The housing system in this game NEEDS A COMPLETE GD OVERHALL. Complete stupidity....

[k99]

This opinion will be largely unpopular. I just want to inject a little clarity to the concern about locked content. This is not an argument about which is better or who should or should not have houses.

The elephant in the room which is never addressed is that housing content is only locked from you if you wish to be the sole proprietary owner of the property.

Almost everything about housing is available to you as a non-owner if you are given the permissions or shared access rights.



The only exclusive rights a private house owner would have are placard editing, locking the door, and adding/removing people.

Everyone is capable of becoming a co-owner in some fashion. With the amount of empty houses people seem to find during their crawl through wards, I'm surprised nobody has asked those people to become their personal decorator or gardener. Surely there are a handful of people who would be happy to give you that right, and benefit from your decoration enthusiasm or gardening motivations.

Again, this is not an attempt to tell you that you should not pursue a house by highlighting the above. I want to simply correct the concerns about content lock-out to show you that nobody is locked out by SE, but only by your own desire to be the absolute owner.

[Nix]

This opinion will be largely unpopular. I just want to inject a little clarity to the concern about locked content. This is not an argument about which is better or who should or should not have houses.

The elephant in the room which is never addressed is that housing content is only locked from you if you wish to be the sole proprietary owner of the property.
Almost everything about housing is available to you as a non-owner if you are given the permissions or shared access rights.



The only exclusive rights a private house owner would have are placard editing, locking the door, and adding/removing people.

Everyone is capable of becoming a co-owner in some fashion. With the amount of empty houses people seem to find during their crawl through wards, I'm surprised nobody has asked those people to become their personal decorator or gardener. Surely there are a handful of people who would be happy to give you that right, and benefit from your decoration enthusiasm or gardening motivations.

Again, this is not an attempt to tell you that you should not pursue a house by highlighting the above. I want to simply correct the concerns about content lock-out to show you that nobody is locked out by SE, but only by your own desire to be the absolute owner.

I can see where you're coming from, and understand what you're saying - but still, there will be those who won't be able to take part. Many FCs limit garden access to a select few (especially if the FC is growing big-ticket items), and not everyone wants to allow tenants to use their gardens (or have tenants in general). Can it happen? Sure! Is it as easy as it has been made out to be? Probably not.

Personally, I do not allow my tenants to use my gardens because I use them, nor do I allow them to shuffle my furniture around because I am quite particular with my decorating. Some folks will be cool with it and that's rad, but not all of us will be for various reasons, and that's okay too. Maybe if the number of garden plots allowed per house were increased it'd be nice, but a small only gets one, and if it's in use often, then the other tenants are SOL anyway.

If SE doesn't want to add in a new housing system or toy with the one that's implemented, then I think that they should at least focus on a way that will allow people to enjoy locked content without being at the mercy of others. I had mentioned in another post that it'd be nice to see a way to garden via an NPC, where you select what you'd like to plant & with which topsoil via a menu (so there's no physical plot), you'd be able to select its location on the 3x3 grid, and then after a set time (based on seed type) you could collect your items without needing to rely on housing to enjoy gardening. Same deal with workshops - have an NPC in Ishgard that handles projects.This way FCs without a home (they exist!) can still partake in airship/sub/build projects.
Having access to these features would be awesome, and likely negate some of the issues that people have with the current system. There will always be some that cannot be pleased, but I would like to see something a little fairer.

[k99]

If SE doesn't want to add in a new housing system or toy with the one that's implemented, then I think that they should at least focus on a way that will allow people to enjoy locked content without being at the mercy of others.

Thank you for your reply.

Raids, dungeons, and treasure maps are all the same level of locked content by this definition as they all rely on other people to enjoy or complete. I would appreciate it very much if you could avoid using the term 'locked content' so loosely without this clarity. That was all I wanted to highlight in my post. Having a solid discussion to benefit housing becomes difficult when these details are thrown around incorrectly.

[Nix]

Thank you for your reply.

Raids, dungeons, and treasure maps are all the same level of locked content by this definition as they all rely on other people to enjoy or complete. I would appreciate it very much if you could avoid using the term 'locked content' so loosely without this clarity. That was all I wanted to highlight in my post. Having a solid discussion to benefit housing becomes difficult when these details are thrown around incorrectly.

