Why Housing Was Doomed To Fail

First, I wanted to say if you were hoping to get a house and didn't, I am supremely sorry. I know it sucks, and it will honestly just worsen from here. You missed your one big chance to get a plot with manageable odds.

For those saying, stop crying, you wanted this, no, they didn't. Players did not ask for such a low supply of personal housing. They wanted a chance to own a house and didn't want to spend 4-5 hours at a time clicking a sign. Going from the world's worse system to this is NOT better. Your odds are still just as bad going forward.

For personal houses, SE released wards 19-24. Each ward has 60 homes, and on my server, after running around for a couple of hours, about ten people were bidding on a single house, and on some plots, that went up to 30 bids. We will assume a low number of 5 per house for our purpose. That is 360 houses trying to be split between 1800 people bidding. Of course, people are going to be upset. The supply is not there.

Then, to make matters worse, players cannot do anything about it. At least when we're clicking on the house, and you lost, often you could move to click on another one. Now you are forced to sit on your loss for nine days. This is split between having to wait four days to bid again, to which supply is far less going forward, so expect upwards of 50+ bidding on the house. Then you wait five days to find out another winner. With those numbers, you have about 40 attempts to win a bid in a year. Depending on the odds as we advance, that could be winning a 1 in 50 rolls, and it could be worse.

The entire issue is a lack of supply. There is not a system that SE could put in that makes such a low supply feel good to people. It just isn't going to happen. Far more people don't own a house than do own one, and while we don't have numbers on that, I could only assume that is pretty significant considering the sheer amount of bids.

To sum up my Ted talk, there isn't enough supply. Your odds going forward are much worse than they were at release. Yay! Housing got better! /s

Basically the current system is the same as before, you just don't have to spend your whole life clicking on the placard, system chooses who wins and thats how it is, back then youd have to keep on clicking and when the server decides that the house was available to purchase one lucky person gets the house, I honestly don't see much difference from this to the lottery system.

Except the previous one didn't screw up a lot of people with bugs.

Just making myself clear here that I'm not defending the old system, I'm 100% up for instanced housing.

SE didn't understand the problem they were trying to fix. You can't just throw a new system over the old one and expect things to change. There was never enough supply, not by half. They did very little actually to fix that. I am happy for the people who won but understand that hundreds more did not for everyone who did.

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Originally Posted by Grimsalt

For those saying, stop crying, you wanted this, no, they didn't. Players did not ask for such a low supply of personal housing. They wanted a chance to own a house and didn't want to spend 4-5 hours at a time clicking a sign. Going from the world's worse system to this is NOT better. Your odds are still just as bad going forward.

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We also wanted Square to double-check their code and not allow for jank like the lottery rolling a 0. Missed out on upgrading my FC house when I was the *only* participant on the plot I wanted. Went from being a sure thing with 100% chance of me getting it to a coin-toss based on some broken code. 6.1 has turned out to be an absolute mess between changes nobody asked for, a janky lottery system that doesn't work as intended, visual bugs and glitches up the wazoo and no real end in sight beyond "we're sorry for your inconvenience." I've been playing for years and I've never seen any mid-expansion patch have such a negative effect before, but I suppose there has to be a first time for everything. My only hope is that the devs can sack up and deliver the fixes pretty soon because the way things are going, I don't think I'm going to renew my sub when the time comes.

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Originally Posted by Wolfenrir

Basically the current system is the same as before, you just don't have to spend your whole life clicking on the placard, system chooses who wins and thats how it is, back then youd have to keep on clicking and when the server decides that the house was available to purchase one lucky person gets the house, I honestly don't see much difference from this to the lottery system.

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The new one is worse.

Before you had atleast the chance to find a house here and there with noone on it, or atleast 2-3 players. Of course on highly populated servers it might´ve been like 10 players clicking 24/7 on it, but the new system? The more and more houses are gone, the more poeple will bet on the left ones. In the end you gonna have 100 or even 1000 bids on it.

I would actually prefer sitting a whole night here smashing buttons and having a tangible chance on a house instead of gambling with a 0,1% chance because i wasn´t able to get a house week 1, especially when you have to wait like 10 days for a new bid just to be mad at the end once again.

