Housing--The One Stain on FFXIV

[Garlyle]

So far, it seems to me that the game is really well done and it doesn't seem like the devs are totally clueless like some other games I've played. However, if they think they've met demand... I can't imagine they're really in touch with the player base on that one.

This really depends on which server you're on. Adamantoise, for instance, still has housing open; but we're one of the least active NA servers. Japanese servers especially have huge amounts of room open. ...But go to servers like Balmung, Gilgamesh, or really most of the EU data cluster, and... yeah.

They've stressed several times that due to the nature of housing (perpetual, alterable-in-real-time non instanced zones), it takes up a lot of stress on the servers and isn't easy to just 'allocate more space', as the case may be. But yeah.

Not excusing the fact that it really sucks for some people, 'cause it does... just yeah.

[Velisra]

This really depends on which server you're on. Adamantoise, for instance, still has housing open; but we're one of the least active NA servers. Japanese servers especially have huge amounts of room open. ...But go to servers like Balmung, Gilgamesh, or really most of the EU data cluster, and... yeah.

They've stressed several times that due to the nature of housing (perpetual, alterable-in-real-time non instanced zones), it takes up a lot of stress on the servers and isn't easy to just 'allocate more space', as the case may be. But yeah.

Not excusing the fact that it really sucks for some people, 'cause it does... just yeah.

I totally understand that some servers have different amounts of housing still available. I apparently chose poorly when I rolled on Diabolos! However, for the rest of the game, it's probably not a bad thing to be on a busier server at this time, since it might be harder to find groups to do the 2.0-2.55 story content with once HW drops on a less active server. I'm already a bit concerned about that honestly, but that's another issue altogether!

Anyway, I don't know what the answer is for SE on this issue obviously, so all I can do is post my feelings and thoughts here, and hope that the devs read the forums and see the feedback.

[Risvertasashi]

As a new player, I strongly suspect it's quite literally impossible to amass the amount of Gil that would be required in the short amount of time between now and the xpac launch. So far, Gil feels like it falls from the sky, but even then it's not in THAT kind of quantity.

Correct. For your particular situation... My recommendation: start amassing now, and hope there are new housing zones added not at launch but at a later date.

So far, it seems to me that the game is really well done and it doesn't seem like the devs are totally clueless like some other games I've played. However, if they think they've met demand... I can't imagine they're really in touch with the player base on that one.

Perhaps adding tiny plots that offer gardening only might be an option. Honestly, RIFT has a really fun "housing" system, and if I want to build and decorate, I can go over there for free so I'm not even hung up on the whole idea of having a house in Eorzea. What I would like is access to a garden. Heck, Germans have their Schrebergärten; make something like that for folks who would like to garden, but aren't really interested in a whole house.

I'm not going anywhere--heck, I just got here, and I'm having a lovely time with the game--but this housing issue is a big one for me and I hope a fix of some sort comes soon.

I'm as baffled by it as you are. Both housing launches were highly controversial and made it into the mainstream gaming press. But uhm... here we are?

They also refuse to give more wards to the highly populated servers, and not so to the tiny servers that still have tons open. i.e., A server with more than 50% availability will still get the same number of new wards as those with none.

Lastly, there is no decay system. Someone purchases a house and quits the game? It's still theirs forever. If you walk around the housing wards you can see this... Houses someone started to decorate but abandoned, and so on.

So... here we are.

Incidentally, originally they promised us a personal housing system that was separate and considerably more affordable than the FC housing system. 9 months after that promise, they gave us the ability to purchase FC houses individually, at the same (very high) prices.

[Niwashi]

They've stressed several times that due to the nature of housing (perpetual, alterable-in-real-time non instanced zones), it takes up a lot of stress on the servers and isn't easy to just 'allocate more space', as the case may be.

"The way this was designed makes it hard to expand to a more useful form" isn't a very good excuse when they're the ones who designed it that way. It shouldn't have been hard to foresee that an instanced housing system would be more expandable than a system of permanent housing wards. Just as it shouldn't be hard to foresee now that even those low-pop servers with plenty of houses still available won't remain viable forever with the way a limited resource is permanently allocated.

Incidentally, originally they promised us a personal housing system that was separate and considerably more affordable than the FC housing system. 9 months after that promise, they gave us the ability to purchase FC houses individually, at the same (very high) prices.

That's one of the really frustrating parts of this. It's clear they'd originally intended to do something better, but then gave up on it and just gave us this instead. They apparently felt it as a deadline to get some sort of personal housing out, but the result is that, by giving us a badly designed version, they just made it all but impossible to eventually have a proper personal housing system, since there's this sorry excuse for one already in game. It would have been better to put off the personal housing release until they'd gotten their original plan for it working. Sure, there would have been a lot of complaints over the additional delays, but delay frustrations are temporary frustrations, whereas the frustrations over a bad implementation stick around.


I'm still hoping they'll do something like opening up Private Chambers to people who don't have an FC with a house. (They could refer to it as renting an apartment in town or something, but it would essentially be the same feature they've already implemented as Private Chambers in FC houses.) And then add an indoor planter box the size of the small (4 plot) gardens that could be put in there to allow gardening. Then have chocobokeeps allow adventurers to stable and train their chocobos there if they don't have their own house and stable.

(Of course, providing access to all the housing features to those without a house sort of limits the usefulness for those who do have a house, but that's the price of having designed the system so badly in the first place. It's a better price to pay than the current price of excluding it from so many people.)

[Risvertasashi]

-snip-

Further puzzling is that they have a very solid instancing system in this game. Even FFXI, which used PS2 dev tools for development and has little instancing at all, has instanced housing and even gave every player their own private moogle-managed island. So they've got the tech.

Among all their game design decisions... most of them I can at least understand, even if I don't agree with it, but this one... I just don't understand their reasoning at all. The result of a fall back for too much ambition does seem like a plausible hypothesis...

[lordoftheapes79]

I suspect they'll start dealing with this within the next 6 months. They've said that inactive players will eventually loose their housing, but with the expack about to launch, many of these players are about to return. So it'll come down to who comes back and who doesn't. It would be nice if they put an actual number on this though. like if you're account is inactive for 6 months you loose your house and all your furniture goes to the calamity salvager. BUT unfortunately its low priority until the smoke from the expack settles.