Plots everywhere demolished and open!

[Nabiri]

Jesus. Hope you got an actual desirable plot for all that time. I don't even have arthritis (in my mid-20's), but after probably around 12 hours total of clicking, I could really feel it..

Haha.. Thanks, but it was a piece of junk facing a wall in Ul'dah. I've since moved though.
Was just happy to be able to decorate and have a garden!

(X3 In my 30s, but have an old injury in that hand - turned into arthritis. D: )

[SturmChurro]

Haha.. Thanks, but it was a piece of junk facing a wall in Ul'dah. I've since moved though.
Was just happy to be able to decorate and have a garden!

(X3 In my 30s, but have an old injury in that hand - turned into arthritis. D: )

I think I know which plot you mean. You got lucky on that relocation. I've been checking housing every so often, it's literally ALL gone here. I can't relocate anywhere.

That's too bad, but now that you have that house you probably won't ever have to click like that again. Even if they don't fix, or alleviate the issue of housing.

[Packetdancer]

Congrats on clearing Housing (Savage), Sturm! As someone who actually likes using housing (and is proud of her yard), welcome to the club! Since we're both on Primal, let me know if you need any furnishings. I... uh... have a problem. *stares sheepishly at retainer full of unused housing items from retainer ventures, from completing crafting logs, etc.*

But while I love doing housing stuff in-game, as someone who also does system engineering work, I cannot help but agree that this housing system is so badly broken. I get what they were going for, mind you; when a neighborhood is actually active, it's an amazing community to have. But I don't think it's worked as they intended. (Sadly, I don't see many ways to fix it without outright replacing it or adding a separate parallel housing system; every compromise I can come up with has major drawbacks.)

The real issue I see isn't even the scarcity of housing -- though that's not great -- but the fact that housing gates participation in other systems. Your FC wants to do airships/submersibles, or company crafts? Need a house. You want to do gardening where you can crossbreed seeds? You need a house. Etc. Apartments do not work for those scenarios... and that's a problem. Because not only does the scarcity of housing prevent people who want to engage with those systems from doing so, but the fact you need housing to do those things means people who don't actually care about the house but want to do those thigns need to purchase and sit on a housing plot in order to engage with the systems that interest them (like gardening).

The scarcity of housing is bad. The fact that the scarcity is both blocking participation in tangentially-related systems and exacerbated by the fact that it's required for those systems... that's disastrous in terms of system design.

[Packetdancer]

To add to previous post, since Mogstation/cash shop stuff has come up...

I personally don't object (much) to the Mogstation, since pretty much everything they offer is cosmetic. (Glamours, dyes, etc.) Yeah, there are multi-seat mounts in there, but you can get two-person (and four-person!) mounts in-game as well. Yeah, I sort of wish job potions were restricted to letting you only skip a job you'd leveled the slow way on some other alt, but I get why they sell those.

But I've seen so many much-more-predatory cash shops that the Mogstation seems pretty mild. The whole reason I quit the Secret World after its reboot into Secret World Legends was their cash shop change; what used to be mostly glamour items became "we're going to drop loot crates in world, which you need to unlock with keys that you get very few of... but hey, come pay us real money and you can get more keys to unlock the loot you obtained during actual game play."

(They're far from the only game that has done that, but it really, really irritated me since it was a change introduced with the reboot. Classic TSW's 'lootbox' mechanic for event glamour was bad enough pre-reboot, but it was just glam/pets/mounts. Locking down actual in-game loot behind RMT in SWL was the final straw for me.)

So if they chose to add a for-cash option of "buy a small private housing ward for your FC" or whatever, honestly, that's probably not the worst change they could make. (It's not the best change either, mind you...)

Of course, what I'd really love to see as a change is the ability to get most of the cash shop stuff in-game through spending the golden Chocobo feathers you get for recruit-a-friend and whatnot: use them on fantasias, dyes, glamours, mounts, etc. Then restore the veteran rewards system, and just give you like... 5 golden feathers for every three months that you're subscribed. That way, long-time subscribers would effectively have a way to buy the cash shop items as a side-effect of their subscription, while people who like to sub briefly and bounce, or just use timecards—or people who wanted more things than they had feathers for—could all still get those things via the cash shop as well.

