My issues with the new housing systems.

[Olivia0x25]

After seeing the new housing in effect, I figured I'd drop my input on this new design for housing and what I think are really bad issues that should be looked into when it comes to the new housing system.


1. The FC & Residential wards.

A lot of the main issues before the new housing system was that there was NOT enough housing to go around for everyone. Both FCs and players are looking for housing. The temporary solution to that back in the day was to just add more wards. It gave more chances, and more recycling of account that would lose interest.

However, now with the new system where the FC's have 75% of ALL the wards for plots reserved to them. You took a problem and didn't fix it, but rather put it somewhere else in even a BIGGER scale.

Some servers dont even have enough active FCs to fill up that may plots in wards. Some FCs are also being treated as player houses, which you managed to try to fix this patch, which is good, but the core problem is STILL there. Not enough wards for everyone. You simply could of increased the ward count yet again by another 25 wards and gave more of an opportunity to a lot more people. Not to mention, FC's DO supply an instanced base housing similar to apartments for each FC that owns a house.


2. The placard bidding.

Most of us can agree that the new lottery system is better than spamming a placard for 14 hours a day or waiting for prime time only to get beat by bots. I wont argue that. But what I will argue is that placing a bid and losing, is not fun. It never has been. What bothers me is that you are forcing players who want to buy a house to go to the house and bid on a placard. If they lost, why would you FORCE the player to go back to the placard? It's very demoralizing to have the player do a walk of shame to collect their gil at the placard and move on. Why not just MAIL them their gil back if they lost? Even if its in the form of an item, they could just log in, go to the mailbox, collect gil or the item equivalent of their gil, and sell it to a vendor for their gil back from their housing loss.


3. The waiting.

I made a post here already:

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...elocated-plots

So I dont wanna go deep diving into this, because there is a separate conversation there. but to summarize.

Why do player need to wait, to wait to bid, to wait for the bid to end, to wait some more if they lost? Just make confirmed relocated housing instant biddable so everything keeps going in motion.




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[Olivia0x25]

It really seems like that the new housing system was rushed and wasn't fully thought upon when developing, and should be re-opened and looked at to remedy the situation. I also think if you are going to drastically change the plot type (residential or fc), you need to make it up to players by adding a SIGNIFICANT amount of wards so the ratio is better suited, like a 60/40. IDEALLY 50/50 is how it should of always been from the start.

[Dagavis]

Just wanted to add a reply because this covers all my issues with this system to a T.

[Brignadalee]

Absolutely agree, especially in regards to the new FC/Resident wards now in place. It's an absolutely ridiculous addition from most requests of just simply adding in a lottery system. That's it, we didn't need half of this extra they threw in to try "balancing" a problem already in FC's favors. Being someone trying to grab a personal has now become even more difficult once the handful of wards are soaked up by other players. People leaving FC wards are just feeding more houses to them, and taking away from solo buyers. It's an incredibly flawed system, one that I'm genuinely surprised how easily slipped past them in how rushed it feels.

[Olivia0x25]

The dev team really need to rethink this clearly and try again because the way this has been implemented is just bad all around. Yes it's a step up, but this is far from a good working system.

[Palslow]

FFXIV is the only game I play, so can anyone tell me how other games deal with housing in a much better way? why can't FFXIV copy their method?

[HeyMcFly]

It also doesn't help that this still doesn't stop entire fake FC's buying up all wards.
The only thing the lotto stops is plot sniping.
More "empty" FC's mean more RMT/ grandfathering in players to sell their FC entirely over the actual price.

[IdowhatIwant]

It also doesn't help that this still doesn't stop entire fake FC's buying up all wards.
The only thing the lotto stops is plot sniping.
More "empty" FC's mean more RMT/ grandfathering in players to sell their FC entirely over the actual price.

I would send these pictures over to the bug forums. Cause either that is a bug or some one made that many accounts as you can only have at most 2 houses per account per server and only 1 being a FC house.

[Toutatis]

The current plot allocation encourages shell FCs. The 4 ppl requirement is way too low as well. A reasonable amount of FC points in each of the past 4 weeks to demonstrate real activity should be required.

Right now we are seeing some of those fake FCs flipping houses for real money and kicking the 3 extra members (probably accounts belonging to the same person) added just for the sake of bidding. They only need to promote the buyer.

[Batbrat]

Pretty much all this. They flip-flopped on what they wanted to do and ended up haphazardly slapping the last minute decision in and messing up in the process. but even if it went right, FC's having 75% of all housing is insane. We don't actually have that many FC's. All this did was reward those who make "fake" FC's specifically to get a house. This didnt stop people from private owning houses, it stopped people who are in FCs with friends from having privately owned houses. If it stays this way, people will opt out of joining FCs more often to fake and make their own to finally get a house. Socially, it'll only cause more problems. Kind of undo's the work that they seemingly tried to do with the Community Finder things. If people have to choose between being in an FC and having their own house, they're going to choose to have their own house and actual FCs will pale in comparison. The anti-socialness and individualism will only become worse, on top of the misery and disappointment from regular players in friend group FCs who keep trying and failing to get a house.

Also, the time duration of the entire process is way too long. It's bad enough the housing demolition is still turned off. People shouldnt have to wait over a week for every rejection. Make it like 2 days to claim it, and lottery'd for maximum 3 days. 9 days is too much. Auto deliver the gil to their mail as well. It's apparently making people very angry/sad to go to the house they wanted and get their gil back. It's not our place to tell people what to feel. If they're saying it bothers them, then it bothers them and it's a problem that should be looked into and adjusted if possible for a better more tolerable experience. We want them to try again after failing, not feel so demoralized that they give up and unsub.