful it is something they are planning to address eventually, and that the lotto/new district was just a temporary band-aid (because a real solution is going to take a lot more time), rather than the devs mistakenly thinking this was a good enough fix and not planning to address it again.

(sorry for the double post, too many characters to put it all in one reply)

I'd be surprised if they weren't tracking lottery participation somewhere, seems pretty useful for an idea on demand vs supply compared to people talking about it.

[ShantiiElorei]

I'd be surprised if they weren't tracking lottery participation somewhere, seems pretty useful for an idea on demand vs supply compared to people talking about it.

Hopefully if they are it's giving them a clearer idea of what precisely the demand level is. Hmm, I wonder if that's part of the reason they added it? Both as a temporary measure to try to make it more fair but also maybe as a way to collect actual hard numbers on how much more housing they would need to add to meet player demand? Because that would make a LOT of sense. It was probably difficult to asses before.

[Alien_Gamer]

Question as someone who doesn't track all the dev comments and interviews and stuff and doesn't know if they check these forums, do we know if they're aware there's still a lot of frustration over the housing availability? I would assume/hope they do?

Yoshi has commented a couple times over the years, mostly in live letters, that he's aware of the housing shortage. He's also stated that they prefer the ward system and can't add instanced housing to it. He's given several reasons over the years for why instanced housing isn't possible;
-the social aspect is the most common one
-storage space on the servers
-the way the wards were programmed doesn't really allow for instanced housing
-he prefers wards to instances.

More recently, the global supply chain issues have only complicated any potential changes to any system. If they weren't planning it 4 years ago, its not going to happen any time in the near future. Thats just the reality of the world we're in right now.

None of that's to say instanced housing can't eventually happen but we're unlikely to see it. Personally, I think Yoshi has convinced himself of that they've put so much into wards now, that it would be a waste to abandon it and switch to instanced housing. They'll just keep throwing wards at the problem until demand is met.

[ShantiiElorei]

Yoshi has commented a couple times over the years, mostly in live letters, that he's aware of the housing shortage. He's also stated that they prefer the ward system and can't add instanced housing to it. He's given several reasons over the years for why instanced housing isn't possible;
-the social aspect is the most common one
-storage space on the servers
-the way the wards were programmed doesn't really allow for instanced housing
-he prefers wards to instances.

More recently, the global supply chain issues have only complicated any potential changes to any system. If they weren't planning it 4 years ago, its not going to happen any time in the near future. Thats just the reality of the world we're in right now.

None of that's to say instanced housing can't eventually happen but we're unlikely to see it. Personally, I think Yoshi has convinced himself of that they've put so much into wards now, that it would be a waste to abandon it and switch to instanced housing. They'll just keep throwing wards at the problem until demand is met.

I mean they don't necessarily have to abandon the existing wards. Instanced housing can be a separate, co-existing system, and people can choose which they want to get a house in. So those who like the social aspect can still have that, but those that just want ANY house, even a private instanced one, to decorate and garden with can have one.

But if they plan on continuing to add more wards until demand is met, I'm fine with that too. I just wasn't sure if we had any idea if that's something they actually planned to do, and if it was technically feasible. Presumably there IS some technical limitation there for them to not have done it already (I know there was the issue adding servers due to global hardware shortages the past few years but I'm not sure where that stands now), unless they genuinely thought Ishgard housing would be enough and severely underestimated the number of players who want houses. In which case I hope they realize it was not enough and add more wards or yet another district.

[Jojoya]

"Housing: Reborn"

Though really, the only question for me is about how wards actually fit. They'd get grandfathered in but you'd want people who don't actually care about being in a ward to move out so there's space for people who do care to move in. Aside from taxes, one thing would be making it so you can only have one house regardless of whether that's instanced or ward which would force the choice between being potentially stuck with a small in a ward or upgrading to a medium/large in an instance.

There's no reason an improved instanced system couldn't exist side by side with wards.

The improved instanced system could even be accessed through the wards just as apartments already are. I think all the housing districts have areas that are unused dead ends. Turn the dead ends into the entrance for "private estates" (would need a better name), which would be the new instanced system. It would give the added benefit of more traffic in the wards as those owning the instanced housing would want to go back into the ward to access marketboards or vendors or the "recreation areas" (like the Brimming Heart or the Shirogane hot springs) on occasion. It would give everyone a house at the same time it improves the "neighborhood" feeling that the wards are supposed to provide but don't.

