6 New wards Added to All housing districTs PER WORLD!

[Hasrat]

Color me surprised.

But. What does this bode for the auto demolition system? While I'm sure demand may have gone up in the last year or so (with or without shells..), it feels... odd, to just randomly throw more plots at the issue without really knowing how many could've been vacated by now. I mean.. maybe they themselves could know how many plots ought to have been demolished and recognized they need more wards regardless..

Still, nice, but, would additionally be nice if auto demo were reinstated as well, especially with the conflict that instigated it seeming to wind down. Maybe still a little early yet, but.. waiting for things to get back to some sense of "normal" could take years.

[Nepentha]

I know quite a few house enthusiasts that make shell FC's to buy up houses on other servers like crazy, and worst part they can't even see for themself as for what they do is bad morale and just not ok in anyway.

Owner of 1 FC per Account Owner of 1 House per account, and then removal of grandfathering and shell FC's based over what is on accounts, and if some of these FC's is heavy inhabited they can just find another leader of in those FC's and still be member with SIC rights.

I know there is a few here that may say it is ok to have like 2 personal houses or the likes as well, which is still wrong.

There would be nothing bad in SE enforcing the TOS as it is, if it end with a couple of people quitting over it then they are not playing the game for Final Fantasy XIV anyway but for a housing simulator, the SIM's and various other apps/programs is better suited for that.

If only the world worked in the black and white manner you perceive.

[Shibi]

I know there is a few here that may say it is ok to have like 2 personal houses or the likes as well, which is still wrong.

Ah Marvin, more than a few, as you are about the only person on the one house per account speil. The vast majority of players (and the rules themselves) are clearly fine with one house per world, and that's far more realistic when we do play on multiple worlds.

[Greyhawk]

This just tells me that they still haven't learned their lesson with housing. They just continue to feed the Director's ego and stack the everlasting failure of housing in this game.

[Oizen]

This just tells me that they still haven't learned their lesson with housing. They just continue to feed the Director's ego and stack the everlasting failure of housing in this game.

Thats been housing since its released, the fundamental problem with it is that it can only ever grow linearly with the wards they physically add.
The system flat out isn't designed to scale with the player base, so anything they do involving throwing more wards is just going to be a temporary bandaid at most.

They need to focus on scalable solutions, like having apartments that go up to the size of a large with an outdoor area/patio for furniture, or even having individual houses in their own unique instances, say on some sort of island that is also a sancutary of sorts.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

Ah maybe I can get the beach front cottage I couldn't get with the last lot of houses ^^ that'd be nice!

[Amarande]

There isn't. Not anymore. The issue people have is they clutch pearls at the idea of people creating small FCs to get housing. That somehow this is morally bankrupt.

For a long time, the only way to really reliably secure a house at all was to obtain a FC house from an existing owner, via FC leadership transference, and almost always this transference would have to be obtained through less than kosher means.

I don't care if someone gets a house via creating a small FC or lands themselves a personal plot. I celebrate them finally getting the thing they've been wanting.

It is possible to be happy for people finally getting the plot they want while at the same time noting that this has undeniable negative effects on the game community, however:

Editting this to add: I find it clever and resourceful that people use 'shell' FCs to buy housing. Gives them access to the workshop, and they can even have all their alts in the FC create rooms. In a way personal housing can't.

The ultimate problem with this being less "people make small FCs to get houses" though - it's more "because they make small FCs to get houses, that takes up their FC membership 'slot'" and the implications thereof for larger FCs - who thus tend to spall off at the seams like a heavy nucleus throwing off Alpha particles.

The result is that as a side effect of this whole housing to-do, FFXIV has grave difficulty in maintaining larger IGGs - especially more casual IGGs - in the way that is virtually de rigeur in almost every other MMO. In WoW, many casual guilds routinely have several hundred members and a thriving social scene within the guild. Last time I played SWTOR, we had to routinely prune the guild roster of inactive players, because we easily brushed up against the membership cap. FFXIV? You're usually lucky if a FC maintains as many as even ten long term members.

Cliquism, already a notable issue in XIV, is enhanced as well, because of the system encouraging small groups to spall off rather than mingle together in a larger FC.

The fact that everyone's in separate FCs also encourages people to base their communities in social media rather than in game, too. This has the double effect of big SM and its policies placing heavy pressure on the development of those communities, and of players tending to drift away more readily than otherwise from XIV, since they're no longer a FFXIV community, they're a Discord or Facebook community that plays XIV sometimes (which has its benefits, but also its problems - in particular, it aggravates the already significant problems with content lulls and those who join/return during them often struggling to pop queues).

[Jojoya]

Cliquism, already a notable issue in XIV, is enhanced as well, because of the system encouraging small groups to spall off rather than mingle together in a larger FC.

The fact that everyone's in separate FCs also encourages people to base their communities in social media rather than in game, too. This has the double effect of big SM and its policies placing heavy pressure on the development of those communities, and of players tending to drift away more readily than otherwise from XIV, since they're no longer a FFXIV community, they're a Discord or Facebook community that plays XIV sometimes (which has its benefits, but also its problems - in particular, it aggravates the already significant problems with content lulls and those who join/return during them often struggling to pop queues).

That's not a problem created by game design. That's normal social interaction and it's that normal interaction that has influenced game design over time.

People don't tend to enjoy constantly being in large groups. They prefer to be in smaller groups with like-minded individuals who have similar interests. They like to truly get to know the others they play with instead of being near anonymous names lost in a sea of other near anonymous names. Occasionally they will join larger groups for special events but otherwise stay within their clique. Sometimes someone new will appear who fits in with the group and will be invited into it.

Game developers have learned that you can't try too hard to force players outside of their comfort zone and so they make changes to better accommodate the patterns players actually follow.

Take a close look at your own social circles. How well do you really know the people in them? Do you spend most of your time interacting with those you really don't know anything about, or are you spending your time with those you know better?

[Nepentha]

Snip.

Disagree. Community is more than belonging to a large FC. I find big FCs to be draining. I'm an introvert. So I'm in a small FC with a handful of people. But I belong to a larger community of roleplayers. Map groups. Raiders. Marketboard crafters and gatherers. Housing enthusiasts. Sure we may gather on Discord in our various groups, but we gather in game. My venue is being used by the fish group for an up and coming festival. I have an alt over on Dynamis to help fund a whole bunch of people trying to put together a little RP area collectively. I have a map group that I join every Sunday for the afternoon. These are my people. We're all on different servers, belong to different FCs, but we gather together in game to have fun together frequently. So long as FFXIV continues to provide content we all want to participate in together, we'll be logging in.

The days of large FCs are waning. There are so many ways to form community with other people now that it's almost archaic. You may call it cliquish. I call it setting behavior boundaries in a certain social group. And there are /many/ out there, enough that if one group isn't your cuppa, you can find one that is.

[Themarvin]

If only the world worked in the black and white manner you perceive.

It should in this instance, due to a limited ressource, and it would be the right thing to do, those affected should even be able to understand such, after all this is a videogame, and if housing mean everything, then you clearly are playing the wrong game for it entirely.