New Housing Wards for Balmung, please!

As some have suggested in General Discussion, I thought maybe addressing the housing issue in the specific server's category might be best.

Balmung is one of the most populated servers, if not the most populated server entirely, and as such it has highest demand for housing wards than other servers have. SE said they have decided that the current amount of wards and subdivisions has met the demand, but while that may be true on an "average" esteem, I feel this shouldn't be the method to be used for something like housing, which is greatly affected by the population and, as such, changes greatly from server to server. Making an average math for this is not the right way to go.

Clearly the most underpopulated servers have several free wards still, while Balmung and high-population servers do not. If adding wards is really not possible at the moment, then maybe taking empty wards from empty servers to give them to those who actually need them is due.

Or if not, implement the system that resets plots that haven't been used for 1-2 months. People who play only until the latest content is over and then unsubscribe to go play other stuff may not be happy about it, but housing was not implemented for people who are not playing the game, and Twelve know how many abandoned houses are sitting empty in the oldest wards and only take space occupied by people who have since long quitted.

In the end I don't really care which method they use, but please, monitor Balmung's situation with housing and see for yourselves. We really need new houses.

EDIT
A suggestion I've been suggesting for a while, but that I doubt will be considered since it'd require a general overhaul of the housing system:

Step 1) Make instanced housing. This allows everyone to have a house, especially if instead of gil it asks for GC points or Main Scenario progress like for most of other games. I'm thinking of an instance similar to the Demon Doors in the Fable games, with house, yard with field, well and whatever. It would start with small, and will be able to be expanded through further accomplishments.

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/...20090122222817

Step 2) Make the housing wards, limited as they are now (since they don't have the servers do add more currently). For a fee (like the current fees we have now), you'll be able to move your instanced house inside the ward. So for example, 4M to move your instanced Small Hut into a Mist Small Plot. Of course, the price will raise with your instanced house's size, and you'll need to select a plot your house can fit in.

This way, all those who want a house can have a house, and all those who actually care to have a neighborhood (and will use it), can have a neighborhood. Houses for all, and no more ghost towns.

I agree with this. I know dozens of people and FCs alike on Balmung who have the funds for a house...but no means to get them because of lack of supply. I myself am on the cusp of being able to afford a medium house, and am hopeful I can get one soon!

Given the present state of housing in this game's closest competitors, the FFXIV housing system is an embarrassing blemish on an otherwise robust and exceptional game.

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Originally Posted by Bluevann

Or if not, implement the system that resets plots that haven't been used for 1-2 months.

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No no no no no this is not the solution no.
Do you know how long and hard I worked to save up for my house? 6 months. 6 months of putting off PvE and most anything else to raise funding for my house. I stared at the market board for hours. I prepared months in advance for when new wards opened I would be able to get the desired plot of my choice, and then prepared harder when they were out to get the desired ward of my choice. Do you know how angry I would be if I had to take a break for 1-2, or even 4-6 months due to RL circumstances to come back to all of my hard work, all of my planning and focus to be gone in an instant? Imagine if hardcore raiders had their gear reclaimed if they did not log in for a month or two. Or achievements or even levels rolled back. That would not be fair.

Please do not take my house if I have to AFK for a few months unexpectedly TnT

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Originally Posted by Titor

Please do not take my house if I have to AFK for a few months unexpectedly TnT

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Actually I think there's already a system in place where if you're gone for a certain period of time the plot opens itself up.

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Originally Posted by Lilithium

Actually I think there's already a system in place where if you're gone for a certain period of time the plot opens itself up.

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There is not. They never implemented it thus far. They realized it would not be a good idea due to the reasons I stated above, and how upset people would be.
And it is not like they never changed their mind in the past. Heh. They did say it was something they were intending to do a long time ago, but never have, so I hope they will never go through with it.

Regardless of the "how to resolve it" in this case, I still feel the OP's general concern is spot on in the higher population servers. While I can definitely understand the concern with the resetting of plots, I would still say something should be done to help the housing along here.

For real like, please implement more housing wards based on server population and demand, not just two new wards whenever the fancy strikes. While I don't think it would be fair to kick personal houses back into the market if their owner doesn't log in for like three months, I doubt there'd be much of an uproar if a plot went up for sale for a Free Company that hasn't seen a single member log in for three months straight.

Wish they would give us the damn housing that was promised.

I was utterly disappointed/angry that personal housing was the same price and area as FC housing, the complete opposite of what was promised. Not to mention, an unfair set up because you pay as much for a house as an FC, but you can't have any extra rooms like an FC can. HMM.

