Why housing is bad, and how to fix it

The housing system is in quite the bad spot.


****if its not possible to to make changes so every viable person can obtain a plot.....

Here is why it is bad:
-Current "Placard spam" encourages bot programming.
-Cannot share housing with alternate characters.
-It is not "fair" by putting a random timer forcing people to spam the placard. Nor is this fun.
-No rewards for putting in more effort to obtain a house.
-No separation of Free Company and personal housing.


Here is how to fix it:

-Put in a sort of "gil vote" system.

How it works-
Players will put in say, 10,000 gil, and can do so every 4 hours, while a plot is "locked." For every time a player adds the 10,000 gil, it increases their chance to obtaining the plot. After a maximum of 24 hours, the plot then goes to:

1. A random person... but...
2. The more times you put in 10,000 gil, the higher the chance you win the plot.


Then most importantly....
3. The people losing the plot, have their gil **refunded** plus a bonus amount of gil.


NOTE1: Putting in the maximum amount of gil should not, or will not ensure you win. It just increases your chances. The plot winner is still randomly selected. Just putting in more, will increase your chance.
NOTE 2: Players then have 24 hours to claim, and purchase their plot. If they fail to claim the plot, they lose the gil offered to claim it.
NOTE 3: Players who have lost the plot also have 24 hours to claim gil placed to win the plot. If they fail to claim their "lost plot" gil, the gil is forfeit.


This way its fun for everyone, and it truly is fair, and it does *not* encourage bot plot spam.

-Add alternate character automatic house sharing. This is quite late, and should have been added with housing. Its a large portion of the reason why so many houses are owned by one person...
-Separate Free Company housing and player housing. Obviously, its not possible to split the housing now, but all new plots can be restricted to the new system. This way its even more fair for those FC"s who do not have houses.

Not. Again. Please.

Edit:
Okay, I actually contribute something to this Topic: Please use one of the hundreds and hundreds of threads about this for your suggestion. There is no need of making just another one. There is not even a new or innovative idea. There have been more than enough reasons why a roulette system is even more stupid than it is right now. If you got enough time to make this thread why not use some of the time of reading one of the posts about this (there are literally more than FIVE other posts on the first page in this sub-thread)

This system you still need to camp for every 4 hours and turn into lottery at the end. Everyone will be putting max gil the timer allowed. It does not resolve one of the biggest issue of current housing, wasting time camping it. Just turn the timer into a lottery will be simplier and fair

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nanami_Naniwa

Not. Again. Please.

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Excuse me? Not again?

I shouldnt offer advice to how to fix the housing situation?

Square-Enix shouldnt acknowledge the grave mistake they have made, and address the issue?

People who are using bots to claim houses should be rewarded while actual players, not breaking the Terms of Service, by using bots, who have been subscribed longer, arent able to get one?

If you think this is acceptable, even when Yoshida himself said FC and personal housing would not be shared, nor would it be tied to your subscription, and then the system encourages bot spamming.. sure nothing anyone says is going to change your mind, but logical thinking dictates this system needs to be addressed.

I'm sure more people quit the game over housing, than "the ARR quest line is too long."

Housing **should** be addressed before them changing or "condensing" the 2.0 quest line.



Edit
Ok, just because there are countless threads, you should go to all of them and tell them to stop?
There wouldnt be so many, if Square-Enix addressed the issue, instead of turning their attention to less important "problems."

Why the opposition, how about Square-Enix do something instead of wasting time on things that bare little to no consequence to player enjoyment? ... such as "condensing ARR quest line" or "reworking AST/DRK" or "reworking crafting/gathering" all of this was not asked for. But housing was. They need to get their focus back and address the actual issues. If you dont agree, sure, go to every thread telling people to stop trying to direct Sqaure-Enix to the important issues. Thats what the forums has become anyway.


All the suggestions I have read, do not add a gil cap, or doesnt add chance to winning based on more effort. The ones I read, also dont include a reward system for having lost the house that prevents encouraging RMT.

**********Most importantly, my thread includes Alternate character housing sharing, which is, again, a huge issue in the game. The people who have entire districts, are people with alts. Again, if alt automatic sharing was added at the start, which it should have been, half the problems wouldnt be nearly as severe.

