Housing Situation

I cannot thoroughly express via text how infuriating it is to wait week by week for 3 to 5 houses to appear vacant so I can have a less than 1% chance to win a house via RNG.

Last I heard of anything housing related was when the fires started in California. And for some reason this prompted SE to effect our in game housing by stopping all demolition for an unpredictable amount of time.

I've been playing since 2.0 and had a house back then and my biggest regret was switching servers for friends to find out I'd likely never get another house again as the lottery system was implemented by then.

No news on anything related to it. It's the only reason I'm subbed and after 3 months of trying EVERY WEEK, I AM TIRED, AND WILL UNSUB as I am tired of wasting time hoping to get another one. I saved up so much money at this point waiting that I could actually afford a medium sized house at this point and that was never my intent.

there are severs that have like 50% of their housing plots not used at all. Maybe try transfering to one of those

So server change again to a dead server and lose all my friends to have a house? I'd still unsub cause now there's no community.

They also have severely nerfed the number of houses available to FCs even though FCs have access to company workshop that single player housing do not get. All of the company workshop features have been nerfed to only require a single person to perform, so they've turned into lowman FC "fight club" submarine retainers that give the privileged few 1million gil per 24 hours. I'm honestly amazed SE hasn't nerfed the NPC sellable items from subs, nor have they just made the workshop available to all housing. At least they TRIED something with FC airships getting access to a special diadem zone back in the day, but it was really unpopular and disappeared pretty quickly.

They stopped it because players from those areas are gonna find it difficult to login to the game and keep their house, when their real life house and its associated computer, is, well...

There has always been a housing crisis. In my opinion, they should allow unlimited people to make houses, then just have wards automatically reflect active players within the last 30 days. That means your ward would change if logged in after being away for 30+ days. This would also mean SE would not have to run too many ward server programs, since they only need enough for the actually active players.

I believe they intend to revisit Island Sanctuary this expansion if they get round to it. My hope is they will use that time to let you build houses in it. They came so close to that with outdoor furnishings, after all.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

There has always been a housing crisis.

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This is why it's even more infuriating. It's been like 8 years man, i'm TIRED.

I'm not a developer, but if SE can store an unlimited number of player accounts/characters and all their associated data, I don't understand why they can't store an unlimited number of housing wards too.

WoW will apparently be doing just that once their housing system comes out.

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Originally Posted by Underscore

I don't understand why they can't store an unlimited number of housing wards too.

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Nothing is unlimited, but they should have enough storage (as in drive space) for "30 million adventurers'" homes.

Wards are different. Wards are persistently-running server programs. If you do the maths, it's not realistic to run enough ward servers for 30 million adventurers.

Fortunately, they don't have to. They could make it so the only people whose homes "display" in the wards are those of ACTIVE players. This would mean your plot/ward would change if you went inactive and returned to the game.

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Originally Posted by Ayatamoken

So server change again to a dead server and lose all my friends to have a house? I'd still unsub cause now there's no community.

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you dont really lose anyone as long as you stay on the same datacenter or have the opportunity to travel to their dc

Crystal doesn't have a server that has enough free plots for it not be a complete toss-up of a chance.

Although ppl have told me that Dynamis has extra housing, and I DC traveled a few weeks ago but mostly all the M/L houses had been taken along with the nice small house plots, so RIP.

OP, I think you'll have to start smaller, like a small plot in the Goblet level of housing ambition levels vs bidding against 100+ bids for any medium plot on a busy server unless they add more wards one day.

Every reply here unfortunately suggests that you lower your expectations rather than the developers make small changes to improve the housing system.

So many players buy *multiple* houses just to make Gil off of their submarines, 'shell houses' and 'shell FCs,' all over the place no matter what ward, what location, or what server you pick. I've found them everywhere. One thing that could at least alleviate the issue on Crystal is to move the airship and submarine management for Free Companies to the OIT Administration in the major city-states.

It's unreasonable to ask people to transfer from servers they've cemented themselves into Free Companies on to just up and move to literal dead servers.

