I'd like to take an extended break from the game, but...

[BigRed5392]

the reasons these exist was complaints like fc leaders never coming back, players with houses never coming back.

Imo save airship stuff, but the rest was added due to complaints.

[Hasrat]

I agree that it's something that affects a good chunk of the playerbase. But it has to be admitted that that chunk is disproportionately distributed to a small chunk of servers.

So devs are left with trying to strike a balance. Do they spend time and resources on features that only a few servers will ever need? Or do they take a more moderate approach that satisfies the needs of most of the servers?

Personally, I feel suggestions such as instanced housing are only "fixes" for the overpopulated servers, without providing any benefit to the rest, or even risking being largely unwanted. If we want to come up with ideas for the "housing crisis," it should probably be something that's good for every server, or at least not just the few (I presume few, does anybody actually know how many this affects?) that are most vocal. In that regard, I just can't really see a good reason to spend more on housing resources.

Again, this is all still only tangential to the auto-demolish. Maybe devs hoped housing would help balance servers, and thought, in an ideal world, they wouldn't need an auto-demolish. But, given the situation, it doesn't seem like such a bad thing to have. Unless, of course, you're a player that wants to take a break. Then it's a punishment. But to anyone constantly checking for free plots, it's at least a glimmer of hope.

[Voltyblast]

I can relate to the OP - even though I never join FCs, but I used to own a house - and it's kinda why I used to sub constantly as I loved my house too much and I couldn't bear the thought of losing my precious place...

...but now that it's gone I'm glad I have an apartment instead. It doesn't get destroyed after 45 days!

For now.

[Cinno]

I was in the exact same situation... Me and two of my friends were all co-leaders of an FC, with a house that we absolutely loved - we spent so much time decorating it together, and the location was excellent.. theres a lot of memories in that house, and with the FC as well.

But we all got bored, and were no longer having fun with the game.. so we all stopped playing. They both unsubbed.. but I was stuck staying subbed so I could log in every couple of weeks to keep everything. I felt trapped, paying for a game I wasnt even playing and didn't know if I wanted to even play anymore..

We finally had a talk and decided that... we don't care anymore what happens. We took what furnishings we wanted from the house/our rooms and logged out one last time, and unsubbed. If the house gets destroyed, it is what it is. If the lead of the fc gets passed around and the fc gets destroyed, it also is what it is. The feeling of being trapped, the feeling of obligation, its finally gone, and that feels great.

[Zojha]

Maybe devs hoped housing would help balance servers, and thought, in an ideal world, they wouldn't need an auto-demolish.

Then the devs are sooomewhat bad at math >_>

Right now, we have about 140k plots available across all servers - JP, NA, EU etc. All of them. JP alone almost has that many characters at endgame. Those are just the most active characters.
A quick lodestone search for free companies with the letter A gave over 100k free companies. Those share the housing pool with singular characters. So you'll be distributing 140k slots among roughly 400k candidates. That can't work out, even in a perfectly even spread. Even if only a half of the candidates even want one. Even if you don't account for free companies at all. As such, I'd imagine most of the servers suffer from housing scarcity to some degree - Some more some less. Mateus for example is the smallest server we have and only has like 100 more endgame players than housing plots - I can imagine it's not a big issue there.
(Edit: Talking of bad at math: It's actually 600 more plots than endgame characters on Mateus. We have 12, not 8 wards now. I did it right when calculating the total, tho >_>)

Just looking at the numbers, they probably should have just left the wards for free companies and made personal housing instanced - Those numbers would have worked out nicely. By putting personal housing into the wards they created too much competition for the existing plots. Auto-Demolish is a bandaid fix for that mistake. Love it, hate it - it's what it is.

[Linadae]

Unfortunately I'm an rper, so my choice of server is limited to the two unofficial rp servers, Balmung and Gilgamesh, and unbeknownst to the rp community one of the big 4-chan/reddit groups picked Gilgamesh as their server of choice. So both are massively over populated.


