Land Needs Are Unmet on Balmung

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Originally Posted by tocsin

If it meant the people on getting some sort of extra benefit, like a lower cost or better ping qualities, then yeah, all for that.

it would definitely increase the value of play time, so that people aren't being quite so lazy while they are on. maybe less people will just sit around in MD, wasting time chatting, and spend more time actually doing things.

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So could you just go ahead and make this your signature so everyone knows to not take anything you say seriously?

Housing that isn't meant "for everybody" that means that people are locked out of the decision to be able to get a house is a bad system. There's lots of time and effort they put into systems like coloring and training chocobos, gardening, and all the housing decorations you can make. Having that be locked to a segment of the population that had established itself on a server is a waste of resources. Defense of an obviously flawed and incomplete system like this is not what I thought would happen when I made this thread.

so even if they add more wards, it's going to be bought out in seconds of the servers coming back up, and you're just going to make another thread like this one complaining the server needs more wards. If you dont have a superior connection, a fast system, and at least 30 million gil on hand, you might as well forget buying a house on balmung.

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Originally Posted by Verdan

So could you just go ahead and make this your signature so everyone knows to not take anything you say seriously?

Defense of an obviously flawed and incomplete system like this is not what I thought would happen when I made this thread.

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When you make a thread, you have to expect to hear from both sides.

I happen to be on the side, that finds housing to be a pretty cool reward, for those that take the time to achieve them; the vanity version of finishing a relic, per say. I'm quite okay with it being gated behind the server population.

I will agreed that it is flawed, but I dont think we agree on the way that it is flawed.

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Originally Posted by Rokochan

so even if they add more wards, it's going to be bought out in seconds of the servers coming back up, and you're just going to make another thread like this one complaining the server needs more wards. If you dont have a superior connection, a fast system, and at least 30 million gil on hand, you might as well forget buying a house on balmung.

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That's why you need to auto generate districts. Bottled demand means that things are gonna go very quickly, so they need to add them until things settle down. This is the fairest scenario and the one that makes the most gameplay sense.
And yeah, I'd very much make another thread, probably titled "Land Needs Still Unmet on Balmung" if they added like 3 total districts and they were all snapped up in a matter of seconds. Because the land needs would still be unmet on Balmung.

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Originally Posted by Verdan

That's why you need to auto generate districts. Bottled demand means that things are gonna go very quickly, so they need to add them until things settle down. This is the fairest scenario and the one that makes the most gameplay sense.

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Well, just for clarity's sake, it's not like, on the same servers they have now, they can just crank up unlimited subdivisions now at no performance cost. It's just that they came up with a more efficient way to add/handle capacity internally. Adding more subdivisions or wards would still mean adding more servers. They said in the past that they'd be willing to do that to meet demand, but right now I think they're focusing more on the expansion and free company crafting. Adding more capacity would follow logically after that.

I think the biggest issue is the fact that all the servers appear to be exact replicas of each other, creating a big disparity between the busy servers and the lighter ones. I don't know if it must be that way or not, but if so, it would probably make sense to offer emigration incentives.

All players that own a house should have their subscription cost increased. All players that do not should have their subscription cost reduced.

I am tired of subsidizing the development of features available exclusively to a bunch of whiny, entitled brats.

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Originally Posted by Intaki

All players that own a house should have their subscription cost increased. All players that do not should have their subscription cost reduced.

I am tired of subsidizing the development of features available exclusively to a bunch of whiny, entitled brats.

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Thank you so much for that, it's been a long day and I needed a good laugh.

I still fondly recall the day I got my house... I went to Lavendar Beds, found the plot I wanted, used the /gimme command and boom! it was mine. Sadly, /gimme seems to have been removed from the game, as it hasn't worked on anything else. I guess it worked that one time because I deserved it for being me, though as for why others got to /gimme a Medium or Large house instead, I have no idea and that doesn't seem fair. It's like the game decided to give the Medium and Large houses to people who already had the most expensive crafting and gathering tools and gear for their level 50's, how fair is that?! I went to the guy in Mor Dhona who had the Artisan stuff and went /gimme and got nothing.

