housing conundrum: there needs to be a better way.

[VerdeLuck]

To some people, yes. But Instanced housing could free up more ward housing for those who prefer it. How many houses do you see in your neighborhoods that are empty? How many that look like literal storage lockers? Instanced housing would appeal to the FOMO crowd who holds on to a house because they might want to play with it in the future. It would give those using housing storage as just another inventory a way to do so without taking up a ward house and leaving it essentially unused. And since instanced houses don’t need to be permanently loaded, they wouldn’t need to be subject to auto-demo, so they’d also appeal to those more casual types who don’t want to be chained to a sub every other month. (And it also opens up the possibility of your house being converted to an instanced house instead of actually being demolished should your timer expire…) Instanced could also let you choose your house/plot size, so you could have a large without having to wait for one of the 6 per ward to open and test your RNG luck. Add to that the people who don’t care about having a “prestigious” address or location, and just want a creative space to decorate, and I think overall instanced housing solves a lot of issues, the main one being scarcity. Not to mention the possibility of additional features that they can’t add to the permanently loaded ward houses because of the massive amount of lag and/or server drain they’d cause.

It's not going to free up ward housing. At best it will just be +1 to the house count of the people who already have multiple. They aren't giving up their ward house unless SE says you can't have both at the same time.
You're too trusting in that people will be nice, play fair, and share a limited resource. The fact that people own entire wards to themselves and have continued to for half a decade while housing has been ridiculouly hard to get a house for new players shows that is not going to happen.
SE has to put hard limits on pretty much everything in this game to prevent greedy players from snapping up more than their share of limited resource and locking others out.

[Musashidon]

It's not going to free up ward housing.

it frees up future housing wards though.

yes i know they will also sell out of course people are going to be greedy but there is a very large group of people who would take the instance housing and be sated sure there will still be complaints like with apartments guild rooms ect. but every player getting housing would solve the main problem of *i can't get a house*
course it doesnt solve it if players cant do what current housing can do aka outdoor furnishing and your gardening or things like sub/airship.

the reason people want instance housing is because overall it gets rid of the average players need of the current housing system, which they only try to be a part of because they have to. a real alternative to it is what players want.

like a suggestion instead of instanced housing how about expanding apartments and allowing tenants like housing does. let players choose the size and pay for it at the apartment like we already do and get a much bigger sized apartment with a padio that goes outside and can be bigger/smaller based on the size apartment you got which can hold outdoor furnishing and your garden. i will say once again it doesnt fix every issue but its a thought.

[VerdeLuck]

it frees up future housing wards though.

yes i know they will also sell out of course people are going to be greedy but there is a very large group of people who would take the instance housing and be sated sure there will still be complaints like with apartments guild rooms ect. but every player getting housing would solve the main problem of *i can't get a house*
course it doesnt solve it if players cant do what current housing can do aka outdoor furnishing and your gardening or things like sub/airship.

the reason people want instance housing is because overall it gets rid of the average players need of the current housing system, which they only try to be a part of because they have to. a real alternative to it is what players want.

like a suggestion instead of instanced housing how about expanding apartments and allowing tenants like housing does. let players choose the size and pay for it at the apartment like we already do and get a much bigger sized apartment with a padio that goes outside and can be bigger/smaller based on the size apartment you got which can hold outdoor furnishing and your garden. i will say once again it doesnt fix every issue but its a thought.

It's a thought that would take a huge amount of dev resources, but also doesn't address the failings of something like apartments. Having low player counts allowed inside instanced housing, worse menus to access it, it being cumbersome to visit and access, and in general it being much less useful for anything other than strictly personal use would make it always inferior to ward housing. If it was added and it was just straight up an instanced medium that you had to go through a half dozen menus to access like apartments, it would be in the same spot. We would still be arguing about access to ward housing because instanced would be inferior in most ways.
As long as ward houses still exist, nobody will want to use instanced housing, unless they add some specific feature to them that ward houses don't get.

