"Exposing the FFXIV Housing Black Market." RMT House Sales

A video covering the RMT side of house selling.
https://youtu.be/xcU_7-JrpZo

As much as I hate RMT, if the devs didn't model the housing system after the Hunger Games these sorts of sales wouldn't be possible. And they're implementing technical measures to hopefully fix it, but there wouldn't need to be dev time spent on that either - if housing was simply more available.

And before someone shouts "chip shortage!", this problem has existed well before covid19 was a thing.

People act like the timer system is to blame for the housing black market when the housing black market had been even more extensive before the timer was implemented.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

this problem has existed well before covid19 was a thing.

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Doubly worse when other, *older* games, have had better systems in place.
LotRO has a very similar housing system to 14, except that the system just made a new instance when no more houses were available.

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Originally Posted by QueenVanraen

Doubly worse when other, *older* games, have had better systems in place.
LotRO has a very similar housing system to 14, except that the system just made a new instance when no more houses were available.

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More than that, it made new districts if houses of one type sold out. As a result, most of the districts was empty, cuz big houses went down first. And tbh, I'd prefer it that way.

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Originally Posted by QueenVanraen

Doubly worse when other, *older* games, have had better systems in place.
LotRO has a very similar housing system to 14, except that the system just made a new instance when no more houses were available.

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You mean those games that went out of business or close enough to be considered as such?

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Originally Posted by Bladehawk

You mean those games that went out of business or close enough to be considered as such?

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Doesn't mean there wasn't some good systems in it. Point in case: Wildstar and it's housing.

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Originally Posted by Hatfright

Doesn't mean there wasn't some good systems in it. Point in case: Wildstar and it's housing.

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I agree that other games had/have better housing solutions then we have currently.

What I don’t like seeing is people saying that they should have “fixed” housing years ago while completely ignoring the fact that it would have come at some cost.
Either they would have to have spent lots of money on hardware or have spent development time/resources on a new housing system instead of other things.

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Originally Posted by Bladehawk

You mean those games that went out of business or close enough to be considered as such?

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I mean. FF11, SE's previous MMO that is still running and getting updated to this day, has more available housing. And it's had island sanctuaries for every single player for some years now. Granted, I hope FF14's islands will be more extensive than what's there in FF11, but this ain't new territory for SE.

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Originally Posted by Bladehawk

I agree that other games had/have better housing solutions then we have currently.

What I don’t like seeing is people saying that they should have “fixed” housing years ago while completely ignoring the fact that it would have come at some cost.
Either they would have to have spent lots of money on hardware or have spent development time/resources on a new housing system instead of other things.

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I get where you're coming from, but what any of this have to do with "games that went out of business or close enough to be considered as such"?
Honestly, if SE really wanted to fix the housing problem, they'd find a solution w/o hurting the game as a whole.

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Originally Posted by Bladehawk

I agree that other games had/have better housing solutions then we have currently.

What I don’t like seeing is people saying that they should have “fixed” housing years ago while completely ignoring the fact that it would have come at some cost.
Either they would have to have spent lots of money on hardware or have spent development time/resources on a new housing system instead of other things.

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If instanced housing was an expensive solution requiring larger amounts of hardware and development time/resources than wards, I shouldn't have been able to walk back into my RIFT Dimensions last fall after 4 years of not playing that game and yet I could. Trion (or I guess it's better to say Gamigo now), would have demolished my Dimensions for inactivity just as SE demolishes our houses for inactively.

If instanced housing was an expensive solution requiring larger amounts of hardware and development time than wards, ESO would not allow its players to own every single housing location in the game if they desire and yet ESO does. Each player can have 20+ houses of varying sizes if they're want and are willing to put in the effort to acquire them.

In the meantime SE has spent money on hardware/development time/resources to create Shirogane and Empyreum, which only serve a handful of lucky players while the rest are left wanting.

SE has wasted money trying to overimpress with a housing system that is less than impressive because it doesn't serve its purpose nor the player base. A couple of days ago, I was doing daily garden tending when I saw the first person in my ward in about 4 months (other than friends who were coming to specifically visit with me). They rode away when I waved a greeting at them. I've still never met the neighbor who lives directly across from me and bought that house about a year ago. It's been a while since I ran into anyone at the nearby marketboard/summoning board or merchant stalls when I need to go buy materials for a random crafting project. I never see other players wandering around on the beach or swimming in the water (my house overlooks the beach in Mist).