The chances to be together on the same ward with your friends / partner-fc decreased drastically with it too.


EDIT: Imagine they would´ve finally added an anti-cheat system against bots / clickmacros and other software. That combined with "you can´t relocate" and fc restrictions... it would´ve solved a lot much better than this.

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Originally Posted by SlickPaws

We also wanted Square to double-check their code and not allow for jank like the lottery rolling a 0. Missed out on upgrading my FC house when I was the *only* participant on the plot I wanted. Went from being a sure thing with 100% chance of me getting it to a coin-toss based on some broken code. 6.1 has turned out to be an absolute mess between changes nobody asked for, a janky lottery system that doesn't work as intended, visual bugs and glitches up the wazoo and no real end in sight beyond "we're sorry for your inconvenience." I've been playing for years and I've never seen any mid-expansion patch have such a negative effect before, but I suppose there has to be a first time for everything. My only hope is that the devs can sack up and deliver the fixes pretty soon because the way things are going, I don't think I'm going to renew my sub when the time comes.

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Yeah, when talking about my grievances with the system, I wanted to focus on the housing system as a whole. The bug indeed does suck, but it wouldn't technically have been an issue if there was supply. That being said, I hope you get your house!

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Originally Posted by ssunny2008

The new one is worse.

Before you had atleast the chance to find a house here and there with noone on it, or atleast 2-3 players. Of course on highly populated servers it might´ve been like 10 players clicking 24/7 on it, but the new system? The more and more houses are gone, the more poeple will bet on the left ones. In the end you gonna have 100 or even 1000 bids on it.

I would actually prefer sitting a whole night here smashing buttons and having a tangible chance on a house instead of gambling with a 0,1% chance because i wasn´t able to get a house week 1, especially when you have to wait like 10 days for a new bid just to be mad at the end once again.

The chances to be together on the same ward with your friends / partner-fc decreased drastically with it too.

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This is what I wanted to point out. I am severely lowballing my estimates to make it seem a little better. But I expect that houses will have upwards of 100 bids on them going forward. And given that you only have about 40 tries per year, the odds are stacked against you.

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Originally Posted by Wolfenrir

Basically the current system is the same as before, you just don't have to spend your whole life clicking on the placard, system chooses who wins and thats how it is, back then youd have to keep on clicking and when the server decides that the house was available to purchase one lucky person gets the house, I honestly don't see much difference from this to the lottery system.

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I'm not bashing the current system or defending the old one either, but there is one major difference. The amount of people entering. Before, the system sucked pretty bad so there were comparatively less people trying for a house because not everyone had the time/wanted to camp a house & click for hours. Now, it's easy to try for a house, so everyone and their mothers can just walk up, click a button, and walk away. More people are able to enter than before, and they have 5 days to do it as opposed to having to find the time in 1 day, so your odds in general are alot lower.

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Originally Posted by Grimsalt

SE didn't understand the problem they were trying to fix. You can't just throw a new system over the old one and expect things to change. There was never enough supply, not by half. They did very little actually to fix that. I am happy for the people who won but understand that hundreds more did not for everyone who did.

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They do understand the problem. They don't want to fix it.

They'd rather put minimal effort into mixing the system up to give the appearance of doing something over investing the resources needed to fix it. Now we're seeing the typical result of such an approach - new and bigger problems.

Well, sadly, over half of my FC quit because we've been trying to get an house for ages and the old system was beyond garbage and now this happens. I know for most of you this shouldn't be a reason to quit but it's an adding up of situations and honestly my group of friends just wants to move on at this point.

People were already frustrated about a lot of stuff and honestly this was just the straw that broke the camel's back for many of them. Some people went out of their way to be up at dawn, some were playing on a Saturday when its "family time" for them and, all for nothing. At this point we were just angry but then Yoshida releases a boilerplate corporate speech with "Welp, sorry, we'll do better next time". No, you won't, there won't be a next time, people got fed up with "sorry's", don't be sorry be better or compensate for the losses you caused. It's not too much to ask. If people ran on their own for a house and lost, give them the damn house! We deserve better than a boilerplate corporate speech!

