With very limited amount of housing plots for a large game population, this creates a lot of competition for plots that happen to open up. For it to be balanced, invisible timers are put in place that let the plot be purchasable at a random time. The issue this creates is players that resort to scripts that allow them to continuously attempt to buy the plot without needing to physically be there. This is often how players end up winning houses as well, by breaking the ToS they agreed to by cheating because they feel that's the only way to win.
I have a few suggestions that I hope might offer a fix for the issues we have with this current system, with pros and cons for each.
Suggestions
Add More Housing (wards/plots)
Pro(s): This would lots of new plots for players to grab when readily available and would hopefully greatly decrease the amount of bots as there would be less competition for plots. More plots means more players get incentivized to buy a house, removing more gil from the economy.
Con(s): This is currently limited given the status of the pandemic limiting physical installation of new servers so this may take much longer than expected. This also does not guarantee that bots will disappear and not attempt to take every house that gets added, further measure would need to be taken to solve this particular issue.
Reduce the Plot Timer to about 2-4 Hours
Pro(s): Lessens the amount of time players have to wait for a house to become available to prevent possible physical or mental strain for having to wait. Still allows players to become aware of a newly available plot's presence.
Con(s): Does not fix the botting problem
Standard Housing Lottery System
Each player who wants to buy a house makes an inquiry on an open plot and obtains a ticket similar to a cactpot ticket which can then be turned in to acquire the plot if the numbers match up when the random housing timer expires. Winning numbers last for approx 8 hours to allow winner to claim their house, otherwise it is rerolled for the next person.
Pro(s): Allows multiple players to inquire on more than one plot without needing to "camp" placards. Allows for more flexible housing purchasing. Possibly prevents bots from winning by not giving them the winning number
Con(s): Much higher amount of players competing for the same plot makes winning much harder.
Anti-cheat/Anti-botting System
Pro(s): Curbs the botting problem immediately with a system that checks background applications/extra files in the game's folder. Conversely add an anti-botting system that requires players to complete a CAPTCHA or similar style problem when they do not move for 1-2 minutes, yet continue to make repetitive button presses like how a bot would.
Con(s): Disables player freedom to use external programs like parsers, texture mods, and anything else that isn't used to gain an advantage in-game. Anti-botting can probably be worked around/hacked.
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12-15-2020, 05:00 PMShadRykerSome Suggestions for the Never-ending Struggle of Buying a House
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12-15-2020, 06:30 PMERMITANYO
Housing in ffxiv is sadly a limited resource. The devs. surely know about this, evidenced by their attempt to fill-in the lack of housing by adding new wards. I believe they are trying to come up with a more lasting solution unfortunately that might have been delayed due to the global pandemic, a lot of things have been delayed this year. Let's hope for the best this coming 2021.
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12-15-2020, 06:54 PMShadRyker
Aye I believe they want to fix the issues that have been created by this system permanently, but are currently limited because of the global pandemic. I'm hoping some kind of long lasting measures are made to make housing easier to obtain for everyone this upcoming year. Alas we can only hope and wait for what they can and will do
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12-15-2020, 07:11 PMtdbJust want to note here that there are ways to hide the botting program from easy detection. And making the anticheat measures too strict would step on the toes of some legitimate users too.Quote:
Originally Posted by ShadRyker
The captcha suggestion would be easy to circumvent by having the bot jump or move a bit every now and then. Computers have become pretty good at solving captchas as well. Maybe it would stop some casual botting with autohotkey and similar keyboard macro programs.
