Please fix or remove housing!

[Abardaeg]

I feel your pain. I was on Excal and housing was something I really wanted. I also wanted airships and gardening! But, as those things are tied back to revenue streams for an FC, they're pretty well guarded and left to the upper echelons.

Before the new wards were added even getting a small plot on Excal was rough. Rather, it was impossible without many extra millions and a willingness to violate the EULA by buying it from another player. I also didn't have the patience to stalk the neighborhoods for a mere opportunity to find a house to buy. So, about a year ago I started looking around at other servers and noticed Mateus and Goblin had tons of plots just sitting there. Before the pricing adjustments a small, lower quality (4 / 5) plot, would run you just over 900k. So, I packed everything up, gave away a lot of gil to friends, and server transferred with my 1.2 mil (2 retainers) then bought myself a house in the Mist. It was a pretty awesome day! Once transferred I worked my way up to a large and also nabbed one for my FC.

All of that to say, it might be a strategy for SE's to keep player housing on populated servers limited in an effort to encourage migration to lesser populated server. That's pure speculation, of course. I imagine if every server had housing capped and players were willing to cancel their sub because of it we might see them heading down a different path. Mateus still has many, many (wouldn't surprise me if it were 100+) housing plots available! There are still a lot of players that just don't care about owning a house and prefer the apartments.

I'd guess that from a business perspective they'd need to invest in more resources (either development or hardware) to increase ward size and accommodate a very select group of subs. If the amount of subs they're losing (over not getting personal housing) isn't a large enough dent in net revenue to justify the expense of expanding the housing system why would SE do it? However, from a high level I can't imagine they see it the same way the player base on highly populated servers does. Just know, it frustrated the crap out of me too.

I agree with you, the OP, that housing should be available for everyone. It's a huge reason I log in as often as I do. Just know if you really want it, it's there. Sadly it'll mean a hefty sacrifice to get it right now. Should you have to? No, probably not. But there are good people on every server! Convince, coax, or otherwise coerce a core group of friends to transfer with you and take over a neighborhood while you still can!

p.s. Just think of how much easier getting to a hunt on time is when it's low pop... just don't expect to kill Odin at 1 AM on weeknight, about 6 people will show up now matter how much you shout

[Besame]

I was lucky enough to get a small house when they increased the wards a few months back. There were 2 plots across from me that people bought and did nothing with. They simply sat on them. After a while seeing no one, I sent their names in and asked them to check because I have friends that wanted houses. No reply, and the houses continued to sit there months later with no deco, nothing. Eventually the 2 plots got demolished, someone bought them and they continue to sit unoccupied and undecorated. Seems like there would be a better way to get people housing that want it. This game has the worst housing of any I have played. it needs to be totally redone because no player should ever NOT to be able to have a house...terrible design, just lazy and inept.

Housing should be able to be added onto instead of demolishing your small and hoping you get to the medium or large before it is scooped up. Standard size lots with the ability to expand would of been the intelligent thing to design, people add on to their homes in real life ya know lol. They also need to add hook space allowances. I have things placed as I like and would enjoy adding more to walls but guess what??...no more slots.

[Evol]

I don't understand your thinking here, you go on about it not being fair locking people out of features yet you think it is fair removing the opportunity of FC's getting a larger house. This still gives other players the opportunity to claim a house from the older wards.

Now if we are going for unfair suggestions then I suggest that people who have a small house should get first dibs on a medium or large house to upgrade, as why should you be able to go straight for a medium/large.

Yes housing is a problem but on Ragnarok we are a decent sized server and I have no trouble finding houses. This week alone I have found four houses on the aertherites for friends, start checking them when servers are quiet for me they always come available between 11pm and 11am. Hell I managed to get my personal house and FC house in the space of a day through reclamation.

Its your thinking I don't understand. Why should an FC or an Individual who has had a plot all this time, get first dibs on the new plots? Why should they? How is that fair at all? Nothing should be held for said entities they should have the same fair chance as everyone to get one. That's my thinking and I don't see anything wrong with it. You are actually proposing that locking everyone else out of a fair chance at the new plots, until after those who already have a plot decide which plot they want - is not locking others from features? You are contradicting your argument against me with your own statement.

