Poor Housing System

I would like to preface this by saying that, while I am a relatively new player, I have about 7 friends who all play this game and regularly give me information on how it works and what the systems in place are.
In terms of decorating and generally living in houses, I think this game has a fabulous system. I love the intricate work you can do in decorating and designing a home, and the sense of community in wards as a whole feels very rewarding.

That said, the house purchasing system is the single worst designed system in an MMO that I have ever seen. None of my friends, even the ones who own houses, really understand how the purchasing system works. I've seen timers on houses hit 0 and reset, not knowing why they never became available for purchase, and I've sat at houses for 8+ hours multiple times doing nothing but trying to purchase it; everyone I've spoken to believes this to be a normal experience.

The system is grossly unintuitive, poorly designed, and perhaps worst of all, under-explained. The official FFXIV page on housing doesn't even mention the function of the timer or when houses are available to purchase. Following the logic of that page, one is lead to believe they can immediately purchase any house on sale.

I really and truly love this game, but this piece of it has left such a poor taste in my mouth. If anyone understands the system or has a guide to it, I would very much like to know. Thank you for your time.

It is the fault of the many people who bought houses to resell 5x the purchase price.

Before, you could just buy when it's available. You can thank the profiteers, it's always like that in life, we pay for dishonest people.
The best you can do is buy the first house you can and move to a free location that you prefer.

In both cases, the system has its faults. The first is difficult to buy a lot as everyone camps the panel and the second, you pass in front of all the people who camp in front.

There are people who propose a system of instantiation of housing areas, but so far, SE & Naoki Yoshida prefers the social side and the meeting between people. But even here it does not really work, we do not meet anyone in the housing areas and even with the possibility of noting and commenting on the houses with a newspaper system. In general, it is to receive insults of rage, of those who do not have houses.

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Originally Posted by AshelotteGrey

That said, the house purchasing system is the single worst designed system in an MMO that I have ever seen. None of my friends, even the ones who own houses, really understand how the purchasing system works. I've seen timers on houses hit 0 and reset, not knowing why they never became available for purchase, and I've sat at houses for 8+ hours multiple times doing nothing but trying to purchase it; everyone I've spoken to believes this to be a normal experience.

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When a plot becomes open from being manually demolished or has not been entered for 45 days by the owner (or in case of an fc house, any fc members), a timer timer will be put in place that goes to about 5-6 pm server time that devalues the price and then will reset in 6 hour increments after that. Beyond that timer, there is a completely random invisible timer that will not allow the house to be purchased by a new buyer until it has completed. There is no way to know when the timer has completed, other than attempting to purchase the plot. During this rng time, current homeowners may choose to relocate their house to the open plot, thus freeing up their old plot but also starting all the timers over at that location.

I will admit I was for a timer like this because the house resellers were becoming a larger issue over time and the GMs didn't seem to have a clear ruleset or desire to deal with the problem. As such something needed to be hard coded into the system, but relocation & fcs weren't tied down as well so the problem still exists in that form. I see how painful it is though and up to 24 hours on the rng timer was a bit much.

Yeah, there are 2 separate timers. One is visible. That is the de-valuation timer. For every house that is currently un-owned, this timer ticks down to 0 every 6 hours. At the end of the timer, the house gets a little cheaper and the timer starts up again. For a house that has been unowned for awhile(for instance, Louisouix on the euro data center has several hundred plots that have never been owned) it eventually hits a minimum price of about half what its starting price was.