Personally I think the lottery suggestion would be most the fair. -
12-15-2020, 07:23 PMCatstabThis can't happen just because it's bot-friendly. It's also alt-friendly. If you have to be online at the placard open at the moment a house is available to get one, then SE is limiting a single account to 1 chance at the house, and a single machine 2 chances at a house. If you can win a house while offline, suddenly any account can enter the lottery 8 times and people running multiple accounts on one system can enter with every one. Lottery gets suggested frequently, and unfortunately it would only make getting a house harder - though it would do away with camping.Quote:
Originally Posted by ShadRyker
SE won't do this because no one wants their games spying on their computer. Would it cost them many customers? It might, and might not even stop the bots in the process. It seems like kind of a gamble with their resources. As well as general spyware concerns, the ToS doesn't allow modding but people do it. It exists in sort of a 'dont ask, dont tell' space but a lot of people run reshade, texture, or data mods. If SE ran anticheat, they'd likely bar modding through the same means, and upset a lot of their customers. SE doesn't like to rock the boat and wouldn't implement this tool.Quote:
Originally Posted by ShadRyker
Your other ideas are decent. Though I think the timer should just be gone, rather than reduced. I think the price should be what it was in ARR: 40 million or so, closer to a house's genuine value. Supply will be increased just because fewer people will be shopping for houses if the price is increased. Right now you earn enough gil doing the storyline to afford a house, so many of the 20,000+ players per server want their share of the ~4300 houses left per world after FCs fill their spots in. As for 'more/instanced houses' we can only hope. The announcement of new wards back in August made it sound like more were coming once they had servers in place (not til travel is normal) but no one can say when or how many wards might be added. Instanced housing is a maybe, especially with ishgard on the horizon. But they've gone this long without it, it seems an unlikely turn to make right now. It's not impossible but I remain skeptical. I've heard that Yoshi P really loves the neighborhood feel. -
12-16-2020, 02:56 AMShadRykerThis makes a lot of sense hence why I included it as a con on the anticheat/botting system. It is not difficult to circumvent a botting system with more complex macros even if it would snuff out most basic macros like AHK. Not to mention I believe SE does not want a super strict anticheat system in place essentially spying on their players' computers and whatnot, it would drive away a lot of them that share a mentality of "our games should not spy on us" and cost them lost of money as a result. I'd imagine the plans SE has for "fixing" housing is to add more plots in the future, but with the current state of the COVID pandemic they are not planning any travelling to see new servers installed which means the waiting game for all of us.Quote:
Originally Posted by tdb
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12-16-2020, 03:28 AMShadRykerMy current suggestion to circumvent these issues would be one inquiry per service account, to prevent extra characters/alts on one account to make inquiries on the same plot. Another idea that comes to mind is to require the player/character that made the initial inquiry remain online or forfeit their ticket on the plot, preventing players with multiple service accounts switching between them in order to flood the auction placard with their own inquiries.Quote:
Originally Posted by Catstab
Yes I 100% agree that the timer is a stupid mechanic, and either needs to be shortened, made visible, or removed entirely. Especially with it going up to 22 hours it does not do any good for players that wish to manually click on the placard, almost necessitating the use of scripts to navigate the menus for them to avoid physical and mental strain. Conversely, vastly driving the prices up on housing would make obtaining a house much more of a commodity and akin to purchasing a real house. I however only see this inflating the value of gil up to disproportionate amounts as players will find a way to drive the economy up so high that 40 million gil is nothing to them. It's not a bad idea in its own to make it less available by driving the price way up, but I believe it's something that SE and Yoshi P are not going to do as a "fix" to the housing market. I believe their current plans are to to add more plots with the ishgard housing and then probably add more down the line when they further optimize their current housing servers as well as physically adding more when travelling is much safer to accomplish. I believe they want to do what's best for us players that want to obtain a house but their options are limited as to what they can reasonably accomplish without upsetting the current "balance" they currently have.Quote:
Originally Posted by Catstab
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12-22-2020, 01:33 PMVoidle
Penthouse suites in apartments would help. Not everybody needs a garden, some people just want more space.
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12-23-2020, 12:34 PMDaniolautHousing was released in 2013, the pandemic only started this year. They have had more than enough time to fix housing.Quote:
Originally Posted by ERMITANYO
Also, FFXI, a game that is 8 years older, or 11 years older, depending how you look at it, than this game, and has free instanced housing, with a personal private mog garden to top it off.
The XIV team has all the answers on how to fix housing, they simply are choosing not to do it. -
12-25-2020, 09:36 AMGreyhawk
Did everyone who makes these posts just completely skip the part about them adding servers specific for housing? They have the servers, the pandemic is slowing the implementation process to address the housing. Hardware is in their possession, it's just not in yet. Like everything else in the world, this isn't the end of it.
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12-25-2020, 11:02 PMJojoyaI think somewhere along the way, someone took what was said the wrong way and blew it up into something it was never going to be then that started getting spread as fact.Quote:
Originally Posted by Greyhawk
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...8d38461c5ae127
All they had planned was to add some more wards once the servers were installed. I suspect a good chunk of that new server space, if not all of it, was originally reserved for Ishgard housing. With COVID delays and the increasing demand for houses from the increasing player population, perhaps they felt they could shift more of that server space toward expanding the existing wards early instead of holding it for Isghard?
