Relo mechanics are Cancer

[Catstab]

I'm banking on SE being smart enough to thoroughly think through the consequences of whatever they are going to try

All love to SE, they made a lovely game. But to expect them to consider all ramifications of a decision before going through with it is not realistic. The housing system has been one reactive change after another.

Housing came out as FC only originally. Players demanded personals and SE said ok. SE promised that personals would be in their own separate wards so that FC and personal housing would not compete and interfere with one another. This proved impossible and was never done.

Housing was originally priced with FCs and omnicrafters in mind, 40-600 million gil at the placard! Players begged for a price cut. Yoshi P said that if prices were lower, then the rich players would buy collections. We said that sounded worth it to us if we got our savings. So house pricing went down by 90% and now everyone could afford one, and some people could afford dozens.

Housing was originally allowed to alt characters. You could have 8 personals per server if you wanted. Not everyone chooses to play alts, but for those that did, this was completely and totally allowed. SE in 2018 realized that if housing was going to be a prestige item, players should not be allowed to build such a large collection. They adjusted the size of future collections, and wisely chose to leave existing collections intact rather than upset valued customers. That said, some people continue to believe this decision was made in error. Some of these detractors respond with forum feedback opposing the decision, some just launch harassment campaigns against their fellow players in game or on social media over it.

So you could say there have been a few mistakes along the way. I'd say that makes it a safe bet there are a few more in our future.

[Dzian]

...

Some missing bits here.
The personal housing was indeed originally going to be in separate wards, however they decided to mix them up with FCs because while housing was FC only the wards were completely desolate and empty.

Since the launch of ARR and the absolute lack of actual social content and interaction that promotes stronger bonds between players. Virtually all those big linkshells or groups of players ultimately collapsed and fell apart.

There's numerous reasons for this.
One ofl the top ones being the total lack of free company group content of any form. Even the free company primals were scrapped and free company's developed into little more than a chat channel.

Other reasons include the game design itself with content all being designed specifically for 4 or 8 people, it meant that Free Companies found it impossible to include everyone who wanted to participate. This either lead to people being left out and getting upset / angry or every one doing nothing. 7 of your members want to farm Garuda. Sorry you can't unless you get a pug 8th. But that 8th interferes with any loot plans you may have so you don't bother going at all, so again people get frustrated or angry.

Then there's the msq. When you and some of the people in your free company all want to do it together and find you can't because "you must be solo in order to continue this quest" which is annoying to this day... its an mmo I wanna play with friends.. it also leads to people leaving other people behind because you get notorious stuff like Brush of Cold Steel in 4.0 that held players up for 3 or 4 days clicking the npc trying to get in an instance and progress the story.. This then meant some of you have done it and were moving on while others were still stuck waiting sometimes for days. This also hinders new players as well, How are new players meant to make friends and build connections when the game keeps telling them they have to be a billy no mates in order to continue the story. Its one of the reasons many new players dont stay around very long becasue they cant make decent connections when the game blocks them.

In 14 for example I cant even tell you names of anyone who was in my expert an hour ago or who was there the first time i cleared the most recent story dungeon., but I can still tell you the names of everyone in the party when i beat the raven in 1.23 or if you want to get even more nostalgic when i beat the shadow lord in FFXI and that was nearly 20 years ago..

All of this has destroyed many free companies even some of the closer knit ones from 1.0 or other games including my own LS from 1.0. The game is designed to be anti social right down to the fact you can't even send your friend a tell if they or you are in an instance of any kind.

The effect of all of this meant that the housing wards were empty and deserted because almost no free companies ever survived long enough to even get the rank required to buy a house and of those that did. Getting members to work together when everything in the game is designed to be antisocial is a nightmare. Hell just getting 4 people into a company workshop so you could advance a project became a real challenge.

So the devs decided to open it up to personal housing in an attempt to populate the wards. Thats why they mixed fc and personal because free companies just didn't survive long enough.

