Open plea to the Devs

[Jojoya]

the lack of gardening can prevent players from crafting to it's fullest extent..

Sorry but that's a bunch of BS. No crafter needs to be able to garden to craft any item. The marketboard exists for a reason - so players can buy/sell items that one has and the other needs.

Lack of gardening only means lack of self-sufficiency and that's actually bad in a MMORPG where player interaction is part of the experience.

Still, SE needs to do something about the housing situation so every player can have access to all housing features as long as they meet the stated requirements to purchase.

Maybe not but it’s the result of their bad design nonetheless, the lotto thing didn’t come out of the sky just like that. It’s because they’re trying to fix a bad system implemented on top of another one to fix an original design that was giving a lot of ground to RMT and shady deals. Still happen today and will happen tomorrow because this camp’n’spam method will still be there along with house trading.

The lottery does not fix anything. It just shuffles the problem around. All it does is guarantee that player to player house sales will be rely more heavily on transfer of FC leadership.

[Nepentha]

The lottery does not fix anything. It just shuffles the problem around. All it does is guarantee that player to player house sales will be rely more heavily on transfer of FC leadership.

That's def what's going on now. There's a few people snapping up FC houses for subs, but way more are just people who want A house, and can't get one without placard clicking hell. There's no real gil sinks in the game, so people have a lot of excess gil lying around, so why not just pay someone else for an FC house to decorate? With how easy it is to transfer gil through the FC chest and pass over FC Master, people are making a killing just flipping houses if they win them.

[Kniteroad]

Sorry but that's a bunch of BS. No crafter needs to be able to garden to craft any item. The marketboard exists for a reason - so players can buy/sell items that one has and the other needs.

Lack of gardening only means lack of self-sufficiency and that's actually bad in a MMORPG where player interaction is part of the experience.

Still, SE needs to do something about the housing situation so every player can have access to all housing features as long as they meet the stated requirements to purchase.


The lottery does not fix anything. It just shuffles the problem around. All it does is guarantee that player to player house sales will be rely more heavily on transfer of FC leadership.

I'm not sure why you're so against removing gardening from housing unless you make most of your gil from selling gardening items. There are plenty of mats that come from gardening that certain crafts require. Giving people the reasonable ability to obtain those mats can only be a positive. Telling then "oh well you can buy it on the market board" is a terrible argument.

and the lottery is not meant to fix anything, it is meant to prevent people from "hurting" themselves and blaming SE for their "health problems" from camping a plot for 24 hours straight. This is the epitome of what I call "tide pod culture" where some people apparently no longer have the wherewithal to care for themselves and need an adult to do it for them. The lottery is a band aid to a bad system while they take the necessary time and allocate the proper resources to figure out how to reasonably solve the housing problem.

[Nepentha]

I'm not sure why you're so against removing gardening from housing unless you make most of your gil from selling gardening items. There are plenty of mats that come from gardening that certain crafts require. Giving people the reasonable ability to obtain those mats can only be a positive. Telling then "oh well you can buy it on the market board" is a terrible argument.

and the lottery is not meant to fix anything, it is meant to prevent people from "hurting" themselves and blaming SE for their "health problems" from camping a plot for 24 hours straight. This is the epitome of what I call "tide pod culture" where some people apparently no longer have the wherewithal to care for themselves and need an adult to do it for them. The lottery is a band aid to a bad system while they take the necessary time and allocate the proper resources to figure out how to reasonably solve the housing problem.

I've said this before but it's actually explained in psychological experiments. Look up the variable ratio schedule sometime. It's the reason gambling becomes so addictive.

It's why this placard clicking idea was a terrible one from the get-go. But, people wanted a way to stop the resellers from snatching up demo'd homes and flipping them for ridiculous prices, so they all thought this was a miracle that would put an end to it.

In practice, no. It's a terrible idea. Housing resellers/flippers easily adapted and their operations are still ongoing and they are all laughing their way to the gilbank. Meanwhile, players are in a variable ratio schedule experiment in hopes this latest bar press will give them that food pellet... I mean house.

Now people want a lotto. Which in theory sounds great and makes frustrated players feel this is the panacea. Let's see how they enjoy it in practice.

Honestly though, all of this can be solved by SE rethinking their approach to housing. They need to significantly increase the number of available houses (which they can't right now due to hardware issues) or finally cave and give us instanced housing.

[Kniteroad]

I've said this before but it's actually explained in psychological experiments. Look up the variable ratio schedule sometime. It's the reason gambling becomes so addictive.

It's why this placard clicking idea was a terrible one from the get-go. But, people wanted a way to stop the resellers from snatching up demo'd homes and flipping them for ridiculous prices, so they all thought this was a miracle that would put an end to it.

In practice, no. It's a terrible idea. Housing resellers/flippers easily adapted and their operations are still ongoing and they are all laughing their way to the gilbank. Meanwhile, players are in a variable ratio schedule experiment in hopes this latest bar press will give them that food pellet... I mean house.

Now people want a lotto. Which in theory sounds great and makes frustrated players feel this is the panacea. Let's see how they enjoy it in practice.

Honestly though, all of this can be solved by SE rethinking their approach to housing. They need to significantly increase the number of available houses (which they can't right now due to hardware issues) or finally cave and give us instanced housing.

