Hurray! Finally saved up 6mil for my personal house!

[Malevicton]

Housing is not just for interior decoration. It's the ONLY way to access content such as Chocobo raising and gardening. SE should consider implementing instanced community gardens and stables to get around this.

Yeah, maybe they could expand that to some sort of community house for your whole FC! oh wait

[Purrfectstorm]

What about those who bought the game in the last few days?

I get that they do have bigger fish to fry but it feels like none of the issues that have arisen were ever considered when they developed the content. That's my beef, poor planning on this particular content.

There will always be things that veteran players have that new players will need time to acquire. What new player doesn't understand this? And if you can't get a small, save for a medium, or a large while waiting for SE to add more housing. SE will eventually you know (or at least devise some other solution).

[Illya]

What about those who bought the game in the last few days?

Those people will be directed to a less populated server when they create their character.

[Gyson]

Those people will be directed to a less populated server when they create their character.

Good in theory, but in practice it doesn't pan out that way.

Look, I'm pretty sure we can all agree that it'd be fantastic if enough housing were available for everyone that wanted a residence (provided they could afford one). So, I'm not sure why there's any opposition when someone complains about the lack of available plots (on any server).

Whether it's new, active players who end up sticking with FFXIV for years to come, or long-time players who spend most of their days now idle and AFK, everyone has an understandable expectation of being able to access a game feature like housing. And when the competition in the MMO gaming market is offering it, it's generally a good idea to make the process as hassle-free as possible if your product hopes to be competitive.

Worse still, the practice of "selling the right to be present when a plot is abandoned" needs to go, and badly. Newcomers to the housing market shouldn't essentially be paying for the same plot of land twice; it's ridiculously unfair. I realize current landowners looking to upgrade have an expectation to recover the money they spent on their original plot of land (just like in the real world), but housing was designed to be a gil sink, not a security deposit that's returned when a player moves out. SE should really step in and squash this, in my opinion.

[Tiggy]

What about those who bought the game in the last few days?

Then they aren't level 50, and they don't have millions to blow on a house. So completely doesn't matter. So you might then ask "what about those who bought the game a month ago and now has a 50 and some cash" and to that I say sometimes you can't expect to have what the veterans do immediately and to have some patience. You are not entitled to a house. This also assumes that somehow that new player is more entitle than I don't know, someone who had the money 5 months ago and still hasn't had a chance to buy one due to availability. So really I don't care about your hypothetical new person. It doesn't change a thing.

[MageBlack]

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While I can understand this regarding FC housing, Personal housing in an MMO should not have been this way. FC housing makes sense to be communal like that, there is no reason personal housing should be done the same way. It no longer is personal and there is little to no difference between a FC owned house and Personal house except for the way it is acquired and restricted. Especially when they link things like the chocobo stables, gardening, Crafting bonuses, and possible future content like the chocobo raising/racing which is all supposed to be casual cosmetic content that is denied to the casual player base.

This housing feature seems to go contrary to the dev teams philosophy of making the game casual friendly. Lets make the end game content accessible to everyone and "easy" (according to some) to do yet lets restrict player homes and all associated features to the hardcore, first come first serve crowd.

[Tiggy]

I'm not disagreeing with that sentiment. Just saying that dangling new players in my face does nothing to change the situation when literally thousands of players who've been here for months still don't have housing. They don't change anything and it doesn't tug at my heart strings. The problem is bigger than new players.

[Pterois]

I'm not disagreeing with that sentiment. Just saying that dangling new players in my face does nothing to change the situation when literally thousands of players who've been here for months still don't have housing. They don't change anything and it doesn't tug at my heart strings. The problem is bigger than new players.

hell they could even look at the multiple people who bought small plots to make some kinda mass gardening operation... and limiting people to only 1 personal house. the problem is way beyond new people seeing as how it was about 9 months in before i could even consider looking into getting a place let alone afford it.

[MageBlack]

I'm not disagreeing with that sentiment. Just saying that dangling new players in my face does nothing to change the situation when literally thousands of players who've been here for months still don't have housing. They don't change anything and it doesn't tug at my heart strings. The problem is bigger than new players.

Wasn't "tugging on heartstrings" just pointing out yet another issue that I don't think was fully considered when they did personal housing the way they did. A while back I saw a post where they worked out an average of player base per server Datacenter and compared it to available houses after the recent addition and it still only worked out to something like 25% of players per server would be able to get homes. (wish I could remember the actual thread and I would link it.) Thats not even looking at the actual picture when you have servers like Balmung that are over populated and others that are near ghost towns. The current way its implemented doesnt look at the real picture and poorly looks at averages (see reasons behind the cost of housing) and now we have huge disparages between high population and empty servers. so theoretically there are servers dedicated to housing that are near empty while others are full when if the housing servers were created by actual demand in the background then they could have cut costs on their end and increased efficiency for players.

That said, I am not privy to their programing and technical side of things so I may have a few false notions. What I'm imagining is based off what I see here compared to what I have seen in other games. I could also go on further about new players and how the ideas set forth by yourself and others may not always work but that would be situational arguments and you have already said you arent interested. But trust me, I do understand all the things I could do, could have done, to change my situation but that would only be useful to me if we have foreknowledge of how the systems would work back in 1.0. So considering we had no idea how even the FC housing would work until a month before it was released then full details a day or two before (same for personal housing) Its difficult for someone like me who is a filthy casual ruining games since 1980 to prepare for it. Sorry.

EDIT:

Found a link to someone who did the math on cost and availability, not sure how current it is but it provides a decent overview.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post2468479

[Tiggy]

When it comes down to it with the way housing was implemented the only way to get more housing districts is to add more servers which is extremely expensive. This is because they chose not to do instanced housing. At this point I don't think there really is anything they can do aside from..

A) Throwing money at the problem for more servers. Likely not even an option.

B) Rewrite the system for instanced housing districts instead. Also very unlikely due to the work involved to rewrite the system and to modify existing player experiences.

C) Beef up Inn rooms and FC house rooms to be more functional making houses truly luxury items and not necessary items.

Option C is the only one that seems realistic to me. Housing should be like glamour. Optional.