(As a bonus, if you could buy the glamours in-game for golden feathers, and could buy the individual pieces of said glamours... you could use the in-game glamour vendor to preview the dang things on your character.)

[GeminiReed]

The worst I've done was trying to buy a guild house. I think 4-5 of us stood around the target placard for 4-6 hours just clicking. Mostly it was click through the menus, pause, repeat but a known flipper showed up occasionally so then it was a mad clickfest until they got bored and left. I did get a personal house right before ShB when a whole bunch of plots opened up in a similar situation to this one. I got another on an alt completely by accident. A nice-ish spot (#22) in the Mist was open and I was curious. Probably should have stuck my gil on a retainer first but oh well.

I had some high RP hopes for the first plot but the combination of the atrocious chat implementation plus how much of a let down XIV housing was compared to Wildstar I've pretty much left it to rot.

[Nabiri]

I think I know which plot you mean. You got lucky on that relocation. I've been checking housing every so often, it's literally ALL gone here. I can't relocate anywhere.

Check wards every hour on the hour. That’s when demolitions happen. That’s how I relocated.

[Quintessa]

Well, them adding a Crysta reward system wouldn't necessarily lead to them becoming more and more predatory, so I'd give you that. I do think there is SOME merit in the idea, for sub-based rewards, in general, but a system like ESO, I just don't think would work. At least not on a similar scale. I think there may be other better alternatives anyway, I'd rather see more unique rewards in-game, outside of the cash shop.

As for developer history, I don't really know SE too well, not outside of this game in particular. I tend to not trust most developers these days, and when I do, I get let down. Like CDPR - I don't excuse them either, they are actual liars in my book. Same level, maybe worse than EA.

Yeah, there is a ton of instanced housing available in that game. Granted, I think Zenimax uses housing as a vehicle to sell cash shop decor, but even so the housing at a base level is far more in depth and dwarfs this game's large plots in scale/scope. I don't necessarily think SE has to go down the road of instanced housing, but they need to do something. Housing is fairly heavily emphasized, and I wouldn't doubt if they add at least something new to it come this next expac, whether it's changes, or more of the same. I couldn't believe that clicking on a plot for tens of hours was the norm for trying to get a house on a populated server. It was unbelievable, and it's still unbelievable.

Oh, also, they need to add a glamour dresser function and stuff to houses too.

--

This estate hall is probably the ugliest thing I have ever seen for housing. I need to figure out how to get something better. Probably crafting.



Seriously, it's hideous. I can't believe I spent 450k on it.

Hey, I see you got a house finally, grats.

Crafting would be the way to go and imo this is where it really feels rewarding to be a crafter. You can literally craft your house. It will take A LOT of time, but it will be worth it.

[SturmChurro]

Hey, I see you got a house finally, grats.

Crafting would be the way to go and imo this is where it really feels rewarding to be a crafter. You can literally craft your house. It will take A LOT of time, but it will be worth it.

Yes, but I'm not too invested in living in the Grand Canyon. I'd rather have Lavender Beds, or God Forbid Shirogane, but that'll be another struggle. Not too interested in the idea of Ishgard, I'll have to see how the whole place looks, if they do it. Ishgard would probably be really nice for a medieval fantasy inspired set though.

Yeah, I want housing to be kind of a big motivation to get me to actually level, or occasionally play any crafters.

[Packetdancer]

This estate hall is probably the ugliest thing I have ever seen for housing. I need to figure out how to get something better. Probably crafting.



Seriously, it's hideous. I can't believe I spent 450k on it.

I... admit that's not a house I'd consider attractive, no.

Some of the housing types can be crafted by individuals, others (especially the newer ones) require using an FC company workshop to craft. That said, if the issue is the roof (my issue with it would be the roof, anyway), you can swap out the roof on that for something like the Oasis Composite Roof or Oasis Stone Roof relatively quickly.

In general, once you're into housing, I highly recommend using FF14Housing to look up the things you want. (For furnishings, the preview mode also lets you pick literally any furnishing in the game and try temporarily placing it to see how it looks.)

[Packetdancer]

I had some high RP hopes for the first plot but the combination of the atrocious chat implementation plus how much of a let down XIV housing was compared to Wildstar I've pretty much left it to rot.

To be fair, WildStar's housing would be a hard act for anything to follow.