That timer doesnt matter(aside from potentially saving a few gil). The invisible timer is the one that youre contending with. When a house becomes available the game assigns it a random timer that counts down server side. The consensus seems to be that the shortest of these timers are in the 4-6 hour range, and the longest are probly 24-26 hours(ive read no credible estimate for an "average"). Once this timer hits 0 anyone who meets the requirements(level, rank, and gil + permission if purchasing for FC) can buy the house either for their FC or for personal use. Before this timer hits 0 anyone who already has a house can decide to relocate to the empty plot. Relocation bypasses the RNG timer, but in return the relocators old plot is now available with a newly assigned RNG timer. Houses that havent been entered(the inside of the house, visiting the yard doesnt count) by their owner(or any FC member for FC housing) for 45 days(the servers are supposed to send warning emails to the account on file, but these are sometimes lost in the shuffle/junk mail folder) are demolished by the server(some lost furnishings can be reclaimed by the one who lost the house, but these expire after roughly a month) and become available for purchase after the same RNG timer. Any auto-demo's happen at the top of the hour, so someone scouting for newly opened lots is well advised to check the aetherytes at such a time. Beyond that, youre looking at luck and persistence(or buying an apartment for which there is a much higher limit... or playing on a less populated server). Personally, if i still needed a house i wouldnt even think about placard camping in the first 6 hours as its just going to frustrate and waste time(honestly, i might skip the first 12+ hours - lose out on a few houses but know that when i showed up to camp that the wait was at least halfway over). Take that last bit of advise with a grain of salt, as i do already have my house and have no desire to try and get one for an alt so im no longer involved in that part of the system.

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Originally Posted by Naoki34

It is the fault of the many people who bought houses to resell 5x the purchase price.

Before, you could just buy when it's available. You can thank the profiteers, it's always like that in life, we pay for dishonest people.
The best you can do is buy the first house you can and move to a free location that you prefer.

In both cases, the system has its faults. The first is difficult to buy a lot as everyone camps the panel and the second, you pass in front of all the people who camp in front.

There are people who propose a system of instantiation of housing areas, but so far, SE & Naoki Yoshida prefers the social side and the meeting between people. But even here it does not really work, we do not meet anyone in the housing areas and even with the possibility of noting and commenting on the houses with a newspaper system. In general, it is to receive insults of rage, of those who do not have houses.

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Housing wards are about as social as the rocks in the desert...

If the RNG timer is indeed here to stay, and Yoshi absolutely will not budge, how about it being dependent on how the plot became free?

For example:

Demolition timer: No RNG
Relinquished: RNG

Flippers will only have relocation as a bypass, but honestly, I'd rather see that being taken out so people aren't spending, say the price of a small+paying the individual absurd amounts of gil+price of the plot.

Ironic that everything else in the game is instanced.

I wish they did something similar to the Georama from White Knight Chronicles 1 and 2.

In my opinion, the single best example of instanced personal housing/land in a game I have ever known. It also had an ingame forum community which I thought was quite nifty.

You'd buy a license with ingame currency and start with a small square, you would pay more to grow this land, you could add houses/furniture that gave your home "stats", you could house npc's, some of which were shops, there were farmable nodes which were dependent on the stats of your home.

Everyone had one, every guild had one, due to the gathering nodes which respawn after every dungeon it was sociable. An instance could only have 16 people in it (I'd probably suggest 24 for ff14) so there was a good spread of social activity and not restricted to the dedicated or rich few and everyone had something different.

It's a shame that these were pretty much the only good features of the game

Yeah because of greedy people we're now stuck with these random, invisible timers that only hurt people with no house while benefitting the people who already have one.

Last night I sat at a Shirogane plot for hours attempting to buy. Someone came by and transferred and all I got in the end was hours wasted.

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Originally Posted by Besame

Housing wards are about as social as the rocks in the desert...

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Indeed. The only time I've seen houses was a friends house, or just browsing out of sheer boredom, but when I DID look through other housings that weren't private, the person that owned the house was never in there anyways.

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Originally Posted by Besame

Housing wards are about as social as the rocks in the desert...

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Guess it depends on your ward really. I have several neighbors that hang out and we chat together. Same with our FC house. We see the folks who own the surrounding houses on a regular basis and get to talking.

I too have made several friends through housing. Its why I hate the idea of Instanced housing. I even got a sad tell from my neighbor when I moved because I went from a small in Shiro to a me in Mist. I think Instanced housing would loose a lot of the charm.