Please Implement a Bid/Monthly Maintenance System for Housing

As the title says, I think a big problem with housing is availability vs demand, which could be solved with a bid and monthly maintenance fee system.
You want more land so more players can have a CHANCE at a house. However, the current housing system is a "First come, first serve." Meaning, the first characters to rack up the money and log in right after maintenance, has the chance to obtain his/her land for housing.

But my question is...what about the new players? What about the players who join the game AFTER all the land has been bought out? What about the land/houses that are taken up by inactive players and FC's in the future? I get it, housing is a luxury item - but the current system goes against what the developers are trying to achieve: Allowing MORE players to obtain housing..... How can you achieve a goal when the current situation logically does not allow room for such? There are just TOO MANY players who would like to own land for housing vs the amount of land that could possibly be implemented.

For the bidding system, each plot of land would have a minimum bid set by the economy (though I'd have to argue it would be lower than the current standing prices of housing) and for a set time period, players can place bids on the land - the highest bidder within the last ~5 mins of the bid takes the land. Of course, when they bid, gil is taken then and there. Whoever wins the bid has the money taken permanently, while the others have his/her gil sent back via moogle mail or automatically. When players want to sell the land, it goes back on the market for bidding.

To make sure houses are kept in use, instead of land being taken by inactive players and fc's, houses must be "maintained" with a set monthly fee. If the fee is not paid, the land goes on the market. That way, land can become available to other players in the future - including newbies. Logically, if you make enough money to purchase land... then you must make enough money to maintain it, whatever the means.
If I'm incorrect about our current housing system, feel free to correct me, as I do not own a house/land myself. I guess I am just having a hard time understanding the logic behind the current housing system.... then again, the system I propose just seems too logical in the end, eh? :p (sorry I could only put 1000 characters in post)

This would just enable the people with the most gil to get all the land. There are people who don't have very much gil who would like to have a house. Those people would always be outbid. The prices of even small houses could be driven up beyond what they are now by bidding.

You can edit your post to make it longer.

A bidding system is already in place, granted it's a reverse bidding system. It just starts out at the max bid and works its way down. If someone buys before you, you were outbid.

As to a maintenance fee. I spent every penny I have getting my home and building permit. I would be pissed if I lost it because I couldn't afford the maintenance fee. The only way a maintenance fee would have worked is if the houses weren't so expensive in the first place.

Just click "edit" and add the +1000 characters text in your first post.

Honestly i dont believe this wouldn't fix the issue. While it would get rid of first come, first serve there is still too little land available. Costs of houses would rise even higher then they are now which would make even more complaints. There is just not enough supply for the demand. Until that changes it will still be inaccessible to most. Though I do believe an auction system would be a lot of fun and better, it still won't change the frustration people have with land availability.

I do support an auction house being added for new land similar to FFVI's auction house. It would be a fun event.

RMT approves this message.

Well this is for the future. I can see how it is sort of impossible to have these features now, as the system was JUST implemented, and the economy is still growing.

SE could essentially allow players to ONLY have one plot of land. - that way, one person with millions of gil cannot own more all the land.

As I stated, the minimum bid would have to start LOWER than the current cost of housing - it is only logical that this current price is the max an invididual can afford according to the current economy. Yes, it would suck if you lost your house to a monthly maintenance fee, but I'm not talking about several mil - maybe 300,000 gil ~ 500,000gil would be the reasonable pricing. As I said, this is something SE could do in the FUTURE, since the current situation does not allow room for such excessive spending.

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Originally Posted by Saigwa

Yes, it would suck if you lost your house to a monthly maintenance fee, but I'm not talking about several mil - maybe 300,000 gil ~ 500,000gil would be the reasonable pricing.

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300k-500k is reasonable? For a month?!? I don't think so. There was a post not too long ago asking people how much gil they had and the vast majority of people were below 1 mil. My house was 1.5m. It was in an old ward in the Goblet. My girlfriend and I pooled our money together to get it and our building permit. When all was said and done I had 10k left and she had 1k left. I play most days, but I don't have the time to dedicate to making gil and still be able to enjoy the game to come up with 300k a month.

300,000 gil monthly maintenance? That will just be a pain in the ass, and irritate everyone. Oops forgot to pay my maintenance, guess everything I saved up for is gone. If someone takes a small break from the game for whatever reason, they don't need to lose everything.