Why should I be able to go straight to a medium or large? I can afford the in-game price, just like all the people in game who went straight to a medium or large. The issue is simply that there aren't enough plots for everyone. People don't buy a small on Sarg to eventually upgrade to a medium. They buy it because that's all that's available. I checked just yesterday. Several of my friends check for me each and every day. Ragnarok is Ragnarok, I live on Sarg. Just because it isnt a problem for you or your FC, doesn't mean it isnt an issue here on Sarg, and elsewhere.

I welcome your feedback, but I have already responded to the point regarding low-pop servers and housing being available to them. Why should I pay $20 to go to another server just to be able to buy a house for my FC? Why should 20 active people in my FC abandon their server? Why should we have to pay money when we are already paying a sub? When you are low on gil do you go to pvp-gil.com and buy some? When you bought your house did you illegally buy it from a PC in-game?

Your way of thinking IMHO is inherently wrong. Still leaves the other players an opportunity to get a house from the old wards? Why should everyone else be 'left an opportunity'? Why should you get first dibs when you already have a house? The only bit of your thinking that I do agree with, is that FCs are definitely more important - with regard to housing - than individual players. I can't stand seeing <pure> on 5 plots in a row. I was told that this could simply be several members of the same FC all wanting plots neighboring their FC. Really? So several FCs lose a spot so individuals can neighbor their feature packed FC house? How is that right?

While you're so interested in getting content held specially for you, while you're so convinced that you and yours are deserving of special treatment, you are doing nothing but proving the greed of players - and it's something that only SE can fix. This is the purpose of this thread, and I am so glad you are helping me to prove my point.

[OliviaJ]

I wasn't trying to come off as salty, I'm just simply tired of hearing the constant complaining from the overpopulated servers. I get it, even though I don't agree with you. I have friends on my server and luckily it's never been overpopulated. Housing was closed prior to demolition for a very long time. Now that I've experienced housing I would definitely make an alt on a lower pop server if for some reason I lost mine and there wasn't any opportunity to get one back. To suggest that it gets completely scrapped so no one can enjoy it, sarcastic or not is going to invite defensive and "salty" responses.

That being said if they scrapped housing all together I would probably quit playing as would many others, especially crafters. A better fix would be an instanced housing area in the new expansion. I personally prefer the neighborhood scene even though it's unpopulated a good amount of the time. It's nice seeing how others express themselves.

[Evol]

Seems like SE's solution would be one house per account. Or maybe one per account per server. In case there really are that many people hoarding plots.

I agree, though I see a couple major issues here:

1. RMT - As long as something is finite, there will always be someone willing to extort. Nobody here knows just how many accounts an RMT force will use, but we have an idea. There's no doubt in my mind that 1 person with 10 accounts, would purchase 10 houses just to be able to sell them on pvp-gil.com. In fact, SE is supposedly going to be opening plots soon where the plots were being held and inactive, and where purchase was actually illegal.

2. Non-RMT - We all know there are people extorting in-game that don't even do it for RMT. They just do it to extort in game for massive amounts of gil, or do it to hold plots for their buddies and their friends.

As long as its possible for someone to be left out, regardless of anything - it's not kosher. They need to implement a system that's fair for the majority, not the few. If a group of players wants to start an FC, they should be able to and be able to have full access to all features. No FC should be left without a plot while an individual player has more than 3 of them.Nobody should be forced to join an overpopulated FC. Nobody should be forced to leave their server. I still feel housing plots should be FC only until they can find a way for every player to have one.

[Evol]

I own three houses between this character and my two alts, and Hyperion isn't exactly a low population server. You can find a house to buy, if you're willing to put in the effort to look for one. Its not even hard, you just browse through the residential districts from the main city aetheryte and look for plots for sale.

Thank you for explaining that its not hard to check the aetherite for open plots lol! I actually do know how to check. I have so many times its not funny. Though just because your server doesn't have a problem with housing be available, doesn't mean that others servers don't. And no, we should not have to leave our server. We should not have to pay extra. You didn't have to, why should we?

I appreciate the feedback, but its not so simple on a populated server, especially a legacy one. And not to mention I am not the only one looking!

