A Better Way for Houses Up For Grabs

[Catstab]

Sure, we could let only rich people have houses. Or only crafters. Or only savage raiders. Or only mentors. For some reason though discriminatory conditions don't tend to go down well.

4300 personal houses, 20000+ players per server. Only one in five people gets a house. To me it makes a lot more sense to give houses to people who either quested or crafted or played roulettes than it makes to give housing to anyone at all who wants one, but force those people to spend up to 24 hours each camp up to 20-30 times over. Even if you camp 'smart' and spend only 4 hours at each plot, if you win your 20th plot you've spent 80 hours. Go 10 hours on 30 plots, things get much uglier.

Spending 40m on a placard is showing that you understand the game and put time into it. Spending 80+ hours on a placard is just damaging to the player experience.

[tdb]

Whats discriminatory about a bidding system? Everyone has the same opportunities as everyone else, that way.

It strongly favors those players who have hundreds of millions of gil. Those who can barely scrape together three million for a small plot at current prices would have no chance. And yes, I know players at max level who don't have even one million. I don't know what they do with their money.

4300 personal houses, 20000+ players per server. Only one in five people gets a house. To me it makes a lot more sense to give houses to people who either quested or crafted or played roulettes than it makes to give housing to anyone at all who wants one, but force those people to spend up to 24 hours each camp up to 20-30 times over. Even if you camp 'smart' and spend only 4 hours at each plot, if you win your 20th plot you've spent 80 hours. Go 10 hours on 30 plots, things get much uglier.

Yes, the current timer is stupid. That's been established many times over.

[Mavrias]

It strongly favors those players who have hundreds of millions of gil. Those who can barely scrape together three million for a small plot at current prices would have no chance. And yes, I know players at max level who don't have even one million. I don't know what they do with their money.


Yes, the current timer is stupid. That's been established many times over.

Yes but this is not real life where others get ahead due to favorable family lineage, country of birth, etc. You can quite literally earn money through the same channels as anybody else with nothing limiting you besides how much effort you want to put in and how much you save vs spend. Maps, crafting, farming primal mats, materia, eureka/ Borja drops etc. Even just doing your dailies can make an okay amount of coin.

It "favors" no one because anyone can be in that position with a reasonable amount of time spent (other than free trial players, but they already cannot buy a house so nothing about that would change.)

[tdb]

Yes but this is not real life where others get ahead due to favorable family lineage, country of birth, etc.

Yeah, instead this is a video game where some people got ahead by getting into the game early and doing things which now are nowhere near as profitable. Crafting in particular has been made a lot more accessible, which also means prices for crafted items have gone down. It hasn't been even two weeks since 5.4 and Exarchic gear is already selling below 100k (for some pieces at least) - cheap enough that I consider crafting it for sale a waste of my time. There was a very short window (a couple of days) where the new crafted gear sold at high prices, and I made about 35 million gil from it because I was prepared. Others probably made even more. How quickly do you figure you can make 35 million gil now that that window has closed?

[Mavrias]

Whats discriminatory about a bidding system? Everyone has the same opportunities as everyone else, that way.

[Sindele]

(also, 40m absolutely wouldn't stop FC shell farmers - the barrier to entry going up behind them would just make them very, very happy.)

[Catstab]

40m wouldn't stop FC shell farmers - the barrier to entry going up behind them would just make them happy.)

Behind them, sure. So workshop farmers would be sitting pretty, as they are now. SE changes things moving forward, not retroactively, so workshop farmers are golden gods till the reward pools get nerfed.

But the barrier to entry means 10 smalls with workshops that costs 42,500,000 now will cost 412,500,000. Which means that new workshop farmers aren't joining the ranks daily and shopping for cheap houses to expand. Those that continue to expand will pay out 85 days of one workshops income for a new workshop, instead of 8 and a half days.

tldr: no one loses anything they have, but future house hunters no longer need to compete with workshop farmers.

[Jojoya]

Behind them, sure. So workshop farmers would be sitting pretty, as they are now. SE changes things moving forward, not retroactively, so workshop farmers are golden gods till the reward pools get nerfed.

But the barrier to entry means 10 smalls with workshops that costs 42,500,000 now will cost 412,500,000. Which means that new workshop farmers aren't joining the ranks daily and shopping for cheap houses to expand. Those that continue to expand will pay out 85 days of one workshops income for a new workshop, instead of 8 and a half days.

tldr: no one loses anything they have, but future house hunters no longer need to compete with workshop farmers.

I thought the repeated argument around here is that the shell FCs owning houses is too small a percentage of the total to be worth doing something about?

Considering I've made over 150 million gil for my FC this year off our workshop (and I don't even focus solely on the lucrative routes), I don't think a 40 million gil price tag is going to be much of a deterrent to the workshop farmers. At best it slows down the number of houses they start with but it won't take long to have plenty of gil to buy even more.

