A Better Way for Houses Up For Grabs

[tdb]

Sure, we could let only rich people have houses. Or only crafters. Or only savage raiders. Or only mentors. For some reason though discriminatory conditions don't tend to go down well.

[Mavrias]

Whats discriminatory about a bidding system? Everyone has the same opportunities as everyone else, that way.

[Catstab]

Sure, we could let only rich people have houses. Or only crafters. Or only savage raiders. Or only mentors. For some reason though discriminatory conditions don't tend to go down well.

4300 personal houses, 20000+ players per server. Only one in five people gets a house. To me it makes a lot more sense to give houses to people who either quested or crafted or played roulettes than it makes to give housing to anyone at all who wants one, but force those people to spend up to 24 hours each camp up to 20-30 times over. Even if you camp 'smart' and spend only 4 hours at each plot, if you win your 20th plot you've spent 80 hours. Go 10 hours on 30 plots, things get much uglier.

Spending 40m on a placard is showing that you understand the game and put time into it. Spending 80+ hours on a placard is just damaging to the player experience.

[tdb]

Whats discriminatory about a bidding system? Everyone has the same opportunities as everyone else, that way.

It strongly favors those players who have hundreds of millions of gil. Those who can barely scrape together three million for a small plot at current prices would have no chance. And yes, I know players at max level who don't have even one million. I don't know what they do with their money.

4300 personal houses, 20000+ players per server. Only one in five people gets a house. To me it makes a lot more sense to give houses to people who either quested or crafted or played roulettes than it makes to give housing to anyone at all who wants one, but force those people to spend up to 24 hours each camp up to 20-30 times over. Even if you camp 'smart' and spend only 4 hours at each plot, if you win your 20th plot you've spent 80 hours. Go 10 hours on 30 plots, things get much uglier.

Yes, the current timer is stupid. That's been established many times over.

[Sindele]

Flippers are a scourge that needs to be stopped because all they do is buy up what's available for personal profit instead of allowing those houses to go directly to players that would use them.

No one is being prevented from giving up a house they don't want. You simply clear the furnishings from the house, remove the estate hall then relinquish the plot.

If they aren't relinquishing it, then clearly they want it for some reason and generally that something comes down to wanting gil for giving it up. After all, there's no cost for keeping it.

Nothing will stop the flippers as long as there is a limited number of houses that's less than the number of players and FCs that wish to own them. That is why SE needs to improve the housing system so supply of houses will always meet demand and that means focusing on an instanced system that's more comprehensive than just apartments. The existing wards can remain but stop throwing more resources into creating more wards when that's not solving the problem.

Who's buying the houses from the flippers if not players that would use them? I mean, if you think it's more important that people get placard cost than that they actually get access to houses, that's an.. inspired view, I suppose, but it's not realistic, and I gathered the idea of this thread was realistic solutions for the system we have rather than pipe dreaming about instancing systems that don't exist, that might require massive feats of system engineering to make viable, and have massive unsolved problems in terms of game mechanics like infinite gardens and what it spells for the economy when on one side you have hyperinflation from submersible profiteering and on the other side a massive value depression in the form of the craftbots that have been allowed to flourish.

Also, you completely missed the point of people holding houses that they don't want. They don't want that house. They want their ideal house, and the only way you're going to get a significant upgrade in this ecosystem is to be able to relocate.

[Sindele]

(also, 40m absolutely wouldn't stop FC shell farmers - the barrier to entry going up behind them would just make them very, very happy.)

[Mavrias]

It strongly favors those players who have hundreds of millions of gil. Those who can barely scrape together three million for a small plot at current prices would have no chance. And yes, I know players at max level who don't have even one million. I don't know what they do with their money.


Yes, the current timer is stupid. That's been established many times over.

Yes but this is not real life where others get ahead due to favorable family lineage, country of birth, etc. You can quite literally earn money through the same channels as anybody else with nothing limiting you besides how much effort you want to put in and how much you save vs spend. Maps, crafting, farming primal mats, materia, eureka/ Borja drops etc. Even just doing your dailies can make an okay amount of coin.

It "favors" no one because anyone can be in that position with a reasonable amount of time spent (other than free trial players, but they already cannot buy a house so nothing about that would change.)

[tdb]

Yes but this is not real life where others get ahead due to favorable family lineage, country of birth, etc.

Yeah, instead this is a video game where some people got ahead by getting into the game early and doing things which now are nowhere near as profitable. Crafting in particular has been made a lot more accessible, which also means prices for crafted items have gone down. It hasn't been even two weeks since 5.4 and Exarchic gear is already selling below 100k (for some pieces at least) - cheap enough that I consider crafting it for sale a waste of my time. There was a very short window (a couple of days) where the new crafted gear sold at high prices, and I made about 35 million gil from it because I was prepared. Others probably made even more. How quickly do you figure you can make 35 million gil now that that window has closed?

[Catstab]

It strongly favors those players who have hundreds of millions of gil. Those who can barely scrape together three million for a small plot at current prices would have no chance.

That's the point. There aren't enough for everyone, and if you think 40m is a lot of money you don't need a house.

I made about 35 million gil [in less than 2 weeks]

It isn't hard for established players to make this sort of money. You just made enough for almost 12 small houses in about 12 days. Almost all players can afford houses as it stands. Quite clearly, anyone who deserves to be in the 20% of players who gets housing can afford that price.

[Catstab]

40m wouldn't stop FC shell farmers - the barrier to entry going up behind them would just make them happy.)

Behind them, sure. So workshop farmers would be sitting pretty, as they are now. SE changes things moving forward, not retroactively, so workshop farmers are golden gods till the reward pools get nerfed.

But the barrier to entry means 10 smalls with workshops that costs 42,500,000 now will cost 412,500,000. Which means that new workshop farmers aren't joining the ranks daily and shopping for cheap houses to expand. Those that continue to expand will pay out 85 days of one workshops income for a new workshop, instead of 8 and a half days.

tldr: no one loses anything they have, but future house hunters no longer need to compete with workshop farmers.