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

[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.

[Alleo]

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.

Can we really take a few examples out of thousands of players playing on the server to show that its fine? Maybe you just know the very few people that really got lucky (and if you already own a house it is a bit easier to get another because you dont need to wait for any timer and now you can move when they release new wards). I am 100% sure that for every person you know that got their houses, there is another person that wants it for years but never gets one no matter how hard they tried.

And as long as there are less houses than people/FC it will remain something nearly impossible for most.

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.

They are not the same because the amount of raid instances and maps are not limited. So if you have the fee to pay (with houses it would be gil with other content it would be the people necessary to do it) you can always try it. The example of it being truly locked like housing would be that only the first 100 people can use the raid and after that its locked up for x amount of time until SE decides that another few people can try it. This is not the case. As long as you have the "fee" you can try it. With housing it does not matter if you have the Gil.

I can't even quote and respond to your post because you've continued to add and subtract from your original post almost 15 times over the last hour and a half. I had to wait until you were finally done making up your mind with what you wanted to say.

https://i.imgur.com/RfpomQg.png
Your edit timestamp marathon


You even called me a stalker and removed it right away then became the victim to save face.

So you went out of your way to search for her plot ingame, went there and posted about this on this very forum, then she turns around and points out that this was only recently bought and that she worked a lot the last few days thus had no time to decorate and then invited you to visit another house of her where she had time to decorate but instead of visiting that you keep on attacking her personally?

What does her editing her post a few times have to do with the topic? What does her having not instantly decorating her newly bought house have to do with the topic? A good discussion should be about the post and not the person itself, yet you seemingly only posted the last two posts to attack her, why? What does this prove?

I too have gotten a large this patch and since I wanted to decorate it completely new the inside of it is also still blank while the garden was half done with older items. I have spent the other days first gathering everything I need for a new house wall which I then need to craft in the workshop and have pages over pages of items to gather (myself) to then craft the new furniture. Yet if I have to believe you, because my house is still blank after a couple of days after the patch I dont care about housing and all my arguments are not true...

[Nix]

I can't even quote and respond to your post because you've continued to add and subtract from your original post almost 15 times over the last hour and a half. I had to wait until you were finally done making up your mind with what you wanted to say.

https://i.imgur.com/RfpomQg.png
Your edit timestamp marathon


You even called me a stalker and removed it right away then became the victim to save face.



It is really sad that you have to contort this much in a single post just to keep your 'right to advocate' for housing. Even going as far to quickly throw down some empty garden patches and then behaving this way to maintain your forum image (albeit using an ALT yourself).

I saw you posting about housing and trying to add to the ongoing discussion to over 10+ threads in the last 72 hours and so I wanted to see what kind of housing the person advocating so hard did. Needless to say, I was disappointed when I found out you were just another person who liked to speak out about housing from a safe distance but not actually lead by example.

Maybe instead of lying and trying to be a false advocate on the forum, you should probably practice what you preach first instead of giving people false hopes and misleading insight from a falsified position just to satisfy your ego.

Good morning! Usually my posts are rather hurriedly mashed together while I'm at work, so I do tend to edit out typos. Sometimes if I feel like I haven't adequately explained a topic, I'll rephrase things for the sake of clarity because I want my point to be understood,
I also make a point to not personally attack people if it can be helped, but your post did kinda rub me the wrong way - I did feel like that by calling you a stalker, I was attacking you and so removed it because I thought that my knee-jerk reaction wasn't justified.

But... you're proving me wrong.
I'm so glad that my stance on the housing system has put me in your crosshairs, and that you have nothing to add to the topic, but to try to paint me as some kind of terrible person is just laughable. Apparently, if your house isn't instantly furnished, this = bad, but whatever. But I guess it's nice being able to flame and hide stalkerish-tendencies from behind an alt account. My ego isn't inflated, if anything your behavior is kinda worrisome, but if pushing for a fairer housing system for all means that my ego is inflated then I guess it must be? Who knows.

Also, the last 2 edits were to add the decorating progress picture - 1 time the picture link didn't work, second time it did though

[Nix]

So you went out of your way to search for her plot ingame, went there and posted about this on this very forum, then she turns around and points out that this was only recently bought and that she worked a lot the last few days thus had no time to decorate and then invited you to visit another house of her where she had time to decorate but instead of visiting that you keep on attacking her personally?

What does her editing her post a few times have to do with the topic? What does her having not instantly decorating her newly bought house have to do with the topic? A good discussion should be about the post and not the person itself, yet you seemingly only posted the last two posts to attack her, why? What does this prove?