I disagree with your comments about treating housing as a priority over fixing the post-ARR questline and sorting crafting/gathering. No new player gets warned about the lack of housing opportunities when starting whereas I'd hazard a guess that many, if not most, get warned about the slog of the post-ARR section. Without people gathering and crafting, there would be no furniture on the marketboards for the precious housing. There would be no endgame food, potions or gear to enable people to do endgame battle content so fixing their problems should also be a priority over, and let's be honest, a vanity problem. Housing offers nothing to the progression of a player in this game and it's just something people get over-upset about because they haven't got access to it.

Your suggestion won't fix the problem. A lottery style roulette where you will actually be competing against many many more players for a plot will cause more problems as mathematically you will have much less of a chance to get the house. A gil compensation won't calm the anger that the players will feel because someone was luckier than them because aside from housing, there is very very little to spend gil on.

The real problem with housing is that the lack of a house locks far too many players out of gardening and workshop content. Housing should have only ever been for FC's only and players be given apartments that we can increase in size, customize (with a balcony or rear garden for exterior furniture for example) and consider private workshops with limited functionality such as a single airship/submarine. All apartments be accessible from a "major foyer" which would ultimately become a player hub for each zone.

So basically, I've just detailed what gets said on every thread of this kind and said give us instanced housing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daniolaut

Excuse me? Not again?

Edit
Ok, just because there are countless threads, you should go to all of them and tell them to stop?
There wouldnt be so many, if Square-Enix addressed the issue, instead of turning their attention to less important "problems."

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The point Nanami made is not to stop talking about the issue, it is stop creating a new thread every other day. By doing so you're actually hurting this cause, because they're apparently more likely to pay attention to large threads that discuss an issue instead of 100 small ones.

Flooding the forums with countless threads that all die after 2-3 pages because the topic at hand has already been discussed in 20 similar threads is not helping to bring attention to the problem (btw: a problem they're aware of), its actually taking attention away because they dont look at such small threads. Making a new thread isnt helping the issue, its hurting it.

Bottomline: Yes, talk about it! Discuss it! Try to make them aware of it - but you dont need to create your own thread. You're helping a lot more by posting in one of the many, many housing-threads by saying that you agree with it, maybe add suggestions that werent mention yet and giving likes to the posts you agree with. That way some foren-mod could easly see "Hey, here is a big thread with many comments and many likes, so this must be an issue a lot of people care about!" instead of having to sit down and count all the small threads that just repeat the same thing over and over again.
To quote the forum-rules in addition: "Please use the search function placed at the top of the forum to see if your questions have already been answered. If there happens to be a thread with similar topics, please divert your questions to that particular thread."

Little Edit: I'm also not quite sure if you're aware that "ARR quests are to long" and "we dont have enough housing" are two completly different problems that need attention from completly different people. Shortening the ARR-questline probably involves mainly the writers who are looking through all the quests, see what they need to adjust, if there need to be re-writes etc. until some programmer makes the needed adjustments. The main issue here is the leg-work before: Looking through the quests, writting stuff and so on.
The main issue with housing is the server-space and how that storage is handled there, aswell as the capacity of there servers. Thats nothing the lore-team can help with, I reckon...

People often seem to be under this missconception that any content can be exchanged for any other content and that us getting content A prevents us from getting content B because they're busy with content A. But often thats not really the case. We're not getting a fight instead of new armor-designs, because its two different departments working on those things. The battle-team cant just design an extra set of armor and the lore-team cant fix the housing issue.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daniolaut

Excuse me? Not again?

I shouldnt offer advice to how to fix the housing situation?

---

No, that by itself is fine.

What is not fine, and what you should not do, is start yet another thread complaining about the house buying system.
There are already a gazillion of those threads, and you should have picked some existing thread to post your advice in.

Why people always believed the reason they lost is because other people use the bot?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Why people always believed the reason they lost is because other people use the bot?

---

because they didn't get it and they're salty and full of raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggeeeeeeeeeeeeee SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daniolaut

Why housing is bad, and how to fix it

The housing system is in quite the bad spot.
Here is why it is bad:
-Current "Placard spam" encourages bot programming.
-Cannot share housing with alternate characters.
-It is not "fair" by putting a random timer forcing people to spam the placard. Nor is this fun.
-No rewards for putting in more effort to obtain a house.
-No separation of Free Company and personal housing.

