It's obvious they don't care about housing -- last sticky posts from 2013 and 2014!

[timmeh1333]

topic

prove me wrong!

[IkaraGreydancer]

topic

prove me wrong!

Nothing to disprove imo. Precisely why I gave up on housing. As long as placecard spamming is a thing, I wont wont waste my time on it.

[Wilford111]

Keep adding another thousand housing threads. This forum could really use them.

1. Pretend housing doesn't exist.
2. Actually play the game.
3. ?????
4. Profit.

[Manabender]

I think I may have found the problem... (emphasis on may)

SE is a Japan-based company and their Japanese fans come first. That's just how it is. So I decided to check the Japanese housing forums. I can't read Japanese, so I fed the whole page through google translate.

There didn't appear to be ANY threads on the first page complaining about the messed-up way of buying a house, or the limited supply, or anything of the nature. It was all general housing discussion.

Of course, keep in mind that google translate is imperfect at best. Even so, to find that the English forums have so many more true complaints than the Japanese is...disturbing.

Anyone know Japanese? It'd be great to get some presence in there.

[MizArai]

I think I may have found the problem... (emphasis on may)

SE is a Japan-based company and their Japanese fans come first. That's just how it is. So I decided to check the Japanese housing forums. I can't read Japanese, so I fed the whole page through google translate.

There didn't appear to be ANY threads on the first page complaining about the messed-up way of buying a house, or the limited supply, or anything of the nature. It was all general housing discussion.

Of course, keep in mind that google translate is imperfect at best. Even so, to find that the English forums have so many more true complaints than the Japanese is...disturbing.

Anyone know Japanese? It'd be great to get some presence in there.

It might be worth noting that most JP servers are smaller in size than NA servers. Most JP servers have an active population in the 6k-8k range with a few spilling over (up to about 12k on their largest server). Most NA servers have 8k-11k active characters (with a few heavy hitters running over that). (As a point of reference, EU servers run within the 9k-13k range.) It should be pretty obvious that with so many smaller population servers, JP isn't going to have the same problems that NA (and EU) has (have).

Yesterday I made an alt on Durendal so I can take part in a housing tour this weekend. I was shocked to see a large for sale in the Goblet. That had devalued a few times over (was originally 42.5 mil, priced a little over 39 mil when I saw it). There were also plenty of smalls and mediums at base prices available. I haven't checked out the rest of the JP servers personally, but it's very possible that it's not all over their forums because it's just not a problem for them.

Maybe what we need isn't more housing wards but more servers for our NA player population to spread out better. (For reference we have about 7k more active players than JP, yet we have 8 less world servers.) I know with all the complaints people have in these forums about why should I have to give up my server for a house. I shouldn't have to give up my friends and my FC to get a house. Things like that are often said here, so my suggestion of adding more world servers isn't going to be popular, but it's something SE should probably consider. Even though I'm not sure how well it would work, since we all seem very attached to our current servers, FCs, friends, etc. So adding more worlds for us might just create dead servers and not actually spread out our population more evenly.

[GenBroadaxe]

They're very aware of the housing issue just based on interviews since it's brought up in pretty much every one. What some people don't seem understand (or do and just chose to ignore it) is that while they are aware of the issue, they have prioritize where they spend their time and resources at any given time. They're just about to drop a full expansion so that's where their main focus has been, this big brand new hunk of content that includes new locations, races, and jobs that they have to design around. That's where the focus is right now and housing changes may be bundled in there or they may be laying the groundwork for it in future patches.

They can't respond to every single thread where someone is upset about housing, but that doesn't mean they're not listening. They have people monitoring the forums and if there anything like most large companies, those people will report back things they see to the development team for future action. If they were to answer every thread now it would be pretty pointless since it would be continual variations of "We understand you're upset and are forwarding your feedback." If that's what everyone would get then certain people would start complaining that these forum moderators weren't coding new housing systems themselves.

Is SE a big massive corporation that very likely is only looking at the bottom line? Probably, but the people who are designing and working on this game do care about making the best experience they can. It's not always going to be perfect, but they've continually taken steps to try and improve which in itself shows that they want to improve the housing situation. FC only housing became FC/personal housing. Housing limits were added. Auto demo was added. Timers were added to reduce flipping. Relocation was added. Apartments were added. We know farming will be added. Ishgard housing may be on the horizon.

As much as folks like to armchair code and game develop here, the hard truth is unless you work for the FFXIV design team you don't really know what resources they have. Maybe they would love to rip the whole housing system out and redo it, but that could mean delaying other content that would appeal to more people. Or a full overhaul would mean that those who currently do have houses would lose them. We just don't know and SE isn't going to just toss their code out for the world to see.

At the end of the day the design team has to budget both money and time. They have to prioritize the experience for the majority of the player base and based on that, housing is probably a bit further down on the list then other things. I'm not saying it's not frustrating, but if they see NA servers with hundreds of houses available them changes just on more populated servers isn't going to be a priority for them specially since World Visit is a thing now.

Again, I'm not saying housing is perfect, but I do think it's a bit disingenuous to say that the dev team doesn't care.

[Harmonea]

It's obvious they don't care about crafters - last sticky post in the DoH forum in 2013!

It's obvious they don't care about DPS - last sticky post in the DPS forum in 2013!

It's obvious they don't care about lore - last sticky post in the lore forum in 2015!

Do you even hear yourself?

[Jojoya]

Sorry, they do care. They can't spend all their time posting to satisfy your curiosity but they have addressed many of the issues that the player base has in a variety of interviews, live letters and Q&As (all of which reach a much larger percentage of the player base than the forums do).

When they have something concrete to share with the player base, they do.

In the meantime, what have they done with housing since that 2013 stickied post?

They added a new housing district. They added new wards to all districts. They added storage and relocation. They doubled item limits. They've greatly increased the number of furnishings we have to choose from. They've loosened restrictions on things like aquariums. They've fixed the problem with interactive objects that would cause housing items to randomly appear or disappear from view. They've done lots of other little things to improve housing.

I say SE does care about housing based on those things. Prove me wrong.

[timmeh1333]

They need to do more. I can't understand why you all defend them. Oh. Because you have houses and aren't facing this problem. Go troll somewhere else.

[MizArai]

They need to do more. I can't understand why you all defend them. Oh. Because you have houses and aren't facing this problem. Go troll somewhere else.

They know they need to do more. So far most of what they've done has made things worse. At this point I would take a step back and try to figure out how to actually fix things instead of just adding expensive band aids. We defend them because we've seen that they do care, that they know this is a problem, and that they won't just let this stay a problem forever. And just because I have a house doesn't mean everyone else that I care about in game has one. That doesn't mean that I don't know what this is like, or that I didn't go through all of this as well back when the changes happened at 4.2. I'm sorry that you (and the people in all these other complaint threads) are late to the party. "Go troll somewhere else."