Housing Frustrations

[KikiTia]

So, to put it bluntly, last time we had new wards all the houses, and I mean ALL the houses were gone in less than 10 minutes. My FC had worked up the money for a Large and we were gonna buy one as soon as new plots came out but because we didn't have the best internet and the grace of God himself we got nothing. Is this an okay system? To encourage so much extreme competition that people harm themselves over? People have lost sleep for the purchase timers as well. Frankly I'm sick of seeing this fester in the community and am extremely disappointed to hear that Ishgard will be similar if not the same. Is this just how the game is going to play? If you want a little place to your community to hang with friends you have to forego sleep, food, drink, and bathroom to have an ideal chance for? Please give us instanced housing, or revise the system in such a way that does not so severely limit housing availability. And no, I do not take apartments as an acceptable solution because they are tiny ass little rooms that cost 300k a piece, not a place for friends to hang out and interact. Am I the only one who feels this angrily about housing at the moment? Do Yoshida and co. not care enough/don't have the ability to resolve this?

[ItMe]

Is this just how the game is going to play? [...] Do Yoshida and co. not care enough/don't have the ability to resolve this?

Yes it is just how it's going to play.
Their solution to the problem seems to be to throw space at it until it's enough. And considering Ishgard Housing is still about a year out... I don't think it's fair to expect instanced housing anytime soon.

Doesn't seem like they have the ability to resolve this.
If they could have given us instances housing, I imagine they would have instead of giving us new wards and Ishgard Housing.

[Jojoya]

So, to put it bluntly, last time we had new wards all the houses, and I mean ALL the houses were gone in less than 10 minutes. My FC had worked up the money for a Large and we were gonna buy one as soon as new plots came out but because we didn't have the best internet and the grace of God himself we got nothing. Is this an okay system? To encourage so much extreme competition that people harm themselves over? People have lost sleep for the purchase timers as well. Frankly I'm sick of seeing this fester in the community and am extremely disappointed to hear that Ishgard will be similar if not the same. Is this just how the game is going to play? If you want a little place to your community to hang with friends you have to forego sleep, food, drink, and bathroom to have an ideal chance for? Please give us instanced housing, or revise the system in such a way that does not so severely limit housing availability. And no, I do not take apartments as an acceptable solution because they are tiny ass little rooms that cost 300k a piece, not a place for friends to hang out and interact. Am I the only one who feels this angrily about housing at the moment? Do Yoshida and co. not care enough/don't have the ability to resolve this?

I don't feel angry.

I am very disappointed that SE refuses to learn from the past and continues to make the same mistakes by sticking to a ward system that doesn't meet the needs of the player base..

Hopefully when Ishgard opens a year from now. SE will implement the personal purchase moratorium so FCs will be able to get a house without difficulty. In the meantime, keep an eye out for housing becoming available through demolition. Hopefully your FC will be able to get one sooner instead of later.

And you're very wrong if you think an apartment can't be a place for friends to hang out and interact. They absolutely can. We had a sizeable chunk of our FC sitting together and chatting in the FC room of one of my alts while we were watching the Announcement Showcase Friday night and those are the exact same size as apartments. It just takes a bit of creativity to make them into a place where people want to hang out.

Yes it is just how it's going to play.
Their solution to the problem seems to be to throw space at it until it's enough. And considering Ishgard Housing is still about a year out... I don't think it's fair to expect instanced housing anytime soon.

Doesn't seem like they have the ability to resolve this.
If they could have given us instances housing, I imagine they would have instead of giving us new wards and Ishgard Housing.

They've got the ability to resolve it. The foundation is already part of the housing system in all the house interiors, FC rooms and apartments that already are instanced.

What's confusing is why they continue to refuse to expand on it.

[ItMe]

They've got the ability to resolve it. The foundation is already part of the housing system in all the house interiors, FC rooms and apartments that already are instanced.

What's confusing is why they continue to refuse to expand on it.

Do they have the ability to resolve it?
They have the ability to make new instances housing in the form of apartments, but from what I understand those barely work on the back end.

[Greyhawk]

Do they have the ability to resolve it?
They have the ability to make new instances housing in the form of apartments, but from what I understand those barely work on the back end.

Sure they do. The process might make a few players mad at a restructure of the current system, but in the end we will get rid of all these same posts about how bad housing is to get (and throwing in someone's health concerns to boot).

Even if they could wipe out the entire housing system and start over, they could make the same structure with some development modifications, utilize both existing and new servers they just got a few months ago and turn it instanced.

