FFXIV Housing System is Unhealthy for its House-less Players (Endgame life?)

[Jojoya]

People need to stop pushing the blame onto others for their poor personal decisions. If you don't want to have to camp, don't do it. Houses are not required to play the game. They're merely something you want. You can pop into a ward, click the placard to see if you get lucky then leave. You do not have to stay.

SE doesn't need to stick houses on mogstation. They need to implement a proper instanced housing system like many other MMOs have done successfully so that every player who wants a house can get one.

We don't know what Ishgard housing is going to be yet. SE has told us nothing other than it will be coming.

While I agree that relocation needs a longer cooldown than 5 minutes, it doesn't need to be 6 months. Make it the same as the demo timer for consistency - 45 days. It also doesn't need to be more expensive. Player are already effectively paying twice when they relocate since 30% of the old plot's minimum value doesn't amount to much.

There doesn't need to be an increase to house activity, and I'm saying that as someone who visits both my personal and FC houses multiple times daily. Some people actually have lives that obstruct their ability to play for a few weeks in a row (business trips and the like) even though the majority of the year they are active players logging in multiple times a week. The 45 day demo timer adequately allows for those who have occasional need to take breaks from the game. If your goal is to get houses out of the hands of players who aren't actively using them, attach a monthly property tax. People who aren't using something generally aren't inclined to keep paying for it month after month.

Wards will always be dead. I hate to break it to everyone who has dreams of active neighborhoods but it's just not going to happen. The majority of the content that draws people to the game does not happen in the wards, and there's no reason to be in the ward most of the time except as a waypoint as you're trying to get into the instanced interior of your house. There are not enough houses in a ward to generate the sort of traffic that will make them feel active. There is no point in trying to pretend it is going to be different short of SE removing all other content from the game so only housing exists.

I’ve never liked this argument, reminds me too much of people who defend loot boxes. “If you don’t like loot boxes don’t buy them, no one is forcing you to buy loot boxes.”

That's not a defense of loot boxes. That's telling people to get smart and stop buying them. It's not like the items in them are needed to play the game most of the time, and on the occasions they are the intelligent person quits and picks another game to play.

Again, people need to take responsibility for their own poor personal decisions instead of pushing the blame on others. If they can't control themselves, then they need to take courses to learn how to do so.

[Crimson03]

1. Nobody is forcing you to pick spamming a placard over sleeping or doing anything more 'productive'. You are willingly taking that path, so cool it with the blame-game.

Haha. I will have to admit that post was me rage posting after finishing off a day of clicking. For those that already have houses, good on them. They don't face these issues. They never have to. I have/had a case of the mad clicks for housing right now, just because i wasn't around when wards were open.

What i am trying to get at is, I understand that housing is a rat race. Wards open, you snooze, you lose. Survival of the fittest. Crush all the weakest/laggiest. You make it sound that way, but i get it. There just has to be a more convenient way to gain access to housing.

2. Pay-2-win? really? That's your recommendation? Not to mention publicly commenting on RMT costs (which is enough to get a permanent suspension, by the way!) won't win you any points, especially when not everyone wants to risk losing their entire accounts (which can be up to several years worth of progress) for Gil that is stupidly-easy to get nowadays.

Noted on the RMT mention. "There is no war in Ba Sing Se" regarding the RMTs. I was using the RMT to estimate a cost for a house if it was to be sold on the Mogstation. We already have P2W services on Mogstation like Story Completion and EZ 80s, so yeah .. call it conveniences or whatever. To me, that's a P2W feature.

3."Accounts that have never bought a house before shouldn't have the timer" okay, so you just straight-up give bots an instant-win UNO card and you lose any hope of seeing any house. Ever. To the point that the invisible timer is meaningless. Good job! Purely on the fact that botters can instantly make "brand new accounts" faster than any human can. So they will just keep flooding the zones.

I was talking about human players, not bots. But clearly u have experienced more bot menaces than i have ingame. The only onces i have seen are the teleporting/leveling ones.

3a. Relocating is not going to be turned off. Period. Sure, it could certainly use a cooldown period, since nobody would need to relocate several times a day. But 6 months is a bit steep. Maybe 1 month at most, or 1 week at least, but no price-increase, unless they are upgrading sizes. To penalize people for wanting a more desirable plot is beyond stupid.

The 6 months limit was a random number thought up . I mean, in reality, i move places every 5 years. Minimum 2 years. Right, so 6 months is a lot of dog years for some people. I agree with the 1 month bit, and i am open to suggestions. I am just estimating numbers that appeal to me. So chill. You don't have to bite my head off.

[Crimson03]

4. Housing Activity could be cut down so you have to be active more than once every 45 days, but at the same time, FFXIV encourages taking breaks when things get to a lull. Reducing the inactivity timer would only make people who already log in once a month to reset the timer.. Simply log in more, then log off again.. It wouldn't really fix anything.

