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

[Aegis]

You are not entitled to a house.

I don't know about you, but if I'm a fresh subscriber to a game that features personal housing, then yes, I would expect to have a house relatively easily. I wouldn't expect factors such as when I can log in or how long since the last patch to affect my ability to get it.

If this is entitlement, then the standards expected of an MMO have fallen ridiculously.

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

That's just it, on many servers it isn't optional. It just isn't available.

[MageBlack]

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.

I would be OK with C as long as we then had access to stables, gardening and all the other features and, like you said, owning a house is nothing more than a luxury and something to show off. Sorry for such a rant but I'm terribly worried how this will affect future content as it is released, especially if we are getting chocobo racing in patch 2.5 (i dont actually expect it until 3.0 TBH) and I hope, for the sake of availability, the raising feature will be like it was in FFXI where it will be a stable somewhere in Heavensward/Ishgard that we talk to an NPC and then anyone can use it regardless of housing.

[Tiggy]

That's just it, on many servers it isn't optional. It just isn't available.

The only thing that is required is the garden. Literally nothing else about the house is required at all. (Almost forgot choco raising but they've already confirmed that would move to porters so eventually a moot point, but for today it counts) If gardening was added to inns and personal rooms then the only valid reason to have a house would vanish and it would be entirely extra. Also notice I said SHOULD be like glamour and optional. So I never said they actually were. Reading comprehension! It was an hypothetical situation that I was saying we should try to get to. Not a comment about the current state of the game.

I would be OK with C as long as we then had access to stables, gardening and all the other features and, like you said, owning a house is nothing more than a luxury and something to show off. Sorry for such a rant but I'm terribly worried how this will affect future content as it is released, especially if we are getting chocobo racing in patch 2.5 (i dont actually expect it until 3.0 TBH) and I hope, for the sake of availability, the raising feature will be like it was in FFXI where it will be a stable somewhere in Heavensward/Ishgard that we talk to an NPC and then anyone can use it regardless of housing.

Chocobo raising is thankfully moving to porters soon so that's one part down. No work on gardening so far but I'm really hoping they just accept that they need to expand that system soon and give us room planters like XI had or at the very last window planters. Thankfully from what I remember reading the new chocobos for racing are separate from our existing ones. So I'm hoping the raising system will be based out of the saucer and available to all, but we gotta wait and see I guess.

[MageBlack]

Also, right now there IS a huge waste of money and resources if things are as posters claim with some servers having so many available plots while others are completely packed.

-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-

Seems like an awful waste of space.
- Carl Sagan

[IfritReborn]

It's been like this on every MMO ever made since forever.

Servers have limited capacities. There are a lot of servers. People all try to crowd onto one server and ignore the 30 other servers, that's not Squenix's problem.

Funny you mention other MMO's lol...

LotRO has a similar instanced neighborhood, wanna know how many neighborhood instances are on Brandywine, their most popular server in that aging game? 250, with 30 houses in each instance. That was the max limit 4 years ago and granted this has not been changed, 250 is still a very high number
FFXIV has 48..

WildStar and Rift which have a wildly more robust and dynamic housing system can afford instances for all it's players; last I checked Rift let's you add in PvP gameplay and all manner of special effects to your home instance and WoW which has an even bigger population cap also gave out instanced housing to every one of it's players and even Swtor for crying out loud hands out housing like candy.

So this IS Squenix's problem as their competitors have just flat out demolished them when it comes to housing. The players certainly shouldn't be punished, no one told Squenix to be cheap with the servers.

[EdwinLi]

If I remember correctly the original intent was that FC Housing was the aim for functionality for a group like FC while Personal Housing was to fall into a lesser more accessable Housing for a single person being more of a Vanity thing.

They got the FC Housing working right but they did not get the Personal Housing system right as they originally want it to be.

They should have limited the Personal Housing to 1 per Server so players on a server can share their Personal Housing for all their characters in that server while limiting it so they can not buy more than 1 Personal House by having multiple characters.

[Gyson]

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.

Making housing "less required" and "more optional" isn't a solution to the problem. Sure, it's a fix for the players who are only interested in the functionality tied to housing, but (believe it or not) there are players who simply enjoy owning, decorating, and having fun with their virtual homes.

