NA house challenge for FFXIV dev team

[Jojoya]

Sometimes you have to experience something yourself to understand how painful it can be for those who are already experiencing it.

So the challenge is for members of the FFXIV development team to make new characters on NA worlds and obtain a personal house prior to the next housing update that increases the number of houses per world. With Ishgard housing not being released until 6.1, that should give you at least 10 months to get a house.

The character needs to remain on a NA world though it can be transferred between NA worlds if you think you chose the wrong world and being on a different world will make it easier to get a house.

It must be a personal house, not a FC house.

Get a feel for what it's like to keep checking the housing districts and finally come across that one available house just to head to the plot and find that there are already several other players camping the placard waiting for the house to become available for purchase (including players using some sort of automation to click the placard).

Understand what it's like to be told "transfer to a different data center if you want a house" when it means leaving behind friends and the other players you know to go to a world where you don't know anyone, relatively few players share your primary language, they have different expectations, and latency is making your game experience less enjoyable than it would be on a data center closer to where you live.

Maybe experiencing it for yourself will help you understand why so many NA players are upset and frustrated with the housing system.

[Themarvin]

Sometimes you have to experience something yourself to understand how painful it can be for those who are already experiencing it.

So the challenge is for members of the FFXIV development team to make new characters on NA worlds and obtain a personal house prior to the next housing update that increases the number of houses per world. With Ishgard housing not being released until 6.1, that should give you at least 10 months to get a house.

The character needs to remain on a NA world though it can be transferred between NA worlds if you think you chose the wrong world and being on a different world will make it easier to get a house.

It must be a personal house, not a FC house.

Get a feel for what it's like to keep checking the housing districts and finally come across that one available house just to head to the plot and find that there are already several other players camping the placard waiting for the house to become available for purchase (including players using some sort of automation to click the placard).

Understand what it's like to be told "transfer to a different data center if you want a house" when it means leaving behind friends and the other players you know to go to a world where you don't know anyone, relatively few players share your primary language, they have different expectations, and latency is making your game experience less enjoyable than it would be on a data center closer to where you live.

Maybe experiencing it for yourself will help you understand why so many NA players are upset and frustrated with the housing system.

If they do that, they will find ways and methods to cancel out autoclicking bots, with eg, max 3 clicks per plot per day or something.... the challenge is to beat those people that technically cheat and exploit their way to it, and they will feel that in live upon them.

[not_ya_wify]

Do you honestly think the devs don't play their own game? They get paid to play this game.

[Kuroka]

No, no they dont. They stated several times, they have to buy their private subs xD

[ItMe]

No, no they dont. They stated several times, they have to buy their private subs xD

Do they really?
Wow lol...
Do you have any sauce for that?
I know looking for one may be like searching for a needle in a haystack, but if you happen to have one I'd appreciate it.

[KadaRemnant]

I completly agree. I wish they could realize how bad it is and the worse experience in the game. Housing is part of the game, even if others say it's not mandotary, it is still something i paid to be ABLE to get. Right now it is not. They need to change it!

P.s. Ffxiv the only mmo game with no instanced. All others have it. Time for ffxiv too. There's nothing good with keep patching the problem, fix it. You'll never give enough houses for everyone. And it shouldn't be limited, everyone deserve one. Just raise the requirement to purchase like anything in the game. No roulette or lottery and rng.

I gave up trying to get one too. My energy is better spent in something else i know i CAN get. Guess i wait for ishgard but we'll always have the same issues. Not enough house, more new players.

[Kuroka]

Do they really?
Wow lol...
Do you have any sauce for that?
I know looking for one may be like searching for a needle in a haystack, but if you happen to have one I'd appreciate it.

There it was during a liveletter
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._subscription/

[ItMe]

There it was during a liveletter
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._subscription/

Thanks for the link.
Lol SQEX making their people pay to play their own game, that's pretty crummy.

[Mimilu]

This reminds me back from before we had the ability to right-click and report RMT bots (I want to say near the end of HW).
On NA and EU servers RMTbots would spam you will tells until you blacklisted them and/or set yourself to busy and to report them, you had to write out a whole report.
It wasn't until Yoshi-P was touring around NA and EU servers and got spammed himself that the dev team really saw how bad the problem was (even with the forums having tons of threads about it). It kind of raised the question of what exactly do the reps tell the devs outside of the JP forums... >x>

[Jojoya]

Do you honestly think the devs don't play their own game? They get paid to play this game.

They have their own personal subscriptions to play.

To the best of my knowledge, they don't play on the NA servers. They play on the JP data centers that are much lower in population, and where houses are usually available.

The request is for them to experience the game as NA players experience it so they get a better understanding of our frustrations.

P.s. Ffxiv the only mmo game with no instanced. All others have it. Time for ffxiv too. There's nothing good with keep patching the problem, fix it. You'll never give enough houses for everyone. And it shouldn't be limited, everyone deserve one. Just raise the requirement to purchase like anything in the game. No roulette or lottery and rng.

LotRO's base housing system in similar to the FFXIV ward system. You have Neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are increased on a per world basis as demand on a world increases.

Demand doesn't increase in that game (at least when I played) because in all other respects, their housing sucks. Tiny placement limits, placement can only be done on pre-designated hooks and other really unsatisfying design decisions. I did a little google searching on their housing about 6 months back when trying to research differences between FFXIV house and housing in other MMOs. LotRO housing doesn't seem to have changed. Perhaps one of their current players could give more insight if there are any in the FFXIV community.

It kind of raised the question of what exactly do the reps tell the devs outside of the JP forums... >x>

I would imagine they summarize feedback on topics they've been asked to monitor then translate before forwarding. I'd be more interested in finding out how well the translated summaries convey our actual feelings. We know they do pay at least some attention to NA feedback, though a lot of that attention seems to be focused on the popular content creators. I'm not certain how much they pay attention to the forums.

Humans are really good at filtering information based on personal experience. Two different people can be given the same information and come to two totally different conclusions when their personal experiences vary wildly. It's why idioms like "before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes" exist. Sometimes you need to see things from another person's perspective to understand.

Do the developers truly understand the frustrations of NA players when their personal playing experience (as opposed to their development work) comes from playing on the JP worlds?

Thanks for the link.
Lol SQEX making their people pay to play their own game, that's pretty crummy.

Most (if not all) Blizzard employees also have to pay their own subscriptions for WoW. I would imagine other large game developers are the same way.

That's actually common in business. In some countries, the market value of the game subscription (or whatever product/service the company provides if they were to give it to their employees free) would have to be reported as taxable income and sometimes could fall into category of bonus wages that are taxed at a higher rate. Both the company (less ""paperwork")and the employee (a few dollars saved on income taxes) stand to benefit if the employee just pays for it on their own.

People love to see their employers as stingy but a lot of times it's laws that are at fault.