"Free Company Houses" should not exist, they only encourage "personal/solo FC's"

[Azuri]

They explained it as being "your personal space where your minions can run around", so idk how that can be interpreted as anything other than being an instance.

I can already see the pre-6.3 Live Letter. "Well now that we've added Island Sanctuary we don't have capacity for instanced houses too."

[Padudu]

I can already see the pre-6.3 Live Letter. "Well now that we've added Island Sanctuary we don't have capacity for instanced houses too."

lol, that might be the biggest troll move that they could pull by far.

[Boldprint]

housing is broken in the game, it will always be broken in the game. its been years and years and they will not ever fix it. there has so many suggestions that would work. before people say not everyone should get housing, it was effin advertised that way from the start. they could of removed the need for it with island sanctuaries, but that has been pushed from "spring" to august and even that i think will not be what people hope for. until they wipe out all housing so no one is grand fathered or make unlimited instanced wards, the housing will always be broken in the game.

[Seraphor]

Yes I'm a Karen because I can see that they dont care about fixing housing, sure buddy

No you're a Karen because you're demanding they change something you don't understand the issue with and won't accept any explanation.

I want my medium rare chicken steak and I want it now!

[Padudu]

No you're a Karen because you're demanding they change something you don't understand the issue with and won't accept any explanation.

I want my medium rare chicken steak and I want it now!

They're a Karen because.. *checks notes* they want to utilize an advertise feature of a game that they & everyone else pays for monthly/yearly? For a system that is incredibly flawed and has been going on for years? Ok.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Another thread trying to take things away from players. It won't happen. People salty over personal housing have had years to get over it by now.

The cost to fix their poor design choice should not be paid by we the players. If devs want to remove the stain on their record it is for them to find the resources to do so without taking homes away from people who have had them and paid a sub to keep them for years. As a consumer I don't care what the difficulties are, I can understand chip shortages but at the end of the day I really don't care when this is an issue that has been present since before those issues arose. And we can only assume at the moment that island sanctuary will be an instance for each individual player, so they clearly have some capability of pulling of instanced housing in some fashion.

It's an advertised part of the game, owning your own little slice of Eorzea, and they are failing to fulfil that promise. Taking away from those that have managed to get a house is not the way to fix the problem and sounds incredibly petty.

[Padudu]

People salty over personal housing have had years to get over it by now.

What about returners/new players who haven't had years lol, I came back right before EWalker launch and just walked into this mess :P

Also, I hope you have the same attitude for the rest of their messes - roles/jobs feel samey, viera/hrothgar - "you've had years to get over it".

But yes, I agree, they put themselves into this corner, no reason why the consumers (the people who have already purchased plots), should get hit negatively. It's up to SE to fix it, not punish people further lol.

[Johners]

The solution isn't to take away FC housing, the solution is ensure an FC is actually an active FC. Personal housing is easily "policed" with auto demolition based on an activity level for the individual character/account. I know the system hasn't been active since Endwalker released, extended because of the war in Ukraine but that's not ending soon so should be enabled again, but personal housing is lost by one person not playing.

FC housing should ultimately be judged by the activity level of the entire FC and should fall in line with the requirements needed to bid in the FC raffle. You need to meet a few levels for FC age and having a minimum of four members but realistically you should probably be maintaining activity and members levels to keep a house. If they have a hard cut off for being able to raffle an FC house, the same cut off should be utilised to keep it. That way genuine FCs can obtain and keep a house but people abusing the system, which I know several people that did, actually have to maintain an FC to keep their FC house. Likewise, I know of a few completely dead FCs, that have been dead for years, with medium and large houses (much limited in number) that is just a personal house for the FC owner now.

A limited housing system is always going to shaft someone but I'd be ok with house-owning FCs actually having to stay active to keep their house. Old FCs that died or new FCs created just to workaround bidding requirements are an acceptable "loss".

[Aelin_Ashryver]

What about returners/new players who haven't had years lol, I came back right before EWalker launch and just walked into this mess :P

Also, I hope you have the same attitude for the rest of their messes - roles/jobs feel samey, viera/hrothgar - "you've had years to get over it".

But yes, I agree, they put themselves into this corner, no reason why the consumers (the people who have already purchased plots), should get hit negatively. It's up to SE to fix it, not punish people further lol.

Well if you are new and part of an FC atm you have and have had a prio on wards now and previously. Any FC who has wanted a house realistically should have had one on all but the most bursting of servers. So the question then would be why the salt over personal? Esp atm when they are relegated to a few wards.

But even that feels like nit picking, I rather we can all just have a house that we can upgrade into larger sizes and with a more realistic item limit for large plots because 400 is a joke. Housing could be such a huge draw for this game if they spent the time on it, lets yoink some of those sims players over here...

[Shougun]

This keeps getting thrown around. Has he reiterated that position recently? I'm reasonably confident that he is painfully aware that the ward system simply isn't living up to their expectations and has been nothing but a source of bad PR since it's been released. The servers and the services they run to manage the interior instances are just barely able to keep up.

I'm not cutting them any slack but I do understand the complexities of the problems they need to solve. Unfortunately they are also ridiculously tight-lipped about development projects until they're ready for release. I'm just hoping they're working on an alternative before housing collapses under its own weight.

TL;DR: I very much doubt the reasons have anything to do with obsession over a pipe dream.

I imagine it's a little bit of column a and a bit more from column b.

We know that he is a big fan of some of those older school MMOs, including calling Dark Age of Camelot as a fond mmo experience- which has a housing system very very similar to the one we currently have. It wouldn't be, imo, unreasonable to suggest that he liked that system and thus made it again.

That said we also know things like they programmed with fixed memory in mind to optimize better, LONG LONG ago they talked about how things were not set up very dynamically and perhaps this allowed them to work on the PS3 but it causes some challenges too. As we're all aware FFXIV has a fixed limit on a lot of things, including # of account wide items (they've said that they can't make all mogshop purchases account wide due to memory. . . lol).

I very much imagine that housing hasn't been massively improved because of the latter (server issues), but that the beginning of all of this was born out of a personal appreciation of a system he liked. Though said earlier in the thread I do think their original plan would have worked better, if the system was FC housing only. As the major benefit of the system would have been supported by higher population density. If they had an 'easy' ability to make the system meet the player demand I think they would have done it already to be honest. I imagine the Island Sanctuaries might try to alleviate some of the player desire by giving them a homestead like concept, and I think it will work for some players, but hopefully they can slowly upgrade the system to also incorporate housing. I think a -in the meantime- help to that would be doing something like allowing players an inn room space to be build (perhaps using inn rooms you've discovered in game), upgrading the apartment system so everyone can have one, allowing players to connect their apartment to a structure in the sanctuary, upgrading the apartment system further when possible (like second floor).

Of course also said previously but I would have much preferred a Wildstar, ESO, hell, personally, WoW approach- though I would note the WoW system is not really a housing system and so the list is in order (wildstar, ESO, WoW).. though I think the WoW system would be VERY cool if they added customize-able house to the rest of it.. which would increase the rank given to it by quite a bit.