Watching Gaming Kinda with Xenos about housing

[Kaurhz]

And then what? Freeing maybe 40-50 Houses per Server for a demand which is likely higher then several thousands? Yeah, this will help to get everyone a house. Jeez I swear to god people need to use at least one braincell just for the sake of their own sanity. Nothing will help except an dramatic increase in additional wards. Nothing. Not getting rid of "Hoarders", "Shell-FCs" etc. Only new Servers will help to lower the pressure on the housing issue.

Or you yourself can exercise a brain cell and see that what many players do only aims to compound the issue, quite significantly so, especially under the current constraint of FC : Private

It is hardly about ensuring everyone has access to a house and more about ensuring that measures are taken to prevent the misuse of the system and compounding the issue even further than it already is.

I'm sorry but if an individual or a group of individuals accounts for a portion of multiplot owners, especially in the case with a certain 2 FCs on this server accounting for 90 plots between the two. Regardless of how you want to try and dress this up or rationalize it; it is still a clear problem, much so that they have had to introduce countermeasures to prevent the issue from compounding even more.

Under their current system with instancing housing, there is always going to be a degree of hard-limitation on plot availability, so it isn't really just a matter of simply adding wards and calling it a day. As much as I wish this were the case, it isn't. So yes, I do firmly stand by the point that people should not have grandfathered plots, especially under the abysmal system. -- All they will continue to do is attempt to dissuade these would-be multi-plot owners by introducing systems that arguably become more of an inconvenience to actual players trying to obtain a plot. It's an abysmal feature that people are required to wait 30 days from their FC creation to even attempt getting a house, and this is a feature simply because people want to engage either in RMT of FC plots, and because they wish to hoard.

This is a good point. I get wanting to punish those who gamed the system and got grandfathered into multiple houses, but putting in the effort to fix that would be a drop in the bucket compared to the demand. Basically, it'd be a PR move that would make us feel good and not much else.

The issue is that given they put all this effort into a lottery system signals that developing a 1 to 1 instance housing system would take too long to show results to work, outside of a side project that won't really get in the way of patch release content.

Hah, given this sad state of affairs, perhaps some PR would be nice, but that feeling of satisfaction wouldn't last long.

The problem is not necessarily related to just increasing the demand as that is without saying a small availability in the overall sum of things, but it shouldn't be a behaviour that is allowed to fester simply because of their lack of desire for stepping on players' toes for behaviour that arguably they dislike based on their trends with introducing systems.

To put it into perspective, whilst people see this as an acceptable thing to do they shall continue to attempt to find new ways to skirt these systems, be it through just more inconvenient measures of obtaining a house, or simply playing the long game with buying and waiting. The actual issue only comes with the fact that they deal with this behaviour by indirectly addressing it by introducing systems that are an inconvenience to players or a group of players.

Why should an FC be required to wait 30 days post-creation, or post-invitation to FC in order to stand a chance in purchasing a plot? I can certainly tell you this system was introduced precisely because of some of the methods people go about for buying multiple FC plots.

[Jojoya]

Why should an FC be required to wait 30 days post-creation, or post-invitation to FC in order to stand a chance in purchasing a plot? I can certainly tell you this system was introduced precisely because of some of the methods people go about for buying multiple FC plots.

The 30 days has nothing to do with multiple plot owners. Someone who wants multiple houses isn't going to worry about waiting a month. It's not a long period of time.

The 30 days is to try to curb housing purchases made to resell for profit (mostly RMT but even gil resales to some extent). Until now, it was run in, grab fast, sell fast and get out before it could be detected. The hope was the waiting period would deter resale activity.

Already we're seeing that it doesn't appear to be having the desired effect as houses are still getting listed on the resale sites and discords. What we don't know is if SE is going to make use of that 30 day period to aggressively track FC that appear to be getting created solely for house resale and crack down on those participating.

This is definitely a case if focusing on the wrong issue.

ADD INSTANCED HOUSING YOU IDIOTS. NO EXCUSES. DO IT.

We already have instanced housing. It's called apartments.

Instead of screaming "DO IT!" we need to be screaming "IMPROVE IT!!"

[Brygd]

We already have instanced housing. It's called apartments.

Instead of screaming "DO IT!" we need to be screaming "IMPROVE IT!!"

I hate this answer, because although true, apartments are such huge downgrades to even a small house. I'm nervous if the devs actually implement "instanced housing", that they would give us the monkey paw's edition of be careful what you ask for.

The current housing system is infuriating. For other game features, such as crafting, raiding, rare fishing or pvp, I know that if I work hard I'll have multiple attempts on a regular basis to improve myself and strive towards achieving my goals. That feels good, even when I face setbacks. With the lottery housing system, a key feature I desire is impossible to work for. I'll dump 20 million gil into every lottery, but I can't practice at winning the lottery. It's not like a rare equipment drop, where I can just run the raid again to strive for the drop. Hell, FFXIV raids tend to have tokens to reduce the RNG element of your gear not dropping. Housing before lottery was painful, and I remember how much my wrist throbbed from clicking the signs. However, the new lottery system just vastly increased the RNG nature of housing... which makes an individual feel miserable when they lose.

To compound matters, I'm fairly certain the devs don't prioritize personal housing. There's been messaging for the zero error bug, but the devs to my knowledge have never addressed the fact that a highly desired element of the game is inaccessible to a large portion of the player base. While MSQ/Raids/Trials should take a higher priority, we're now facing a decade of failing to address the issue, which has festered. Some players still cry "devs think personal housing was a mistake!", yet they sure as hell marketed the feature.

