We need better communication on Housing

[ElysiumDragon]

This is probably the thing that irks me the most as a player. The devs communicate fairly well in other areas, yet they keep dropping the ball when it comes to housing. I'm still aware of there being a server shortage, but I feel an actual explanation of why the housing situation is such a mess (an issue that predates current world events) would be most appreciated, and help to clear up misconceptions held by the playerbase.

Other MMO's have handled this issue (housing) in their own way, be it through Instanced Housing, or a Neighbourhood System with (functionally) infinite wards, and I think SE needs to start looking into a long-term solution, especially given that as a game, FF14 prides itself on the whole 'community' aspect, with housing a critically important component of that. Not to mention of course that with housing being a substantial gil sink, it'd also help with the whole gil inflation issue as well.

It could be a dedicated Housing Live Letter, or maybe a full official statement detailing the current system, the issues with it, and any possible solution they might have. I believe having something concrete that the community can point towards would help to ease tensions.

I lost my lottery fair and square, and I'm completely fine with that, as long as I can understand that it'll be a temporary setback, instead of me never realistically having a chance of owning anything other than a shoebox (or nothing at all if you're on Balmung or Mateus).

[hotakako]

I second this.

I appreciate the effort that the devs had created a commual space in each ward to allow communities to get together.
But whenever any questions directed to them regarding housing, we are never getting a straight forward answer. And sometimes, it is basically filtered and they move on to other topics during their Live Letters.

[Antagonist01]

The devs are simply falling out of touch when it comes to housing and system issues. Failure to account for population differences across data centres (i.e. NA's troubles), screwing up a simple lottery system, FC housing limitations in redistributed servers in JP being messed up (with GMs ignoring things in game), refusal to act on people who own multiple houses in 1 ward...

[ElysiumDragon]

The devs are simply falling out of touch when it comes to housing and system issues. Failure to account for population differences across data centres (i.e. NA's troubles), screwing up a simple lottery system, FC housing limitations in redistributed servers in JP being messed up (with GMs ignoring things in game), refusal to act on people who own multiple houses in 1 ward...

Problem is, populations can shift substantially from a single event, as we saw only last year. What's needed more than anything is more servers to spread the population out more evenly across the Data Center, instead of having say, the entirety of the NA RP population on only Balmung and Mateus. One single server having a 6 figure population leads to the sorts of things that happened during Endwalker's launch, and even my own much smaller server suffered because of it.

[EthanXdeath]

You say we need more servers, how many people are going to be willing to transfer just for another likely low chance at a house? sure with 6.18 it really won't matter what DC you're on anymore, but how many people will want to forgo their current FC? What we need is simply more wards, and this asinine splitting of FC/Private honestly should have been the other way around 75% for private, and 25% for FC. Ishgard added 1440 plots, yet 1080 are exclusively FC (there's no way there's 1080 homeless FC's, let alone a majority of them willing to settle for a small plot). Compound the fact that not every private owner wants a small (not enough space), and limited supply of both Mediums and Larges, more wards bottom line are needed. As for Balmung and Mateus, well honestly, Crystal as a DC... (needs to be split up), arguably 6.18 fixes that sorta.

[BellBixbite]

Instanced housing just isn't gonna happen. It ruins the whole point and value of an estate expecially for the RP community that hold parties. If it is instanced it takes away on the realism of RPing.

Housing is inclined toward FCs since it makes the most sense. A FC can house a lot of players then a private that houses 1 with up to 3 tenants. It wouldn't make sense logistically to have more privates over more FC housing.
Maybe the islands will make it better for those seeking their own place since the only benefit if a private house is gardening. FCs provide the airships and submarines as well as gardening to the whole FC.

Both methods of getting a house, placard spam or lottery, are flawed bit in general the lottery seems more fair. It took me 15 tried to get a small house spamming placards over the course of 3 months. It was possible with enought effort. Housing, to me at least, is something you really need to work for. At least before the lottery everyone seemed to have wanted but now don't want. It sucks but just gotta keep trying.

They did not intentionally screw up the lottery system and they are working on a resolution. Saying they aren't communication is ridiculous. SE communicated fantastically compared to other games and does seem to care about their player base. Be patient, keep trying, adventually your effort will be rewarded.

[Greyhawk]

Instanced housing just isn't gonna happen. It ruins the whole point and value of an estate expecially for the RP community that hold parties. If it is instanced it takes away on the realism of RPing.

Housing is inclined toward FCs since it makes the most sense. A FC can house a lot of players then a private that houses 1 with up to 3 tenants. It wouldn't make sense logistically to have more privates over more FC housing.
Maybe the islands will make it better for those seeking their own place since the only benefit if a private house is gardening. FCs provide the airships and submarines as well as gardening to the whole FC.

