Why so much new house content as casual rewards?

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Originally Posted by 314159265358979323846264338327

That's generally the idea, yeah.

http://i.imgur.com/rgfqBuC.png

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lol touche.

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Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

Really? All that post looks like to me is somebody bragging about their ability to earn gil and then making fun of the OP's point which is not difficult to understand by any measure and has absolutely nothing to do with asking for free housing.

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No the OP is acting like casuals are all broke. Your also acting like every casual is indeed broke with no opportunity or ability to achieve those numbers. All DOL, DOH, quests, maps, dungeon gil and etc ARE inaccessible to casuals.

We are casuals telling you that as a casual, that the opportunity to make gil is there. Once again we started out with pretty much the same amount as everyone else. You do not need to be on 24/7 to make those numbers.

You can log on a majority of the low-medium population servers and there are a ton of lots to buy. The problem with OP is that he/she situated himself/herself on an over crowded server that continues to recruit more individuals daily.

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Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

splitting the cost even 3 ways is totally unreasonable for the average casual player

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What if the person you claim is bragging, is a casual player~

Is this about seasonal housing furnitures?
It was requested by the community

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Originally Posted by Xystic

No the OP is acting like casuals are all broke. Your also acting like every casual is indeed broke with no opportunity or ability to achieve those numbers. All DOL, DOH, quests, maps, dungeon gil and etc ARE inaccessible to casuals.

We are casuals telling you that as a casual, that the opportunity to make gil is there. Once again we started out with pretty much the same amount as everyone else. You do not need to be on 24/7 to make those numbers.

You can log on a majority of the low-medium population servers and there are a ton of lots to buy. The problem with OP is that he/she situated himself/herself on an over crowded server that continues to recruit more individuals daily.



What if the person you claim is bragging, is a casual player~

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The OP never said that casuals are broke, the average player, casual or not casual does not have 30 million gil, or even 10 million gil, how is that difficult to comprehend? Having less than 10 million gil doesn't make you broke, there's nothing in this game besides housing and pentamelds that costs that much gil, period.

As far as them "situating themselves on a populated server", what difference does that make? Do you expect everybody who ended up on a populated server to spend $18 to transfer? I would never pay that money to transfer, and it isn't because I'm poor irl, it's because that's a rip off.

Also, the person I'm claiming is bragging may very well be a casual player, despite all of their level 50 jobs. That doesn't mean they aren't bragging.

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Originally Posted by Intaki

And considering SWTOR managed to build a freaking flight simulator into their themepark MMO while creating their housing system and releasing content patches and developing an expansion, I'm pretty sure your argument that making the housing system sensible and workable would suck up resources kind of falters.

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Just wanted to point out that SWTORs servers exploded when they released housing/the last expansion. There is ability lag every three skills or so. As in, you use an ability, the cooldown goes off, and you sit there for 10 seconds doing nothing. Once the skill actually goes off, sometimes it hits it's target sometimes it doesn't. The worst part is the ability lag has been going on for a month or so now. The devs admitted to it being a problem... but they aren't sure how to fix it yet. Personally I wouldn't call that a successful system. I rather houses be rare than not be able to play the game properly.

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Originally Posted by DoctorPepper

Oh and by the way, you're playing on one of the poor servers so plots are half price on your server and readily available. Basically, you have no idea what it's like playing on a populated server where medium housing sells fast and is 30+ mil per plot.
Source: http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Personal_Housing

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I must have gotten lucky then. I bought Plot 14 (medium) in Mist for 15 mil.... D:
I also looked somewhat recently at the medium house prices for a private one and didn't see any that were over 20mil. Weird.

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Originally Posted by Felis

Is this about seasonal housing furnitures?
It was requested by the community

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^ This

In the housing forum you can see multiple requests for Square to give us seasonal items so we can decorate our houses for the holiday. They're doing what players asked for.

A system that's exclusionary by design is by design catering to a social concept of an elite.

Also there's a serious dissonance between casual players on the forums being told to go to smaller servers where more housing is available and in the next breath being told to transfer to more populated servers where PF is more active so they aren't chained to a static for playing content.

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Originally Posted by Krr

A system that's exclusionary by design is by design catering to a social concept of an elite.

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The system isn't designed to exclude people on purpose. It's designed to be bought like real houses (the prices themselves are what they feel regular players can afford) and if you can't afford them, you have the inn room. If you have an house in your current FC, then you can have a private room like a dormitory. No one thinks an FC is elite because they own a house. Just a little less likely to disband at the flip of a switch. No one thinks that a player is elite because he owns a mansion.

Most people don't think anything of whether or not someone owns a house. There's no social concept of elite with owning one. With most I know, it's either you do or you don't.

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Originally Posted by Krr

Also there's a serious dissonance between casual players on the forums being told to go to smaller servers where more housing is available and in the next breath being told to transfer to more populated servers where PF is more active so they aren't chained to a static for playing content.

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That is literally two different things. If people complain about not being able to get houses, they are told where they can find them. If they complain about wanting their gameplay to be more active, then they are told where they can find that. Those two things don't belong together.