You can use duty finder to join raids, dungeons, or even set up a PF for maps. These things were created with the intention of people partying up to do things, and in a way so was FC housing (tenants on private housing came as a later addition, almost an afterthought, but with no expectation that one should take on tenants if they didn't want to). But with the way that things actually are, it's not as easy as people are making it out to be. Also, raids, dungeons, maps and such don't cease to allow people to partake in them after a certain amount of players have already done so.

Gardening, subs/airships and workshops are locked behind housing access, which is not possible for everyone to enjoy - sure, many people do have access to it in some flavor, but not all, so I believe that I am correct in my use of "locked content." If it were available elsewhere, then it would not be locked.

[Edax]

You can use duty finder to join raids, dungeons, or even set up a PF for maps. These things were created with the intention of people partying up to do things, and in a way so was FC housing (tenants on private housing came as a later addition, almost an afterthought, but with no expectation that one should take on tenants if they didn't want to). But with the way that things actually are, it's not as easy as people are making it out to be. Also, raids, dungeons, maps and such don't cease to allow people to partake in them after a certain amount of players have already done so.

Gardening, subs/airships and workshops are locked behind housing access, which is not possible for everyone to enjoy - sure, many people do have access to it in some flavor, but not all, so I believe that I am correct in my use of "locked content." If it were available elsewhere, then it would not be locked.

What's stopping you from using the PF to garden? Chat up some interested parties and become a tenant.

[Nix]

What's stopping you from using the PF to garden? Chat up some interested parties and become a tenant.

I don't need to, I own a home of my own - and while yes, what you suggest may work for some, it's still not a possibility for all.

[Minibun]

I don't need to, I own a home of my own - and while yes, what you suggest may work for some, it's still not a possibility for all.

So I went and visited said home, and well hmm.... for someone who's house really resembles the type of empty house people posting here despise the most, you sure like to defend aspects of housing that you yourself do not even use. I'm starting to think you are not the qualified voice for defending these topics.

[Shougun]

What's stopping you from using the PF to garden? Chat up some interested parties and become a tenant.

Personally I'd hate to trust some random person that much. If they were pre-existing friend it might not be so bad but not everyone has that luxury, of both a friend that has a place and one that wants to share the whole feature. I know some think "yeh housing IS a luxury", but I disagree with that idea at the core of it so I won't accept that. Housing imo should be an integral part of the experience.

I know you like it and I don't want to have people think you have to get on the back foot to protect it from me, but every time I hear someone talk something good about it all it sounds like to me is "if you bend over backwards jump three times, clap your hands, scream out the window, stab your own eye, check 24 times a day, get lucky, slap your posterior, and pray to Thal- then if you roll a 6 three times on a 24 sides dice. . . housing is going to be great for you!". Which has me rolling my eyes so hard into my head that they come back around to reading more about how many and how great all these compromises are lol. I'm of course also aware how you feel about people who feel so strongly against the housing system, like myself, but I guess we provide each other hours of fun then . To be fair they're self realized compromises (admitting subjective view), I know some people like it, like EVE sounds like a nightmare to me to play but I think it's fun to hear about people blowing up thousands of dollars in corporate espionage and mass warfare-- a type of fun I'd listen to but absolutely hate to be part of.

One of the /many/ compromises that I feel this system introduces (for the worse, functionally, and intractably), is for example some people really are happy with a small, to the point they had a large and was like "omg nope" and went back. To find out if you were that person you had to enter the (imo) annoying system twice, had to get ready to comprise on a whole slue of values (location, theme, size), and pay for the whole thing twice. So much better, imo, if players could just upgrade features and figure out that stuff smoothly and gradient-ly, where exploration isn't giant leaps off into the unknown. If they could buy and permanently keep the Ramuh platform, keep the Azim Steppe, keep the Ruby Sea water dome, they keep buying yes (gil sink doesn't go away), but they so easily go back if they were like OMG NO TOO BIG. But alas, no.. Every change, every choice, just existing in the system is some sort of first world torture (hyperbole for fun, but seriously I grimace).

I can easily see this system could work well for a sandbox or hardcore rpg (in fact I believe Yoshida was heavily inspired by Dark Age of Camelot, a game he self confessed enjoyment to, which is a bit of the more older school designs with emphasis on that old school tier mmo team work), but with how this game presents I grimace even further. Our awesome job freedom, how the devs approach content with rolling difficulties, how the story has unfolded and begs any type of player to come and try it (they even let players choose difficulty now lol), everything about this game is freedom fantasy and flexibility- then WHAP here is housing "ultimate" where everything is inflexible, restrictive, and grounded in some reality that the rest of the game shares very few if any conceptual throughput ideas with (this game isn't grounded hard fantasy, in the sense that we're practically gods already and toss fireballs like they're pennies). When people are like "you dont even want that large" I think yeah some people wont, some people want a small forever, some people actually want something much larger than large (to be honest our houses and gardens are kind of small compared to some other mmos)- yet to figure that out as a player is like trying to pull your teeth out and hope you found the right one so you don't have to pull another.

