The Real Problem with Housing

[Masenko]

Thanks for your constructive criticism. Attitudes like that really make the world a better place as we are all able to correctly identify what (or in some pertinent cases who) the problem is and either deal with them, ignore them, or write a thinly-veiled response about their mother and/or small anatomy. Not that any of that is happening here, certainly.
That would be rude.
Much like how horribly rude the housing system is. Did you know that some people have been trying to get houses since release and have just had no luck? Try simple human empathy; it's pretty neat.

[Jojoya]

Did you know that some people have been trying to get houses since release and have just had no luck?

Did you know that they are lying when they say that?

Even Balmung had a brief period in 4.2 when houses were available for the taking. If they'd genuinely been trying to get a house all that time, they would have gotten one.

Certainly anyone new to the game in the last 3 years would be facing an uphill battle in getting a house but that is not true of long time players who have had plenty of opportunities but didn't take advantage of them.

[tsuchii]

Exactly all of this. This is literally the only feature in the game that you cannot work on. You want that one achievement? Grind for it. You want that ultimate weapon? Grind for it. You want that mount? Grind for it.

You want a house? Grind for it? No. Doesn't matter if you have millions. Fuck you if you're not one of the lucky ones.

It. Doesn't. Make. Sense. Every other aspect in this game is done so well. Housing here is just garbage.

For someone to make a counter-argument that it is optional - what makes the ones who have it special? We pay for the same subscription fee. Hell, if this was locked in paywall, I'd take it. People just want to experience it. Locking it to a miniscule few just doesn't make sense.

[Big_Bap]

Locking it to a minuscule few just doesn't make sense.

rofl

More than 2 million characters have access to FC housing. This game has been out for nearly a decade and despite FCs dying every single day, 65% of all characters in a Free Company have access to housing. You might want to open a dictionary.

[Illmaeran]

Well it is.
We're being charged money monthly and don't have access to a basic game function that is gated. There's an argument to be made here (likely poorly) that this is fraud of some sort.

And yeah, I'm bitter.

If you're currently on a Standard sub and are able to downgrade to Entry, why not do that? You'll essentially be choosing to pay less (vote with you wallet) to compensate for the housing content you're not getting with a Standard sub.

[Sythex]

If you're currently on a Standard sub and are able to downgrade to Entry, why not do that? You'll essentially be choosing to pay less (vote with you wallet) to compensate for the housing content you're not getting with a Standard sub.

I personally cancelled my sub for the time being. If my gameplay consists solely of running alliance raids or normal raids (depending on the patch cycle) and the one thing I want besides that is my own space large enough to decorate how I want is gated behind a luck based system, then why should I give them my money on a monthly basis? especially if they incentivize keeping a persistent sub to prevent you from losing said house.

[Jojoya]

I personally cancelled my sub for the time being. If my gameplay consists solely of running alliance raids or normal raids (depending on the patch cycle) and the one thing I want besides that is my own space large enough to decorate how I want is gated behind a luck based system, then why should I give them my money on a monthly basis? especially if they incentivize keeping a persistent sub to prevent you from losing said house.

Why have you been continuing to give them money until now if you feel the game isn't worth it without a house?

Certainly you should make the best choice for yourself as a consumer. If you will get more entertainment value spending your $15/mo elsewhere, then do it. Part of the problem in the game industry is they're used to players throwing money at games without actually looking into the game play to see if the game is any good and they'll like it. As long as people keep throwing money around like that, game developers have no reason to change.

Personally I'm satisfied with what I get for my money here. Even if I didn't have a house, there's still a lot of other content in the game I enjoy (crafting, hunts, etc.). I'd still be getting my money's worth and so I continue to play. On the other hand if content underwent major changes and I stopped enjoying the rest of the game, not even housing would keep me subscribed. RIFT Dimensions are a lot of fun as housing but the rest of the game is meh is best so I quit playing it.

And to correct the common perception that you need a persistent sub to keep a house in this game, you do not. Sub for a month, unsub for 6 weeks. Repeat. As long as you remember to enter your house at the start and end of your subscription period so the demo timer resets, you're not going to lose it. That's only 40% of the year you need to be subscribed, and lucky time with their free log in campaigns can reduce it even more.

[Valfreyja]

Voting with your wallet is meaningless.

Unless you've got about 20,000 to 30,000 players doing it, if not more.

A handful of players doing it, won't even be noticed, at this point.

[Fleap]

Design philosophy: Dungeons have been moving more towards a single-player friendly design. Recently with the Duty Support goon squads you can single-player experience your way through a giant chunk of the game. Why... WHY is housing not like this?

All these years of lurking on the forums and not making an account and now you've pulled me into it.

Here's the thing that really irritates me.

Everything's going solo. Crafting? Easier so it can be solo'd. Dungeons? Easier so it can be solo'd.

But Square keeps squalling that they want to build community?!

Do you know how I met most of my friends in this game? Not the mega-FCs that invited every newb where no one said hello. I got friends and made a community off of people I met in dungeons, and people who turned their houses into cafes and museums and other neat little oddities.

Pick one Square. What do you want? Do you want basically a cheap, typical-Eastern single player MMO where you maybe go raid and that's one of your few interactions with other humans?

Or do you want a vibrant game full of happy players and community?

The way you're going, you're not heading for the second one. More houses, personal AND FC, is how you're going to enrich the social culture of your game. Especially if you want to slim down human interaction through huge chunks of the game to basically naught.

[Corvus_V]

Or do you want a vibrant game full of happy players and community?

The way you're going, you're not heading for the second one. More houses, personal AND FC, is how you're going to enrich the social culture of your game. Especially if you want to slim down human interaction through huge chunks of the game to basically naught.

People shouldn't have to deal with artifical scarcity and a broken housing lottery system. Most people will not be happy with it. The only way to realistically fix that is to redesign housing so either:
1. People don't have to be cramped into smalls, with dog crap item limits and no space (meaning it would have to be instanced)
2.

that's it, really. There simply aren't enough large and medium houses for the people who want them. Without instanced housing, which would solve the issue of not having access to a company workshop/gardening (both of which are basically non-issues, given are current circumstances; anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to make FC housing look dire when it isnt) if all they do is keep the current layout and add wards, you would have wards full of empty small plots and a bunch of eaten up medium and large ones.

There's no reason homesteads can't be visitable either. If you're even worried about community just give people who own homes an easily referable ID akin to a phone number.
Hell, if someone comes to your house and starts trolling you you could probably have functionality to ban them from the exterior. There's just way more reason to do it than to not.