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

[Theodric]

A large part of the issue is the development team's unwillingness to punish poor behaviour. On one hand, we're told that the current system is designed to encourage a 'neighbourhood feel' but on the other, entire wards are taken up by one or two players due to them playing the system in a way that very likely was not intended.

As mentioned earlier, I already have a house myself so this is by no means a case of me being 'jealous'. I do wonder if the development team are unaware of such problems, though.

[Maero]

I'm all for instanced housing, but what would those who have a home now receive? Would I get (at least some) of my gil back and what about the furnishings/outdoor decor? If we could be reassured we'd at least get exact copies of our homes as they currently sit I'd be fine with it.

No, that is why i always propose they have a instanced and non instanced mix. Those with a house currently would keep it but those that want housing would have a choice. Perhaps an area designated for instanced housing in the wards?
The technology is there with apartments and the like, SE are just so damn stubborn on this matter

[Nix]

You’re making the assumption that none of those features should be limited. Also, exactly how penalizing is it not to have them? And for whom? Fc owners? Members? How hard are the workarounds?

The players who absolutely need housing are few and far between and I guarantee you they found a way to get a house. For everyone else it’s a comfort feature.

Gardening, FC workshops etc, should NOT be limited as they give people advantages to making gil, or acquiring certain rare items. I believe that if people put in the work for something, then they should be rewarded. The workarounds for these two systems in particular would be ridiculous - gain access to a friend's garden and hope that they aren't using it, or drop your FC and join one with a house and HOPE that they let you garden (because some officers like to keep access to gardens to themselves) - neither of these options are good.
If people keep wanting to claim that housing is optional content then they really need to separate these two systems from housing so that housing really is just fluff.

As another poster has said, housing can be a nightmare - on Hyperion, not counting this current couple of weeks while there's a moratorium in effect, but it's virtually impossible for both players and FCs to purchase homes. One home comes up maybe every 2-3 days, which is then heavily camped by legitimate campers, bots, and macro users for the entire duration of the timer. It's not a case of hard work that will win the battle here, just obscene amounts of luck. I did a scout 2 days back and the only houses that could be purchased by players (not FCs) were in the Goblet - 2 smalls with about 5 campers each. All other wards were full to the brim.

In other posts of mine, especially on the housing forums, I have explained that I have a home of my own and one for my FC - hard work was not involved in obtaining either, it was nothing but sheer luck. So I'm here fighting for a better system not as someone who finds it impossible to get a home, but as someone who knows how thoroughly broken the system is. I'm so sick of the "screw you, I got mine" attitude that is so pervasive on these forums.

[EaMett]

On bigger servers it is probably quite impossible to get a house simply by the amount of players on it and the small amount of houses in turn. Time is also not something which counts here. You can barely spent any time looking for a house and just get lucky while the one that looked for it for a long time will lose out. And if new wards are coming you can take a break from work or be home without ever having spent time into getting one and get the nicest one while the other person will be locked out thanks to a server issue.

My server is pretty big, I've been playing for 4 years now and housing has always been full. Everyone I know that wanted a house have managed to get housing in those 4 years. I've seen them not only get one but MULTIPLE either because they moved away then back or because they also needed one for their FC. I've seen them move from small to mediums, from mediums to mansions etc. It isn't easy but it's not nearly as impossible as people like to make it sound. The name of the game for housing is to play it smart not fast. Took me a little while to get one, took said friends less time but they spent more time at it, some even getting one really fast.
Keep track of when SE turns the demolition timers on and off, free up time for when houses might come around, be it expansions or timer turn ons.
When new wards are added: Practice running to the wards, place postit elements on your screen so you can spam click the right teleport, or menu item before it even shows. Level classes with speed/teleport/movement enhancements to go faster, practice with those before the servers go down to make sure you're as fast as you can be and are using your cooldowns and class switches appropriately when they come back up. How many people complain that everything is gone within minutes but never even gave these things a second thought. Of course they're going to lose out.
When the patch hits stay up to download it, get in front of the logging screen 15mn at least before launch, use various tricks to make sure you loggin as fast as possible. Play the logging queue lottery when servers come back up, if you get unlucky and get DCed you might miss out and will have to try again next time, it happens and there are other ways of getting what you want you just lost out on one.

