Remove FC housing entirely

[Jojoya]

I have never in my life seen a single person express this. Outside of periods where the demo-timer is off, housing is always viable to acquire.

Then it's clear you don't read through all the posts in this forum. Many have expressed they believe housing to be a prestige system that not everyone should have access to.

And no, demolition has done little to make housing viable to acquire when the overall supply of plots has always been fair less than the demand.

I lost my first house through demolition when I was unable to play for 9 weeks back at the start of Stormblood (I got back barely in time to reclaim my gil and furnishings from the Resident Caretaker). There was zero housing available at my return. I was thinking to myself "Okay, then I'll wait for Shirogane to open to get another house, that's only a couple of months away." Couldn't get a house when Shiro opened, not even from the plots in other districts vacated by those who relocated to Shirogane.

I did finally get my house in 4.2 and still have the same plot today. But that's because SE increased the number of available plots by 50%, not because of demolition.

Demolition does help keep a small number of plots circulating back into the system but it has never made it viable for everyone who wants a house to get one except on the low population worlds. And none of the NA worlds are low population.

It sucks because it still has exploitable loopholes that are being abused.

It sucks because if SE had designed a proper housing system in the first place, there would be no restrictions to get abused.

[CatStarwind]

Then it's clear you don't read through all the posts in this forum. Many have expressed they believe housing to be a prestige system that not everyone should have access to.

Obviously not enough for me to notice so I'm not sure what's to gain in giving more exposure to such a minority opinion.

And no, demolition has done little to make housing viable to acquire when the overall supply of plots has always been fair less than the demand.

I'm not sure what data center you're in but any time the demolition timer is on, there was always a handful of plots available. There's a reason why prices use to decay over time, which is coincidentally how I was able to afford mine. You probably should've just simply moved Worlds.

It sucks because if SE had designed a proper housing system in the first place, there would be no restrictions to get abused.

Neither ward nor instanced is "proper" they are just different styles, both with their pros and cons. The nice thing about SE is that they offer both.

[Seraphor]

I would say specific plots in a ward should be regarded as a prestige system.
Neighbourhood plots are by design limited, you can't have unlimited versions of the same plots without completely undermining the 'neighbourhood' design. Each ward is made up of 30 distinct physical locations, and some are going to be more popular than others, that's an unavoidable truth.
If you're on board with physical neighbourhoods, then you have to accept this. There is a limited prestige system and it's by design.

But functional features, the ability to use a full garden and full sized house, shouldn't be a prestige system. These aren't cosmetic, they're functional gameplay elements. Apartments provide the same format, but they don't provide the same scope.

And in my experience, FC houses work with the whole neighbourhood dynamic because FC houses are active, members hang out at their FC house. Private houses are largely dead space, because the chances if you visiting someone else's house is already fairly low, and when it happens, the chances of you being there at the same time as them, or anyone else really, is virtually non-existent.
Hence: FC houses should use a neighbourhood system, private houses should be instanced and unrestricted except by player resource, i.e. only limited by Gil. In my opinion.

But there's no reason why private housing shouldn't also interact with this prestige plot system as well. If players want to compete for that prestige individually. But the instanced option as a baseline should be there.

[UkcsAlias]

I have never in my life seen a single person express this. Outside of periods where the demo-timer is off, housing is always viable to acquire.


It sucks because it still has exploitable loopholes that are being abused.

These 2 lines contradict each other. Exploitable loopholes are normaly only needed when its not viable to obtain a house. That they exist and are being abused is proof of the issue being there, hence not being viable. Otherwise abusing it wont have any effect, and then the question becomes: is it realy a loophole in that case?

So no, housing is still a problem.

But i think the best update they could do is making them not strictly tied to a server anymore (the server name is there for address reasons only, but someone on server A can just buy one in server B). This makes the total housing scale better towards an entire DC, and as a result, adding additional wards on empty servers means they will still be used instead of having half the server empty (and slowly taken over by dummy fcs/bots etc).

[Elevin]

If all housing was instanced in the first place, these discussions wouldn't be happening.

If ward housing is going to continue to be a thing, then FCs should still be able to get a house but SE should remove all the economic advantages to ownership. Those getting a house solely for workshop or garden would no longer get one; FCs would still have their customizable space for social gatherings without being limited to some generic space (unless SE finally decided to do instanced housing right and offers variety in locations).


The mistake was SE's original assumption that players don't want personal houses and that only FCs would. Considering the number of players already using a FC house as a personal house because that was the only way to get a house for a while, removing personal plot ownership wouldn't accomplish anything.

But...but...my workshops :O

If SE do that, then they need to move all the items from workshops and all the items from gardening to other parts of the game.

But the reality is they won't because they keep adding exclusive workshop content that keeps making us FC owners richer and richer.

[CatStarwind]

Exploitable loopholes are normaly only needed when its not viable to obtain a house.

