Just Another Housing Complaint

[Fybrile]

1\3

Heya,

First off, please understand that I don't want to post this here. I'd much rather send a well-thought-out private email to a company account - where I'm sure it would be auto-deleted and that would be the end of it. But, I've searched and searched, and everything I've read says that this is the singular place to send feedback. So, here I am. I don't suppose I'll have any more luck getting my thoughts in front of the eyes of someone that can help here than I would via email - but, I will enjoy the opportunity to receive condescending, sarcastic or diminishing responses from onlookers as I am forced to make my private thoughts for SE very, very public.

Just saying, for someone with social anxiety, this is not the best way to allow one to give their heartfelt feedback and honest complaints.

I'm also not truncating my thoughts as your character limit expressly wants me to do. This is my one post here, and I want to say what I have to say. It won't be new, or interesting, or groundbreaking. This is just another complaint from a frustrated player who sees that there are far too few houses for private buyers in this game. But, I felt it was important for me to take the time and put in the effort to add my voice to the cacophony of complaints about this simple-to-resolve issue.

So, allow me to just say that, at this price, at this level and length of development, EACH player should have a house in FFXIV. The current system is not a fix. It is yet another carrot-on-a-stick for players who really want to experience housing but can't. The added Ishgardian districts were clearly a drop in the ocean of demand, and there is no possible way SE doesn't know this - and didn't know that long before it was released.

I am a Legacy player who has never un-subbed since 1.0. Like many, I am a player who missed out on houses in 2.0 because I didn't have enough gil during the brief window they were available on my server (a period of about 1 week), and who didn't have the DAYS of free time and general level of masochism it required to sit in one spot for an indeterminable amount of time and right-click on a sign with a dozen RMT accounts, and who is now being further disappointed by the current RNG mechanic SE has mislabeled as an auction system. Over 2000 days subbed, nearly $1000USD all told in subscription fees, app companion fees, retainer fees and store purchases, and not even the faintest glimmer of optimism about getting a house.

I am pointing out how much money I spent on this game PRECISELY because I feel it entitles me to buy a house in this game. I believe wholeheartedly that ANYONE who has spent even $3 on on a sale for this game is ENTITLED to buy a house in this game. It should not be a privilege for the lucky few simply because SE doens't want to fork over their capital on servers. We are giving them this money to buy those servers. They are not holding up their end of the deal.

[Fybrile]

2/3

This is housing, not endgame gear. It shouldn't be an RNG mechanic in the first place.

The developers should be ashamed of themselves for not fixing this system as soon as it was clear it didn't work - which was immediately upon release. There are some players - myself included - for whom getting a house is one of the biggest draws of the game. Some find pvp really important. Many are are here for the story. Some want to get into progression statics. Myself, and players like me, want to decorate their house. Certainly, the game itself incentivizes having a house, with outdoor furnishings being presented as rewards throughout the story. This reinforces that having a house is supposed to be a given. But, actually getting the house is possible only mathematically. We all know that players joke that housing is the REAL endgame, but it's honestly not funny. It shouldn't be that way. This is an advertised facet of the game that is frankly revealed to only be slightly better than an outright lie. Not exactly false advertising, but misleading to be sure.

Under the current auction system, you have to struggle just to see which houses are available to private buyers (why that information can't be made available from the teleport screen is beyond me), and, once you've found the 5 available small houses in the worst plots that are for private buyers, you get the opportunity to roll for it with over 20, 30, 40 or 50 other players. A 2% chance at getting a house is not a chance at all. If it were an actual auction, then at least it would be slightly better. At least then, we could throw all the useless gil burning a hole in our pockets at the problem. At least then, there'd be a modicum of self-determination in this singular aspect of the game completely out of the player's control.

Which is all besides the point that SE makes more than enough money to buy the servers they need to just give us each a house. The lack of concern this complaint gets from the developers is really disappointing, and belies their otherwise attentive façade. "Look, bunnymen! See? We're listening! We care! Well, not enough to sink the time into development to make hats visible on them, which modders did overnight. But, well, here they are! Please ignore the things you want that would actually eat into our profit margins."

SE, we don't care that the results for the first auction weren't displayed. 7 letters from the producer about how they are checking the backend of their blah, blah blah... who cares! Where's the letter explaining why, nearly a decade on, and you still have dozens of players begging for scraps the rare times a small house becomes available? FCs with hundreds of millions in gil that can't get a large plot? Where's that letter?

