Getting a New House Feels Impossible

[AnimaAnimus]

The lengths people go to so they can act like only what they want is correct or matters. But that's not surprising at all. The world is filled with self-centered people not willing to look beyond their own personal self-interest.

Housing has changed over time, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, whether those are changes that you approve of or not, whether they are changes dramatic enough to please you or not. To say the dev team doesn't care has been demonstrated to be untrue many times over.

You don't know they aren't doing anything. All you know is you aren't getting what you want right now and so you're going to resort to mudslinging in a temper tantrum.

If you genuinely believe this dev team still doesn't care 7 years later, what are you even doing here? By continuing to pay a sub, you're saying you support them and their work. Strange thing to be doing if you think they don't care.

Legitimate criticism is not a temper tantrum. But accusing ppl of just having a tantrum or being self centered by giving actual criticism is a default to a conversation by someone who does not have a strong argument to begin with.

So tell me what they have done to improve the situation outside of adding a few more wards and a timer that actually made it more difficult to get a house? Apartments? That's at best a quick fix since we already had them in the form of FC rooms. Actual apartments of a decent size and more functionality would have been a better solution than just moving the same broken thing to a new location and calling it a new system.

There could have been plenty of things they could have done, we have been clamoring at the gate for the option to have instanced housing since day 1, which could possibly solve a lot of issues, but they literally said no they are steadfast at communities without explanation beyond "we don't want to". If it was technical, that is more understandable, but that's not the explanation we got.

It's not that I am whining, I am just not making excuses. Like I said, they have had 7 years to improve the system and its still tragically broken. But if you really want, let's have a conversation about this instead of trying to end it with such childish tactics.

[Jojoya]

Legitimate criticism is not a temper tantrum.

"The devs don't care" is not legitimate criticism. That's a child throwing a temper tantrum because they aren't happy with the toy mommy and daddy gave them. "You don't love me, you don't care or you'd give me what I want instead of what you gave me."

The devs do care. Their vision for housing may not be your vision for housing so their solutions may not be to your liking but they do care.

Adding wards was a solution that worked decently if not well on most worlds up until mid Stormblood. Go back to the Housing Census thread and revisit the posts from 2018. You had a couple of NA and EU worlds, primarily Balmung, complaining about a lack of houses but most worlds had at least a small amount if not a large amount available on a regular basis.

Even when I did a full world census last fall before wards 19-21 were added, it was only NA that was facing a severe shortage. Some EU worlds and most JP worlds had houses available.

The ward system has failed primarily because the player base has exploded in size the last 15 months and exceeded SE's ability to keep up with increasing demand for housies. As simple as adding more wards may be compared to completely overhauling the housing system, it's still something that requires advance planning.

As for other changes to show they care beyond simply adding more wards? Here's a few samples:

3.1 - Private owners can add tenants as players had requested. Demolition was added so house owned by players who had stopped playing could be purchased by active players as players had requested.

3.4 - Apartments added to create more options for personal housing.


4.0 - Interior item limits doubled.

4.1 - an entire new housing district added. Relocation added in response to player request to make it easier to change where their house was located. Storage added to relieve the burden of excess furnishings taking up inventory space.

4.2 - purchase timer added to combat house flipping at player request (yes, players were the ones who suggested the timer as a solution)

4.5 - interactive furnishing limit was removed.

That's not a comprehensive list of all the housing related changes made over the past 7 years. There are other things they've done.

People who don't care don't put this much work into something. When you don't care about something, you ignore it.

If you believe that this is not the path housing should have taken in this game, that's fine. I think they would have been better off with a fully instanced system myself.

But the housing we have is their vision for what they want housing to be. Just because they won't abandon it outright and wave a magic wand to instantly give you the housing you envision doesn't mean they don't care.

[Gula]

"The devs don't care" is not legitimate criticism. That's a child throwing a temper tantrum because they aren't happy with the toy mommy and daddy gave them. "You don't love me, you don't care or you'd give me what I want instead of what you gave me." -biggest snip-

/clap

This is it.

I wholly understand what it is like to have something added that is not what you want. But they are looking at the playerbase as a whole. Square Enix is a business and Yoshida's job is to keep that company going. He has acknowledged how amazing housing can be and would love to play more with players. But he can't, and when he is able to, there are additions that work as a compromise between the players, and the company.

One cannot come before the other, and yes it would make a lot of players happy to have instanced housing and 500/500 slots regardless of housing size, that would set back features and future plans even further and they can't pull another Bahamut to put the game on pause and rebuild again out of the blue.

[Madbunny]

There could have been plenty of things they could have done, we have been clamoring at the gate for the option to have instanced housing since day 1, which could possibly solve a lot of issues, but they literally said no they are steadfast at communities without explanation beyond "we don't want to". If it was technical, that is more understandable, but that's not the explanation we got.

In the past was many voices asking for instanced housing but frankly i'm opposed to that because instanced translate to absolute solitude. Even now some wards feels empty, with instanced housing would be even worst. How would you navigate trough instanced housing? Some servers would have dozens (or even more) pages of house listing and to find/navigate/visit would be a time consuming nightmare. Last but not least, what would be the purpose of decorating the yard if no one would ever see that. We are talking about huge currency sink feature that become obsolete over night.

Once i played a game with instanced housing and it failed miserably and frankly i dont want same crap here in FFXIV.
Maybe there is no solution for housing when it comes to satisfy huge amount of players without implementing solutions what would make things even worst (or break the game). Maybe housing is just one of many things that is limited in number. Anyone who ever played any decent MMO pretty fast came to conclusion that some items cant be obtained, doesnt matter if we speak about items from old events, one time events, insanely hard to obtain... and the list just goes on.
But one thing i'm 100% sure - if you make instanced housing you removed the reason to have a yard or to decorate a house. Not to mention all people whining will be several times greater as the solution would be even greater problem.