Housing: Square Enix is failing to accomplish what Lord of The Rings Online did in 07

[Striker44]

Therefore, it stands to reason that there is zero chance there was a 50% player drop-off between December 2020 and now, especially since the current Steam count is roughly the same as it was during the 10-year peak.

Again, look at WoW. It stands to a reason that 2-year-old data is meaningless even with equally worthless Steam data included.

None of which even matters given how you completely ignored my other points, and how even "if" your data was actually correct, FFXIV would still have about 4 times larger a population, and that's during a trough. The population at peak times is an even larger disparity.

[FireMage]

There is a world crisis going on

What else is new?

[Themarvin]

What else is new?

Just because it does not 'trend' anymore does not mean it is not still a problem, other companies may just think whatever or whatever, but not SE.

[FireMage]

Just because it does not 'trend' anymore does not mean it is not still a problem, other companies may just think whatever or whatever, but not SE.

Unfortunately in this case. Demolition should NEVER be off

[Ranaku]

Yeah yet LotRO is dead by any and all means. Like as dead as something can be.

Wildstar had its focus heavily on housing and we saw where that did lead them.

Not to mention that in XIV everyone can get housing if they want, there are apartments. Yeah it's not really uh...big...but it is housing. If you want a personal room you can have a personal room. Wish they would upgrade these or let people upgrade them for gil tho, that way i think people would be much happier with the apartments.

And even if you want a house there is often the possibility to get one, on new servers. Even large and medium ones. I snatched myself a M one recently. If you want a house you can get one, if the price you have to pay (time, server transfer etc.) is too high for you then well bad luck i would say. I don't raid cause well i can't focus for hours on these fights but yet you don't see me crying about making them easier.

[Kes13a]

be nice if you made it something comparable OP.

its amazing that a game from 2007 with that "advanced" housing can put so few things in it, even less than a standard FFxiv apartment. a "deluxe" home has 45 interior and 7 exterior spots for placing things. there is very little latitude in what kind of home you place, so everyone looks the same based on the "ward"

I believe that if FFxiv implemented your "amazing" LOTRO system, there would be more unhappier people than there are now.

some big indie games like WoW still have no housing, they have refused player demands for it for over a decade, makes you wonder if its really more trouble for the company than what its worth

[Solarra]

Wildstar had its focus heavily on housing and we saw where that did lead them.

I don't remember Wildstar mentioning housing as a major focus or selling point before release. The devs promised something MMO players seem to ask for in every game, which was more challenging content and that was the main sticking point. People thought they'd enjoy it, but in reality, they found they did not.
Housing in Wildstar was great however, and as far as I know there was no shortage even though the system allowed far more customisation than we have in FF.

OP - I don't believe the devs are deliberatey keeping the supply short in order to increase revenue. At the top of the Housing Forum, we have a stickied apology from Yoshi regarding the shortage of houses around the time of HW (I think). That said, the supply of larger houses is severely limited and that may be by design, though I am sure lots of individual players and FCs find the inability to get themselves a larger house frustrating.
I do believe there is a certain degree of 'sunk cost fallacy' in them keeping the ward system and not considering instanced, even though a sizeable number of players do not care about the wards or the neighbourhoods.

Other games have definitely done housing better; even FFXI gave every character a house, though it was very limited, but then FFXI was PS2.
I think our housing suffers from being envisaged as FC only initially and not designed for individuals, even though it looks like individual housing is the most desired.
Poor decisions in the past have created a system of shared personal and FC housing that isn't dynamic and copes poorly with a large influx of players such as we saw in ShB. The fact that every world has the same number of houses regardless of population only exacerbates the issues.

While Yoshi has said they are working on adding more wards, I dare say they'll wait and see if the population spreads onto the new servers to take up the empty houses there before they make significant changes.

[Midareyukki]

I think one thing people forget is that there is no instanced housing because of how our housing system is designed. We have external housing decorations. We have wards. And in those wards, the devs insist they wanted people to interact.

Because of that, there's a lot of space and instances being taken up with a really old framework on top. Even if LOTRO did it, they don't compare to what FF14 has to accomodate. We should have instanced housing in the same vein as IS to help alleviate it, but even then I doubt it'd be enough. Because there's a reason apartments, which are instanced rooms anyway, are limited as well.

Island Sanctuary is a cute start to instanced housing, what we got in it isn't enough. They are a start though. Apartments don't achieve what housing does, not by a mile, but they're a start too. But that's just the design. The real issue comes in having room for more instances. Because, surprise surprise, we have a lot more players. More than Square ever thought they did. So many that they had to suspend the game's sales. I don't think housing nor its servers could accomodate the community as a whole to begin with, much less now that we're this many.

Then again, OP loves whinging about millenials with avocado on toast rather than thinking about solutions to these situations. So I doubt this thread warrants any further merit.

Unfortunately in this case. Demolition should NEVER be off

It shouldn't because of how supply and demand works. Were there a better system where you could satisfy a growing number of players, there wouldn't be a need for it. The issue is that our system is stupidly limited. It was before, it kept on being and it still is. And with each expansion, our numbers grow and all the devs can do is put a band-aid on an exponentially-larger issue.

We need something else, and we need something better than what we currently have if demolition is to be done away with. But doing that requires effort, understanding and it's going to require sacrifices. I just don't see it happen, even if they turn IS into personal instanced housing.

[Solarra]

Was 100% with you up to the last 2 sentences Midareyukki. Not sure what the OPs opinion on millenials with avocado toast has to do with FFXIV's housing issues.

[NanaWiloh]

Thank you we know housing sucks and there are better methods.