The minimum acceptable situation

What, in your opinion, would it take for housing to be acceptable in FFXIV?

My personal opinion is that most servers are there. Some of the high pop ones aren't, but most are. I'll elaborate.

Every FC can get a house. Maybe not a medium or large, but a house. Having even a small house gives you access to the workshop, aetherial wheels, and a place for people to apply in you're not online. It also gives members a place to congregate and to make FC rooms. The jump in quality and features from no house to small house is far bigger than small to medium or even small to large. Every FC needs a house to be able to access all of the features of getting an FC.

Every player has some kind of personalized space. This is accomplished with apartments. Houses were originally FC only things, and FCs should be given priority.

Please remember that this is what I consider the minimum, not the ideal. Ideally, every player and FC would have whatever size in whatever zone they want, and I would support an instancing system if it allowed that. But right now, housing in FFXIV gets a barely passing grade.

Instanced housing for personals. You can keep the wards as they are, and institute housing that isn't the breadbox of an apartment sized. Perhaps even gate it behind MSQ content. (I mean, Smileton is right there on the moon waiting to be used.)

It's a great opportunity to rethink housing in general.

Available small houses to all fcs and private owners who want a house / want to relocate. Europe has already reached this acceptable situation. Now we just need auto-demolition back at some point, so this situation can be maintained.

Better enforcement of the plot requirements. Maybe even a second attempt at plugging in the loophole. Though considering the rank permission is still beyond broken that might take a while.

Every character (not just player) and FC able to get the house or apartment of their choice provided they meet the requirements (level 50+, 2nd Lt in GC, have the gil to purchased the desired location, for personal, and Rank 6 entitlement for FC) without having to compete against others to get it.

We know it can be done because we've seen it in other games. It's up to SE to make it happen.

Keep the wards as they are but add instanced so everyone can own a house of their choosing. Housing shouldn’t be a competition or an “if you can luck into it” thing. There’s lots of people here that have put forward so many good ideas of how it could be done, and with 30 wards already, SE needs to look at options to solve the scarcity issue without putting more stress on the servers. And I understand that this is mainly an NA region issue. But the fact that NA’s problem is overcrowding also suggests that this is a huge chunk of your customer base, and maybe worth some attention. lol

Auto-demo has helped a little bit, but those houses will be gone in probably 2-3 lotto cycles. And really it’s another “feel bad” part of the system right now that the only hope some people have for a house is that someone else gets theirs demolished. It feels bad to lose every lotto, because it’s all RNG. It feels bad to walk back to that placard to collect your money. The system as it is now just feels bad all around, and it’s sad that a game that has done so many other things so well has kinda dropped the ball in this area.

Also, adding new worlds is great for those just getting into the game, and those that don’t have any strong ties to keep them from transferring. But you can’t just say housing is meant to foster community, and then say leaving the community they’ve built up over years is the only solution to the housing shortage.

There’s a way for everyone to have what they want, it just needs to be worked on. And that’s what I want to see… because again, the current system just feels bad and creates animosity between players.

For personals, I honestly think all that's really needed is size-upgradeable apartments with uncapped availability. If you want to load balance availability between wards, add an NPC that can point you to wards with availability.

It's the cheapest and easiest solution and the relative losses are marginal. So much so, that the fact that it hasn't already happened raises red flags with me about any other potential solutions.

FCs are more complicated. I have serious reservations about the scenarios that would arise from an uncapped number of FC workshops, and the solutions that would make it more permissible aren't terribly pretty either and mostly render the whole thing pointless.

The largest mistake was mixing FC and Personal housing.

If they were to double current capacity and keep FC and personal split combined with auto demolition, there would be no issue with European servers for space.

But the main issue thereafter is people wanting medium and large houses so the next step would be to make dynamic housing.

-Dynamic housing would require a complete redesign of the wards, and make plots scale in size with enough space to scale a house from small to large. The owner can then upgrade their house over time. Bear in mind that not everyone will want to go large, some just love medium houses.
-Make it so that there are as few undesirable plots as possible. That means each house must have a decent view, and be able to see over other if they are on a slope like in Mist or Shirogane. Currently, A LOT of houses have undesirable views.
-More market boards and summoning bells around. Ishgard, goblet and lavender beds have some of the worst locations and distance to travel to get to MBs and Summoning bells.

Make the FC's instanced guildhalls you can enter from the GC you made it out from... and make housing for people be the ward system... there will be alot of free room whenall the pocket FC's disappear and also every one making an FC will not have to struggle to find an FC house or pay a ludicrous amount of real life money or ingame money for a plot from a FC reseller.

