Why is there still no good solution to the housing shortage?

[LisSquid]

The only real fix would be going full instanced housing.

Add instanced housing like in ESO where they exist in towns and cities. A treetop penthouse suite in Gridannia, a boat house in Limsa, or a luxurious suite in Ul'dah. Make GCs important again by tying residency at these places with earning a certain rank with them, just like you have to be second lieutenant(?) to purchase housing in the first place. Captain and you are awarded a place of honor to reside.

Make the interiors be bigger than cottages or comparable to a medium. There will still be "community" because you exit your house and are surrounded by every person in that city.

[Shougun]

Add instanced housing like in ESO where they exist in towns and cities. A treetop penthouse suite in Gridannia, a boat house in Limsa, or a luxurious suite in Ul'dah. Make GCs important again by tying residency at these places with earning a certain rank with them, just like you have to be second lieutenant(?) to purchase housing in the first place. Captain and you are awarded a place of honor to reside.

Make the interiors be bigger than cottages or comparable to a medium. There will still be "community" because you exit your house and are surrounded by every person in that city.

What I find really cool with ESO besides the awesome variety and scale (both waaaaaay more than FFXIV) is that you can own multiple houses.... And!!!!! They are shared cross your characters on an account.

[Kaliesto]

There might be a way to solve the housing issue, but it is going to require a bit of creative sacrifice of Yoshi P like he did with DIADEM to make it happen if we're trying to make everyone happy. Just do away with the housing instances as it currently is, and rework it as specialized player-restricted zones where only the player can appear in and make his house via a hypothetical building mode kind of similar to THE SIMS.

Basically think of a Empty Grassland with no houses, and only you exist in it because is your own special zone. You can invite other players to this zone to live near you or live in your house.

Building Mode offers you themes such as...Limsa, Garlean, Gridanian, Uldan, and Coerthan landscapes that you can SHAPE to your desire, and then you proceed to build your house.

Now coding all of this on the other hand is a different story, might be easy or next to impossible on whoever is handling that part of FFXIV.

Besides coding, if their servers can't handle it then DAMN their server budget is more worse than I thought it was. I mean I don't mean to offend, but there is a lot of MMOs that don't really have this problem, and for some reason FFXIV has been having this problem for years now.

I mean that translates to me that SquareEnix doesn't believe in FFXIV all that much, and it just see it as a emergency money cow (and its starting to look like it, too many things don't add up over time).

Maybe I'm wrong (probably), and only Yoshi P. knows why he does the things he do.


Alternate theory -

Its just budget, and lifespan of FFXIV.

Maybe they feel a new MMO is better suited for major changes, but then if server strain becomes a issue AGAIN then its squarely SquareEnix' at fault for not doing something about it for using ancient technology.

[Moonlite]

We are all hostages to bad design and an accepting/apologetic player base. They had multiple chance to dump the current system and it has never happened. It probably never will. All you can do is hope you get lucky every 2 to 4 years when they deem to add more space.



Good luck hope people get lucky getting one and the people that defend/excuse the system.....

[kaynide]

At this point with “why housing xxxx” threads, hasn’t everything that need be said, been said?

I mean, I’ve seen you (OP) in other threads, surely you know the situation and the devs process for adding new housing wards etc?

[Arzalis]

At this point with “why housing xxxx” threads, hasn’t everything that need be said, been said?

I mean, I’ve seen you (OP) in other threads, surely you know the situation and the devs process for adding new housing wards etc?

New housing wards don't solve the problem. That's what people are saying.

It just kicks the can down the road. Arbitrary numbers, but if you get 5,000 new players on every server, but add houses for like 500 people in that same time span, it's not hard to see the problem. It's a really similar problem to the glamour system (give us 200 slots, then add hundreds of new items each patch.) For whatever reason, the devs have trouble implementing systems that scale or work long term.

I think the reason it keeps getting mentioned is because it's actually fairly heavily detrimental to the game. The problem has existed for years but there's really little that's been done about it.

The problem is actually so bad on some servers you can't even get an apartment at the moment. They're all full.

This isn't even getting into all the other problems the current housing system has. The entire philosophy of the game (via Yoshi-P) is that you shouldn't feel like you're punished or have difficulty catching up if you decide to take a break. Housing runs counter to this because you cannot take a break or you lose your house. If you have a large or a medium, you will likely never get it back.

[kaynide]

I have never said just adding housing wards was the solution, I’m saying that this has been talked about in detail to the nth degree.
People are complaining when SE is making actual strides to address the problem.

