Endwalker Housing Update

[Illmaeran]

Because it is freshly wrapped donkey nards.

LOL, I haven't seen/heard nards in forever. Thank you for the trip down memory lane.


This may not be a popular opinion, but I'm just fine with the lottery/raffle mechanism. I gave placard camping a serious go a few times and said "stuff it" when relocators took them after many hours of clicking. I haven't had a house since Stormblood released and have found that not having one hasn't significantly reduced my enjoyment of the game. Yeah, it would be nice to have for all the reasons they're nice to have, but an apartment scratches the majority of those itches.

I get the strong desire to have a house among first-time buyers; I was incredibly excited to get my house and spend All. The. Hours. And. Gil. decorating it just right. Having a private place to chill and craft in was awesome, no doubt about it. Even though it was purely cosmetic and didn't impact core gameplay, having my own tiny space in Eorzea was cool and got me invested in the story and world more than I was previously since I was now an inhabitant and not just a gamer moving an avatar around.

After losing that house, getting another one and losing that too, then getting an apartment, the luster's worn off and having a stand-alone house isn't as exciting any longer. Having the option to toss a ticket in the pot, get on with my life, and "if I get it, great, if not, no worries" will work just fine for me. If I don't get one, I've still got my apartment and eventually an Island Sanctuary to derp around with.

[Jojoya]

This may not be a popular opinion, but I'm just fine with the lottery/raffle mechanism. I gave placard camping a serious go a few times and said "stuff it" when relocators took them after many hours of clicking. I haven't had a house since Stormblood released and have found that not having one hasn't significantly reduced my enjoyment of the game. Yeah, it would be nice to have for all the reasons they're nice to have, but an apartment scratches the majority of those itches.

My big complaint is they're just changing the "flavor" of RNG that controls the limited access to houses instead of addressing the access to houses. It should have been clear to them when houses first sold out on most worlds back at the end of Heavensward that the ward system would never be able to keep up with demand as the player base grew. That was almost 5 years ago. Certainly I know that development of systems in MMOs can be very time consuming but they already had the backbone of a housing system in place to work from. We should be seeing more at this point than just "here, have a lottery".

The changes at least make it more difficult to flip houses but they won't prevent it unless they make the new member period an excessively long period of time (like 6 months or more) and I don't see them doing that because it could cause problems for new but legitimate FCs starting out if the FC leader has a real life emergency. They may have been better off setting a waiting period for new FCs to purchase a house since getting to rank 6 for the purchase entitlement can be done in a few hours. Not that I disagree with the new member period in general - that will be a help when it comes to FC theft due to account compromise if SE can't get the rank permissions straightened out.