Private housing is in total shambles

[RioZabes]

Yeah man, really not a fan of this... got full on broken hearted this morning due to yet another Squeenix contest loss.
RP FCs having issues getting houses, meanwhile Lurkers own entire wards on Balmung.

[Nixara]

In several years of playing FF14 this is the first time I've actually felt compelled to complain on the forums about a development decision.

Putting aside the whole fiasco with the lottery system bugging, the main disgrace is the decision to lock 18 of 24 wards for free companies. To the expectation of just about everyone aside from the development team, the free company wards have numerous plots that didn't receive a single bid. Compare this to the private housing wards, where every plot, even on lower population servers, received significant number of bids due to the artificial scarcity you created.

Since most people, myself included, missed out on a house in Ishgard, I decided to check to see the new availability of housing in other districts. Queue my surprise when I see you've applied this 18/24 ward free company only housing rule to every other housing district, not just Ishgard.

I'm absolutely blown away that despite adding more housing, you've managed to make the housing availability situation considerably worse than it was before. What you've created is a system where people who own multiple FCs are able to easily obtain housing for making gil, while legitimate players have even less of an opportunity to engage with the system.

[Colt47]

I managed to stay out of housing for a long time because of the first come first serve system being broken. In the end there's no "good" solution to the housing issue, so the only thing that can be done is make a fair system, which is not what was implemented with the lotto system. Not to mention the fact it is bugging out right now states that this was definitely not a priority system being put in but more of a rework to what was there.

To make this a fair system, it needed to be impartial and handle things from a centralized point. If people want to move to the new district, they should have to sell their old house first before participating. Second, there should be no waiting period where people have to "claim the house they won" by visitation. They should just get an item in the mail saying they won or lost the home and that is that. Finally, they should have done it from a single point like a market board where you just bid on a specific housing size. That way people are lotting on the chance to get a plot period and not a specific plot. The current system could never handle people being picky about plots without having a lot of heart break.

The entire user story for the current method is a mess since it promotes waiting to the last minute to pick a house and demands the person to go look over every single private or FC ward currently available just to find the one with the fewest lotto tickets on it.

[Riddlebox]

Is anyone actually surprised that everything went to hell in a hand basket with the housing when they decided to mess with it ? Among others I would have rather sat and clicked or had to race to get a house than to go through all this bs.... The 0 random would have affected everyone seeing how it was going through the numbers... So even if you didn't get that message the winner was still decided using the same formula.. Meaning that person that won only won due to that formula.. NOW we get the OH postponing further purchases making everyone wait even longer for some sort of supposed FIX ? Major screwup indeed........

Not to even mention pathetic only have so few wards for Personal while FC wards have so many..... Makes it even harder for someone to purchase one for themselves not including the mess that they have made now....

[JessaHawke]

Putting aside the whole fiasco with the lottery system bugging, the main disgrace is the decision to lock 18 of 24 wards for free companies. To the expectation of just about everyone aside from the development team, the free company wards have numerous plots that didn't receive a single bid. Compare this to the private housing wards, where every plot, even on lower population servers, received significant number of bids due to the artificial scarcity you created.
.

I think that the only reason there are unsold FC houses is that most FCs were picking their #1 choice plots so they're fighting for the best mediums, the best larges, and some have kept their expectation low and gone for smalls. Any losers are now going to bid on the remaining FC houses. They will get sold. And because of it, more people in general (because FCs are usually more than 1 person) will get to Play House.

I've done multiple housing camps, transferred servers multiple times and camped houses in different places. Almost every time i'm there clicking, there are multiple FCs there also clicking, complaining that they've only wanted a home for their FC for the last 6 months. I don't think the split between FC and Personal housing is an unreasonable one. I think it's a pretty equitable solution to a shitty situation where there just isn't enough space to host housing for everyone. Having it tied to FCs gives people more incentive to join an FC and band together. While I enjoy having a personal house, I support the Dev's choice on this one.

Everything else about housing is crappy though.