Both methods of getting a house, placard spam or lottery, are flawed bit in general the lottery seems more fair. It took me 15 tried to get a small house spamming placards over the course of 3 months. It was possible with enought effort. Housing, to me at least, is something you really need to work for. At least before the lottery everyone seemed to have wanted but now don't want. It sucks but just gotta keep trying.

They did not intentionally screw up the lottery system and they are working on a resolution. Saying they aren't communication is ridiculous. SE communicated fantastically compared to other games and does seem to care about their player base. Be patient, keep trying, adventually your effort will be rewarded.

I disagree. If it's done correctly, it can still hold 'value', but that's a word I wish people wouldn't use with housing - value. There is no value except for the one-time purchase. After that, there is no value to it - there is only a digital asset that is of interest to the owner. If there were a trading market, it would have value, but we "legally" don't have that in game (in terms of intended functionality, not the FC sales BS). It's really more of just 'salvage value'.

Getting off-topic here - You can still add 'value' to RP communities by keeping the ward look but have instanced housing.

You create one ward that everyone can go to, similar to how we all congregate at an aetherstone. The instancing takes place at the housing line property, so you have an instanced house of your choice, yard included just like we have now but it's your own instance. Purchase price doesn't need to change, relocating and losing property is no longer an issue, lotteries are a thing of the past, choice selection of houses that you can afford are available, etc. I could go on, but you can use the common area of the ward for RP, or have more people in your instance. By RPing in common areas, you can potentially increase your audience and interactions while keeping what Yoshi-P won't let go of - that neighborhood feeling.

I never see anyone in my ward, ever. It's lost on his great idea of neighborhoods.

Get rid of this stupid archaic thinking, get rid of these instances inside instances, inside instances (Really, does no one else see how stupid this is?) and create one singular area, literally getting rid of 59 other instances inside of instances per housing area.
This is a prime example of server architecture failure as it is now - let me make a Windows server. Inside that server, I create VMs. In those VMs, I create VMs to do things in those VMs. Or, do I create it smart - barebones platform, then create my singular common spot connected to instanced areas that are only created as needed. The overhead on hardware would make so much more sense, be less of a headache and solve the problems they and we have with housing.

[BellBixbite]

FC venues alrdy use the common areas in game examples are the beach in the mist, Costa la sol beach and ship as well as a few other spots. The common areas would still be limited to the player rendering limit the game as already been using. So opening up ine large common area will result in alot of players popping in and out of rendering since it's all one huge common areas. That sounds terrible. It alrdy is a small issue at bug venues.

Second how would you advertise it? Community mist instance number 4 of for the large plot 12? I'm just making up numbers but you are now layering more instances on top of eachother making advertising venues or getting directions worse. At least now it's a physical location not a location with 10 or more instances you have to choose from like appartments. Currently you can say this plot on this ward is me. Not this plot instance 4 is me.

Instances takes away from the unique living areas and aspect of the residential districts. We don't need more instanced areas in the game. I'm curious how this whole situation would have gone if SE's lottery didn't have a bug in it? Would we still be discussing these topics or would it be a smaller group complaining they didn't win instead of a bug?

Everyone can't be happy but living areas like on BDO felt so off veung instances on top of eachother. At least in FF it's more of a physical location.

To summarize funneling all the plots and wards into one zone instanced on top of eachother sounds like a cluster and a mess. As of now things are more spread apart and easier to navigate. Imagine the chaos of pages after pages of people's areas instanced on eachother and trying to visit a place.

[ElysiumDragon]

As someone who frequents RP venues in the game, wouldn't this also significantly harm the so-called 'nightclub' scene, given that on most occasions, the player capacity of a housing instance can be filled multiple times over by such an event? Whenever I've been to these venues, it's been difficult to access the property itself precisely because of how instances in this game work. I don't think so-called 'Instanced Housing' is the correct solution here, especially with how unpopular Apartments (the instanced Housing option) are on many servers.

I feel like more Wards, and (the most important part) more player servers would fix these issues. Especially with what happened during the launch of Endwalker, I think it's become abundantly clear that the player population's too cramped together, and needs to be dispersed across a greater number of servers. Would probably significantly address the housing issues too.

I believe that organising around a single viable solution would allow the player base to make a much stronger case to the developers, instead of arguing over trivialities and (inevitably) ending up with harassment and unnecessary toxicity.

[GeminiReed]

[Instanced housing] ruins the whole point and value of an estate expecially for the RP community that hold parties. If it is instanced it takes away on the realism of RPing.

And yet I've had significantly better party/bar RP in Wildstar's instanced housing. Jump into housing, open the visit dialog, type in their name and bam, you're there.

Here? If you're lucky they're in a base city-state. Then you need to figure out the ward and if they're in the main or subdivision. Once there then you need to navigate to the house itself. Easy enough if you're familiar with the zone but quite the PITA if you're not. One venue set up an alt to friend people who got lost so they could just teleport.

Instancing is not the barrier you make it out to be.