It's too much shit at this point. Adding to all the personal issues everyone has with the game, there's the ones that were bad for everyone. Server massive login queue that had people waiting for hours to play (you know, people that were paying subscriptions and only had those few hours to play to begin with) which at some point was almost impossible to get in on a weekend due to all the anti-AFK scripts, then they closed the server which meant if we wanted to get our friends to come try Final Fantasy, we couldn't because it was closed for 2 months, and then there was the "data center coming soon™" debacle which by "patch release estimates" we're only getting 4 months from now for visits within same areas (IE europe: chaos, light) and all over the globe not sooner than next year, if we're lucky! All of this in the span of a few months. It's too many sorrys and not actually getting stuff done and right the first time around. Sorry does NOT make up for messing up.

And above all, I know most of you see Yoshida as a God, but almost everyone I know is tired of the levity at which he answers some stuff. Shrugging his shoulders and rolling his eyes every time someone asks "IS HOUSING GOING TO BE FIXED?" feels like a taunt at this point, because he goes "Uugggh, this question again, every time", YES, every time, because you haven't fixed it the first 30 times, what do you think it's going to happen the 31st? PEOPLE ARE GOING TO ASK. What kind of dev never addresses a problem and expects it go away? Maybe you should wonder why people keep asking instead? It's because people care about it and they are tired of trying to get a house due to your crappy system and you refuse to fix it. Lo and behold, a light at the end of the tunnel and BAM, "sorry kids, we'll do better next time, good luck with your even lower odds of getting a house now."

Getting really hard to justify to my friends why they should keep playing this "amazing" game every time Squeenix messes up royally.

Also, the "complicated code we need to check" excuse? Coooome on. You can BS any layman with such a sorry excuse, but understand that some of us actually are coders and devs ourselves. "Complicated system that we need to through" for a raffle? Please... Either the code is basic and you're lying (my guess) or the code is unnecessarily complicated which means you need better coders which doesn't make me feel any more at ease.

These threads pain me :c

Am hopeful that SE will now finally take proper measures, even if its just to keep face after this... Debacle ^^

Coz in my mind, the only way to fix this mess is by increasing supply of houses.

It's not about a

"better system to acquire a house"
"instanced housing"
"add bigger Apts."

(tho the latter I'd like)

It's simply about the willingness to pick up wads of cash and make use of them - they have said cash now. Or should have it now *cough*.

I just ask you guys one thing, stop pushing for instanced housing a la BDO/whatever.

The neighbourhoods gotta stay. Imagine what'd happen if they touched that part of the code again... *shudders*

ANYWAY, they did add a bit of supply - so goodluck to all you housing Hunters out there :3

Been playing since 2k13 and managed to get a house during Shadowbringers, so you guys can do it too~

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Originally Posted by StarkeRegulus

And above all, I know most of you see Yoshida as a God,

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Yoshida sucks.

Downgrades across the game... hidden nerfs in gameplay presentated as QoL-feature... classes homogenized af and it still continues for no reason... dozens of braindead content poeple complain for years about... copy & paste each addon... housing still restricted for no reason but money, so players just CAN`T drop their subs sometimes...

The game has some cool graphics and a lot for "UwU" players. The popularity comes, because there is no real competitor next to WoW. Otherwise things would look different. Yoshido needs to give this game in some more competent hands. The ignorance is real far too long.

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Originally Posted by IckeDerTyp

Am hopeful that SE will now finally take proper measures, even if its just to keep face after this... Debacle ^^

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They actualy did.

- There is now some more supply again (its not enough, but its a 25% increase in total compared to the state before)
- Placard spamming became irrelevant (which counters the bot complaint)
- Islands also will make housing itself less interesting for people as some simply wont care about farming onions, but do want to have a house. And therefor some people will just accept this as solution and stop going for a house at all (again a way to increase supply by getting players less interested in a normal house).
- And they actualy did a split on type to counter the FC without house issue.

That its still not optimal is true, but it is an improvement. And who knows if they actualy already had plans to increase each region in the number of wards, but are delaying that after islands?

(sure, they created new issues in the process, but thats what always happens)

[QUOTE=Grimsalt;5904524]

"For personal houses, SE released wards 19-24. Each ward has 60 homes, and on my server, after running around for a couple of hours, about ten people were bidding on a single house, and on some plots, that went up to 30 bids. We will assume a low number of 5 per house for our purpose. That is 360 houses trying to be split between 1800 people bidding. Of course, people are going to be upset. The supply is not there. "



I also think it's strange that people relocating didn't get any type of a benefit in the lottery. If 1800 people are bidding but 50 of them are trying to relocate, if they win there are still 50 open plots somewhere else.

