Fix Housing Megathread

[Almagnus1]

The biggest issue is how the population is spread. There are literally thousands of vacant apartments and hundreds if not thousands of empty housing plots. The problem is that 99.99999999% of players are all cramming onto the same 2 or 3 servers.

Apparently they're doing a data centre visit feature soon so what you have there is an opportunity to transfer to a low pop server / data centre get your house. And still be able to visit or hop onto balmung or whatever and play with your friends..

There are a ton of unused plots and apartments though. Even on my server sargatanas I think my apartment complex only has 6 tenants. And last time I went checking others I found hell of a lot that were the same.

I think the real problem here is that apartments need to be a more attractive option and occupy the niche between the FC room and the small house. Until they can better do that, most complexes are going to stay empty.

Never say never...one said "oh no other mmo will beat wow ever!"
(0)

I mean, if the dev team showed some inclination that this would happen, I wouldn't be so harsh against it. It's a bit like saying "SE should make the PLD into a healer instead of a tank!" or "SE should make DRK a DPS class instead of a tank!".

Some things are just so ridiculous that it's more of a hopium dream than reality.

[HeyMcFly]

Never gonna happen because of the sunk cost fallacy with wards. Your time would be better spent on advocating that more features are added into the apartments, and explaining why we need them, and figuring out how we can work instanced housing with a lore appropriate setting into FFXIV.

I'm aware it'll never work
It's just me kind of spilling an idea, regardless of how unrealistic it is

But to answer your advice: I've spent the last 2 or so years advocating for small, medium & large housing as well as apartments to get an item limit upgrade for inside decor to be increased with all of the good reasonings in mind ^^

[Dashiya]

Ive contacted support this morning regarding donating my personal house to my FC and was advised to put it up here in the suggestion box

Due to current insanity of housing market we are unable to get FC house but mine is just sitting there not being used for any other purpose than looking pretty.
I really Don't mind donating it for FC so we can work on airships and have a place to hang out in all together.

I was told that's not possible at the time, SE could you make it possible? As the timer is equal for both types I don't see a reason why not to...

[Jojoya]

But to answer your advice: I've spent the last 2 or so years advocating for small, medium & large housing as well as apartments to get an item limit upgrade for inside decor to be increased with all of the good reasonings in mind ^^

YoshiP did say in a broadcast since Shadowbringer's launch that interior items limits are on the list of things they want to address but of course did not mention any time estimate. It's the type of update I would expect to see with major housing update so hopefully when Ishgard is opened.

Pretty certain we're out of luck when it comes to getting an increase on outdoor items. Loading times in housing districts still suck for players on PS4 and older PCs.

[HeyMcFly]

YoshiP did say in a broadcast since Shadowbringer's launch that interior items limits are on the list of things they want to address but of course did not mention any time estimate. It's the type of update I would expect to see with major housing update so hopefully when Ishgard is opened.

Pretty certain we're out of luck when it comes to getting an increase on outdoor items. Loading times in housing districts still suck for players on PS4 and older PCs.

That's fair as far as outdoor items- I think a good way to help with that is make some items larger, like an illusion of the item taking up more than it is- like stone/ wood/ brick pathing size increased but still takes only 1 plot up. Or flower gardens being larger but still taking 1 space up- Or have house designs come with specific yards (with custom flowers/ pathing etc) that we can add to. That may be the same kind of issue though, increasing the items themselves rather than the cap.

But yes, +1 to increased indoor item cap
I'd sell my soul to be able to place atleast 100 more items in my small house (I don't want to upgrade to a medium just so I can have a larger item limit)

[drkekyll]

Would it help if FC housing was instanced and only individual housing was in the wards? Since housing is kind of necessary for some FC functions as well as kind of integral to the social aspect, FCs shouldn't have to compete for limited housing. That would help alleviate the housing shortage by removing FCs from the equation. You could already just get an apartment if you wanted an interior and no yard, but I would expect instanced FC housing to have a yard but no neighbors, and I imagine some individuals would choose to do this further alleviating the shortage. This would also make it impossible to sell ward plots via FC transfers as well.

[Divinemights]

The only possible solution for SE to put up more housing ward is to increase monthly subscription. (Drop any childish thinking that all subscription fee should go back to certain game aspect, that is not how a business works)
Do you really want that?
I mean, it is clearly housing is not everyone's cup of tea.

[Almagnus1]

Would it help if FC housing was instanced and only individual housing was in the wards? Since housing is kind of necessary for some FC functions as well as kind of integral to the social aspect, FCs shouldn't have to compete for limited housing. That would help alleviate the housing shortage by removing FCs from the equation. You could already just get an apartment if you wanted an interior and no yard, but I would expect instanced FC housing to have a yard but no neighbors, and I imagine some individuals would choose to do this further alleviating the shortage. This would also make it impossible to sell ward plots via FC transfers as well.

That's not a bad idea, but the fundamental problem with have with instanced housing is that the wards are textbook sunk cost fallacy, and unlikely to change (or be directly competed against) because of that.

That said, it would still make things better especially if the buy in for that was like half a billion gil for your own FC ward, and then the houses had to be bought after the ward was bought.

[Jojoya]

The only possible solution for SE to put up more housing ward is to increase monthly subscription. (Drop any childish thinking that all subscription fee should go back to certain game aspect, that is not how a business works)
Do you really want that?
I mean, it is clearly housing is not everyone's cup of tea.

Or maybe drop the idea that money is the problem instead of design and/or logistical concerns.

[Lee102]

I've helped a few fcs camp their houses now. After they had pretty much lost hope. I think the Invisible timer should not last more than 10 hours.

24 hours is crazy, there's no reason the plot should sit empty, longer than my work day. Camping the houses, half the time, the worst part is it just Not selling.

If it would sell to Someone, I could go do something else.

The relocation cooldown, also needs to be increased. Change it from 5 minutes to 24 hours, at least. Relocation is a benefit of being a homeowner, but even I've seen the 5 minute relocation be abused, It would have been nice to see that person get stuck in that spot for a while.

I've seen the other suggestion of showing the Invisible Timer. I know, then everyone knows when to show up, but right now, it's still a game of luck to obtain, you would still have to show up, and still have to get luckier than everyone else there, and you wouldn't have to be there for too long.

Most of these suggestions could help now, and shouldn't be that big of a change to the current system.