If someone has a link to a SE source that says the servers were going to be for something more than just a normal ward expansion or Ishgard's release, I'd appreciate seeing it. -
12-26-2020, 03:17 AMtdbYeah, I posted essentially the same thing to another thread where someone was talking about "dedicated housing servers". The official post implies that they'd need to install new servers to add more wards than they did. But it's not clear at all if those servers would be used exclusively for housing or if they would dynamically serve any game zones as needed. And indeed there isn't even a hint that it would be some new kind of housing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jojoya
The timeframe is a little early for Ishgard housing anyway. There's going to be at least one more stage of Ishgard restoration, so the housing is at least four months off (and that announcement was made half a year ago). It's possible some of that server capacity would be in preparation for Ishgard, but it does seem like they wanted to add more wards to the existing housing districts too. It wouldn't really make sense to make an announcement of something which would only cause a delay to something that hasn't even been officially announced yet. -
12-28-2020, 06:08 AMThemarvin
Don't add more wards, it is Ghost Towns already.
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01-02-2021, 05:30 PMKenkyMore Housing will not fix the issues present with the current system. It will only delay it and (to some people) make it worse. Personally, the foundation needs to be changed or reinforced before adding more 'floors' to the house, if you get the metaphor.Quote:
Originally Posted by ShadRyker
SE doesn't expect -any- player to sit at the Placard for its entire wait-time, nor do they enforce it or make it seem like that is the only way to do things. That's an issue that stems from players own obsessions (And if you get upset by that, then you know what I mean.) and, while SE certainly isn't doing anything to STOP said obsessive placard-camping, they aren't encouraging it either. Could probably do with a bit of a firmer hand in that department, but that is up to how 'restrictive' SE wants to become.
Again with the Lottery system? Jeez, that point has been 'discussed' to death and people have almost unanimously said it would be worse than the system we already have! Having more RNG on top of RNG will only take away the feeling of actual control you would have in getting the house. Instead of your own actions, you give the entire choice to a number-generator that could easily be swayed in the botters / cheaters favor through otherwise legitimate means. (Purchasing more tickets, being the prime example. Or filling the lottery)
Anti-cheat and Anti-botting would be great. But the way you word it violates Privacy Laws in several countries, as it would require Square Enix to officially state they are requesting permission to scan your computers files for any modified files, which can result in false positives and unfair suspensions, if not terminations. Not to mention a "Captcha" system in XIV would be laughably easy to program and brute-force through, given enough time. -
01-02-2021, 06:51 PMtdbI've already explained in one of these threads how the technical issues can be solved. It's easy to limit it to a single ticket per player and botters will have no advantage because there's nothing to automate (unlike the current timer system where botting provides a singificant advantage). Besides the misconception that a lottery system would not be possible to implement fairly, the opposition seems to be centered on the argument "but in a lottery system all the lazy people get a shot at a house too". Well yes, that's kind of the idea. Despite SE not intending it, players do camp the placards, and it happens to the extent that camping for several hours and incessantly clicking is basically a requirement for getting a house. Does it seem like a fair requirement to you? Would it truly be so bad if it took less effort to get a chance at a house?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenky
If you're dead-set against a lottery system and want to instead fix the timer system, it needs a cooldown which prevents clicking the placard (at least the same placard, maybe even any placard) too often. That should encourage players not to camp. I think it should be at least 15 minutes, but maybe as long as 60 minutes to really give a hint that you should do something else in the meanwhile.
Edit: And since several people have also pointed out that a lottery system doesn't solve the deeper problem of availability, it bears repeating that I'm suggesting it on the assumption that the real solution (i.e. instanced housing) takes a lot of time and effort to implement. If we could have instanced housing next month, we absolutely should. But it's likely it will take years, if we're getting it at all, so an interim solution seems necessary. -
01-03-2021, 12:30 PMKenkyThe "single ticker per player" thing wouldn't really stop the Botters and cheaters, as they have several service accounts (assuming that's what you mean by 'per player'. Not 'per character') and still could relatively easily flood the system with illegitimate requests. While yes, it would certainly be great for people to not have to sit in front of a placard for HOURS at a time, that isn't an issue that SE can genuinely 'fix' without serious backlash. Mostly because it's not SE's fault that people are obsessed with housing to the point of neglecting physical and medical needs.Quote:
Originally Posted by tdb
Add a cooldown timer on the Placard? You'd get plenty of people pissed off that the house didn't sell during 'their' attempt. Make it so you put your name down? People will be pissed that someone who was offline at the time won it.
It's a rather uncomfortable minefield SE is in, yet they weren't the ones who put the mines down. 'Twas us. -
01-03-2021, 12:47 PMItMeQuote:
Originally Posted by Kenky
That's... interesting.
