The New Housing System is Terrible

[MsMisato]

Honestly SE should have offered free World transfers with in the Data center before new housing plots so people could have moved to less popular world. Today there is no reason to be on a heavy pop world since you can free travel within the data center.

They do offer free world transfers to preferred server. RIght now aether is standard which means pops are balanced.

There currently are preferred servers on Cyrstal, elemental, and mana people can transfer to for free with incentives. Its honestly just not worth it move to a preferred server if you have character under level 70 because you aren't eligible for the road to 70 on the preferred server where its just easier to roll an alt in that case because you get the road to 70, gold and silver chocobo tickets sans the gil. I think if they attached the road to 70 to those characters already established and below level 70 it would entice people to transfer but they don't.

It might be only worth it if you have a plot and are ready to give it up and fight for housing. (They will give you the full value of the plot back + an additional 3 mil this also applies if you have an apartment as well plus some gold chocobo feathers). But there is no incentive to fight for a plot again its not worth the headache.

[Bsrking5]

A, its not new
B, your idea sucks and just incentives RMT
C, what SE really needs to do it kick all personal house out and buff apartments to houses level of function, or nearly. Also require FC house to maintain 4 or more active accounts.

[SamSmoot]

How about: Pay a refundable fixed price, which is taken from your account, and X days after the house becomes available, it's awarded to one of the prospective buyers randomly.
No sitting around for hours clicking something, just pay and wait. If someone else gets the house, the gil is returned to you with a notification

[NanaWiloh]

*sighs* A lottery system may sound like Heaven until you see it in action. Instead of a you and a handful of people vs a timer. It will become you and everyone who wants a house vs rng. Oh and dont think people winning improves your odds it dont. You got new and upcoming players jumping in to replace players who win.

[MyneJoestar]

Lottery system is miles better than clicking a placard, with hidden timer. The Need/Greed loot system. Its rng. Need can be used for those who don't own one yet. Greed for FC with existing housing already/relocate/or alts.

[Edax]

The New Housing System is Terrible

What's the "new" housing system?

[Belisaire]

The timer existing isn't really the problem. It has definitely damaged the market for people who seek to acquire housing to buy just to flip it for crazy prices. No one wants to see that happen again.

The timer being invisible though, is a big problem. I don't know how many hours I spent until I finally beat Placard savage, but its hardly something I enjoyed or take pride in. I think the timer being random is fine, but the countdown should be broadcast out to everyone. Sure, people will crowd the placard when the timer is almost up, but people are already doing that anyways. Better to waste people's time in small doses than the multi-hour affairs we have going on right now.

I think the goal they were trying to achieve with the timer being invisible was to discourage players from camping the placard, but that certainly hasn't been the result. So just let the timer be known to everyone. This will still prevent people from reselling the plot in the way it does now, because no one is going to throw down millions and millions of gil for a house that's even on a known but randomly generated timer.

[Gothicshark]

I'm putting this out here because of the recent patch causing another rush of players charging the houses to each other's despair, and I would like to say this:

The random timer should be removed.

No

1. Players will be able to free up spots for each other through communication and coordination. Is there a potential bias to this? Of course. MMOs are about making friends, so what's stopping you?
2. Buying from someone who supposedly 'gouges prices' actually gives you value for your money, as you are acquiring the plot without the added anxiety of this toxic competition for what should be a feature for everyone.
3. Reporting players has always been a feature, and if someone is going in with this kind of transaction, they can prepare screenshots to make sure the seller remains true to their word, or report if they are charging well more than is necessary (which can always be established as a rule, ToS changes often).
4. Meritocracy has never worked. The random timer has forced people to suffer just for a chance at a home. The moment a game causes you genuine distress just to use a basic feature, you know it needs reworking.
5. A player housing market for all its flaws allowed players to have a degree of control. The beauty of FFXIV is that it doesn't resemble the real world entirely in its economy, as the game doesn't account for inflation in the player economy. Anyone can get the money needed to buy from a seller, and in a much shorter span of time than we'd expect.

Terrible idea, honestly No. Want to cause people to leave this game for good, do this. Square needs to remove the scarcity of housing, not increase it.

Thought gold sellers were bad, now let the control of the housing market. No longer do you fight against players with click bots, now you fight against Real Money sellers. Buying up entire wards, and selling them for cash outside of the game.

What Square needs to do is make the Houses Shard based and unlimited. Yes, this means random people can't walk by and see your hot pink manor and collection of toys in the front yard, but let's get real most people don't look or care anyway. Doing what WOW did making player housing shard-based allowed for every player to have a "Home" (sadly they ruined it in other ways). Instead of making more wards, they could collapse the wards down, and players could then all buy the house they most want. To visit a home the placard outside the house would be used.

[Packetdancer]

The timer being invisible though, is a big problem. I don't know how many hours I spent until I finally beat Placard savage, but its hardly something I enjoyed or take pride in. I think the timer being random is fine, but the countdown should be broadcast out to everyone. Sure, people will crowd the placard when the timer is almost up, but people are already doing that anyways. Better to waste people's time in small doses than the multi-hour affairs we have going on right now.

This.

I have a small house. I only have a small house through dumb luck. When they did the last housing ward expansion and people relocated their houses to the then-new wards (which were, at the time, FC and relocation only), I ran around all the original (less-in-demand) housing wards trying to find a now-vacant plot. Many of them had someone already camping the sign and I didn't want to get into a clicking war and potentially snipe a house out from under someone who was already waiting, and the two I sat at clicking while I waited for the timer to tick down ended up vanishing from under me when people relocated houses into those plots.

After several hours I gave up and bounced back to my FC house in Shirogane. And then thought "Hey, I wonder if there are any here in Shirogane." And I saw there was one plot still available. So I wandered over and thought, "Oh, this is a lovely spot. Well, I'll click and get rejected, and then I'll call it a night and do something else." And I clicked on the sign...

And suddenly I owned a house.

Surprisingly, my little corner of Shirogane is actually reasonably active; while I was gleefully playing around in my new yard setting things up, a couple of my neighbors came over to welcome me. Two brought housewarming gifts, we chatted, I put them on my friends list, and I've run roulettes with one of them periodically. When I relocate to Ishgard (because ISHGARD), I will miss my neighbors. So I get what Square-Enix wants with the neighborhoods.

But I only landed where I am via dumb blind luck. And dumb blind luck is not a viable basis on which a housing market should operate.

And given that housing in this game gates participation in other systems, that's a problem.

[Khalithar]

So I understand what you're saying OP but you're missing something very important.

All the complaints you listed are not problems, they are *symptoms* of a much larger problem, namely the housing system itself.

The change that needs to happen is that EVERY player should be able to buy a house so long as they have the gil, instead of people arguing over the merits of the timers here, we should all be demanding SE implement proper instanced housing so that everyone can get one. Anything less than that is, and will always be, unacceptable.