Getting a New House Feels Impossible

[hynaku]

They just need to make it instance housing like how it is for Elder Scrolls Online that would fix the problem and I also like how housing is shared with all your characters on the same account.

[Drkdays]

Go back to limiting housing to FC's or whatever other measures are needed. But this current madness and people (rightly) flipping out on the forum and not receiving any kind of official statement (and I'm speaking of Ishgard restoration stuff here), about their future intentions for housing is just disturbing to me. I'd like to know just what we are getting from all this ishgardian restoration stuff, is it more of the same? Is it anything at all other than some npc's giving us an atta'boy? Is it going to be an instanced version of a house that we can upgrade over time given to us through the course of the MSQ? Is it just gonna be a small house that everyone gets as a starter home that will NOT be upgrade-able? Just give us something to at least give people an idea of what to expect. If it just HAS to be a super top secret secret, I don't think it'll be a secret when your players start flipping back out about the same song and dance getting sung and danced.

Please forgive the multi-posts the automated forum controls kept me from posting a longer post, and also limited by time as well.

Well, maybe if this forum grows big enough we'll get a response.

[Drkdays]

Then again, maybe not...

[Barraind]

Every MMO has a problem with RMT. None have combated it successfully.

RMT will never be something you can beat without fully embracing it, especially now.

As long as you can buy weeks or months worth of in-game currency for a couple hours work, it's a trade you'll ALWAYS find both buyers and sellers willing to make.

Lets look at an example:

I can get 2mil ESO gold for $45 (PC - NA). 2mil gold translates, through in-game trading to roughly 13,333 crowns (it fluctuates from 120g:1 crown to 180g:1 crown, but 150:1 is common, if slightly on the high end, I personally wouldnt buy in bulk higher than 130/135:1 because you can find SOMEONE selling at those prices if you look hard enough) . Crowns have a purchase value of 1650 for $14.99 through the ESO+ subscription, or slightly worse rates for direct purchase (3000 for $29.99).

If I want to buy premium currency (for character slots past 9 on a server, or permanent unlocking of dlc, or a house, or glam mounts, ect) my return is 270% for buying currency from farmers (you can legitimately farm 60-100k an hour of tradeskill mats with the right end-game builds) versus buying it direct.


Then you get into why else you might want currency in various games (14 has one of the weakest currency economies because its complete aversion to horizontal gear progression and lack of quality gold sinks means money accumulates far faster than it can ever be spent), and you'll never get away from the math that it's easier to spend 1-2 hours of discretionary income than tens or hundreds of free time hours farming currency.

Hand in hand with that, if you are playing regularly and arent taking breaks or only take breaks when demolition timers are paused, a ff14 house is an investment. It will, unless you dont use ships or gardening, eventually make back every gil spent to purchase it.

[KayRadley]

I'm going to bottom-line things here. With the pandemic going on, housing is in all likelihood the absolute last item on Squeenix's list of priorities. If a major patch can be delayed by COVID, your options are twofold: settle for an apartment, or give up on getting a house altogether.

[Awha]

You could also try your hand at going to bot route, or buy an FC from someone who has a house.

[Kenky]

You could also try your hand at going to bot route, or buy an FC from someone who has a house.

Both of which are technically bannable offenses, under SE's ToS agreements. So if you go this route (which I'm adamantly saying not to, mind!) then you're painting a target on your back. It's only a matter of time before you get caught.

I say this in the comfortable belief that botting is bad (duh..) and SE has said several times that they do not want the price of plots being within the players control, as it would cause the rather obvious problem it has already caused. shell FCs being sold on a website that SE has no power over and thus, being unable to use the multitude of people using their ingame names to advertise who they are, what ward / plot / house they have and how much they want people to 'gift' them for ownership.

The evidence is there, clear as day. But SE can't use it, as it would break a few laws purely on a technicality and cause the company far more damage than I'm assuming they want to take. Though they could always.. Y'know. Get permission from the website owners to use the information stored on their websites but that is full of holes in its own right.

[Jibs]

My 2 cents. Finding a house is impossible. One was recently relinquished on my server....then was spammed by 20 other people. System is terrible. FFXIV is a great game but the housing system is trash.

There needs to be a special market board in each housing area to immediately see whats open and buy it instead of manually clicking every ward to see whats open.


Edit - I also understand that auto demolish is off at the moment due to Corona. That was nice of them to do for people who cant play at the moment. However my gripe is the overall system needs an update on buying, searching etc.

[CycloneFox]

I'm frustrated with how this system currently is, but at the same time I don't want the instanced system that many other MMOs are using. I like the way how you have a fixed neighborhood with a ton of other players you might only get to know because your houses happen to be in the same ward and you meet them in your daily routines to go to the market-board or retainer bell. I also like the way you can tell someone in which ward you live and they might know players or houses of that ward. You can just delve among fixed wards, which are still instances, but it feels more real to me.
What I don't like is the fact the market eventually gets full depending on which server you are playing on. You get punished for creating your character on an older server, because maybe your friends have been there and now it's impossible to get into housing when you get to that level. I'm frustrated with the purchase-timer which is supposed to eliminate monopolies, which is totally valid and necessary. It should make things fairer, but it actually makes things even more frustrating than they already are.

So I have the following suggestion:

Instead of always having 21 wards for each city, why not just make it dynamic? There is a lot of unused room in new servers where only few people can even buy a house yet. So these slots could go to the busier servers instead. Eventually a server gets so full that this whole limitation only hinders players who would normally want to do housing. That can't be in Square Enix' best interest. I'm not speaking of unlimited housing wards taking up more and more server resources; I would still keep systems like the auto-demolishing, so there are no unnecessary unused wards. But if there is much demand, there are also a lot of players on that server who pay and should get a fair chance to get houses.
In detail, I would make it so that if all wards of a city are at least 95% full, so you can't even get a small house in any of the wards even after auto-demolishing, let's say, at the server-maintenance then this system could just add a ward. A new server could start with a lower number of wards and plots could still be demolished for inactive players. But over time the list of wards would eventually stabilize a bit higher than it is now in cities like Shirogane and a bit lower in The Goblet as the server itself gets full eventually. So we would still have a fix/known number of wards for each city, just that this list is a little shorter or longer for each city of a server.

I know if there are a lot of rich players on older servers, those lists (especially in Shirogane) will not be "just a little longer". They will be way longer, leading to more server costs. But if there are so many long time players, that also means that there are so many paying accounts which are also likely spending a lot in the FFXIV store, so the extra server costs are mainly covered by those servers to begin with.

[LaylaTsarra]

My 2 cents. Finding a house is impossible. One was recently relinquished on my server....then was spammed by 20 other people. System is terrible. FFXIV is a great game but the housing system is trash.

The number of people spamming right now is very high given auto demolition is turned off and people are home due to Covid and have a lot more time to house sit. The only houses going up for sale are those where people have voluntarily relinquished and demo'd their homes. One is better off to wait for demotion to start again... there will be a day when many houses go poof and the number of people at each house will be considerably less. The prime plots will have quite a few but the less desirable locations should be a relatively easier mark to get a house. The goal should be to get a house, any house, and relocate later to a better location when the occasion arises.

Perhaps we'll get some news about auto demolition on the 22nd with the live letter.

The other option is to wait patiently for Ishgard and the new wards there. I suspect we'll get additional wards in all areas when Ishgard goes live. One has to hope that the FC first preference will be very short or removed altogether when that happens. Even when Ishgard opens I would suggest one grabs a plot quickly then looks for a better location where you can immediately transfer the house you just bought.