Horrifyingly bad experience

As a homeowner and someone with an fc with a house, I'd gladly give up both of those plots to have the housing system completely scrapped and re-done in a more enjoyable manner.

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Originally Posted by EnigmaticDodo

Would it truly destroy server stability to add maybe 3-5 wards on extremely congested worlds/servers? It seems like just that small gesture would alleviate a lot of complaints. If something like this is out of reach, they need to invest in some sort of overhaul of what they are running on. I know this isn't a simple process, but this game is pulling how much a month? Put a bit more back in I say!

If it's not a server thing, then maybe they intend for this kind of exclusivity? I don't get it, but I'm not the one in charge or know what's going on.

Edit: This is happening in 5.1, lmao. wewlad. Well, if the problem persists on especially populated worlds, they should consider adding more. Just correct the problem as it arises.

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They can't add wards only to certain worlds. It's all worlds or no worlds. If they could limit it only to the worlds that needed more wards, things would be in better shape.

Hopefully the Ishgardian Firmament hosts a form of instanced housing that will serve as a starter home for everyone in the FFXIV community, that is appealing and functional.

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Originally Posted by Roda

As a homeowner and someone with an fc with a house, I'd gladly give up both of those plots to have the housing system completely scrapped and re-done in a more enjoyable manner.

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Wife and I just got a house last night i still hate this and think the whole system is a bunch of garbage and needs to be redone. terrible design choice.

Housing reborn, lets do this.

HOA comes in wearing bahamut costumes wielding baseball bats.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

They can't add wards only to certain worlds. It's all worlds or no worlds. If they could limit it only to the worlds that needed more wards, things would be in better shape.

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Why can't it be done to only certain worlds? Did they specify why?

One word.

Apartments.

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Originally Posted by EnigmaticDodo

Why can't it be done to only certain worlds? Did they specify why?

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How the servers are set up. If one server gets X, then they all need to get X, because they're all running on the same system. On top of that, SE probably doesn't want to (And neither do many companies nowadays) make choices that could hurt them in the long run.

Think about it. If you want a house in the game, why not move to one of the few servers that has 10+ more wards than other servers? That would cause congestion and we go right back to servers crashing entire data-centers, because of how many people are on there. It would be counter-intuitive and straight-up landmine-to-face catastrophe.

The only servers (That I know of) that are having the "housing crisis" are the US ones and some EU. Adding more wards wouldn't fix the issue we're having, only delay it while also causing another issue on the other data-centers, further diluting the housing market there and making it all the more of a deserted, unused waste of code and HDD space on the servers. It may not be much, but it adds up and I can only hope SE knows that wasting space is a huge no-no

But nobody really cares about those ramifications, now do they? They don't play on <Insert Oceanic server here> so they couldn't care how their state is. They only focus on what affects THEM personally. Sucks, huh?

Implementation of improved apartment systems that are aesthetically pleasing and functional, continuation of the housing district and ward system as a limited resource but attainable with some competition, implementation of, per service account 1 plotted house per world only.

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Originally Posted by KayRadley

One word.

Apartments.

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3 words.

Not the same.

Apartments are just FC rooms without the FC requirement. A small, compact space that, while giving the basic features of housing (decorating) it doesn't go far enough. Is it better than nothing? Oh yeah, definitely. Is it the same as regular housing? Not even close. Apartments are far more limited in that they don't allow for outdoor furnishing and customization, as well as providing an extremely small space for people to work with.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

3 words.

Not the same.

Apartments are just FC rooms without the FC requirement. A small, compact space that, while giving the basic features of housing (decorating) it doesn't go far enough. Is it better than nothing? Oh yeah, definitely. Is it the same as regular housing? Not even close. Apartments are far more limited in that they don't allow for outdoor furnishing and customization, as well as providing an extremely small space for people to work with.

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If apartments could be upgrade a la Animal crossing houses I think they might be a better replacement, though that would still lack the exterior part.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

3 words.

Not the same.

Apartments are just FC rooms without the FC requirement. A small, compact space that, while giving the basic features of housing (decorating) it doesn't go far enough. Is it better than nothing? Oh yeah, definitely. Is it the same as regular housing? Not even close. Apartments are far more limited in that they don't allow for outdoor furnishing and customization, as well as providing an extremely small space for people to work with.

