Housing crisis is to close to real life.

[Yshtola_Rhul]

Right now? It is not like they haven't known it is a problem since ARR. The design is bad and throwing more servers at it isn't the solution. At this point housing has more zones then the whole rest of the game. They claim stability issues. Instead of blaming the chip shortage, just be honest they did a bad job and have refused/can't fix it for years.

off topic, but...
As someone who worked in the chip industry (in the US) and recently left. COVID was but a small little blip in a huge array of issues. Production is going back up from the COVID -19 dip, but there was always a bit of a shortage. I think there's going to be a shortage for a good few years to come - or forever - unless the workplaces and businesses improve. As an example, during COVID what helped exaggerate this was a Silicon shortage in the US because no one wanted to purify and package it for industry use, simply because it wasn't profitable, and had forced production facilities to order it from across the world.



Anyway, back to housing.

I always liked to argue purely instance based housing (much like BDO for example) where multiple people could own the same physical plot in game, but I know this would take a lot of the magic and immersion from the wards away since every house would be default unless you clicked on the board and chose whose house to visit.

I just don't find the current system indicative of a good experience. The more you dive into the housing world and community of this game, the darker it gets. Real money, bots, autoclickers, auctions on discords and selling for literal billions or trillions of gil. It's low-key kind of disgusting.

[Oxi]

off topic, but...
As someone who worked in the chip industry (in the US) and recently left. COVID was but a small little blip in a huge array of issues. Production is going back up from the COVID -19 dip, but there was always a bit of a shortage. I think there's going to be a shortage for a good few years to come - or forever - unless the workplaces and businesses improve. As an example, during COVID what helped exaggerate this was a Silicon shortage in the US because no one wanted to purify and package it for industry use, simply because it wasn't profitable, and had forced production facilities to order it from across the world.



Anyway, back to housing.

I always liked to argue purely instance based housing (much like BDO for example) where multiple people could own the same physical plot in game, but I know this would take a lot of the magic and immersion from the wards away since every house would be default unless you clicked on the board and chose whose house to visit.

I just don't find the current system indicative of a good experience. The more you dive into the housing world and community of this game, the darker it gets. Real money, bots, autoclickers, auctions on discords and selling for literal billions or trillions of gil. It's low-key kind of disgusting.

What about having both instance and server based housing?

I know many would want to buy up public plots for vanity. A lot of actual game mechanics including storage and gardens are tied to housing and most people will never be able to take part as it is.

So few are the player with housing I can't even find an ff14 wiki with details on what you can do with a house.

[Claviusnex]

What about having both instance and server based housing?

I know many would want to buy up public plots for vanity. A lot of actual game mechanics including storage and gardens are tied to housing and most people will never be able to take part as it is.

So few are the player with housing I can't even find an ff14 wiki with details on what you can do with a house.

My take has always been to have an instanced based housing system in addition to the existing ward system. The ward based system would be frozen and players that really wanted a ward based house could do as they do today to obtain one. The instanced based system would essentially be a plot or range of plots with an exterior and interior space you enter similar to the way you enter apartments. To be honest apartments should have been an instanced house from the beginning since they are by SE's own admission virtually unlimited due to being instanced.

[Elladie]

I have to admit as a reasonably new player that this problem made the game a lot less enjoyable for me. I was really REALLY looking forward to buying a large house and building it up, but I'm told that its basically impossible because large plots are never available.

I'm told that they are adding extra housing in Ishgard and implementing a lottery, but realistically there's still almost no chance of getting a large house which is really depressing. Its such an easy fix to just add more housing wards but im told its been a problem since day one and its never addressed.

Ive really enjoyed everything in the game so far, and im working towards saving up 50 million for a plot, but not a single person i talk to thinks a large plot is a realistic goal.

It hasn't been a problem since Day 1 because most of us couldn't afford the prices of houses then. Even a lot of FCs couldn't afford them; as I recall a small plot was nearly as much as a large plot is now. So for several months, especially since it was FC housing only then, there were lots of plots available. And of course the player base was much much smaller then.

It's also not true that it's never addressed. It has been addressed on multiple occasions. There are far more plots now than on Day 1; they doubled the amount of wards in the three starter cities, they added Shirogane housing with the same additional capacity, they added more zones to all four areas, and now they are adding Ishgard.

I'm not arguing that the housing system doesn't need work - it really does - but it's unfair to state that it's always been a problem and that the problem is never addressed. Unfortunately SE wanted a housing system that wasn't instanced, and they also wanted housing to be a goal that you had to work towards. Both of those have meant that supply is much lower than demand.