I don't think anyone who suggests transferring to Dynamis actually plays on any of those servers. I have a character on Dynamis that I made specifically to enjoy a house, and the experience is dreadful. There are no players to find on that Data Center, besides the occasional RMT bot clipped into the floor of Limsa Lominsa, and even they don't seem to care to visit Dynamis that much (says a lot!).

At this point, NA does not need new Data Centers, and further server infrastructure should be dedicated to supporting this clearly very complex housing issue.

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Originally Posted by Underscore

I'm not a developer, but if SE can store an unlimited number of player accounts/characters and all their associated data, I don't understand why they can't store an unlimited number of housing wards too.

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The vast majority of player data is not accessed in real time. Knowing what I know about database design, I'd guess the character tables are stored in a separate view that is copied over from a NAS to the lobby server once you select a character to log in with, and then copied over to the main World database once you've actively logged in. So while a given server might have 100,000 character accounts made for it, it'll only have 7,000 live characters being stored on the world server's tables at a given time.

Changes made to the character are saved to the world server, and then copied over to the character tables periodically. Maybe the character tables remain on the server for 24 hours or some length of time before they're put back to sleep in the separate character database (in case of server crashes to prevent roll backs) but they're copied back over fresh the next time you log in, whether that's on your own server, another server, or on another different devise. It's ugly, but it works.

For the housing, however, there was a fundamental flaw in the design, in that the entire neighborhood would be stored on the server itself, with the INTERIOR of the houses as their own instances, as opposed to having the neighborhood be an instance. That lets anyone wander in to view the houses, but also puts a hard limit as to how many neighborhoods can be stored in the server's RAM.

It's a hole that SE dug for themselves. All housing should have been done as full instanced zones from the start, instead of neighborhoods.

Placard clicking was better than a lottery, but the masses are always right and wanted a change.

Sadly, there's not much they can do cause the neighborhood system is inherently flawed and can't change it without demolishing everyone's house and starting from scratch. The solution in my mind is to make the apartment system better. Have a Tier list with Apartments ranging from 250k gil to 15m gil (random numbers) that increase the size of the apartment. So, for example:

250k: The current apartment size (with added balcony for exterior furnishings
500k: Small house sized apartment, two levels
3mil: Medium house sized apartment(maybe this could have a huge exterior furnishing balcony?)
10m: Large House sized apartment

Once you buy a larger one, you can down and upsize to different sizes at no cost. This would get rid of the "Oh, I have to quit for a year, but I'll lose my house FOMO" since apartments don't get deleted. And people would get bigger houses.

Just my idea on how I would "fix" the system.

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Originally Posted by Doki

They also have severely nerfed the number of houses available to FCs even though FCs have access to company workshop that single player housing do not get. All of the company workshop features have been nerfed to only require a single person to perform, so they've turned into lowman FC "fight club" submarine retainers that give the privileged few 1million gil per 24 hours. I'm honestly amazed SE hasn't nerfed the NPC sellable items from subs, nor have they just made the workshop available to all housing. At least they TRIED something with FC airships getting access to a special diadem zone back in the day, but it was really unpopular and disappeared pretty quickly.

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I own a large with high level subs and airships and I kind of have a hot take:

Workshops were a mistake and shouldn't be limited to housing at all. They've ruined FC wards because they're so lucrative that it's worth the effort to make multiple alt FCs and buy as many houses as possible for more of them, and extending that to personal housing would just make it easier. There should be an unlockable workshop elsewhere in the game that's available to all players with housing workshops being more of a convenience than anything.

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Originally Posted by Luca_

Workshops were a mistake and shouldn't be limited to housing at all. They've ruined FC wards because they're so lucrative that it's worth the effort to make multiple alt FCs and buy as many houses as possible for more of them, and extending that to personal housing would just make it easier. There should be an unlockable workshop elsewhere in the game that's available to all players with housing workshops being more of a convenience than anything.