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Apartments are exact copies of small houses when housing came out, minus the garden. With some small houses having a sticker price of 50,000,000 gil, you have to be delusional to complain about the current apartments.

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Originally Posted by Big_Bap

Apartments are exact copies of small houses when housing came out, minus the garden. With some small houses having a sticker price of 50,000,000 gil, you have to be delusional to complain about the current apartments.

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Just because a system used to be worse than it is today doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement still.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

Just because a system used to be worse than it is today doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement still.

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Worse? It wasn't. The shortage of houses started to happen when they tried to make it better and look at the mess we're in. Be grateful an apartment costs you 1% of what some small houses used to cost. You want improvement... get a house.

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Originally Posted by Big_Bap

Worse? It wasn't. The shortage of houses started to happen when they tried to make it better and look at the mess we're in. Be grateful an apartment costs you 1% of what some small houses used to cost. You want improvement... get a house.

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I have one. Still wouldn't mind them improving on apartments through.

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Originally Posted by TheForce

Gotta stop you right there. I wanna focus on what you said about "paying for access to all the content in the game." Some of you guys really, really need to stop throwing around the misconception that paying a sub entitles to you to every single piece of content in the game. The ONLY thing paying a sub guarantees you is access/entrance to the game. That is it. I'm not trying to say you don't deserve a house/apt or anything like that, everybody should have a place to call theirs, but please stop trying to use the fact that you pay a sub as reasoning for why you should be guaranteed one. That's not how it works.

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And let me point you to the fact that I said housing is the only content in the game in which you can meet all the prerequisites to engage in the content but still somehow be unable to do it due to no fault of your own.

Very easy to make me look like I'm an entitled player when you outright intentionally misinterpret my whole post. Here I highlighted that bit for you in case you genuinely missed that part:

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Originally Posted by Penthea

This is an exceptionally unfair thing to say. You almost make it sound like had they enough sense to come earlier then they would have a house.

Housing is the only content in the game in which you can meet all the prerequisites to engage in it but you still cannot participate because there is limited supply. In fact such a system is exceptionally rare these days in gaming.

No one should be told they aren't allowed to complain about it when they have no reason to know about it unless they actually play the game (referring to "if they came to FFXIV earlier") and when they are literally paying for access to all the content in the game but they are roadblocked by bad design, not their own shortcomings.

This idea that players are not allowed to complain simply because of when they began playing or wanting to get a house is downright awful.

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Imagine if savage raiding was the same. That you could have the required job lvl and ilvl, maybe even have a full team with you as well, but be unable to participate because there's only a tiny amount of instances in the game. Or what if instead it was that bosses dropped loot only a limited amount of times per server, so you could kill the boss but get absolutely nothing simply because of when you killed it. This is the sort of comparison that I am making. That is not saying "a sub entitles me to a house!" that is saying "a sub entitles me to engage in content whose prerequisites I have fulfilled".

Again I point out: housing is the only content in which you can prepare for it in every way the game demands, and still be unable to engage in it.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

that is saying "a sub entitles me to engage in content whose prerequisites I have fulfilled"

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You can engage in it, though?

Again. Apartments. You want to "engage" in housing? Get an apartment. Upset you don't have a house? Get a house and deal with the system, as we don't really know how long it'll take before said housing "gets better", even if it were to get better in the first place. Don't like the systems? Well, then kindly point your anger to the hundreds, if not thousands of players that exploited the older system and gouged the economy, forcing SE to change it.

Is housing perfect? No. It's not. It could use a LOT of updates and such, but it's not TERRIBLE with how it is currently. Everyone has a fair chance in buying it. Sure, people use macros and bots (which in of itself makes their 'victory' bittersweet) to try and give themselves an edge. But you can do the exact same to maintain that fairness, if housing truly so high on the list that "Obsession" is plastered over it.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

And let me point you to the fact that I said housing is the only content in the game in which you can meet all the prerequisites to engage in the content but still somehow be unable to do it due to no fault of your own.

