An idea for obtaining houses.

[Claviusnex]

Or, you slap a weekly rent on the houses so the players require to maintain, else they run risk losing their place.
With that, you always have them active, and others get their chance of a plot when they get cleared.

It doesn't matter how you determine a house is not being used demolition isn't the fix. The only fix is to provide a housing system that can provide houses for all players that want one. Anything else is just trying to put lipstick on an pig (no offense meant to pigs). The problem with wards is they are always up using server resources whether there are players in the ward or not. This means they sit idle most of the day doing nothing for the game. This is why an instance system would be a far better solution as it will only use system resources when in use and could utilize a pool of housing servers that could be added or removed dynamically with housing access demand.

I have played other MMO's with housing and have never seen the access issues you have in FF XIV. Wildstar has a very vibrant housing scene with an active chat log and open houses. You enter and exit from the capital so you have player activity when you leave your house. I have been playing Elder Scrolls Online since their last free week in March. I have 8 dwellings at this point. Some are just small apartments I use for free ports and to hold storage chests and others are larger houses with yards. I own some in the middle of cities with all of their hustle and bustle that provide easy access to crafting stations and banks. Others are outside or on the fringe of towns and have peaceful get away from it all feeling. While both of my examples have some housing drawbacks (such as item/visitor limits, placement rules) neither share the biggest one and that is access. I will also add both feel more alive as they both allow for access to active common areas where players are playing the game.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Anyways lotto system makes as much sense as the current system we have now
, a bidding system would be better, at least with a bidding system people that put the most work for a housing gets one.

Do you have 50M+ for a small house? Because a bidding war will lead to rich players completely dominating the competition. Not to mention, such a system heavily encourages RMT. Considering my old FC leader was apparently offered $700 for vacant her house way back in 3.3, I don't doubt for a moment people won't resort to RMT.

[Jijifli]

Do you have 50M+ for a small house? Because a bidding war will lead to rich players completely dominating the competition.

Isn't literally one of the big complaints in this game the lack of gil sinks?

Imagine a 50m gil sink for a cottage because someone actually got to 50m and wanted a house. If they earned that legitly, they probably deserve a house.

Not to mention, such a system heavily encourages RMT. Considering my old FC leader was apparently offered $700 for vacant her house way back in 3.3, I don't doubt for a moment people won't resort to RMT.

I mean people already do and openly admit to it in chat anyways. How about Square actually starts shutting down the large banks, and this won't be as big of a concern.

Also we're talking about a game where people spend $1200 for bragging rights on UWU.

Edit: Bonus mention, the lottery idea also encourages RMT, because people will buy gil so they can enter on more characters. Even if 1 character a server limit to lottery, extra accounts. You can RMT buy those too.

[Dyvid]

Honestly I think SE and the community could do a better job at warning players of the pitfalls of over populated servers. Medium server pops are best when it comes to FFXIV

[Enla]

Honestly I think SE and the community could do a better job at warning players of the pitfalls of over populated servers. Medium server pops are best when it comes to FFXIV

SE spams pretty much every populated server with rewards notices to move, and the ones that have the biggest issues tend to be nearly impossible to get into regardless. This is the message I see every day when I log in and multiple times until I log out.

[8:07]Welcome to Balmung!
[8:07]Welcome to FINAL FANTASY XIV!
[8:07]* Balmung is categorized as a Congested World: https://sqex.to/6AC
[8:07]* Bonus incentives are in place for those who transfer from a Congested World to a New/Preferred World.
[8:07]* Incentives include: FREE World Transfer, increased amount of gil that can be transferred, and items you can exchange for rare mounts! https://sqex.to/Sn9

Short of slapping a 'you can't have housing if you go to these servers because we didn't think this system through in any capacity' warning over the server list upon character creation, there isn't much else you can do. Besides quite frankly housing is really the only issue - now that Balmung is locked down and no longer threatening to implode - I have with higher population servers and that's a situation purely of SE's making and personally not worth transferring over. Though your mileage might vary.

[Dyvid]

SE spams pretty much every populated server with rewards notices to move, and the ones that have the biggest issues tend to be nearly impossible to get into regardless. This is the message I see every day when I log in and multiple times until I log out.

[8:07]Welcome to Balmung!
[8:07]Welcome to FINAL FANTASY XIV!
[8:07]* Balmung is categorized as a Congested World: https://sqex.to/6AC
[8:07]* Bonus incentives are in place for those who transfer from a Congested World to a New/Preferred World.
[8:07]* Incentives include: FREE World Transfer, increased amount of gil that can be transferred, and items you can exchange for rare mounts! https://sqex.to/Sn9

Short of slapping a 'you can't have housing if you go to these servers because we didn't think this system through in any capacity' warning over the server list upon character creation, there isn't much else you can do. Besides quite frankly housing is really the only issue - now that Balmung is locked down and no longer threatening to implode - I have with higher population servers and that's a situation purely of SE's making and personally not worth transferring over. Though your mileage might vary.