Spend your free time camping available plots. Always go for the least desirable one (so many people complain their prime location was relocated to after they spent hours camping.... You're asking for it). It's a long grind and like any pvp situation you'll often lose out to those who spend more time. You have a job and a life and can't afford to spend crazy amounts of time on this? Then you'll have to pray you get lucky on a house placard spamming (which btw needs to change). That's also why the "lucky" part of your comment is a good thing and not a bad thing. People spending a lot of time at it will eventually get a house even if they lose out to lucky players a few times. People who don't have that much time can still try and get lucky and have a chance at it. If SE changed it for something that rewarded time spent then anyone with half a life would be locked out of the feature completely.

Everyone I know who's been diligent and has pushed themselves to guaranty success have managed to at least get a medium, some have even gotten multiple houses. Short of the placard spamming which is a ridiculous mechanic atm none have had complaints about the system. It's just what it is and they worked around it.

Can the ratio of mansions to small be adjusted? Probably. Can the placard clicking mechanic be improved? Definitely, that's hot garbage. Is housing broken and needs a revamp? No, it's just pvp.

Gardening, FC workshops etc, should NOT be limited as they give people advantages to making gil, or acquiring certain rare items. I believe that if people put in the work for something, then they should be rewarded.

I mean, if you don't spend time leveling your crafters you lose out on making gil like that, if you don't spent time practicing ultimates you get locked out of rare items, if you don't spend time farming diadem/eureka/etc you don't get rare items or gil making opportunities. The entire game is Time to Reward based, you don't spend time getting a house you don't get the rewards. The only difference is that FF14 is almost completely a PVE game so people have a hard time wrapping their head around the fact the Housing is PVP. In PVP you don't get rewarded for spending time on something, you get rewarded for spending more time than others on something (whether it be to improve skill or sum up more points). If anything like I said above, it's good that there's some random component to housing since it doesn't automatically lock out people with less time.

The workarounds for these two systems in particular would be ridiculous - gain access to a friend's garden and hope that they aren't using it, or drop your FC and join one with a house and HOPE that they let you garden (because some officers like to keep access to gardens to themselves) - neither of these options are good.
If people keep wanting to claim that housing is optional content then they really need to separate these two systems from housing so that housing really is just fluff.

Giving someone your components and asking them to do something for you shouldn't be that difficult. Besides it's hardly like people require these features, walk around any ward and tell me how many plots have a garden and how many are growing stuff in theirs. For shits and giggles I ran around mine, 30 plots, 11 with gardens, 2 actually growing stuff.
Like I said, if you need these features often enough that bugging a friend to do it for you is an inconvenience then you likely worked your way to already owning a house. For everyone else it's fluff.

As another poster has said, housing can be a nightmare - on Hyperion, not counting this current couple of weeks while there's a moratorium in effect, but it's virtually impossible for both players and FCs to purchase homes. One home comes up maybe every 2-3 days, which is then heavily camped by legitimate campers, bots, and macro users for the entire duration of the timer. It's not a case of hard work that will win the battle here, just obscene amounts of luck. I did a scout 2 days back and the only houses that could be purchased by players (not FCs) were in the Goblet - 2 smalls with about 5 campers each. All other wards were full to the brim.

See my reply to the previous poster. On Faerie things are the same and there are ample opportunities for people with the available time to pursue it.

In other posts of mine, especially on the housing forums, I have explained that I have a home of my own and one for my FC - hard work was not involved in obtaining either, it was nothing but sheer luck. So I'm here fighting for a better system not as someone who finds it impossible to get a home, but as someone who knows how thoroughly broken the system is. I'm so sick of the "screw you, I got mine" attitude that is so pervasive on these forums.

