Fix Housing Megathread

[Valfreyja]

The timer is the main thing that needs a dramatic overhaul. Up to 24 hours is obscenely excessive and in no way necessary at all.

8 hours is more than enough time, I would say. Literally every house I've seen the past few days, have all had 12 hour timers, minimum. There was one in Gridania just tonight that had at least 20 hours on it.

It was there at midnight with people camped already last night, and didn't sell until after 7pm tonight.

[Praesolus]

The timer is the main thing that needs a dramatic overhaul. Up to 24 hours is obscenely excessive and in no way necessary at all.

8 hours is more than enough time, I would say. Literally every house I've seen the past few days, have all had 12 hour timers, minimum. There was one in Gridania just tonight that had at least 20 hours on it.

It was there at midnight with people camped already last night, and didn't sell until after 7pm tonight.

I agree with this. It's so hard to get a house these days unless you have the time to sit there and spam the button.

[Valfreyja]

Auctions can work and not encourage RMT. Just use Price is Right rules.

Fix each house size with a price range of min to max. Let's use Small as an example. 3 million minimum, 15 million max. When a house goes up for sale, a random amount is chosen within that range.

Bidding lasts 24 hours. Each service account is allowed a single bid. The winner is the one that either exactly hits the price set on the plot. Or is the closest to it WITHOUT going higher.

So if a Small comes up and the price is set at 4,596,295 gil, then anyone bidding OVER that is going to lose. But if someone bids 4.5 million and nobody does higher, then they win it.

You take a moment out of your game time to bid, you get notified by mail if you win. You have X amount of time to redeem an item to claim your plot.


One bid per account keeps things honest and fair. By having to match a price, or bid near it, but not higher, it is fair for all involved. Doesn't matter if you RMT and buy tons of gil illegally. You can't just walk up and bid a high amount and win the house.

It's entirely based on luck and RNG. And further, it prevents house flippers because bidding will always last 24 hours. So the timer is still in effect. The only difference is instead of sitting for hours on end clicking a placard and hoping, you can stop by, make your bid, and leave to do other stuff.

To me, honestly, that seems like a much better system.

Edit: To clarify, the first bid at an amount is the one registered and counted. So if there are multiple bidders for 4.5 million, the first to do so is the one that gets the house. But what they pay is 4,596,295 gil. Give them 24 hours to come back to the Placard with an item in their inventory (mailed to them automatically when they win). So the purchase button would then require that item to be handed over, and the gil would be deducted from their inventory.

[Jojoya]

The largest JP server (Tonberry) is has about as many players as NA's smallest server (Sargstanas).
NA has far fiercer housing problems than JP, so I really don't see why most of the housing would go to the place it is least needed.

NA has fiercer housing problems than JP because it's got 30% more population but 30% fewer worlds to spread out that population.

It's not like SE picks and chooses where plots are made available. Every world gets the same number.

SE does choose how many worlds are available in each region and that's a decision they base on things other than housing availability. NA players seem to prefer playing on highly congested worlds. Adding more worlds to NA to spread out the population more (and add more houses as a side effect) would lead to complaints of "my server is dead".

Players can be their own worst enemies at times when they want things that conflict with each other.

If you read up a few posts, the original response was made in reference to the house plots that would get opened up as Australian players move to Oceania data center. (Hence “that” housing). If the majority of the Australian players are currently playing on Japanese servers, then indeed the plots that will become open due to transfers would be on the Japanese servers.

I don't think that the majority of AUS/NZ players are necessrily on the JP worlds. From talking to the ones I know, they're pretty well spread out across all the data centers.

The difference is that they concentrated on a couple of JP worlds for language reasons while on NA (and EU) they're spread out over all the worlds since language isn't an issue.

[Valfreyja]

Another idea that stops house flippers and is fair to everyone, is a lottery system.

House comes up for sale. Everyone who touches the Placard is assigned a single number, increasing until 24 hours has passed. Then one number in that range is drawn. They get mail saying they've won, plus an item. Go to the Placard again, where they present the item, and pay for the plot.

You still have a timer to stop the flippers, and nobody cares because again, you only go by one time to get your number. So there is no frustration over sitting and clicking, and losing to people who just run up at the end.

(I do agree, we need at least double the housing we have now, though.)

[Praesolus]

That sounds pretty good Valfreyja. But yes, increasing the number of housing would be great (even with the new residential area coming).

[Valfreyja]

Ishgard is only adding 1,440 plots. That's 60 across 24 wards. It's an insignificant number.

If they added 30 more per ward by EW, we'd have a total of 10,800 houses. Not enough still, but it's a helluva lot better than the 5,760 we have now, or the 7,200 we'll get with Ishgard in EW, if there are no changes.

[Almagnus1]

I don't think that the majority of AUS/NZ players are necessrily on the JP worlds. From talking to the ones I know, they're pretty well spread out across all the data centers.

The difference is that they concentrated on a couple of JP worlds for language reasons while on NA (and EU) they're spread out over all the worlds since language isn't an issue.

That's also why I'm suspecting that the Oceanic servers may help with the housing issues in NA (and possibly EU) as I suspect they're a significant number of them are playing on servers that are natively English.

[Valfreyja]

I'm starting to think the whole "as little as 30 minutes" part of the invisible timer is a lie. That they are intentionally high to increase visibility on plots that are going up for sale, so more people can come to the clickbait placards.

[Valfreyja]

To be honest, a lot of the crap added with Stormblood needs to be removed. Relocation is a prime example. People shouldn't be allowed to bypass the timer and steal a house out from under those without houses, who are restricted by the nonsensical timer. Allowing them to get the nicest places.

Bad enough you make people camp at houses to try and get one. Only to have someone run up and grab it before time runs out, so you basically just waited for nothing.

The timer is awful, in and of itself. With Relocation it's even worse. With Relocation getting 30% knocked off the house from your previous house, it's a disaster.

Relocation should cost MORE, not less. If they want to bypass the timer, they should be forced to pay more for that convenience.