Maybe they need to give instinctive for new to the game players to start on low pop servers along with trying to get high pop servers to move. It would nice to know why the OP choice his server and what could have been done to make him choose a different one.

[Vrankyl]

Maybe they need to give instinctive for new to the game players to start on low pop servers along with trying to get high pop servers to move. It would nice to know why the OP choice his server and what could have been done to make him choose a different one.

They do though. If you create a character on a Preferred server you get the Road to 60 buff and silver chocobo feathers. Not sure if they are still offering 15 days of sub time as well upon reaching lvl 30 as well or not. Most don't think about that or housing when they select a server though, they generally think about what kind of place will be active enough to suit them. It's why people flock to the largest servers despite there being no free housing, they want to have the crowd around them.

[KisaiTenshi]

How about this...

Instead of spending time spamming purchase on an empty plot competing against other players who are doing the same, why not... do a literal LOTTERY? As in, if a player wants to buy the house, he'll register himself and be put on a random real lottery, to which if he'd be the winner, he'd get the house?

I managed to get an FC house myself yesterday, but it was absolute hell.

Making it so that it's an actual lottery will save players from pain.

No, this just encourages more RMT.

There's three "fixes" for housing, and none of them are good:

1. Instanced housing - which means nobody will ever see your house, garden, or retainers ever again. Good for people who hate other people, bad for "community" building.

2. Throw more instances at the housing - creates the same problem as 1, entire FC's buy up every plot in a ward. There will never be enough housing on some servers.

3. Treat housing like it's own city - Thus one FC is elected mayor and city counsel, sets the tax rate, and elect the wrong FC bozos, tax rate goes up to 200%, and everyone empties out that ward. .

I like the idea, in concept, of treating wards like their own cities, with their own tax rates for operating your building as a shop, or other political levers (eg teleport fees, disable teleports/market boards/aetherytes, designate if houses of certain sizes are for FC's only), as long as there are still wards that are free of it. That adds that extra RP lever to RP servers that other servers can just ignore. A ward can be left in "city-state controlled" mode if there aren't enough votes from house owners to change to a player managed one. Apartment owners and FC room owners can also vote, but only have the weight of one vote collectively (since they're instanced and can be practically unlimited.)

When you create a lottery, it just encourages RMT via ticket stuffing. When you let the prices of housing escalate, that also encourages RMT. So the status quo really is not good for a server with a high population. Shirogane-extreme when everyone logged in at once and nabbed the first house they logged out standing on, or ran to the next unoccupied one, is not really a good mechanic.

To borrow a bad idea from Mabinogi. The guild castle was rewarded to whoever bid the most for it. It lasted like a month or so, and then had to be built again. Because of how bad everything is timed in that game, a week would go by without a castle, and thus all the houses that expired during that time would be unable to be bid on since the guild owning castle had to put them up with specific tax rates, and the tax rates went straight into the guild money. So whoever got the castle first, perpetually had the castle for a year until additional housing areas were opened up that could offer competitive tax rates. When the leases of the house expired, the guild castle owner could also demolish (keep in mind they also spent their guild money on building the houses in the first place, the players only rented them by bidding on them) any house they wanted, and a really spiteful guild could demolish every house the previous guild built and leave the housing empty to effectively "close" it.

So that's why "bidding" is bad. Whoever has the deepest pockets forever has their thumb on the scale to control the housing in the game. The decaying price that FFXIV uses is better, but still not great. The delayed demolish is also not a good mechanic as it can be gamed through buying something that is open (if you can find one) and then transferring.

As mentioned in a previous housing thread, there needs to be an actual imposed delay on moving (eg can move upwards, but not downwards or sideways without delay until all housing of that size expires) to prevent that kind of abuse.

If you're on a congested server where there is no housing, then if you really have your heart set on a house, move to another server.

[Elamys]

1. Instanced housing - which means nobody will ever see your house, garden, or retainers ever again. Good for people who hate other people, bad for "community" building.

I don't understand this complaint. Wildstar has completely instanced housing and when it was active there were plenty (and might still be) of community events going on. The players organized them. How often do you get random visitors anyways in the first place? Judging by my guestbook entries, not many. And I'm sure I don't need to point out that houses are instanced anyways so for a lot of people the interior still isn't getting seen if we're assuming that.

[KisaiTenshi]

I don't understand this complaint. Wildstar has completely instanced housing and when it was active there were plenty (and might still be) of community events going on. The players organized them. How often do you get random visitors anyways in the first place? Judging by my guestbook entries, not many. And I'm sure I don't need to point out that houses are instanced anyways so for a lot of people the interior still isn't getting seen if we're assuming that.

Instanced housing removes the entire "ward" and thus there is only ever an "apartment". A glorified Inn room.