Critical Feedback: Housing is not for Casuals

@Squeenix Mod Team:

I am finding really troubling trends in FFXIV, especially since itiis an MMO that touts itself as "casual".

Specifically, I log on at irregular times and for short bursts here and there. In my time playing I have saved a hefty sum of money and finally thought it might be nice to buy a house. HOWEVER, logging in just two hours after the maintenance ALL S-size houses on my server sold out, including the high-price new lots (Lots 31+). Most were bought by individuals and not FCs. Moreover, I overheard about how some bought several houses for various mules.

I understand the deal with legit endgame stuff, but having to blitz into the game like it's opening time on Black Friday is ridiculous.

See LOTRO- when housing districts fill, they automatically generate new ones. Coding this is really not nearly as taxing on servers as you are claiming it to be.

i think its really a bad idea to mix personal and FC housing in the same zone. My neighbouring houses are all individually owned and the zone is like a ghost town

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Originally Posted by kaynide

@Squeenix Mod Team:

See LOTRO- when housing districts fill, they automatically generate new ones. Coding this is really not nearly as taxing on servers as you are claiming it to be.

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While I get that you're kinda upset about the whole Housing situation (and, I'll admit, not being able to get a house myself has me a bit steamed since I have a bit of a spending problem as it is), one thing that has to be understood is that FFXIV does not operate with the same framework as other MMOs on the market, nor does it have the same number of players.

It could be that LOTRO has a low pop compared to FFXIV and its framework is better optimized for housing. But for whatever reason, FFXIV can't seem to handle more than a comparative handful of housing per server. I mean, if the devs thought the servers could handle it, I'm sure they'd just be like "Hey guys. I heard you like housing wards, so we're gonna be releasing Wards 61-6000 and reducing all housing costs by 90% to make it more affordable for the whole community!"

Seriously, if the devs could do that, the majority of the playerbase would practically be worshiping Yoshi-P like the people who use Steam already worship Gabe Newell. But it can't be done. That's why, instead of adding infinite wards, they put in a 30-day forfeiture clause for every house stating that, if you do not touch your house for 30 days (or however long it was), your house goes back up on the market.

There are intricacies involved that only the devs truly understand because the devs are the ones who built the framework and know what their servers can handle.

It actually isn't the coding that I think is stopping them. It's database concerns. Whatever database system they are using (educated guess from me is Hadoop), it requires that the server be able to respond to a request in a certain amount of time. That's why we had a 25 hour long maintenance yesterday - so they could drop all the new housing wards onto the same server rack as the old ones.

I'm sorry you couldn't get your personal house. Hopefully SE will add in more wards.

I think only allowing one personal house per server/account could be a good thing.

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Originally Posted by Korbash

I think only allowing one personal house per server/account could be a good thing.

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I agree with this, but also in that right all chars on that server/account should have unrestricted access to said private house, I think that's a fair trade and an awesome solution

Thank you for your post, OP. I am an old warrior on the housing front. I love housing and think housing is a great feature, and I really want it to be great in FFXIV, but so many players are cut out of the loop for this content. Either they can't make the steep gil requirements, or houses aren't available when they save up the gil, or server errors prevent them from logging on during the initial rush. This is a feature that we're all paying to support, and whatever solution they come up with, I really hope that they make it so that every player is eventually, through their own work and achievement, of course, able to enjoy housing. As it stands, it's a feature for the elite and the lucky.

From what Yoshi said back in September, part of the reason for the infrastructure updates that came with the patch was to allow them the freedom to be able to expand however much they needed to going forward so expect more subdivisions going forward. They probably don't want it autogenerating new Wards and/or Subdivisions as eventually you could end up with a fresh new zone based on server conditions that proceeds to only have 1 or 2 houses bought. Do that across all three areas and you could have three fresh Wards that collectively don't even have one full Ward's worth of purchased land, adding up to large server space waste.

One house per server/account is an absolute must at this point since so few players can get access to housing. I would like to think no one would buy more than one house per server but I suspect there are plenty of assholes out there who don't care about others and just want as many gardens as possible.

I have reluctantly begun to accept that there probably are server side limitations but if that is true, SE has to ask themselves why they are the only major MMO with this problem and just FIX IT. I am just so fed up with being shut out from such a, for me, major part of the game. In my case it is because of the ridiculous prices on my server. If I hadn't made some good friends on my legacy server I would simply have transferred to a smaller server and got the house I want there. Maybe that is what SE are doing, using this as a way to even out server population.

Housing is a matter of player priority. I am not a rich player... I never have been. I don't like crafting, and I don't like grinding anything simply to make money, therefore I do not focus on gil at all unless I need to. That said.

Owning a house was a priority to me. I wanted a house more than I wanted anything else... therefore I simply choose not to spend money until I had a house.

I did not make any extra efforts to gather the money. I simply:

1.) Sold the stuff my retainers were bringing me from ventures. (Casual)
2.) Sold stuff I acquired from Mythology Tombs, GC Seals, Dungeon Chests and other random things I acquired. (Casual)
3.) Sold Glamour Dispellers for 10x or more than what I purchased them for from the vendor. (Casual)
4.) Completely stopped spending money until I had a house. (Over 3 weeks with no extra gil farming.)

You see you CAN earn a house casually. However if it is not a TOP priority for you as an individual you'll find the goal unreachable.