Time to end the theft of home and bots - GIVE MORE WARDS-!

[EaMett]

Considering there are games where every one can have a house, the thing is they should be able to provide a system where all players can have a house, even if it is shared between alts.
The current system is still pretty weird. A player can, in theory have a FC room AND an apartment for each character he owns but SE is unable to provide an evolutive housing system,even if it means shared with alts, without destruction timer, for everyone? It doesn't make sense.

For me the real reason behind the timer is to help the FCs to have a house. But then, it means they are perfectly aware of the limit and the problem of the ward system as it is.

It's not just about being unable. They never wanted housing to be accessible to everyone in the first place. The entire thing was designed with limited access to start with. The limited nature of housing make it a status symbols, an item to strive for, and gives the task a sense of accomplishment. As a good proof of success, despite the horrible placard spamming mechanic, people are ecstatic when they finally get theirs. There are very few people who finally get a house and then just flip from being pissed off at the process.
Could it be made better? sure but that's not what is being discussed here.
Equally, could they perhaps change their mind? Sure, but they haven't shown any sign of wanting to (as they keep the available plots at around 30-50% of server population consistently), and even if they did, at this point, it would involve a major overhaul of the housing system that is very unlikely to be lucrative for them.

The FC only timers were implemented at the request of the players, and it makes sense to give FCs priority as it is an important feature for them (more so than for individuals)

Just do it like everyone else and spend time at it. You'll get your house eventually like every last one of the current owners. If you just want to garden then keep asking for small gardening plots in apartments or something easier for them to implement.

[C000kiemonster]

It's not just about being unable. They never wanted housing to be accessible to everyone in the first place. The entire thing was designed with limited access to start with. The limited nature of housing make it a status symbols, an item to strive for, and gives the task a sense of accomplishment. As a good proof of success, despite the horrible placard spamming mechanic, people are ecstatic when they finally get theirs. There are very few people who finally get a house and then just flip from being pissed off at the process.
Could it be made better? sure but that's not what is being discussed here.
Equally, could they perhaps change their mind? Sure, but they haven't shown any sign of wanting to (as they keep the available plots at around 30-50% of server population consistently), and even if they did, at this point, it would involve a major overhaul of the housing system that is very unlikely to be lucrative for them.

The FC only timers were implemented at the request of the players, and it makes sense to give FCs priority as it is an important feature for them (more so than for individuals)

Just do it like everyone else and spend time at it. You'll get your house eventually like every last one of the current owners. If you just want to garden then keep asking for small gardening plots in apartments or something easier for them to implement.

The thing they havent done with it that many feared would be to make it a premium service similar to retainers where you pay $5 a month.

[Eldevern]

...

That is a pretty fake achievement since :
1. gils are easy to make
2. the only achievement is to be connected the right time.
3. it keeps out some FCs and players who would have merit to have a house.

Nobody will praise someone who have a house when the only difficulty is this damn timer or to handle 90002 at the release of new wards.

In my opinion, it is even far worst : technically, housing is a pure fail, totally outdated, limited, rigid, not inspired. At first glance it can look cute but we quick realize the limits : little houses are too little, some glitchs don't make sense, houses are not evolutive (you can't change the shape, the number of floors, of rooms etc.).

I talk as someone who owned TWO mansions. And still, I thought it was too limited. Since the first day of housing release I'm disppointed. I expected something better from SE.

[EaMett]

That is a pretty fake achievement since :
1. gils are easy to make
2. the only achievement is to be connected the right time.
3. it keeps out some FCs and players who would have merit to have a house.

Nobody will praise someone who have a house when the only difficulty is this damn timer or to handle 90002 at the release of new wards.

In my opinion, it is even far worst : technically, housing is a pure fail, totally outdated, limited, rigid, not inspired. At first glance it can look cute but we quick realize the limits : little houses are too little, some glitchs don't make sense, houses are not evolutive (you can't change the shape, the number of floors, of rooms etc.).

I talk as someone who owned TWO mansions. And still, I thought it was too limited. Since the first day of housing release I'm disppointed. I expected something better from SE.

1. The entry gil requirement (for small) isn't bad but when it comes to larger plots, that kind of gil isn't easy to make for everyone, I wonder how many people posting here have 40m to spare.