Give back the players who have houses, the small, medium or large ones they originally purchased to match what is in the instance. If they can't have an outside area developed because of instancing (normally you go into the house like in FFXI), then make a sunroom or something within the instanced house that would accommodate for gardening and social "outside" type of areas.

Expand the housing storage to accommodate the furnishings even temporarily, so people aren't struggling to move things out of storage into retainers for the move.

At worst, you have to redecorate (who would hate that? I've redecorated three times in the past few months, and change the outdoor area along with the seasons). We may not have an exterior building look, but that wouldn't bother a lot, if any, people.

In summary (TL: DR): Take the current apartment type approach and accommodate the living quarters to coincide with small, medium and large houses, then add a room to 'settle' for an outdoor need, such as gardening. Remove existing housing after its implemented which I am betting would take off a lot of stress on the current infrastructure.

[Jojoya]

Do they have the ability to resolve it?
They have the ability to make new instances housing in the form of apartments, but from what I understand those barely work on the back end.

Then we wouldn't have housing at all.

Again, even our house interiors are instanced.

Have you never noticed that when you go into your house, you get the "You have left the sanctuary." and "You have entered a sanctuary." but when you leave your house to be back into the ward you get both those messages PLUS a message listing the housing district name and ward number. Your character has been moved from the ward server to the housing instance server and then back to the ward server.

Never been curious why the weather inside your house is always listed as Fair even though it was Fog in the ward when you went into your house and Rain when you left it 10 minutes later?

Interiors are already an instanced system. What's not working on the backend is trying to add weather conditions to the instance server. Considering most players aren't actually interested in gardening and just want a bigger space to decorate, I don't think that's really an issue.

Weren't there actually houses, like, available for a week or so? Not *large* but....like, you can't be picky when there's already a slim amount of choices to be had.

There's homes *available*, just check regularly and be prepared to fight for it like everyone else.

That small surge of houses was due to hitting the 45 day mark after demolition resumed. We're not going to see a similar surge short of demolition again being suspended for several months (taking out the chance for any houses to become available short of voluntary relinquishing during that period) then being resumed.

Having 6-8 houses a week per world become available when there are hundreds of players actively looking doesn't help those hundreds that don't get lucky and are still without a house.

[Big_Bap]

That small surge of houses was due to hitting the 45 day mark after demolition resumed.

Small... what kind of world do you live in?

[DrWho2010]

Yoshi-p has loved the idea of "neighborhood" housing since his days of Ultima online. That's probably where the idea came from. Initially housing was priced so high that only a few could do it, but then the game got more people that they initially bargained for. I believe there was some interview somewhere that said if there was something he could do over from the beginning it was housing, but at this point they're too far gone to do anything else about it.

[LaylaTsarra]

Large houses will sell fast yes but there were houses available even after 30 minutes on Siren.

[Frizze]

Large houses will sell fast yes but there were houses available even after 30 minutes on Siren.

Quoted for emphasis. Some version of this complaint(the OP) comes up a decent amount. The current layout of the housing wards makes getting large houses(and even mediums on most servers) difficult. This is because 70% of the ward is small houses. We do not know if the Ishgardian ward will have the same distribution, but unless they announce something new im going to spend the next 6+ months(until we can go see for ourselves in 6.0) assuming its not changing. So why is only 10% of the ward large? Because when they drew up the map, the original prices were 10x higher. It would take ages for people to save up 400+ million to buy a large, so we wouldnt need many. And the maps just never changed, even though the prices were eventually slashed.

So for the OP. Get the notion that because you saved up enough for a large thats all youll settle for out of your head. Even if the next ward opens up FC exclusive, youll have a ton of competition for that 10% of large plots. When Layla says there were houses available 30+ mins after the servers came up, i believe them because my server was the same. The last small plot actually took almost 3 hours to sell for us. What your plan should be next time is to pick 3ish lots(at least one of which should be small). If the first pick is full, immediately work your way down the list. And even if all the plots you like are taken by the time you get to them(the faster you do this check the better), buy any small plot even if you dont like it. Because 1, you might actually find that you DO like it once you decorate it out and get used to the place... and 2, having a plot means you can use relocation to move your house later(and in case you dont read this board and see all the complaints, relocation allows you to skip the random timer of a demo'd house). And in the meantime, a few of your FC members can buy apartments(maybe in the same building to be neighbors?) and decorate them out. Jojoya is 100% right that you can make an attractive hangout spot if you put in some effort. And that will all be good practice for when you get the FC house and want to decorate it.