Forcing players to pay to keep housing is unfair.

[Cylla]

snip

Ok, yeah that my bad. I can't really give details on such things as I'm not all into the "how they did it." just that I know it was done and it something everyone had from the moment they created a character and picked their nation. lol

[KarstenS]

Miss a few payments and the bank forecloses on it.

Maybe in the "country of freedom". Here its a bit different and stuff like a house is one of the last things that get touched.

[Moonlite]

I'm really sorry if I'm coming off rude or angry right now but I have to get something out of my system now - which is: I'm so sick of hearing people complain about the housing system. Could it be done better? Sure. Did they made mistakes? Certainly. Do we need to tell the devs that by making a new thread on this topic every other day? Really not. I bet they're well aware of the problem - and they're trying to adress it with introducing apartments for example.

If people thought they were really trying to address the problem you wouldn't see threads non stop about housing.

Apartments are offensive, all they did was remodel a FC house and let people buy FC rooms. They didn't even man up and put all the NPCs or bonus items in that a FC house would have. They also have you sharing a stable with a bunch of randoms. That is a brilliant idea.

They have had years to YEARS to work on this problem. They have refused to admit they made a mistake and no fix now coming up on the second expansion. This is the same attitude we got from the dev team in 1.o. Adding more wards is also offensive, since they can't seem to count number of players.

Let us also not forget that developer resources are put into housing items each patch. If only X% of players can get housing, then housing items should only be worked on equally. Yet they have more items each patch and each seasonal event.

Every time they have a discussion about the player base. They should have to see players are unhappy with housing. Every meeting they should know they made a mistake and have to discuss a fix. Until they either design the system to grow organically per server (HAHAHA) or move the houses to instances and take down the server strain wards.

[RubyCirha]

soooo its fair to let houses sit for months with out any activity in them when others could use that land ? cas thats how it was before the 40 day limit was put in place yea it sucks but hey id rather have a time limit and what not cas if im gona for longer than 40 days chances are i didnt need that house that bad anyways

[Pireco]

So pay real money (sub) for a (debatable) big part of the game is okay , and i say this because OP would be paying only for that, but to sell emotes/mounts/clothes its the end of the world, you guys are a joke.
I understand why they put demo timer , and personally i used it to get back a few gil for a new house in shiro (since didnt had anything of value that was destructable), but it is a pretty lazy fix for a big problem, and most housing systems in other mmos are wayy better, i mean you dont have to be a genius dev to think better solutions ... i would trade the current "neighbour" feel for a instanced expandable house anyday.

[Niwashi]

FFXIV is stuck in the Stone Age by having housing be in zones.

And they didn't even do zones well. LOTRO has zone housing of the same sort, but they made it accessible. They automatically spawn new neighborhoods whenever all the current houses of a particular size in a given region are taken. (Though there is a limit to that, it's at 1000 neighborhoods x 4 regions compared to FFXIV's 12 wards x 3 regions, not to mention the fact that FFXIV started off with just a couple wards per region.)

In LOTRO you can get a house at level 15. (Since both LOTRO and FFXIV launched with a level cap of 50, their leveling systems are comparable. Level 15 there is about like level 15 here.) A small one costs around 1 gold, which is equivalent to 100,000 copper, the game's smallest denomination currency. (Since the games have completely different economies, both in terms of how to get money and how to spend it, prices are difficult to compare, but considering a copper to be roughly on par with a gil is close enough for a basic comparison like this, so consider a small house at 100K, a bit steep at level 15, but completely trivial by mid-game.)

They do have a small weekly upkeep cost, and you can be locked out of your house for not paying it, but you can pay up to six months in advance or authorize other players to make payments on your behalf if you'll be gone longer than that. Even once your house is locked, it's still yours and you have another couple months before you could lose it if you fail to come back and pay the fee to unlock it. If you're gone for a really long time, and actually lose the house, all the items you had in it (that's ALL of them, no destroy on removal nonsense like FFXIV has) are held by an escrow broker for you to pick up. (Originally the escrow broker only held them another couple weeks, but I believe they updated that to permanent escrow at some point.)

All of that ensures that players who have really left the game won't hold their plots forever, yet anyone who is still playing the game isn't going to lose their house for simply taking a break for a few months. Even after really long breaks, like a year or two, where you could come back and have your house gone, you simply buy another (fairly cheap and in inexhaustible supply), pick up your stuff from escrow, and you're back in business.

I'm not saying LOTRO has a great housing system. (Their decorating system is horribly limiting, with only specific places you can put items.) But they did work out how to make shared neighborhoods work.


FFXIV did everything wrong for having shared neighborhoods. By far the biggest failing is that they released it without investing in the infrastructure necessary to maintain large numbers of them. Then in an effort to address that problem they just exacerbated it by using foreclosure, which should have been only to free up plots after someone leaves for good, and instead put it on a short timer that kicks out people after even temporary absences. Not only does the shortage make losing your house a far bigger problem than it should be, since you can't rely on being able to just buy another, but the cost makes it a far bigger loss than it should be as well. People aren't going to accept losing something that took them months to save up for in the first place. Then there's the fact that many of the best housing items are destroyed if they're removed. (That one's a big problem for housing even if you don't lose your house, and yet another nail in the coffin if you do.) And even the remainder of your items aren't available for long anyway. They've both made housing into the biggest investment in the game, and at the same time ensured that you can lose it all for good at the drop of a hat. That's the kind of thing that can lose them players and subscriptions at the drop of a hat as well.

[RayneLittlewinkle]

Not trying to be snarky at this at all.

But isn't 45 whole days not a break? You already have a time frame. Its not like you stop playing for a week and your house goes.

[Niwashi]

But isn't 45 whole days not a break? You already have a time frame. Its not like you stop playing for a week and your house goes.

For short term players, the sort who will only play a given MMO for a few months to a couple years anyway, that's a long time to take a break.

For long term players, the sort who stick with an MMO for a decade or more, it's hardly any time at all.

[Lexia]

For long term players, the sort who stick with an MMO for a decade or more, it's hardly any time at all.

I have sub time on XIV paid up to 4 year mark andon't realy see going anywhere and with XI I had sub for4-5 years for me my sub is always going as long as I continue to play even it might only be couple times a month or taking a "break" for me taking a break doesn't end my sub if I end my sub for something it means I'm done with it and not coming back.

[Naunet]

I understand why this system is in place but I do not think it is fair. It basically traps players into paying their subscription every single month. There is a life outside of FF and I don't deserve to lose my house for wanting to take a break.

I agree, 100%. ESPECIALLY when SE said that they would NOT be tying house ownership to a subscription.

Their entire housing system is crap.

[edit] I see folk have been mentioning WildStar's housing. Guess what we're getting in that game soon? The long-awaited Communities feature, where we will be able to link up housing plots into one massive housing structure. I see a clear difference here. In one game, they care about providing an endlessly enjoyable game feature; in the other, they seem to have decided to go with bare minimum effort and stubborn pride.

Everyone whining about housing will become silent on the issue when/if they finally aquire one. It's only such a desperate issue for them becuase they are without. Once they get it, they could all careless.

I own a house. I care deeply about SE turning this content into legitimately enjoyable content with as few restrictions as humanely possible.