Ishgard Restoration and Housing

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

In Gamerescape's recent E3 interview, the question was posed, "Will Ishgard Housing be tied to the Restoration of Ishgard crafting and gathering content?" To which Yoshida replies, "It depends on the players ..."

Read the excerpt here:

Gamer Escape: We know that Ishgard Reconstruction is going to be considered crafting and gathering endgame content. Can you elaborate more on what this means? Will it be only level 80?

Naoki Yoshida: First and foremost, how this will be flagged as far as completion will not be by individual player, it will be flagged based on the entire world. The basic concept is going to be that all of the players within a particular world are going to rebuild Ishgard. Of course you can contribute more if you have a higher level crafter or gatherer, so in that sense you would be able to contribute more. There is also an element, however, where if your character does not have the crafter or gatherer jobs sufficiently leveled, you can purchase something like a lottery ticket that will allow you to participate in the reconstruction. Also, as more of Ishgard is reconstructed, there will be festivals that will be held, kind of like a seasonal event, and players can participate in those events to obtain additional rewards.

Finally, there will also be a ranking system where, if you are one of the top crafters or gatherers, you will have a title that can be awarded to you or a tool that you can obtain, sort of reminiscent of the ultimate battle weapons. So that will be an element for the top crafters and gatherers to attempt to achieve as well.

Gamer Escape: Is Ishgard reconstruction available at 5.0?

Naoki Yoshida: That will be implemented at 5.1.

Gamer Escape: Is Ishgard housing related to this system?

Naoki Yoshida: It’s up to the players I think…

So it sounds like Yoshida is asking for feedback on whether or not we as players would like for the Ishgard Housing to have special requirements for making it available. So to that end, I thought I'd open the dialogue and see how players feel about it. I can kind of guess what most people probably are going to say, and so I think I probably will have an unpopular opinion here but I'll share it nonetheless.

For me personally, I think the Ishgard housing should be tied to the restoration. So the question becomes to what extent should it be locked behind the content ?

Since this is high-end crafting/gathering content, it's not going to be something everyone will be able to do. So do you lock out those people from being able to buy a house in Ishgard completely ? I don't think that's probably the right direction to go in, however, I do think that participating in the content should give you some kind of benefit.

So before I give my opinion, I also want to bring up some of the problems that still exist with housing in general. Namely, the scarcity of land.

Prior to patch 4.2, players were able to purchase multiple plots of land on a single account using alts and dummy FCs. In extreme cases, there were instances of entire wards being owned by a single person or FC. After patch 4.2, restrictions were put in place to prevent this type of land hoarding from happening, however, those players who already owned land were allowed to keep what they had already purchased. So to this day, there are still a large number of plots of land that are owned by a small number of individuals. Going forward, players who wish to relocate to a different plot of land, must first relinquish all other plots of land in their possession.

So now knowing all of this, here's my take on how Ishgard Housing should be handled:

Upon the release of the Ishgard Housing ward, allow only those who have placed in the rankings for Ishgard Restoration to purchase land. The more exclusive the better. Perhaps top 3 ranked in the server only. This will make the Ishgard Housing ward the most prestigious housing ward to live in. For high end crafters, it will be a symbol of your achievement to be among the first to live in the new housing area and have your pick of land before anyone else. This prestige will be very attractive for those high end crafters who are the individuals most likely to possess multiple plots of land. This will entice those players to give up their multiple plots in order to move into this prestigious new housing area, thereby freeing up land for more people who can afford it in the older zones.

Allow this to go on for a few seasons of the Ishgard restoration until enough players have ranked to fill a single housing ward or two. During this time SE can collect data on how many are relocating and giving up their land in the older zones. If the data shows that not many plots are being freed up in this manner, then they can start to remove the restrictions and allow everyone to purchase land. If many plots are being freed and housing plots are continuously opening up from rich crafters giving up their multiple plots of land, then continue to only allow those ranking high enough in the content to purchase land. Eventually the restrictions will be lifted regardless as the number of plots being relinquished starts to taper off, and everyone will eventually get access.

Sorry for the long post, but I really wanted to get my thoughts out there as I do feel like it is an ideal solution to a growing problem. Those who participate in the content get to feel like they get a bit of exclusivity for their efforts. Housing plots will be freed up by players who might never have a reason to give up their land otherwise, allowing more players access to housing in general. Those players who don't participate in the restoration can still have a chance to get a house in Ishgard, albeit not immediately on the release of the new wards.

TLDR; Ishgard housing should be exclusive to those ranking in Ishgard Restoration content at least at first, to incentivize rich land owners with multiple plots to give up their land to relocate to Ishgard.

[ERMITANYO]

A point that i see here is the statement of mr. Yoshi-p stating that the reconstruction of ishgard will not be flagged by individual players but by the entire world, hence possibly if the reconstruction of ishgard is tied to a form of housing it depends on the players, which he stated as well, if it is enabled, it will be a server wide effort.