For such a freedom and high magic game the system feels like, imo, shackles in so many ways and honestly I'm really not here for the 2000 era MMORPG experience- I want to make the joke "ffxi is still online if I wanted that" but the hilarious thing is I can't because every single person in the game does actually get a space. That's two floors/upgrade-able, and they have a personal island. If they had upgraded their FFXI concept they'd probably have had near Wildstar housing, or better (which would award winning housing I bet), and I'd have cried for joy. . . instead we're more like 1.0 market wards which if anyone is old enough to remember was just fantastic lol.

Though again I want to state I know you like it, and I'm sure at this point you know I'm near loathing the system lol, and for that I don't want to see the current system destroyed but only significantly added onto. Though for me on a personal level if it was Dalamud'd right into the ground I'd shed no personal tear- in fact I might internally cheer, but on a commiserating level, on a level of "I suppose I'm not the only one playing this game", out of respecting and believing your joy is valid- I'd not want it ruined like that.

[Edax]

I know you like it and I don't want to have people think you have to get on the back foot to protect it from me, but every time I hear someone talk something good about it all it sounds like to me is "if you bend over backwards jump three times, clap your hands, scream out the window, stab your own eye, check 24 times a day, get lucky, slap your posterior, and pray to Thal- then if you roll a 6 three times on a 24 sides dice. . . housing is going to be great for you!". Which has me rolling my eyes so hard into my head that they come back around to reading more about how many and how great all these compromises are lol. I'm of course also aware how you feel about people who feel so strongly against the housing system, like myself, but I guess we provide each other hours of fun then . To be fair they're self realized compromises (admitting subjective view), I know some people like it, like EVE sounds like a nightmare to me to play but I think it's fun to hear about people blowing up thousands of dollars in corporate espionage and mass warfare-- a type of fun I'd listen to but absolutely hate to be part of.

I have played Eve Online. It's a game that actively encourages and rewards sociopaths. I ran a new player mining corporation that helped new players and we just kept getting war declared on us by trolls who just came by and slaughtered all our new players that were just mining in newb space. We were even infiltrated by fake new players so they could more better kill other new players to the point that nobody could even leave the space stations anymore. One of our members was even a firefighter who just couldn't tolerate the kind of cruelty Eve Online encourages and left the game forever. I don't blame him, I left Eve too so I didn't want to become a sociopath to enjoy that game.

For such a freedom and high magic game the system feels like, imo, shackles in so many ways and honestly I'm really not here for the 2000 era MMORPG experience- I want to make the joke "ffxi is still online if I wanted that" but the hilarious thing is I can't because every single person in the game does actually get a space. That's two floors/upgrade-able, and they have a personal island. If they had upgraded their FFXI concept they'd probably have had near Wildstar housing, or better (which would award winning housing I bet), and I'd have cried for joy. . . instead we're more like 1.0 market wards which if anyone is old enough to remember was just fantastic lol.

Beware of a system of total freedom. The result is chaos and anarchy. Our housing system is currently structured by rules, restrictions and represents a reflection to the real world. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm living in an area experiencing a house crisis in real life. I know such problems are not instantly resolved, such is the reality we all live in, even in a game called Final Fantasy. It's important that we learn to share this world. It's an underlying theme of Final Fantasy.

Though again I want to state I know you like it, and I'm sure at this point you know I'm near loathing the system lol, and for that I don't want to see the current system destroyed but only significantly added onto. Though for me on a personal level if it was Dalamud'd right into the ground I'd shed no personal tear- in fact I might internally cheer, but on a commiserating level, on a level of "I suppose I'm not the only one playing this game", out of respecting and believing your joy is valid- I'd not want it ruined like that.

I've seen your suggestions, but personally I think are a little too extreme. Expand apartments, give them gardens and workshops and suddenly the need for pocket dimension houses goes away. The apartments already do so much to give everyone personal space the ability to express their creative freedoms in this game, it's important we don't let the hyperbole let us forget that. After apartments get expanded, it'll just be players complaining they can't every little thing they want or that the item limits are too low.