Very easy to make me look like I'm an entitled player when you outright intentionally misinterpret my whole post. Here I highlighted that bit for you in case you genuinely missed that part:



Imagine if savage raiding was the same. That you could have the required job lvl and ilvl, maybe even have a full team with you as well, but be unable to participate because there's only a tiny amount of instances in the game. Or what if instead it was that bosses dropped loot only a limited amount of times per server, so you could kill the boss but get absolutely nothing simply because of when you killed it. This is the sort of comparison that I am making. That is not saying "a sub entitles me to a house!" that is saying "a sub entitles me to engage in content whose prerequisites I have fulfilled".

Again I point out: housing is the only content in which you can prepare for it in every way the game demands, and still be unable to engage in it.

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Housing doesn't equal a house. Houses, apartments, and even free company rooms all fall within the game's housing content. People can engage in the housing system without owning a house.

It's amazing how many people are either defending the current system or just throwing their hands up and demanding everyone to "deal with it".

FFXIV is my favorite MMO ever. I'm a huge fan of it and Squeenix. But even I can see how utterly crap the housing system is. It's the worst system I've ever had to deal with in any MMO. When you're so damn blinded that you're actually defending the need to stand at a sign and click it 4 or 5 times in a repeated sequence for a random amount of time that could total 20 real life hours with the extremely high possibility of losing it anyway thanks to botters and macro users, then it may be time to reflect on your priorities.

This is a Bad. System. And we all have a right to complain about it with the very, very tiny sliver of hope that we will be heard.

Now to actually add to the conversation - I give a suggestion. One of the biggest reasons why this is such a problem is due to the desire to have "permanent" residences in world. Apartments help this, however as we all know - they are immensely inferior to actual houses. So I propose they simply make instanced houses. Have it cost more than an apartment while having all the amenities of a small house: Outside area, basement, etc. The "permanent" houses will still be in high demand due to being persistent and in world. Instanced housing will leave you secluded, while persistent will have you in a player created neighborhood.

I feel this suggestion would be a win-win for everyone looking to enjoy housing. "But how would outside work?" Take a look at Elder Scrolls Online's housing system - which I gotta say is leagues better than ours. While there aren't any player neighborhoods, everyone has the ability to have their own instanced housing and it opens up to some extremely huge housing instances - from a simple walled in cottage to a gigantic island. If we had something similar as an option, we would not be having this conversation right now.

Wasn't one of the issues of an 'instanced house on it's own lonesome plot' the idea that gardening is (through the code somehow) tied to weather, which if needing to be applied to endless instanced houses, could lead to some severe data congestion?

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Originally Posted by Kidria

Wasn't one of the issues of an 'instanced house on it's own lonesome plot' the idea that gardening is (through the code somehow) tied to weather, which if needing to be applied to endless instanced houses, could lead to some severe data congestion?

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You can have planters inside your home, so at this moment in time weather isn't a factor when it comes to gardening.

I like having neighbors with whom I can interact. With instanced housing, wouldn't your house be a "stand-alone" area cut off from others?

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Originally Posted by Fym

I like having neighbors with whom I can interact. With instanced housing, wouldn't your house be a "stand-alone" area cut off from others?

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That's the idea.

Everyone gets a house, yet said house is cut off and put in the void, away from everyone else. Meaning the social feature of housing is gone. Pretty counter-intuitive for a game that is trying to promote social interactions and players finding groups / Free Companies.

Even then. "Instanced Housing" wouldn't fix the issue, just as much as people clamor about thinking it will. Even gave the reason back in a previous post in this exact thread. Nobody cares about what issues their choices bring with them, so long as THEY get a house. Or boiling back down to the "I am entitled to a house, because of X" reasons, which are laughable at best. The reason being that instanced Housing would take up the same data-space as a ward house, as it's the EXACT SAME. Just without the trimmings around the outside. Same inside, same capabilities. It wouldn't solve the Server burden (the reason why we don't have infinite wards. Read up on that, please!)

And to top it all off. People are confusing "acceptance" with "Defense". Plenty of people who are "Defending" the current system have come to terms that yes, it does suck and yes, it needs to change. But compared to the other recommendations and solutions, the "placard spam" option is the only fair one as all the others have ignored ramifications.