I too have gotten a large this patch and since I wanted to decorate it completely new the inside of it is also still blank while the garden was half done with older items. I have spent the other days first gathering everything I need for a new house wall which I then need to craft in the workshop and have pages over pages of items to gather (myself) to then craft the new furniture. Yet if I have to believe you, because my house is still blank after a couple of days after the patch I dont care about housing and all my arguments are not true...

I'm not sure if I should be flattered or scared by their actions lol.
As for them visiting my other place, I even unlocked it for them but I don't think that they will swing by because then I won't fit their bad-person-empty-house-hoarder narrative.
If they'd only just post from their main account, then I won't have to wait until tomorrow for their rebuttal

[Shougun]

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.

Hahaha, have you seen the parody of the "This is (REALLY) EVE" video? I feel like that's just perfect to represent EVE and part of why I like hearing about it as a sort of like "omg wow look at all that lol", but terrifies me to go play. Not just the culture but how the game functions as well, which I think the function of the game, unintentionally, helped make some of that culture.

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.

While I'll still disagree that the costs are worth it, that we could do so much more if we were released from the structure - I'll say I understand what you're trying to point out. That a community is important and a system that behaves more solitary can dissolve some of those concepts. I'd also say there are ways to lessen the difficulty of those naturally solitary boundaries (instanced spaces) by implementing community driven system and just better linking systems.

So I guess I hear your fear, and I wouldn't say it's an invalid fear- but the costs of wards is great (imo) and the challenges of sociability of an instanced system are not "un-addressable". In the sense that it's not like nothing can be done to encourage social atmosphere and have them be instanced spaces at the same time. I mean just a silly example but mobile games have you go visit other player's instanced worlds because it rewards yourself, can't tell you how many random places I visited back when mobile games were first starting up and the cash shops weren't so predatory. Obviously not the most social concept to give people a weekly log but doing that in conjunction with a calendar of housing events players can set up, with a catalog of public houses (big searchable filterable housing list), weekly competitions, rewards for visiting other player's houses and interacting (like players could buy FATEs from an NPC to set up on great intervals, set up mini-games, etc- some of these ideas I'm mentioning are shown in Wildstar). All these things, and more, could be done to keep social qualities (or at least greatly lessen the cost of an instanced space) while still giving players the power of a instanced personal space (although noting again at this point I do not suggest SE to kill the wards and I would like any feature created not to punish ward users). Perhaps its the culture of each game but I can say in Wildstar the housing communities were more social than FFXIV's and yet that game was just instanced spaces (sometimes things can't translate 1:1, so I can't say it's guaranteed unfortunately lol but I can say instanced housing can absolutely be a social experience).

And I don't think I need to say it but just to be clear I understand you might feel the opposite where the cost of social is too much for the freedom or that systems added wouldn't be good enough to make it worth it.

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.

I mean we're very vaguely heading the same way. I only don't reference apartments because I don't want to give SE the idea that's the end goal. If they use that system to start to produce the end goal it doesn't bother me how they get there, just that they do. I believe apartments can be a key step in going the "right direction" (opinion obviously lol), but I don't want to mention them as they might go from shooting for the moon to shooting for the barn door and I don't want to see that happen.

Same direction in the sense that I believe if they removed the quantity on apartments and added a wealth of upgrades to both specifically apartments and the system at large (such that demand is always met, though I'm personally fine with demand being considered met by account like if you were given one place that was account bound and worked for all your alts- any other houses would be purely extra and by the whim of the system's availability). I think like FFXI it should give a very basic room room part of the MSQ (perhaps even less features, but give them power back via upgrades so they may be able to upgrade their item limit and to new features). From there a large list of upgrades appear in steps, perhaps gated by story (this can help SE a lot both in helping give players progression but also to stagger the stress on the servers when released (a bit) and to lower the amount of excessive data being held for players who probably wont keep playing the game), because the upgrades are pieced together and in steps they become affordable and easier to progress rather than all at once, such that apartments go from one room to two, from no balcony to having one, to a cottage in the wilderness that behaves just like a ward space but for yourself (gaining gardening and outdoors, exit of cottage can still be the wards area), to finally after the ShB conclusion gaining your own pocket space where the upgrade-ability goes even further (being able to change your land, sky, and background music via magic).

So where you start I just keep going from there. And of course not forgetting to give ward users those powers (as I reference Howel's Moving Castle door since it's just such a classy gif for me to link lol), without destroying wards. I suppose that is extreme in the sense of where we started to where I hope we go, but I feel it's less extreme in the sense that it's not like I'm asking for something that's never been done before - we know it's been done as we've seen it (and that system has won awards for it's housing).

Just because others have done it doesn't mean it would be easy for SE to do of course. Also +1 as I feel we've reached a nice cross roads where we can look down each other's road, be like "I'm not crazy about that road", and still be okay with each other lol.

[Nepentha]

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.