---

If sounds like you don't know much about housing. There's way more to Housing then the placards. It's hard to take this review of housing seriously if most of what you talk about is a tiny placard.

Maybe they should concentrate more getting rid of the bots. Now that would be a more novel idea.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JowyAtreides

I disagree with your comments about treating housing as a priority over fixing the post-ARR questline So basically, I've just detailed what gets said on every thread of this kind and said give us instanced housing.

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. I dont know why they arent creating instanced gardens for apartments. This would address some of the concern yes. Yoshida said himself Free Company housing wouldnt share the same areas as personal housing. Him failing to deliver, dug this hole, and its only getting worse. (With the influx of new players from Shadowbringers. Literally not a single world on NA data centers is preferred, and nearly half are congested. Over 1 month later.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vidu

The point Nanami made is not to stop talking about the issue, it is stop creating a new thread every other day. By doing so you're actually hurting this cause,

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by MistakeNot

No, that by itself is fine.

What is not fine, and what you should not do, is start yet another thread complaining about the house buying system.
There are already a gazillion of those threads, and you should have picked some existing thread to post your advice in.

---

Actually. I just poured over the last 2- 3 months worth of threads...
over 20 threads worth..

only 2 have gotten proper attention. One being the player being rather aggressive to Square-Enix, the other a petition to add more wards.

Square-Enix already stated they would not add more wards. This also doesnt fix the issue of all these new players "fixing A Realm Reborn story" is going to magically bring in, as they will fill extremely quickly, as the players already playing are complaining of not having land.

So the problem, in fact, is not how many threads there are, but the players derailing threads, as being done here, or the players not listening to Square-Enix and asking for things specifically they said they cannot offer.
Here, I will link each thread on the specific topic of players expressing disappointment with the availability to housing or similar issues:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Links




http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...n-plot-utility
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...it-any-better.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...to-buy-a-house
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ing-situation.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...to-buy-housing
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...21%21%21%21%21
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ousing-lottery
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-not-fixed-yet
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ame-on-your-SE
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...acard-spamming
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...SING-SYSTEM%21
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-little-better
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Housing%21%21
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ndom-anyways..
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...on-and-Housing
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ng-for-absence
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...housing-thread
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...tanced-housing
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...uses-is-broken
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...sing-Census%21
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...INFURIATING%21
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-needs-to-GTFO
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Y-ruin-housing
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-we-buy-houses

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Why people always believed the reason they lost is because other people use the bot?

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Who said the reason someone lost their plot was to a bot? If anyone has, it shouldnt happen, as there should be no systems in place that encourages botting.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

because they didn't get it and they're salty and full of raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggeeeeeeeeeeeeee SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

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I already own a house.

To further my point. as of this post, this comment has the most likes.
This is the mindset the playerbase encourages.

Fix? Address? Improve? No.
Make simple, make easier, make popular, make Fortnite dances? Yes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Edax

If sounds like you don't know much about housing. There's way more to Housing then the placards. It's hard to take this review of housing seriously if most of what you talk about is a tiny placard.

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. I was very clear, that a large reason why housing is in a sorry state is, lack of separation of FC and personal housing, alternate characters automatically sharing housing, and the other issues my original post covered.

Its very clear, from Square-Enix stand point, they have no interest in adding siginficantly more wards, if any-more, nor will they change it to all instance housing. I purposefully tried to avoid touching on things that will hold no bearing. So, simply put. You are wrong, and dont understand housing yourself.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Edax

If you say I don't understand the housing system, then prove it. Why is the housing system bad?

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If you think, for any reason, being unable to log in and visit your house every 45 days, then not visiting the housing caretaker within 35 days after, resulting in losing your house, your gil. and every single item inside, is ok. Then no one saying anything will ever "prove it."

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daniolaut

. I was very clear, that a large reason why housing is in a sorry state is, lack of separation of FC and personal housing, alternate characters automatically sharing housing, and the other issues my original post covered.

