Housing abandoned plots, this is needed SE!!! Thank you!

[MageBlack]

Folks keep bringing up Instanced Housing like it would be some miracle cure-all when, in fact, it would remove one of the biggest charm points about the housing system as it exists now: The ability to show off.

Simple fix for this, allow people to be invited to your house or if you player search it and you leave your plot "Open" then people can come look. Regardless of how they "fix" housing, for the personal house side of things there either need to be enough housing plots so each account (or each player) can have one per server, they need to limit players in the amount of land they can hold (this buying land at 4 mil then selling it for 30 mil needs to stop), The bar for accessing this content should never be availability. I would sacrifice showing off in an instant if I could be guaranteed to get a house once I met the requirements. Showing off is what the FC Hall is for...

[Niwashi]

I don't personally think anyone's alt character or FC should be holding additional housing space and a viable solution would be to implement something like 1 personal house per account per server.

That wouldn't be bad provided that all characters on that account are given full access to using the house. Currently, that's not the case, and buying up a house per alt is the only way to have access to a house.

[MageBlack]

That wouldn't be bad provided that all characters on that account are given full access to using the house. Currently, that's not the case, and buying up a house per alt is the only way to have access to a house.

At least have some level restriction or MSQ requirement on housing. The Ideas and concept of housing is grea, I love it, that's why I want a house. But with the current system there will forever be a wall keeping the majority of players from enjoying it. Bottom line, Greater availability needs to be implemented. The demand is high, time to increase the supply.

[StouterTaru]

At least have some level restriction or MSQ requirement on housing.

There is already a substantial wall before you can buy a house:
-Personal house requires highest current GC rank, which involves doing DD and AV
-FC house requires rank 5 for the FC

[dekal]

...

The price of a house taxes increases depending in how popular is the land u are living and house big is your house(having mist as the first choice and lavender. Leaving poor goblin as last). Would you be OK to pay the monthly fee too right? I mean the houses lights are much pretty much 24/7 on in a FC house.

If you make a section in ur house like kitchen/add sauna/add bathroom/ water and gas can be charged too. The front garden in a small/medium/large houses needs a daily maintenance. The price will skyrocket for ppl with mansions.

What SE did wrong was to create a limited resouse in a game that 90% of the population will demand a house for themselves.

It is a terrible idea the one that I read saying to delete unsub ACC's. Is that player crazy? No a single mmo will do that cuz that is a potential come back player that will, at least, resub for a month. Do you know how many ppl just came back with the HW and new players (friends) join them? That is a water of revenue.

To the other person saying let's be honest. People want to see glamour and if it is an instance house is a no-no. Other games let you visit the other player house(s) if you click visit.

The only real solution to make people and players happy (yes I am saying people and players cuz I am sure players say the burn they have to other ppl that don't even play the game, no all of ten but some) is to make unlimited houses and instance house could be a solution. They should get a different section for very expensive mansions. It will be kind of sad, but have a rich/middle/ and so so class residencial areas. The rich residential areas will get more options to decor the outside since they are paying more every week monthly.

[MageBlack]

There is already a substantial wall before you can buy a house:
-Personal house requires highest current GC rank, which involves doing DD and AV
-FC house requires rank 5 for the FC

Oh, then thats good. I didnt realize that, my bad. Thanks for pointing it out cause I thought once you unlocked the wards you could just buy a house.

[Niwashi]

At least have some level restriction or MSQ requirement on housing.

It currently requires level 50 and being a 2nd Lieutenant in your Grand Company before you can buy a personal house, and an FC rank of 6 for FC houses. I think if anything the requirements are a bit steep already (and the prices even more so). Both requirements and prices were designed to limit the number of players who would try to buy houses, because SE wasn't providing enough of them. They need to take care of the deplorable limits on space, so that they can safely allow everyone to get houses, and then drop the requirements and prices down to something more reasonable.

The Ideas and concept of housing is grea, I love it, that's why I want a house. But with the current system there will forever be a wall keeping the majority of players from enjoying it. Bottom line, Greater availability needs to be implemented. The demand is high, time to increase the supply.