No, I mention no one seems to mention any idea of their own, while shooting down every proposed idea, as well as mentioning the lottery system won't fix the issue of limited housing.
Additionally, my idea of generating an instanced version of a house would fix a lot of problems that people tend to bring up. Outside of releasing sufficient wards to address the issue of greatly limited housing, what do you propose? Rather be incapable of reasoning and cut off posts or prefer I quote verbatim every single line of back of forth over the last several years?

In the context of the discussion, what do you offer tho? Any suggestion? Just here to stir the pot some?

Plenty of ideas have been mentioned in these forums over the past few years on how to fix the system. How many times must they be repeated?

Those ideas have been discussed in detail, both pros and cons. How many times must the same arguments be repeated over and over?

I've been arguing for instanced house plots for over 2 years. Feel free to check my post history. It's not a new idea.

If SE is not willing/able to change to an instanced house plot system, then I want to see monthly gil fees added to house ownership. That at least would cut down a bit on those who own houses and don't use them. People dislike having to continuously pay for things and if it's something they aren't actively using, they'll usually get rid of it so they're not losing money, or gil in this case.

[Sauteed]

I thought the repeated argument around here is that the shell FCs owning houses is too small a percentage of the total to be worth doing something about?

Considering I've made over 150 million gil for my FC this year off our workshop (and I don't even focus solely on the lucrative routes), I don't think a 40 million gil price tag is going to be much of a deterrent to the workshop farmers. At best it slows down the number of houses they start with but it won't take long to have plenty of gil to buy even more.


Plenty of ideas have been mentioned in these forums over the past few years on how to fix the system. How many times must they be repeated?

Those ideas have been discussed in detail, both pros and cons. How many times must the same arguments be repeated over and over?

I've been arguing for instanced house plots for over 2 years. Feel free to check my post history. It's not a new idea.

If SE is not willing/able to change to an instanced house plot system, then I want to see monthly gil fees added to house ownership. That at least would cut down a bit on those who own houses and don't use them. People dislike having to continuously pay for things and if it's something they aren't actively using, they'll usually get rid of it so they're not losing money, or gil in this case.

I did not say instanced housing is a new idea. I have said in the past I didn't feel adding a recurring payment to owning a property is a good idea (in terms of video game). I do think the producer of the game mentioned they didn't want that system, I'm not sure why they said that, but I'm glad it isn't like that. If they aren't going to improve this aspect of the game to accommodate the population well, sure we can play the landlord simulator and kick out the tenants if they don't want to pay the gil. Most people I know with houses wouldn't be too put back to have a nominal fee charged them for owning a property, and unless they quit playing the game for a longer period of time than is required to actually keep their house from auto-demo'ing (nulifying the need to enforce the rent in the first place), I don't think they'd be worried about losing their house. Now I'm basing this off the "most of the people I know with a house" view point in mind. I may be that one weird dude that just happens to know people who aren't barely scraping by to get their plot , but I doubt that sincerely. Also, I'm the kind of person that would without hesitation give my friend gil if they needed it for whatever reason, and have helped friends pay for and get houses, also kept them company while they clicked away for their house on multiple occasions because I knew it was something that person was passionate about and wanted to see them live their XIV dream and own a house in game. This on top of having enough gil to have multiple houses of my own, and not slightly worried about the idea of a "reasonable" montly charge. When it comes to needing to pay like 10 gillion a month or else you lose house, they lose a paying customer tho. And I'm pretty sure they are aware I'd not be alone in that sentiment either. So your idea of recurring payment is not new either, it was shot down years ago by the producer himself. Is it a bad idea? No. Definitely not the worst I've seen in game.. definitely not on the same level as people saying we need to strip people of their grandfathered houses etc. But is it a good idea? No not by any means either.

furthermore, I could do a you tactic and chop of a large portion of your post and say whatever I wanted to say to make someone who hasn't been actively posting for years look like some upstart that has no place on the forum or whatever you do for whatever reason you do, but I don't. No you don't need to quote every single 'idea' that's been going around for years. No you don't need to like any ideas either. But offering constructive ideas to address the situation helps. I've actually read on this forum for years (sad I know I should get a life right?) but I actually started posting on the forum because of the housing situation and to a lesser extent the pvp situation.. and here lately, making probably highly unpopular proposals to chop the MSQ (imo definitely takes precedence over housing and pvp issues if it's the main draw for the game). But in all of this, I try to be a bit more tactful than grabbing 1 little line in a full post and trying to make it seem like the world needs to stop because this one guy said this one thing while taking it completely out of the context of an ongoing thread. But you do you.

[Sindele]

The reward pools constantly expand, so it just means more future profits as others fall off or sell out. (Also, at current rewards, 40m is still hypothetically worthwhile faster than that - the biggest hurdle remains the buildup time of unlocking zones.)

I think the community cost of 40m barrier to entry is too high, but I'll agree that current placard costs are outdated - just not that outdated.