The housing system as it currently stands is not perfect. Somehow XI made everyone happy with individual and free Mog houses (that were smaller than the first room of a small house, fyi). However, SE needs to think of a better solution than just continuing to pump out houses. That will never solve the issue nor will it make anyone happy. People who had already bought houses will feel neglected because there will be more items available and no space because they never bothered to improve on the internal space of the houses and new players will be upset because there will never be enough.

It seems the only way to make people somewhat happy is to have instanced rooms. You would basically see Mist in the distance as you enter the zone and you would load into your instanced room/house. Except that you can no longer have anything outside.

Residentials in MMOs never turn out exactly right and will always make people unhappy and people need to learn how to live with that.

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Originally Posted by Ophie-Mio

The system isn't designed to exclude people on purpose.

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Yes, it is. They purposely created an extremely limited number of plots, thereby purposely ensuring that players on mid-to-large servers would be excluded from housing gameplay.

They may not like having made the decision to exclude people, but it is what they did and what they intended to do when creating the system.

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Originally Posted by Ophie-Mio

The housing system as it currently stands is not perfect.

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This is a pretty severe understatement. Amongst pretty much every other large MMO (since I don't keep up with the dime-a-dozen korean free to plays), I've never seen so many complaints and issues with the way housing is handled. The fact that entire gameplay mechanics are locked behind house ownership only compounds the problem.

In the sphere of largely successful, high-profile MMOs, FFXIV has arguably the worst housing system out of any other. Second-worst if we want to count WoW's garrison as "housing". I personally don't.

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Originally Posted by Elim

Just wanted to point out that SWTORs servers exploded when they released housing/the last expansion.

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Their lag issues apparently came with the expansion, which released way, way after the housing did. I'm not really sure how you're making the connection there.

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Originally Posted by Intaki

Yes, it is. They purposely created an extremely limited number of plots, thereby purposely ensuring that players on mid-to-large servers would be excluded from housing gameplay.

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When they made this system, I'm sure they had no idea what to actually expect from it. Their first ventures into housing were FC related and there were a good number of houses available except for the largest of servers, I'm guessing. Otherwise, on Cactuar (heavily populated and considered a rich world) when only FCs could buy houses, there were always plots available for us of every house size in every location.

Also, when they decided to go forward with personal housing, I doubt they truly understood that people would be excluded to this effect. Kinda like how hunts are, I just doubt they understood how many people would flock to them.

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Originally Posted by Intaki

This is a pretty severe understatement. Amongst pretty much every other large MMO (since I don't keep up with the dime-a-dozen korean free to plays), I've never seen so many complaints and issues with the way housing is handled. The fact that entire gameplay mechanics are locked behind house ownership only compounds the problem.

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Yeah, I agreed that there was stuff wrong with it. I didn't wanna use any stronger words than that though because I don't like to be overly dramatic. It's busted. They know about it. *shrugs*

I'm also curious which gameplay mechanics that are vital to playing this game are locked behind house ownership. I for one can't think of anything that's super impactful to any gameplay. And we are talking personal housing, not FC, ya?

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Originally Posted by Intaki

Their lag issues apparently came with the expansion, which released way, way after the housing did. I'm not really sure how you're making the connection there.

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Ability lag started to rear it's ugly head when housing was released. It just got way, way, WAY worse once the expansion hit.

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I also remember ability lag being bad when they released section X, but it was fixed or accidentally fixed until now. SWTOR gets game breaking bugs that come and go. The engine they built it on is the root of the problem imo.

This is coming from someone who joined SWTOR day 1, became one of the richest people on my server, and use to be a hardcore raider till I got bored of the game. I stopped raiding there when there was a mass exodus way back.

Despite quitting raiding there and hating the ability lag issue, I have a stronghold(aka house) on Dromund Kaas with every room unlocked and decorated. So I have tried their housing out. It's not a terrible system, just a broken game.

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Originally Posted by Ophie-Mio

I'm also curious which gameplay mechanics that are vital to playing this game are locked behind house ownership. I for one can't think of anything that's super impactful to any gameplay. And we are talking personal housing, not FC, ya?

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I think it is hard to talk about one and not the other, I personally know of a couple houseless FC because they're stuck at needing 40mil which they're too new and casual to see that happening any time soon (told them the large might be bought if they don't work double time or find someone who will sell a small for twice its worth). I think they made chocobo's trainable at the NPC stable now, so thats good but the FC/personal house still generates gil and items by means of the garden, aether wheels being a new missable, and I'm leery what airship construction will mean to these FC.

I'm hopeful for the apartment system though, these big systems I know take a long time.. and people, like myself, are naturally impatient - but the current system is definitely not "done". I've got no sense of their costs either to say if they need to cash shop it .. ugh, its rough as a customer to say I really want you to do this "right" but not want to pay when more money is needed.. but if you offer to pay and they know you will they will of course say they can't.. lol. I feel like the easier "now" solution is to let current players on full servers transfer off in approved groups, and then add a big big check box to new players that says you agree to the understanding that housing is limited and may not be available (current players to the server were not part of the server with this understanding, myself started on Fabul in 1.0 and was merged to Balmung which then happened to be one of the biggest lol).

