Housing Market Demand Leading to Health Concerns

[glitteringcosmos]

With the suspension of auto demolish, it's incredibly, INCREDIBLY difficult to get a house. Which leads to people camping outside of the very infrequent open plots (at least on the NA worlds, where I frequent). Literally, when I was trying for an FC house, we had our three officers (myself and two others) sleeping in shifts while one person continuously clicked. I literally had to log in at the airport to do my shift.

But even when I was trying for a personal house (which I still have not managed on my main, only on my EU server alts which are less populated), I stayed awake for 13 hours trying for a house only to have it sniped out from under me.

I know this isn't an uncommon practice. It's unhealthy. But as crazy as it is, it's kind of not our fault? The fundamental issues with the system, the supply far, far outweighed by demand, and SE's refusal to do anything about it lends to such practices. Sure, they add a couple of wards every, what 2 years? And then it's gone. Why hasn't SE addressed the issue? I can think of a number of different solutions that can't be too hard to implement.

1. Instanced housing. I know we have apartments but there are limits to what you can do with them and you can't garden. At least give the player the option for ONE instanced house with an invite system sort of like Party Finder? Where you can have people access your house with an open invite or something like that. Or, they could put the one instanced house IN the neigborhood with the other houses, kind of like they do with the Apartment complex. Do it OG Animal Crossing style. Or just one instanced house per ward or something.

2. Housing market. If they're dead set on the whole neighborhood system, why not open the housing market for sale from player to player? They could easily put caps on upmarking to prevent ridiculous inflation and overcharging other players, and while I get this could lead to people becoming "house-flippers" for gil, surely that's better than what we have now.

3. Addressing the bots. On Adamantoise one person owns 7 plots in the Goblet. I understand that SE has suspended auto demolish because of the pandemic, but can't they do something about the plot hoarders or the houses being sat on by dead FCs?

I know it's not the end of the world not to have a house, and I'm lucky my FC was even able to find a house at all. But a shared house can't be personalized 100% the way I want it, which is why I want a personal house, and I know I'm not the only one who feels the same way. Other games, like Maple Story, have instanced housing implemented and they bring in way less revenue than SE does with FFXIV. Surely there's a solution which addresses the blatant health concerns and the frankly disastrous housing system that we have right now.

(Also, yes, I know we're getting more housing with Ishgard, but in my opinion that's a bandaid over a leak in a pipe.)

What are your thoughts on this?

[JamieRose]

I'm pretty sure Squeenix knows and they don't care.

[Kenky]

It's unhealthy. But as crazy as it is, it's kind of not our fault?

Sorry to burst your bubble. But here's the scoop.

It is your fault.

SE isn't forcing you to camp for hours on end. SE isn't saying you HAVE to prioritize getting a house. Sure, the systems in place certainly don't make it easy for you (or healthy) but that is not really SE's fault, as the system in place is to try and lower the amount of bots camping the plots. Player Obsession is the problem and nobody can really fix that, outside of admitting you have a problem.

We all know how effective that'll be. But after that, I'll answer the points.

1. Instanced housing is a thing and you'd be surprised what you can achieve with an apartment. Sure you don't get gardening, but most people that clamour this point cross-breed like.. Once or twice, then never use the plots again (unless it's an active FC. But this is from personal experience!) so it's not really a big selling point.

2. No. Absolutely not. They already said countless times that handing the ability to sell the house plots to players is the worst idea imaginable. Player A buys the plot at, lets say 10M. But because it's a housing plot, they can immediately advertise to sell it off for 10 times that amount (for a SMALL, mind!) and some obsessed goon would happily pay that amount. SE wants to avoid that in its entirety. (which is why you don't find people selling plots in-game. It's always on a 3rd party site that SE can't do anything about. If you find anyone advertising plot-selling ingame, you can report them and get them permanently shut down)

3. They sure can, but at the present, it would be in poor taste to start slapping bots and clamping down on restrictions while a fair % of the playerbase is currently unable to really react to them. Dead FCs are a grey area that SE has never really been good with handling, mostly because we can claim an FC is dead, yet there could be one member still active, making it an "active fc" in SEs eyes.