Raffle? Great. You've just made it all the more disconnected and worthless to do. On top of adding another big slice of "bad for you, it's RNG" to the community. Something you should KNOW is despised.

Auction? Wonderful. Now only the richest players can get it, due to them having the option to jack up the price so anyone that wants a house can no longer afford it.

Instanced Housing? Awesome! You just made zero progress, infact you just went BACKWARDS, removing the Housings "neighborhood" feeling that plenty of players strive for (Especially Roleplayers, which SE actually adores, might I add!)

With those in mind, clicking a placard is the only fair option as nobody has a "higher chance" of winning. Yes, people use macros and bots (which are against ToS if I remember rightly) but you can do the exact same thing to keep that equal ground. It's not perfect, it definitely needs work, but we don't know how long it'll be before the placard gets swapped for a new system and we certainly don't know if the 'new system' won't be just as agonizing as the Placard Spam.

If you want a house THAT badly, you'll have to make due with the system currently in place and just bite the bullet. Yes, it'll suck. Yes, you'll get angry and yes, you'll definitely loses houses. But there is legitimately nothing you can do (beyond joining an FC, buying an Apartment or joining a House-hunter Discord) to make it easier. Or, you could just laugh in other peoples face and just "Buy" the house off another player for 100x the price. Because House-flipping is still a thing. Just not talked about in-game. The only "suggestion" I could really give is to not go at it 100%. Wait for 5.11 when the 3 new wards show up. That could open up plenty of plots all over the wards so your chances are at an all-time high. Or wait for the player-count to dwindle after ShB has finished its content cycle. (Similar to Stormblood's end-cycle.)

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Originally Posted by SoulEchelon

You can have planters inside your home, so at this moment in time weather isn't a factor when it comes to gardening.

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That's not entirely accurate. The 'weather' code is somehow tied to crossbreeding, which is why you can't do any kind of crossbreeding in your indoor housing plots. However, some have noted that the Crystarium inn room has a window that reflects the weather outside so perhaps they are working on that issue.

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Originally Posted by Kenky

The reason being that instanced Housing would take up the same data-space as a ward house, as it's the EXACT SAME. Just without the trimmings around the outside. Same inside, same capabilities. It wouldn't solve the Server burden (the reason why we don't have infinite wards. Read up on that, please!)

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I don't know the exact facts, but my understanding is that most of the burden that wards put on the servers is because of their persistence - ie, wards are always active, even if no one is in them. The interior of houses are instanced - they are torn down when no one is in them, and rebuilt when someone enters. For this reason, instances are less work because servers don't have to maintain them indefinitely. This is why wards aren't added on demand, but apartments (theoretically, according to something said by the devs long ago) could be increased without worry.

For the record, I think the wards should stay and we should have instanced housing as well. Improving apartments is probably the best solution to this issue. The neighborhood feel - and the customizable housing exterior - would be the perk of a ward house. If they added purchasable upgrades to apartments, including a way to use outdoor furnishings and access to crossbreeding gardening, I think it would make them seem more like a viable alternative.

The only thing that is needed is to give each server only one FC just like with personal housing. I don't know why SE encourages multiple FCs on one server. And I never had a problem with a timer (Ive had a house for a good time before it became a thing) but I am sure soon it will be time for SE to make changes to that as well if they'd only make the FC rule a real thing.

I'm also curious, do people just camp at their favorite location only? If I was house hunting I'd seek the crappiest Goblet corner and snatch that small hut. Relocating is the only way to a good house at this time.

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Originally Posted by Big_Bap

Worse? It wasn't. The shortage of houses started to happen when they tried to make it better and look at the mess we're in. Be grateful an apartment costs you 1% of what some small houses used to cost. You want improvement... get a house.

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hey, honest question, who hurt you?

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Originally Posted by Illy_Peridot

hey, honest question, who hurt you?

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Anyone who disagrees with them. Pretty much it. Like another FC house hoarder on these forums they do NOT take criticism well, nor are they accepting of other points of view.

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Originally Posted by Leloa

I'm also curious, do people just camp at their favorite location only? If I was house hunting I'd seek the crappiest Goblet corner and snatch that small hut. Relocating is the only way to a good house at this time.