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Originally Posted by Grimsalt

There was never enough supply, not by half. They did very little actually to fix that.

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Just to address the understatement of the year - they actually made it worse by reducing the amount of personal housing.
25% of housing only for personals does not work, especially when on a lot of servers, most FC houses are just not being bought, and then saying it's only going to be addressed once every 4 months is... It's mind boggling how this was thought to be a good idea.

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Originally Posted by Shazzinoth

Just to address the understatement of the year - they actually made it worse by reducing the amount of personal housing.
25% of housing only for personals does not work, especially when on a lot of servers, most FC houses are just not being bought, and then saying it's only going to be addressed once every 4 months is... It's mind boggling how this was thought to be a good idea.

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How was that mind boggling? If any at this point it's what's to be expected, they are clearly underestimating how much they are pissing off the community regarding the housing issue. Maybe when they lose even more players to Lost Ark they'll wake the F up.

In all the years I've played the game, I can't think of a single time where housing produced feelings of joy or happiness. The only memories I have of people interacting with the housing system that was introduced was a mix of anxiety, anger, disbelief, and cynicism. When someone makes an MMO like this and generates a system that can only be participated or experienced by those that break TOS or commit great amounts of sacrifice on their own part while still being beholden to the roll of a dice, there is no happiness.

The only fate someone has who succeeds in buying is to be beholden to a timer to keep the house alive after spending millions of gil and probably gameplay hours decorating it, with minimal gameplay functionality on top of it all.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

In all the years I've played the game, I can't think of a single time where housing produced feelings of joy or happiness. The only memories I have of people interacting with the housing system that was introduced was a mix of anxiety, anger, disbelief, and cynicism. When someone makes an MMO like this and generates a system that can only be participated or experienced by those that break TOS or commit great amounts of sacrifice on their own part while still being beholden to the roll of a dice, there is no happiness.

The only fate someone has who succeeds in buying is to be beholden to a timer to keep the house alive after spending millions of gil and probably gameplay hours decorating it, with minimal gameplay functionality on top of it all.

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Preach. Was meant to be fun, it's not and it bars content and functionality behind it.

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Originally Posted by Shazzinoth

Just to address the understatement of the year - they actually made it worse by reducing the amount of personal housing.
25% of housing only for personals does not work, especially when on a lot of servers, most FC houses are just not being bought, and then saying it's only going to be addressed once every 4 months is... It's mind boggling how this was thought to be a good idea.

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I understand that the overall percentage of personal housing may have decreased, but hasn't the total number of personal plots on each server increased?

Or they actually shrink or re-zone the previously existing wards like the Goblet? I hadn't noticed that.

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Originally Posted by Grimsalt

The entire issue is a lack of supply. There is not a system that SE could put in that makes such a low supply feel good to people. It just isn't going to happen. Far more people don't own a house than do own one, and while we don't have numbers on that, I could only assume that is pretty significant considering the sheer amount of bids.

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The system was doomed to fail because of the direction the developers took with the game.. housing was meant to be this multiplayer component that free companies could all work together and build. And it was originally going g to be supported by vast amounts of free company centric content to build bonds and promote team work. And community. You know like an actual MMO.

The direction the devs have taken with the game basically says screw all of that and let's make it a single player game. We'll do everything we can to make socialising and building strong connections between players as difficult as possible..

Drove massive wedges between free companies and groups of players and essentially separated them all into much smaller almost individual groups. How many 1 man FCs are there.

Had they stayed on the path of an MMO and not some single player game. There would honestly not be a housing crisis. Because the game would have actual fc based content and be focused around building bonds between players and playing together instead of playing alone..

TLDR. Housing was doomed to fail because its an MMO design in a single player game..

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Originally Posted by Colt47

In all the years I've played the game, I can't think of a single time where housing produced feelings of joy or happiness.