Its very clear, from Square-Enix stand point, they have no interest in adding siginficantly more wards, if any-more, nor will they change it to all instance housing. I purposefully tried to avoid touching on things that will hold no bearing. So, simply put. You are wrong, and dont understand housing yourself.

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You are reviewing the entire housing system based on ownership. There's far far far more to housing then just clicking on a tiny placard. I don't have to deal with a placard so everything that you complain about housing doesn't even apply to my experience. I bought a house the legitimately and nothing in your review on why housing is bad has ever been a part of my experience, and I've put hundreds of hours into this housing system.

-Current "Placard spam" encourages bot programming.
-Cannot share housing with alternate characters.
-It is not "fair" by putting a random timer forcing people to spam the placard. Nor is this fun.
-No rewards for putting in more effort to obtain a house.
-No separation of Free Company and personal housing.

All that doesn't negatively or positively affect me in any way.

If you say I don't understand the housing system, then prove it. Why is the housing system bad?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daniolaut

Excuse me? Not again?

I shouldnt offer advice to how to fix the housing situation?

Square-Enix shouldnt acknowledge the grave mistake they have made, and address the issue?

[...]


Edit
Ok, just because there are countless threads, you should go to all of them and tell them to stop?
There wouldnt be so many, if Square-Enix addressed the issue, instead of turning their attention to less important "problems."

[...]
**********Most importantly, my thread includes Alternate character housing sharing, which is, again, a huge issue in the game. The people who have entire districts, are people with alts. Again, if alt automatic sharing was added at the start, which it should have been, half the problems wouldnt be nearly as severe.

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It is proven from previous topics that SE looks into threads with huge participation instead of several small threads. There has been a huge support thread for Viera for years, for Bluemage, etc. And they got heard. Not because people were spamming the threads but because there was one thread constantly added with suggestions and adjustments. Instead of making yet another thread with yet another suggestion you could have made a difference.

Wanna know how?

Look through the hundreds of threads. Collect all the ideas, all the suggestions that have been made, create your "new" thread and add all what was said before. Add links to the existing threads to show how many people have already taken interest in this topic. THIS could make a difference.

Right now you are just another guy who made just another thread about housing which will just not get passed page 5 (if at all) and gets burried in a week. While in the meantime two more threads regarding the same issue - yet again with perfect solution to a long existing problem - will appear.

You want to make a difference? You want to be heard? Then tackle the problem with the efford that is needed.

The system for getting a House is just disgusting, I want to go to bed and not guard this site to get a house. Why do homeless people suffer, and people can move to any site without waiting in line. Need to something to do with this I not want to change server because that not can take place.

No system is perfect, this one is created after based on the player demands. It is not just the people that want a house but also people want to move to a better location. This system at least gives people who start at shadowbringer a chance to get the house like everyone else. If you want a house that bad, move to the server that has open plot. Do not use “I want play with friends”. There is cross server ls and you also can visit other server. Just do it if you want a house that bad

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daniolaut

Then most importantly....
3. The people losing the plot, have their gil **refunded** plus a bonus amount of gil.

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Houses are designed to be gil sinks, not generators.
SE wouldn't ever give people bonus gil for failing an objective.

I'm living proof you can still get a house with the current spam-the-placard method. Sometimes I'll look for another plot that's open and being camped just to tell people not to give up; it is possible for anyone to win the "House Wars: Savage".

I'm even more glad I don't have to do it again - I also think some kind of lottery system would be better, but I (obviously) disagree with removing personal housing and/or moving to instanced housing. I decorated the exterior of my house with twenty items, and I want people to see them! :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arazehl

Maybe they should concentrate more getting rid of the bots. Now that would be a more novel idea.

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Now we're talking.

The problem with your proposed solutions is that they don't solve the problem of not having enough housing for everybody. You also didn't remove the RNG. It also introduces a mechanic where you say people get gil paid to them for trying to get housing lol. That's a horrible idea that incentivizes more competition in empty housing for easy money. I know rmt
and botters were already a problem before related to house flipping as well. More botters will be doing housing lottery for gil then. Housing is one of the few gil sinks in this game and you'd make it the opposite. The only solution other than adding more requirements / higher prices to purchase housing, or adding enough wards, is instanced housing.