FFXIV Housing = UNBELIEVABLY INFURIATING!

[ERMITANYO]

I am one of the people advocating for improved apartments:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ature-Requests

[Communion]

Games aren't supposed to make you angry. THIS makes me angry. It's really easy to solve this: Add more Wards, let us make direct home sales between players, and TAKE THAT BLOODY RNG TIMER OFF!!! Keep the one house per account, but for the love of all things good in this world... make it so players aren't angry playing FFXIV.

[Kidria]

The RNG timer was to prevent player house flipping. Sadly, it's not really worked, and with the current system it's easily abused to own multiple estates via the FC loop. Adding Wards take memory and resources, allowing direct home sales once more encourages house flipping. People got grandfathered in when they went into the 'one house per account' thing, but even then if you look at things like the Mew FC on Gilgamesh, it has an obvious work around that folks like them happily abuse. FF14's mentality of housing being a premium and limited thing is ultimately what makes this 'housing crisis' happen. The honest to god way to stop it is to convert to an instanced housing system, which I dunno if they will due to the outside furnishing functionality unless they do a mixed system (with outside furnishing functionality being the limited and premium thing with ward houses and then instanced 'townhouses' with no yards the 'common man's' house).

Yoshi-P has already said they will re-evaluate the housing situation after some time has passed after launch of ShB. He didn't say how much time though, so I imagine realistically it'd be after Savage tier and the first wave of class balances/fixes before they even glance at housing. Housing is only 3% of the game if that; if this is making you this angry you really should try to find either something else in game to do, or take a break from the game. If you really want to decorate a space, you can scratch the itch with apartments or even an FC room in the meantime until you get lucky or the system changes.

[FengZhou]

I oppose this with every fiber of my being. I've seen instanced housing from Runescape and SWTOR and they were awful. No one ever visited my house in those games and I almost never had any interest of visiting anyone else's house in the game. When the house exists isolated in an instance then you never feel a part of the community.

I don't care about people visiting my house. I don't want strangers inviting themselves into MY house. The wards are pretty dead as it is on Balmung, there may be a couple outliers, but majority of them are ALREADY like that. I will not support a broken system that taxes the dungeon servers. If you think spam clicking placards doesn't impact the server at all, you are sadly mistaken. I will not support botters on any level. I will not support people who think there is nothing wrong with the current system either (they already have what they want half of the time so it's no skin off their nose).

If I want people in my house, I add them to the list to be able to enter, it's not hard.

[MaybeOliverB]

The RNG timer was to prevent player house flipping. Sadly, it's not really worked, and with the current system it's easily abused to own multiple estates via the FC loop. Adding Wards take memory and resources, allowing direct home sales once more encourages house flipping. People got grandfathered in when they went into the 'one house per account' thing, but even then if you look at things like the Mew FC on Gilgamesh, it has an obvious work around that folks like them happily abuse.

Sorry but no. There are no workarounds involved with these houses. In fact, we got rid of the single house was unwillingly acquired through that loophole at the beginning of 4.2. Our liability was generously given to a random houseless FC and they seemed very pleased

SE quietly removed the FC house restriction two weeks after the release of patch 4.2, which happened at the very same time the moratorium on personal housing purchases was lifted. Only personal houses can be considered as grandfathered as it stands. Anyone can go out there and stack 8 FC houses on every server if they desire, but are limited to one personal house.

That's 545 houses for you.

[Ishgardian]

"This plot of land is not yet ready for purchase."

I think I speak for everyone when I say that not only is housing in FFXIV unacceptable in this day and age, but this message above is steam-coming-out-of-my-ears infuriating.

No, I am sorry but you don't speak for everyone. I am perfectly capable of speaking for myself.

I recently transferred to another world (I was on Omega and moved to Moogle) where housing is not readily available. For every small house evacuated there are around 8 people camping placards to get this house.... For the first time I experienced the "joy" of competing for a house and said message being on a loop every single time I clicked that placard. It was frustrating but not infuriating.

