Housing

[IkaraGreydancer]

Even though your question wasnt directed at me, I'd like to give you an answer - or at least my answer: To make people aware that combining their efforts into one thread instead of cluttering the forum with many will achieve more than making the same thread with the same suggestions (lottery, drop the timer, instanced housing, more wards and so and so forth, we've heard it all).

If the OPs all seriously want to effect any change and not only vent about their own experience with the system, they'd be wise to make a "master-thread" and keep that alive, aswell as complying with the forum-guidelines to check wether or not the thread they want to make already exists. In the housing-case simply opening the forum is enough to see that there are many threads on the issue. This might be a personal pet peeve of mine, but I just love it when people acuse the devs of being "lazy" while they themself appear to be to "lazy" to make sure they're not creating duplicate thread#27.

How is making a new thread lazy? That makes zero sense. And 1 could say the sheer amount of threads about the issue can also tell how big of an issue it is to SE. I say make more AND comment on existing ones.

[Vidu]

How is making a new thread lazy? That makes zero sense. And 1 could say the sheer amount of threads about the issue can also tell how big of an issue it is to SE. I say make more AND comment on existing ones.

Not doing research and looking up old threads is what I'd call lazy, yes.
Creating a new thread is quick and easy - looking stuff up isnt.

Having a huge amount of threads also makes it harder to count how many people would actually like that - other than, lets say, a like-count or the amount of replies to a thread.

[MrMagic]

How is making a new thread lazy? That makes zero sense. And 1 could say the sheer amount of threads about the issue can also tell how big of an issue it is to SE. I say make more AND comment on existing ones.

The community reps have asked time and time again for people to consolidate onto one thread, or like an existing post eg. WHM changes in Stormblood. This request is to help get the ideas to the devs but sure, your way is better lol. What you are asking people to do is also against forum rules.

[IkaraGreydancer]

The community reps have asked time and time again for people to consolidate onto one thread, or like an existing post eg. WHM changes in Stormblood. This request is to help get the ideas to the devs but sure, your way is better lol. What you are asking people to do is also against forum rules.

Making new threads and commenting on old ones is against the rules? If thats true thats ridiculous.
Also I don't think anything would be different if it was just 1 huge thread as appose to the way it is now.
Has SE even addressed the issues with housing lately? Cause as far as I know theyve turned a blind eye to them

[Jojoya]

Making new threads and commenting on old ones is against the rules? If thats true thats ridiculous.
Also I don't think anything would be different if it was just 1 huge thread as appose to the way it is now.
Has SE even addressed the issues with housing lately? Cause as far as I know theyve turned a blind eye to them

You're working against yourself here by not giving serious consideration to the good advice you're being given.

One thread with 30 different players commenting says "this is a concern that many players have in common so we should give it more attention". It's a collective voice seeking attention to the issue.

There can be 30 different threads and it looks like 30 different concerns coming from 30 different people that no one else really cares about. It's just a bunch of noise from people seeking personal attention.

Be noise if you want, it's something companies quickly learn to tune out.

I don't know what you consider "lately" but they do pay attention. We had some major updates in 4.1 and 4.2. Until the start of this year, there was plenty of available housing in NA in general. It was only the unanticipated influx of new players this year that has pressed housing in NA to capacity. The EU and JP data centers still have housing available, which makes it less of a priority for SE since it's only one region that's affected.

They hinted at the NA FanFest that some form of Ishgard housing may be coming this expansion and that it's tied to the Reconstruction, which they told us was tentatively scheduled to start in 5.1. They told us at the EU FanFest that they're working on technology that would allow what's happening in the wards to be seen from the instanced area of a house. They made a comment during one of the June Live Letters that they're aware of the housing demand on the NA servers and they were going to be discussing the problem after the expansion launch.

They aren't ignoring housing like some players insist.

They can't instantly make things better by waving a magic wand. Things take time to develop and implement. Like every game development team out there, they've learned to keep their mouths shut until they're ready to implement something because players love to take comments and twist them into absolute realities set in stone that were supposed to be delivered yesterday.

You can convince yourself they don't care if you want. You can keep making random noises if you want. But you're not going to accomplish anything by doing it.

[Vidu]

Making new threads and commenting on old ones is against the rules? If thats true thats ridiculous.
Also I don't think anything would be different if it was just 1 huge thread as appose to the way it is now.
Has SE even addressed the issues with housing lately? Cause as far as I know theyve turned a blind eye to them

To quote from the forum-guidelines: "Please use the search function placed at the top of the forum to see if your questions have already been answered. If there happens to be a thread with similar topics, please divert your questions to that particular thread."