I haven't played Rift much but my friend said that you get a small dimension for free (instanced housing area for yourself) and can purchase within or from without the game much larger areas and style types.. Of course that game is f2p. Anyway, I really hope they can get everyone into the foot of the system and then allow it to evolve and develop.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

I think it is hard to talk about one and not the other, I personally know of a couple houseless FC because they're stuck at needing 40mil which they're too new and casual to see that happening any time soon (told them the large might be bought if they don't work double time or find someone who will sell a small for twice its worth). I think they made chocobo's trainable at the NPC stable now, so thats good but the FC/personal house still generates gil and items by means of the garden, aether wheels being a new missable, and I'm leery what airship construction will mean to these FC.

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The reason why I ask which one is because they are two different things. Most of this thread seems to be complaining about the lack of houses but it seems to be from solo players, which means personal housing. Therefore, because it's personal housing, all those things besides gardening and chocobos are inaccessible. Chocobos, I agree, are definitely cool to train at the stable but you can level them out in the world. Getting them beyond rank 10 though is the only time I've noticed that they require a house. Same with coloring though that is not a gameplay mechanic that can be argued as vital.

Gardens, yeah, they totally generate gil. As an FC owner and with a house, I use mine for krakka roots but I live in a full ward. I do laps while I wait for duties and lemme tell you, I have only seen one other house (Plot 1, the mansion) actually with stuff growing full time. Other than that, I rarely see more than a hand full of people actually using their gardens. Hard to generate gil if no one actually plants stuff.

Personally, I'm hopeful for an apartment system for the people who can't have houses. Then the developers can focus on improving the housing rather than compounding the problem with adding in more districts and wards that do nothing to help the majority.

I never said "vital" gameplay, just gameplay. Coloring and training chocobos, growing stuff in gardens, these are game mechanics SE spent money developing and only a minority of their paying customers are getting access to. The real slap to the face is that they appear to want to make more gameplay elements for housing without expanding availability.

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Originally Posted by Elim

EDIT:
I also remember ability lag being bad when they released section X, but it was fixed or accidentally fixed until now. SWTOR gets game breaking bugs that come and go. The engine they built it on is the root of the problem imo.

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The poor engine is definitely the root of the majority of that game's problems.

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Originally Posted by Ophie-Mio

The reason why I ask which one is because they are two different things. Most of this thread seems to be complaining about the lack of houses but it seems to be from solo players, which means personal housing. Therefore, because it's personal housing, all those things besides gardening and chocobos are inaccessible. Chocobos, I agree, are definitely cool to train at the stable but you can level them out in the world. Getting them beyond rank 10 though is the only time I've noticed that they require a house. Same with coloring though that is not a gameplay mechanic that can be argued as vital.

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Oh I see you meant to address the lack of accessibility to content, I was just saying that they tend to be one in topic because while a solo player may not be losing out as much, they share the same source of supply, but by the fact that a solo player may not have a house it also means there would be FC without a house. But I get why you wanted the distinction :P, I just felt it was difficult to separate them when you've got one content source, many purposes, and many people upset for many different reasons XD.

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Originally Posted by nyttyn

Most casual players cannot afford housing. If they can afford housing, there is only so much space, and not nearly enough for even a moderate number of players to have a house.

Yet casual events like seasonal holidays keep giving out housing content?? Especially this holiday, where pretty much all we get is furniture and barding.

what are we supposed to do with all of this furniture? eat it?

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Can't you put it in your room or whatever you have in your FC's house? That's only 300k iirc.

Will never understand what possessed them to make personal housing use the same system designed for fc housing.

Should have just been a expansion of the current in rooms allowing you to buy more elaborate spaces in a instance.

only possible explanation is that they were in a time crunch and said screw it. Instead of actually spending time/money we will just allow individual players buy fc plots. What could possibly go wrong?

The whole affair reeks of sloppy design choices and the arrogance to never admit it.

I don't have a house yet, I would eventually like one, doubt I'll ever afford one though. In the mean time I would like some rewards I can enjoy straight away like clothing etc.

On Leviathan and Behemoth, good luck finding even a small plot available in the Lavender Beds. You can be lucky enough to find a small or medium plot available in the Mist and Goblet. Still, I'm tired of getting housing parts from my retainers. I don't have the 4 million gil to buy a small house, so I just sell it to the vendors (furniture & house parts seem to be very hit & miss when it comes to selling on the MB).

EverQuest II approaches personal housing differently. There are different "housing districts" of varying rental prices. Everyone goes to the same door but the interior is instanced. And even the cheap places are pretty roomy. And should you not log on for awhile & check in on your home, you won't lose your room or the stuff in there. Just pay what is essentially a rental fee and you can enter. Everything will be as it was when you last visited.