Housing: there has to be a better way

[Elfidan]

There will be something like 13,440 houses post 4.1 , and around 300,000 players on my server. yeah..... xD

[DevilsDontFly]

Lack of funding I find hard to believe. There may not be 10mil+ people paying for their subs but I'm pretty sure we've got a huge active player base. Add that on top of their Mog Station purchases made and there should be more then enough to at least apply a fix that is reasonable.

The funding problem is not because not enough people play the game though. At this point it's pretty obvious that less than 20% of the money Final Fantasy XIV makes is invested in the game.
What a lot of people think happens is: Playerbase pays > Money is made > Square Enix profits > Profit money is used to improve the game.
But in reality what is mosty likely to happen is: Playerbase pays > Money is made > Square Enix profits > Profit is used on other projects, most completely unrelated to Final Fantasy XIV at all, and just the bare minimum returns to the game for further development.

So unless Square Enix decides to stop treating this game as an afterthought within the company and increase the budget that returns to the team for further development, there are several issues that won't be fixed anytime soon, because the development team simply can't work with a budget they don't have.

It's a case of "My boss wants us to keep the sales high but refuses to let us use higher quality ingredients to do it better".

[Zfz]

I posted this in another thead, but this would be my suggestion:

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Why don't they just have 1 week before the patch when people can go to the plot they want and register a bid? When you bid, you all pay the same full price and the gil will be held by the system. During maintenance, the server randomly draws one bid for each plot and the plot is given to the lucky bidder. When server opens, gil for failed bids are returned in the mail.

Also let people see how many bids have already been registered for each plot, during the bidding week, and allow people to retract on their bids at most once every 18 hours without gil penalty. Each service account can only make one bid per server.

It's way better than making time zone the determining factor and becoming a disruption to real life schedule.

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Obviously, the even better solution is to stop this nonsence with limited availability.

[Talshara_Blade]

There is a better way, no houses for alts. 1 house per account. Done.

Definitely should have been like this front the very start. The leader of my FC has several houses. I bitched at her just last night about it.

And also , SE can take the land rush this update will cause and shove it. That's just dumbass lack of real planning.

"Hey I know how we can make the community hate each other even more! Let's add a new zone with just a tiny fraction of housing by population!"

[Maero]

Also I'm not saying that the PS4 doesn't run well with XIV - but step back and ask this... what other MMO has housing and is on console?

Elder Scrolls Online which i would go as far to say is a larger game then FFXIV, see ESO has instanced housing and i purchased a large house a month after housing was released with no issues. ( and also on PS4)

Here i have been playing FFXIV for 4 years and have been trying since housing was introduced and still have been unable to get one...

[Tele-Viper]

Elder Scrolls Online which i would go as far to say is a larger game then FFXIV, see ESO has instanced housing and i purchased a large house a month after housing was released with no issues. ( and also on PS4)

Here i have been playing FFXIV for 4 years and have been trying since housing was introduced and still have been unable to get one...

The issue is housing itself is rare and expensive. And a status symbol. Instanced houses would ruin both the community of having neighborhoods and the specialness of the housing itself.

[Maero]

Have you not read countless replies from people?
Hardly any socializing happens in wards, i get it is nice to see homes and the like but i for one would much rather even have a house and others as well who are unable to ever log in because of work and the like. Not trying to argue at all but we as a community must stand up to this horrid system which is almost as bad as the rng system they use

[Azurymber]

The issue is housing itself is rare and expensive. And a status symbol. Instanced houses would ruin both the community of having neighborhoods and the specialness of the housing itself.

Housing wards are mostly dead.
And there is nothing rare or expensive about them.
A Large house is a week of farming/crafting (a day if you do it on patch-release day).
And the "rare" factor only comes from the fact that they implemented them poorly and allowed some people to make 100's of mil by buying and flipping them (and LOTS of people did that).

[Miste]

Instanced houses would ruin both the community of having neighborhoods and the specialness of the housing itself.

Well if SE wanted to they could possibly just do both?

Keep the wards system they have now and still slowly expand it still maybe, but also create instanced housing for the overflow and anyone willing to accept that their house isn't in a ward with neighbours etc can just purchase those. So anyone who misses their chance at ward housing or simply just doesn't want to deal with the server up stampede can purchase their solo instance housing and keep it indefinitely and avoid the hassle, stiff competition, and stress of trying to rush at server up.

People willing to put effort in and try to beat the competition and also current owners can still keep their ward homes and show them off etc, but others who just want a house and don't care about it being in a ward neighbourhood can also have homes too to enjoy the content of decorating, having a place to call their own and hang out at, and inviting friends over etc.

[Ryaz]

I'll be at work when servers come back up, so my chances of getting a house in Shirogane is nil. I really hate the housing system in this game. I have to wonder which developer thought it was a good idea when there are so many better examples of housing out there already.