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Originally Posted by Buff_Archer

I went to the guy in Mor Dhona who had the Artisan stuff and went /gimme and got nothing.

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This just gave me a great idea! Since the housing system works so perfectly already, why not extend it to other parts of the game? Make it so there's only 500 pieces of foragers/artisan gear that can be bought from the Mor Dhona vendor! Same for the Supra and Lucis tools!

Wouldn't that be great?

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Originally Posted by polyphonica

it would probably make sense to offer emigration incentives.

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What do you think housing is?

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Originally Posted by Intaki

All players that own a house should have their subscription cost increased. All players that do not should have their subscription cost reduced.

I am tired of subsidizing the development of features available exclusively to a bunch of whiny, entitled brats.

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I'm on board with this. I would gladly pay per month to have access to a house, just like I pay per month for retainers. Support the game more, get more benefits. sounds reasonable!

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Originally Posted by tocsin

What do you think housing is?

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A broken system which gets continued development out of the pocket of players who have never and likely will never benefit from it.

And again, if housing is to be considered just fine as is, why not limit things in other sectors of the game in the same way? Only a certain number of Artisan/Forager equipment can be purchased, only a certain number of drops from raids per server; once they're gone, they're gone!

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Originally Posted by Intaki

A broken system which gets continued development out of the pocket of players who have never and likely will never benefit from it.

And again, if housing is to be considered just fine as is, why not limit things in other sectors of the game in the same way? Only a certain number of Artisan/Forager equipment can be purchased, only a certain number of drops from raids per server; once they're gone, they're gone!

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Actually, I would be pretty cool with that, IF they implemented a system of non-consensual transfer. Make the artisan gear like WWE Belts. You can challenge the wearer of the equipment to a "crafting competition", and whoever gets the best HQ goods, gets the gear. Raiding gear, transfer through dps skill checks (battle square anyone?). Housing through design competitions. whoever can actually design the best house, gets housing.

Dude do you have any ideas that AREN'T like shockingly terrible?

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Originally Posted by polyphonica

I think the biggest issue is the fact that all the servers appear to be exact replicas of each other, creating a big disparity between the busy servers and the lighter ones. I don't know if it must be that way or not, but if so, it would probably make sense to offer emigration incentives.

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I don't know much about their server architecture, but that does seem to have a ton to do with how limited the housing is. I suppose the best hope for us all is that as Heavensward goes forward they settle this stuff out. They're talkin' about 4 million players, but the housing would fit in with a small game with maybe a couple thousand, where a hard limit would be doable. Limits are creating horrifying economic situations and bottled demand now, even with the high prices they got a million complaints about when it was rolled out.

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Originally Posted by Verdan

Dude do you have any ideas that AREN'T like shockingly terrible?

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Then give him better ideas he can improve upon. In case you failed to notice his ideas are direct improvements of the ideas you guys suggest yourselves...lol.

Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me
Did you even read that post? Or the post where he says you should only get to play for a limited amount of time so that people don't hang around and socialize? Or where he called me a (GOT DANG)commie for wanting people to all be able to experience content in a videogame?
The problem I want to solve is housing being actually impossible to get on some servers, and practically impossible to get on others. A hard limit on housing forces this, and transferring isn't an answer, especially because there's a bunch of limits what you get to transfer and where you get to transfer to. Even if they eventually add a few districts, you're dealing with bottled demand on servers with no available plots, which will cause that stuff to be snapped up quick. The only real solution is to add a buncha new plots at once, or to continue adding districts at a good clip. Ideally, by auto-generation when stuff is full or certain plots are snapped up. If server architecture is the problem, I suppose we just gotta wait. But I'd certainly like to have that stuff beefed up before they add more stuff to housing, because a lot of people are locked outta content right now cause there's either no room or economic nightmares.
This is incompatible with people's stuff getting taken. I want everyone to be able to see the things they want, because this is just a videogame and we're all playing to have fun.