I live a balanced work/personal/gaming life, and FFXIV is something i log into everyday to chill and socialize. Work hard, play hard. That's me. Because of that, I think 45 days is a bit too long, maybe 30 days?

I agree that we should be taking R&R from the game, but take note that this game is the R&R for me (maybe some others too) from RL and work. Have you seen the JP FFXIV ads? To live another life? In the game? Yes, those JP ads speak to me. Well, it's either that or board game night.

Dead Wards will always be a thing, purely because Square Enix has said, several times, that they like the Ward-style and the Neighborhood feeling. If you want wards to actually be deemed 'active' then you need to give players a reason to be active there.

I think this is more of a play style thing. And there's not enough of my kind, so boohoo to me. I tend to use housing as a gathering point to just chat the night away among ingame friends. Hosting for friends is my reason to be active in a ward. Even if it means yelling at my neighbors (friends now) once in a while.

[Styrmwyda]

I will say this again, have the option to upgrade your apartment room size. Because lets face it, unless they make instanced housing (which they won't), the majority of players will not get a house.

[Zelas]

Why are there still people defending this obviously terrible system and actually blaming players just wanting to enjoy content that's part of the game they're paying a sub for? How is it even a thing that it's somehow someone's fault that they're being made to feel anxious, bummed out or driven to physical harm for trying to access something that should technically have been made available to everyone from the get go?

Just because you don't care about a piece of content doesn't make it less relevant or worth trying to get. No, it's not their fault for being driven to try despite the pain and loss of sleep. It's the system that's flawed for even making that their only option to access the content they want in the first place.

If hardcore endgame content was locked behind a mechanic half as flawed as this, there would be outrage. Let's not belittle others' anger just because tge content doesn't interest us specifically. It's selfish and beside the point.

[Payadopa]

And here I thought I had seen everything. You make it sound like you're in an abusive relationship. Give me a break.

[Zelas]

And here I thought I had seen everything. You make it sound like you're in an abusive relationship. Give me a break.

Well, if you want me to dramatize, sure. I'll dramatize. This system actually does feel like an abusive relationship because it constantly dangles something you want in front of your nose, makes you work ridiculously hard for it then just doesn't give it to you.

Joking aside, if you're gonna tell people they're being dramatic for wanting content they're completely justified to want just because it seems worthless to you, I suggest you just... don't.

[Payadopa]

Joking aside, if you're gonna tell people they're being dramatic for wanting content they're completely justified to want just because it seems worthless to you, I suggest you just... don't.

Nope. I understand wanting a house. Like, totally. I swapped servers to get one.

But saying it affects your mental health is pushing it. lol

Fun fact, I'm a health care professional so I actually work with mentally handicapped people. If anything the OP's wording is comical at best and insulting at worst. I'm more leaning toward comical.

And if not having a virtual house causes you that much stress maybe the game isn't the problem? (Also apartments exist)

Yes, SE's 'handling' isn't ideal, to put it mildly but that's it. Again, give me a break. lol

[Jojoya]

Well, if you want me to dramatize, sure. I'll dramatize. This system actually does feel like an abusive relationship because it constantly dangles something you want in front of your nose, makes you work ridiculously hard for it then just doesn't give it to you.

Joking aside, if you're gonna tell people they're being dramatic for wanting content they're completely justified to want just because it seems worthless to you, I suggest you just... don't.

If you want to talk about abusive relationships, take a good hard look at your relationship with yourself and your obsession with possessing virtual pixels in an online game. You are the one forcing yourself to do it when you could be making the choice to do other things instead.

The game doesn't make you work hard for it. You're doing the same thing you do for anything in this game. Sit on a chair or lie on a sofa or whatever while pushing buttons on a mouse, keyboard or controller. It doesn't make much difference what your character is doing in the game; you are engaging in the same physical activity. It's your choice to keep pushing those buttons for the sake of something the game has not guaranteed you can have over doing other content. That's still not harder on you than deciding to push the buttons so you sign up then do a dungeon in Duty Finder.

The drama doesn't come from wanting something. The drama comes from the crying when they don't get it.

Well, we don't always get what we want. That's life.

No doubt, the housing system has problems and can stand improvement. Definitely SE needs our feedback on what we feel is wrong and what we think might improve it. But all this whining about "unhealthy, unfair, punishing" just because someone doesn't get what they want needs to stop.

[Coletergeist]

Well, if you want me to dramatize, sure. I'll dramatize. This system actually does feel like an abusive relationship because it constantly dangles something you want in front of your nose, makes you work ridiculously hard for it then just doesn't give it to you.

Joking aside, if you're gonna tell people they're being dramatic for wanting content they're completely justified to want just because it seems worthless to you, I suggest you just... don't.

This is silly to suggest this is anything like an abusive relationship, and rude tbh.