the whole housing situation in this game upsets me

[Avidria]

They are the same in that both your character and housing are big investments. I hope people don't really feel like those that can't play the game due to unfortunate circumstances don't have the right to keep the houses they spent their hard earned gil on.

But they're not the same. Someone could go inactive for months and it wouldn't effect anyone but them. They just wouldn't be online.

Someone going inactive while they own a house, though, is now preventing anyone else on the server from using that housing plot. Even people who have the same hard earned gil are unable to spend it on that house. Now that person's inactivity effects other players. That's the difference.

Factor in the limited number of housing plots on top of what appears to be a high number of inactive players that own houses and you've got a whole bunch of empty houses and a whole bunch of people that want to use them but can't.

[BreathlessTao]

I agree with OP, it upsets me as well. Greatly. I've been here since 1.0 and I've been looking forward to housing ever since then. Sadly, when it was finally implemented, not only did I not have enough gil to buy even the smallest plot (life issues meant I couldn't play enough to save up gil, the way it was implemented and priced meant I didn't have enough gil), but the implementation and its first-come-first-serve basis has been absolutely infuriating. How it is being left alone to be as it is, even though it is glaringly obvious that it's never gonna get anywhere near adequate, it's even more infuriating. What they are doing now, freeing up wasted plots and allowing sharing (indeed, why not make a FC then?)? That should have been done right from the start, now it's a band-aid that the issue will bleed through in a couple of days. Adding more servers, more wards? Do a bit of math if it's not obvious to you that it's way too little.

And the most infuriating thing? I'm still saving up gil, because this is something I really want. With that - I'm afraid the prices will be cranked up again once plots become available again, so I might end up not having enough again; my money is completely locked down while everyone and their cousins around me are buying new glamour clothes and expensive-as-hell minions; it's still gonna be a first-come-first-serve race, with people with perfect connections and best rigs getting an automatic advantage. I'm not able to enjoy this particular feature of the game, and if I want to have a chance of enjoying it, I'm not able to enjoy other aspects of it either. I'm being doubly punished here and I doubt I'm the only one.

Yeah, I don't think "upsetting" or even "infuriating" is anywhere near descriptive enough.

[Ayerinn]

They are the same in that both your character and housing are big investments. I hope people don't really feel like those that can't play the game due to unfortunate circumstances don't have the right to keep the houses they spent their hard earned gil on.

But your character being inactive has ZERO effect on anyone but YOU. A limited, open world resource that is now inactive (and wasted) because someone decides to quit for 6, 9, 12 months is ridiculous and DOES affect other players. There should be NO requirement to actually log into the game, just an active subscription. I was lucky enough to obtain a medium plot on my crowded server because I'm assuming someone transferred and I checked at the right time just a few days ago - and I fully support requiring having to have an active subscription with X number of days grace period before my plot gets forfeited.

[Kosmos992k]

Folks, the problem is that Yoshi-P and his tram are headed down the road of Ishgard wards, transfer system and reclaiming abandoned homes. They are ignoring (or not hearing) the voices that rightly point out this is far from sufficient. The only mechanism we have for feedback is these forums, so, perhaps if we make a clear and loud enough noise, it will be heard.

My message to Yoshi;
A housing system that serves less than 3% of players is utterly inadequate. Adding housing to Ishgard stretches the system to cover perhaps 5% of players, this is still utterly inadequate. Recovering abandonded homes is a band aid over a sword wound, and helps very little. Until you put in place a housing system that serves the vast majority of players, housing will be perceived as a failure. Please consider some form of instanced housing. Or expanding present zones considerably.

[Syrehn]

Folks, the problem is that Yoshi-P and his tram are headed down the road of Ishgard wards, transfer system and reclaiming abandoned homes. They are ignoring (or not hearing) the voices that rightly point out this is far from sufficient. The only mechanism we have for feedback is these forums, so, perhaps if we make a clear and loud enough noise, it will be heard.

My message to Yoshi;
A housing system that serves less than 3% of players is utterly inadequate. Adding housing to Ishgard stretches the system to cover perhaps 5% of players, this is still utterly inadequate. Recovering abandonded homes is a band aid over a sword wound, and helps very little. Until you put in place a housing system that serves the vast majority of players, housing will be perceived as a failure. Please consider some form of instanced housing.

Advocating for instanced housing is, most likely, a losing battle. You can repeat it until you're blue in the face but they're unlikely to tear down the entire system and change it at this stage in the housing game. They've made it very clear on how they're going to proceed. What some players might THINK is the best option might not be based on how their infrastructure is set up.

Not all players would support a full tear-down either, especially if they had to allocate development resources away from other content to attempt it.

[Kosmos992k]

Advocating for instanced housing is, most likely, a losing battle. You can repeat it until you're blue in the face but they're unlikely to tear down the entire system and change it at this stage in the housing game. What some players might THINK is the best option might not be based on how their infrastructure is set up.

Thats fine, my main point is that as long as housing is only available to a small minority of players, it will be seen as a failure. I added to my message...

[FallenArisen0990]

Should have just gave everyone a personal home. Problem Solved.

[BunnyChain]

As of right now there is housing for at least 11% of the active playerbase. (1 character per plot, not counting FC housing or alts)

64 (servers JP, EU, NA) * 3 (housing areas) * 8 (wards) * 60 (plots) / ~823.000 active characters

After the shared housing system up to 5 characters will be able to share a house ~ 55%.


Just for fun, if every house was an FC house, with a maximum of 512 members per FC you can house 47.185.920 characters (in FC rooms).

[mirta000]

snip

that's what I need housing for, my FC :|

now the problem with that calculation is that a) not every server is even. The active servers still have log in queues, while the low pop ones barely have people on them. Some servers still have housing plots empty!
b) some people have insane amount of money and alts and are capable to hog up multiple houses. Calculating the giants in means that each of them can hog up housing for 8 players on one server.
c) people in FCs still buy personal housing, meaning that your calculations could be covering multiple people at once when you do cover FCs
d) people that will share a house will still probably want to buy a house of their own at some point too.

[Kosmos992k]

As of right now there is housing for at least 11% of the active playerbase. (1 character per plot, not counting FC housing or alts)

No, on my sever, that number is about 8%, NOT counting FC housing which consumes approximately half of the plots on my server - based on my casual observation, I haven't counted them - and not counting alt ownership of multiple houses on 1 account. In other words perhaps 4 or 5% of the active players on Behemoth can actually purchase a house, the rest of us are SOL. If Ishgard added another 480 plots, that might boost the % of players able to own a house to between 5 and 8%, which is still pretty damned poor. Anytime 100% of a resource is owned by less than 10% of the population, there are a huge number of people getting screwed over.

Your math will not save this failed housing system, only a complete overhaul, or the addition of some new player housing system will turn this failure around.