[Risvertasashi]

Sorry to burst your bubble. But here's the scoop.

It is your fault.

Someone doesn't understand game theory.

If you incentive a certain behavior, people will do it. And Square has strongly incentivized long camping sessions.

Not Square's first misstep in this direction either. I've been led to understand their last MMO had people camping and fighting boss monster spawns for so long that people passed out at their computers and it made the news previously.

[Kenky]

Someone doesn't understand game theory.

If you incentive a certain behavior, people will do it. And Square has strongly incentivized long camping sessions.

Not Square's first misstep in this direction either. I've been led to understand their last MMO had people camping and fighting boss monster spawns for so long that people passed out at their computers and it made the news previously.

And how are they giving you incentives to camp long hours in a video game, exactly?

You don't get anything "unique" from housing (Personal housing, at least. FC housing has the workshop, so I'll give you that point.)

All you really get is a trophy to gloat about to the non-existant masses because nobody goes to housing wards outside of visiting their own house, or trying to buy one. Other than those two, it's a ghost town. There isn't really a whole benefit to having one if it's personal housing, outside of said trophy.

Anything else people may clamor for (outside of cross-breeding plants) can be done in an apartment and people need to suck up their pride and buy one. Better to have an Apartment than whine that there's no housing, even when there is on a technical point.

[Risvertasashi]

And how are they giving you incentives to camp long hours in a video game, exactly?

You don't get anything "unique" from housing (Personal housing, at least. FC housing has the workshop, so I'll give you that point.)

Now if this were true, SE wouldn't pushing housing so hard in its advertising now would it?

Housing itself is highly coveted among players. SE knows this, SE's marketing team knows this. You don't seem to, so it's a good thing you're not in marketing :P

Of course, it's easy to say "well just don't do it." Any time someone doesn't understand game theory this happens. But when there's a reward, there will be people that want that reward, and thus people that do the incentivized behavior. As true RL as in video games.

[Kenky]

Please note the difference.

Incentive Vs Obsession.

SE is well within their right to give people incentives to try another system (a system that certainly needs a rework, at this point. But one can only hope and dream!), yet at the same time, SE isn't really at fault for people taking that incentive and running to the extreme. They may want to get people to spend time trying to get a house, but not to the point where people get hurt over it. If they did want that, they would be in some serious hot water with their local laws.

Do you truly intend to blame SE for YOUR actions? Those actions that you chose to do willingly? Because most countries see the fact you chose to do it willingly and completely ignore it. You chose to subject yourself to it, so there is no real case to be made. There's no threat, no forcing, no held at gunpoint.

SE may indeed want people to try housing and give it a go. I can wholeheartedly say people should indeed give it a go, but to use apartments instead of housing. If only to avoid the medical strain people put themselves under thanks to obsessive natures. (which sometimes, we can't really help. It's basic human action)

I'm not saying SE is entirely without fault, but that the entire issue isn't entirely one-sided.

[Melrot]

It's bad game design, I wholehearted agree with that.
Timers should not pop at 4 am, making it obvious that you either
A: Are unemployed or have an awkward sleeping schedule and have next day off
B: Use a third-party program to break TOS, risk getting banned just to get a house without losing sanity.

Idk what the other guy is about, clearly does not understand what is going on.
What game presents to us is a problem (random 24h timer that around 4500 people per server can bypass). It also presents to us a solution: camp placard for 24h doing a brainless activity without breaks or do it the bannable way: Autoclicker.

The problem is not people playing the game, since the only ones who even attempt getting a house at these times are ones who really, really want it. The rest of the people, who do not want the house to the extreme are not even trying. It's survivorship bias.

[KayRadley]

Oh bully.

The twinky defense in the housing forum.

AGAIN.

[Shibi]

Timers should not pop at 4 am, making it obvious that you either
A: Are unemployed or have an awkward sleeping schedule and have next day off
B: Use a third-party program to break TOS, risk getting banned just to get a house without losing sanity.

One person's 4AM is another player's 10AM is another player's 8PM is another player's 11PM.

My last click frenzy went from 4PM my time to 11:30PM my time. That was the entire night for a person from the Americas, or the morning daylight hours to around lunchtime for a European playing on the server.