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Originally Posted by Verdan

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At this point, it's pretty clear you're feeding a troll. He's not from Balmung, so why should he even care what's going on there?
He has a house of his own, which he wasn't shy to mention a few times.
If anything, he's just enjoying laughing in our faces by making completely sarcastic bullshit suggestions to piss people off.

And people are biting, apparently.

Seriously, though. In the event that I'm wrong and he's not actually a troll, then he's just a self-entitled kid who likes being a special snowflake, so he wants everything to be limited. Which is a pretty stupid mindset to have in a MMORPG like FFXIV, where everything is pretty much designed to be casual and accessible.

Don't waste your time arguing with him.

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Originally Posted by Zelas

At this point, it's pretty clear you're feeding a troll. He's not from Balmung, so why should he even care what's going on there?
He has a house of his own, which he wasn't shy to mention a few times.
If anything, he's just enjoying laughing in our faces by making completely sarcastic bullshit suggestions to piss people off.

And people are biting, apparently.

Seriously, though. In the event that I'm wrong and he's not actually a troll, then he's just a self-entitled kid who likes being a special snowflake, so he wants everything to be limited. Which is a pretty stupid mindset to have in a MMORPG like FFXIV, where everything is pretty much designed to be casual and accessible.

Don't waste your time arguing with him.

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Considering replies like this one I cant fault him for trolling you. Between giving a troll reply and getting flamed, or making a sensible argument and getting flamed anyway, I would say the first one is the better choice.

Why respond with actual arguments if people will ignore them anyway, and burn you on a stake for not agreeing with them? Atleast if using a troll reply, someone gets enjoyment out of this pointless discussion.

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Originally Posted by Zelas

MMORPG like FFXIV

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That's the thing.. There is no MMORPG like FFXIV.. Much of FFXIV design defies MMO traditions and it's not exactly like the other FF games either..
I think the game suffers some serious identity crisis :) it's very wishy-washy when it comes to certain ideals.. It's like SE wants to please the casual gamers as well as the hard core gamers, which isn't a bad idea, but you can't please everybody..

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Originally Posted by Zelas

he wants everything to be limited. Which is a pretty stupid mindset to have in a MMORPG

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In the case of the former, that's how many MMOs are designed.. not all content is freely available to everybody. Housings are usually first come first serve, and you can even take other people's house/fort down and take over.

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Originally Posted by Zelas

FFXIV, where everything is pretty much designed to be casual and accessible

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Hmmm... But that's what would lead a lot of MMO players to get tired of the game.. Many of them need/want competition, no matter how trivial it may be. We need something to fight over, a medal, something tangible that we can see as a token of our efforts.



I'm not trying to twist your words by quoting you separately, but that's just how I feel about the game in general. It's very hard to put a finger on it and declare what kind of game this is.. I still enjoy parts of it, the hard core grindy part.. But the general loitering around cities and RP'ing doesn't really appeal to me much. In fact, most of those people just sitting around with shiny weapons with names like Kirito, Naruto, and whatever else anime character happens to be the flavor of the month just annoy the hell out of me, I wish there was less of that around here which is why I'd prefer a more hard-core dog eat dog environment and that can be achieved by limited goods which people have to compete over. Housing, gear, titles, money, whatever else it may be..

But I don't really care about the housing issue anymore, if it'll make you people open up your wallets and finally spend some money on the MB and get the economy flowing, by all means :)


I'm just throwing in my two cents to say what I feel is the source of this huge divide between the player bases' ideals.

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Originally Posted by GenJoe

In the case of the former, that's how many MMOs are designed.. not all content is freely available to everybody. Housings are usually first come first serve, and you can even take other people's house/fort down and take over.

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In EVE online, one of the most ruthless, cutthroat, and casual unfriendly MMOs in the entire genre, it is easier to acquire personal territory and keep it than it is to own a house on a crowded FFXIV server.

