General feedback on the housing system

[TikkiMykk]

First of all, I want to say thank you for finally giving an alternative to the 'First come, first served' system. It was certainly a system that needed to be overhauled however I'm not confident that using a lottery was the best way to go about this.

My thoughts on the current state of the housing system are:

- Why were FCs given Ward 1 - 18 and private buyers 19 - 24?

I will give you the benefit of the doubt here and run with the excuse of the FFXIV team wanted to give a stronger sense of community to the game. On near any other server, I am sure that would've been fine. However, I play on Crystal and I this particular decision does make me question if anyone from the FFXIV team takes the time to interact with and understand the different communities on the various servers.

The Crystal DC is extremely heavy on Role Play. Mateus does not have enough FCs to fill 18 wards. We do however, have an abundance of players who desperately wish to own their own plot and have more of an established presence in Eorzea. To have a permanent location where they are able to role play their cafes, general home ownership aspirations, radio stations - whatever else they want to have in their homes. Knowing and Understanding this single fact about my entire Data Centre means that the decision to turn the first 18 wards into FC plots was, in fact, a poor one.

As I write this, I am looking at the Ishgard residential area. Less than 10% of the first 18 wards are full, and less than 15% of all plots were taken ( I realize that as of right now there is actually a bug with people buying the properties, but I'm not even going to bother having that discussion. The point I want to make is still valid).
There are going to be plots that will never have anyone living in them because they're FC exclusive wards whereas there will be players who go without housing.

[TikkiMykk]

- limited properties with no word about additional wards

Each residential area has 24 wards with 30 plots per division. This has been fact since the residential areas were released. Many MMOs have taken to including housing elements in their games, and I really feel that FFXIV can learn from how things are done. Certain MMOs have an inn system similar to what FFXIV does. The primary difference however being that the inn room(s) serve as a players personal home. The player is free to decorate that inn room as they see fit. The housing is instanced and EVERYONE gets a property.

Other MMOs have a constantly evolving ward system. Each player can go and purchase a home within a ward and once it is full, another ward is generated to accommodate the ever growing player base. I understand this may be complex for FFXIV, but this option may well be worth investigating as FFXIV is home to over 25million people.

To give a different understanding:
There are 25million+ players.
Each server has 5 residential districts (Lav beds, mist, goblet, shiro and ishgard).
Each district has 24 wards/60 plots which is 300 plots all up.
Roughly.. what? 68 worlds across the different DCs means there are about 20,400 plots total.

20,400 plots for over 25MILLION people? There is enough housing for LESS THAN 0.1% of your player base.

The main issue you need to focus on is not simply adding locations. it really does now come down to adding in more wards and plots.

Note: No I did not include apartments in this. They're irrelevant for the purpose of the point I'm making.

- Lack of information on Island Sanctuary

This seems like it makes no sense for this post, but it does actually tie into the above point. The lack of information on Island Sanctuary does potentially exasperate the issue. If the XIV team doesn't want to or for whatever reason cannot add more housing, then there needs to be a stronger transparency regarding Island Sanctuary. I understand that the team likely wants it to be a surprise and be all amazing upon release, but with the current backlash from Ishgard and the housing system as a whole; communication is now paramount!

At the very least, just give your player base an answer for the biggest question they have (that I've seen so far, at least): Will Island Sanctuary be a sort of instanced housing?
To expand on this: Will it be an island all for us where we can build our own home and decorate it much like a residential plot?
If you can give the player base a clear answer on this, there is a chance (depending on the answer, of course) that the pressure surrounding the residential areas to ease up. Not everyone wants to live in a residential area with other people. Some players would be absolutely content with having an instanced home.

[TikkiMykk]

- Invisible timer on FCFS properties

It was announced way back when, that the spam click placard system was remaining alongside the lottery system. If you insist on keeping this archaic, carpal tunnel inducing system, then you NEED to remove the invisible timer. either remove it outright OR display it on the placard so people don't spend 12+ hours of their day spam clicking and praying that they're faster than the myriad other people also spam clicking.

- Multi plot ownership

Here is a big one you actually have the capacity to change. With the inclusion of the Ishgard housing, the XIV team has limited plots to 1 personal per account. This sounds amazing in theory however, it has not happened in practice.
How do we do this, you ask? You get serious and accept that there will be sacrifices to overhauling a system.

your options are:

*IF* someone who owns multiple properties attempts to purchase another OR relocate to a new plot. They are given a warning message that states by moving ahead with the purchase, they understand that they're relinquishing EVERY SINGLE ONE of their other personal properties to get it.

This option is a little more complex, but the dev team does a sweep of accounts. Players flagged with more than one personal plot are sent a message via the in game delivery system warning them that they will only be allowed to keep ONE of their properties and they have until the upcoming maintenance to relinquish all other personal plots that are tagged to the account. Failure to do this will result in a random small plot being flagged to the account and the others force demo'd.

The XIV team made the decision to implement a 'one (personal/fc) plot per account' and now they MUST be honorable, firm and fair in enforcing it. Yes, there will be complaints from the people who want to keep their 14 houses, but as I said. Sacrifices must be made.

Note: I say 'personal' but these options can be applied to FCs, it would just take extra steps: There would need to be a database or something that contains information regarding each unique FC and the players within or a database that contains which plots are owned by whom. If a plot is registered to an FC more than once, then they would need to be warned in the same manner as either aforementioned option.
The complexity here stems from having to work out the most effective way of identifying which players within a single FC had FC plots assigned to them and then eliminating them so that, for example, only the FC leader was able to have a plot flagged to their name on behalf of the FC.

An additional boon of this is that in taking the time to sweep and warn people in this manner, the RMT trade will suffer greatly for it.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk

[Faafetai]

I think the lottery is a good idea because it prevents clicking on a placard for hours. Not everyone can do this and when my partner was doing this every time someone who already had a house would move into that spot so began the cycle again. The thing I do not like is of course the fantastic bug that many lost to literally no one. I do not know what other system could be put in place to prevent clicking for hours, but the lottery system itself clearly needs to be fixed. Maybe not have literally more than half of the available houses for FC's lose to no one would be a good start.

[TikkiMykk]

You are right, click spamming wasn't the way to go about it.

The lottery was great in theory but appears to have been coded very poorly. With 0 being a number that could've been picked, it invalidated an entire system. Given how long they knew this was coming for, that is not an error that should've made it through.

The concept of letting people pick up houses within a ward and then having a constantly evolving ward would have been a good idea. Other MMOs have it and it works so well; to the point they do not have Housing (Unreal), (ultimate) and (savage) jokes. If they can do it, there is no reason why XIV can't work it into their system. It would be complex, yes, but absolutely doable.

[Themarvin]

It is still bs... no talk about doing something for these that logically won and the likes... and now being kept hostage untill the problem is solved as well.