This plot of land is not yet ready for purchase.

[Wrestlefire769]

The only way to make everyone happy is to do away with finite housing availability while maintaining the sense of community that living in a district currently provides (if there even is one nowadays). Currently there is no known practical way to do this.

Then do away with housing. The FFXI Mog House was actually more efficient in this manner.

The thing is, this kind of stuff is Square-Enix, once again, stiffing non-bot players by basically saying you have four choices to get a real house on the market...

1) Win the race when there IS a patch update.
2) Bot.
3) Buy it off an RMT site for 5X the gil.
4) Forgetaboutit.

[Vynlador]

The only way to make everyone happy is to do away with finite housing availability while maintaining the sense of community that living in a district currently provides (if there even is one nowadays). Currently there is no known practical way to do this.

Adding more wards is a band-aid solution. For all 647,345 active players to have a personal house, there would need to be at least 10,790 wards. This does not include FC houses. There are currently 72.

People have suggested having instanced housing like how we have apartments, but houses are different from apartments in that houses have exteriors. The problem with this solution would be figuring out how to handle per-house instanced exteriors without sacrificing the aspect of being in a neighbourhood with other players.

It's a bad system that many people hate, but it's what people have to live with until some galaxy brain comes up with a better solution. Complaining about a 7 year old problem doesn't help. Instead, think of ways to help solve the problem. Be that galaxy brain.

You do not need galaxy brain to figure this out. Off the top of my head after just reading this post, i can think of a few systems way better then current.

1. Instanced Housing Ward- Have a few houses randomly generated around your house that are not actually open and then have your house in the middle or wherever you pick. So basically have 5 open spot you pick one the other four are randomly generated houses, but empty on the inside and locked.

2. Everyone on each district own the same house- but when you load in it shows your stuff not everyone elses. have a single ward for each district, with one of each type (small, medium, large)

3. my best attempt to fix this system- similar to two have a house that multiple people own but have multiple wards, have 10 wards per district with a few of each type of house. you can buy whatever house you want and thats your house, when you load into the zone it loads your stuff over others stuff. so you still get that community feel of having people around but it limits the amout of overall wards and total housing needed to be loaded at one time. you can even walk up to the placard and pick whos house you would prefer being loaded so others can see your house.

4. accept the fact that you run one of the biggest MMOs in the world and use the about 8 million USD (based on your figure of 647,345 active players) you make a month in just sub fees and pay for more server space and accept it as the cost of doing business.

edit: typos

[blu789]

That won't solve anything. Again, that's just another way for the RMT sites to plop 50 of them down at each plot and swarm the market.

You have really only one option: If the plot is not available, the price is not visible to anyone. It doesn't matter if the plot is vacant and the random timer is going or if the timer to demolish is going or whatever. For all you know, "FizzWidget Whatsit" still owns it until all timers run out - or whatever the person's name was.

this is the current system minus clicking. how does it support RMT anymore than the current system? The timer still applies as it currently does.

[Jojoya]

People have suggested having instanced housing like how we have apartments, but houses are different from apartments in that houses have exteriors. The problem with this solution would be figuring out how to handle per-house instanced exteriors without sacrificing the aspect of being in a neighbourhood with other players.

Not everyone cares about being in a neighborhood so it's not a solution that instanced housing needs.

There can be instanced house plots for those who don't care about being in a neighborhood. The existing wards could remain for those who do.

[Wrestlefire769]

this is the current system minus clicking. how does it support RMT anymore than the current system? The timer still applies as it currently does.

The key is, and this is where I get a bit frustrated with some of the other people, you don't know the status of that timer.

If the gil number is up there, you know the timer is "sufficiently short" that you can plop a bot there, script the entire process, and hope that, the instant the plot becomes available, your script is the first one to hit.

Without that knowledge, you could be there six months and not know.

[tdb]

I'm pretty vocal when it comes to my issues regarding housing. Won't catch me defending the system. lol

You certainly seemed to like how the timer system reduces competition.

[tdb]

Adding more wards is a band-aid solution. For all 647,345 active players to have a personal house, there would need to be at least 10,790 wards. This does not include FC houses. There are currently 72.

While I don't disagree about more wards being a band-aid, your math is grossly wrong. Firstly, Kugane has housing too. Four districts times 24 wards equals 96 wards, not 72. Second, that's per server. The game has 68 servers, so that makes for a total of 6528 wards.

[Frizze]

While I don't disagree about more wards being a band-aid, your math is grossly wrong. Firstly, Kugane has housing too. Four districts times 24 wards equals 96 wards, not 72. Second, that's per server. The game has 68 servers, so that makes for a total of 6528 wards.

I was going to reply with some version of this. Reading bad math that no one is correcting was bothering me a little. So to take this a step further. Using his "target number" of 10790 wards, minus the 6528 we have now means we are around 4262 wards short. Divide that by 68 game servers(i acknowlege that player population isnt uniformly distributed), and you get 62 with a remainder. Split among the 4 cities would amount to a little under 16 wards. This isnt accounting for FC housing(about 25% of houses are FC houses as of the last data i saw), but there are also many players who dont care about or want a house. If ishgard ends up just as a "normal" housing ward like the other 4, opening that would add 1440 more houses per server as things stand now(the equivalent of adding 8 more wards per server) - or more potentially if they also increase the overall number of wards.

[Jojoya]

I was going to reply with some version of this. Reading bad math that no one is correcting was bothering me a little. So to take this a step further. Using his "target number" of 10790 wards, minus the 6528 we have now means we are around 4262 wards short. Divide that by 68 game servers(i acknowlege that player population isnt uniformly distributed), and you get 62 with a remainder. Split among the 4 cities would amount to a little under 16 wards. This isnt accounting for FC housing(about 25% of houses are FC houses as of the last data i saw), but there are also many players who dont care about or want a house. If ishgard ends up just as a "normal" housing ward like the other 4, opening that would add 1440 more houses per server as things stand now(the equivalent of adding 8 more wards per server) - or more potentially if they also increase the overall number of wards.

The number game gets worse when you consider anyone with a Standard subscription could get up to 80 houses on their single account if they wanted to go to that much effort. It just takes leveling 40 characters on 40 different worlds to 50 and creating a FC for each, then getting lucky at the placard. That's 79 other players not getting a house because of one player.

[Cylla]

I'm not completely defending this system but it is a bit more fair then what we had before.

More fair for whom though? Cheaters (i.e people using macro's/bots) and people who can stand at a sign for more then 5+ hours? Because that how fair it is right now.
For people who work 40+ hours a week, have families, and have other responsibilities... this system is in no way shape or form fair.