Yoshi has commented a couple times over the years, mostly in live letters, that he's aware of the housing shortage. He's also stated that they prefer the ward system and can't add instanced housing to it. He's given several reasons over the years for why instanced housing isn't possible;
-the social aspect is the most common one
-storage space on the servers
-the way the wards were programmed doesn't really allow for instanced housing
-he prefers wards to instances.

More recently, the global supply chain issues have only complicated any potential changes to any system. If they weren't planning it 4 years ago, its not going to happen any time in the near future. Thats just the reality of the world we're in right now.

None of that's to say instanced housing can't eventually happen but we're unlikely to see it. Personally, I think Yoshi has convinced himself of that they've put so much into wards now, that it would be a waste to abandon it and switch to instanced housing. They'll just keep throwing wards at the problem until demand is met.

Most of that makes no sense when all housing interiors, whether house, FC private chamber or apartment, are instanced.

They already co-exist.

The only reason I've personally heard him give is that they like the social aspect of wards and yet they fail in that regard for the majority of house owners.

- There's a limited number of owners in each ward/subdivision, usually with different schedules on when they can play the game.

- If they are playing the game, most of the time they're going to be doing other things instead of standing outside their house in the ward where other players can see them (like playing around inside of their house where they can't be seen).

- Lack of reasons to travel within the ward not to mention the aethernet shards that can take players directly to their destination those rare occasions they do need to means greatly reduced chances of random encounters that lead to socialization.

- If socializing is intended to mean hanging out at the FC house with your FC members and their invited guests, or going to a RP venue, that can be accomplished through instanced housing as easily as a ward. RIFT has a great system for helping players find and travel to other players' housing, not to mention the whitelist and blacklist features that frequently get requested for housing here.

SE need to stop believing they can train the player base to use housing the way YoshiP wants it to be used and start looking at the actual experience house owners are getting on a daily basis. I love my house, I will visit it a few times each play session but I'm still spending 90% of the time I'm logged in doing other content, 9% inside of my house and only 1% standing outside of it. Even last expansion when I spent about 300 hours sitting in my yard grinding out my Expert crafting achievements, I only saw 3 players randomly pass by my house.

If a player is after an actual social experience, they're much better off hanging out at the Limsa, Ul'dah or Gridania aetherytes where players actually gather to socialize and other players are constantly passing through.

[Silverbane]

The only reason I've personally heard him give is that the like the social aspect of wards and yet they fail in that regard for the majority of house owners.

Japan has a very different culture, so maybe the experience on JP servers is different.

Heh. If I lived in Tokyo, instead of a suburb in the US, just a daytime walk through a neighborhood without hordes of people in it might be a treat.

[One of my enduring memories of Tokyo is my spouse and I taking a walk early on a weekday morning. It was empty and quiet ... until a few minutes before the subways started running, when the commuters filled the street like a Bay of Fundy tidal bore.]

[Sairys]

There's no reason an improved instanced system couldn't exist side by side with wards.

The improved instanced system could even be accessed through the wards just as apartments already are. I think all the housing districts have areas that are unused dead ends. Turn the dead ends into the entrance for "private estates" (would need a better name), which would be the new instanced system. It would give the added benefit of more traffic in the wards as those owning the instanced housing would want to go back into the ward to access marketboards or vendors or the "recreation areas" (like the Brimming Heart or the Shirogane hot springs) on occasion. It would give everyone a house at the same time it improves the "neighborhood" feeling that the wards are supposed to provide but don't.

Sure, but you can also create one instance lobby per district and open up the possibility of all sorts of locations. Sharlayan, the First, the Moon, etc on top of just scenery places like mountain tops and islands all of which could have their own different little recreation area in place of the apartment entrance/lobby. But personally, I think the thing that's going to improve the neighborhood feeling the most is encouraging a system where the people in wards basically all want that.

[Setesh45]

Why is everyone spazzing out a month before the Island Sanctuaries get introduced to the game? To my knowledge you'll have a garden and a house in there too, wait and see how it works before spazzing out. O_o