Just Another Housing Complaint

[Fybrile]

Taxes on existing homeowners are not a solution.

I have to agree with this 100%. I don't think making the current demolition system more punitive is going to make the situation any better. Losing the house itself is already a far bigger punishment to most players than losing a few million gil which could be recouped easier than getting another house.

Moreover, it doesn't solve the problem. We don't need solutions that are based on living with the same woefully-insignificant number of plots. It's the lack of plots that's the problem. Having only enough plots for like 5% of the population is never going to be enough, no matter what systems are surrounding it.

As far as I can see, there are only two options: add more plots, or implement instanced housing. The neighborhood system is nice, but I think most players would be happy with giving it up if it meant they could get a house, or upgrade their house, or switch their plot, or change their district on a whim.

Honestly, allowing SE to entertain any solution that's not those two solutions is just allowing them to keep kicking this can further down the road so they can continue to save a buck.

[Drkdays]

Perhaps SE shouldn't refund all of the losing bidder's money. Perhaps they should only refund, say, 95% of it. Anyone who can afford to put down 5, 20, or 50 million for a chance at a house can afford to lose 5% of it.

Because right now, people bid on house knowing they have nothing to lose by doing so.
Imposing a small fee on the losing bidders might reduce the number of people bidding to those that really want a house, and discourage people from creating multiple accounts just so they can take more no-risk attempts to get a house.

Plus, removing gil from the game is never a bad thing.

Yes, punish the poor! Let those peasants feel the pressure of the elite upper class rich players. They should just stick to their apartments if they want to dabble in home owning

[Nepentha]

Perhaps SE shouldn't refund all of the losing bidder's money. Perhaps they should only refund, say, 95% of it. Anyone who can afford to put down 5, 20, or 50 million for a chance at a house can afford to lose 5% of it.

Because right now, people bid on house knowing they have nothing to lose by doing so.
Imposing a small fee on the losing bidders might reduce the number of people bidding to those that really want a house, and discourage people from creating multiple accounts just so they can take more no-risk attempts to get a house.

Plus, removing gil from the game is never a bad thing.

Why are people so insistent on coming up with ideas that punish players like this.

5% is nothing to rich players. I'm gil capped. I can bid on houses till the cows come home. I make way more than that 5% back in a single day selling things on the marketboard.

For something that should be open to everyone anyway.

[hynaku]

You would think they make sure everyone thats wants a house can get one. Your the warrior of light and have saved the world but your homeless with no place to call your own. Sure doesn't make you want save the world when they can't even give you a home. Even FFXI you got your own room for free could decorate and add storage items to it.

[PrincessLily]

Lottery is bad hopefully they come up better way lol.

[Fybrile]

I can't honestly see a purpose for having medium and large houses at all if they were going to be so impossible to get.

I can't imagine that the way this worked out could have been the developers' intentions. While I think it's a failed system that needs change, I don't believe SE is doing this intentionally. They gain nothing out of false rarity for houses in the game, and it's completely against their design philosophy in several ways:

1. Almost every system in the game is designed to reward you in some way. You gain totems for beating a boss, to ensure you always get the piece of gear you're looking for even if you have bad luck with the RNG.

2. Literally everything else is designed to be accessible for everyone. I mean, it's a single-player MMO for crying out loud. As an example of their "everyone should be able to do everything" philosophy, they came out and said that the way they did endgame raiding in 2.0 was a mistake, in that they put in effort to produce content that most players didn't get to see and that was a mistake. Since then, in every aspect of the game, they've taken clear steps to make it easier and more streamlined to participate in all the content the game has to offer.

3. I think it's pretty clear the developers want only timed, limited rarity for most things in the market. Look at minions for example - they'll be exceedingly rare for a time, and then they'll start turning up as venture rewards, treasure chest rewards and accursed horde rewards. They release more and more of a rare thing the older it gets, until it's not so rare anymore (remember fat cat's?) Almost everything difficult about the game gets its own version of "the echo buff" after a few patches. Even housing! Paradoxically, they reduced the price for plots just to make it more affordable - which all demonstrates that they don't want houses to be rare, or exclusively for those who "work for it", else they wouldn't have made the prerequisites for getting one so insignificant. Housing is exclusively the only exclusivist thing in the game - which would connote that it's just not working as intended.

And, that's my point. I don't think the devs meant for housing to turn out like this. I think they're just either too idealistic ("we're going to fix it one day") or too cowardly to step up and say: "Alright, this is a failed system. We made a mistake. The Neighborhood system just doesn't work because we can't fulfill our end of the promise and buy enough servers to make it work. So, here's your in-game refund. Housing is instanced now, as it probably always should have been. Our bad."

Either way, after 8 years of this BS, it's time for them to focus on the problem and fix it!

[Shibi]

I can't honestly see a purpose for having medium and large houses at all if they were going to be so impossible to get.

Housing was originally designed ONLY for free company use. It was never meant for individuals.



While smaller FCs of 2 or 3 people can manage admirably in a small, groups of 20, 30, 40 people need a larger space, it's nigh on impossible to fit that many into the basement of a small.

A year later, they added free company rooms for people, and later again they allowed people to buy houses for themselves without the FC requirement.

...What's JojoBa's Kooldaid?

Crustacean flavoured, I think. (Shell FCs and all).

[Fybrile]

Housing was originally designed ONLY for free company use. It was never meant for individuals.

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what the original intentions were. You don't let a bank robber go who thought to himself beforehand: "I'm not going to rob that bank." Ultimately, it's only their decisions and actions that are relevant.

And, early on, private housing was promised. If they weren't sure if they could meet that promise for even half of the player base, they really shouldn't have done it.

There is no excuse. Just apologists. That's why Yoshi-P's had nothing to say since 2014 but: "We apologize"

[Yshtola_Cat]

It's really amusing how everybody that screams about rmt doesn't even understand that gil can be removed permanently. It's as if they are so far gone with JojoBa's Koolaid that they convinced themselves into thinking gil miraculously appears out of thin air for gil sellers.

Same thing for the big meanies with one or multiple gil caps. Nobody can sustain buying houses at gil cap endlessly, but somehow, you people convinced yourselves that its possible. Drop the Koolaid.

[Eraden]

And therein lies the genesis of the problem. If houses had been restricted to FCs, much fewer people would be complaining. The moment they opened that Pandora's box and allowed private ownership, everything changed. There is no way backwards for SE at this point without tanking their game. They HAVE to move forward in some way to provide more housing. The question is how?