The FFXIV housing system does not cause competition. It's just a first-come first-serve game mechanic that functions as a gateway to even more game mechanics subsidized by the entire community for the benefit of only a few players.

I'm paying a monthly subscription, like everyone else. That alone is reason enough for everyone to have the same opportunities and the same freedom of access to the content that is being created with OUR money. I mean, it just doesn't make sense, why should I be spending my hard earned money if it's being used to develop something just a select few players can enjoy? I mean, I can't enjoy it, so why should I pay for it? Why should anyone? As it is now, housing would make more sense as an optional service in the mogstation that you pay for separately to your subscription.
People shouldn't have to transfer to a different server and they shouldn't have to do anything else but invest their available ingame time on it... And they definitely shouldn't be attacked by elitist pricks that have fragile egos, too much free time and a need to constantly feel "special".

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Originally Posted by Zelas

Feeding the troll.

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Off chance, am I the one being considered the troll here?

if so, I most certainly do not mean to be. I merely am pointing out, that housing, lijke in the real world, should be considered a valuable resource, and if we just give them out to everyone, then they cannot be.

I have an alt on balmung. He will never have a house. That's the price I pay, for having a character on such an over-populated server. That's the price we all pay for having our large server benefits.

pro:
lack of RMT spam
faster flowing market board
easier to find raid groups
more socialization
"balmung elite" status
cons:
no housing
login queues
more undercutters
less tolerant of newbies
nonexistent chances of getting credit for hunts

its just a tradeoff. The grass isn't greener on either side, it just tastes different.

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Originally Posted by tocsin

if we just give them out to everyone, then they cannot be.

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This isn't the real world. This is a computer game. And the housing system in this computer game is an utter embarrassment and stain on the quality of the product as a whole. Especially when other lesser games are delivering far better housing systems far more effectively.

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Originally Posted by Intaki

This isn't the real world. This is a computer game. And the housing system in this computer game is an utter embarrassment and stain on the quality of the product as a whole. Especially when other lesser games are delivering far better housing systems far more effectively.

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"effectively" is a very subjective term. so is "embarrassment and stain".

I tried Wildstar, and RIFT, and UO, and WoW, and countless other MMO's, and, other than UO, who regulated their housing limitations by pure landmass (open world housing, but only so much open space), all of the other MMO's with housing have failed to make them a point of desire. If everyone has a house, no one cares about houses. it is a disincentive for communal socialization, and encourages individuals to solo play.

As I said, I'm quite pleased with the lack of housing in FFXIV. That's also a subjective opinion. I think this is just a point where we can agree to disagree.

I'm just saying, that, looking at the game as a whole, there is a hell of a lot worse things going on than "Balmung doesn't have enough house plots".

Also, it's not just Balmung's problem anymore.
Even on Jenova, one of the smallest servers, there's 0 small plots. Medium plots in the range of ~15 or so and 7 mansion plots left.

Lot more than 0 I know but I'm willing to wager that by May, all the mansion plots will be bought out and by June, all the medium ones also..

My point? Housing shortage may be by design.. if it wasn't meant to be this way, there's no reason the newest and smallest of servers would have 0 houses left after just about a year of being open.

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Originally Posted by GenJoe

Also, it's not just Balmung's problem anymore.
Even on Jenova, one of the smallest servers, there's 0 small plots. Medium plots in the range of ~15 or so and 7 mansion plots left.

Lot more than 0 I know but I'm willing to wager that by May, all the mansion plots will be bought out and by June, all the medium ones also..

My point? Housing shortage may be by design.. if it wasn't meant to be this way, there's no reason the newest and smallest of servers would have 0 houses left after just about a year of being open.

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"one of the smallest servers" was Jenova 5 months ago, before transfers opened. as of recent character creation restrictions, Jenova is now one of the top 10 Highest population servers on FFXIV.

