Getting a New House Feels Impossible

[Drkdays]

People have jobs, school, and other responsibilities. I've wasted about 6 hours clicking on housing placards so far, and I'm not going to waste any more of my time doing it. The current lot buying system is repetitive, inane, and requires zero skill or thought from the player... its literally 0,0,0,4,0 over and over and over in a battle against an invisible timer. Its a system literally designed to be automated. Asking people to pointlessly click against a hidden timer is disrespectful of players time, don't forget someone can come in at any moment and relocate making all your past hours of clicking pointless. Everyone should be MACROing this pile of shit lot buying system until its changed.

Honestly, as someone who thinks SE has done a very good job with FF14 overall the housing system is a huge let-down. I like the idea of finding or crafting furniture and decorating a place over time. I'd like to try the gardening system as well. I know neither of these systems is particularly important to the game itself, but every time my retainers bring me back furniture or I find seeds it just annoys me that this part of the game is locked away from me behind a TERRIBLY designed system. A system that's been terribly designed for years... There is no excuse for the way housing works in the game at the moment.

Well said, minus the swearing. It's hard to hate those that macro or even bot. It gives a clearly unfair advantage, but using tools to save yourself from mental fatigue cannot truly be faulted. After all, what's the difference between using a macro and having your nimble-fingered younger brother speed clicking for you for a while in exchange for some McDonald's next time you go out except that one is free and the other costs you $7 for a happy meal. When someone tells you to stare at a wall for 12 hours after which your odds of being paid are actually really small, is it wrong to do something to make it less unpleasant? Against ToS sure, but against common sense? That's arguable. Personally, I can't endorse it, but it's easy to see the appeal.

[Gallus]

I don't even know why SE came up with the whole random timer idea xD. Wasn't it to prevent people from abusing the housing market? I mean, houses are still being sold every day with the random timer anyway (both via FC trading and house Relo), so I'm not too sure what this whole "new" system has accomplished other than giving carpal tunnel to a few tormented souls lmao.

[Kenky]

I don't even know why SE came up with the whole random timer idea xD. Wasn't it to prevent people from abusing the housing market?

To try and make it hard for bots to obtain them, though it has sadly not done much to stop it.

If people knew when the timer was going to be up, then people would get there like a minute before it's up and spam the placard, rather than it be a random ballpark number. While I personally believe the intent was to try and stop bots from camping the plots all the time, it's gone the reverse way and is now kind of forcing (Not really, personal choice and all that!) players to camp the placard all the time.

And if someone relocates to the plot, just to be a prick? (They do exist, unsurprisingly.) Well, then you're SoL.

[Draven2]

To try and make it hard for bots to obtain them, though it has sadly not done much to stop it.

If people knew when the timer was going to be up, then people would get there like a minute before it's up and spam the placard, rather than it be a random ballpark number. While I personally believe the intent was to try and stop bots from camping the plots all the time, it's gone the reverse way and is now kind of forcing (Not really, personal choice and all that!) players to camp the placard all the time.

And if someone relocates to the plot, just to be a prick? (They do exist, unsurprisingly.) Well, then you're SoL.

From what I've read the random timer was added to make it difficult for players to sell housing plots to each other. They were basically trying to eliminate the black market selling of housing lots.

Technically the timer does accomplish this but its one of the absolute worst ways possible to do it.

[Jojoya]

I don't even know why SE came up with the whole random timer idea xD. Wasn't it to prevent people from abusing the housing market? I mean, houses are still being sold every day with the random timer anyway (both via FC trading and house Relo), so I'm not too sure what this whole "new" system has accomplished other than giving carpal tunnel to a few tormented souls lmao.

The random timer was originally proposed by players as a solution to house flipping and SE decided it was worth implementing.

Even if it doesn't feel like it, you do have a better chance of being able to purchase a house directly from the game now than you did prior to the timer. Back in 4.0 or 4.1 (at least on the NA worlds though I doubt EU was any better), you either bought from a flipper or you camped the city state Aetherytes yourself hoping to see a plot become available then rushed to try to buy it before a flipper did.

The latter was no better than the placard spam that players now complain about. You had to sit there flipping through each ward and subdivision over and over hoping to see something suddenly appear. Then you had to rush to the plot to hope you got it before another buyer did.

At least now, there's a few hour window where players can see a plot has become available. They can make the decision on whether they want to spend their time trying to buy it, even if that means competing against the placard bots/scripts.

Direct flipping is now reduced even if it's not eliminated. Flippers still have to compete against the timer when buying a new plot and they're not always going to win. Whatever plots they do get need to be interesting enough that another player is willing to pay the inflated price for them (not to mention give up being in their current FC).

Relocation flipping is rare since the relocating player would have to pay twice - once to the flipper then a second time to the game. That means the flipped plot will need to be especially desirable to be worth the additional cost. It's far more likely to happen if someone is seeking a medium or large (and the flipper has a medium or large) but it's going to be rare overall.

