Rework the housing system

[LaylaTsarra]

I don’t care if the game hints at it—they are awful and bait, so until it’s been confirmed officially, this is still a rumor.

Pretty big hint. There is no way the development team would tease rebuilding a housing ward/district by everyone doing Firmament reconstruction and not come out with more housing. Sure it's not official until formally announced but it's coming. I think the only thing we don't really know yet is if it will be something new (instanced housing) or more of the same and when. My guess is 5.5 or 5.55 but we'll have to wait and see.

[tdb]

I bet they're holding back with the official announcement until they have the necessary server capacity installed. That way they won't have to break any promises.

[ramsesh]

Pretty big hint. There is no way the development team would tease rebuilding a housing ward/district by everyone doing Firmament reconstruction and not come out with more housing. Sure it's not official until formally announced but it's coming. I think the only thing we don't really know yet is if it will be something new (instanced housing) or more of the same and when. My guess is 5.5 or 5.55 but we'll have to wait and see.

No. We don’t know if it’s coming or not. This community is absolutely ridiculous with how it overhypes things, and then is inevitably depressed and riotous when they don’t get what they envisioned.

Until it’s announced it might as well be absolutely nothing.

Don’t mistake this for a lack of desire; I do want the housing district, probably as much as anyone else. But at this point SE has disappointed me enough to know not to get my hopes up, and I’m just trying to remind people to do the same so they aren’t disappointed if it isn’t what they want.

For the record my guess is 6.1 as I sincerely doubt they’ll do a housing district at the tail end of an expansion, they would smartly use it the same way they did Shirogane in 4.0 going into 4.1.

As said above, they are likely waiting until any necessary infrastructure is in place. That’s reasonable.

[LaylaTsarra]

No. We don’t know if it’s coming or not. This community is absolutely ridiculous with how it overhypes things, and then is inevitably depressed and riotous when they don’t get what they envisioned.

No it's not ridiculous. It's pretty naive to think that there will be no housing district but lets agree it's not official until they announce it but sorry I'm going to go with it's a pretty sure thing we're getting it and the only question is when.

[ramsesh]

No it's not ridiculous. It's pretty naive to think that there will be no housing district but lets agree it's not official until they announce it but sorry I'm going to go with it's a pretty sure thing we're getting it and the only question is when.

You’re welcome to be wrong. That’s fine.

And yes it is ridiculous. We’ll have to agree to disagree.

[LaylaTsarra]

And yes it is ridiculous. We’ll have to agree to disagree.

We certainly do lets check back in a few months and see who was right.

[Jojoya]

This is incorrect. We do not know it’s coming because there’s been no official release or statement.

I don’t care if the game hints at it—they are awful and bait, so until it’s been confirmed officially, this is still a rumor.

YoshiP specifically stated this in an interview he did prior to the last Live Letter. The FFXIV subreddit Discord posted the translation of the interview.

It is indeed coming.

It may not be coming as quickly as players hope since all he said was "after". That could mean 5.5, 6.0 or even 6.5. Considering what a contentious topic housing has become, I doubt they're going to push it off into the distant future if that can be avoided. They know they need to do something sooner, not later.

Yes, a raffle system does not address the insufficient amount of housing. But until a sufficient quantity can be provided, or if for some reason it can't, I think a raffle would be more fair and enjoyable than the current timer system where you have to camp the placard for hours. You might not have any better chance at getting the plot, but at least you'd only have to spend a few minutes on it.

Chances of getting a plot would become worse than they currently are. House hunters would no longer be competing only against those willing to put in the extra effort to camp the plot but they'll be competing against those who didn't want to bother in the past. When it only takes a couple of minutes, players are more likely to go "sure, why not?"

Then there would still be all the little details of how the raffle would actually work that SE would have to figure out how to program. If the idea is to make getting a house more fair and less annoying, they're going to have to go beyond the usual real life "buy as many tickets as you want then wait to see if your number is called, you must be present to win".

As said above, they are likely waiting until any necessary infrastructure is in place. That’s reasonable.

Not just reasonable but necessary. Whatever they did to optimize the existing servers to accommodate the additional wards added in 5.35, I certainly have been feeling it on my PC. I've been getting a lot of lag only in while in a housing district that I wasn't experiencing before the wards were added.

[tdb]

Chances of getting a plot would become worse than they currently are. House hunters would no longer be competing only against those willing to put in the extra effort to camp the plot but they'll be competing against those who didn't want to bother in the past. When it only takes a couple of minutes, players are more likely to go "sure, why not?"

If you think it should take effort to get a house, make it require completing a series of 20 fetch quests to be eligible for the raffle each time. Or gathering and crafting a pile of items. I don't see why the effort required should be in the form of an extremely repetitive task which is easy to automate using a keyboard macro program.

Any participation requirements means that the players who enjoy those kinds of activities or can stomach jumping through the hoops will be at an advantage. So what kind of players do you think are more deserving of getting a house than others?

Then there would still be all the little details of how the raffle would actually work that SE would have to figure out how to program. If the idea is to make getting a house more fair and less annoying, they're going to have to go beyond the usual real life "buy as many tickets as you want then wait to see if your number is called, you must be present to win".

Only one ticket per player, obviously. Can't do much about alt accounts, since those are effectively separate players from SE's perspective. Being present is required so a player can't enter multiple raffles at once. There could be a cooldown, or intentional aligning of multiple raffles so players have to pick which ones to participate in.

