It may be the 24th century, but there's no way I'm convinced holosuite addiction isn't a BIG problem in this utopic future, Barclays was just part of a greater societal symptom imo, like why would you go outside when you can bring outside inside?

>They'd be things you'd have to make a special trip for like an Amusement park in the current day. Yet holonovel are a super common talked about thing. I don't think they would use that terminology for an activity that wasn't something that could only be done at home in at least some capacity in fully civilized areas. The idea that holoNOVEL specifically is used could imply that home based iterations are much smaller, maybe closet sized, and less powerful. Lacking the computational power to fully process lifelike NPCs and scenery on the fly and relying on preprogrammed characters...much like how a lot of older games used pre-rendered backgrounds and scenery to have better graphics than could have been otherwise generated personal computers. This would also explain why Riker was so blown away by the holodecks on the Enterprise D. Otherwise, people are going to theme parks just to see novels? I think they would use holoMOVIES or holoPLAYS if it was something you could only do by going to a holosuite establishment. Just think how many of those you would need to be open to service your standard city. While I'm sure there are places with publicly accessible full power holosuites like in the show throughout the federation, there must be a home version of this 23rd century technology. I'm not saying everyone has one, but they are probably as popular/common as gaming computers and gaming consoles are today, with the big difference being that reduced power and active space compared to the bleeding edge holodecks that Starfleet runs. Also explains why we never see Starfleet officers active/or retired with personal holodecks: they are too used to the good stuff and going to the standard personal models is like playing a game on a budget PC. >Even on DS9 they're seen as a luxury that needs to be specially booked. DS9 is a previously low priority frontier station built by the technologically inferior cardassians, and they always seemed to struggle with reconciling that with federation tech, so not necessarily a good representation of modern federation living conditions. Space, power, and technical resources are necessarily limited. It's worth it in this case for Quark to use outside resources to install high end holosuites of his own, and stock them with proprietary programs.sonce he will make profit.