Did you just... actually go to Nyx's house, then post about it on an alt? (Also blacking out the name of your alt on that server is hilarious. Clearly it's a low level character you can just delete.)

If you don't have the courage of your convictions to post on your main, I don't think anyone is going to take you seriously.

[GomJabbar]

Unpopular opinion here, but I honestly think the housing system is fine the way it is. I enjoy the ward feature, and am personally glad that they decided to stick with it instead of instanced housing like every other MMO seems to have done. I also think housing should be somewhat exclusive, which is where most people seem to disagree... The only thing I'd actually change, if given the chance, would be to shorten the random timer when buying a plot without relocating.

[Jybril]

I can't even quote and respond to your post because you've continued to add and subtract from your original post almost 15 times over the last hour and a half. I had to wait until you were finally done making up your mind with what you wanted to say.

https://i.imgur.com/RfpomQg.png
Your edit timestamp marathon


You even called me a stalker and removed it right away then became the victim to save face.



It is really sad that you have to contort this much in a single post just to keep your 'right to advocate' for housing. Even going as far to quickly throw down some empty garden patches and then behaving this way to maintain your forum image (albeit using an ALT yourself).

I saw you posting about housing and trying to add to the ongoing discussion to over 10+ threads in the last 72 hours and so I wanted to see what kind of housing the person advocating so hard did. Needless to say, I was disappointed when I found out you were just another person who liked to speak out about housing from a safe distance but not actually lead by example.

Maybe instead of lying and trying to be a false advocate on the forum, you should probably practice what you preach first instead of giving people false hopes and misleading insight from a falsified position just to satisfy your ego.

LMAO this guy has some real issues! Nix get off the high horse and take the L bud.

What in tarnation is going on here?
Why are you attacking her for? If you didn't go out your way and alt in her house
just to post it here, it wouldn't look so petty.

Both of you never even posted her before up until now lmao.
One is taking jab after jab when she explained herself and
the other is backing one up, instigating and telling OP to get good over what?

What's there to get good on? The housing system has been a mess since
it was introduced. I guess gitgud about getting up in the wee hours in the morning
to catch a house in time. Lol, okay guy.

[EaMett]

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.

I think this is the going to be the major point of disagreement between us because I think that gating features behind pvp type content is ok. Whether it be housing or any of the gardening/etc. Even your raid example is something the likes of which exists in other games. It just stands out as an outlier in a game like ff14 that is almost integrally PVE even though it's been a perfectly acceptable game design in the past/present.
I'm going to assume some think it's an ok design and others like yourself think something better could be done.

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.

There's value in considering the risk of some forced exchanges like this. There are workarounds but it's true that none are really safe, I'll give you that. My point was that it's ok even if people were completely locked out of the features (as stated above) but there were still options in FF14 unlike how it could be in other games with similar design.

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.

The devs were pretty vocal in the past about making housing hard to get and exclusive. They wanted players to get a sense of achievement when owning a house (paraphrasing). Them consistently adding housing to equal ~30% of server population has been an indicator that they've been sticking to their guns.
PVP isn't always about skill, it can be a measure of time spent as well. I think the Ishgard restoration will be another example of this type of PVP (with the rankings). In that sense housing is very much PVP content with a touch of luck added in for good measure.
And like any PVP time based mechanic, people with half a life will lose out to those who've got no life. This is a fact that's almost as old as gaming itself. At least the "luck" factor with housing doesn't completely lock these people out.

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.
.

That's fair, I'd try and give people the benefit of the doubt though.

[Nix]

Stuff!

Hihi Ea, you bring up some nice points too - it's nice to see things from your point of view.

You mention that PvP isn't a measure of skill, but time spent as well - this I would agree with, but it seems like the housing system doesn't really reward time spent. Say if players were to complete 100hrs of placard spamming, then they would be guaranteed to get a house at the end, that'd be a bit more fair than the system we have now. As it stands though, one player can spend 20 minutes and get lucky, where another player may spend 200 non-consecutive hours and still be out of luck, and this is where I'm a little sad about the system, even though I am one of the lucky ones.

In this system, hard work isn't rewarded, and there's a chance that time spent won't be either.
It feels like it hinges on luck way more than skill/time, but if it were the reverse, maybe I'd feel better? Who knows haha.

As for exclusivity - I believe that if they wanted to keep it exclusive, then they would have kept the original prices. It's not hard to make gil in game; I can make a few mil a week doing nothing but sit by my retainer bell and run ventures while I'm at work. Making housing ridiculously affordable (even larges!) have only added to the influx of people wanting to own homes.
I feel like they wanted to make housing accessible, but then greatly underestimated the amount of players that wanted to utilize it, but are now far too invested in the current system to really do much about it anytime soon.

I could be absolutely wrong on this though, and that's cool too.

Have an awesome weekend!