PLEASE fix housing

[True-to-Caesar]

You will need to understand house is a finite resource and there is no fix.
You have 5000 players on your server and you only have 3000 plots available.
Do you really think your idea of "1 house per toon" is going to work?

There is a fix, but the developpers don’t want it.

It’s called instanced housing, similar to how everyone get their own inn room. It would literally be the same process.
It doesn’t mean wards would be gone, both systems could coexist.

With this you fix :

- the supply issue
- less complains about housing scamtrade
- no RMT in relation to house trading
- housing subforum free of the supply related issues

Square Enix would also get more people with houses and therefore more willing to purchase housing items in the cash shop.

There’s zero downsides to this. Works fine in ESO, Runescape and other games.

[Arohk]

It’s called instanced housing, similar to how everyone get their own inn room..

Inn rooms are static and don't require to have furniture and their location stored in them.(it just creates an instance for you when required, and not be stored at all time 24/7) thats also a reasonw hy we cant get glamour dressers for our houses (as far as i know)

Also good luck with the Lottery, you will then have to compete against a massive amount of people to get a plot instead of the few people actively trying to buy it.

I still think there should be an auction as well, (highest bidder gets the plot) would also take gil out of the game.

[True-to-Caesar]

Inn rooms are static and don't require to have furniture and their location stored in them.(it just creates an instance for you when required, and not be stored at all time 24/7) thats also a reasonw hy we cant get glamour dressers for our houses (as far as i know)

Also good luck with the Lottery, you will then have to compete against a massive amount of people to get a plot instead of the few people actively trying to buy it.

I still think there should be an auction as well, (highest bidder gets the plot) would also take gil out of the game.

Not really static, because it loads your instance of the inn room which has to check on the server which orchestrion rolls you have, what you have in your toy box (I have nothing, I’m a sad boy !), armoire and glamour dresser.

Sure it could take some space but I heavily doubt it would be as taxing as current wards. That’s why ESO and many other games went that route, and I believe doesn’t have the same amount of budget/servers as FFXIV.

It’s just sad people who could enjoy housing can’t do it, meanwhile in less popular games you just have to save enough money and off you go. When I started a few weeks ago, I was happy and already planning on what I would use in a house until I learned how it really works. Still makes no sense to me tbh.

[Claviusnex]

Inn rooms are static and don't require to have furniture and their location stored in them.(it just creates an instance for you when required, and not be stored at all time 24/7) .... -snip -.

It is the other way around. Houses in the wards are persistent (a better word than static). They are loaded when the housing ward instance is loaded and they with all of their items stay loaded in server memory, taking up resources until the server is shutdown. Apartments on the other hand are just some database entries until a logged on player enters them which makes them dynamic.

Not really static, because it loads your instance of the inn room which has to check on the server which orchestrion rolls you have, what you have in your toy box (I have nothing, I’m a sad boy !), armoire and glamour dresser.

Sure it could take some space but I heavily doubt it would be as taxing as current wards. That’s why ESO and many other games went that route, and I believe doesn’t have the same amount of budget/servers as FFXIV.

It’s just sad people who could enjoy housing can’t do it, meanwhile in less popular games you just have to save enough money and off you go. When I started a few weeks ago, I was happy and already planning on what I would use in a house until I learned how it really works. Still makes no sense to me tbh.

While I admittedly don't have all of the information to prove my hypothesis I suspect housing server requirements would actually decrease with instanced housing. In the current system houses are persistent requiring server resources whether a player is logged on and using their house or not. This is purely anecdotal but from what I've seen the wards might have one or two players at any given time in them. Moving to an instanced housing option would most likely reduce the current server load since houses are only loaded when the player is in them reducing the need to continually add more wards.

As to why housing is this way I think it boils down to a couple of reasons. The first, I don't think SE thought there would be this high of demand for houses which from my understanding it is mostly a USA phenomenon. This allowed them to create a finite system for housing to meet another goal that the housing areas be social places fitting with the game's philosophy of player cooperation. I see nothing wrong with either of these decisions but it was obvious early on that the system wasn't going to work. There is a reluctance to admit the problem and provide a robust solution. Apartments could have been the fix and SE admits they are for all practical purposes unlimited but they did not go far enough. My belief is they really don't understand players who are into housing. If they had made the small house plot an instance over the one room apartment I think most players would be satisfied. I know I would.

[Jojoya]

As to why housing is this way I think it boils down to a couple of reasons. The first, I don't think SE thought there would be this high of demand for houses which from my understanding it is mostly a USA phenomenon. This allowed them to create a finite system for housing to meet another goal that the housing areas be social places fitting with the game's philosophy of player cooperation. I see nothing wrong with either of these decisions but it was obvious early on that the system wasn't going to work. There is a reluctance to admit the problem and provide a robust solution. Apartments could have been the fix and SE admits they are for all practical purposes unlimited but they did not go far enough. My belief is they really don't understand players who are into housing. If they had made the small house plot an instance over the one room apartment I think most players would be satisfied. I know I would.

Home ownership is valued everywhere. I wouldn't call it just a US phenomenon. I think the main difference in the US is that we want more square footage whether it's house or apartment. People want huge spaces even though they don't need that much to live comfortably.

The housing problem in the game became more apparent on the NA and EU servers first due to population density. We had (and continue to have) more total population but fewer servers than JP. Spriggan and Twintania's addition to EU created a little breathing room in EU for a year but even that housing is filled now.

A guess on why they underestimated the importance of housing to players is that they focused too much on WoW as a success model. WoW never added housing to the game even though a crude version of housing had been part of the original alpha files. If WoW wasn't using it, then players must not care. And yet there were constant requests for player housing in WoW going back to before I started playing WoW in TBC. Whenever discussions would get started about features that WoW lacks compared to other MMORPGs, housing would be there at the top usually right behind the lack of a dye system for gear.

You're right that apartments could have been the solution. Using house interiors as the template for apartments instead of the private chambers would have made them far more appealing. I can only guess they went with the private chambers because apartments in Japan tend to be very small and compact with some facilities shared between building residents.

[Claviusnex]

There is a fix, but the developpers don’t want it.

It’s called instanced housing, similar to how everyone get their own inn room. It would literally be the same process.
It doesn’t mean wards would be gone, both systems could coexist.

With this you fix :

- the supply issue
- less complains about housing scamtrade
- no RMT in relation to house trading
- housing subforum free of the supply related issues

Square Enix would also get more people with houses and therefore more willing to purchase housing items in the cash shop.

There’s zero downsides to this. Works fine in ESO, Runescape and other games.

This same solution was being proposed when I last played the game four years ago. They could even keep the feeling of wards by letting players select from a few choice lot views and have common entries in the existing wards similar to apartments. Walk up the stairs and be whisked to your front yard or click on the plaque to go to a friend's house. For some reason SE goes out of their way to try to band aid the current system which I think has more to do with personal than technical reasons.