Fix Housing Megathread

[Arielen]

The tenant system needs to be changed to prevent stuff like this.

Tenants don't even prevent a house from being autodemoed. They have no true ownership. If the person that owns the house quits, the person it was basically bought for is essentially back to square one. And of course, getting someone a house through the tenancy system doesn't actually give them full rights to it: if there's a falling out, bye bye house. There's nothing wrong with the tenant system in other words.

[Valfreyja]

There is plenty wrong with it when it's exploited like that. It doesn't matter if it's not true ownership. And most are people who play for years, so the auto-demo thing doesn't even matter.

Again, the main issue is that it's an unfair advantage. The system needs to be fixed so that it is something fair for any player. Not simply those with a lot of friends that'd stand around to help them buy it.

[Arielen]

There is plenty wrong with it when it's exploited like that. It doesn't matter if it's not true ownership. And most are people who play for years, so the auto-demo thing doesn't even matter.

Again, the main issue is that it's an unfair advantage. The system needs to be fixed so that it is something fair for any player. Not simply those with a lot of friends that'd stand around to help them buy it.

How is it an 'unfair advantage' that you can share a house with a friend? And I seriously doubt everyone you know has never unsubbed for more than a month and a half.

[Valfreyja]

You aren't paying attention.

The unfair advantage lies in 10 or 15 FC people showing up to buy a plot. Not to legitimately share it. But to just give one of their friends "Tenant" rights, and let the friend own it and do whatever they want.

You act like the one who purchased the plot was actually going to use it. And that's not the case. They only did it to give it to their FC friend to use.

[Jojoya]

First, make it a silent auction. A house comes up for sale, you make a bid. One bid per service account per plot. First highest bidder gets the plot. Sure people with more gil get an advantage. But it comes down to whether they are willing to bid 10 or 20 million gil to get a small housing plot.

The second option was presented by someone in my FC. That being putting it to RNG. The house comes up for sale. Every 18 hours a player can walk up and use the Placard. If the RNG hits, and they have the gil to make the purchase, they get the opportunity to buy it. If not, they have to wait 18 hours for another chance at it.

Silent auction still doesn't solve the supply problem and encourages RMT by players desperate enough to get a house they're willing to pay any price. It could potentially give house flippers more control over the highly desirable plot locations. Wouldn't it be better to solve the supply problem?

The suggestion by your FC member is what players should already be doing. Check the placard. See if you get lucky. Go do other things and try again later if you aren't. If you can only check it once every 18 hours, kiss your chances of getting the house goodbye because someone else will have gotten it before you can check a second time.

If anyone is feeling animosity toward other players over not getting a house, that's a personal anger issue they need to learn to manage. It's a game. Feeling frustrated and disappointed because of a poorly implemented game system is normal. Feeling hatred toward other people, especially those who have nothing to do with creation and implementation of the system, is not.

You aren't paying attention.

The unfair advantage lies in 10 or 15 FC people showing up to buy a plot. Not to legitimately share it. But to just give one of their friends "Tenant" rights, and let the friend own it and do whatever they want.

You act like the one who purchased the plot was actually going to use it. And that's not the case. They only did it to give it to their FC friend to use.

There is no unfair advantage.

About 2 months ago, a house near mine became available. There were 11 players camping the placard with 9 of those players representing 2 different FCs. Who got the house? One of the two solo players camping it (which I was glad to see because that player had been camping for at least an hour before the rest started showing up).

Someone in my FC was competing for a house a couple of weeks ago against 4 other players all from the same FC. Who got the house? The one in my FC. I'm sure the players from the other FC were bitching that she got the house even though they had more people camping the placard.

There is no unfair advantage when it all comes down to RNG. You still have to be the player clicking at the right moment.

As for the house that your friend didn't get, the owner will have to use it at times or the house will demo. Tenant entry does not reset the demo timer. The player who bought it can't just give it to their friend then forget about it.

It will also be actively getting used by other players who haven't gotten lucky enough to purchase their own.

I'm not seeing a problem with that.

The system definitely could stand improvement but that particular complaint you're making is just sour grapes because someone else got lucky instead of your friend.

[geminipestdeath]

Yeah this "megathread" did exactly what I thought it would and just created a soap box for the same four or five people to play the contrarian to anyone who dislikes the current system, patting each other on the back with every post. This exercise in consolidating peoples' thought into one area so that "the devs could more easily see it" was an exercise in futility. Honestly, hats off to the people who are at least pitching ideas, cause the rest of you who tell them they're bad ideas haven't contributed a single thing in fifteen pages besides "lol add more servers" - like that's hasn't been suggested and equally lambasted because we all know it just isn't feasible.

Que another five pages of "no you" and "bad idea hurr", please. I'm sure the devs would love to see all of it for how valuable it is.

[Besame]

Silent auction or people with care for others (not enough of them in an MMO) will not make a dent in the housing problem. Only fix is a revamp to all instanced. All this mega-threading with long, drawn out "Eureka's" are fine and dandy if you are bored, I suggest just short replies containing "Instanced housing" might do you one better. However, keep in mind that at the end of the day, Yochi gets what Yochi wants. Too bad it's not a new wig...

[Divinemights]

Yeah this "megathread" did exactly what I thought it would and just created a soap box for the same four or five people to play the contrarian to anyone who dislikes the current system, patting each other on the back with every post. This exercise in consolidating peoples' thought into one area so that "the devs could more easily see it" was an exercise in futility. Honestly, hats off to the people who are at least pitching ideas, cause the rest of you who tell them they're bad ideas haven't contributed a single thing in fifteen pages besides "lol add more servers" - like that's hasn't been suggested and equally lambasted because we all know it just isn't feasible.

Que another five pages of "no you" and "bad idea hurr", please. I'm sure the devs would love to see all of it for how valuable it is.

Oh no Twitter is here, if you do not agree with me (even the idea is absurd) you are the enemy

[Catstab]

"lol add more servers"

As much as it sucks, beyond "overhaul the housing system and make it instanced" the only solution left is indeed "add more servers/wards." And Yoshi P has said many times he wants the neighborhoods, so instances are unlikely.

The only other approach to boosting supply? Nuking demand. My suggestion is and always has been: increase house pricing by 10 times, to their original costs. 40m small, 200m med, 500m large.

Of course 5700 houses is not enough for 20,000 people on the server when you get 5 million gil for finishing the story and it only costs 3 million for a house. So either you make 4x as many houses as there are now, or you make it so 75% of people cant even consider getting houses, or it continues where only 25% of people have houses and more than that are eligible/interested.

Of course suggestions like "SE should tailor-make a feature the size of a small expansion pack to overhaul the housing system and thereby re-distribute player dissatisfaction slightly" are bad. It's a ton of work for no results, which is a bad business decision.

[Seleni]

The game should try to advertise apartments better. It’s the instance housing that people keep asking for but many house-seekers tend to dismiss it outright. (I wonder how many people know that apartment room is bigger than the usable space on a cottage first floor? It may not be obvious if you’d only ever seen fully decorated smalls)

To help illustrate the differences and similarities between apartment/FC room and a cottage, they could add a quest, with either cutscenes or quest area, to show off an empty apartment room and an empty cottage.

And if possible, they can show off the two furnished, with vendor-sold furnishing, interactive items available at the inn (besides dresser of course), and vendor NPCs. (Both within respective item limit, of course. And no glitching allowed; that’d be false advertising). Ideally they would make it a hands-on quest to let player decorate the room(s) using a set of predetermined furnishings.

This way players can get a taste of what it actually would be like, without having to buy an apartment/house first. And maybe more people would consider getting an apartment first, so they wouldn’t feel so deprived of housing.