The abused loophole isn't for acquiring a single house, it's for acquiring entire wards worth of houses. It exploits an edge case to circumvent the official requirements.

[Elevin]

From what I understand, they had originally told players that personal housing would be an entirely separate system. The assumption is that they changed their minds and lumped personal into the wards when the wards remained mostly empty. The interest in FC housing either was not there, or no one was interested for the prices being charged at that time.

I'm definitely one who would love to see a good instanced housing system implemented. I also believe that ward housing and instanced housing can co-exist without issues. Most of the pushback seems to come from those who seem to want housing to be a prestige system in a game that pretty much lacks prestige systems outside of Ultimate, and if others were able to easily get a house their own purchase wouldn't feel as special.

The separation of wards would have been perfectly fine on new world with 10 wards for FCs and then all new wards etc for personal especially with auto demolition enabled. That would have worked in the long run. But because people were getting upset that the FC wards still had small houses available, there were push backs on that. Now all those people that were complaining about all those smalls being available now have to contend with FCs dropping 30 extra tickets on their favourite large house.

[Jojoya]

But...but...my workshops :O

If SE do that, then they need to move all the items from workshops and all the items from gardening to other parts of the game.

But the reality is they won't because they keep adding exclusive workshop content that keeps making us FC owners richer and richer.

Which many of us have been suggesting for the last few years. Detach the workshops from housing. Attach them to the Grand Company HQs or another location. This not only has benefit if reducing demand for plots, it has the potential to give new formed FCs access to an income sooner to support FC activity. Other than the cost for the initial purchase of the workshop along with first sub and airship, it is possible make a workshop self-sufficient (though it does slow down rate of progression).

One player's desire for multiple workshops then wouldn't interfere with the ability of other players to get a house, or even to likewise get multiple workshops if desired. But I do suspect they would either remove or nerf the value of Salvaged Accessories into the floor. The game's already got a problem with gil generation versus gil sinks to remove part of it back out.

Gardens likely could be accessed from a different location so every player could have a garden, not just house owners. We know that they're working allowing outdoor furnishing placement in Island Sanctuary. Will that include the Garden Patches? If so, there's something else that would reduce demand for houses.

The separation of wards would have been perfectly fine on new world with 10 wards for FCs and then all new wards etc for personal especially with auto demolition enabled. That would have worked in the long run. But because people were getting upset that the FC wards still had small houses available, there were push backs on that. Now all those people that were complaining about all those smalls being available now have to contend with FCs dropping 30 extra tickets on their favourite large house.

It's going to be an uphill battle satisfying players when the system as is cannot deliver to every player a plot, let alone the specific plot the player wants.

I understand why the separation to guarantee FCs are able to get a house but can't agree with the design decisions that cause that to be necessary in the first place.

It's been 9 years since patch 2.1 was released and housing was added to the game. It's a shame that SE won't acknowledge the design flaws that turn what should be a 100% positive game experience for every player into one that is negative for far too many players and make the necessary changes to prevent that. More wards is not the answer when the ward system limits how many players can acquire a specific plot location.

[Elevin]

It's going to be an uphill battle satisfying players when the system as is cannot deliver to every player a plot, let alone the specific plot the player wants.

I understand why the separation to guarantee FCs are able to get a house but can't agree with the design decisions that cause that to be necessary in the first place.

It's been 9 years since patch 2.1 was released and housing was added to the game. It's a shame that SE won't acknowledge the design flaws that turn what should be a 100% positive game experience for every player into one that is negative for far too many players and make the necessary changes to prevent that. More wards is not the answer when the ward system limits how many players can acquire a specific plot location.

I won't lie, i do like the ward system a lot because I have neighbours that i've made friends with that I wouldn't have met otherwise. In fact, i've made friends with far more people through housing than I ever have going to a city.

Most of the issues with housing seem to be surrounding medium and large plots. Personally, I'd love a medium (i haven't been lucky yet) and in a very specific location due to sunsets and sunrises etc.

But, the housing areas quite frankly are terribly designed to the point that exploring with a friend goblet, one plot had shirogane castle walls that were clipped all the way into the steps.

A redesign of the housing wards (which shouldn't be an issue since people are registered to plots, not coordinates) and then potentially changing it so the sizes of the plots can be increased/decreased by the player's choice. (probably redesign some house walls as shirogane castle is too tall as well) This would make A LOT of people happy and reduce many of the issues with housing which is cantered around size. To increase a plot size, obviously would need to pay the required sum amount.

This would be great as there are A LOT of small plots in excellent locations around, like for example, in Shirogane alone, you have 4 smalls right next to the beach and 2 mediums. That would be upped to 6 plots of any size right next to the beach, 12 per ward if they were to keep the rough layout whilst increasing the size of the district.

[ThatsStellar]

We already have instanced housing: Apartments.

Sorry to ruin the illusion, but apartments aren't instanced. There's a max of about 90 per half ward, I've even heard of them being unavailable on contested servers at times.