[Evol]

I was lucky enough to get a small house when they increased the wards a few months back. There were 2 plots across from me that people bought and did nothing with. They simply sat on them. After a while seeing no one, I sent their names in and asked them to check because I have friends that wanted houses. No reply, and the houses continued to sit there months later with no deco, nothing. Eventually the 2 plots got demolished, someone bought them and they continue to sit unoccupied and undecorated. Seems like there would be a better way to get people housing that want it. This game has the worst housing of any I have played. it needs to be totally redone because no player should ever NOT to be able to have a house...terrible design, just lazy and inept.

Housing should be able to be added onto instead of demolishing your small and hoping you get to the medium or large before it is scooped up. Standard size lots with the ability to expand would of been the intelligent thing to design, people add on to their homes in real life ya know lol. They also need to add hook space allowances. I have things placed as I like and would enjoy adding more to walls but guess what??...no more slots.

Thank you!

Great ideas, through and through. I would love to see it implemented in the fashion you speak - especially if they could do it while making it available to all!

[Evol]

I feel your pain. I was on Excal and housing was something I really wanted. I also wanted airships and gardening! But, as those things are tied back to revenue streams for an FC, they're pretty well guarded and left to the upper echelons.

Before the new wards were added even getting a small plot on Excal was rough. Rather, it was impossible without many extra millions and a willingness to violate the EULA by buying it from another player. I also didn't have the patience to stalk the neighborhoods for a mere opportunity to find a house to buy. So, about a year ago I started looking around at other servers and noticed Mateus and Goblin had tons of plots just sitting there. Before the pricing adjustments a small, lower quality (4 / 5) plot, would run you just over 900k. So, I packed everything up, gave away a lot of gil to friends, and server transferred with my 1.2 mil (2 retainers) then bought myself a house in the Mist. It was a pretty awesome day! Once transferred I worked my way up to a large and also nabbed one for my FC.

All of that to say, it might be a strategy for SE's to keep player housing on populated servers limited in an effort to encourage migration to lesser populated server. That's pure speculation, of course. I imagine if every server had housing capped and players were willing to cancel their sub because of it we might see them heading down a different path. Mateus still has many, many (wouldn't surprise me if it were 100+) housing plots available! There are still a lot of players that just don't care about owning a house and prefer the apartments.

I'd guess that from a business perspective they'd need to invest in more resources (either development or hardware) to increase ward size and accommodate a very select group of subs. If the amount of subs they're losing (over not getting personal housing) isn't a large enough dent in net revenue to justify the expense of expanding the housing system why would SE do it? However, from a high level I can't imagine they see it the same way the player base on highly populated servers does. Just know, it frustrated the crap out of me too.

I agree with you, the OP, that housing should be available for everyone. It's a huge reason I log in as often as I do. Just know if you really want it, it's there. Sadly it'll mean a hefty sacrifice to get it right now. Should you have to? No, probably not. But there are good people on every server! Convince, coax, or otherwise coerce a core group of friends to transfer with you and take over a neighborhood while you still can!

p.s. Just think of how much easier getting to a hunt on time is when it's low pop... just don't expect to kill Odin at 1 AM on weeknight, about 6 people will show up now matter how much you shout

Thank you!

I definitely know what you mean - and can see it too - regarding SE and their willingness to re-implement housing in a more constructive fashion.

However! The beautiful scenes we see client-side are only client-side. Their server isn't rendering a picture and sending it to you, our client application is doing all that work.
All the graphical data is already on our machines. All those fancy websites with item databases; they hacked FFXIV's client data-files and extracted all that info. There's even an app you can download online to do the same yourself.

Server-Side this data is just a list, a compressed list, sorted and designed to take as little space as possible. It's handled by a service where its sole job is to read/write that data. The list simply notes who has access, and what it is they have access to, the client engine then does any rendering based off of - albeit much more than just - this information received from the servers. The Server is updated with positional data, user interaction (such as clicks/input); no different than the normal game itself. If one player is doing these things in a housing ward, they aren't doing these things outside of the housing ward. If you don't grasp my point: It takes no further processing from their server to handle interactions for a player in a housing ward or the same player not in one. The server is still handling the same number of players interactions. The ONLY limitation they could have here is storage. And who is going to believe SE can't afford to build a few more raid-arrays/NAS boxes?