Agreed. They need a new model that allows them to dramatically increase the space, not just settle for adding a ward or two every 6 months to a year and act like that will satisfy the demand. They need to redesign the system so there will be enough houses for everybody, even on the high-population servers.

Instancing the personal houses is the most obvious way to remove the limit on space, but not the only one. Take LOTRO as an example: It has a similar housing system to FFXIV, with a few locations (four in their case compared to three here) that each have a collection of wards (or neighborhoods by LOTRO's terminology) where a bunch of people have houses together. Both games have 30 houses per ward or neighborhood. The difference is that LOTRO has up to 250 neighborhoods in each of four areas, whereas FFXIV has 16 wards (well, 8 wards and 8 subdivisions which are essentially the same thing) in each of three areas. That difference between 1,000 neighborhoods in one game and 48 in the other is what makes that shared neighborhood pattern work there and not here. If SE wants to keep using this type of shared housing ward, then they need to actually devote the necessary servers to housing, just like Turbine did for LOTRO. We're stuck with these ridiculous limits on housing for the same reason a lot of other things are lacking in this game, because SE doesn't want to spend anything on their infrastructure.


As to how LOTRO handles the abandoned house issue, they have a maintenance fee of a few silver per week that can be paid ahead up to six months in advance. Past that, if your maintenance fees aren't paid your house is locked so you can't use it, and after a period of time (another month IIRC) a locked house will be foreclosed with all contents going into escrow for the owner to pick up when/if they return. Combined with the fact that houses there are drastically cheaper than here, and there are plenty so you can always get another, not many people are upset with the foreclosure system. (There were, however, lots of complaints about their first attempt at it, because initially the escrow that holds the items from your house was going to be time limited as well. To get a system that players would accept, they had to drop that rule, and keep escrow indefinitely. There were a few other changes as well, like extending the amount of time you could pay ahead to 6 months as it was originally shorter.)

[MageBlack]

We're stuck with these ridiculous limits on housing for the same reason a lot of other things are lacking in this game, because SE doesn't want to spend anything on their infrastructure.

I'm curious to know if SE is back in the black now after the 1.0 disaster. They spent a lot of money on that then spent even more trying to fix the error. I know the company is wealthy but each project has its budget and financial expectations. I would like to hope that by now they are finally seeing a profit after all their prior debts being payed but when they were already working in a deficit then you get frugal with your spending. Not something I begrudge the team for this game. But I would imagine with the unexpected success of 2.0 that by now they are able to final devote some of the income to going above and beyond what they felt safe. I also keep in mind that they plan their content several years out and if there is a big change, it wont be something they can implement immediately. As for housing servers, Buy a few more then C&P your wards across them. We need more space! I would rather have it and not need it then need it and not have it.

Other than that, I totally agree with the rest of your post. I like the current system, I just wish there was more spots available. The instance housing is a sacrifice I would be willing to make for personal homes if it would mean a house for everyone.

[Ferr]

Folks keep bringing up Instanced Housing like it would be some miracle cure-all when, in fact, it would remove one of the biggest charm points about the housing system as it exists now: The ability to show off.

I would say the priority now making a resource accesible to everyone more than "e-peen" showing.
I don't have a house , but I have a room. I care about showing it to my friends, but honestly, I don't give a fuck about strangers. Same as glamour, I do it for myself, not for others.
An instanced housing can have the option to invite friends, as you know from FFXI.
Also, housing is more than just showing, as you know, theres gardering and Chocobo stables.

Mind you, if you REALLY like to show, just do it with FC houses. I'm OK with FC houses being the way they are now, because I guess there's way less demand.

About wards... you know, they are ghost towns already. And it's not just because of people leaving,. Neightborhood idea is fine but no one is going to do any kind of social interaction there. People is either inside their houses or in Ishgard. No matter what you do the wards will always be ghost towns. Same as how Gold Saucer is now.

[Syrehn]

That wouldn't be bad provided that all characters on that account are given full access to using the house. Currently, that's not the case, and buying up a house per alt is the only way to have access to a house.

I guess my question is... if you already have one personal house on your main character (garden, decorate etc.) why do you need to buy up a house per alt? All this does is take away from others being able to access a limited resource on their main character.