[Fybrile]

3/3

At the very least, allow us to purchase a house for real money. We can purchase a high level character with all jobs nearly-maxed for money. We can purchase weddings. I can expand my inventory space with real money. I can buy the rewards from one-time festivals I've missed with real money. Why can't I buy a house with money? If you're saying we can't have a house because of server costs, why not let the whales in this game offset those costs by making housing available for real money? Or, larger plots available for real money? You don't seem to have a problem taking my money to solve your other problems? Why's this one special?

As you can tell, I'm frustrated. I'm sure no one even read to this part of the post anyways, so I'll just step off my soapbox now. I just needed to say what I wanted to say. I just wanted to put my hand up and say that this isn't right.

[ijuakos_xqwzts]

3/3

At the very least, allow us to purchase a house for real money. We can purchase a high level character with all jobs nearly-maxed for money. We can purchase weddings. I can expand my inventory space with real money. I can buy the rewards from one-time festivals I've missed with real money. Why can't I buy a house with money? If you're saying we can't have a house because of server costs, why not let the whales in this game offset those costs by making housing available for real money? Or, larger plots available for real money? You don't seem to have a problem taking my money to solve your other problems? Why's this one special?

As you can tell, I'm frustrated. I'm sure no one even read to this part of the post anyways, so I'll just step off my soapbox now. I just needed to say what I wanted to say. I just wanted to put my hand up and say that this isn't right.

I have bought all the Store items that came with in-game items (even some that haven't), bought at least 3/4 of the items in the cash shop - not counting housing items since I have nowhere to put them. I regularly subscribe to all the extras - saddles, retainers, etc. I just scraped the housing districts and there are, assuming the houses available today aren't claimed by the current claim cycle, 11 houses left (all small). I'd happily pay for a medium and maybe even a large house. SquareEnix hasn't even said they'd address other considerations to fix the housing problem; they don't see it as a problem and even doubling down on the "neighborhoods" thing despite the only people I see running around here are people looking for and bidding on open plots, people running to laim their money from losses, and people running to vendors to buy stuff for their newly acquired houses.

I wonder how many of the "I have a house already because some arbitrary luck or condition (such as more available plots, lower player base, etc) that doesn't exist now so f--- your complaint" people would feel if SquareEnix demolished every house in the game, refunded everyone the money they spent to buy it and gave everyone back the items inside their house, then made everyone play the current system to re-acquire their houses.

[Shibi]

I just scraped the housing districts and there are, assuming the houses available today aren't claimed by the current claim cycle, 11 houses left (all small).

Go back and check Mist, Ward 22, Plot 2 which is a large that will be available on your server in the next round.

I wonder how many of the "I have a house already because some arbitrary luck or condition (such as more available plots, lower player base, etc) that doesn't exist now so f--- your complaint" people would feel if SquareEnix demolished every house in the game, refunded everyone the money they spent to buy it and gave everyone back the items inside their house, then made everyone play the current system to re-acquire their houses.

I wonder why people keep wanting to punish other players to increase the odds to get their own house instead of directing that energy at SE instead to look at what players want and address it?

Why does the first choice always have to be "let's demolish someone else home so I can have it" instead of "SE YOUR SYSTEM IS REALLY BROKEN, FIX IT!"

It's really time to stop this wrongthink of demolishing other people's homes, and instead direct that energy at SE. Because the system clearly ain't working - lottery being so effortless has really exposed the wart that placard clickers have known about for years.

[Archaell]

Why does the first choice always have to be "let's demolish someone else home so I can have it" instead of "SE YOUR SYSTEM IS REALLY BROKEN, FIX IT!"

Demolitions are already in-game and proven to work. We could dream about there being enough plots for everyone, but that's at the moment just day-dreaming. Yoshida is adding more wards, more housing zones, slowly increasing supply, which helps but clearly it's not enough on its own, so additional systems are needed to redistribute the limited supply. Removing houses from inactive players is the first partial solution in the line. Losing a plot is not end of the world, you can always get a new plot eventually - as long as there are features like the demolition. It seems harsh that inactive players lose their houses, but that also makes it easier for them to replace said houses if they decide to return to the game.

[Shibi]

Demolitions are already in-game and proven to work.

I think you missed my point, as in I wasn't talking about the demolition system, but instead about players wanting to take away other people's things so they can have it instead.