2. No it's not about being on at the right time. It's about grinding placards to increase your chances. There's a bit of RNG and yeah you can get lucky by showing up and winning but that is necessary. If there was no RNG at all, anyone with a job or school or any IRL commitments would just never have access to housing at all. It would become a pure pvp mechanic and only the most dedicated would get housing, alienating anyone who can't commit crazy amounts of continuous game time from housing altogether.
But even with that RNG housing overwhelmingly rewards those who spend more time house hunting. Putting aside the terrible placard spamming mechanic the whole thing is actually decently balanced in terms of time/reward/opportunity.

Even if you look at it from a "come online when new ward is available" perspective. It still overwhelmingly rewards the people who spend extra time making sure patches are downloaded, who level the classes with movement perks (brd, nin, drg), who rehearse running to their plot, who are clever in choosing which plot they want, who put post-its on their screen to speed menu selection up, etc...
This isn't PVE, you're up against actual other players and are going to lose out to those who put more effort than you into it.

Also, you saying nobody is going to praise someone is a bit of a moot argument. This forum is full of posts of people being envious of house holders and wanting one so much that they actively petition for an overhaul of the system. If I were designing optional content meant to be limited in nature and rewarding when obtained I would look at these forums and present my results as a success in my next board meeting. Especially when knowing that 30-50% of the population had access to a house in one form or another. Just saying, it's working as intended. If you want change you need to argument against the premise, not the outcome (aka why housing for all would be superior to limited housing as a mechanic).


3. FCs get priority over everything currently. They can have multiple people on a placard increasing their odds significantly. They can also, just wait for extra wards if they missed the previous release and get first dibs. I don't think anyone really needs to take pity on FCs with the current setting.

You complain about the entire thing as is your right (and there is indeed plenty that could be improved), yet you still played housing enough to own not one but two mansions. Working well enough I would say. Definitely not broken to the point of requiring an overhaul.

[Eldevern]

You complain about the entire thing as is your right (and there is indeed plenty that could be improved), yet you still played housing enough to own not one but two mansions. Working well enough I would say. Definitely not broken to the point of requiring an overhaul.

Not really, my main is on Cerberus, it was BEFORE we can lose houses and there were just slots available, without any kind of timer (even for mansions you could take benefits of the weekly price decrease).

I'm in the game since the 2.0 Beta. You can't understand my point of view if you don't take that in consideration. The whole system was to me already a fail. And it was even more disppointing after.

And making gils IS easy as soon as you know what to do. You don't even need to wild grind or play 8h/day. Since ARR some players have realized you can make 1M (or more) a week. Currently is it far easier than in ARR. People just don't understand how it works and how to do. The first relic was so expensive players had to make tons of gils to buy materias.

40M was the average cost of the Zeta (all steps considered) at its release because of RNG (and the need to have the right relic for Coil BiS).

You aren't placing 400 personal items in an instanced dungeon that needs to be permanently saved. All housing information has to be saved on your character or the server and if suddenly everyone is carrying all this extra data on them 24/7, it's going to tax the servers.

Not quite exact. You seem to be confused by static memory and dynamic memory. From this perspective, there's no difference between dungeon and instancied housing as soon as it remains an ephemere instance. They still have datas to load. Where wards are differents is because you have to load all gardens at once that is pretty heavy for dynamic memory.
Keep in mind that one player is still in one "instance" at once anyway. And dungeon means monsters and dynamic management of datas for them. Instancied housing as apartments is more a database mapping and index problem, than a dynamic memory problem. That is the difference with wards that are both a database mapping nightmare AND a plague for dynamic memory. I make my bet that wards are some kind of remanant maps (as main maps are) rather than "instance" (as dungeons, even Eureka are).
Even if the 2.0 ARR were a full overhaul from 1.0 it's still a technology of database mapping from 2010~2012. Server side, I doubt they have made an overhaul from SQL-like (UML mapping) systems to a no-sql technology.

[MsMisato]

That is a pretty fake achievement since :
3. it keeps out some FCs and players who would have merit to have a house.