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That's too bad! My own housing experience has been pretty positive; overall I've really enjoyed having a house as well as the neighborhood system. I like being able to see other houses (except for ugly Moogle monstrosities) and running into other people in the housing area. We even used to have a neighborhood linkshell. Decorating the house inside and out (we currently have Hatching-Tide decorations up) has been fun as well. We made indoor and outdoor jump puzzles. It has definitely been a focal point for our FC. And we got lucky and won the lottery! So for us it has been pretty good.

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Originally Posted by Avenger

That's too bad! My own housing experience has been pretty positive; overall I've really enjoyed having a house as well as the neighborhood system. I like being able to see other houses (except for ugly Moogle monstrosities) and running into other people in the housing area. We even used to have a neighborhood linkshell. Decorating the house inside and out (we currently have Hatching-Tide decorations up) has been fun as well. We made indoor and outdoor jump puzzles. It has definitely been a focal point for our FC. And we got lucky and won the lottery! So for us it has been pretty good.

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My statement is not a personal one. This is a community wide issue and while you may have found something in it, it is far outweighed by the pains that everyone has gone through because of this system. That and this is the same kind of sentiment and strawman situation that has shown up in gachapon games, where the few people who win in the system and are rewarded would obviously support or say good things about it.

In fact, turning this into a lotto essentially put housing one step closer to digital gambling with in-game currency. That's some food for thought.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

My statement is not a personal one. This is a community wide issue and while you may have found something in it, it is far outweighed by the pains that everyone has gone through because of this system. That and this is the same kind of sentiment and strawman situation that has shown up in gachapon games, where the few people who win in the system and are rewarded would obviously support or say good things about it.

In fact, turning this into a lotto essentially put housing one step closer to digital gambling with in-game currency. That's some food for thought.

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"In game currency".

Homie, I know for a fact most of my acquaintances that ran for big houses bought money outside the game. I've been playing for 7 months, heavily manipulating the market, buying from other servers to sell at mine, using the materia system and what not and I'm at 32M. I can only imagine the stuff people have to go through to make big bucks in this game. Just 24/7 crafting or something.

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Originally Posted by StarkeRegulus

"In game currency".

Homie, I know for a fact most of my acquaintances that ran for big houses bought money outside the game. I've been playing for 7 months, heavily manipulating the market, buying from other servers to sell at mine, using the materia system and what not and I'm at 32M. I can only imagine the stuff people have to go through to make big bucks in this game. Just 24/7 crafting or something.

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Im trying to compute why you would post this idea, like, what?
Are you trying to say simply "ingame? Theyre gambling with real money!"
Or like "no one got gil whos bidding on a large legitimately"

Ive been anticipating ishgard housing since well before the firmament and ive been saving gil for it for a long time. Ive left the money for a house on one of my retainers so i could never touch it or go under that amount. Selling desired stuff on patch days or days when people acquire housing typically gets you alot of gil

Its what i would be doing if i didnt basically just quit.

The devs won't listen to the player base in any meaningful capacity whilst there's tens, if not hundreds of thousands of free apartments still in the game. Not every server is Balmung or Mateus, and whilst apartments aren't perfect, they're a perfectly acceptable compromise, even if only temporarily (they're also super cheap, permanent, and not tied to a subscription). More Wards means more sets of empty apartments, and that's a sizable waste of resources for the developers to waste because the wider player base refuses to spend the bare minimum of 500k to own an apartment.

Tl;DR actually buy apartments, and the devs will be more likely to take housing shortage concerns seriously.

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Originally Posted by ElysiumDragon

The devs won't listen to the player base in any meaningful capacity whilst there's tens, if not hundreds of thousands of free apartments still in the game. Not every server is Balmung or Mateus, and whilst apartments aren't perfect, they're a perfectly acceptable compromise, even if only temporarily (they're also super cheap, permanent, and not tied to a subscription). More Wards means more sets of empty apartments, and that's a sizable waste of resources for the developers to waste because the wider player base refuses to spend the bare minimum of 500k to own an apartment.

Tl;DR actually buy apartments, and the devs will be more likely to take housing shortage concerns seriously.