It's not a screw you I got mine attitude. It's a matter of some people thinking the process of getting a house is difficult (we can all agree on that) but not that bad (ignoring the placard spamming bs), and others thinking it's not good enough.
The devs have clearly stated they're on the "not so bad" side of things, and clearly as you've mentioned, people on these forums seem to also follow that trend.

Even though I think they could fix the stupid placard spamming and things would be good, I'm not opposed to threads asking for more access to the features. But, I definitely don't think asking for instanced housing or a total revamp for the umpteenth time is either productive or even a good idea.

[EaMett]

Also while I'm at it, so that I may also contribute a little bit to the topic. Here's my idea of placard spamming fixes:

The way it currently works is that the plot could unlock any second so you need to repeatedly spam the placard, some(most)times for hours on end.
Cons of the system : Just horrible, ew. Macros, bots, etc...
Pros: people who spend the most time at it get more opportunities and are more likely to succeed, people with less time can still get lucky even if it's less likely. It evens out the playing field

Suggestion #1:
Make the plots unlock every, say, 20mn on the dot. So 00, 20, &40 past. That way people need to be present but don't have to click like crazy outside of the minute or so around these times. We preserve the pros of the system while removing a few cons.

Suggestion #2:
Make the unlock every 5mn on the dot. So 00,05,10,15,20,etc.. But allow players to roll dice for each unlock. So basically you only need to click and roll once every 5mn if the plot unlocks and you're the highest roll it goes to you if not rince and repeat every 5mn. This way you can probably roll on a few plots at a time if multiple are available and just cycle between them. People with a lot of time have higher odds but others can still get lucky.

Both these systems retain the pvp nature while allowing for the least time fortunate to still have a go at it. It also retains the reward nature of owning a house.

[Nix]

Sorry, I'm at work so I'll try to reply to the best of my abilities - as a note though, I'm not attacking you, so if my following post comes off dry at all, please forgive me. I'm actually enjoying the discussion; it's nice to see things from different viewpoints.

I mean, if you don't spend time leveling your crafters you lose out on making gil like that, if you don't spent time practicing ultimates you get locked out of rare items, if you don't spend time farming diadem/eureka/etc you don't get rare items or gil making opportunities. The entire game is Time to Reward based, you don't spend time getting a house you don't get the rewards. The only difference is that FF14 is almost completely a PVE game so people have a hard time wrapping their head around the fact the Housing is PVP. In PVP you don't get rewarded for spending time on something, you get rewarded for spending more time than others on something (whether it be to improve skill or sum up more points). If anything like I said above, it's good that there's some random component to housing since it doesn't automatically lock out people with less time.

If you don't spend time levelling crafters, sure, you're going to miss out on making gil from them - the thing with housing/gardening is that even if you want to do these things, without access to a house, you are unable to do so. Same with the other content - if you don't spend time practicing how to do those things, then there's no way that you're going to be able to complete them. Housing is different.
You keep saying that "Housing is PVP", and this would be fair IF housing were just housing, except it's not. It's a pre-requisite to other content, such as gardening and FC workshops.
Terrible analogy that I saw in another post, but it's almost like having a raid with limited spots, and only a certain amount of people can join it per week. But by doing this raid, it opens up more content that you could profit from. Would people still be like "It's just PVP!" when they don't get a spot in the raid?
PVP is not a prerequisite to enjoy other content - you get your fair shot to take part, and if you don't win, you don't get the trophy/title/mount.

Giving someone your components and asking them to do something for you shouldn't be that difficult. Besides it's hardly like people require these features, walk around any ward and tell me how many plots have a garden and how many are growing stuff in theirs. For shits and giggles I ran around mine, 30 plots, 11 with gardens, 2 actually growing stuff.
Like I said, if you need these features often enough that bugging a friend to do it for you is an inconvenience then you likely worked your way to already owning a house. For everyone else it's fluff.

