Housing system: Land race

[moggy]

Surely personal housing will have it's own wards and you're not expecting us to cram into the leftovers of the FC areas?

OP and I were discussing that and didn't really understand what the rep was implying, either.

Housing needs to be accessible or otherwise outright said to be a first-come-first-serve process. SqEx made housing sound like something universal, a goal that could be reached with hard work. If personal housing is linked to FC wards, it's going to be a disaster all over again. It's been said that personal housing will be cheaper than FC housing - imagine personal housing on the same "land race" system as FC housing. 40 million gil is hard to save up, but one million gil is not. There won't be time to blink before all the wards would be full. For a lot of people, it looks like the ward system has been a tremendous failure in terms of availability, not even mentioning other issues brought up by others in this thread.

[Ryuko]

The race to get the ideal plot is indeed an uncomfortable one. I stayed up all night to snag my FC's plot as soon as the servers went up... and I'm glad I did. Three mediums in ward 6 of the lavender beds were taken within an hour of the servers being up (one by me). I was the first person to get a house, but only because someone told me that the servers went up almost two hours earlier than they were supposed to... 5am my time as opposed to 7am. I would have been really disappointed if I had woken up the next day and the best plots were gone. As of now (almost three days after the patch went live), the new ward for lavender beds seems about half full. I haven't checked the other areas.

I do hope they'll be introducing more wards in the future, so the desire to get a plot isn't halted by the lack of available housing. My FC found it really hard to be patient for all the months every medium was gone on my server and we were waiting on the sixth wards (2.3). At the same time, I do understand that there needs to be some exclusivity to which plots are available. (We do pay more money for 'prime real estate' after all.) I just think they should release new wards more frequently. Hopefully the wait for ward 7 won't be as long as the wait between the original wards and ward 6.

[moggy]

I do understand that there needs to be some exclusivity to which plots are available. (We do pay more money for 'prime real estate' after all.)

I think you're right. The issue, as Nyalia said about personal rooms, is we're dealing with pocket-dimension areas where real life concepts like 'prime real estate' are hard in a game where hundreds of people vie for plots. Obviously, there aren't 6 neighbourhoods with 20 identical small houses in 20 identical spots. We have to take the realistic aspect of things like prime real estate with a grain of salt. The "exclusivity" is already there; not everyone is going to have 50 million gil to spend, and that's okay. OP and I run a FC of only four friends who will never see that kind of gil, so we're content with the small houses. The exclusivity is affording prime real estate to begin with. Introducing wards constantly would keep that exclusivity rewarding - and would reduce the need to stay up all night, I hope.

[BroodingFicus]

Oh wait, chocobo's can be different colors! Neat!-What do you mean I need a stable? Oh, those are only in FC houses? *cranes eyebrow* I hate to bring this up but I was agitated enough to go find old letters released after the outrage of housings release.

There was a lot of talk about making prices high so that they would not all get bought up, about wanting everyone to have access to it. There was talk of not wishing other players to be left out - even though they possess the gil - for extended periods of time. From Balmungs point of view, that is whats happening. Maybe its not right to drag the awkward dead horse into the living room again but it all wearing thin. I have yet to hear a valid plan of how to solve this other than wait. Has anyone heard word elsewhere? This seems to be an issue that rises up and then disappears as soon as someone makes a vague statement that, once again, mostly just amounts to 'wait'.

[Shneibel]

Maybe i'm mistaken in saying this. but i just reliquished millions in furniture and about to relinquish millions in land as not a single plot in lavender beds has been taken over 15 hours after patch. you're just unlucky?

you are just lucky to be in that server, in excalibur however is not that way

[BroodingFicus]

Sadly true. A lot of servers are fine or have empty lots. Frankly I'd consider moving if we hadn't worked so hard to get our fc up and if I didn't have five chars. I'd want to move with me. Currently every time I see a colored chocobo I have the strangest impulse to stare and then shut the game off. I keep wanting to send someone a memo that we are paying to play /every/ aspect of the game. Well also this keeps running through my head:

Around 30 lots (I don't wholly remember because I only check now and then in hopes of in activity)

Six wards: Ok 180 lots.

Three ares: Ok 540ish total....

Who thought that would be enough to support the larger servers? Personal housing doesn't particularly sooth me since unless we can add private rooms its useless.

[xjia]

Totally agree with what BroodingFicus said. Ive already got a friendly, helpful FC

but im looking foward to personal house, cuz
1.Own front yard (own decoration-with lots of plants where i can sit and relax.
2.Own garden ( where i can test/plant whatever i want ), chocobo stable
3.my own indoor furniture

For me, It doest matters whether personal house will be able to add private rooms or not.

[mcgoo94]

When personal housing comes out there better be about 50 wards................(not that much but you know..) The amount of QQ that will happen when people don't get a house will be insane.

[The_Last_Dragoon]

Me and a friend are desperately trying to rank up high enough to grab a house when 2.4 drops (literally 30% left on the bar until it unlocks). It's really just the two of us right now in the FC and we're hoping to be able to draw more people once we actually have a residence.

I'm not sure if it's true or not, but I thought I saw that if a house isn't used for a certain period of time, that it becomes abandoned and goes up for sale again. I would personally just try and check the wards every time you get on in hopes that maybe someone's grown inactive enough.

[BroodingFicus]

Its 30 days inactive. I think 'inactive' is decided by 'did at least one person enter the house even for two seconds in a months time?'. The FC I am in has been checking just in case but the likelihood of an entire FC going off the map and leaving their house abandoned for that long is pretty slim in my mind. I just hope 2.38/2.4 releases more than one ward. The longer they go without meeting the demand, the more people are queuing up to get a house and the harder it will become. Also I feel your pain. The FC I am in raised its rank and the 4.5 mil we have with only the two original members.