Is Housing a major feature of the game?

Not everyone can have the same experience playing the same game. There are some things in this game that not every player can experience. From temporary events, to the challenge to beat one piece of content that it has become very easy to beat today thanks to power creep, or like not being able to play with some of your friends because they are in a different server, or like not being able to get some item because it was tweaked or removed.

Housing may be one of these things, where not everyone can experience. They're limited because the game itself, is design and the infrastructure the game is based upon.

BUT... this time, Housing (specially Shirogane) was featured as what it seems it is a mayor feature of this game. It's on Stormblood's product page, and neither that page or the entire FFXIV site specify the limits and availability of this feature. Any new player would assume they can get a house by just buying Stormblood and actually, Housing is one of the few elements of the game that is both persistent and not available for everyone.

So, is Housing a mayor feature of the game? Should anyone be able to get a house? And how this can be changed without negatively affecting players who already have one?

Whether it is or isn't a 'major feature' is irrelevant. It isn't a requirement for core gameplay and functions primarily as a status symbol & gil sink. As such there should be no expectation that everyone will get a house.

Stop through in around 'mayor feature'. I have no idea what you are referencing. What is that?

There is absolutely no reason why I get to pay a 15 dollar a month subscription and have a house while someone else pays the same damn subscription for the exact same services and perks and has nothing. Period. I cannot understand why it is so difficult to wrap the mind around this seriously simple concept.

No :) and since my text is to short i say it again No :)

Yes.

After your long work fighting various primals, collecting some herbs for the poor and playing the Warrior of Light, you just need a place you can hide from all those ever needy NPC's ...
And ofcourse glamour and housing is the real endgame. Oh and ofc you need a place where you can ERP in privat.

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Originally Posted by Kalamon

Whether it is or isn't a 'major feature' is irrelevant. It isn't a requirement for core gameplay and functions primarily as a status symbol & gil sink. As such there should be no expectation that everyone will get a house.

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What's "core gameplay" though? I mean sure we're all murder hobos for hire when we start out but even a murder hobo dreams of having a roof of their own over their head one day. If we never get that house we can never change jobs to murderer for hire.

You dream too big!

Murder hobo for life.

I think that everyone should be able to own a house, but I also think people blow their importance and usefulness way out of proportion.

Housing is a feature.
Just like Duty Roulette is a feature.

But housing is the only feature that is denied to the majority of the player/customer base because they failed to click an object within a few mins of the game coming out of maintenance.
Replace the word housing with other features such as "Raiding, beastman dailies / chocobo license / gold saucer access etc" and it should be abundantly clear to everybody as to why some players are upset.
It's sad how there are people out there who still fail to see this, or erroneously attribute it to player-attitude problems/demands for freebies.

I don't think is a major Importants but huge disappointment when you have around 81mil save up to buy a place of your dreams just to no get one because somone got it 1min after Maitance ended lol

Se needs to make more wards period. Its obvious its an issue. People keep going on about it (its obvious) youre talking about it right now...the fact youre talking about it..means its an issue and u are clearly aware of it. Se is a company...they are not stupid. They are very much aware of it. They choose not to fix it. so ... .now what? hmm

It depends on the player, an example: I dont do Savage Raiding, so for me this part of the game is not a major feature for me and if it was up to me, developers would not have spend time and money in creating them, but others do like them and for the hard-core raiders this is a major feature.

Since housing provides certain features that are exclusive to it, I think one could call them a major feature and if you look at the forum, you will see that people are very vocal about it.

Just like casual and hardcore playstyle, what is a major feature of a game is subjective to each and every player.

Given how the community is reacting to the shitfest that occurred today, I could also make a safe assumption that housing is a major feature for majority of FFXIV players.

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Originally Posted by Kalamon

You dream too big!

Murder hobo for life.

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Nah, you dream too small.

Aim to topple the heavens themselves or die forgotten in a ditch with only the crows and worms to keep your bones company.

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Originally Posted by Tillie

There is absolutely no reason why I get to pay a 15 dollar a month subscription and have a house while someone else pays the same damn subscription for the exact same services and perks and has nothing. Period. I cannot understand why it is so difficult to wrap the mind around this seriously simple concept.

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The housing is made for gil sinking more than anything. When the housing was out at first, the very first patch back in 2014, the house I got for the fc was at 79 million gil. Some were even higher than that. The lowered the cost as economy got more stable but the gil sink is a huge part of the reason. And also many people can't raid or have the skills to do it as well, what makes you think they have the right to clear the content as well? It goes as an example btw, not saying it's part of the subject here.

