Petition for Instanced housing

[AlexiaD]

Imagine how many people left this game only because they don't have time to grind to keep housing up. There is no problem with subs but with content open for everyone. Most players attracted to housing in games don't want to spend a hundred hours to keep it. They just wanna chat and casually play with building up a house.

Uh if people left the game entirely because of housing they didnt like the game in the first place lol.

Perhaps the sims 4 might be a better game for them ?

[ThomasOfEger]

Imagine how many people left this game only because they don't have time to grind to keep housing up. There is no problem with subs but with content open for everyone. Most players attracted to housing in games don't want to spend a hundred hours to keep it. They just wanna chat and casually play with building up a house.

Just look at every other MMORPG with housing. New World - Option to buy a house at first levels if you will just save money for it. People grind because they want to make it look better with crafting. And for them it's fun.
Elder scrolls online - Housing in first few levels completely for free with tons of types of furniture for real money like cash grab works well for them.
Because people have an open way to it.
Fallout 76 or whatever was that name. U can build their house in the few first hours of gameplay....

But FFXIV with the largest RP and social potential just lock it behind the RNG system with tons of in-game currency and grind.

And I can bet with you if they will make it open for everyone somehow and find a solution to this problem, advertise this game it's friendly to casuals who want to have pink carpets in their own house and play like they want with housing ....100% there will be thousands of players who will start playing it. Not even because there was not new Sims game after years and people like discover.

[AlexiaD]

Just look at every other MMORPG with housing. New World - Option to buy a house at first levels if you will just save money for it. People grind because they want to make it look better with crafting. And for them it's fun.
Elder scrolls online - Housing in first few levels completely for free with tons of types of furniture for real money like cash grab works well for them.
Because people have an open way to it.
Fallout 76 or whatever was that name. U can build their house in the few first hours of gameplay....

But FFXIV with the largest RP and social potential just lock it behind the RNG system with tons of in-game currency and grind.

And I can bet with you if they will make it open for everyone somehow and find a solution to this problem, advertise this game it's friendly to casuals who want to have pink carpets in their own house and play like they want with housing ....100% there will be thousands of players who will start playing it. Not even because there was not new Sims game after years and people like discover.

I am one the biggest fan of housing there is and I dont play the game only for its housing, having instanced housing is not going to make thousands of people subscribe for it, I'm not sure I get it lol

[Sourcy]

I love the talk of "Large/Med's" are too uncommon! We need more!

My main has been on Balmung since 2.1. I have been trying for a house, any size, any district, since 2.4. I have not been successful. I have lost EIGHT coinflips.

Were I just an anomaly, I'd grumblingly accept that my time may come. But I am not. Dozens of friends who started in SB/ShB still lack houses. Every small that goes up anywhere on Balmung reaches 40+ bids every cycle.

In 6.3 when the new wards drop and I lost a 1/2 and a 1/4 I gave in. I made alts on Malboro and Mateus. Surely I could get a house on lesser servers and at least have a quick world hop for my main to use it for RP. It'd be annoying if I needed to change furniture or get the orchestrion rolls again but at least I would HAVE a house to decorate for RP/events. I have lost every cycle on them as well.

Do the math here with me a moment. There are 5 neighborhoods, 30 wards in each and 60 plots in each of those. Ignoring size/owner restrictions, that is a total of 9000 housing units. As of the Lucky Bancho Lodestone census for October 2023, Balmung had a grand total of... 11971 active level 90 players. There are less houses than active 90's by well over 2000. That isn't even mentioning that anyone 50 and up who has the seals to get to 2nd LT and finished ARR can have a house. Nor the fact that a good fifth of the houses are in FC only wards and individuals have to compete with FC's in 3/5ths of them. This issue isn't just a Balmung problem. Every server on Aether and Crystal have this problem.

This is now the part where Stormpeaks and other Dynamis users say "Just move to Dynamis! There are still houses here! If you don't move it's clear housing isn't a priority for you."

The problem with that argument is that while housing is important. I should not have to give up being a part of my FC and social circles just to utilize a basic feature of the game. "But Apartments and the Island Sanctuary are housing!" is always then said too which I respond "Apartments and IS are essentially instanced housing. What's wrong with making their be options for sizes?" Add onto the fact that now every Dynamis server also is above 9000 active 90's via census data and it's only a matter of time (Especially with the Xbox release coming) until those wards are all full too.

The final argument of "If housing is instanced, Square will lose subs because people pay just to keep houses." just falls flat if you just turn on Auto demolition for instanced houses too. Is it scummy? Sure. But in the end it would absolutely make MORE money for Square.

I'm tired of losing a bid every week and walking to a placard. I just want a house. I don't care where. Hopefully with the cloud servers they just steal the LOTRO housing model straight up and just spin up new wards on the fly the moment one fills up. That way we get the best of both worlds.

[ThomasOfEger]

Not everyone is like you. But it will be like an open gateway for those who wanna try it and get what they want let them think if they want to do a story, casual content for unlocking the next furniture types, etc. This means more time spent, subs, fun for them ...something that will catch them to the game. Not everyone likes the MMORPG genre or wants to play it because there is a lot of struggle to learn it. And don't say you don't understand right now. It would be cool Gotch ya move from SE to make a lot of people play it. They can make some options to the free trial to make it simpler but not so much and give them a chance to try "how it will look like when they want to pay sub" ...easy way

[LianaThorne]

Wait is this an alt account for Stormpeaks? You know what whatever, anyway, thats so generous of you..."at least a small house" she says.

But not a mid or large house oh nooo we cant have everyone buy one even though they have the funds for it.

This is the kind of thing that is stupid with your dynamic ward system. It still trying to gatekeep people in some way. The only hurdle you should have is not having the money in general to buy any size house.

