Nope you didn't add enough plots SE...

[Penthea]

they will be adding more housing it's just covid threw a wrench into the works.

This is true, SE did plan to add more wards but due to covid they couldn't add more servers so instead they optimised their current servers to add the wards we just got.

However I think the main thing to take away is if the game instead had a fully fledged instanced housing system none of the threads like this would exist because players wouldn't be running into availability issues.

[Vickii]

There is something very wrong with the content if you can be denied access due to needing to do a completely normal bodily function like going to the toilet.

And please no one compare this to missing a duty finder queue pop due to being afk in the bathroom. You can queue again when you get back and you'll have the queue pop again usually within a half hour. Absolutely not comparable to spamming a placard for several hours, or waiting several weeks to even get the chance to spam click.

Yes it happened to my friend yesterday. He waited 8 hours, went to the bathroom for 10 minutes and lost the plot.

I waited 11 hours, went to bathroom for 5 minutes and plot was ready when I got back and could easily have been sniped but luckily wasn’t.

People say this is horror stories but literally happened to two friends in same day, so it’s not unrealistic. If the plot is highly contested you literally could lose up to 23 hours of your time because you need to go.

[Shougun]

This is true, SE did plan to add more wards but due to covid they couldn't add more servers so instead they optimised their current servers to add the wards we just got.

However I think the main thing to take away is if the game instead had a fully fledged instanced housing system none of the threads like this would exist because players wouldn't be running into availability issues.

I know we interacted pleasantly a few times so probably not adding much here but.. also instanced housing could bring a lot of wonderful things to the game for everyone. Such that if everyone can obtain a house the game can add a lot of new interesting concepts and not make it a waste of resources (as currently its a bit unfair to put any system behind houses), as well the seasonal can not feel like a slap to the players who really wanted but couldn't get the lot they wanted lol. Or that if you want to take a break, something Yoshida encourages when you need it, that you don't feel held prisoner to your house. Meanwhile if you use an instanced you can make the progression far more smoother and integrated to the game experience, so you can get people investing in chunks that make sense to their ability at the time (while having a new sort of progression system).

On top of that simply adding more wards and themes is going to water down the neighborhoods even more. Neighborhoods being the main purpose to the system, the main thing it provides as a benefit over an instanced system (even though you can technically add social experience to instanced systems to if you try to support it). If you get lucky you might find a neighborhood with very high activity but most people are going to be players and not FC, as it becomes easier to get a house more will be casual house users (not an evil thing, just not going to be hardcore decorators at least probability speaking), and as more options open up more people will organize around the better choices which means you might have X and Y zones full to the brim and meanwhile because their system isn't dynamic Z zone (let's call it Goblet... lol) is going to have many open spaces.

Not enough houses = problem
Too many houses = problem

This game is too popular, the system too static, the game having a very large casual audience and not focused on the hardcore scarcity individuals. Of course you can make content that caters to the niche, but doing so with such desirable features I feel is a big mistake- better to create new and directly pointed towards that niche than take general concepts that would have suited your larger audience well and mutate it into something not for them.

Housing system is the problem and will remain the problem no matter what they do so long as it remains as it is, as soon as they introduce just enough that the vast majority get a house then people will be upset they can't be in the ward theme they had dreamed of, as soon then it'll be the size, as soon then they'll have so many open wards that the existence of the system is a joke (neighborhood vibe destroyed to meet the other demands). The system as they designed it needs to change (evolve / whatever), powerful instances would be better for everyone. In so much I mean not taking away the wards, many people don't care or actually dislike the neighborhood system (like people putting up ugly / mismatch houses), but still want a powerful house (not an apartment), some want instanced because it'll be potentially even more powerful (like letting players have a house in neat locations, Azim Steppe or whatever)- which is to say many who want a house is not because of SE's system and those who want it because of SE system would be treated better if they were surrounded by others who also actually wanted it. And ideally as I've said before they can make it so everyone can enjoy the new power, like housing ward users get the new more powerful housing system for their pocket world and house internal, while keeping the ward outside (using magical teleporting door like concept from FFXI flower girl quest and like Howel's Moving Castle), and instanced users just don't have a ward outside which is no big deal (the size of a pocket world can easily be vastly larger than a small plot yard, so not having that tiny bit of land will not matter to many people, especially if they don't care for the ward system). If you lapse on your sub your instanced is saved, only the ward may be lost (and all objects in the ward will move to your instanced storage holder, and you can rebuy your ward plot while keeping your instanced internal house and pocket world exterior). There are other ideas too like a bit like BDO where the door is phased to you personally, which could make very active wards (and sometimes so weird circumstances but technically should work still lol). Or even consider what LotR Online did with automatically growing wards based on occupancy. Naturally on the instanced concept they could be less ambitious and make their apartments gain an outdoor section like a decent balcony and floor upgrades (so they're in effect the same as outside houses, with all the same options but the house model- although if they can achieve that they could always just provide players with cottages of the exact same ward system but off on their lonesome).