After two weeks of house hunting I finally bought my house early this morning, at 4:30 a.m. to be precise. The irony is that the timer went off 30 minutes after people started leaving - which makes me believe that some people fail to understand that getting a highly sought after house needs patience and perserverance. Checking house availability and trying for a couple of hours is not something that will work, especially with the hidden timer in place.

It's really easy to solve this: Add more Wards, let us make direct home sales between players,

This is a big NO-NO in my book. I'd rather Square-Enix run the real estate business than the players. Full stop.

Also, I am against instanced housing, but I firmly support suggestions for more wards, new housing districts and bigger and better apartments.

[Brynne]

I've posted this before but there's a bunch of new threads so here's my idea for easing the housing crunch:

1. Remove the reliance of housing for airships/submarines. Keep them FC-related and locked behind the same rank as housing, but allow FCs to buy some space in Cid's workshop or something rather than a house. It could literally just link to the same workshop that exists in the house, so you wouldn't lose any progress transferring from one system to the other. This allows fledgling FCs to begin to build their airships and submarines without needing to compete for a housing plot first.

2. Remove the reliance of housing for gardening. Allow players to purchase gardening plots in another instanced zone where they can do their personal gardening.

If you do both of the above, that makes the functionality currently gated behind housing available to anyone. I think it would be a good start. The third suggestion is on a larger scale and would require more time, but I think it'd be worthwhile for SE to consider.

3. Add in an instanced housing system in addition to the current wards that includes a yard to decorate. Make it so that players can own either an instanced house or a house in the wards, not both. Allow transfers between the two systems. Include incentives on the instanced housing like purchasable upgrades to house size and yard space that make it an attractive option. Some people will move and some won't, but everyone can get a house and the neighborhood feeling of the wards is still there for those who want it.

Alternatively, make apartments a much more attractive option and a viable alternative to housing.

[Losara]

Improving the apartment system seems like a really good option. I would love to have a balcony attached to each apartment which has a built in single plot of gardening space to plant crops and a small amount of space to put up outdoor furniture. A balcony would imply that there is 'natural' light in the room as well which will make it look more open instead of giving off the feeling of living in a cube.

Another alternative being each house plot has a generic house for that area (e.g. Mist houses are Mist themed) that people see by default and the actual plots are instanced 'you need to select character you want to see the house of on that plot'.

This would allow for multiple people to live on the same plot of land but have different houses. Runescape PoH is just a portal that connects to apartment like houses and ESO allows for the purchase of multiple houses since they have instanced housing already in place.

Adding more wards is just a band-aid fix at this point since we've heard that each housing ward is essentially the same as adding another zone to an existing area e.g. Crystarium (Instance 2) and these require a lot of server processing since they are constantly running. SE will eventually need to sort this out in another way.

[Edax]

I don't care about people visiting my house. I don't want strangers inviting themselves into MY house. The wards are pretty dead as it is on Balmung, there may be a couple outliers, but majority of them are ALREADY like that. I will not support a broken system that taxes the dungeon servers. If you think spam clicking placards doesn't impact the server at all, you are sadly mistaken. I will not support botters on any level. I will not support people who think there is nothing wrong with the current system either (they already have what they want half of the time so it's no skin off their nose).

If I want people in my house, I add them to the list to be able to enter, it's not hard.

Well if you support destroying the player communities, then I oppose you vehemently. My neighbor is a lively FC house with plenty of people coming, going and hanging out by the marketboard and I even cheekily stole their gardening layout which prompted them to redesign. This all gets lost in instanced housing.

[Jojoya]

Well if you support destroying the player communities, then I oppose you vehemently. My neighbor is a lively FC house with plenty of people coming, going and hanging out by the marketboard and I even cheekily stole their gardening layout which prompted them to redesign. This all gets lost in instanced housing.

There's no reason why the current ward system can't continue to exist with all future housing added being instanced so all players would have their chance at a house without having to compete over limited ward space.

Most players wouldn't find anything getting destroyed even if all housing was converted to instanced because most players haven't joined communities built around owning a plot in a specific housing ward. You'd still be able to visit the houses of other players with an instanced system, just as you can now, to build communities that way if that's your desire.