Makes sense that 4 months ago, before "transferring to Jenova" became popular, we had entire wards unfilled. It makes sense, now, that housing attracted more players.

System working as intended.

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Originally Posted by tocsin

If everyone has a house, no one cares about houses.

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Right, because they're too busy actually playing with their house to have the time to jerk themselves off to how great they are to have a house to lord over all the worthless plebs beneath them.

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Originally Posted by tocsin

If everyone has a house, no one cares about houses.

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If everyone has a house, everyone cares about housing. It becomes a system everyone interacts with, rather than something for a relatively small number of people to enjoy.

I know this is your opinion, but what you don't seem to realize is that it's a terrible opinion.

And yeah, it may be by design that housing shortages come about. Which is why I'm adamant about bumping the thread and talking about it, cause that's a crappy way to design a system unless there's technical shortcomings. Don't put a lot of work into a system that it's possible people will be completely locked out of.

Come to Zalera. We have smalls for less than 1m.

The catch is, you most likely won't have neighbours.

I do believe that there is no real advantage to playing on a large or small server, but there is a difference between having longer queue times and not being able to access a certain piece of content at all.

Also:

-Housing was in the ARR trailer and listed as a major feature of the game.

-Housing was never said to be an exclusive feature until after SE attempted to justify their inability to supply new housing wards.

-A lot of content is gated behind housing including: chocobo dyeing, gardening, chocobo raising, FC airships, and the actual housing parts themselves.

I get that some folks around here like the sense of accomplishment it took....but really all I see are people lording it over people's heads for not quitting real life to be able to experience a desirable aspect of in game content.

TL;DR is differing queue times and market boards are just different ice cream flavors of the same content. Housing is an entire segment of gameplay people are barred from.

Yeah so coming into a housing forum where everyone cares about housing, and saying no one cares, is really stupid. Just saying.

I feel like it should have been where FC Housing is separate from Personal Housing. Different Zones, also people can only have one house.
There's a guy on my server who has one FC house where he's the only member after inviting a bunch of people to kick them out and One personal housing. I feel like it should be World/Account Bound that you can't have more than one household.

That's just my feeling on it.

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Originally Posted by Mirakumi

I feel like it should be World/Account Bound that you can't have more than one household.

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That would certainly help with the current "housing hoarding" issue where people own several houses across alts so they can resell them at insane prices.

I mean... seriously. Someone was asking for 25kk for a small house in Lavender Beds, this weekend.
On Balmung, that's 5 times the (full) price of a highest grade small house plot. Not counting the fact that the person then has to buy the house at its full price.

It's getting pretty ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by Zelas

That would certainly help with the current "housing hoarding" issue where people own several houses across alts so they can resell them at insane prices.

I mean... seriously. Someone was asking for 25kk for a small house in Lavender Beds, this weekend.
On Balmung, that's 5 times the (full) price of a highest grade small house plot. Not counting the fact that the person then has to buy the house at its full price.

It's getting pretty ridiculous.

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The housing market is player driven. The full price for the plot is squares problem and what square has in the game as a gil sink. I'm sorry if you do not like that but it is the way it is. If I owned a small house I could get 20-40 mil gil for it on my server as that is what the demand is.

They simply need to open up 8-10 more wards with nothing but small and medium sized plots in them.

There are measures they can take before adding new wards. One thing they can and should do is default plots back to purchasable if the owner doesn't enter it for x period of time. There are people who have clearly never even bothered with their house after purchasing it (the entire thing and garden is empty with default name) and there's a medium plot opposite mine whose owner - to my knowledge - hasn't logged in for at least two months.

To counter the "but houses cost a lot of money and you'd lose it all" argument, if you don't log in for half a year, you obviously don't care enough to retain your land. Not to mention all of the houses bought with RMT gil that should automatically be removed. I'm aware that people get ill or have PC/console breakdowns, can't afford sub fee etc. but something needs to be done overall - not for individual servers. Even if it's a partial refund for relinquishing, but then I feel people would abuse that too. Not a very simple workaround, really.