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Which would also mean that if you unsub for a while, your hard work isn't destroyed. Subs take something like a year to level to max, but if you lose a workshop, they're gone forever.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Placard clicking was better than a lottery, but the masses are always right and wanted a change.

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No. The lottery allowed everyone to bid fairly, and it's how I got my small house when they added new wards 2 years ago. In the old system, ppl would bot the placards, so it's impossible or extremely rare for someone to get it on their own.

Demolition has been paused for far longer than since the LA fires started. There's always something going on in the world that forces them to halt demolition, which should be a good indication that what we currently have doesn't work and should be changed to give people easier access to housing without having to transfer to a dead server. As neat as wards are, half the yards in my ward remain undecorated and the only time I see other people is when they're coming to visit me to hang out during our weekend get-togethers. I would be completely okay giving up the ward system if I was able to just plop my house on my Island Sanctuary and just let people travel there from the Moraby Drydocks or teleport via the Friend List.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Placard clicking was better than a lottery, but the masses are always right and wanted a change.

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Clicking on a placard for 13 hours straight doing absolutely nothing else until finally I could no longer hold it and decided to quickly go to the bathroom, only to come back to the house being sold to someone is an experience I think everyone should enjoy.

But if you get a house, you have to keep paying to monthly to keep it, even through you're taking a break.

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Originally Posted by USAFJerrySo

But if you get a house, you have to keep paying to monthly to keep it, even through you're taking a break.

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There is something called apartment with no demolition timer

Carrot on a stick & subscription. Are you new to traditional MMOs?

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Placard clicking was better than a lottery, but the masses are always right and wanted a change.

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What for Drugs are you taking in to spit such nonsense? The Lottery is fair for everyone, while Placard clicking 99% of the People used Macros/Bots and called it a day, yea super fair

Company Workshops are not the only incentive for owning multiple houses.
If you are really into housing and like decorating there is no other way than creating alts on other servers and own multiple houses to build new things.
Unless throwing away furnishings counts as an option.
Tools from the party of three at least allow for saving and loading designs to prevent them from being lost forever. But storage, inventory and retainers will run out of space quickly, forcing someone to throw away furnishings every time they want to make something new.

The FFXIV housing system is dated, and based of what we have already seen WoW is just about to showcase how dated it really is.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Placard clicking was better than a lottery, but the masses are always right and wanted a change.

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let's cheat so people that does it legit can't win obviously better ya

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

there are severs that have like 50% of their housing plots not used at all. Maybe try transfering to one of those

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Yeah transfer to a dead server where you will be unhappy either way is such good advice, bro can I hire you

Any news on more furniture slots? COPIUM

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Placard clicking was better than a lottery, but the masses are always right and wanted a change.

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'Clicking' -- Playing very fast and loose with that one.

The Auto-clicking and botting was so woefully apparent -- That if you got the plot, you could comfortably place a retainer behind your placard and rinse a bot of a significant amount of Gil, pretty reliably too.

There was nothing better about that system.

I wish they could just add housing inside the island. I mean you can already decorate a big ass yard there why not a housing space. People don't really much about housing being in the overworld, players generally just want a space to decorate.

Did you all know that you can add a trial character as a tenant?

I am just leaving this information here.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

True enough, my only character is on Dynamis, and owns two houses (personal and FC) literally across the street from each other, that's how little competition there was due to the lack of other players.

https://i.imgur.com/0L7CN9T.png

But I can not in good conscience recommend that people transfer to Maduin even if it's free because I rarely see those houses when I spend 99% of my time as a Traveler to Aether or Primal.

If I had a choice in the matter, I'd want the Dynamis worlds merged into Aether/Primal/Crystal, so I don't have to data travel anymore for content and people lacking for houses on A/P/C have a much more viable transfer destination for a house without the risk of being stranded somewhere dead.

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Dynamis is like Detroit or Gary Indiana.

Bring back first come first serve. No placard clicking, no lottery.

1% chance of winning means people will keep subbing for their houses, due to automatic demolition. Gotta keep that FOMO feeling pulsing through the veins of the playerbase.