It's also why I sort of started hoping they are working on another mmo, which might be why they didn't want to do something crazy for this one (the time frame from FFXI to FFXIV is about reached, and the current main story is going towards a close in 6.0 at least so they said). It would make a lot of sense to be resistance on making too many hyper large systems that you intend to implement in your new game (takes away sale value). Also a new game would potentially mean no more 9.99 sub lol, can get people to pay full price.

There is more than one option but this system is going to be the problem and remain the problem until it changes, slapping more wards only creates different problems while stressing and disappointing a lot of people in the process (people having to pray to get a house, get a house they didn't want, dislike the system, their neighbors, w.e).

. . .. . Alright alright I'm out now, I promised I wouldn't sit too much in the housing threads this time around lol. Maybe I'll go touch my airship thread which I still think could be an interesting sort of compromise (with new features and content rather than having to redesign old stuff, and value for current ward users) and not terribly hard on the servers at the same time (in comparison to a full blown house lol).

[Penthea]

I know we interacted pleasantly a few times so probably not adding much here but.. also instanced housing could bring a lot of wonderful things to the game for everyone. Such that if everyone can obtain a house the game can add a lot of new interesting concepts and not make it a waste of resources (as currently its a bit unfair to put any system behind houses), as well the seasonal can not feel like a slap to the players who really wanted but couldn't get the lot they wanted lol. Or that if you want to take a break, something Yoshida encourages when you need it, that you don't feel held prisoner to your house. Meanwhile if you use an instanced you can make the progression far more smoother and integrated to the game experience, so you can get people investing in chunks that make sense to their ability at the time (while having a new sort of progression system).

Yes the housing system is definitely a direct contradiction to the ideology Yoshida very frequently expresses. You can't really take a full-on break from the game if you have a house. Well you can just not log in aside from resetting the timer but a complete break would be unsubbing, which you can't do if you want to keep your house.

Having instanced housing could open a lot of cool forms of progression that are impossible with the current system: alter the size of your house indoors and outdoors without changing location, have far more customisation with the exterior (wouldn't it be cool if we could choose terrain types, different skyboxes and weather?), have a real chocobo ranch, and of course the increase in outdoor furniture slots due to the game no longer needing to load 30 houses worth of outdoor decor. SE could even create questlines to get certain types of upgrades and features.

Neighborhoods being the main purpose to the system

While I understand that the neighbourhood feel is SE's intention, the fact is SE are providing something most of the playerbase doesn't seem interested in.

People very often say housing areas are super quiet. Even dead. This does not mean the houses aren't being used, but it does mean most players do not seek social experiences with strangers while in housing areas. It appears that most just keep to the houses they have teleport access to.

I have had access to housing for over four years and I have made only one friend through the neighbourhood aspect. Everyone else I encountered was only interested in token emotes or entirely ignored my attempts to be social. I haven't been stuck in only the one area all this time. Both previous fcs I was in had plots in entirely different locations, my own fc has been in three different houses in different wards, and houses I have tenancy access to also relocated to new wards. In all the wards my fc house has been in we were most times the only active group who spent a lot of time outdoors. Very briefly a very outdoor active fc was our neighbour but years ago they left for a different ward. There is another active fc quite near us but they spend most of their time indoors.

My point is if SE consider the neighbourhood aspect of housing a strong reason to keep housing as it is, then it frankly means SE are not taking note of player habits. Housing has been around since ARR and for the most part the wards have not turned into the social hubs that they perhaps hoped they would be. By giving the players something they don't seem to be interested in using, SE are depriving players of what they have been wanting for a very long time: enough houses for everyone.

Does this mean I think neighbourhoods should be entirely abolished? No, I would quite like to see a system in which players or fcs could purchase small instances where they can have several houses so they could create their own neighbourhoods. But these would be completely instanced. I see this as a best of both worlds situation. It would be completely instanced housing so no one would be locked out of housing and players would have the option to create a neighbourhood if they wish to.

This game is too popular, the system too static, the game having a very large casual audience and not focused on the hardcore scarcity individuals.

That the housing system suffers greatly from the popularity of the game just shows how flawed it is. All other features thrive on the popularity of the game. The goal for every game company is to create something very successful. If something no longer works well due to the game becoming popular...well it means that feature never worked well in the first place. It just wasn't obvious until the player population reached a certain stage.

Sigh I feel so apathetic about this. For so long SE have had ample feedback regarding housing and at most we have gotten tweaks that often swapped one problem for another. I badly want proper instanced housing but I seriously doubt it will ever happen.