Onto the matter at hand. I agree with the OP, though not with the removal of someone's property after 1-2 months. That's a pretty short amount of time considering the current economics. I've had to drop sub, and if I had come back to find that the house I saved up for with friends was gone, I would be devastated.

The number of housing and wards available should be based on the server population and the demand. On Lamia we had months of plots being open, but Balmung was a NIGHTMARE. Scrambling at 4am to get a SMALL plot because they were bought out within TEN MINUTES is taking the exclusive angle too far.

Another suggestion!:
The ability to trade a plot to someone!! So sick of seeing people have to drop double the gil to get a SMALL plot because the person can only "relinquish" it and not "sell" it to someone. If we could trade or sell plots (with the game making it automatic to the value of the plot or not), this would give people who bought a house but don't use it the chance to recoup their costs, thus being more willing to give up the plot to someone who will actually use it!

Saving up gil is difficult; especially for Role Players since we can spend good chucks of our time not earning gil at all. My small FC finally saved up for a small house, but none are available. So then we decided to go for a medium; none available. It would take us likely a year at this rate to save for a large, but oh looky there, -none- available.

It never dawned on us that we would have to race people for houses. Please, we did not look forward to it.

It just seems like common sense for higher populated worlds to have more wards, especially since it's been a couple months (basically since release day for Smalls) since all of Balmung's Smalls and Mediums have sold out. I can think of many people who have been interested in buying a house, but simply can't get one.

So yes, more wards, please.

I could be wrong, but didn't SE say that they would be adding more wards with every major patch? Or something similar? What happened to that?

Putting the unused wards into a pool that are allocated to servers when their existing wards fill up seems like a no brainer to me. LOTRO has had this sort of system for years (a new housing ward is allocated when the existing ones get close to being full), and they've managed to completely avoid a housing crisis.

Instead, what we're seeing is a weird sort of land grab mentality, where the plots on high population servers are bought out immediately by players who are lucky enough to get online right when the servers come up. These players then will charge gil (sometimes more than the cost of the plot!) for the opportunity to be there when they relinquish the plot.

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Originally Posted by Frejyalen

I was utterly disappointed/angry that personal housing was the same price and area as FC housing, the complete opposite of what was promised. Not to mention, an unfair set up because you pay as much for a house as an FC, but you can't have any extra rooms like an FC can. HMM.

Onto the matter at hand. I agree with the OP, though not with the removal of someone's property after 1-2 months. That's a pretty short amount of time considering the current economics. I've had to drop sub, and if I had come back to find that the house I saved up for with friends was gone, I would be devastated.

The number of housing and wards available should be based on the server population and the demand. On Lamia we had months of plots being open, but Balmung was a NIGHTMARE. Scrambling at 4am to get a SMALL plot because they were bought out within TEN MINUTES is taking the exclusive angle too far.

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This, so very much this!

A lot of valid points have been made in this thread and I completely support it. I am new to FFXIV but was thrilled to learn that you could buy and decorate houses. That excitement has waned in the face of low/no supply and the enormous cost.

To be perfectly honest I don't like how this is per Balmung specific only and that people suggested that this issue be taken away from General Discussion or Housing for that matter. It doesn't get this the type of attention or feedback this deserves. It's not just a Balmung issue either, as other high-population servers have been said to experience the same issues..

I just want to quote a relevant statement that Yoshi-P made during the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XVIII.

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A: We’ve been using all our energy to increase the amount of land, so we haven’t been able to touch this aspect of housing. However, with the new wards that were added, I feel that we’ve just about fulfilled the demands.

We’ll continue to add more land, but we’d like to improve the utility of each house.

However, the team that is in charge of housing, known as the Live Team, is also in charge of Free Company elements and the Gold Saucer, and they’re currently devoting all their energy to Free Company crafting and the Gold Saucer. We expect that they will be able to address this afterwards, but they will need a bit of time.

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The fact is, Balmung has no free lots. This is exacerbated when you have instances where a Free Company leader will immaturely just login and like a temper tantrum throwing toddler, kicking over 80 players in the Free Company out and then sit by their lonesome in the Free Company's house.

We understand that things take time but the larger and densely populated servers need to have some sort of respite from the heavy housing demand. There are 0 plots free. Not one large in any of the wards. Not one medium. It's expected that their are no small plots but we should be able to get more wards every so months with a server like Balmung. Find some time to continue to add land, but find some way to permanently fix the issue of land being in such a high demand that no one can even attempt to get land.

Argh! This is so bloody obvious I don't know how they overlooked it...

*grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter*

Please toss me into the chorus of Balmung-ish voices crying out for more land (and easier ways to get them) in general.

Someday, little house. Someday...

Ja already, I need space to build my lalafell training hut.

I agree with all his points on the mark. Although for an FC all its members need to be inactive for it to remove the plot. So that way if an FC leader is gone then they can still retain their place. If it is owned by a player? Them is it possible to leave for FC, make your house the FC house? Then just designate people to watch it? That sounds like it would allow you to keep your house. While still rulling out the people who are REALLY gone.

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Originally Posted by Titor

Please do not take my house if I have to AFK for a few months unexpectedly TnT

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If they did add the feature, you could prevent that by simply not unsubscribing and actually USE the house plot you took from other potential owners. It's no matter how much effort you put into something. If you don't use it, you don't need it. 10-15€/$ a month is not that big of an issue to pay for to keep a house, or hell, just have an FC mate log in and actually use the house to keep it up. It's just really sad to me how many people don't seem to use their houses daily as I do. Wards are ghost towns at the moment (and the funny thing is that Yoshida said they implemented neighborhoods because players demanded them. I wonder where those are players now? Maybe waiting for their house still.)

It's nothing personal and I share your feelings, but remember that house owners consist of 2% of the population, so they're still a minority and the uprage wouldn't be that great, not bigger than the uproar that was had when housing and personal housing were first implemented. And most important of all, the efforts and understandable feelings of a few (like yourself) are not superior to the amounts of currently abandoned ghost houses of players that will probably never return that are right now in the oldest wards. I've made my searches and though I cannot put down names, I know there's at least 3-4 long abandoned FC houses in each housing areas as of now.

I agree that housing should be based on server demand, and Balmung definitely needs more. With the upcoming 3.0 update where FCs can build airships in their houses, it'd be a good idea to release more house plots in the most populated servers, so that everyone will stand a chance >_<
Please SE, don't leave many people out of both housing and some of the new content.

Edit: I also agree with the post above mine. If losing a house after a few months of being completely inactive sounds unfair to some, leaving tons of ghost houses and stealing active people's chances to enjoy the house system sounds worse to me. No one can decide when people will be back or if they ever will, so it feels unfair to wait for them forever while other players are locked out of the content.

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Originally Posted by ExKage

To be perfectly honest I don't like how this is per Balmung specific only and that people suggested that this issue be taken away from General Discussion or Housing for that matter. It doesn't get this the type of attention or feedback this deserves. It's not just a Balmung issue either, as other high-population servers have been said to experience the same issues..

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I agree, but I do have a few reasons for posting here instead, mainly being:

- Threads in General Discussion flow way too quickly, and I'm worried the thread would be pushed down to the back-pages fast.
- Posting in Housing and GD usually leads to a lot of comments of the type: "Oh, but my server still has plenty of plots." or "Leave our servers alone, don't take our wards." or "Why don't you just change server then?"
- If developers respond, they'll usually give a very general replies ("We are monitoring the situation in all servers.") in which they point out that not all servers are full.

So, yes, I wanted Balmung's case in particular to be examined. Of course, players of other servers in similar situations could do the same in their respective sections too.

I agree with many of the points said here, although oppose that people should lose their housing if they've not played for a couple of months. Or it were to happen it only applies to active servers as mentioned above, and is a temporary solution. Another idea would be that people are limited on the amount of houses (as many have several houses here) they have per account or per world - in particular if you're playing on an already restricted world like Balmung.

More plots please SE!

I definitely think that housing should be available to everybody. Make the gil/time sink aspect the acquisition of exotic and exclusive furniture rather than the horrid process of trying to earn enough gil to buy a plot that may not even be available by the time you manage to scrape together enough coin to purchase one. It's a great investment since if it's more readily available and affordable then the game's economy benefits from it and many players will indulge in building something that they find special and want to invest in. Plus there's all sorts of nifty perks/features that can be baked into player housing as the game evolves.

I would also like to note that not having housing available right now is sort of demotivating. I would be doing so much more PVE/crafting content to make gil if my FC had a house to look forward to. Yes, we are saving up still, but very slowly. I've been just doing some SBing at Urth's Gift. Why bother with the grind if there is nothing to grind for?

I don't care for the idea of instanced housing. It'd be better than no housing at all, for sure, but I like being able to see other people's housing & other superficial benefits.

They need to just actually make enough wards to meet server demand. If it's a problem on low-pop servers, then restrict ward access. I severely doubt it's a complicated fix.

