My issues with the new housing systems.

After seeing the new housing in effect, I figured I'd drop my input on this new design for housing and what I think are really bad issues that should be looked into when it comes to the new housing system.


1. The FC & Residential wards.

A lot of the main issues before the new housing system was that there was NOT enough housing to go around for everyone. Both FCs and players are looking for housing. The temporary solution to that back in the day was to just add more wards. It gave more chances, and more recycling of account that would lose interest.

However, now with the new system where the FC's have 75% of ALL the wards for plots reserved to them. You took a problem and didn't fix it, but rather put it somewhere else in even a BIGGER scale.

Some servers dont even have enough active FCs to fill up that may plots in wards. Some FCs are also being treated as player houses, which you managed to try to fix this patch, which is good, but the core problem is STILL there. Not enough wards for everyone. You simply could of increased the ward count yet again by another 25 wards and gave more of an opportunity to a lot more people. Not to mention, FC's DO supply an instanced base housing similar to apartments for each FC that owns a house.


2. The placard bidding.

Most of us can agree that the new lottery system is better than spamming a placard for 14 hours a day or waiting for prime time only to get beat by bots. I wont argue that. But what I will argue is that placing a bid and losing, is not fun. It never has been. What bothers me is that you are forcing players who want to buy a house to go to the house and bid on a placard. If they lost, why would you FORCE the player to go back to the placard? It's very demoralizing to have the player do a walk of shame to collect their gil at the placard and move on. Why not just MAIL them their gil back if they lost? Even if its in the form of an item, they could just log in, go to the mailbox, collect gil or the item equivalent of their gil, and sell it to a vendor for their gil back from their housing loss.


3. The waiting.

I made a post here already:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...elocated-plots

So I dont wanna go deep diving into this, because there is a separate conversation there. but to summarize.

Why do player need to wait, to wait to bid, to wait for the bid to end, to wait some more if they lost? Just make confirmed relocated housing instant biddable so everything keeps going in motion.




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It really seems like that the new housing system was rushed and wasn't fully thought upon when developing, and should be re-opened and looked at to remedy the situation. I also think if you are going to drastically change the plot type (residential or fc), you need to make it up to players by adding a SIGNIFICANT amount of wards so the ratio is better suited, like a 60/40. IDEALLY 50/50 is how it should of always been from the start.

Just wanted to add a reply because this covers all my issues with this system to a T.

Absolutely agree, especially in regards to the new FC/Resident wards now in place. It's an absolutely ridiculous addition from most requests of just simply adding in a lottery system. That's it, we didn't need half of this extra they threw in to try "balancing" a problem already in FC's favors. Being someone trying to grab a personal has now become even more difficult once the handful of wards are soaked up by other players. People leaving FC wards are just feeding more houses to them, and taking away from solo buyers. It's an incredibly flawed system, one that I'm genuinely surprised how easily slipped past them in how rushed it feels.

The dev team really need to rethink this clearly and try again because the way this has been implemented is just bad all around. Yes it's a step up, but this is far from a good working system.

FFXIV is the only game I play, so can anyone tell me how other games deal with housing in a much better way? why can't FFXIV copy their method?

It also doesn't help that this still doesn't stop entire fake FC's buying up all wards.
The only thing the lotto stops is plot sniping.
More "empty" FC's mean more RMT/ grandfathering in players to sell their FC entirely over the actual price.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...6300/ward2.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...95178/ward.jpg

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Originally Posted by HeyMcFly

It also doesn't help that this still doesn't stop entire fake FC's buying up all wards.
The only thing the lotto stops is plot sniping.
More "empty" FC's mean more RMT/ grandfathering in players to sell their FC entirely over the actual price.

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I would send these pictures over to the bug forums. Cause either that is a bug or some one made that many accounts as you can only have at most 2 houses per account per server and only 1 being a FC house.

The current plot allocation encourages shell FCs. The 4 ppl requirement is way too low as well. A reasonable amount of FC points in each of the past 4 weeks to demonstrate real activity should be required.

Right now we are seeing some of those fake FCs flipping houses for real money and kicking the 3 extra members (probably accounts belonging to the same person) added just for the sake of bidding. They only need to promote the buyer.