I am happy to admit if I am wrong later, but the island getaway could very well be some kind of limited instanced housing setup. There are new housing wards incoming.

The same things are being said again and again; SE has gears turning on this topic. There really isnt anything to add until we see what SE’s next move is (eg if island isn’t instanced, the. Yeah we should revisit that)
My stance from many other posts is the same:

It boils down to money cost, and monthly maintenance cost for no gain in profit.

If you want more housing, the best/biggest way to actively go about it is by constant requesting and also Mogstation purchases.

YoshiP has gone on record (sorry I forget where) saying one of the last times they expanded housing wards was directly paid by Mogstation purchases.

The problem is more about the company waffling and giving into pressure from players.

Originally, housing was meant to be for FCs only; no personal housing options. Also it was meant to be very very expensive with some distant future plan for individual housing. We are talking a large house was as much/over as 600 million gil in some cases. It was never meant to have as much demand as it does today.

The player base asked for it to be lower and for it to be more open to all players and ultimately that’s the decision the devs took. So, basically we can only blame ourselves for how it is, and can only ask for tweaks to move towards a direction that would satisfy as many as possible.

The reason housing is limited is literally down to cash. It is a zero-gain for Sqenix to add more housing wards with much of the housing expansions being funded by the Mogstation. I can’t speak for the ishgard housing as I haven’t really been following the live letters as closely as I used to so can’t comment there. Good on them for adding, but they know it’s a money black hole.

Originally housing was meant to be FC only with some requirements in place and an alternative system for personal..even talk of cheaper pricing for personal housing when it came to be... but it never did come to be and the devs decided to open up houses to the masses without adequate supply.

Instanced housing is probably the most elegant band-aid solunion they have at this point.

[TeraRamis]

We are all hostages to bad design and an accepting/apologetic player base.

Yes, it's definitely a theme with this game. I get that you love a thing - but to love it so desperately that you simply cannot see the flaws? That you rally against every criticism like it was an army landing on the nearest beach? Pathetic.

[Shougun]

I have never said just adding housing wards was the solution, I’m saying that this has been talked about in detail to the nth degree.
People are complaining when SE is making actual strides to address the problem.

I am happy to admit if I am wrong later, but the island getaway could very well be some kind of limited instanced housing setup. There are new housing wards incoming.

My stance from many other posts is the same:

I generally really appreciate, and feel as some say counter and I disagree, that FFXIV team listens to player feedback and is willing to make some substantial changes... I think in this instance going from FC to player with the system they had in hand.. was one of those times that unfortunately listening to the players I think made it worse. That said I don't mean to be negative and say they should stop, just that this time it didn't pay off lol.

I can see it in my head, I can see their vision of the system, this neighborhood, with every single house being a FC I find it likely you would meet a few people, the super high costs they originally had ensuring FC clump together. Now I "still" think given the general direction the game was going (theme park mmo, even back then) that this particular system wasn't the best choice, but I can imagine high cost limited access high density (fc) would cause a far more consistent neighborhood. That however all died a horrible death once players joined in, and again like I said even though I can see the general concepts they were going to I still believe it's not the greatest system given the rest of the format of the game. I mean in general just everything screams freedom, at your pace / choice, etc, you've the job system one of the best things you could ask for in an mmo (imo), the welcoming old content echo / oversyncing, etc, etc, the entire game leans one way and this housing system leans the other way (if anything 'this' game should have one of the most freeing systems as the rest of the game is often more flexible than it's competition). I don't believe even when it made the most sense that it was the 'right' choice but at that point back then I did see the logic and I did feel they could have achieved some of that neighborhood goals.

And yes.. to the nth degree, although some people are more okay than others to sit on the hill of a thousand horses beaten to death. . At this point I think its more of a just don't enter if you don't want to hear the wails of a thousand salty braying beasts lol.

[kaynide]

Snip

Mostly, yeahs agreed. I just wish people knew the full context before complaining. This is less of a SE made a bad system than it is SE made a bad call by giving into the demands of the player base.

In meme form:

SE> hey guys! New housing system for your FCs!
Players> But it’s too expensive…and I can’t have a personal house!
SE> Well yeah…servers can’t really have that many houses..so it should be a big effort of your Fc to get a house together!
Players>But I want a personal one..
SE>Ok but that means more people getting houses..less supply…
Players>Do it!
SE>…ok.
Players>WTF still too expensive.
SE>Well yeah.
Players>But you said personal would be cheaper.
SE> I mean we can..but you realize that means even less supply…
Players>idc, I just want my own house.
SE>ok..done.
Players>WTF they sold out already. Your system sucks.
SE>…