[Musashidon]

As long as ward houses still exist, nobody will want to use instanced housing, unless they add some specific feature to them that ward houses don't get.

people want to use instanced housing but it doesn't actually do what the wards do there is content gutted out of it, thats the problem.

like i said most people participate unwillingly because they have to, not because they want to. the ward part is moot. people will take the extra steps if its worth it.

now i will say i used apartments as an example not as the cure all.

They are actually delusional, they think future house owners or already settled in house owners will give up their house/give up on the idea of a ward house because of instanced housing, well I cant wait to see that when it does happen, because I am fully certain that it wont

yea definitely people aren't going to get rid of their already bought homes just for a instance one.

i will use me as the direct example i have both a FC house (small) and a personal house (large) i also have my guild room and apartment both which i barely use. if an instance house was also offered i would buy one just to have one but not relinquish the personal ward or fc ward homes. so i agree people arent going to get rid of their home for any reason.

i mean there are people grand fathered into 10 or more houses on their alts from before there was a limit they will always keep them it's just how it is.

[Reinha]

yea definitely people aren't going to get rid of their already bought homes just for a instance one.

i will use me as the direct example i have both a FC house (small) and a personal house (large) i also have my guild room and apartment both which i barely use. if an instance house was also offered i would buy one just to have one but not relinquish the personal ward or fc ward homes. so i agree people arent going to get rid of their home for any reason.

Same! I have an fc house, personal house, apartment and island sanctuary. The last two I have not decorated at all because they are inferior to ward houses and I don't see the point. The island is hard for people to visit and can't be used to store furniture. The apartment lacks outdoor decoration, but the whole reason I want to decorate the outside is for others to see my design and who is ever going to see an apartment? My strawberry garden and snowy cafe mansion are visible the moment you step into the ward even when I'm not online. I'd keep them and just store more furniture in an instanced house like I do with my apartment.

[Jojoya]

It's a thought that would take a huge amount of dev resources, but also doesn't address the failings of something like apartments. Having low player counts allowed inside instanced housing, worse menus to access it, it being cumbersome to visit and access, and in general it being much less useful for anything other than strictly personal use would make it always inferior to ward housing. If it was added and it was just straight up an instanced medium that you had to go through a half dozen menus to access like apartments, it would be in the same spot. We would still be arguing about access to ward housing because instanced would be inferior in most ways.
As long as ward houses still exist, nobody will want to use instanced housing, unless they add some specific feature to them that ward houses don't get.

You're making a lot of assumptions about how a better instanced housing system would work and what it would look like.

Then I think of RIFT Dimensions and what they were like so I know instanced housing can be far better than what you described.

Now I don't honestly expect any new instanced housing in the game to be on the same level as RIFT's but I know it can be much better that what apartments are.

As for what is superior, that depends on what the player wants from housing. Most players are going to consider a system that guarantees them a house of their choosing better than one where they're lucky if they manage to get anything at all.

As Stormpeaks said in their earlier post, time will tell what we end up getting. No doubt there will be some players that will only be satisfied by a ward house but I doubt that number would be as large as you think.

They are actually delusional, they think future house owners or already settled in house owners will give up their house/give up on the idea of a ward house because of instanced housing, well I cant wait to see that when it does happen, because I am fully certain that it wont

If a new instanced housing system opens the doors to more location options and more customization of the house layout, I absolutely would give up my ward house for an instanced house. Again, I remember RIFT's housing very fondly. It was one of the few memorable things about the game.

Yours is the delusion if you think that what you want is what everyone else wants.

Same! I have an fc house, personal house, apartment and island sanctuary. The last two I have not decorated at all because they are inferior to ward houses and I don't see the point. The island is hard for people to visit and can't be used to store furniture. The apartment lacks outdoor decoration, but the whole reason I want to decorate the outside is for others to see my design and who is ever going to see an apartment? My strawberry garden and snowy cafe mansion are visible the moment you step into the ward even when I'm not online. I'd keep them and just store more furniture in an instanced house like I do with my apartment.

What was that again? I'm online. I don't see your house. I would have to know where your house is and travel to it before I could see it.

In other words, no different from instanced housing.