I never thought of it like that before.
No wonder SQEX is mainly keeping their head down and trying to add wards whenever they can. -
01-03-2021, 06:49 PMtdbThere's unfortunately no 100% reliable way to determine that multiple accounts belong to the same person. Email addresses are free, and a shared IP address could indicate any number of other things as well. From SE's perspective each service account is a separate player and has the same right to get a house as anyone else.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenky
It's not like the timer system prevents botters from benefiting from multiple accounts either. Having multiple bots click at the placard increases the chance that one of them gets the plot. So I don't really see how a raffle system would be worse. If anything it would decrease the botters' chance of winning and/or tie up more of their resources since there'd be more real players in the running.
Is it really worse to click once and not get it, as opposed to spend six hours clicking and still not get it? Or does this come back to the "I can't tip the scales in my favor" argument?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenky
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01-03-2021, 11:49 PMDaniolaut
Unhide the hidden timer.
Problem solved.
Anyone who would disagree with this is either uses a botting program or is a scalper, who also likely uses a botting program.
Unidding the timer would literally change nothing, except discourage botting and increase the chance of owning a house for honest players. -
01-03-2021, 11:52 PMDaniolaut
To solve the rest of the problems:
Restrict one private house and one FC house per account. Period. No one needs a house on multiple servers except people abusing the system.
Restrict relocation to a set number of days, 30, 60, 90, which ever Square-Enix would deem feasible.
Or, better yet, create instanced housing like in FFXI where you have a mog garden, except expand upon this nearly 20 year old games system, and allow players who have more gil to upgrade the size, and to customize their exterior mog garden/yard. Then restrict "districts" to Free Company's so that there are literally people in the housing districts instead of it being an empty void of lifeless houses.
Literally all problems solved. If FFXI can have unlimited instanced housing and is 20 years old, with a mog garden FFXIV can create a slightly better version of this for its players. I believe in them, its not hard. -
01-04-2021, 10:40 PMKenkyThe Timer system doesn't stop them at all, as you stated. But they have to at least be there and take up that account in order to participate. Putting your name in a box would (theoretically, at least) mean that the botters could log-in, put their name down, then immediately swap out. Meaning far more bot traffic and far more 'fake' ballots.Quote:
Originally Posted by tdb
And yeah, Every service account is its own thing and has every right to do everything any other service account can do. That is why we have problems in the first place, but to go back on that choice now would only light the gasoline they've unconsciously poured.
Is it really worse to click once and not get it? You would think not and you'd be entirely correct, it goes back to the "tip the scales" argument. If there is a way to increase a persons chances of getting this 0.01% thing to occur, you can imagine a notable few (debatable on 'few' in this case) would do everything they can to achieve said increases. We've even seen it happen with people actively camping plots for 24+ hours with barely any time AFKing. one cannot truly quantify just how far the obsession rabbit-hole goes, but by the looks of it, it's pretty darn deep. -
01-04-2021, 11:52 PMtdbWhy does everyone assume that a raffle system has to be a "put your name in a box and walk away" thing? It's easy enough to formulate in such a way that you have to be present in order to be eligible. Here's some of my previous posts on the topic:Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenky
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5475899
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5478753
It's true that this would allow botters to farm materials or whatever while waiting for the raffle time. But is delaying the market board crash by a fleeting moment worth sacrificing housing (the only actually limited resource in the game) to the botters? -
01-05-2021, 12:35 AMKenkyBecause if it wasn't, then it would legitimately be no better than the current system. You'd still be sitting there, doing next to nothing. The only difference would be no wrist-damage from placard-spamming.Quote:
Originally Posted by tdb
Being online to be eligible is an agreeable point, until you take in people randomly dropping out or losing connection, while the bots remain until the server straight-up shuts down on SE's side. Granted, this is a rare thing nowadays, but it could still happen and still be used to say SE screwed up, when it wasn't SEs fault they lost the plot.
Again, in a pretty dense minefield, yet we're the ones that put the mines down. I'm not saying the suggestions you offer are wrong or in any way considered "inferior". Just that it would require more conversation, from every possible angle to try and minimize potential loopholes.