I don't know. FCs had their moment to make housing happened as the wards were originally designed for FCs but I am going to place equal blame on SE as the initial pricing structure for the wards was ridiculous making hard for even small FCS. Even then after the pricing was adjusted to entice an FC to buy a plot, no one bought into it. As I recall I believe the wards took off at the beginning individual housing was to be implemented later on. After SE opened it to individual purchasing, I remember coming back a couple of months later even after that and there were plots galore. I think the wards really took off to after the release of HW and even then it was easier to get plots because demo was pretty effective when it was left on. Hopefully when the timers are turned back on there will be a whole of lot plots like last May when they turned it back on.

That being said, having the demo timers serves a purpose. Its to help curb RMT for plots. I hate the click the placard with a passion. I spent countless hours but still I got 3 homes on 3 different servers it really does boil down to RNG Jesus favoring you. My second home, I got last July. I happen to see a lot for sale in Mist and walked up to it and bought it right away no one around. Only happened to me once out of the other times. But as for the 1st and 2nd time, I notice the plots become available between 4 am and 6:00 am PST thats my experience.

I am hoping the wards that will be added in Ishgard will help alleviate some of the housing pressures in the game the game. It would be a nice surprisedif it was instance housing of some sort like everyone wants.

But here is a glimpse of initial housing prices when it first launched. Mind you it was based on the amount of Gil circulating around the server but it was insane in pricing and truly only the people in swimming Gil like Scrooge McDuck could buy it lol. This was on Gilgamesh at the time:

Fifth-class Plot Fourth-class Plot Third-class Plot Second-class Plot First-class Plot
Small 8,000,000 8,500,000 9,000,000 9,800,000 10,000,000
Medium 30,000,000 31,875,000 33,750,000 35,625,000 37,500,000
Large 100,000,000 106,250,000 112,500,000 118,750,000 125,000,000

Edit
sorry for the crap copy paste for the original prices. Here is alike to the initial prices it's at the bottom of the patch notes 2.1 lol

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...7af43f3c43828a

[Eldevern]

...

I forgot the first range prices but it makes me remember my first tought at housing release : FFXIV housing looks to be Aion inspired (both the Ward idea and the range price similar to the rumored auctions).

It is were we can see how outdated the design of housing is. It is all designed before big data and no-sql concepts.

The market really need a brand new and up-to-date MMO (housing, gameplay, design).

[Caitlinzulu]

Either make 50+ wards or unlimited instanced houses.... see the housing servers crash continuous due to overload.
wards system is a way of controlling how many resources are used my houses, think it would be accepted if SE said only x amount of houses allowed? And the more people get mansions the lower that number will be?

[Eldevern]

...

Considering Eureka, Trust, Squadrons, soloing dungeons, the question about the server charge is a false problem. The wards are heavy only because of the personalized extoriors and gardens. Everything else is already instancied anyway : interiors of house, apartments, Inns, FC rooms.

And if you consider the technology (everything that is no-sql-like, in other word live-data/dynamic memory), we can ask the question about the technology of the game itself that starts to look dated.

[SamSmoot]

Instance the plots themselves so:
1. Every plot can have many owners. This increases the chance of seeing more players in the neighborhood, since they will all be in one "ward", not spread across 21 of them.

2. Eliminate the multiple wards, since they're not needed with instanced plots.

3. When you arrive, your plot contents are visible, but you can select other owners' content from the placard (with thumbnails please. This will allow you to customize the appearance of your immediate neighborhood (Hate / love Paissa houses?).

4. Your plot is always loaded when you arrive. No load screens when entering the yard or house. Other plots would cause load screens on entry since preloading them all would probably take too much time. Still, selected yard appearances would have to preload so you'd see them when outside.

5. Since the house and plot are one instance, you could have real windows, open doors to walk out onto a patio / deck with no load screen.

6. Ideally, when in your yard you should be able to see everyone on the street (Assuming it's possible to code it.)

Of course, everyone would just buy copies of the most desirable plots, but it could be spread out by raising the prices of ones with many owners, and reducing the price of the others.

One problem though: With many more house owners, SE would need to add more storage to hold the content, and pay to maintain it. I suppose they could make it so everyone can buy one small plot for just Gil, but larger ones (containing more stuff) would add to your sub fee (like extra retainers).

And, add farms. Allow us to completely cover a plot with garden patches with no house (or just a tiny garden shed for storage). I don't do housing myself because I can't stand having my camera pushed in to nearly first person view all the time, but if I could do everything outside, I'd go for it.