[Salt thread] Owning a House Offically became Dead content for me

[DeNada]

If you can't really get a house, an apartment is also just as good to get a taste of decorating your own little slice of Eorzea.

The only thing it's missing is outdoor gardening and no one really misses that since it's mostly tedious busywork with little rewards since the value of onions have gone down dramatically that it's barely worth the effort to do it anymore.

[Imora]

If you can't really get a house, an apartment is also just as good to get a taste of decorating your own little slice of Eorzea.

The only thing it's missing is outdoor gardening and no one really misses that since it's mostly tedious busywork with little rewards since the value of onions have gone down dramatically that it's barely worth the effort to do it anymore.

They're not very big, and you can have multiple setups in multiple places with a house, too.

I have a house, apartment, and FC room, and they're all *very* different vibes. In Everquest 2, I had 5 mansions. 5. MANSIONS. all decorated to the nines. Instanced housing has so much more potential than just allowing everyone to have A house.

[Imora]

?

The only houses in the game that can only be bought with Crowns are the huge ones meant to serve as guild halls (the ones they frequently rotate in and out of the store, to the disgruntlement of most of the playerbase). They aren't necessary unless someone either plans to form a large guild that needs the space, or they simply like the location/style/etc.

You can pay for every other type of home with in-game gold, and own it forever (with it being tied to your account, meaning all your alts can use it as well). All furnishings can be bought with in-game gold except for very specific Crown-only purchases - which, again, tend to be stuff someone will only want if putting together a guild hall for a guild that would actually need or make use of such items. Some items may simply rotate in and out on the Luxury vendor every weekend, but there's usually people selling past Lux items on traders anyway.

You don't need to spend thousands of dollars to either buy or fully decorate a house, and I don't think that's ever been the case. Simply grab the patterns/blueprints/praxis to make them yourself, or buy them off guild traders. The worst any non-Crown homes will run you is some extra time finishing any necessary Achievements to unlock the ability to purchase that home with gold.

Frankly, you can even buy the Crown houses and items with in-game gold too, since ZOS allows for the trading of Crowns for gold and vice versa. It'd simply require people to put in the effort to make the money to do so - which is the same as in FFXIV, really.

At least you won't lose the houses you buy if you quit the game for a couple of months to 'take a break', as Yoshi does love to say (while holding houses hostage to a subscription unless auto-demo happens to be off).

Also frankly, given it's a buy-to-play game with an optional sub... I'm more lenient with cash shop pushing than I am a sub-based game double dipping with extra charges for retainers and a cash shop with overpriced attire you can only use on single characters. Not to say ESO's cash shop isn't predatory as all heck, but I can at least understand the necessity of not just having it but pushing it so hard, because at the end of the day, it's essentially free to play after you purchase the game.

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Games that came before and after FFXIV have all - for the most part - had better housing systems than FFXIV. Which is incredibly sad for a game touted as 'the greatest MMO on the market'. With Wildstar out of commission, ESO is king of housing at this point.

ESO's housing isn't terrible, I have a house on Vvardenfell. Too bad decorating it was annoying because I didn't have gold because the market system there sucks harder than a Dyson.

[AnnaUK]

I moved to a new server. Got a medium no problem.

[SturmChurro]

(...)
Also frankly, given it's a buy-to-play game with an optional sub... I'm more lenient with cash shop pushing than I am a sub-based game double dipping with extra charges for retainers and a cash shop with overpriced attire you can only use on single characters. Not to say ESO's cash shop isn't predatory as all heck, but I can at least understand the necessity of not just having it but pushing it so hard, because at the end of the day, it's essentially free to play after you purchase the game.

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Games that came before and after FFXIV have all - for the most part - had better housing systems than FFXIV. Which is incredibly sad for a game touted as 'the greatest MMO on the market'. With Wildstar out of commission, ESO is king of housing at this point.

That's how they get you. The sub is "optional" .. it's really not though, if you seriously want to play. I agreed that the housing system is good every time I have talked about that game, I have just always criticized the monetization of said feature - the game in general really, it's awful. I understand that there are players who do not really like this game or it's direction, and the housing definitely could be better, but FFXIV is still the all around better game. Anyway, sure, if someone has a lot of money (or time) that they are willing to spend, likes bad gameplay, likes ES in general, then they can always give it a try.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

That's how they get you. The sub is "optional" .. it's really not though, if you seriously want to play. I agreed that the housing system is good every time I have talked about that game, I have just always criticized the monetization of said feature - the game in general really, it's awful. I understand that there are players who do not really like this game or it's direction, and the housing definitely could be better, but FFXIV is still the all around better game. Anyway, sure, if someone has a lot of money (or time) that they are willing to spend, likes bad gameplay, likes ES in general, then they can always give it a try.

ZOS is money-grubbing just as much as SE is, it's true. I think it's better to call both out on crappy practices, however, instead of painting a wide swath of "ESO bad FFXIV good". ESO has a lot of issues, just as FFXIV has a lot of issues. They aren't all the same issues, however, and what ESO offers vs what FFXIV offers is ultimately subjective in whether it's "better" or "worse". Frankly, I'm having more fun in ESO in the past... 3? 4? months than I've had in FFXIV in 10 years, thus why I've moved to it as my primary MMO and am likely to remain with it as my primary MMO (unless some massive, sweeping changes happen over here to fix most of the issues that have been piling up for literally years).