Well, im not the one with the logistics, just guessing. SE would be the one to do all of that - and I would hope they would be reasonable with the price. Of course, we are also on different servers and from what I've seen, 300k is not a lot for my server. From what it looks like on your server, I would take a guess of 100,000 gil. Again, just guessing since I don't know the statistics. As for the break thing, thats the problem. As I stated, there are more people than land available - there always will be. Perhaps SE could make it so all your items and housing stuff go somewhere if you cant pay up the monthly fee, but it would be more problematic when there are players with months of inactive subscriptions just taking up space someone could use. Now, this sort of system is just a suggestion. SE could do it every other month, or every 3 months - whatever. This is just a simple outlined proposition to fix a problem I can see SE having to deal with in the near future

Honestly, why does it even need to be that high? If the entire point is to make sure that somebody is still playing then 1 gil or 100k gil still has the same effect. I might be ok with this if it was a very small fee (say 1k-10k gil) and you could pay several months in advance like LotRO allows.

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Originally Posted by Saigwa

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I will never get this kind of thinking. We all get gil the same way. Why do the legacy server have to pay more than others? That's not even fake difficulty, its simply unfair.

SE was already working on a system that if no one in your FC goes to your house for X amount of days you will lose it. The system was pushed back until more adjustments could be made because their first proposal of 30 something days was too short. They never said they abandoned the system so I expect to see it come up again later and be applied to personal housing as well.

Definite NO to monthly maintenance. They explicitly stated there would be no upkeep required for housing. If they wanted a fee, it would have had to have been there from the start, you can't slap a fee on houses already bought in retrospect, that would be beyond disgusting.

What they could perhaps do, though, is introducing some new houses for rent. Some wards could be rent-based instead of charging millions for land. Perhaps they could even make it so that rent houses all look similiar from the outside and can't have their exterior changed, if that would go easier on their precious resources and allow for more houses to be provided.

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Originally Posted by Amenian

Honestly, why does it even need to be that high? If the entire point is to make sure that somebody is still playing then 1 gil or 100k gil still has the same effect. I might be ok with this if it was a very small fee (say 1k-10k gil) and you could pay several months in advance like LotRO allows.

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It doesn't. My point is that there should just be some sort of currency exchange to prove that you are still an active player and the house does not go back on the market. The problem is inactive players owning land. Which, shuts out old and new players from being able to own said land. In fact, It also really doesnt have to be currency, it's just the only thing I can think of since most mmo's i've played has had the currency check system for housing like this. I just want SE to do SOMETHING about inactive, wasted land others could use.

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Originally Posted by Cutie_McSnuggles

SE was already working on a system that if no one in your FC goes to your house for X amount of days you will lose it. The system was pushed back until more adjustments could be made because their first proposal of 30 something days was too short. They never said they abandoned the system so I expect to see it come up again later and be applied to personal housing as well.

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I'm hoping they do something like that then. Last FC I was in, bought land but there was no house, and no one had logged into the game for a while.

Can we please stop asking to play an economy mmo?

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Originally Posted by Titor

RMT approves this message.

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Pretty sure they're already making a killing on the current system.

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Originally Posted by Souljacker

Can we please stop asking to play an economy mmo?

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Good idea, let's suggest that to the developers of our economy mmo.

Rather than focusing on taking away people's houses and land that they paid ridiculously high prices for, I really think SE should get their crap together and provide more land. Nothing is going to keep a player who's taken a break from the game from coming back like knowing that the house they worked for for ages is quite simply gone, without any of their invested money returned.
I for one know for sure that I won't ever even consider coming back to the game once I took a break and lost my house because of it.

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Originally Posted by Saigwa

monthly maintenance fee system.

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Nothing encourages people to come back and play FFXIV like getting kicked out of their house.


Theoryfun: Could I get a grant from the Eorzean Housing Authority to cover my expenses while I'm deployed overseas? Will my mortgage qualify for Ward Affordable Refinancing Program (WARP) if I'm recovering from having Virus cast on me? What if I not a tank, and I don't get the In Need bonus for Roulettes. Can I get a subsidy from the Department of Queue Normalization?

Your idea probably wont work, if there was a bidding system in place, then its pretty much whoever has the most money will get the house. Housing at like 1 to 5 mil right now i think is pretty good pricing and most people should have this amount if they are fairly active and just do their daily. I rather it be a first come, first serve system, so that everyone have a chance of owning a house not just the rich/RMT customers. What they should do though is only allow 1 house per SE account, right now its 1 house per character and I read how some people bought 8 houses across their characters, just plain selfish.

And they don't need a monthly maintenance cost, that is a bad idea. They already have a system in play to check for activity, if i remember right if you don't visit your house for like 30 or so days, it is automatically relinquished. I would have prefer if your house was relinquished, you get your money back, but instead you lose your money. I'm pretty sure SE did this to prevent people from flipping the market, IE buy all the houses, and then bid off the land to buyers. Personally I'm not a fan of the whole relinquishing idea, but I do see where they are coming from. But there are RL circumstances that prevent people from logging in, for example if you are in the army and get deployed. Not exactly the best to come home from service only to have your in-game house taken away by SE.

