Housing gameplay is unhealthy for the players.

[Bridgeburner]

The act of camping a house timer is unhealthy for the player base.

I know we're getting new housing soon, and I appreciate that. But the core housing gameplay loop - if you want to call it that - is bad, not just from the "I don't like this thing" point of view, but from the "This encourages unhealthy behaviors" perspective.

Currently, houses that come available for sale are on a random purchase timer. This is invisible to players, presumably to prevent person-to-person transfers. There are problems with this approach:

• The purchase timer can span multiple devaluation windows, preventing the gil sink from working as well as it could.
• Illegal tools (botters and automation) have an inherent advantage in not getting tired, hungry, or sick.
• Players will camp the for-sale sign, spamming the same commands over and over, for hours on end, to the exclusion of further involvement with the game world.

It's that last point I'd hope to see addressed. While developers can't directly control player behavior, they can take steps to not incentivize detrimental play styles.

The current system encourages players to sit in place, not enjoying FFXIV, while they repeatedly cycle through a limited set of steps to receive an error about the house not being available for purchase. This approach wastes player time and actively lowers their enjoyment of the game. Nothing about it is fun, or rewarding, or exciting. It is exceptionally boring.

And beyond being boring, it's just unhealthy. When the house timers can run to double-digit hours, some players - driven by the fear of missing out on an opportunity to own a home - will sit for that full duration, or as much of it as their body can take. Some won't move, for fear of missing their opportunity. It reminds me of what used to happen in FFXI during the spawn windows for HNMs. The current state of play encourages inactivity, mental idleness, and may lead to repetitive stress injuries (assuming there are any actual humans trying to be luckier than the bots and macro tools).

I think there is room for change here that could spare people from camping the board, hoping their numpad 0-0-0-0-4-0 spam will beat out someone else's 0-0-0-0-4-0 spam.

There must be a way forward that would allow people to attempt to buy a house without having them commit to hours of deliberately miserable game time. For example, maybe the "sale window" for a house could allow people to deposit gil in escrow with an NPC. When the window has closed, a random selection could occur to choose the new owner. That person's gil would be committed; the rest would receive a refund. (Perhaps a "handling fee" could be deducted to make the process a more effective gil sink.)

The current system is so unfulfilling that I can't imagine it's the desired outcome. ugh.

[Bearded]

Housing gameplay is only unhealthy to those who allow it to be unhealthy as nobody (other than a FC) actually needs a house.

[Theodric]

Housing gameplay is only unhealthy to those who allow it to be unhealthy as nobody (other than a FC) actually needs a house.

Eh, many other MMO's have implemented player housing in a way that allows for every player to own one. In some cases, such as ESO, they're able to own roughly forty different houses of varying shapes and sizes throughout the game world.

It's a core part of the game in FFXIV and something updated with each new content patch. I'd say it's pretty understandable for people not to want to risk losing their house when there's no guarantee they'd be able to get one again in the future.

[Enla]

Eh, many other MMO's have implemented player housing in a way that allows for every player to own one. In some cases, such as ESO, they're able to own roughly forty different houses of varying shapes and sizes throughout the game world.

It's a core part of the game in FFXIV and something updated with each new content patch. I'd say it's pretty understandable for people not to want to risk losing their house when there's no guarantee they'd be able to get one again in the future.

Not to mention that because of how apartments currently work they aren't a good alternative to housing for most people. Not only are they basically a detached FC room with the same number of slots, they also cannot be upgraded, nor can they take full advantage of the various glitches the housing system in this game has to make something extraordinary. There's a Z-Axis glitch in the game that only works by 'inching' the items up that requires having at least a small house to pull off in full due to the access to the basement area. Without that you're kinda hamstrung as to what you can really create because there's also minimum height requirements on most furniture that are at least one player character in height tall. Which must be met if you don't want the furniture to go crashing to the floor.

Really what they have a lot of things they need to do to fix this issue, but the barest minimum would be:
-Make all sales raffle based. You put the money in along with anyone else who wants it and at the end of the timer one person is randomly picked to own the house, with the others being sent back their money.
-Then make apartments actually equitable. A lot of people would stop pining for a house if apartments were a viable alternative. (They'd also act as a good gil sink, which the game desperately needs.)

Even just doing the first would solve at least the issue of people being forced to sit at the plots all day.

[Endeleon]

Get an apartment then.

[Jojoya]

There's been plenty of discussion about the housing situation in the Housing subforum over the past couple of years. This would have been better posted there since that's where Housing feedback is collected.

It's the player who chooses to engage in an unhealthy behavior trying to get a house. They could always stop by an available plot, check to see if they get lucky, go do other things if they don't then check again later. Instead they're so obsessed with getting a house they choose to camp. Their choice, not something that SE is forcing them to engage in doing.

Plenty of ideas have been tossed out about how to avoid the camping. Lotteries, waiting lists, etc. They all have their pros and cons, with the biggest con of all being that none of them solve the problem of making enough houses available for every player who wants one. The only thing that will accomplish that is SE choosing to adopt what the other MMOs have done - use instanced housing beyond the simple rooms we get with apartments. Anything else is just a band-aid that will continue to leave players who can't get a house frustrated.

Any major changes to the housing system that SE has in the works won't be seen until Ishgard Restoration is completed and housing there made available. Considering we're looking at what's clearly a housing district but with houses already erected instead of just being empty plots, maybe it will be instanced housing. We'll have to wait and see.

It's a core part of the game in FFXIV and something updated with each new content patch. I'd say it's pretty understandable for people not to want to risk losing their house when there's no guarantee they'd be able to get one again in the future.

It's fun and popular but it's not a core part of the game. Nothing mandatory for game play comes from it. Housing could be removed and the majority of players would only feel a minimal impact.

Also, demolition wasn't the issue being discussed. Obtaining a house in the first place is the problem. Demolition actually helps other players get a house by removing them from inactive players who aren't using the house.

There is always the chance to get a house in the future if someone loses their current house. Even with demolition suspended at the moment, a few houses become available each week on each world. But it does require making the decision about how important owning a house is to the individual player compared to the rest of the content in the game.

But again, the player's choice. No one is being forced to camp to get a house if they'd rather be doing other things with their game time.

[Jin-]

Good old capitalism would fix the problem but we aren't allowed to use that word or method in 2020

[StriderShinryu]

While not necessarily a core part of the game, it's a fact that a decent number of the rewards from events, beast tribes, crafting updates, etc. are housing items. If you don't have a house then a small but notable portion of the stuff added regularly to the game is completely useless to you.

But yeah, the way things currently work is definitely not a good thing. I'm not sure what else they could do within the constraints of the system they are working with, and every option would have it's own issues, but expecting players to just sit there clicking a plaque for 10+ hours a pretty bad way to go about things.

[Lihtleita]

Good old capitalism would fix the problem but we aren't allowed to use that word or method in 2020

the way it was before was capitalism and had the same result, explain how reverting it would help?

[VictorTheed]

It's not SE fault if people don't have the self control that would stop them from harming thier own bodies by doing rediculous tactics such as camping a house spot for 8 plus hours straight or more.

I personally wished we'd go back to the old housing system but still have it were u can only own one house per account, at least then we wouldn't have to deal with this awful random timer system.

I'd much rather deal with the dick head who jack's the price up then the complete insane timer game, plus I've dealt with fair people in the old system and now it's just insane.