Are we suggesting that providing fun should be optional now? If someone asked me if FFXIV offered housing, my honest response would have to be "Yes, but not really..". The barrier here is supposed to be in-game currency, not availability. If you offer limited housing to the extent that a majority of the player base can't own a house, then it stops being a potentially fun feature and instead turns into a frustratingly flawed design.

It's not the players responsibility to shuffle around from server to server to fix this issue. It's the developers who need to address it. And if it costs more money to fix, then it cost more money - isn't that what we're all paying subscription fees for? Regardless of who got here when, everyone is paying the same subscription fee, and everyone needs to have access to the same services and features provided they meet the necessary requirements - which in the case of personal housing is supposed to be gil and a level requirement, not how long you've been here or how quickly you can snatch up free plots.

The developers dropped the ball here and should be interested in handling housing better. Why oppose the requests to do so?

[Aegis]

The only thing that is required is the garden. Literally nothing else about the house is required at all.

Nothing is 'required' in this game at all. Or do you mean exclusive?

Rather than glamour and optional, I would prefer it to be useful and free as it is in other games. Provide extra storage, gardening, crafting bonuses etc. Things that have been available in personal housing in the genre for decades now. Keep FC housing in wards if they like, but give instanced housing for free to everyone. If they could find the resources to do this back in 2002, they can do it now, surely?

Making housing "less required" and "more optional" isn't a solution to the problem. Sure, it's a fix for the players who are only interested in the functionality tied to housing, but (believe it or not) there are players who simply enjoy owning, decorating, and having fun with their virtual homes.

Are we suggesting that providing fun should be optional now? If someone asked me if FFXIV offered housing, my honest response would have to be "Yes, but not really..". The barrier here is supposed to be in-game currency, not availability. If you offer limited housing to the extent that a majority of the player base can't own a house, then it stops being a potentially fun feature and instead turns into a frustratingly flawed design.

It's not the players responsibility to shuffle around from server to server to fix this issue. It's the developers who need to address it. And if it costs more money to fix, then it cost more money - isn't that what we're all paying subscription fees for? Regardless of who got here when, everyone is paying the same subscription fee, and everyone needs to have access to the same services and features provided they meet the necessary requirements - which in the case of personal housing is supposed to be gil and a level requirement, not how long you've been here or how quickly you can snatch up free plots.

The developers dropped the ball here and should be interested in handling housing better. Why oppose the requests to do so?

+1

[Souljacker]

Sooooo, I gather things haven't changed. That's kind of sad. I thought that Yoshi-P was the kind of guy who just got things done. The idea that this is still in its completely broken and unfair state is disheartening.

[Tiggy]

Making housing "less required" and "more optional" isn't a solution to the problem. Sure, it's a fix for the players who are only interested in the functionality tied to housing, but (believe it or not) there are players who simply enjoy owning, decorating, and having fun with their virtual homes.

Are we suggesting that providing fun should be optional now?

No I'm suggesting that core functionality should not be tied to something so limited and hard to get at this stage. It's about helping as many people as possible with as few changes as possible. Putting must have functionality into Personal Rooms and Inns would appease more people than adding a few more wards ever would. Did I say this was a perfect solution? No, its just a way forward that would do a lot of good for both the game and for many individuals by putting currently limited functions (gardens and chocobo raising) into the hands of far more people to play with. This is after all content that many people can't even play with right now and most players haven't. Can you honestly tell me people wouldn't be overwhelmingly happy in the majority with enhanced access to these features that allowed them to avoid the insane restrictions on housing? Until such a time as housing can actually fit the demand nothing that important should be linked to them, and until actually adding that housing is easier than just adding these features to an inn room I will continue to say that it is the better option. The development time required to recode the system or the server costs to add wards are both very unrealistic options or we wouldn't be having this conversation. Simply adding the features in other places (chocbos to porters, planting to flower pots or window beds) would be far simpler and faster and make a lot of people happy immediately. Time is money and the longer they take to fix things like this the more time people have to get frustrated with it. If every problem sat and waited around for only the perfect solution to come along then nothing will happen fast enough. You need to make a cost benefit analysis of your options. I'm not opposed to them adding 200 housing wards and just doing away with the problem. I am however realistic and I know that is not an answer we will get any time soon and until that time we need something else.

I never once made a comment about what is or isn't fun since fun is entirely subjective anyway. Don't put words into my mouth with assumptions about hidden meanings or suggestions. I mean only what I explicitly say. Making the houses entirely for glamour type purposes in no way inhibits your "fun."