Worst housing system in history

[HyoMinPark]

FFXIV housing is pretty good

I have to disagree with this system being a decent system when it’s difficult for even half of the playerbase to have access to it for…reasons. And the developers keep putting bandaid after bandaid on this ward system, but they’re slowing finding out that nothing they do to preserve the wards will really make the issues go away. I think at this point they’re operating more off of sunk cost fallacy than anything else. A combination of wards + instanced housing seems like a decent middle ground for people that want the ward/neighborhood feeling while also allowing everyone to have access to the feature should they desire it. And, clearly, the desire for housing in this game is fairly high.


Some math of my own on estimated rates of housing per player—

Number of plots in a ward (main- and sub-division): 60
Number of wards in a housing area: 24
Total number of plots per housing area: 1,440
Number of housing areas on a server: 5
Total number of houses per server: 7,200
Total number of servers: 73
Total number of housing plots available in the game: 525,600

Total active population estimate per most recent LuckyBancho census was around 1.7 million active players. While some of these are likely alts—525,600 houses divided by an estimated 1.7 million players means that only 30.91% of these players will own a house if we are only looking at private housing. But since the FC/personal split with the wards, combined with grandfathering those who already owned multiple plots and with people like those in the OP’s screenshots with multiple service accounts buying houses as shell FCs, even less players get houses.

Even if we took the active playerbase down to a million and assume 700,000 of those active characters are alts (which is unlikely but we’ll stack the deck more in favor of this argument), we’re just barely over the 50% mark for each active player to own a house. And this says nothing about new people joining, which seems to be at a higher rate than old players leaving. One can, of course, argue that not everyone wants a house—but are we going to seriously try and argue that that number of players is 50% or more? Without some further research, we can’t really back this up. Based on the amount of complaints I see on various platforms, I would argue more that more than 50% of players would like a personal house in this game.

The alternatives to personal housing are laughable at best: apartments are just more expensive FC rooms that don’t offer players anything special or different for the 500,000 price tag attached to them. They were a disappointment since launch, but the developers seem content to leave them as is versus trying to find ways to improve or expand them. Instead they cite that they “weren’t meant to be expanded” and expect everyone to be okay with that. I don’t think Island Sanctuary will offer any decent instanced housing alternative either, but this is just my opinion.



Yep. FFXIV housing is so good that not even half of the active playerbase get to participate in it for arbitrary reasons.



EDIT: Out of posts for the day it seems, but I do love how the response to valid criticism of this game with regards to any aspect is just:

Go play wow then

How unfortunate that I have no interest in playing WoW. It doesn’t even appeal to me at a basic aesthetics level. I’d rather play FFXIV.

if you think that is better, 30 to 50% of all houses is never or rarely used.

I don’t know anything about WoW or its housing system. The game itself doesn’t matter to me since I don’t play it, and I have no desire to play it. I don’t really care if “30 to 50% of all houses” are hardly ever used. It’s not the game I play. FFXIV is. And there is no valid reason for housing to be in the state that its in. There’s no valid reason that every player can’t have instanced housing of some kind that aren’t just crappy, more-expensive FC rooms. The only decent reason the developers have given is “server limitations” with regards to shortages caused by the pandemic—but those aren’t going to last forever. Eventually things will return to a relative normal, and the issues with housing will still be there. Likely far more exacerbated given the growth of the game since pre-Shadowbringers and if that continues.

The housing in this game has always been broken, and the developers need to seriously consider alternatives to fix the supply and demand issue. It’s clear that whatever bandaids they keep putting on the bullet wound that is Housing in this game are failing to staunch the flow even in the slightest.

[LaylaTsarra]

Total active population estimate per most recent LuckyBancho census was around 1.7 million active players.

A lot more in line with the actual number of players and not all of them want a house but that's not to say it's not time for SE to get this fixed. They have options they need to pursue to give everyone access to housing.

[Oizen]

The actual active player base is probably closer to 2 million maybe 3 with xpac release. I don't have the figures but you don't seriously believe we have that many active players do you?

Its hard to say if this counts or not because obviously not all of those players are active all the time, but then housing doesn't require you to really be active with it, you can just sorta, log in every now and then go in it then log out. Which I think a lot of people do. So I'm inclined to use the larger numbers instead of just currently active players.

No I think housing doesn't require being active, just logging in once in a blue moon to avoid those demolition timers.

Furthermore the sources for the numbers you listed seem to imply those are player peaks for the day, not totals of unique logins through the day. Which is a very different thing, as one would imply there are only 2m accounts active total, while the other implies that there are far more, and people are logging in and out cycling the number entirely.