And yes I do a bit of pve, but unfortunately this expansion has been on the whole disappointing for me and rp has been the only thing keeping me subscribed. Because even though SE's content was lackluster for me, I can always make my own.

And I would love a home for my character, but due to over crowding, I will likely never be able to own one. Even the apartments are disappointing and filled. 500k and you're getting less than what an fc room offers...they could have at least went the SWTOR method and allowed you to purchase expansions for the apartments so you could turn them into condos, with their own little private garden section. Then at least I could see the 500k as an investment for the future.

But what might truly fix things on Balmung and Gilgamesh, is make an Official Roleplaying server. That way the RP community won't be split, pvers, pvpers, and trolls can go off on their own and people will know for sure what servers to pick. All it would take is, picking a server (or even getting a new one, seeing as we will be getting new NA servers anyway) and adding (RP) at the end of the name and for one month offer free transfers to it with the gil cap removed.

[Kaethra]

Can anyone explain the Cons of instancing this stuff to me? The only one I can think of is it lowers immersion a bit. But the benefits are that housing becomes more accessible and doesn't disappear if you have to go for whatever reason.

The way I see it, a soldier deploying for a year being able to keep their stuff as it was when they left sort of trumps the reasons for not instancing.

But what might truly fix things on Balmung and Gilgamesh, is make an Official Roleplaying server. That way the RP community won't be split, pvers, pvpers, and trolls can go off on their own and people will know for sure what servers to pick.

The (RP) tag on a Roleplaying server attracts trolls like a moth to flame. Its a well known fact that RPers buy items for higher prices due to glamours. In addition to the fact it brings in all sorts of 'other' players. The fact that you have unofficial servers actually curbs it a bit. Unfortunately those servers just got too big.

[Alleo]

I agree with you OP. Thanks to the auto demolishing you cant really take a longer break..at the same time Yoshida said that its fine to play another game till the next patch.. Yet we cant truly take a break because we have to log in once each month to keep our house..which means that we have to constantly pay the sub even if we only log in once..

Really its even more sad since he once said the in the past that a housing timer is thing of the past and will not be part of this game..really..I hate it that we as the customers have to pay the price because the Devs cant somehow accept that they created a faulty system and change it to something better..If I ever lose my house for any reasons than this will surely be the last day of FF14 for me too.

[LineageRazor]

For every homeowner who MIGHT come back to the game someday, there are ten who leave and never look back. Without auto-demolition, their abandoned house remains forever empty. After a few years, it's not unreasonable to expect that entire wards will become ghost towns. Even if there WAS enough housing for everyone, don't you think that it'd be a bit depressing to be the only occupied house in an otherwise abandoned ward? I'd say that even if housing was infinite, auto-demolition is still a good thing. It clears out the dead houses of folks who have permanently left the game.

That said, I agree that it's silly if stuff like airships and whatever are lost if the house gets demolished. That kind of data should be tied to the FC, not to the house.

As for instanced housing, I don't know about you, but personally I consider the number one primary purpose of owning a house is to SHOW OFF. You want people to SEE what you've done with your house. You want to show them how beautifully you can decorate it, or show off your raiding achievements with hard-to-get furnishings. With instanced housing, the only time anyone will actually see any of it will be if they randomly decide to pop in to your instance. Gone will be the days of just strolling through the housing districts to see what people have built.

[AstralKaos]

Can anyone explain the Cons of instancing this stuff to me? The only one I can think of is it lowers immersion a bit. But the benefits are that housing becomes more accessible and doesn't disappear if you have to go for whatever reason.

That's the only con, really. And for that con there's a very, very, very simple solution - if a person/group want to have this neighbourly district thing which barely exists (most servers you will only see your neighbour at the board or in their garden with FC, or alone) then you can fight it out with the others that want that; meanwhile, those that don't care about this sort of thing and just want a house, small, medium or large - can go and easily get one in an instanced little zone that's accessed easily to others should they wanna see by the aetheryte.

Not that saying any of this helps, the dev team clearly don't want to fix this horrid system... no, they want to keeo adding on to it instead.