So, no its obviously not strictly against the rules, but you're being asked to keep everything in one thread if possible instead of creating a new one.
It also matters little what you "think" works - not when the devs themself told us what does infact work, which is consolidating everything in one huge thread.
To me it looks a lot more like you are turning blind eyes to pretty much everything that goes against your view(s) - them holding off on the housing on the new EU-servers and only making it available recently (and FC-only for the time being) shows me that they're monitoring the situation, are aware that they are issues but arent completly done with the fixes they mentioned yet. Its no surprise that they're being careful with giving updates to that - and its also no surprise that housing isnt a top-priority for them, specially not in the last year or so when they were busy getting out the next expansion. I know that a lot of people seem to either believe that (a) they can just wave magic wand and give you what you want RIGHT NOW or (b) that the team should put everything on hold until the problem YOU care most about is fixed. (on top of people having this missconception that getting one type of content prevents fixing another one - getting more quests or ARR reworked isnt what prevents housing from getting fixed)
Neither works. Nor does creating the same thread over and over again works.

Fair point. But we do have threads like that and nothing seems to be changing

Maybe not as fast or in the way you'd like it to. I'll admit we're getting mainly band-aid fixes, but...
...people can only own one house now, unless they go through quite a bit of trouble with dummy-FCs etc.
...we got new wards - not enough for everyone, but we still got more. We started with 6 per district.
...FC gets the first chance to grab houses now.
...apartments are a thing, aswell as FC-rooms.

They did add things to make housing more accessible to everyone. You make it sound like they did nothing, which simply isnt true. Ofc its still not enough so that everyone can have a mansion - but pretending like they dont listen at all is simply untrue and unfair.

[DarkMasamune]

They did add things to make housing more accessible to everyone. You make it sound like they did nothing, which simply isnt true. Ofc its still not enough so that everyone can have a mansion - but pretending like they dont listen at all is simply untrue and unfair.

Thank you for mentioning that. I do understand the overall frustration reguarding housing, but I really don't understand why people say SE dosen't care or dosen't listen.

[IkaraGreydancer]

Thank you for mentioning that. I do understand the overall frustration reguarding housing, but I really don't understand why people say SE dosen't care or dosen't listen.

Because all of these "hints & band aid fixes" arent really helping. People who have houses arent going to care as much because theyre out of this problem. People like me who've puts weeks of playtime into placards dont care about these little things. Is that fair to the devs? No. And im willing to admit that. But at the end of the day what they say is white noise to me...I want to see change not hear about what "possibly" could change. Theres a reason why these threads keep popping up.

[DarkMasamune]

Because all of these "hints & band aid fixes" arent really helping. People who have houses arent going to care as much because theyre out of this problem. People like me who've puts weeks of playtime into placards dont care about these little things. Is that fair to the devs? No. And im willing to admit that. But at the end of the day what they say is white noise to me...I want to see change not hear about what "possibly" could change. Theres a reason why these threads keep popping up.

Of course. I know the housing system has a lot of flaws, but I believe they tried to do something— even thought it was just band aid fixes, yes.

I hope one day we will have a true solution that will allow everyone to own a house as they please, but saying they're not doing anything and/or that they don't care is a bit harsh. There are a lot of things in the game to handle, a lot of demands and a lot of players, housing is one of many.

[Vidu]

Because all of these "hints & band aid fixes" arent really helping. People who have houses arent going to care as much because theyre out of this problem. People like me who've puts weeks of playtime into placards dont care about these little things. Is that fair to the devs? No. And im willing to admit that. But at the end of the day what they say is white noise to me...I want to see change not hear about what "possibly" could change. Theres a reason why these threads keep popping up.

You know its funny you'd say that... because I didnt mention all the little things they added over time (due to my own time here being limited... and me typing at 2 in the morning). One thing I failed to mention is the ability to share your personal house with other people. And didnt YOU make a thread about wanting that feature for apartments just a few days ago?
And you wont see change if you decide to ignore all the changes they've put in place - some at our request, I'd like to remind you. People were unhappy with seeing houses beind abbondond and empty because their owners stopped playing months ago, so they asked for a system to get those houses relinquised. People complained about the house-flipping-mafia, so we got the random timer in hopes to ease that a bit. People had issues with one account owning mutliple houses, so they made that more difficult.

I understand your frustration, but lashing out will get you nowhere. Not following the advice the devs themself gave us to communicate problems to them (one megathread) will get you nowhere and certainly wont get your message to them. As it stands all those tiny threads are most likely white noise to them.

I'd also like to mention that one reason those threads are popping up is that people cant be bothered to read the forumguidelines and take a quick look around to post in an existing thread.