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Most folk do go for literally any that's up on timer; outside of the current post-patch shuffle, the absolute max on my server I ever saw was three plots at the same time, so not like there's ever enough choice to get picky. The issue is, everyone says "just get a small in the Goblet and then relocate", so even the objectively worst plot will have several folk click-spamming for the many hours it's on timer.

Loads of folk are sitting on holding plots waiting for their desired plot to open up because relocation is required to get anything even remotely desirable...at one point, I counted and almost half of all smalls in The Goblet across all wards were clear holding plots, no house built until the last minute, and even then just a shell added to stop demo. So that's hundreds of plots that many folk would be perfectly happy with being hoarded for a relocation that may never happen.

Relocation as a pre-requisite is a large part of the problem. I'm lucky that I only wanted a small with my FC, and could be there for patch launch, so got my first choice plot (Shirogane 27) for us as an outright purchase this week. But I spent months haunting literally any plot that came up for sale with no success, and even saw the same plot (Goblet 20) turnover three times in one week, because people bought it to use as a relocate, moved, then another bought it to use to relocate, repeat ad nauseum while I'd have been perfectly happy to buy it and keep it (I like waterfalls). One even relocated away half an hour after purchase, admitting he found a plot he liked but it was on a timer, so cycled all the open ones until he got lucky and then swapped to the one he was actually after... effectively resetting the timer on one plot to bypass the timer on another. That's aggravating.

There should at the very least be a cooldown on relocations of a significant time (say 6 months), so that it's an option for an FC that outgrows it's current size, individual that gets more gil than they anticipated, or someone who has found some insurmountable issue with their current location (problem with the neighbours, bored of the view, etc.), but buying that random small is making a commitment, and you won't be able to relocate to [insert desired plot here] if it comes up any time soon. It should be an option for if things change way down the line, not the intention at point of purchase.

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Originally Posted by Kruceo

There is absolutely 0 acceptable reasons that people should be required to sit around spam-clicking a sign for HOURS, praying to RNG gods that they get the opportunity to purchase a "feature" of the game all while we are paying for game time to play.
The experience is less fun than buying a house IRL.
Instanced housing, or infinitely generated districts are far more acceptable of a solution than this RNG timing.
Until this is fixed, I find it to be a joke to call it a "feature" of the game.

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Your right, your absolutely right. Games are supposed to be FUN, first and foremost. And the Lock out serves no real purpose ever since they made it that you can only own one house per server. All it does is cheat people who get to the plot first out of their rightful purchase. To miss out cause of a crowed of campers clicking that sign over and over is just infuriating. not to mention the time wasted sitting there doing NOTHING when you can be advancing in your quest lines or Reputations quests of crafting etc etc etc. The lock out needs to change. Only lock out we need is after buying a plot you are locked in for 1 week from buying a new plot that way griefers don't run around buying plots to harass people, cause they are out there and God only knows what kind of sick jolly they get from this sort of stuff, and that's it.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

3 words.

Not the same.

Apartments are just FC rooms without the FC requirement. A small, compact space that, while giving the basic features of housing (decorating) it doesn't go far enough. Is it better than nothing? Oh yeah, definitely. Is it the same as regular housing? Not even close. Apartments are far more limited in that they don't allow for outdoor furnishing and customization, as well as providing an extremely small space for people to work with.

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Man...there's just so many things that are wrong in this response. I'll start with what you said about how apartments "don't go far enough". Here's a tough pill to swallow, but apartments are actually more on the generous side when it comes to housing in this game, so it's kind of annoying seeing the entitlement in this post. Here, in case you don't believe me, I'll break it down:

With apartments, you are given an teleportation aetheryte crystal for free, you must buy it yourself with an estate.
With apartments, you are given a chocobo stable for free, you must buy it yourself with an estate.
You are able to put a summoning bell, orchestrion, gardening pots and many other amenities in an apartment. The only things you are really losing from not having a house is a little more space, decorating the outside, and intercrossing. But, for literally 1/6 of the price of an estate, that's still an incredible deal. Honestly if it was up to me, I wouldve priced apartments at 1,000,000. Getting them at 500,000 is a steal.