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Originally Posted by Nepentha

Instanced housing for personals. You can keep the wards as they are, and institute housing that isn't the breadbox of an apartment sized. Perhaps even gate it behind MSQ content. (I mean, Smileton is right there on the moon waiting to be used.)

It's a great opportunity to rethink housing in general.

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It would be better to make the FC's instanced and housing free then the trade with FC's on cool wards stops... and you can't trade normal housing as it is now.

End the plot system and just do instanced housing like every other game released after 2010.

And even some before 2010.

Delete all housing, apartments only. If there is no differentiated class of housing and everyone can only have the same type of in-game lodgings, there will be no more complaints.

Also, there will be no more fear of auto-demolition and the apartment system can then be expanded upon with the freed-up servers now that they are not needed 24/7 for housing wards.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

End the plot system and just do instanced housing like every other game released after 2010.

And even some before 2010.

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Yeah nah, let's not do that thank you very much.

People have their houses and are happy with them, we shouldnt lose our plots because you cant get a shiro large uncontested, sorry.

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Originally Posted by DeNada

Delete all housing, apartments only. If there is no differentiated class of housing and everyone can only have the same type of in-game lodgings, there will be no more complaints.

Also, there will be no more fear of auto-demolition and the apartment system can then be expanded upon with the freed-up servers now that they are not needed 24/7 for housing wards.

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How about, let me think.. No.

If FCs mainly want MD and LG houses, their wards should be designed with that in mind imo. That ship has sailed of course since the game features one identical neighborhood layout per housing area. The minimum acceptable metric in that case is - - are all houses filled? If they aren't something is wrong. That's where we are right now.

Some of my suggestions may not be popular but I believe they would help.

-Create new ward maps with primarily medium and larges. Keep personal and FC wards separated.
-Make Flame/Serpent/Storm captain new requirement to get housing and to create a FC.
-Allow apartments to have different sizes. Allow gil compensation to people with ward houses that choose to relocate to an apartment. (I understand this could be abused, maybe a once per character/account thing.) I just know a lot of people would rather have apartment style medium/larges because they don't really care about yards.

And to give more incentive for people to move from congested to preferred worlds. Chocobo Feathers/ slight housing refunds/ and road to 80 or nice--but something that would really pull to preferred worlds.

While I’d like to see apartments get an update with different sized layouts, apartments aren’t a substitute for a house. As it is now, you can have both, and many do. Maybe some people don’t care about outdoor space, but the ones that do aren’t going to be satisfied with an apartment, especially when anyone pining for a house probably already has one, and maybe an FC room as well.

I also like the medium/large only ward layout idea, but that would take a lot of commitment on SE’s part and who knows how much server space. One of the reasons I keep campaigning for instanced is I truly think it’s the easiest way to satisfy the largest amount of people for the least amount of effort. Keep the existing wards and add on instanced. The instanced house/ plots could be modeled after the already existing ward plots, so anyone can pick the one their heart desires. And nothing gets taken away from anyone else.

What you're proposing is not in the slightest the 'least amount of effort' here - that's an entirely new system that has to be developed, and that won't come cheap. Budgeted out, there's a very real chance a 'new ward design full of nothing but larges' would cost less. Engineering time is expensive, and there's plenty of design and QA work implied there on top of that.

i like this one for being unique, sure its limited but we have apts

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Originally Posted by Oizen

End the plot system and just do instanced housing like every other FAILED game released after 2010.

And even some before 2010.

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Fixed that for you.

-Add some kind of upkeep to housing to prevent folks grabbing housing simply for the sake of having it.
-Remove large/Medium personals from wards.
-Resize ALL plots so that a owner starts at a small and must invest time/gil into the house to increase its size (if they choose to) as a Medium should fit in the new "resized" plots.
-Allow people to select one of 2-3 orientations of their home on their plot.
-In FC only wards leave larges so that large active FC's can compete with each other.
-Have houses have a increase of item limits over time - the purpose of this is to increase the amount of gil moving through the economy by encourging players to redecor as they get a larger item limit over time and allow long time home owners to see their houses becoming complex and elaborate vs the level 20 housing alts everywhere.
-Built in saving of housing builds and VASTLY larger housing storage NOT linked to the house but the character instead.
-One home per world; One FC home per world - in the event that you inherit a FC you are unable to decorate that FC house or enter its workshop. You go first come/first served - so if you can already deco/use the workshop of a FC house - the moment you inherit another; those new houses are under such restrictions until the "prime" FC is no longer the case. This allows you to be in multiple FC's without resulting in mass private FC home ownership.
-Workshop access to all characters via GC.

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Add some kind of upkeep to housing to prevent folks grabbing housing simply for the sake of having it.

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No.

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Remove large/Medium personals from wards

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No.