Congrats to everyone who got their house and to those who did not I know how you feel. It took me over a year to get my house, and I got the one I have because I was extremely lucky. Even our fc house was gotten through luck. Both were before the placard timers. The only work involved was getting the gil. If the placard timer mechanic existed back then I and my fc probably wouldn't have gotten a house as early as we did.

[sa02]

This rat race for housing after the patch dropped has been absurd. I can understand that random timers curb people who want to monopolize the housing plots but it's ridiculous to have people clicking on placards for potentially 24 hours to actually nab it.

Just make it a lotto system. Completely random. Or give us private instanced housing... the neighborhood I can do entirely without.

*sigh*

[Moonlite]

they will be adding more housing it's just covid threw a wrench into the works.

Honest question. Do you believe that the new servers will actually fix the housing problem? It seems to be an explanation trotted out a lot. I haven't seen a census of players at 80 per server lately. But in the past the number of plots no where matched the SEs acceptable population on a server. That doesn't include free companies.



This housing release feels kind of tame because lots of people didn't even try.



On a housing side note. Has their been any discussion about making retainers and MB for the whole data center? Just feel if they could pass that hurdle they could remove the wards from the world and make the wards there own world. They wouldn't have to worry about world stability as they are open zones attached to each world. It would also allow them to move on from the excuse each server needs exact same houses. And Once housing world one was full. They could just add housing world two. This only works though if retainers and MB are cross server. Am i missing anything else besides those two attached to houses that would need to be cross world?

[Arielen]

Honest question. Do you believe that the new servers will actually fix the housing problem? It seems to be an explanation trotted out a lot. I haven't seen a census of players at 80 per server lately. But in the past the number of plots no where matched the SEs acceptable population on a server. That doesn't include free companies.



This housing release feels kind of tame because lots of people didn't even try.



On a housing side note. Has their been any discussion about making retainers and MB for the whole data center? Just feel if they could pass that hurdle they could remove the wards from the world and make the wards there own world. They wouldn't have to worry about world stability as they are open zones attached to each world. It would also allow them to move on from the excuse each server needs exact same houses. And Once housing world one was full. They could just add housing world two. This only works though if retainers and MB are cross server. Am i missing anything else besides those two attached to houses that would need to be cross world?

https://ffxivcensus.com/ active characters shows how many have completed the 5.0 story quest as of April and it's as close as we've got

I think new actual servers (not housing wards) would definitely alleviate the housing issue a bit, provided people are willing to move. Spriggan and Twintania only recently ran out of plots with ~7k players on them. All the other NA and EU realms have 10k+ characters on them that have finished 5.0. JPs housing problem is bad (no plots available) but it's not as severe as the NA/EU one because there are 32 JP servers vs 24 NA and 12 EU servers.

Alternatively, if we do get Ishgard housing, only a few more wards would be needed even for the largest servers in the game to have their demand pretty much covered for.

[EaMett]

I have a house, I put effort in too.

You are defending waiting up to 24 hours in a video game doing nothing but sitting by a sign, with the potential of someone else coming in at the 23rd hour and getting a lucky click.

This is an example of playing housing wrong. You get very little benefit from camping extended periods. Just house hunt for an hour a day or something. You’ll enjoy the game way more, wont be frustrated, and will get a house in the end.

[EaMett]

This one so much. My FC mate was trying to just get a plot that was up all weekend before the rush, and it eventually got sold while everyone was offline/couldnt wait for days/week for it to be available. Patch happens, we did get a small house, but due to the server congestion at log in. All larges were gone within minutes Personally I see nothing wrong with instance housing for individuals or FC or both. If I had my pick though, id go for FC instances due to several factors: theres more for an FC riding on whether they have a house or not, it means doing airships or not at all. Or creating actions that are FC specific with the wheel or not at all. Honestly its those two things, plus FC houses allow the members to at least get a room they can decorate, if they dont have millions for a house or an apartment. Still on the camp for instance housing in general, the whole neighborhood feel loses its luster for me over what benefits and instance could proovide if SE looked at it seriously and took ideas from other games(like gathering nodes in back yard, etc)

That’s why new wards are typically reserved for fc first. This patch was different because SE we’re making up for the lack of demo timers. So they allowed everyone to participate.

[ADVSS]

That’s why new wards are typically reserved for fc first. This patch was different because SE we’re making up for the lack of demo timers. So they allowed everyone to participate.

We did get a small plot, but the fact he was trying all weekend to get an open plot, maybe to relocate or something, was absurd. Plus the rush at server open. 7 hours to 7 days seems a bit extreme honestly. At least before you could find someone willing to sell a plot, for whatever reason, and just pay the extra and get it. This might prevent flippers, but what would do that one better is limiting houses per server per account, honestly.