Pretty much all this. They flip-flopped on what they wanted to do and ended up haphazardly slapping the last minute decision in and messing up in the process. but even if it went right, FC's having 75% of all housing is insane. We don't actually have that many FC's. All this did was reward those who make "fake" FC's specifically to get a house. This didnt stop people from private owning houses, it stopped people who are in FCs with friends from having privately owned houses. If it stays this way, people will opt out of joining FCs more often to fake and make their own to finally get a house. Socially, it'll only cause more problems. Kind of undo's the work that they seemingly tried to do with the Community Finder things. If people have to choose between being in an FC and having their own house, they're going to choose to have their own house and actual FCs will pale in comparison. The anti-socialness and individualism will only become worse, on top of the misery and disappointment from regular players in friend group FCs who keep trying and failing to get a house.

Also, the time duration of the entire process is way too long. It's bad enough the housing demolition is still turned off. People shouldnt have to wait over a week for every rejection. Make it like 2 days to claim it, and lottery'd for maximum 3 days. 9 days is too much. Auto deliver the gil to their mail as well. It's apparently making people very angry/sad to go to the house they wanted and get their gil back. It's not our place to tell people what to feel. If they're saying it bothers them, then it bothers them and it's a problem that should be looked into and adjusted if possible for a better more tolerable experience. We want them to try again after failing, not feel so demoralized that they give up and unsub.

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Originally Posted by Palslow

FFXIV is the only game I play, so can anyone tell me how other games deal with housing in a much better way? why can't FFXIV copy their method?

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SE XIV would have to scrap the entire housing system to make it work like other games (or so we have been told by various people against instanced housing bc they want to keep making surplus gil/ RMT on flipping FC plots which they can still do)

Some games (like FFXI) you just had a house. You didn't have to mentally hurt yourself for one.
Some games, just give you a house after a certain period whether it's story advancement or crafting related.

Other games created instanced housing. So, you & I & 20 other folks could own the same house but a page comes up that shows the users who own the same plot, but friends are on the top- so you can click on your friends & the furniture/ designs would change to match what your friend put & now you are in your friends house.
If it's your house, you just enter to see your house but you can also view other peoples designs on the same house- it's like a tab/ UI page you can cycle through

That's how Black Desert did it & it's similar to ESO
In BDO (black desert) - the towns usually looked lived in because the houses were often in cramped alley ways around NPCs or high up in tree canopies.

Wildstar you had your own island that you could literally turn into a town/ barren desert/ ocean/ elven forest/ magical snowfields/ spooky cavern/ creepy asteroid with a black hole- the only limits were your budget & imagination lol
You could size the items up or down- and they didn't pixelate.

Things folks have suggested for literal years for XIV:
Instanced houses/ islands
Increased apartment size
Apartment roommates
Garden plots for apartments
Increased interior item limit & storage for all house sizes
Reworked Housing UI for decorating- x, y, z Axis placement (similar to other MMOs)
Adjustable room lighting per room
Adjustable music per room

The neighborhoods in XIV are mostly ghost towns so that system has failed & is flawed.
The lotto *is* good on paper & is good so you don't have to sit at a placard all day, losing to a bot that runs a 3rd party program to click faster.

Some would argue that apartments are instanced housing & technically, YES. BUT it lacks any good features that owning a plot or FC actually provides.
Having an apartment is a literal downgrade & waste of gil unless you need a storage space.

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

I would send these pictures over to the bug forums. Cause either that is a bug or some one made that many accounts as you can only have at most 2 houses per account per server and only 1 being a FC house.

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It's likely the same person with multiple accounts or people in agreement buying these plots (shell FCs)- since the FC's only had 1-5 entries bc of lack of demand
FC tags are not unique so I basically could have my friends with all of their gil make an FC- all different FC's of course, but with the same FC tag.
This is probably to show this person/ people are FC house flippers. They likely belong to the housing discord.
there are folks literally sitting on max amounts of gil who just do this stuff for fun

UPDATE:

So here's a thing I noticed to.

With purchasing a ticket, the system IN NO WAY SHAPE OF FORM! Notifies you of your pending lottery ticket plot numbers.

So if I forgot what placard I bid at, do I just... Lose my gil because I forgot where it was and let it go unclaimed?


I know there's gonna be a few inconsiderate people who are like "well if you forget what house you are trying to get, then you deserve to lose your gil", but that's not the point. Anyone, in excitement, can bid before they find out what ward/plot they was at, and get caught up in the moment. Things do happen, that doesn't mean there shouldn't be ANY NOTICE about it.


A EASY GIVEN SOLUTION WOULD BE TO SCRAP THE IDEA OF GOING BACK TO THE PLOT, AND JUST MAIL THE GIL BACK TO THE LOSING LOTTERY TICKET HOLDERS!