This is what I mean by gray areas that prevent accurate numbers. But fact of the matter is, there is a hilariously lopsided imbalance in supply and demand here. But even if we use your numbers that would exclude ~75% of the player base from owning a house, still not factoring in things like FC only wards, entire wards owned by assholes, and so on.

which uh...still not good.

[LaylaTsarra]

This is what I mean by gray areas that prevent accurate numbers.

That's some grey number there when we're talking less the 2 million active players versus 38 million. Just try and get your facts straight before pushing numbers that are meaningless. And I suspect anyone logging in within 45 days would be on the active player list.

[Oizen]

That's some grey number there when we're talking less the 2 million active players versus 38 million. Just try and get your facts straight before pushing numbers that are meaningless. And I suspect anyone logging in within 45 days would be on the active player list.

If you're going to clip little things I say and not read the rest of what I have to say I don't see the point of this.

Go back to magic fantasy land where player numbers are completely stagnant and everyone is logged in at the exact same time I guess.

[LaylaTsarra]

If you're going to clip little things I say and not read the rest of what I have to say I don't see the point of this.

Go back to magic fantasy land where player numbers are completely stagnant and everyone is logged in at the exact same time I guess.

I'm going to highlight the important point. Making up things to push your agenda is Fantasy land and I'm not going anywhere. You and the OP need to stop making statements that are blatantly false.

[SilverSp]

You don't have a clue about the percent but it's certainly not that. I understand and so do many here that you're upset. You can continue to rant but I suggest making suggestions that count instead of spouting nonsense would help your cause.



The actual active player base is probably closer to 2 million maybe 3 with xpac release. I don't have the figures but you don't seriously believe we have that many active players do you?

Thats why i said "im not sure" and "i wouldnt be surprised if" statements. Read it again i never certified data. Read the statement again and try harder next time . no date was certified and no statement was attested it was said in "probability "

[Oizen]

I'm going to highlight the important point. Making up things to push your agenda is Fantasy land and I'm not going anywhere. You and the OP need to stop making statements that are blatantly wrong.

Or you're going to take it out of context and continue to live in a fantasy land I guess, I explained why the numbers are hard to figure out, explained why exact player numbers are hard to estimate.

This isn't even me pushing an agenda, this is me saying there is a hilariously lopsided imbalance in supply and demand in housing, which is a fact by the way. No one sane would dispute this.
Then you got uppity when I threw out an random guess, with a statement not even addressed at you, and I supplied numbers to show how bad the system is. I never once said it was perfect, I acknowledged how many holes there are in those numbers, just like all guesses online for these numbers.

This number wasn't in your liking, so you got even more uppity, then I explained why even the lower numbers are bad and have holes in them, which lead to you becoming even more upset. All the while I've maintaned this number really cant be calculated because we just don't have the data, but I tried to anyway for rough estimates.

All this because I wanted to back up a boring, well known fact that this game doesn't nearly have enough housing to cover a large % of its playerbase.
Cant wait to see what you highlight as important here.

[LaylaTsarra]

All this because I wanted to back up a boring, well known fact that this game doesn't nearly have enough housing to cover a large % of its playerbase.

I don't think anyone is arguing that. There aren't enough houses for everyone. Question is how do they fix it. The fix doesn't include making up numbers that have no basis in reality. People come here to read this forum who have no clue and being disingenuous with the facts isn't doing anyone a service.

[ForteNightshade]

snip

LuckyBancho bases his census around players who have actively logged in within a specific time frame. This is usually assessed by mounts or minions they've obtained due to Achievements being turned off by default. While far from full proof, it's a fairly accurate assessment of the overall playerbase. Citing 24M+ is simply disingenuous at best if not downright ridiculous otherwise. These include everything from bots to people who literally installed the free trial and quit within the same day. It's PR nonsense and not remotely close to accurate. Even with them turning off demolish rather frequently, it still wouldn't come close to those numbers. After all, when it's on, you have to step into your house every 44 days. The amount of people who aren't counted as active within LuckyBancho's would be relatively small.

With all that said, one could make the argument that since the devs themselves flaunt this exaggeration around for advertisement, we can throw it back at them. Although, it does hurt the validity of the argument. At just 30%, it's already an awful system as that number doesn't factor in FCs, shell FCs or grandfathering. No matter how you slice it, the housing system in FFXIV is, objectively, terrible. We really don't need to exaggerate how bad it is.