Btw, I cannot think of a single MMO I've played that allowed one to customize the outside like FFXIV does, it's definitely not a norm or something one should feel entitled to. It should be seen as a perk, a bonus, so the fact that you're trying to say how it's essentially unfair that apartments can't do it
is silly to me. If you ask me, the best solution for the current housing situation is to just simply increase apartment sizes (but of course at an appropriate price).

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Originally Posted by TheForce

Man...there's just so many things that are wrong in this response. I'll start with what you said about how apartments "don't go far enough". Here's a tough pill to swallow, but apartments are actually more on the generous side when it comes to housing in this game, so it's kind of annoying seeing the entitlement in this post. Here, in case you don't believe me, I'll break it down:

With apartments, you are given an teleportation aetheryte crystal for free, you must buy it yourself with an estate.
With apartments, you are given a chocobo stable for free, you must buy it yourself with an estate.
You are able to put a summoning bell, orchestrion, gardening pots and many other amenities in an apartment. The only things you are really losing from not having a house is a little more space, decorating the outside, and intercrossing. But, for literally 1/6 of the price of an estate, that's still an incredible deal. Honestly if it was up to me, I wouldve priced apartments at 1,000,000. Getting them at 500,000 is a steal.

Btw, I cannot think of a single MMO I've played that allowed one to customize the outside like FFXIV does, it's definitely not a norm or something one should feel entitled to. It should be seen as a perk, a bonus, so the fact that you're trying to say how it's essentially unfair that apartments can't do it
is silly to me. If you ask me, the best solution for the current housing situation is to just simply increase apartment sizes (but of course at an appropriate price).

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I'm entitled...to my opinion. So you are right in that respect. But you don't seem to know what "entitlement" means. I'm far from entitled, or feeling entitled. I have a medium house. I have no stakes in this whatsoever. But even so the housing system we have could use some work in my opinion. And yes, apartments really don't go far enough in providing the same experience as plot owners. Do they get a free stable? Yes. A free aetheryte? Yes. One of those can be obtained for free already though, that being the aetheryte which can be bought with GC seals. But they do NOT have an exterior, and they do not have the same amount of room as regular housing plots, and as a result people cannot place that many furnishings and cannot perform crossbreed gardening. Even smalls are slightly larger because they have a basement. And normal plots, if owned by an FC, have a workshop. Apartments don't allow for that since they cannot be owned by an FC. I do agree with you, however, that increasing the apartment sizes, with a bigger price tag, would help greatly. If all of this makes me "entitled" then I'm fine to be as such all day, every day.

I have tried for a house since it came out. I have done it in various ways. I tried the camping and randome comming back, to check and click, only to see it taken. I tried the sitting around and spam clicking in the hope to get it. Only to get a swollen wrist and no house because I can't do it for hours on end.
I tried it where I came by and "only" stayed for a few hours clicking, for someone else to be lucky.
I also tried to ignore the feature completely but there is so much apeal in a house, for many reasons and much utility. But ignoring it only meant it taken longer, because the system haven't changed or evolved at all. it only stayed the same broken hell of mad clicking and mind numbing clicking.

There is great chance that on a highly populated server, one could win a real life lottery then it is to be the one, that is there at the right time, clicks at th eexact right moment it is released by the hidden timer, among 3-7 other hopeful players that stand around spam clicking.

So I'm petitioning for a different aproch to housing. The problem is not that there is limited number of housing. The issue is that the housing market is to static, there is to little swapping among the houses. Ones bought, many decorate it and then that is it.
So instead of adding more wards and more plots, think about how the excisiting unused housing mass either see some use, so the wards can start to be more alive, or have those that just horded a house because they can and then never use it, give it up for others to get a chance.
That or kill the whole concept all together. I rather have it all demolished and the time spend from teh developers on making more game content that I then can sit and play. Then have to try my luck with the housing roulette. In a matter of fact it might as well just have been a damn roulette, where you buy a lottery ticket and try to win a house. One caan do some raids, gather materials, craft or roleplay and utilize the game to what its made for, passing time and enjoying content, not stand around and click a sign.