Like seriously. No one wants to be kicked while they are down, have to walk back to the house they lost, possibly meet toxic new home owners as they gloat, and then claim their earnings and walk away to wait 4 days before they can try this demoralizing task again. Like seriously, what the hell happened FFXIV Dev team with housing? How is so much of this stuff overlooked? For real, do better. You are more than capable enough. This is sloppy and shoddy at best.

As much as I hate this system and think it's been very poorly implemented, you actually can check which plot you bid on. I had a little notification when I logged in saying the results were pending and when I clicked it it opened a menu showing which plot I'd bid for.

I think it's in the same menu as timers? I'm not at my PC to check but yeah.

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Originally Posted by Olivia0x25

UPDATE:

So here's a thing I noticed to.

With purchasing a ticket, the system IN NO WAY SHAPE OF FORM! Notifies you of your pending lottery ticket plot numbers.

So if I forgot what placard I bid at, do I just... Lose my gil because I forgot where it was and let it go unclaimed?


I know there's gonna be a few inconsiderate people who are like "well if you forget what house you are trying to get, then you deserve to lose your gil", but that's not the point. Anyone, in excitement, can bid before they find out what ward/plot they was at, and get caught up in the moment. Things do happen, that doesn't mean there shouldn't be ANY NOTICE about it.


A EASY GIVEN SOLUTION WOULD BE TO SCRAP THE IDEA OF GOING BACK TO THE PLOT, AND JUST MAIL THE GIL BACK TO THE LOSING LOTTERY TICKET HOLDERS!


Like seriously. No one wants to be kicked while they are down, have to walk back to the house they lost, possibly meet toxic new home owners as they gloat, and then claim their earnings and walk away to wait 4 days before they can try this demoralizing task again. Like seriously, what the hell happened FFXIV Dev team with housing? How is so much of this stuff overlooked? For real, do better. You are more than capable enough. This is sloppy and shoddy at best.

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You can check which plot that you've bid on, not sure if under the duty menu but I would start there. Aside from that , i agree that forcing the people that lost their bid to walk back to the plot is idiotic. As you say, the system should automatically send a mail back to whomever loses. Now, if the person's mailbox is full, then i would force then to walk back rather than having them forfeit their money.

It isn't so much a matter of the winner "gloating" or being toxic' (really- hasn't that been used a been much by now????) , but as you say, why kick someone while they're down.

I don't mind the lotto, its way better than praying to RNGjebus infront of a placard full of bots spamming a macro all day long.. what bothers is me is the fact that FC houses can be bid on multipul times by the same FC, just give them the proper rank and GG theres another ticket in the pot.. And as much as I would love to believe everyone is fair in this world and made the gold via legit means.. most do not and its not goona be shocker if those multipul entries from the same FC were funded by bots.

Thus giving more attention to gold selling bots.. Its no surprise that they've increased lately and have been literally spamming via PM more often leading up to the lottery entry date.. I've had to block SO many..

I would prefer they leave it to one entry per FC and only the FC Master can bid.

You can check under timers I believe, and you get a popup option when you log in.

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Originally Posted by Tirian_Strider

You can check under timers I believe, and you get a popup option when you log in.

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Not sure how to edit, but this was in regards to how you can check which plot you bid on once the results are announced. Before that, I'm pretty sure you just need to write down what plot you bid on.

Overall, all of your points hit the mark, we need instanced housing and we need it now, no more bandages over this broken system, it needs to be fixed.

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Originally Posted by Tirian_Strider

Overall, all of your points hit the mark, we need instanced housing and we need it now, no more bandages over this broken system, it needs to be fixed.

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We won't ever get instanced housing because we would all be alone in our instance where's the social interactions? The system will work itself out give a years or so and you'l see. I put in 5 bids in a 14 entry plot and lost number 10 won and I am fine with that. I like the countdown system it is exciting and worrying it is not boring.

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Originally Posted by sagacious

We won't ever get instanced housing because we would all be alone in our instance where's the social interactions? The system will work itself out give a years or so and you'l see. I put in 5 bids in a 14 entry plot and lost number 10 won and I am fine with that. I like the countdown system it is exciting and worrying it is not boring.

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I think I've had exactly two coincidental social interactions in a housing ward ever and one was because I was actively roaming around looking for an FC
My home ward is dead empty 100% of the time and I've cycled through three immediate neighbors without ever actually seeing the players who owned those houses

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Originally Posted by sagacious

We won't ever get instanced housing because we would all be alone in our instance where's the social interactions? The system will work itself out give a years or so and you'l see. I put in 5 bids in a 14 entry plot and lost number 10 won and I am fine with that. I like the countdown system it is exciting and worrying it is not boring.