[Jojoya]

If you think it should take effort to get a house, make it require completing a series of 20 fetch quests to be eligible for the raffle each time. Or gathering and crafting a pile of items. I don't see why the effort required should be in the form of an extremely repetitive task which is easy to automate using a keyboard macro program.

Not trying to say it should take any specific amount or type of effort to be able to get a house. I'm just pointing out that the competition for available plots will increase rapidly as the amount of effort required is reduced so someone's chance of obtaining a house will actually decrease significantly, not remain the same as it is now.

A player that still does not have a house months after a raffle is implemented is not going to be any happier than they are right now without a house.

Only one ticket per player, obviously. Can't do much about alt accounts, since those are effectively separate players from SE's perspective. Being present is required so a player can't enter multiple raffles at once. There could be a cooldown, or intentional aligning of multiple raffles so players have to pick which ones to participate in.

What about FCs? Is it one ticket per FC as well or would every unique member of a FC be able to buy a ticket on behalf of the FC?

Being present doesn't necessarily prevent a player from entering multiple raffles at a time unless you're going to require the player to camp the placard from the moment the ticket is purchased until the winner is drawn (and I thought the point was to remove the camping?). Better (and probably easier) to just limit how many house plot raffle tickets a player can hold at one time just as we're limited on the number of Cactpot tickets we can have.

I'm also not sure there's really a point to preventing a player from entering multiple drawings at the same time since their chances of winning any drawing would be very low, and they wouldn't be able to buy a second house once they won and bought the first.

Players are already frustrated with a 4 to 22 hour cooldown before a plot becomes available. What happens when it stretches to days before the game decides there are enough plots available that it's time to hold the concurrent drawings?

I'm not saying a raffle can't be done but there would still be considerable work involved in designing, coding, testing and implementing the system. As I said above, it's still not going to make players any happier in the long run.

Is the effort worth it when it will neither solve the core problem of supply nor make players happier?

[tdb]

Not trying to say it should take any specific amount or type of effort to be able to get a house. I'm just pointing out that the competition for available plots will increase rapidly as the amount of effort required is reduced so someone's chance of obtaining a house will actually decrease significantly, not remain the same as it is now.

Well, yes. And I fully expect that not everyone would be happy with it. In one of these threads there was a person who seemed outright disgusted that someone would get a chance at a house by just showing up. Though apparently it's fine if you do it in the new wards right after the servers open.

What about FCs? Is it one ticket per FC as well or would every unique member of a FC be able to buy a ticket on behalf of the FC?

There are arguments to be made for both sides (are larger FCs more deserving of a house because it would benefit more players?), but I think limiting it to one ticket per FC would be the best way to avoid gaming the system.

Being present doesn't necessarily prevent a player from entering multiple raffles at a time unless you're going to require the player to camp the placard from the moment the ticket is purchased until the winner is drawn (and I thought the point was to remove the camping?). Better (and probably easier) to just limit how many house plot raffle tickets a player can hold at one time just as we're limited on the number of Cactpot tickets we can have.

The idea of having to be there (and I mean at that particular placard) at the appointed time was born from the feedback that a buy-and-forget system like cactpot (well, you do have to go back later to check if you won) would make it too effortless to enter. Having a 5-10 minute window for the raffle would at least require setting up an alarm. Can't have someone getting a house without putting in a full day's work for it, apparently.

I'm also not sure there's really a point to preventing a player from entering multiple drawings at the same time since their chances of winning any drawing would be very low, and they wouldn't be able to buy a second house once they won and bought the first.

The idea with concurrent raffles was that if there's X amount of players looking for a house and Y plots available, not everyone would be entering the raffle for the same plot. You'd have to choose if you want the one you think is best, or if you'll try for one in a less optimal location but also less competition. Of course this works best if there actually is some turnaround with the plots. I remember that some time ago there was several tens of small plots free on my server across all housing districts. The last I checked a week ago, Lavender Beds was completely full - but then again the demolition timer has been suspended for a long time and only resumed very recently, so there may not have been any new demolitions yet.

Players are already frustrated with a 4 to 22 hour cooldown before a plot becomes available. What happens when it stretches to days before the game decides there are enough plots available that it's time to hold the concurrent drawings?

The raffle time would be announced in advance. One possible algorithm would go like this: if there's already an upcoming raffle and it's more than 17 hours away, then a newly freed plot will use that same time. Otherwise the raffle time will be set at 23 hours from now. (Odd times in order to get raffles to happen at varying times of the day.) It is my belief that it would be a lot less frustrating to immediately see that you can't make it at the appointed time, than spend several hours clicking the placard only to have to go to bed and in the morning find out that someone else got the plot.

I'm not saying a raffle can't be done but there would still be considerable work involved in designing, coding, testing and implementing the system. As I said above, it's still not going to make players any happier in the long run.

Is the effort worth it when it will neither solve the core problem of supply nor make players happier?

It would take some amount of effort, that's true. But I haven't really seen a lot of concrete suggestions being thrown around, aside from the instanced housing utopia. While that would of course be the ultimate solution, I think we can agree that it would also take a lot more effort. The only other solution I've seen (recently at least) is to increase prices by a factor of 10, which would naturally prevent most of the player base from getting houses since they don't have that kind of gil. It would certainly solve the demand vs. supply issue, but the sentiment of only rich people being able to get houses is not one I agree with (even being moderately rich myself).

I can't speak for the player base as a whole, but I personally would be much happier with a raffle system than the current timers. If I didn't already own a house, that is.