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Resize ALL plots so that a owner starts at a small and must invest time/gil into the house to increase its size (if they choose to) as a Medium should fit in the new "resized" plots.

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No.

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In FC only wards leave larges so that large active FC's can compete with each other.

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It's fine as it is.

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Have houses have a increase of item limits over time - the purpose of this is to increase the amount of gil moving through the economy by encourging players to redecor as they get a larger item limit over time and allow long time home owners to see their houses becoming complex and elaborate vs the level 20 housing alts everywhere.

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No.

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Built in saving of housing builds and VASTLY larger housing storage NOT linked to the house but the character instead.

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Hell to the no.

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One home per world; One FC home per world - in the event that you inherit a FC you are unable to decorate that FC house or enter its workshop. You go first come/first served - so if you can already deco/use the workshop of a FC house - the moment you inherit another; those new houses are under such restrictions until the "prime" FC is no longer the case. This allows you to be in multiple FC's without resulting in mass private FC home ownership.

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Hell to the no.

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Workshop access to all characters via GC

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Sure, but then they will have to nerf it by a huge percentage.

There are times like these I'm really glad they dont read the forums, honestly, according to some, having an FC and a house should be a 24 7 job and constant upkeep to even keep the house, with a billion chores and annoyances to do, and a giant gil amount to keep it

just stop

Sadly, I don't think there will be any solution that will make the playerbase happy.

Make apartments upgradeable to mediums and large? People will complain they don't have a front lawn.
Spin up more instances on an as-needed basis? People will complain the neighborhoods are ghost towns.
Change loop-holes? Many players have had these secondary residences for years and invested lots of time and gil into it.
Etc etc

On my server, we had smalls in the new wards sit vacant in the personal ward going into the 3rd lottery. If you really wanted a house, you could have got a house. So when I hear people complain on my server, they need to realize they are complaining just for the sake of complaining. Is the system perfect? Of course not. But we are much closer to being where need to be than we were before and there is no need to scrap the whole system and start over.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

Sure, but then they will have to nerf it by a huge percentage.

There are times like these I'm really glad they dont read the forums, honestly, according to some, having an FC and a house should be a 24 7 job and constant upkeep to even keep the house, with a billion chores and annoyances to do, and a giant gil amount to keep it

just stop

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Parts of the workshop could already stand to be nerfed. Do Extravagant Salvaged Accessories really need to be worth up to 35k each (especially when it's possible to get multiple in a single voyage)?

We already know they're working on a personal version of voyages. Depending on how those compare to the existing ones, the nerfs are likely incoming regardless.

As for reading the forums, they do have the community team at a minimum reading through the feedback. We got the suggested purchase timer after the complaints when Shirogane was opened, we got the suggested lottery, etc.

But there are plenty of other things that have been suggested but not implemented. So they do read but they don't always do what player ask for.

You also exaggerate how hard it is to make gil. Most players don't have a hard time making it. They have a hard time spending it wisely and so it seems like they don't make much because they're always running out.

Here comes my obligatory "if SE had only developed a good instanced housing system in the first place instead of choosing wards, players wouldn't feel the need to make those suggestions not to mention that demolition wouldn't exist, the lottery wouldn't exist, complaints about not being able to get a specific plot wouldn't exist..."

Safe to say it's not going to stop just because you're mostly happy with the system. Others aren't.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Parts of the workshop could already stand to be nerfed. Do Extravagant Salvaged Accessories really need to be worth up to 35k each (especially when it's possible to get multiple in a single voyage)?

We already know they're working on a personal version of voyages. Depending on how those compare to the existing ones, the nerfs are likely incoming regardless.

As for reading the forums, they do have the community team at a minimum reading through the feedback. We got the suggested purchase timer after the complaints when Shirogane was opened, we got the suggested lottery, etc.

But there are plenty of other things that have been suggested but not implemented. So they do read but they don't always do what player ask for.

You also exaggerate how hard it is to make gil. Most players don't have a hard time making it. They have a hard time spending it wisely and so it seems like they don't make much because they're always running out.

Here comes my obligatory "if SE had only developed a good instanced housing system in the first place instead of choosing wards, players wouldn't feel the need to make those suggestions not to mention that demolition wouldn't exist, the lottery wouldn't exist, complaints about not being able to get a specific plot wouldn't exist..."

Safe to say it's not going to stop just because you're mostly happy with the system. Others aren't.

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And it's also obvious they are happy with the system as it is, since they arent making any changes to it, yes they might add some wards in 7.0, and maybe even switch more wards from FC to personal, or unrestricted, but they are happy with the housing system and lottery as a whole, and I'm pretty confident they dont want to do any big changes to it.