It certainly isn't impossible to get a house though; you just have to be patient. And spamming placards is absolutely not the way to go about it. There are lots of tips out there in Internet world on the best way to beat Housing Extreme

[Eldevern]

SE keep their illusions about immersion or neighborood feeling when most players I've talked with admit it rather give a lonely ghost town feeling. Plus : there are so many wards now it can only go worst.

You want gil sink? Everyone know how to do it : evolutive housing (back in 2014 people already knew).

Instancied evolutive housing can work. Wildstar back in 2014 showed what can be done. Swords of Legends confirms it. I've never seen a better system than those two. With "friend shared areas" it is far more lively than the FFXIV wards where even big FC surrounding are mostly populated only by a few afkers ...when populated.

And the "memory shortage" is just total hypocrisy :
One side :
two houses by world + room + appartment for the main
one room + one appartment for each alt

Other side :
one room + one appartment for the main
one room + one appartment for each alt

SE design is all at fault. There's no way evolutive shared-with-alt housing for everyone be heavier.

[Seraphor]

Just so people know, based on how the servers are set up, any Instanced Housing system would require you to queue into your instanced house, just like any other Duty. (think of it like a solo duty, like... Raubahn Extreme)
You would therefore be unable to queue for anything else, or access things like retainers, marketboard, glamour plates, etc. while inside your house.
This is likely a large reason why we don't have instanced housing, because the devs know it won't be a popular system, and a significant downgrade to the current housing system.
An instanced housing system that is functionally the same as current housing, would require an overhaul of the games most basic infrastructure, which if it were possible for them to do, they would have done it a long time ago.

Simply adding more servers isn't a great solution either (even if there wasn't a chip shortage), because there simply isn't a housing shortage on every world.
Some worlds are at 99% capacity, but others are only at about 70% capacity. Adding more servers would mean those at 99% might be able to increase their capacity by 10%, but then they will still hit that new limit and still leave players wanting more, whereas the less populated servers would have their capacity increased unnecessarily, and end up with even more empty wards, as they now only hit 60% capacity.
This problem is in large part a player-created one, due to discrepant population densities.
Best solution as a player, if you really want a house, move to a world that has plots to spare.
Also, don't be picky. If you really want a house, but you just don't want that awkward plot in the Goblet that no one is buying... you don't really want a house.

[Eldevern]

...

It kinda sounds like you are forgetting appartments, rooms, inn, the split between wards outside and house interiors, the window in Kugane and Crystarium Inns... then... you come with a wrong pretext.

[Seraphor]

It kinda sounds like you are forgetting appartments, rooms, inn, the split between wards outside and house interiors, the window in Kugane and Crystarium Inns... then... you come with a wrong pretext.

I'm not forgetting anything. Those are all permanently loaded and available zones, that fill a fixed and accounted for space on the World servers. Even apartments and FC quarters are limited. (they also don't take up as much space as large houses or external wards) And the inn room is the same model for all players, just like places like the Solar in the Rising Stones/Waking sands, it's essentially a shared zone even if you don't see anyone else there, so it requires far less live data transfer.
To make housing 'instanced' like that for everyone, they need to allow for unlimited instances, which is only possible via the Instance servers, which is what requires a duty queue.

Basically, the cost for having housing "instances" as they currently exist without a duty queue (they're not 'instances' in the games technical vocabulary, they're just zones) is that they are limited in supply.

[KitKatnip]

Considering how many players there are vs how much space there actually is to put housing, since it is in wards and not instanced, it would be impossible to create enough housing to meet player demand. They should just implement instanced housing to go along with the ward housing so everyone has a chance to own a house and not just the lucky few. That would be the only way to make it fair. If ESO can do instanced housing, I'm sure Square can figure it out.

[LianaThorne]

Considering how many players there are vs how much space there actually is to put housing, since it is in wards and not instanced, it would be impossible to create enough housing to meet player demand. They should just implement instanced housing to go along with the ward housing so everyone has a chance to own a house and not just the lucky few. That would be the only way to make it fair.

And again, if we were getting instanced housing we would have it already. This is not a new topic of conversation. Instead of giving us instanced, they chose another idea brought up here for a raffle based system. They literally DO NOT want to or CANNOT give us instanced housing. The end. We would have gotten it instead of the raffle if they could have. Square wants neighborhoods and the feeling of having housing be an exclusive thing or something to work towards. It isn't changing.