Being a fairly pragmatic man, it is only good business management to add things as there is a need and not to grant excessive amounts to sectors that do not need such. This is a sure fire way of wasting time, money and resources.

The best option would be not to single out a specific server or servers, but rather have there be a "threshold" for ALL servers whereby Square is alerted to a housing crisis and will conduct an investigation on implementing more housing for said server -- no matter what server it is -- without wasting resources or the player's time (and risk 40M small when they said they did not want profiteering) by upgrading all servers when they may already have hundreds of wards open already.

This will not be favoritism, but common sense for business and catering to the player base -- so long as each server gets reviewed when they meet the threshold. Maybe every two to three months they will then upgrade any reviewed area that was flagged and found to be wanting.

What's especially frustrating about this issue is that there are tons and tons of plots that are taken but completely abandoned. It's unfair to the FCs who have the gil and the rank to buy a plot. From what I understand, Balmung is one of the only servers with this housing issue and it is an issue. This is not favoritism at all--it's a problem on one server that needs to be addressed.
Thalvaus's idea is actually pretty interesting. There is a demand for more housing and there should be a resolution to this problem.
I'm kind of frustrated that SE hasn't said anything about this at all and apparently there is no new housing for 3.0 which is funny because I imagine even more players joining at the drop of Heavensward.

I thought they said something about additional space being added after the expac drops? Hopefully they'll figure out what's making it impossible to generate a bunch of districts. This isn't something other games have a problem with, but for some reason this game can't add enough housing for people to play with without things all blowing up and rending millions of server farms.

My FC and I have been looking for just a small house for some time now. Most of us can't be on enough time during the week to make the gil for private houses, so we decided to save up together for a small plot. After months, we've only managed the amount to reimburse someone for what they paid for the land and purchase the plot, but of course that's not enough. We've been on Balmung since launch. Now we have a fully established company that's not going to each pay $18, lose most of our saved gil, and start our FC from scratch to go to a server with open plots.

No one is asking for special treatment for their server. Many, many people were looking forward to housing in the same manner that someone might look forward to say an expansion. If one server cannot access that content, it goes down for maintenance and the devs do what is necessary to ensure that the problem doesn't occur on the future. Apparently this has been deemed trivial content, unnecessary but for select players.

i agree with who ever said buying a house on final fantasy xiv a realm reborn is hard because when i have gone to buy a house there have been two things stopping me (1, there are no more houses) and (2, they are seriously over priced) and i hate the fact that there is also quests where you need to purchase a house so i say either make the houses easier to afford for the solo players to buy or take out all the quests that require the player to purchase a house first

--update--
there is someone on final fantasy xiv a realm reborn cerberus server selling a small house for 8 million gil

There is a problem with arguing that "X server that is smaller has better housing markets than a more populated server. Y Bigger servers can have more party finding opportunities, but you lose out on buying a house. Too bad".

And the problem is thinking there needs to be a choice. Either you can have an excellent time running with players in raids, or you can buy a house. As everyone is a paying customer here, why should we be limited by this choice?

Frankly bigger servers should see special treatment in the form of increased housing.
Smaller servers will get the same treatment when they experience the same limitedness in the housing market. They just have to grow as well.

Case in point, Hyperion has one house for sale every full moon or so, and it goes for 37million gil. Quite impossible to ever color your chocobo, train a racing bird, grow gardens, or anything in that realm when it's guaranteed only 1/9th of the total server population will ever have the chance to buy a house and experience that content.

Not to mention free companies that no longer are active, or homeowners who have up and quit the game will not have their housing relinquished, effectively narrowing the marketable houses even further.

It's happening all over the place! I warned you about fixed plots bro! I told you, dog!

Someone is selling a small on Balmung in Mists for 40 mil... That's 40 mil to relinquish the plot that's NOT tied to a FC. Then possibly 4-5 mil to buy the actual plot itself. This is ridiculous.