Watching Gaming Kinda with Xenos about housing

[Gemina]

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

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

This doesn't fix housing. I am not sure what it will take to get people to realize this. What this does is adds instanced housing.

Let me put it this way: You run a donut shop, and you cannot meet the demand. Instead of figuring out how to fill that demand, you decide to also buy a bagel shop that can fill demand [for bagels]. Now you're dealing with customers who want donuts AND customers who want bagels. Some customers will be fine with a bagel. Others will decide they will take a bagel instead of donut. Other customers will say, "I want a donut, not a effin bagel." Other customers will say they want both a donut AND a bagel too, and they should be able to have both if they are willing to pay the money.

You create a 'grass is greener' situation for the bagel people who still don't truly have all the benefits of the donut shop, while the donut people get to have both donuts AND bagels because the owner isn't crazy enough to demolish his/her extremely profitable donut shop.

No one wants to hear that housing will always be limited. It's just the nature of the beast. The only way the dev team can make things fair for everyone is to eliminate housing in its current state. FC housing is an entirely different animal that quite honestly should have absolutely nothing to do with private ownership. They could change things up and make all private ownership instanced, and all of current housing would then be restricted to FC access only. However, even if they could do this, there will still be an angry mob of players steamed about never getting what they truly wanted. There will still be homeless FCs. And there will also be a lot of private owners who will still feel like they lost their home even if it is kept entirely intact, when it is thrown into virtual solitary.

There will come a time in the game's lifespan where there will no longer be enough players to fill all the wards, especially if they keep releasing more of them. While I am quite sure this doesn't do a whole lot to provide any kind of consolation for the shortcomings involving housing, it still remains an eventuality. That doesn't mean that instanced housing will never be a thing, but it needs to be understood that instanced housing is not current housing. It is entirely different content.

[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.

[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.

[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

[Lihtleita]

1 private house, 1 fc house per server per service account would be nice.

[Kaurhz]

1 private house, 1 fc house per server per service account would be nice.

Personally,

I think 1 FC ownership per service account across all DCs, and then 1 personal plot per DC on a service account. I would go 1 step further and say those who already have an FC where they are appointed FC master should be unable to be elected FC master in another FC.

I would then say that the minimum of 4 members in an FC to be entitled to a house should not count when they are on the same service account.

[Azuri]

1 private house, 1 fc house per server per service account would be nice.

That is how it works already though.

[Lihtleita]

That is how it works already though.

no afaik its 1 per character, not service account