And besides Ive already stated that you can keep your shitty ward system for people that somehow want that prestige neighborhood that the devs are so stubborn to keep. But having instanced purchasable houses of varying sizes alongside it will help with everyone else to access the content.

Except it won't happen beyond what we got for Island Sanctuary because, again, ward housing is what SE wants to create a need to stay subscribed to the game. If we were going to get true instanced, we would have gotten it with IS. They literally hooked it into the housing servers, I remember the first day it came out people couldn't get into their houses lmao. SE gains nothing by putting instanced in, literally nothing. If you want them to put it in, you have to find a way for them to profit off it and make the time/manpower worth it to implement. Lottery fell into that category because it still forces people to stay subbed to keep a house, providing SE with the means to profit.

Another issue I have is that we would be losing something content wise in order to implement instanced housing because it would be a much larger task compared to just hooking a lottery system into the existing ward housing, just like how we lost Bozja/Eureka equivalent this year for Criterion/Variant. Square's development is like a cup, to quote Xenos, you can't overfill that cup. If you want something new in that cup, you have to take something out of that cup to make room.

And yes, personally, unless I'm going to be refunded the full price for the two plots I have + the value of the submarines in them + the time and money spent on them in a general sense, I am firmly against instanced housing being a full replacement to the ward system. If they refund owners fairly (for me personally I wouldn't take less than 100m gil) then I would be on board with it being replaced.

I get that Storm makes some hot takes sometimes but yall really need to direct your anger to the right place. Instead of complaining about people who have invested time into the ward system and rightfully would be upset at that being taken away without any form of compensation, people should be piling on Yoshi to get a flat answer about if instanced housing is going to happen and the reasons for why they aren't implementing it. At the end of the day, even if every single ward owner was on board and ready to take on instanced, it's up to Yoshi and the dev team whether or not we get it.

[AlexiaD]

snip

People would NOT be happy with auto demolition for instanced houses, let me tell you, because it doesnt make sense at all, it doesnt even take space on the servers until you actually step inside of it, why would people accept an auto demo system ? People would literally riot lmao, you have no idea.

Also Balmung (and a few crystal worlds in general) are basically self inflicted issues, but my idea that I put on page 1 would fix that problem, dynamic housing would literally fix that issue entirely and people would be able to at least get a small house, with mediums and larges still staying rare.

Regarding Dynamis, it still is a more than valid option, even if you disagree with it, if you REALLY care about housing, you'd move, if not, then you truly dont care as much as you pretend to, its obvious the system is not changing anytime soon so it's really up to the players to decide if they care enough about a house or not to move.

And people asked for lottery, instead of having 10 or so people camping a house, you have 50+, that's what people wanted, they asked for a "fair" chance for literally everyone, and we got it. It's all fair now.

Except it won't happen beyond what we got for Island Sanctuary because, again, ward housing is what SE wants to create a need to stay subscribed to the game. If we were going to get true instanced, we would have gotten it with IS. They literally hooked it into the housing servers lmao. SE gains nothing by putting in instanced in, literally nothing.

I get that Storm makes some hot takes sometimes but yall really need to direct your anger to the right place.

Exactly this, idk why this guy (and multiple others as well) think raging at me is going to do anything, they should rage at SE if anything lmao, but hey it's better to blame multiowners or fight in between house owners apparently.

Instanced housing if it was going to happen was going to happen with IS, that's what everyone was hyping up, and it didnt, it's time for yall to get the hint that they dont want it.

[Sourcy]

Regarding Dynamis, it still is a more than valid option, even if you disagree with it, if you REALLY care about housing, you'd move, if not, then you truly dont care as much as you pretend to, its obvious the system is not changing anytime soon so it's really up to the players to decide if they care enough about a house or not to move.

Like clockwork. I called it.

People are already unhappy. They have been unhappy for YEARS. Square does not care. Autodemoing Instanced housing would suck sure til you realize "Oh I can just buy another one." Yeah you're out gil and decorating time but you still have all the items.

And as I said before. It is not just "Balmung and a few crystal shards" problem. It's ALL of Crystal and ALL of Aether. Balmung is just the worst example.

[LianaThorne]

And people asked for lottery, instead of having 10 or so people camping a house, you have 50+, that's what people wanted, they asked for a "fair" chance for literally everyone, and we got it. It's all fair now.

I said this a while ago when lottery first was announced and people were excited for it that it wouldn't be the dream process they want. All it did was make it easier for more people to bid on a plot and people who multi-account can still just put bids on all of their characters and weight the lottery.

Ya'll kinda shot yourself in the foot on this one, I really doubt that Square is going to take the time in the near future to fix it when this was demanded by the community above instanced housing and implemented pretty recently.

[AlexiaD]

Like clockwork. I called it.

People are already unhappy. They have been unhappy for YEARS. Square does not care. Autodemoing Instanced housing would suck sure til you realize "Oh I can just buy another one." Yeah you're out gil and decorating time but you still have all the items.

And as I said before. It is not just "Balmung and a few crystal shards" problem. It's ALL of Crystal and ALL of Aether. Balmung is just the worst example.

I aint a dev, I can only give you the only solution that exists which is to either keep bidding endlessly, or move, I cant invent something to help you, that's why I'm saying that moving to Dynamis is the solution, I cant create a solution myself.

I said this a while ago when lottery first was announced and people were excited for it that it wouldn't be the dream process they want. All it did was make it easier for more people to bid on a plot and people who multi-account can still just put bids on all of their characters and weight the lottery.

Ya'll kinda shot yourself in the foot on this one, I really doubt that Square is going to take the time in the near future to fix it when this was demanded by the community above instanced housing and implemented pretty recently.

This.

People wanted fair, yall got fair, now enjoy it.