You shouldn't have to ask others, you shouldn't have to FC jump, or beg, and plead. There's a lot of risk involved in handing over what is essentially millions of gil worth of items and praying that they don't screw you out of it / claim the project upon its completion. I've been playing MMOs for -years- and I've seen it time and time again, "friends" screwing eachother over for pixels. This amount of risk shouldn't be mandatory for people wanting to enjoy the game.

It's not a screw you I got mine attitude. It's a matter of some people thinking the process of getting a house is difficult (we can all agree on that) but not that bad (ignoring the placard spamming bs), and others thinking it's not good enough.
The devs have clearly stated they're on the "not so bad" side of things, and clearly as you've mentioned, people on these forums seem to also follow that trend.

Even though I think they could fix the stupid placard spamming and things would be good, I'm not opposed to threads asking for more access to the features. But, I definitely don't think asking for instanced housing or a total revamp for the umpteenth time is either productive or even a good idea.

I can't say what side the devs are on because they're remained pretty quiet on the whole thing, despite the uproar from many players. Sure, they've snuck out extra wards here and there, but I feel like *hopefully* it's tiding us over until something better comes on the horizon. Getting houses boils down to 2 things: Do you have enough gil? and Are you lucky enough? Atleast with PVP there's some skill involved, but a system that relies on luck and if your placard-spamming bot is fast enough is broken as hell.
You, me, and your friends may have been lucky enough to get houses, but there are countless others that just aren't. Anyone with a real life can't realistically sit at placards spamming for 20+ hours in the hopes that they beat a bot.

As for the "screw you I got mine" attitude, sorry if I wasn't more specific, I'm not accusing you of having this attitude, but it's definitely prevalent on the housing subforums, and that's why I'm so vocal on the matter. Those people would be the first to complain that they couldn't get a house if they didn't have one, but as soon as they've got what they want, suddenly everything is "Working as intended", "people just need to work harder", "Stop being lazy", "You're not MEANT to own this" etc. and it drives me crazy.

If a house were just a house and nothing more, I'd probably feel differently on the whole matter, but it's not. If the housing system is kept as it is, I would be happy to see gardening and FC workshops also handled elsewhere via NPCs so that people can still go all battle-royale for the house, but aren't locked out of other content.

Gotta jet for a bit, but I'll keep checking in and stuff. Thanks for reading!

Edit:

Also while I'm at it, so that I may also contribute a little bit to the topic. Here's my idea of placard spamming fixes:

The way it currently works is that the plot could unlock any second so you need to repeatedly spam the placard, some(most)times for hours on end.
Cons of the system : Just horrible, ew. Macros, bots, etc...
Pros: people who spend the most time at it get more opportunities and are more likely to succeed, people with less time can still get lucky even if it's less likely. It evens out the playing field

Suggestion #1:
Make the plots unlock every, say, 20mn on the dot. So 00, 20, &40 past. That way people need to be present but don't have to click like crazy outside of the minute or so around these times. We preserve the pros of the system while removing a few cons.

Suggestion #2:
Make the unlock every 5mn on the dot. So 00,05,10,15,20,etc.. But allow players to roll dice for each unlock. So basically you only need to click and roll once every 5mn if the plot unlocks and you're the highest roll it goes to you if not rince and repeat every 5mn. This way you can probably roll on a few plots at a time if multiple are available and just cycle between them. People with a lot of time have higher odds but others can still get lucky.

Both these systems retain the pvp nature while allowing for the least time fortunate to still have a go at it. It also retains the reward nature of owning a house.

Having un-randomized systems will only encourage botting - I do like your second suggestion with the dice rolls though since they are handled server-side. This would keep the pvp nature of housing but make it a bit fairer.

[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.