Housing Scarcity is manufactured

[Irenia]

I will say that the apartment system is not tenable for instanced housing; it can run out, after all. A true solution would require every character (or at least, account) to be guaranteed a house upon creation. And the problem is that they have said that the current housing system can't scale that way.

The island sanctuary is closer to what we need, but interestingly, it's only outdoors. Given the weird things involving internal housing, I personally believe that's what is holding back housing.

If so, to have instanced housing for the internals as well as outdoors, we would need "Housing Reborn", go scorched earth on the current system and build one up that is built properly. I've floated the idea a few times, and the general consensus is that "the playerbase in general would hate that".

Or maybe we'll get lucky and SE figured out a hack that can give us the golden egg. But would it be worth devoting manpower to that rather than some needed QoL or training new staff or new interesting player facing systems...? Say what you will about Yoshida, but I don't want to be in his shoes.

[Reinha]

If so, to have instanced housing for the internals as well as outdoors, we would need "Housing Reborn", go scorched earth on the current system and build one up that is built properly. I've floated the idea a few times, and the general consensus is that "the playerbase in general would hate that".

Yeah I think the playerbase would indeed hate that and it's because the playerbase consists of more than Aether, Crystal and Primal. Everyone else can get a private house if they want. Deleting people's existing houses for the sake of a few thousand NA players who won't move to Dynamis is something that would not only be a giant waste of resources but also a great motivator to unsubscribe.

[Shinkuno]

Wow that sounds like a massive oversight on SE's part. I'd say I'm surprised it hasn't been addressed, buuut here we are with several busted things in the game already, so...

Because they dont care who has a house, as long as it binds people to the game its good enough for them. And 5 houses might bind you even harder - what does suck more, losing 1 house or 5?

[Zebraoracle]

Because they dont care who has a house, as long as it binds people to the game its good enough for them. And 5 houses might bind you even harder - what does suck more, losing 1 house or 5?

Oh no I agree, which is why it's wild to me that people either defend the system or say stuff with the gist of "well it's what we got we gotta deal with it" like we can't speak out against the devs' decisions. Which, you know, is how changes are made.

[thevanguard]

Different players are going to have a different idea of what an adequate amount of time is to have to take as a break from the game without losing a house.

Classic argument that you've made in a million different forms. But ultimately they're all a clever rhetorical trick.

It's true that different players have different ideas, but that does not mean we can't draw a line in the sand somewhere on the distribution, such as the median.

You always pull this trick, countering every argument you don't like with "some players like this, some don't, some really love this, some really hate it".

And what should we do if 80% of players hate it and 19% dislike it, while 0.9% like and 0.1% love? In your trick they all get represented by the same four categories. In words, they seem commensurably large. In numbers, they don't.

[Fhaerron]

What scarcity?


Housing zones are ghost towns here, there's entire wards just abandoned.



Got my house very soon after I moved to this world (I moved here like 2 weeks after the world was made), I'm at my house daily and I've never ever seen somebody running around here. Except for the 3 times a friend came to see me but that's it.

[Stormpeaks]

Letter from the Producer LIVE Part IX Q&A Summary (10/30/2013)
Q: Will there be any maintenance fees or other costs for housing, besides the cost of the land and house?
A: In older MMOs, such as Ultima Online, there was a house maintenance fee you had to pay weekly, but in FFXIV: ARR we decided against this system. Similarly, these older MMOs also had a system where your house would break down if you didn’t log in after a while in order to have you continue your subscription, but this is a thing of the past and we won't have any system like that.

God I love that quote, thank you Fhaerron, it did not age well

[Zebraoracle]

What scarcity?


Housing zones are ghost towns here, there's entire wards just abandoned.



Got my house very soon after I moved to this world (I moved here like 2 weeks after the world was made), I'm at my house daily and I've never ever seen somebody running around here. Except for the 3 times a friend came to see me but that's it.

Did you transfer to a dead world? I don't know Phantom's population, but that's not the case for every world. I also wouldn't use the number of people you see running around in housing wards as proof of anything lol.

Also, not everyone is in a position to world transfer for a house, I've seen that thrown around multiple times on this forum, "Just server/data center transfer if you REALLY want a house!" Yeah, because that's totally a fair compromise...

God I love that quote, thank you Fhaerron, it did not age well

I giggle every time someone brings this up, it's so funny and sad at the same time. It absolutely did not age well lmao

[Stormpeaks]

Did you transfer to a dead world? I don't know Phantom's population, but that's not the case for every world. I also wouldn't use the number of people you see running around in housing wards as proof of anything lol.

Also, not everyone is in a position to world transfer for a house, I've seen that thrown around multiple times on this forum, "Just server/data center transfer if you REALLY want a house!" Yeah, because that's totally a fair compromise...



I giggle every time someone brings this up, it's so funny and sad at the same time. It absolutely did not age well lmao

Phantom is the new Chaos world that was created along with Sagittarius, Phantom is pretty high pop having (from the look of it) the same pop as other older worlds, while Sagi is the one that a lot less people went to, housing is absolutely wide open on Sagi, while pretty much saturated on Phantom except Goblet/Empy

[Zebraoracle]

Phantom is the new Chaos world that was created along with Sagittarius, Phantom is pretty high pop having (from the look of it) the same pop as other older worlds, while Sagi is the one that a lot less people went to, housing is absolutely wide open on Sagi, while pretty much saturated on Phantom except Goblet/Empy

Gotcha, thanks. Still, my point stands, using the number of people running around a housing district as any sort of reliable metric seems disingenuous.