My Infographic of the Results of the Latest Private Housing Lottery

[Shougun]

I'm going to point to Wildstar's neighborhood concept. As many probably already know Wildstar players could "plug" their housing plots into a super plot. It had its limitations of course. The sockets were static with a fixed orientation. The superplot only came in one size so if you didn't have five plots to add you had quite a bit of dead space[1]. OTOH the superplot owner could choose who they'd let plug in. It was an awesome feature that gave a legitimate neighborhood feel because everybody there wanted to be together.

[1] This was rare because it was dead simple to just add your alts.

I've been a huge supporter of that system, when discussing FFXIV's housing and particularly when people are like "but I like being next to someone and you CAN'T DO THAT IN INSTANCED HOUSING, SO NO WE CANT HAVE IT!" and then I go "OH BUT YOU CAN!" and point out a game like Wildstar lol. There is very little that the ward system does that a proper instanced system couldn't do better in EVERY single way. To which the things that a ward system may actually do better, I'm not sure even the majority want those particular benefits, to which I would say the wards work well for a subset of the player base in the best of times, and in the best of times will still provide worse for everyone else. To which noting we're obviously not even in the best of times with FFXIV's housing system lol. Like theoretically we could point out LotR Online's which is very similar concept, but their system as far as I read last time auto grows for demand (so plots don't just run out).

. . . . . Just not freaking wards, as we have them now, hahaha /cry, like ESO doesn't have that really cool Wildstar ability but you can own like 40+ houses.. 40.. freaking FORTY.. you can barely own one in FFXIV. Sometimes, depending on server, you can barely even own an apartment. Lets not forget in Wildstar it was something like 2000 external objects and 2000 internal objects, and in ESO some houses have near 1000 objects you can place. So not only are the systems easier to get into, they're just plain more powerful in basically every fashion imaginable.

That's honestly just an embarrassing joke, imo.

Like I still will shill FFXIV if someone is asking for an MMO to play, but I wont sugar coat the housing system. I plain think it's bad, was bad, is still bad, and has always been straight out bad. Objects are nice, which is why I differentiate at system (though the system could make objects even better, like how in wildstar you can Z axis and scale objects.. imagine being able to z axis scale a flat surface for FFXIV... so many of those fancy designs you see on reddit would become far far easier to do with far less waste in repeat objects).

There are so many cool things I believe our system holds us back on because of how it is, that you can readily see applied in other MMOs. :/. . .

WoW currently has Garrisons which of course don't quite have the housing touches, though certainly they do have a personal space (hopefully our Island Sanctuary can do better in regards to this concept, better home vibe, less damage to other systems with bad things like the 1 hour war table, etc).. That said WoW devs have recently opened up on the housing idea saying it could be a future thing they don't have resources for at this time (for Dragonflight expansion). If WoW can get every single player a house, with their already fairly powerful and useful (depending on what you are doing) Garrison system, and FFXIV has a fairly un-useful Sanctuary (we know nothing about it, I'm suggesting a dark timeline hypothetical) that has relatively no homely vibes (just a rock to own lol)... Then that's going to look bad. Beyond the fact that one of FFXIV's absolutely massive QoLs being the job system, it appears, WoW is closing the gap on with even more friendly alt systems. If WoW could substantially close that gap then that would be a major pillar benefit for FFXIV that WoW might theoretically be doing better.

Hope SE is ready / paying attention (expansion isn't out, and even if WoW did a good job it wont cause immediate death, so I'm not calling it the death throe or something lol, I'm just looking at the horizon and feel /potentially/ there is a much stronger war of competition brewing).

[Nav_Fae]

Alternatively, they could've just set it so that every ward was FC only until they decide to lift restrictions.

At least private owners got a piece of the action this time.

There was once a time where Personal owners had to wait a cooldown timer in order to buy the house (the old system) but FC owners originally could bypass it. Like I said before, for whatever reason, they want housing to go to FCs/Guilds first. Probably because in theory, FCs should be going towards more people since it's a social function. Of course this doesn't prevent people from making a solo FC. But honestly, most people I know have a personal and a solo FC with house regardless of how they approaching housing.

[Oizen]

I remember when I got venom spat at me when I implied there weren't even enough houses to meet 5% of the demand.

[Avidria]

I remember people who were against the lottery idea, before implemented, and I pretty much felt as much while still being in support of the idea lol.

"You're right, it will suck- but I think it will suck less" haha.

It's like the idea to fix housing demand by making houses cost 10x (or more), might actually fix some of that demand... yet it just doesn't feel right to me either, but at this point until we change systems we're all going to be picking the poison we're most willing to 'take'.

Personally I'm dipping out entirely. This system is trying to cater to two entirely different purposes (FC/social and personal housing) and doing both a disservice in the process. And I'm tired of being disappointed by missed plots, and now lost lotteries. Was planning a break from the game anyway, so it's as good a chance as any to just cut off the housing system and save myself the monthly sub for a bit.

At least I can still store stuff in my apartment though. :')

[Jojoya]

I remember when I got venom spat at me when I implied there weren't even enough houses to meet 5% of the demand.

Hard to tell what the overall demand truly is. Don't forget we need to take into account the existing housing when figuring out overall demand numbers and also those players who might want a house but aren't even trying because they feel like they're always unlucky and won't have a chance.

But working with numbers available to us:

We have 7200 houses per world. There's probably about 500 unoccupied houses in the FC wards at this point on most NA worlds. That's a demand for 6700 houses satisfied.

From the infographic, there is still a demand for roughly 2000 more houses on Sarganatas. 500 of that demand could be met by the unoccupied houses in the FC wards, leaving an unmet demand of 1500. 1500 + 7200 is 8700 total demand. 7200/8700 is about 82% of demand met.

And of course this is going to vary a lot world to world. Demand very well could be met on many of the JP worlds since their player populations are about 1/2 to 2/3 the size of NA and EU worlds.

But that's small consolation for those trying but unable to get a house and for new players who would also like to get a house once they meet purchase requirements.

If 1500 unmet demand is the average for all NA worlds, that's 36,000 total. We'll have 28,800 added toward the end of this summer when SE sets up the new NA data center with 4 new worlds.

That would satisfy about 80% of the remaining unmet demand except we know there won't be that many players willing to transfer to the new data center just to get a house. In addition there will be more unmet demand generated in the 2-3 months we have to wait for the data center to open plus the additional 2-3 months we'll probably have to wait for SE to even open housing on the new data center.

[Hasrat]

Hard to tell what the overall demand truly is. Don't forget we need to take into account the existing housing when figuring out overall demand numbers and also those players who might want a house but aren't even trying because they feel like they're always unlucky and won't have a chance.

Adding to all of this: We'll never get a reasonably accurate measure of "supply" until auto-demolish is allowed to run non-stop for, like, a year or more.

[Lieri]

4% on average means it already includes the less populated worlds...