All those players in your free company that get frustrated or angry because they feel left out. And can't participate in stuff. Like if 5 people want to do roulettes or a palace floor 200 run.. well either someone's getting left out. Or no one's going. Which then means all those players end up breaking connections and jumping from FC toFC to FC and relegating the entire FC concept to essentially just a chat channel..

The wards were designed to be highly social, an actual neighbourhood. But the game itself is designed to be anti social and anti inclusive in so many ways that meant players attitudes ultimately become more and more self centred and not group centred and thats what has lead to the current housing situation as well as many of the so called "toxicity" issues and arguements.

[Almagnus1]

But the game is designed to be anti social and anti inclusive in so many ways that meant players attitudes become more and more self centred and not group centred and thats what has lead to the current housing situation.

So what would be something that would FFXIV feel more social?

[Dzian]

So what would be something that would FFXIV feel more social?

How many answers do you want?

1:- Making the MSQ actually groupable.
For example: When 6.0 lands and my friends and I are all doing the story, simply being allowed to do it together would be awesome.. A story shared is infinitely better than a story not. Not to mention this would also be beneficial from a technincal standpoint as those instanced battles would require much less server resources.. If we're playing together thats 1 instance the server needs to run for all of us not 1 for each of us. (result is much less congestion for everyone)
In days of past some people would say but that would make them to difficult to balance or they'd become to easy.. Well these days they basically have an I-Win button so thats kind of an invalid arguement. Plus making scalable contentnisnt that difficult. Just look at bozja.. so making making msq battles scale shouldn't be an issue.

2:- More content with Dynamic Group sizes.
Make it easier for everyone to be included even allow people to "undersize" current content. if 7 of us want to go and get a primal mount that only 2 of us need then let us goin without having to pull some random 8th that you know is going to win the roll anyway..
the issue right now is if you have 3 5 6 7 9 10 people that want to do something there's literally nothing to do . (Maybe fates LOOOOOL People love fates.. /sarcasm.)

3:- Give free companies some actual content to do or work towards together.
Hell you could have a raid or something thats exclusive to FCs. (or even the FC Alliances we were meant to get but never did) I do think Diadem was meant to be this kind of content, but that was broken in so many ways that noone ever wanted to do it.. People HATE fates...and diadem was basically just a fate grind..

4:- Fix things like loot penalties in Savage. If Ricky Roegadyn and Lisa Lalafell need their weekly clears Their friends cannot help them without incurring a penalty if they've already cleared it that week. (again another example of anti social and anti inclusive)

5:- Lets friends talk to each other.. Sounds so simple but really just being able to send or receive a tell in an instance would make such a big difference to many social connections and interactions.

I could keep going but thats enough for a start I think.

[Almagnus1]

How many answers do you want?

1:- Making the MSQ actually groupable.
For example: When 6.0 lands and my friends and I are all doing the story, simply being allowed to do it together would be awesome.. A story shared is infinitely better than a story not. Not to mention this would also be beneficial from a technincal standpoint as those instanced battles would require much less server resources.. If we're playing together thats 1 instance the server needs to run for all of us not 1 for each of us. (result is much less congestion for everyone)
In days of past some people would say but that would make them to difficult to balance or they'd become to easy.. Well these days they basically have an I-Win button so thats kind of an invalid arguement. Plus making scalable contentnisnt that difficult. Just look at bozja.. so making making msq battles scale shouldn't be an issue.

2:- More content with Dynamic Group sizes.
Make it easier for everyone to be included even allow people to "undersize" current content. if 7 of us want to go and get a primal mount that only 2 of us need then let us goin without having to pull some random 8th that you know is going to win the roll anyway..
the issue right now is if you have 3 5 6 7 9 10 people that want to do something there's literally nothing to do . (Maybe fates LOOOOOL People love fates.. /sarcasm.)