We shouldn't direct our frustrations at other players and think up plans to take their stuff. We should be lobbying SE with requests to improve the system, and that doesn't mean lobbying SE to make it harder to get and keep a house.

[Themarvin]

No one is entitled to a house, that i my point of view, you get alot out of this game by just playing it and housing is just an extra feature, now made fair by a lottery system, further more if just want a roof over the head, get an apartment, it is the same as a house except the garden, and they are really nice as well.

Look at the wards, so many houses is never used and quite a bit even stand empty, and that is for a start.

[Fybrile]

No one is entitled to a house, that i my point of view, you get alot out of this game by just playing it and housing is just an extra feature, now made fair by a lottery system, further more if just want a roof over the head, get an apartment, it is the same as a house except the garden, and they are really nice as well.

Look at the wards, so many houses is never used and quite a bit even stand empty, and that is for a start.

Thanks for taking the time to read my complaint and responding.

Players are certainly entitled to having a reasonable chance to experience a basic, advertised aspect of a game that they pay for. Otherwise, said aspect would be false advertising. And, as it has always stood in FFXIV, players have never had a reasonable chance to experience housing. I don't think anyone has ever tried making the claim that getting a house is achievable, and from what I'm reading in your reply, you're not trying to make that claim either. Your point seems to be more along the lines of "Oh, this isn't available, so you should be happier with this other inferior product" - which isn't a very strong position for a consumer to take. I don't think you'd, for example, expect customers of Subway who want a meatball sub to be happy with a veggie sub instead simply because Subway falsely claimed they had a stock of meatballs when they really didn't. We would call that false advertising, and there would be apologies, refunds, and communication about meaningful steps they would take to correct both the issue as well as the corrupt corporate culture that led to the bold-faced lie in the first place.

As for your next point, I already mentioned, for some players - myself included - housing isn't an extra feature. It's a feature. Like raiding, crafting, pvp, story and exploration. But, if pvp were as impossible to participate in as housing, it would certainly receive justified complaints - and frankly receive much quicker corrective action because fixing it doesn't cost SE money.

SE can't, on the one hand, champion how many million more players they have, and on the other continue to be flabbergasted that adding a few hundred more houses isn't somehow enough to solve this obvious problem.

The current lottery system doesn't make housing "FAIR". It just makes player EQUAL in an UNFAIR system. I don't think anyone could reasonably say a 2% or lower chance of winning a house are "FAIR ODDS" for such a basic part of the game. Again, these aren't the RNG odds for the legendary, ultra-rare Ashbringer in WoW Vanilla we're talking about - it's the odds of getting the smallest house in the worst plot of land in the least popular housing district. That's just ridiculous, and, frankly, indefensible.

As for "If you want a roof over your head, get an apartment" - this is the textbook dismissive position. Your own follow-up shows that you're fully aware that the apartment system doesn't include over half of the content that housing does. No outdoor furnishings. No plot of land. No gardening (cutting players without housing off from being able to farm 100k gil thavnarian onions). It's not the same thing, and attempting to paper over the issue like that is just willful dismissiveness - the kind of apologist response that has allowed this problem to last for so long.

Finally, whether a house is used or not is entirely besides the point. It's not SE's business, or yours, or mine, what someone does with their house. If they never use it, the reclamation system will put that plot back in the pool. It's a non-issue.

The point is SE advertises that we can buy a house, but we cannot. They advertise we can buy medium and large houses, which is and always has been a near mathematical impossibility. These are (I don't want to say flagrant false advertising, so I'll say...) unfulfilled promises from the developer. They have had a very lucrative decade syphoning capital from the playerbase. It's time this basic part of the game was made available.

[Amenara]

No one is entitled to a house, that i my point of view, you get alot out of this game by just playing it and housing is just an extra feature, now made fair by a lottery system, further more if just want a roof over the head, get an apartment, it is the same as a house except the garden, and they are really nice as well.

Look at the wards, so many houses is never used and quite a bit even stand empty, and that is for a start.

I'm gonna disagree with no one being entitled to a house. If you are making me pay the same sub as the player who has access to a system I probably will never have access to with the current mindset on housing at SE, especially as the OP pointed out is advertised specifically on their website, I should have access to all the same game features as everyone else. As for your second point, that is the problem with wards. They were a dream that never came into fruition and should be enough reason for SE to accept defeat and come up with an equitable system so everyone can have access to housing, not just apartments.