I come for the Adventure and the story of the game, I stayed because of sim-housing. Joking aside, after finishing all the weekly tome stone farming, I literary spend hours doing the house make over. So Yes, I'd say housing is a Major feature of the game.

Not really. I've been playing since 2.1, when housing was first introduced. I remember our small FC saving for a house and getting it like a few weeks later (this was on Balmung, and yes housing back then wasn't this bad lol). But I never really thought "Oh I have to have a personal house or I can't play this game!", because... I didn't come to this game for housing. This year, so like 3 and half years later, I moved from Balmung and I did get a small personal house because I could. I had spare gil and I randomly stumbled upon a small house in LB. It's a nice location, it's on its own island, I can fish in my backyard and all, it's really cool. Have a little personal bridge leading to it and I really do enjoy being in LB. But even when I found the empty plot, I was debating with a friend if I should go for it for like an hour or so. I wanted to experience gardening mostly, tbh, so I went for it. I love it, but... it's not why I play. I got an apartment in Shirogane today so I can have cheaper teleportation to that part of the world, mostly. But... is it a major feature? No. You can experience almost everything in the game without it. Heck, just get an apartment and you can experience almost everything but advanced gardening and plopping down outside furniture.

I left my old FC and made a new one with a few friends when SB came out. I scrimped and saved to get a house today, looking forward to the chance to garden whilr my friends planned to decorate. The tier3 bonuses and company exploratory ship were things we looked forward to working on together.

Plots on Behemoth were sold out in ten minutes, and now I don\\'t even want to log in anymore. My schedule precludes me from raiding, and I got all my creation gear this last week. The one thing I\\'ve been waiting for these last few months is out of my reach because others were luckier in logging in this morning.

That is the experience a lot of people had today. No, housing isn\\'t everything, but it is a big enough issue to have affected the experience of a substantial portion of the player base. This feels like the SB launch all over again, where high expectations of quality content were marred by dev mishandling. For the launch it was the Raubahn/Pippin walls, and for 4.1 it was the housing crises. While the wall came down by the end of early access weekend, there is no hope for housing, so there are some of us left with only disappointment.

make it so only the first 720 players who unlock Rabanastre are allowed to do it and see how well that goes over?

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Originally Posted by akaneakki

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Nope. Gil sink? Doesn't matter. Still part of the game that some people are paying for with literally no way to access it. Also: those people still have the opportunity to raid. There is no luck or literally how fast they can hit a login button to hit "find group" for a duty. It's there, it's available, them not participating is their choice. Many people have no choice in the housing matter because it is not available to everyone and the "but not everyone participates in ____" is a garbage argument.

There is no excuse and there is no comparison.

No it's not. Go play the Sims if you want a house.

You don't even need one. You want a convenient MB/Bell? Limsa has you covered. There I just saved you millions.

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functions primarily as a status symbol & gil sink.

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It functions that way because it's so poorly implemented. If there wasn't a handful of houses it wouldn't be a "status"(luck) symbol.

Housing grants a significant advantage to solo players and fcs. Many materials can only be gotten through fc airship missions and many useful plants (including the thavnairian onion) can only be gotten from cross planting. I have literally made millions just from gardening.

We can argue all we like about whether it's a major feature or not. But there is no denying the monetary advantage a player/fc can have when they use their house to its full capabilities. Housing is not only cosmetic.

I'd just like a place where I can decorate a little and grow some plants.

Oh wait ... can't. No house. (unless something else allows me to do so)

Housing is considered a major feature for certain players who do not feel that end game is everything to them. Even if they do raids and end game, some people just do other things as hobbies to play this game and support Final Fantasy XIV. Housing in this game is beautifully done in regards to designs. But the way they hand their housing to players are way too small and inconsiderate.

Comparing to Sims, this is by far better.

Exactly this. End game raiding isn't something my schedule allows, but popping in for a little every day to garden and help out my friends in fc with the housing stuff WAS something I could have done, if only I was luckier...

Housing is important to me because I spend too much time in this game, and I love feeling that there's a small spot in Eorzea where I can live. It makes me feel more like a part of the world? Also, housing is a creative tool, a fun one, and thus it'll attract creative players. Raiding isn't for everyone.

Housing is something that other MMOs have handled better, so I don't see the way FFXIV is mishandling as some reason to continue mishandling it, as if it's justification for the debacle. Moreover, housing was advertised alongside everything else with Stormblood. And of course they have the senselessness to send out emails yesterday advertising housing; I got my email about 10 hours after all the plots had sold out. And to those downplaying player demand for housing, the fact that plots were gone in less than 15 minutes from the server coming up yesterday should have those people really take a step back and think about what that means in terms of player demand.