3:- Give free companies some actual content to do or work towards together.
Hell you could have a raid or something thats exclusive to FCs. (or even the FC Alliances we were meant to get but never did) I do think Diadem was meant to be this kind of content, but that was broken in so many ways that noone ever wanted to do it.. People HATE fates...and diadem was basically just a fate grind..

4:- Fix things like loot penalties in Savage. If Ricky Roegadyn and Lisa Lalafell need their weekly clears Their friends cannot help them without incurring a penalty if they've already cleared it that week. (again another example of anti social and anti inclusive)

5:- Lets friends talk to each other.. Sounds so simple but really just being able to send or receive a tell in an instance would make such a big difference to many social connections and interactions.

I could keep going but thats enough for a start I think.

You may want to spin that post into it's own thread in a different part of the forum. That's not really housing specific but a lot of those suggestions would be good additions.

[Arielen]

How many answers do you want?

1:- Making the MSQ actually groupable.
For example: When 6.0 lands and my friends and I are all doing the story, simply being allowed to do it together would be awesome.. A story shared is infinitely better than a story not. Not to mention this would also be beneficial from a technincal standpoint as those instanced battles would require much less server resources.. If we're playing together thats 1 instance the server needs to run for all of us not 1 for each of us. (result is much less congestion for everyone)
In days of past some people would say but that would make them to difficult to balance or they'd become to easy.. Well these days they basically have an I-Win button so thats kind of an invalid arguement. Plus making scalable contentnisnt that difficult. Just look at bozja.. so making making msq battles scale shouldn't be an issue.

2:- More content with Dynamic Group sizes.
Make it easier for everyone to be included even allow people to "undersize" current content. if 7 of us want to go and get a primal mount that only 2 of us need then let us goin without having to pull some random 8th that you know is going to win the roll anyway..
the issue right now is if you have 3 5 6 7 9 10 people that want to do something there's literally nothing to do . (Maybe fates LOOOOOL People love fates.. /sarcasm.)

3:- Give free companies some actual content to do or work towards together.
Hell you could have a raid or something thats exclusive to FCs. (or even the FC Alliances we were meant to get but never did) I do think Diadem was meant to be this kind of content, but that was broken in so many ways that noone ever wanted to do it.. People HATE fates...and diadem was basically just a fate grind..

4:- Fix things like loot penalties in Savage. If Ricky Roegadyn and Lisa Lalafell need their weekly clears Their friends cannot help them without incurring a penalty if they've already cleared it that week. (again another example of anti social and anti inclusive)

5:- Lets friends talk to each other.. Sounds so simple but really just being able to send or receive a tell in an instance would make such a big difference to many social connections and interactions.

I could keep going but thats enough for a start I think.

God I wish. I'd have so much fun with groupable MSQ - it would actually be bearable! I think if MSQ was groupable I would make a 4man party and go through the game together as the warriors of light or something.

[Arohk]

or remove the relo mechanic from the game and force people that want to move to release the old house and fight for the new one.

Either way, the relo housing mechanic needs to go.

are you insane? hahaha no.
You want people to give up their house, then start a new clickwar for a new one?
It is more than enough that people are required to do this once, first just try to get any house you can, and one day the house you want will be free and you can get it if youre fast enough.

[Malk77]

It's funny that people who already have houses think relocation is fine. Meanwhile I've been sniped four times in the last week by jerk relocators.

[Almagnus1]

It's funny that people who already have houses think relocation is fine. Meanwhile I've been sniped four times in the last week by jerk relocators.

There's a lot of people in housing that are the "haves" and they want to make it exceedingly difficult for the "have nots" to join them.

And Hydaelyn forbid if you dare suggest to even the playing field....

[Malk77]

are you insane? hahaha no.
You want people to give up their house, then start a new clickwar for a new one?
It is more than enough that people are required to do this once, first just try to get any house you can, and one day the house you want will be free and you can get it if youre fast enough.

Or maybe just be happy you have a house already and stop screwing over house hunters?