Also it's not about the amount of gil, you pay for the house, you own it, period, there is no "upkeep" just stop with that crap. You paid it in the first place, period. It's yours. Adding gil requirements for upkeep will literally increase RMT, arent there already enough bots in Limsa under the ground ?

As for instanced housing, I am still on my position that I was in weeks ago, only 1 system can work, either instanced OR ward, both cant be on at the same time, because having instanced while ward housing is up will change nothing, the same amount of people will still go for ward housing because it's simply superior.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

Also it's not about the amount of gil, you pay for the house, you own it, period, there is no "upkeep" just stop with that crap. You paid it in the first place, period. It's yours. Adding gil requirements for upkeep will literally increase RMT, arent there already enough bots in Limsa under the ground ?

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We don't own anything in this game. SE owns it all. We pay a license fee for access to the game content. We pay a gil fee to get the ability to use a specific plot but we still do not own it.

If they want to change how the system works, they can do it. If they wanted to take houses away from everyone and force everyone to start from scratch, they could do it.

Upkeep isn't going to increase RMT because the players who are already willing to buy are already doing it. Those who aren't willing to buy will continue not to buy.

I know your position, just as you know mine. But your position comes with a list of flaws that create a negative experience for a significant part of the player base, including those who have managed to get a house. People are excluded from getting certain locations just because a few other players already own it. That would not happen with instanced housing. The neighborhood argument gets lame when there are rarely other players in the wards to encounter.

Did you see that list of plots on Balmung I made yesterday? Know how many players I encountered in the wards while I was gathering that information?

Seven (2 of them were AFK).

On BALMUNG.

No, it's not superior. It might be more to your personal liking but it's in no way superior when some of the limitations we have, like outdoor decorating, are specifically because it's ward and not instanced.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

As for instanced housing, I am still on my position that I was in weeks ago, only 1 system can work, either instanced OR ward, both cant be on at the same time, because having instanced while ward housing is up will change nothing, the same amount of people will still go for ward housing because it's simply superior.

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If you feel ward housing is so superior, how does it bother you if they add instanced alongside it? It’s not going to affect you in the slightest. And I’m pretty sure at this point, a lot of those suffering through lotto loss after loss would jump at the chance to have an instanced house of their choice. Not all of them, I’m sure some will always prefer the wards, but enough that it’s worth doing for those want the option.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

If you feel ward housing is so superior, how does it bother you if they add instanced alongside it? It’s not going to affect you in the slightest. And I’m pretty sure at this point, a lot of those suffering through lotto loss after loss would jump at the chance to have an instanced house of their choice. Not all of them, I’m sure some will always prefer the wards, but enough that it’s worth doing for those want the option.

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Part of Stormpeaks' position is that SE can have ward housing or instanced housing but not both.

Nevermind that apartments exists so it's clearly possible. But apartments are only rooms, not houses, and so few players find them an acceptable alternative.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

If you feel ward housing is so superior, how does it bother you if they add instanced alongside it? It’s not going to affect you in the slightest.

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No one would be bothered by more houses but it's simply not a matter of being in favor of instanced housing or against it. Players' opinions are irrelevant in this matter.

Square won't make an entire new housing system to ease NA lottery problems when JP and EU are doing fine. All of that development time would be wasted just to serve a few thousand people in one region who couldn't win a personal house on a server of their choosing. Getting an instanced housing system without auto-demolition would encourage more people in all regions to unsub between patches while Square is stuck running servers to maintain ward housing. It's a monetary loss for them any way you look at it.

That's why instanced housing is never going to be added. They have communicated this clearly and continue to act on it by adding more wards. Apartments are inferior by design, so that people will continue to chase ward houses. They also intentionally made island sanctuary separate from housing to offer new content for those who already have a house and to keep wards relevant. Ward housing guarantees a good number of subscriptions at all times, which will cover the costs of keeping the game running as the game gets older and less profitable.

I mean, on the other hand, how much sub money do they lose from people who can’t get a house un-subbing and only coming back for new expansions or when new wards are added? I know a lot of people who’d be around a lot more often if this problem were solved.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

I mean, on the other hand, how much sub money do they lose from people who can’t get a house un-subbing and only coming back for new expansions or when new wards are added? I know a lot of people who’d be around a lot more often if this problem were solved.

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And how much sub money do they get from multiowners with a lot of houses ? Pretty sure that evens out the very few people that are leaving because of housing

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

I mean, on the other hand, how much sub money do they lose from people who can’t get a house un-subbing and only coming back for new expansions or when new wards are added? I know a lot of people who’d be around a lot more often if this problem were solved.

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The people who are willing to leave their fc and friends for months at a time and mostly play during new expansions have already transferred to the new servers. More houses, less congestion and login queues.