I know additional instancing does consume server resources, as data for an instance has to be loaded into memory - consumes a server thread or process - etc., until the instance is over -> but this is also SE we're talking about here, and the number of plots is severely limited on servers where the player population is high. Plots are also in excess, however, on servers with low population. Not quite sure why there is any issue with limited resources at this time. Especially when you consider that each ward is actually an instance. Simply increase the number of plots in each one to something reasonable: There should be 20 tabs per ward, instead of 2. Especially if you want to allow individual players to own a private cottage. Especially when you consider the extra resources being spent on instancing apartments, and I see nothing but empty apartments on Sarg....all available resources.

I think if anything, on servers where plots run out, new tabs should be auto added with more plots. There's no reason to add 20 tabs per ward to worlds where there's nothing but open plots. In fact, remove the not needed wards/tabs from low-pop servers and give that resource to highly-populated ones. And if the low-pop servers become populated, then expand their housing wards in much the same fashion as that which I've just mentioned. (Just an example of an idea, however poorly constructed).

-

With regard to the way you had resolved the issue for yourself; If I could pay for all my FC members to transfer, and they all wanted to - that would possibly be viable for us. I chose Saronia as my home at the early-access of 1.0, and I was put into Sargatanas in 2.0. This is my home and I shouldn't have to pay to switch servers. Similarly, the case is the same with the friends and FC members I've gained over time. I am very sorry that you had to leave your server to enjoy a specific set of features. I really wish you would have never had to. In your case, I hope SE reads this and gives you back your 20 bucks!

And LOL @ 6 ppl showing up for Odin! That made me laugh pretty good, as we get that issue on Sarg - right times of the rare day/night when that FATE pops. Typically, however, its so packed everyone gets 5 mantles, if they don't DC that is. There's something, that the cross-world party finder should be able to fix - though I'm pretty sure FATES are one of the things you can't do with it.

[Evol]

I wasn't trying to come off as salty, I'm just simply tired of hearing the constant complaining from the overpopulated servers. I get it, even though I don't agree with you. I have friends on my server and luckily it's never been overpopulated. Housing was closed prior to demolition for a very long time. Now that I've experienced housing I would definitely make an alt on a lower pop server if for some reason I lost mine and there wasn't any opportunity to get one back. To suggest that it gets completely scrapped so no one can enjoy it, sarcastic or not is going to invite defensive and "salty" responses.

That being said if they scrapped housing all together I would probably quit playing as would many others, especially crafters. A better fix would be an instanced housing area in the new expansion. I personally prefer the neighborhood scene even though it's unpopulated a good amount of the time. It's nice seeing how others express themselves.

Thank you!

I appreciate you replying again and this time being a bit more constructive, truly! Its fine if you don't agree (obviously), though there's something I guess I didn't clarify properly:

* I do not think that the housing system should get scrapped, I think they should FIX it.

* If they don't plan to fix it, they SHOULD scrap it, and I say this because the issue is that serious. No player should be forced to roll an alt on a different server. No player should have to pay 20 dollars to transfer their main. And everyone who pays a sub for this game, should have access to the same content. There should not be a finite number of players who are considered 'special-er' and have access to something others don't. Consider even content exclusive to CE purchasers...even 10 months later someone can digitally upgrade and experience, and have access to, the same content.

The obvious answer here is to fix it, not scrap it. The idea that it should be scrapped if no fix will be implemented, should only fuel others to want to encourage SE to fix it as well. And for the most part, I'm getting a positive feedback from this thread - as others are in agreement with me. Do they want it scrapped? Hell no! They want it fixed!

You're tired of hearing complaining? Then help us ask SE to fix the issue, don't bash those that are unhappy and disregard us because you're not experiencing the same issues. Be grumpy with SE, not with us! Otherwise, its gonna sound like you are one of the few who actually like it when you have things others don't. Except housing isnt something that's gonna be fixed with grinding. It's not an issue that's fixed with being persistent and putting in your time. Its not an issue where people are saying they don't like how long the anima weapon grind is - its entirely different, no amount of grinding or ability is going to open up new plots.

And yea, expand the existing instances or add more instances - either way your recently suggested solution is absolutely valid! SE should not be adding more features to housing for the special few to enjoy, they should leave it as is and stop development on it until the issue of everyone getting to experience it is resolved!

[Evol]

Honestly, owning a house myself, I do feel like housing should have never been private. It should have been company only, at least in the current wards. A housing ward filled with private housing tends to be a dead ward.

Interesting perspective. I can totally relate to this. I go to a housing ward and its mostly empty and dead.