Furthermore, the reconstruction effort will not be exclusive for crafters as it is also mentioned that even players with non crafting/gathering jobs can purchase tickets for the reconstruction, making this system a good gil sinc as well.

I only hope that this system will usher in a housing instance that is sufficient for all, new players as well as veteran.

[Mew_FC]

Eh, personally I think high end crafting is boring and and an inefficient way to make money, yet my FC owns the most houses on the server. I can't talk for the two girls on Mateus, but I doubt they care much about high end crafting either. My point is that the players that own more plots than your average player are necessarily fueled by prestige as you seem to imply. Also, you're aware that you can still own more than 1 personal/1 FC house per server right? The restriction on FC houses was lifted literally two weeks after patch 4.2...

[Dustytome]

TLDR; Ishgard housing should be exclusive to those ranking in Ishgard Restoration content at least at first, to incentivize rich land owners with multiple plots to give up their land to relocate to Ishgard.

Personally I think that's a bad idea. In your scenario the top handful of crafters now have a pass to purchase housing in Ishgard. This means they can now charge an arm and a leg to anyone with an fc that wants in for that exclusive access and if it's not a one time purchase pass, they can just keep joining different fcs, be given purchase privs and buying up all the lots.

[Hero82]

Ive not been interested in housing in the past until i heard about Ishgard so Ive saved enough money to afford a small/medium plot. I have been to every ward in all 4 areas and there is not a single plot available. I've heard of the housing rush on release day and the favour granted to people who already own a house elsewhere (you can just transfer your house if you own elsewhere but if you're buying 1st time there's a cooldown until it becomes available to buy ???)

So basically i stand no chance of buying a house in Ishgard. If it is tied to a server wide effort to craft enough supplies for the restoration effort i would be up for that because it would hamper peoples ability to book the day off. Everyone would be surprised by the release and chances would be fairer to all.

As long as it isn't tied to crafters/gatherers being given priority to buy plots. That i do think would be unfair to most players.

[Harmonea]

If the idea behind this thread is to incentivize multi plot owners to give up their land in exchange for prestige, you have a faulty premise. You assume no attachment to the homes in their present state, and you assume decisions are being made purely on exclusivity and not aesthetic, convenience, or amenities.

And even if you were correct about a desire for exclusivity.... Even for those who don't take every opportunity to flaunt such holdings, owning extra is far more exclusive than owning in an "exclusive" area.

For Ishgard housing to solve any problems, SE needs to make a final decision on what they want housing to be. If they want everyone to have the opportunity to own one as soon as they're level 50 2LT with a pittance of savings, they need to make the Ishgardian house(s) an instanced system that everyone can access after fulfilling whatever requirements. If they intend for housing to be a limited resource, then they need to address the disparity in supply and demand by raising the prices with the release of any Ishgardian wards.

[Naychan]

Ishgard the perfect place for instanced housing.

[Kenky]

Personally, tieing the Ishgard Housing District behind server-specific Restoration is a much better idea than just throwing extra wards at people. That would mean that, say.. Balmung could go into overdrive and get the housing district, alongside any other high-pop servers, while the lower-pop servers don't gain more useless lands to make their already dwindling player count into just a ghost-town.

Not to mention it could give plenty of players still on the fence about gathering / crafting to try it out. Maybe some will stick with it and help their servers economy, boosting general gil exchange which is a server-wide, if not Datacenter-wide benefit.

I can't really see any negatives, beyond the potential of people relocating to snatch all the plots the MOMENT it becomes open. But there's nothing we can really do about that. If people have the gil, they should be given the choice to move.

The only thing I vehemently disagree with is locking the housing plot to only the Top 3 Ranked Crafters / Gatherers, or whatever number you may decide. That is a terrible idea and would only make people hate Crafting / Gathering even more, as you no longer have any rewarding incentive. You're forcing people to do content they may not even like or enjoy, in order to get into the "cool kids" club which could take months, if not years depending on how much time they sink in, or even if they get to the finish line without saying f*ck it.

EDIT: Also, I am aware that what I said above isn't "how the housing system works". But the Ishgard district could potentially change that. Make it an ever-expanding housing plot. First it starts with a few houses, looking rather run-down. Then it expands and gets more plots, maybe a medium or two. Constantly growing bigger and bigger until finally getting to the 60-plot max the other wards do. But perhaps (now that FF14 has given up caring about 32bit OS) it could be all 60 houses in a single section. Not cut into two sets of 30. That sort of thing. The new OS upgrade could use the Ishgard setting as a test to see how we'd react to certain changes and gauge whether its a good idea or not. If it's not a good idea, they can change it rather quickly without much uproar.

[Greyhawk]

Funny, right after/at Patch 4.3 they said that housing wasn't going to be any plans for new areas in this article:

https://www.vgr.com/ffxivs-yoshi-p-r...mons-and-more/

Granted it's been a year, but there has been such a big to-do about not having available resources for this, and now it's a thing? I'm not holding my breath really... although if Ishgard came up, I'd most likely move from my Shirogane beachfront property.