Fair point. There is probably a kind of gambling addict aspect to the whole issue. I was more commenting on those who keep creating posts and comments that they made themselves sick or developed a new chronic health problem and will now sue SE because they can't responsibility for themselves.

[Nepentha]

Fair point. There is probably a kind of gambling addict aspect to the whole issue. I was more commenting on those who keep creating posts and comments that they made themselves sick or developed a new chronic health problem and will now sue SE because they can't responsibility for themselves.

Yeah, I agree there. Some part of me does hold SE responsible for putting this system in place and leaving it in place for this long despite it obviously being bad. But in the end, all of us have to take responsibility for our own health, physical and mental.

[True-to-Caesar]

Yeah, I agree there. Some part of me does hold SE responsible for putting this system in place and leaving it in place for this long despite it obviously being bad. But in the end, all of us have to take responsibility for our own health, physical and mental.

Indeed, I was so happy when I started the game a few weeks ago, planning what I’d do with a house, the layout, retainers etc.
Then when I actually saw what was in store, it was really heartbreaking.

An appartment is okay but extremely limited. I think I’ll just save my money until something good comes along, if there’ll be any real major change.

[Jojoya]

I'm not sure why you're so against removing gardening from housing unless you make most of your gil from selling gardening items. .

I'm not against removing gardening from housing. I'm not certain why you're getting that impression.

What I said was access to gardening is not mandatory for crafting.

I've also pointed out in other places that based on what information has been shared so far about Island Sanctuary, the farming there will not be the same as the gardening in the housing districts so players shouldn't get their hopes up that they'll be able to grow the same items.

If SE wants to add the current gardening to instanced locations so all players can have access, great. We've had no indication they're interested in doing that.

As for the lottery, a lot of us are tired of band-aids. We want to see working solutions.

NO! Not instanced housing! More housing-instances! I dont want to be alone at my house. ESO`s housingsystem sucks.
Why cant the Devs simply make more Instances, now that they see how many new players are there.

More wards will not put more players into your ward where you can see them. If anything, it spreads them out thinner as there's a greater chance they'll pick someone else's ward instead of yours.

There was no consideration for what makes real life neighborhoods feel active and populated when the wards were designed. It's not the presence of houses that does it. It's the need to be doing things in the neighborhoods that creates foot and vehicle traffic so can see others passing through.

Ward design does not generate foot traffic. Owners, tenants and friends get to teleport directly to the owner's house. Need to be in another part of the ward? Players tend to use the Aethernet shards to teleport around instead of walking through the ward. Need to use a Marketboard? There are 7 scattered around every every ward/subdivisions so you usually don't have to walk more than one house over to reach the one nearest your house. The only houses generating foot traffic are the RP venues and they're generally just open a few hours a week.

Unless players are given more reason to be in the wards (not inside their houses where they can't be seen) and the number of wards reduced (not increased) so more players are forced into each ward, they're never going feel populated. We'd be better off with instanced housing so at least every player who wants a house could get one.

[Almagnus1]

I've also pointed out in other places that based on what information has been shared so far about Island Sanctuary, the farming there will not be the same as the gardening in the housing districts so players shouldn't get their hopes up that they'll be able to grow the same items.

AFAIK the only thing with Island Sanctuaries we've had are the stuff from the digital FanFest and Live Letter 65.... is there another source that I missed?

[Aeristace]

1/6
Good morning, I've never posted on any forum before ever so please bear with me. This will get long.

It seems like these kinds of posts get derailed very quickly and veer off into all these different directions, but mostly boil down to a few things: An argument about whether players are entitled to housing, an argument about house hoarding, an argument about self-control and how devs didn't account for you to do _____ /ad hominem (insulting people), and a sort of rhetorical "who cares" thing. Mostly though, a lot of yelling at each other about whose idea is right.

It's very easy to criticize people you don't agree with and I definitely understand how given the past two years or so of just the general world, we all need to vent off steam that otherwise just isn't getting purged. Everything that's been said so far, for the most part, does really honestly have a point behind it from what I've seen. Even when people say that new players or people without housing aren't entitled to it, that is coming from somewhere I promise you. In general, and I cannot speak for everyone who has said such, when someone is saying you aren't entitled to it it's because they definitely were not. They're someone who had to keep a sharp eye on maintenance downtimes, wait up until 3am when the servers would come up earlier than scheduled after, and do a dead sprint race hoping they made it to the house first. It was never fair and those people were victim to it then. I'm not saying I agree with the mentality that my suffering merits others should have similar suffering, but I can find common ground with that thought process.

I think the point Athame was trying to make when she started this was to focus on the demoralizing effect the system has. It used to be that the time invested was much more minimal and the event itself didn't drag on, it was like a Band-Aid being ripped off. What stood between me, you and a plot was the speed of our loading time, our sprint cooldown, and the pixels of the path we took racing to the target after servers came up after maintenance. It sucked terribly when a new ward opened and you didn't make it to even 1 placard to buy first, but it was over in minutes. You could go about your day. This system we're in now works differently on the brain however, and is hard to see as anything but intentionally malicious, even though I'm sure no one at SE was just like "Let's wreck these people."