Here's the way LotRO does it:

You pay a fee for the land and the house that's already on the land (none of this BS land plot fee AND house permit fee crap). This fee is not huge like it is in FFXIV; it is rather affordable to players of almost any play style.
You then pay a weekly upkeep fee. You can pay in advance up to 6 weeks or so. This is not a huge fee either, and is very affordable.
If you fail to pay your upkeep fee, you do not immediately lose your house. There is a period of days (I can't remember how many) before your land is automatically surrendered and put up for sale again.

In that game, each ward has a set number of FC plots, then a set number of various size plots for personal housing. As wel, new housing wards are AUTOMATICALLY generated when all existing wards are full. Why a game from 2007 can have such a similar system to FFXIV yet be vastly superior in all ways boggles my mind. I know all games and game engines are not created equal, but this is a simple example of "we should have taken more time to consider other successful personal housing systems."

Dear SE: Please allow me to buy as many houses as I want.

Then add the ability for me to rent the house to other players on a month-to-month lease. If they don't pay on the first, then I can evict them (we might need a judicial system as well to resolve disputes but the GMs should be available since they aren't currently doing anything about RMT)

Thanks

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Originally Posted by Riepah

I for one know for sure that I won't ever even consider coming back to the game once I took a break and lost my house because of it.

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If the house wasn't taking up real-time space while you aren't paying, I'd agree. That's why this system is such a failure. Personal housing should be personal, not a monument to a players dedication to earning currency.

I'd rather they just add new wards as soon as a previous one fills.

Well, I'd be able to afford a "maintenance fee" but I wouldn't want nor like it. Seems like a pointless gil sink that would just scare the poorer people on the game away from houses more than they already are. lol. This wouldn't make things available, it'd keep the rich in their houses and the poor out of houses forever.

They're adding more plots soon, and I'm sure as they improve and add servers more houses will continue to come out. Also I'm hoping they come out with a system to share houses between spouses or even a select amount of friends in the future.

No to monthly fees once we have the house. I don't want to keep the FC in money making mode just to maintain something we've already spent millions to obtain. I'm not opposed to changes in how houses are initially purchased though.

While I understand the frustration of not having a house, you said it yourself. Housing is a luxury item. A luxury afforded to those (at the time) who have been here since launch or even before (legacy) who have saved enough to have one. They've already said they are opening room for more housing in the future but that's not good enough for a lot of people. You're suggesting a system to revoke ownership of inactive players with personal houses, when personal houses haven't even been out a week? Why don't we just give new players all the vet rewards when they sub their first month too just to catch them up seeing as they didn't sub a year ago and get them then?

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Originally Posted by Elim

Well, I'd be able to afford a "maintenance fee" but I wouldn't want nor like it. Seems like a pointless gil sink that would just scare the poorer people on the game away from houses more than they already are. lol. This wouldn't make things available, it'd keep the rich in their houses and the poor out of houses forever.

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"Poor people" in LotRO had houses. Because they were affordable, and the upkeep fee didn't break the bank. It was far less than you'd earn while playing for any given week.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

No to monthly fees once we have the house. I don't want to keep the FC in money making mode just to maintain something we've already spent millions to obtain. I'm not opposed to changes in how houses are initially purchased though.

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Again, the upkeep fee is tiny. And housing should be much, much cheaper if there's an upkeep fee.

I don't think owning a house should be considered a luxury.

Not everything in these games needs to be a gil sink, a time sink ,a struggle a competition or even a goal. I consider housing a basic thing, a basic need, its just a home in a pretend world no need to kill the fun of it O.o.

I don't think this games housing is very good at all, but that said, I think this one feature should be available to everyone for almost no fee (save the costs for customizing, decorating etc and possibly even expanding the house interior one day) certainly no maintenance fee , and I also disagree with se being able to take the home away if inactive. Boost your resources properly and let all customers enjoy this small feature to their hearts content....for once.

Personal homes imo should have been 1 size for all, very very cheap (no more then 100k) and plentiful enough to house all who wanted one, yes, right away or don't implement. Anything short of that is a blunder on ses part and makes the game look a lot older then it is and comes off and a tad tacky.

I have my fc house and personal home, its unacceptable that so many others can not. There are many cool things about the game, but I cant even fathom how a gaming company who are supposedly so intelligent..... cant grasp the most basic of concepts.

I have said it once and I will say it again "common sense is not that common".