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I just wanted to make sure this is satire because if you think people want apartments I have some bad news about small houses for you

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Originally Posted by ElysiumDragon

The devs won't listen to the player base in any meaningful capacity whilst there's tens, if not hundreds of thousands of free apartments still in the game. Not every server is Balmung or Mateus, and whilst apartments aren't perfect, they're a perfectly acceptable compromise, even if only temporarily (they're also super cheap, permanent, and not tied to a subscription). More Wards means more sets of empty apartments, and that's a sizable waste of resources for the developers to waste because the wider player base refuses to spend the bare minimum of 500k to own an apartment.

Tl;DR actually buy apartments, and the devs will be more likely to take housing shortage concerns seriously.

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Apartments are nice and cozy and hopefully island will fix the gardening monopoly on houses. Devs have listened but no matter what they do people will still be angry. They added more wards prior, changed the housing system several times to prevent monopolies but there isn't a solid fix for having in game housing not instanced. The luxury of the houses is the fact that you can walk around and visit others. Instancing them will kill a huge part of the housing community.

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Originally Posted by Corvus_V

I just wanted to make sure this is satire because if you think people want apartments I have some bad news about small houses for you

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Once someone had a small they will theb complaine about not having a medium and so forth. That's just how it is. If you want property it's either you get an appartment or keep up the grind for a house. Adventually you will get it. To me the lottery system makes it more fair but also harder to get a house. Least when I spammed placards I saw the competition and earned the house by out doing the other clickers. Lottery is no work on your behalf for the same reward. Just gotta fish out the coding bug

Sorry to burst your bubble of "Eventually you will get it" is complete bs. 7 years of trying, fighting and losing to every kind of bs, bot or bug says otherwise. No one actually wanted apartments, it was a bandaid fix hoping that fool's would look away from the lack of progress made to fix the real issues.

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Originally Posted by BellBixbite

Once someone had a small they will theb complaine about not having a medium and so forth. That's just how it is. If you want property it's either you get an appartment or keep up the grind for a house. Adventually you will get it. To me the lottery system makes it more fair but also harder to get a house. Least when I spammed placards I saw the competition and earned the house by out doing the other clickers. Lottery is no work on your behalf for the same reward. Just gotta fish out the coding bug

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Oh god its the superstitious. Im not entertaining that.

No, there is no grind anymore, its RNG, and you wont get a chance unless the people who just got those houses move. Or they add more wards. At an average or like 10 bids per 5 wards, they would need almost 100 more personal ones for people to be satisfied. They should just add instanced homesteads so as many people can own larges and mediums as they want.

No, more people are bidding on mediums and larges outright because you dont need a small to transfer, and they can already afford mediums and larges. Hence the massively skewed bid numbers

Im sorry to burst your bubble on this but people dont want smalls because their decoration limit is hilariously low, and apartments have outrageously low space.

Also, none of this is more fair to anyone who prepared to buy a medium or large by first placard clicking at a small. People just dont want to discuss that because they dont care.

Apparently they made another announcement in the JP forum. It was a wall of text boilerplate corporate "sucks to be you" speech. Don't bother reading, it doesn't offer explanations or entraps them into saying they'd fix anything because if you deny there's a problem for long enough, it usually goes away, right? Right.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

In all the years I've played the game, I can't think of a single time where housing produced feelings of joy or happiness. The only memories I have of people interacting with the housing system that was introduced was a mix of anxiety, anger, disbelief, and cynicism. When someone makes an MMO like this and generates a system that can only be participated or experienced by those that break TOS or commit great amounts of sacrifice on their own part while still being beholden to the roll of a dice, there is no happiness.

The only fate someone has who succeeds in buying is to be beholden to a timer to keep the house alive after spending millions of gil and probably gameplay hours decorating it, with minimal gameplay functionality on top of it all.

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Patch 4.2 was a good time for housing once they lifted the personal moratorium. Not even Balmung sold out immediately (though it didn't last long). Most worlds had available plots for several months. But that was probably the only good time for players.

But worlds like Balmung and the present ward distribution demonstrate problems with the system. Not every world has the same needs because populations are different along with the player focus on game play. "One size fits all" is a terrible at making customers with diverse needs happy.

What is not game play to you is game play for others. Don't mistake what you want as being what everyone wants. Housing is a completely optional system so you don't need to participate. If it doesn't offer what you want, don't engage with the system. Do the content that you do enjoy and leave housing to others.