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I've walked around the neighborhood where my FC has a house for hours at a time and I have never seen a single other person in the ward other than myself
"social interactions" is a strong word to use for the current system

The amount of effort that has gone into "fixing" the housing system vs creating one that had a chance at actually satisfying most players does make it feel like the dev team is so far into a sunk cost fallacy that they will never find a way out. Shell FCs have been an issue since the beginning and probably always will be, but the way to get a handle on the black market is to deal with the scarcity of supply that creates it in the first place.

As much as I would like instanced housing I feel they won't consider it because it won't be a perfect solution, and some people will still complain. There are rarely perfect solutions, however, just workable ones. Instanced housing would, if done well, still give most ppl a chance to get most of want they want out of the housing system--their own personal place to decorate and hang out and be creative with and (hopefully) access to some of functions locked behind housing like crossbreeding plants.

Unlike a lot of people I have actually made friends with neighbors in housing districts before but most FC's in this game are never going to be large as no gameplay incentives it. Unless they make copies of endgame token and tome vendors in the housing zones your not going to get a lot of people congregating outside of houses instead of hanging out inside of their own.

If feels strange that fluff content like housing is constrained by the system and not a player's investment. It is probably hurting social interaction since a person can have a desire to make a social space but not be able to realize it because they can't get a house or one of the right size.

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Originally Posted by sagacious

We won't ever get instanced housing because we would all be alone in our instance where's the social interactions? The system will work itself out give a years or so and you'l see. I put in 5 bids in a 14 entry plot and lost number 10 won and I am fine with that. I like the countdown system it is exciting and worrying it is not boring.

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Who keeps selling this baloney and who keeps eating it? Decades of mmo instanced housing where basic toggles like public/private and handing out keys to your close friends have made for social interactions.

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Originally Posted by SenorPatty

Who keeps selling this baloney and who keeps eating it? Decades of mmo instanced housing where basic toggles like public/private and handing out keys to your close friends have made for social interactions.

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I can count the number of social interactions I've had with people I did not know because of my house on a single hand and most of them were extremely awkward, and I've had my house for almost three years. I've had people who I never met come into my house while I was hanging out with a friend attempt to use my house for RP. Then while hanging out with a group outside two people from an FC in my ward came into yard so they could take screenshots. And this last one wasn't even a social interaction, I was legit just idling outside and I saw two people run inside my house without even saying hi. Then they left without so much as leaving hearts or a message in my book. I could not care less about the "neighborhood" aspect people keep talking about, I just want to enjoy my house and if instanced housing gets all those people who like to complain about solo players like me who actively enjoy their house without others to shut up about us "taking away free company rp housing" then I'd like it even more.

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Originally Posted by sagacious

We won't ever get instanced housing because we would all be alone in our instance where's the social interactions? The system will work itself out give a years or so and you'l see. I put in 5 bids in a 14 entry plot and lost number 10 won and I am fine with that. I like the countdown system it is exciting and worrying it is not boring.

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Not really a majority of people just use Discord to social interact so really instanced housing would just give people a house

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Originally Posted by sagacious

We won't ever get instanced housing because we would all be alone in our instance where's the social interactions? The system will work itself out give a years or so and you'l see. I put in 5 bids in a 14 entry plot and lost number 10 won and I am fine with that. I like the countdown system it is exciting and worrying it is not boring.

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How were you able to put in 5 bids? 5 separate characters?

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Originally Posted by Palslow

FFXIV is the only game I play, so can anyone tell me how other games deal with housing in a much better way? why can't FFXIV copy their method?

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In black desert online, homes are part of the actual town. You click on the door and it gives you a menu where you can access your home, or the ten highest ranked stranger's homes, or your friend's home if your friend has a house there. In this way, thousands of people are owning an instanced version of a single building within the town. And the currency they buy it with isn't gold, but a secondary kind that everyone has ample supply of. The result is that players can own several houses and fill them with many things. A housing "shortage" is unheard of in BDO. In Phantasy Star Online 2 you could purchase a room with different sizes and customize it. Wildstar basically had you hit a certain level, and then you talk to a guy and bam you have a plot that you can customize the crap out of. And in Lost Ark, you get an island stronghold that you can customize.

None of these players even pay a mandatory monthly fee, but they have a player housing system that allows everyone to enjoy the system fully.