Again, RIFT Dimensions had it solved. There was a menu with a search function for houses on the same world. Pick the Dimension you wanted to visit and press the Enter button. You were taken directly to it. The owner did not have to be online for it to be available to visit just as apartment owners don't have to be online for you to visit their apartment.

Ultimately, things are in SE's hands. What are they willing to produce for players? We know what they are capable of doing via both the ward housing and apartments. We know what is technically possible based on what other games are doing or have done.

My friend the only people looking at your ward house NOW are close friends.

Honestly, that depends on how heavily someone chooses to advertise their house. Discords and the like can reach hundreds or thousands of players who list their houses for viewing.

Most players aren't going to get a lot of visitors because they aren't doing anything to get them. They just want a house to enjoy and don't care to use it to seek attention from others.

[Reinha]

My strawberry garden and snowy cafe mansion are visible the moment you step into the ward even when I'm not online.

What was that again? I'm online. I don't see your house. I would have to know where your house is and travel to it before I could see it.

I assume you have some kind of visual disability instead of an intellectual one, so here it is again, with bigger letters. Notice how it never mentions you being online, but you being in the ward and me not being online.

Again, RIFT Dimensions had it solved. There was a menu with a search function for houses on the same world. Pick the Dimension you wanted to visit and press the Enter button. You were taken directly to it. The owner did not have to be online for it to be available to visit just as apartment owners don't have to be online for you to visit their apartment.

Ultimately, things are in SE's hands. What are they willing to produce for players? We know what they are capable of doing via both the ward housing and apartments.

This isn't RIFT, this is FFXIV where apartments don't have exteriors and people with apartments still want ward houses. What does have an instanced exterior is the island sanctuary, and people can't visit those unless the owner comes online and goes on their island. The islands one can visit are also limited to those of friends and fc members. One cannot teleport straight to anyone's island. Those are the instanced options they are capable of providing.

[Jojoya]

I assume you have some kind of visual disability instead of an intellectual one, so here it is again, with bigger letters. Notice how it never mentions you being online, but you being in the ward and me not being online.

You said "the ward". I was in "the ward" where my house is. Your houses are still not visible.

That is one of the many problems with the ward system. There is no single ward that all players funnel through. There are currently 300 wards/subdivisions per world. It does no good to have your house visible if other players are not in the same ward.

This isn't RIFT, this is FFXIV where apartments don't have exteriors and people with apartments still want ward houses. What does have an instanced exterior is the island sanctuary, and people can't visit those unless the owner comes online and goes on their island. The islands one can visit are also limited to those of friends and fc members. One cannot teleport straight to anyone's island. Those are the instanced options they are capable of providing.

I know that this is not RIFT. That doesn't mean that the developers who handle housing can't learn from what RIFT and other MMORPGs are able to do and have done better than FFXIV has done.

[Reinha]

You said "the ward". I was in "the ward" where my house is. Your houses are still not visible.

That is one of the many problems with the ward system. There is no single ward that all players funnel through. There are currently 300 wards/subdivisions per world. It does no good to have your house visible if other players are not in the same ward.

I guess my assumption was wrong... It is obvious to any neurotypical person that I was referring to the ward my strawberry garden and snowy cafe mansion are located in. I understand people have unique struggles. If you have trouble visiting other wards, I'm happy to guide you through the process.

Several strangers have found their way to my yard/message book and I have found my way to other people's houses, so the game is functioning properly in that regard.

[LianaThorne]

That doesn't mean that the developers who handle housing can't learn from what RIFT and other MMORPGs are able to do and have done better than FFXIV has done.

Why are people still thinking they even want to change the housing design that we have? Instead of literally *revamping housing* we got *Island Sanctuary*. Instead of *revamping housing* we got *the lottery system*. Instead of *revamping housing* we're getting *more furniture slots*.

They're actively doing everything other than giving people a better housing system/instanced housing.

At this point, they either literally can't because someone higher up is stopping them/it's not worth it to rip apart the system and put it back together or they simply do not want to and this is what we have to deal with.

Unless they drop a bomb on all of us before 7.0 hits, I don't see copy-cat instanced housing of what we have now or combined ward listings being a thing in the next few years.