[Gemina]

The current housing system is infuriating. For other game features, such as crafting, raiding, rare fishing or pvp, I know that if I work hard I'll have multiple attempts on a regular basis to improve myself and strive towards achieving my goals. That feels good, even when I face setbacks. With the lottery housing system, a key feature I desire is impossible to work for. I'll dump 20 million gil into every lottery, but I can't practice at winning the lottery. It's not like a rare equipment drop, where I can just run the raid again to strive for the drop. Hell, FFXIV raids tend to have tokens to reduce the RNG element of your gear not dropping. Housing before lottery was painful, and I remember how much my wrist throbbed from clicking the signs. However, the new lottery system just vastly increased the RNG nature of housing... which makes an individual feel miserable when they lose.

Totally off topic, so apologies in advance. But I couldn't help but come to a realization that this is what I hated so much about Bozja: The solo battles. And also to a lesser extent, the critical engagements themselves. It was the lack of opportunities that drove me batty. Anytime I get my arse handed to me in a duty, I want nothing more than to get back in there and try again, learn from the mistakes, and improve.

I bring this up because I like your take on it. By presenting some critical thinking, and providing your own voice on the matter, it is far easier for me to find a way to relate to your frustration. Where I will argue with you though is the erroneous mindset that the devs don't care. Coming up short to truly fix the issue does not mean they do not care. Their continued attempts to address the issue, and how prompt they were to inform the community via lodestone during the initial lottery crisis should speak otherwise.

What it does mean is that the issue is a white whale. Using this analogy though is not to be misunderstood. The housing issue itself is the white whale, but the dev team is not Ahab. They are the ocean wherein Moby-Dick resides. Taking the role of Ahab, is the playerbase.

[Brygd]

Where I will argue with you though is the erroneous mindset that the devs don't care. Coming up short to truly fix the issue does not mean they do not care. Their continued attempts to address the issue, and how prompt they were to inform the community via lodestone during the initial lottery crisis should speak otherwise.

I agree with your point there and I've moderated the tone a bit. I suppose my frustration is that while they were very open and communicative about the lotto bug, the lottery shouldn't be required in the first place. The devs have been responsive to a plethora of topics over the years, but they have never addressed the root issue of insufficient housing. Adding more wards with the 20 small, 7 medium and 3 large housing split also makes less and less sense as a maturing population accumulates more wealth in game and desires bigger plots. Toss in the population surge, and the 75/25 FC/Personal split and it is very easy for a player to feel that they are an afterthought for devs when they're pursuing personal housing.

It is possible that they're working on a solution. Yet, I'm also afraid that due to the vastly higher N/A population per server compared to the Japanese servers, the N/A housing crisis isn't even registering to them.

[Velvet_Lunarfang]

I agree with your point there and I've moderated the tone a bit. I suppose my frustration is that while they were very open and communicative about the lotto bug, the lottery shouldn't be required in the first place. The devs have been responsive to a plethora of topics over the years, but they have never addressed the root issue of insufficient housing. Adding more wards with the 20 small, 7 medium and 3 large housing split also makes less and less sense as a maturing population accumulates more wealth in game and desires bigger plots. Toss in the population surge, and the 75/25 FC/Personal split and it is very easy for a player to feel that they are an afterthought for devs when they're pursuing personal housing.

It is possible that they're working on a solution. Yet, I'm also afraid that due to the vastly higher N/A population per server compared to the Japanese servers, the N/A housing crisis isn't even registering to them.

They had years to fix the housing issues but instead they worry about trivial things such as umbrellas and wings. Idc about that crap instead of cosmetics that everyone rarely uses improve more important things such as the UI and housing for starters. I am tired of the excuse everytime that the servers can't handle it that is a lazy BS excuse

[Kaurhz]

The 30 days has nothing to do with multiple plot owners. Someone who wants multiple houses isn't going to worry about waiting a month. It's not a long period of time.

The 30 days is to try to curb housing purchases made to resell for profit (mostly RMT but even gil resales to some extent). Until now, it was run in, grab fast, sell fast and get out before it could be detected. The hope was the waiting period would deter resale activity.

Already we're seeing that it doesn't appear to be having the desired effect as houses are still getting listed on the resale sites and discords. What we don't know is if SE is going to make use of that 30 day period to aggressively track FC that appear to be getting created solely for house resale and crack down on those participating.


We already have instanced housing. It's called apartments.

Instead of screaming "DO IT!" we need to be screaming "IMPROVE IT!!"

That could cover the 30d requirement for member entry, not FC creation. If their attempt to curb the resale of plots via FC then the only system in place that would be consequential to them doing so is the 30d member entry for electing a new master. The 30d creation requirement for FCs most certainly at the very least was done with the intent of curbing people from purchasing multiple FCs, be it for the purpose of later reselling or hoarding. At the very least making it more inconvenient to do so. As far as plot resale for FCs is concerned the FC creation requirement is inconsequential.

There are 2 restrictions in place, and one of them is basically irrelevant to the resale of plots and more relevant to people snapping up multiple FCs plots in very quick succession without a modicum of planning prior. As far as I'm concerned and as far as I can see both are done to curb RMT resale and black market plots in addition to those who find it suitable to buy out multiple plots/wards for RP, or submarines.