A lil nudge hoping for some more feedback!

I'm on Balmung as well, can't express how frustrating it is that not a single plot is open for my FC. Wards should be added based on server availability. Not blanketed across the smaller servers that will not be filled up. I really hope they take notice of this situation.

It's a little upsetting that on top of this, there's no facilitated way to transfer plots. I was moderated for selling a plot last week.

What'd be good too is perhaps Account bound housing so that people can't own multiple houses (Private AND FC) on multiple characters whilst FCs are left homeless and unable to do all the fun things in game that require housing!

I have faith they will add plenty of wards to prepare for Heavensward soon. They're teasing all this airship building and whatnot, there has to be a way to not lock out newer FC's from these features. Otherwise why even add them?

I'm also incredibly frustrated that there's no housing, I finally have enough gil to afford one and I've been interested in a house and wanting one (and saving!) since launch.

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Originally Posted by Rawk

I have faith they will add plenty of wards to prepare for Heavensward soon. They're teasing all this airship building and whatnot, there has to be a way to not lock out newer FC's from these features. Otherwise why even add them?

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Seriously. My (new) FC is still waiting for new wards, and my biggest fear is, when the servers come up the day they finally add them, they will all go super quickly and we won't have time to get any house.

A game's content should never be that stressful, really. >.> Why can't there be a few plots reserved to Free Companies?

I'm an SE apologist, it seems. There are people selling houses on Balmung. Negotiate with them!

It took me a month of party finder to find a house for our FC. But it could have taken under a week if I'd settled. Along the way, I met and commiserated with a lot of people looking for housing. All of them had visited houses I'd never seen. A lot of houses, I said no too, were bought up same day, but some took weeks or months.

There is an active housing market. I want that! I want it player driven. They set housing up to be an investment. If everyone had access to any house they wanted, it would just be a gil sink. Would run into a slew of QOL problems. Having worlds be different is a technical, logistical, administrative hurdle not to be underestimated.

Further, people who bought houses did so with the understanding they'd have them forever. Changing that contract midstream would be wrong. You keep the house, just like you'd keep your armor set, or your gil.

Honestly, I would be content with instanced housing for all the size of the Inn room (like the old Moghoues in XI), as long as I had access to gardening and the stable.

I think that they will add more housing plots.

Adding my voice to this. Housing is one of the biggest draws a game can have for me. I played WoW for eight years and they still haven't gotten with the times. I fawned over FFXIV's demo housing trailers and the like for ages. And when they said housing for individuals would come in a later patch, it was disappointing, but understandable if it would take some time to get right.

But then not only did they delay it, but they just threw us into the same neighborhoods as full guilds. And not even the same neighborhoods, but the same PRICES. Individual players expected to pay the same housing prices as full guilds! And they barely even added any wards! I worked and worked and worked for ages. I ignored every single other aspect of the game to make enough money for even a tiny little Small plot before patch day... And I did it! But did it matter? NO! Because we snapped up every single Small plot on the entire server in TEN MINUTES!

And when I saw Yoshi-P laughing in an interview saying they felt they'd met demand it was an even bigger slap in the face. He seems so genuine and caring about the game but the fact he's so out of touch with Housing is ridiculous. I don't think he understands how big a draw it is for some people. I have been playing this game through 1.0 and the Individual housing is still the only thing that made me take a break from the game for a couple months. It was that crushing.

Honestly I can live with scrounging to make the money as long as there's enough SUPPLY. Housing being such an elite, impossible thing to reach is just completely, entirely unfair. There's enough issues with this in real life, I don't play a game to feel the same way.

I'd like to see new housing wards procedurally generated. I'm not sure if there is a better name for it.

Basically, as soon as all houses are all bought up up in a ward, a new ward is automatically created with new, empty plots. Repeat as needed, with pricing as currently determined for plot rankings. I'm not entirely sure what the technical restraints would be for it, but it seems like a solution, given the demand for housing on high population worlds, where as on low populations worlds, these wards potentially wouldn't pop up so quickly. At least, that is what I would think, but I'm also not a programer, and don't know what kind of work would go into it.

I completely, 100% commiserate with AvalonBright. I have been looking forward to this for so long. When the initial prices were announced, I was crushed. I assumed I would never be able to afford my own house. Then they added personal rooms to FC housing and I thought, "Yes! Let's save up together, buy a house and each get our own rooms!" Well now we can't even do that. We're a small company, it's taken us months to save up double what a small plot would cost, and people have the nerve to ask for 40mil for a small plot. And let's not forget that's just to vacate the land.