Because we both know people love exploiting loopholes. -
01-05-2021, 01:41 AMtdbYou'd be sitting there doing nothing for 10 minutes max, not 10+ hours. The time when you need to go and sit there would be known well in advance so you could plan to wake up or get off work early or whatever.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenky
And I would be open to conversation, but I seem to mostly get variations of the argument of "but then I'll have less chance to win".Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenky
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01-05-2021, 02:00 PMJojoyaThat would depend on how many players are trying to buy the house. We've seen how many players are willing to camp a placard with the hidden timer so imagine how many would be willing to show up when the time is known. Wait until 10 minutes before the drawing time and you might find you can't even get into the ward because the ward is already at population limit. It's not just a matter of how many want to buy. It's also how many will get their friends to show up to keep them company - or just to keep more out so their chances of winning will improve.Quote:
Originally Posted by tdb
It would also block other players who already own a house or apartment in the zone from getting to their houses and apartments. It doesn't matter if the player plans to be in their house or apartment and not in the ward. They have to be able to enter the ward first to get to it. That's going to get those players angry.
SE is highly unlikely to choose a "you must be present to win" design, assuming they would ever go the raffle route (which I doubt). It would create more problems than it would solve.
Because that's what players are ultimately concerned with - "winning" a house.Quote:
Originally Posted by tdb
If changes don't improve their chances of getting one, what's the point? It's nothing but a waste of time and effort that solved nothing. -
01-05-2021, 06:14 PMtdbOk, that's a valid concern. It could potentially be mitigated by having multiple raffles at the same time, causing the players to disperse across multiple wards. But that would require having multiple free plots, and I don't know how often plots free up on the more populated servers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jojoya
I guess you can hold on to the timer system then, while chasing after the unicorn of instanced housing. I can come up with any number of suggestions which gate access to housing behind questing, crafting, fates, dungeons, raiding or whatever game activity (much like it's currently gated behind placard camping), but they're all going to be resisted by the players who don't like that particular type of content. Maybe the unicorn will appear one day, but I wouldn't count on it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jojoya
I'm just happy I don't have to bother with placard camping since I already have a house for both myself and my FC. -
01-05-2021, 07:05 PMJojoyaThe unicorn has existed all along. All house interiors are instanced. Apartments are instanced.Quote:
Originally Posted by tdb
SE just needs to remove the requirement to own a piece of a non-instanced exterior before the player can have a larger interior. -
01-10-2021, 12:40 PMThemarvin
We don't need more houses, lottery, or the likes... the reduced timer idea works though, but let it be from 1 hour to 48 hour interval, this more that seek interest this higher the timer goes untill it caps at 48 hours, to disrupt people that never log out, simply restart the servers every day at the soft restart timer.
We already got enough ghost towns, so restrictions on ownership is what is needed, and more tight auto demo timers and more down those lines, see below
Below, should tidy up some:
1. Remove Grandfathering, people that own multiple houses same account, get an upkeep system to the additional houses, where hase to pay 5 million gil per extra house per month.
2. Remove 1 person FC, gotta be 6 different accounts in FC to get a house.
3. max 1 FC house per account, but could have one on each server am on.
4. max one player house per account
5. reduce the auto demolition timer to 15 days
6. auto demolition if your subscription runs out giving a 5 days chance to renew.
7. that SE go and check out the black market on reddit, for housing, it is there, especially for 1 person FC's and there is alot of Gil and RMT going through that system. -
01-16-2021, 02:58 AMRealism_SnideOnly 1 of these would actually help tidy things up, and that is point #2. Everything else would just cause more problems, or make it more unfair to players who don't make this game their full time job, or just goes against what the developers are going for. Making it a raffle and/or instanced housing would fix the biggest problems.Quote:
Originally Posted by Themarvin
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01-16-2021, 02:25 PMThemarvinThe rest would work easy... you can moldQuote:
Originally Posted by Realism_Snide
#3 into 1 FC House per server am on.
#4 Max 1 house per account, IS how the system is now.
#5 doing something about the auto demolition, would get rid of the players who only play on and off all the time.
#7 that SE openly show that they go out and bust the black market, hitting both buyers and sellers hard, a FC should not be a commodity of value to sell, other than the plot worth and day to day value of materials spendt on making airships and submarines. -
01-16-2021, 05:40 PMRealism_SnideBy "account", do you mean individual characters? Or our Square Enix account with multiple characters?Quote:
Originally Posted by Themarvin
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01-17-2021, 12:15 AMJojoyaSomeone who's played weekly if not daily the entire year shouldn't be forced to lose their house just because they finally get a chance to take their annual vacation someplace where they don't have access to the game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Themarvin
The 45 day timer is fair enough. It does weed out many of the on and off players. It's because SE decides to suspend the demo timer so frequently , coupled with the free log in campaigns so inactive players can log in to reset the demo timer despite not having an active subscription and no sort of recurring fee to retain housing, that we end up with the inactive house owner problem.