A lot of the current flipping isn't even being done by those who make flipping a normal part of their game play. It's getting done by players who are about to transfer to a different world (or take an extended break from the game that would trigger auto-demo) and want to get back some of the gil they spent to purchase it. Otherwise they'd be keeping the house.

[Sshado]

As a developer, I would be ashamed to work for Square Enix knowing that my systems were toxic and causing people such incredible misery every day.

The invisible timer is hands down the worst game design I have ever seen in my life.

SE is full of some extremely messed up individuals if they think this is okay.

Seriously, you have no excuse at this point. It's just downright evil to sit idly by while your playerbase wastes their health in a toxic system you yourself created. As creators of the game you have a responsibility to stop this.

[Jojoya]

As a developer, I would be ashamed to work for Square Enix knowing that my systems were toxic and causing people such incredible misery every day.

The invisible timer is hands down the worst game design I have ever seen in my life.

SE is full of some extremely messed up individuals if they think this is okay.

Seriously, you have no excuse at this point. It's just downright evil to sit idly by while your playerbase wastes their health in a toxic system you yourself created. As creators of the game you have a responsibility to stop this.

You know what removing the purchase timer and reactivating demolition won't do?

They won't get you a house.

The problem is the supply compared to the demand. The player base has grown much faster in the past 2 years than SE could have anticipated. The distribution of that growth is uneven across worlds and data centers.

We know we've got an entire new housing district coming once Ishgard Restoration is completed. Even if it's no more than a standard set of wards like the existing housing districts, it's going to add an additional 1260 houses and 3780 apartments per world.

They are doing something about the housing situation, even if it's not fast enough to satisfy you. But that's MMORPG development in a nutshell, things can never be done fast enough for the players who feel entitled to instant gratification.

[KayRadley]

As a developer

I call cow dung.

[TwistedTea]

The problem is the supply compared to the demand. The player base has grown much faster in the past 2 years than SE could have anticipated. The distribution of that growth is uneven across worlds and data centers.

We know we've got an entire new housing district coming once Ishgard Restoration is completed. Even if it's no more than a standard set of wards like the existing housing districts, it's going to add an additional 1260 houses and 3780 apartments per world.

They are doing something about the housing situation, even if it's not fast enough to satisfy you. But that's MMORPG development in a nutshell, things can never be done fast enough for the players who feel entitled to instant gratification.

Being aware of the history of housing in FFXIV, I think the most of the fault still lies with SE for lacking foresight.

1. They could have chosen to go with fully instanced housing like many other major MMORPGS. Even on Balmung, I rarely see neighbors and usually, it's because an RP event is going on.

2. Adding new wards merely kicks the can down the road. Eventually, those wards will fill up as well.

3. Lowering the cost of housing while doubling down on the persistent ward system in the face of increasing player population. It's simple supply and demand. Yet SE fails to address this because the casual playerbase whines that making gil is hard, despite the game itself handing out gil like candy for just playing.

4. It could be that ward housing is not intended for every player and how SE incentivizes housing for transferring to low pop servers. In that case, SE needs to come out and say it.

5. Given the number of years that have passed since housing was implemented, I don't think it's entitlement or instant gratification, for one of the most infuriating systems in any major MMORPG that wastes hours of a player's life.

[Voidedge_Ragna]

Before we had the timer players sold plots of insane amounts, 50mil for a small wasnt unseen. When Shirogane was added players paid sums that were unholy, one L plot sold for 999mil.
Keep in mind theres players out there with capped money on multiple retainers.

So while we curse the timer, if not for this timer players would be complaining about the blackmarket.
SE took a horrible problem and turned it into a bad one, its better but its not "good"

If relocating would not bypass the timer and we had a rule against all those "dummy" Fc's who block up entire wards. We could make the first steps into the right direction.

I honestly believe by now SE has to take a hard stance and row back on its own rules, if your account has more then 1 house (private) it should be removed and they need to find a way to remove Dummy FC's.
We did not have this rule back in the day because housing was very expensive, but by now its so cheap that the demand and the supply are SO out of sync.

I can imagine how annoying it has to be for a new FC to not buy a house, while seeing an entire ward dedicated to 1 FC ... and well its 29 Dummy FC's. A Dummy FC's needs no house, its simply abusing a loop hole SE is not able to fix. There is a difference between a low members fc and a Dummy FC, noone wants to take the house of a active 4 man FC.

But if 1 Account has 7 alts, which all have a house because they shifted the members ... and you have 4 of those players, you can lock down an entire ward ... which a single low lv char and thats were SE has to crack down. Most of this happend during a time SE thought they were clever, they locked down all the purchases of private players and went "FC's first!" which ... makes sense i guess. But that gave players enough time to create these Dummy FC's to lock down the plots again ... such a shame.