So much for feeling like I live in an active neighborhood. It feels like an abandoned neighborhood instead. I might as well be in instanced housing. My friends could come visit me there just as easily - and they too could own a house instead of going without because there are none available.

Logicaly in resoource usage instanced housing would cause the following results:

- Less server usage per instance because each instance is optimized to only get that instance running. No need to have any housing stuff of other players in that instance.
- In storage value its increases since instead of a limited number of players, it gets opened up for everyone.
- More server usage overal because more players have a house and will move to it for activity. This can be limited by simply setting a hard instance limit.
- Less server usage overal, because the instance is only running when the player is using it.

If the instances allow more (which as far as i know was planned), then storage and per instance server usage increases with it.

The main risk is that because less than 10% of the players can have a house now, that during the first days after release a massive number of players is going for that. Causing a constant capping out of resources. But if instances do not have a destruction timer, i dont see that as a problem since even without it you can just continue doing other stuff. After a while it should die out.

But to get a rough idea of how much more optimized it can be. Currently 1 housing district most likely takes at least 1 'server' (lets say just 1 to make it easier, and i dont care about the exact mechanics, a server is in this case an isolated instance on hardware that acts like its a server). If we consider seperate instances a bit heavier, lets say we can manage 400 per server (and to match out the total cities, lets say 5 servers are reserved). The advantage here lies that most people arent going to stay there for hours at a time. So if congestion times are generaly a portion of 5h, then that means if players are going to visit their house for 30 minutes on average, that they can still handle 800 per hour, or 4000 during that 5h duration. And thats effectively just 1 server in resources. There is no way that the current housing system is going to beat that, as a major portion of the day its simply not being used enough.

No... instanced housing if made properly isnt going to become more expensive in resources. Even if each house can sustain double the amount of items. Since each visit of such region isnt going to demand a transfer of all houses. its just that single house.

Instanced housing is not what the Developers wish for, it is clearly stated that they like and prefer the neighborhood feel to it, besides each ward is an instance of is own and each house is an instance of it's own.

IT is instanced but with features of being able to see your neighbors outside and the likes.

Even the apartments is instanced, but in an open ward instance.

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Originally Posted by Bladehawk

I agree that other games had/have better housing solutions then we have currently.

What I don’t like seeing is people saying that they should have “fixed” housing years ago while completely ignoring the fact that it would have come at some cost.
Either they would have to have spent lots of money on hardware or have spent development time/resources on a new housing system instead of other things.

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You mean like what they are trying to do right now, and have been doing so for a while? This isn't the first time 'servers were/needed to be added'. And, instead of being so hard-headed about the neighborhood structure that Yoshi-P demands, they could have saved themselves a ton of heartache and instanced it (the housing itself, not an instance in an instance, in another instance). The resource loading for that is believed to be the much better solution. They even did it in FFXI, and should have done it here when housing began. They can still do it, but SE refuses to give up that old bone.

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Originally Posted by Themarvin

Instanced housing is not what the Developers wish for, it is clearly stated that they like and prefer the neighborhood feel to it, besides each ward is an instance of is own and each house is an instance of it's own.

IT is instanced but with features of being able to see your neighbors outside and the likes.

Even the apartments is instanced, but in an open ward instance.

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Which is the worst structuring system... Let's put an instance inside of an instance. Yeah, great idea. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Greyhawk

Which is the worst structuring system... Let's put an instance inside of an instance. Yeah, great idea. :rolleyes:

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Not really it really can work, other games have had same kind of structure, eg. Starwars Galaxies, where you could build player cities, you could place your houses as you liked and more in an not instanced at all enviroment.

Also current housing is in instances x wards = x instances, each house has a garden, you can see and meet your neighbors, it does not have that cheap feeling that instances do hence you get more quality for what you pay for...

More housing will becoming, it is a system that has kept on being added to.

It’s a lot of hard work to fix this but they should consider adding the option of instanced housing that has a garden and the same space as the other ones, one option could be to let us expand the apartment/fc room by paying more gil so it has a garden and the same space as a small house.

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Originally Posted by _Shadowsong_

It’s a lot of hard work to fix this but they should consider adding the option of instanced housing that has a garden and the same space as the other ones, one option could be to let us expand the apartment/fc room by paying more gil so it has a garden and the same space as a small house.

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I don't understand why people always using garden as an excuse for instance house and go on full denial on FC room and apartment
If you go through all wards on each server, most of yard don't even have a garden.