Overall, every one of my friends who has moved to ESO with me lauds its housing system. One of my friends moved over solely because it has instanced housing that is relatively easy to access and permanent, account-wide. They played the placard and then the lotto game in here for years with no luck, and it genuinely killed their motivation to continue paying for the game because they were essentially locked out of content due to poor implementation and artificial scarcity that SE has perpetuated.

You go on about "it's really not though" - the sub is entirely optional. You can play the game without it. You can spend the time and effort to make enough in-game gold to purchase literally anything and everything on the Crown store with in-game gold. The sub simply offers a fair bit to it and is honestly more worth to get than not, but that is simply how things are in a b2p-then-f2p-for-life game. They want people to buy the sub, so they make the sub tempting without making it incredibly intrusive to simply being f2p. For all the faults of ZOS as a company, they actually offer a decent sub model in comparison other (mostly Korean) f2p MMOs I've seen.

And honestly, just like in here, the Crown store as a whole is entirely optional.

Trying to downplay its housing system by making incorrect statements about it costing people hundreds or thousands of dollars to get into or fully decorate was just very disingenuous. I know people hate it when others bring up how other games are doing things better than FFXIV, around here, but seriously.

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ESO's housing isn't terrible, I have a house on Vvardenfell. Too bad decorating it was annoying because I didn't have gold because the market system there sucks harder than a Dyson.

If you're talking about the trader market system, it's got its ups and downs. Overall, I actually prefer it now that I've had time to experience and get used to the way it works - it keeps markets relatively stable, listing fees prevent massive and constant undercutting, it's difficult to control a market unless you have a lot of time and money to spend going all across the world to buy up everything of one type of item, and it keeps trade guilds active because they need to be making money for the house in order to bid on a trader.

Not the most perfect player-based buy/sell system out there, of course, but I definitely prefer it over a broken, easy to exploit universal market system where nothing has value. Buyer's markets are great for people who only ever buy things, but it is absolutely atrocious for people trying to make money through hard work and market trends.

[SturmChurro]

...

Going in-depth is probably better off being moved to discussion over in off-topic or in a thread directly related to a wide variety of issues that allows for comparisons with FFXIV and other games. I would be more than happy to discuss it better there.

I did not make incorrect statements about that game's housing, it can cost that much, and allows for a better experience when one does hence "willing to spend hundreds of dollars worth of premium currency". If someone were to buy "hundreds of dollars worth of premium currency" with gold, does that negate the statement "hundreds of dollars worth of premium currency"? Also, I did not say thousands.

Housing needs a lot of work in this game, and I was against the current system, and a system that was proposed like it for quite awhile. I have continuously been for housing improvements, which includes instanced housing. Everyone should be able to own a house in this game, or at least an instanced variant that allows for the same variety of features as a house in a ward. It is unfortunate that many players on more populated worlds would need to move to a dead one in order to obtain a proper house in this game, or have a real chance at getting one.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

Going in-depth is probably better off being moved to discussion over in off-topic or in a thread directly related to a wide variety of issues that allows for comparisons with FFXIV and other games. I would be more than happy to discuss it better there.

I did not make incorrect statements about that game's housing, it can cost that much, and allows for a better experience when one does hence "willing to spend hundreds of dollars worth of premium currency". If someone were to buy "hundreds of dollars worth of premium currency" with gold, does that negate the statement "hundreds of dollars worth of premium currency"? Also, I did not say thousands.

Housing needs a lot of work in this game, and I was against the current system, and a system that was proposed like it for quite awhile. I have continuously been for housing improvements, which includes instanced housing. Everyone should be able to own a house in this game, or at least an instanced variant that allows for the same variety of features as a house in a ward. It is unfortunate that many players on more populated worlds would need to move to a dead one in order to obtain a proper house in this game, or have a real chance at getting one.

I frankly hadn't planned to go so in-depth with discussion about it anyway, but you made an incorrect statement - or rather, I suppose a misleading/uninformed one - in stating ESO's housing system is good "if you are willing to put hundreds of dollars into it".

That is just factually incorrect, as like I had stated, the crown-only items for homes tend to be things one will only want for guild halls that would make use of them. They aren't necessities, and they can still be purchased through in-game gold. You can argue the semantics of "you're still buying Crowns, RL money, with it" but the fact is - you made a false statement that I simply explained about in detail to debunk and clarify. That's all.

Frankly, had I other games with good housing that I personally was familiar with and had played, I would have brought them up in my initial post. Alas, ESO is what I currently have experience with and thus could speak about in regards to comparing it to FFXIV's system. Should have expected people on this forum would disregard the fact I was comparing it to how poor XIV's housing implementation, however, and instead focus on the fact I simply mentioned ESO (or any other game, as it would have been likely) at all.

Regardless, my initial statement stands: I encourage people like the OP, and others, to continue putting pressure on SE to properly fix or better their housing system. But ultimately, I would temper expectations with the unfortunate fact that things are unlikely to change in the next decade; they certainly haven't since 2015 when the system was first introduced, save for band-aid fixes that have not addressed any of the core issues whatsoever. If housing is at the point that it is make or break for some folk, I advise moving to a different MMO with better housing implementation - ESO being simply one of (and probably the best) example, but not the only one. Money talks best, after all, and SE could certainly stand to lose some so they might better pay attention.

And now I return to ignoring these forums in their entirety.

[SturmChurro]

Should have expected people on this forum (...)

Do you remember who you are talking to?

Recently, and funnily relevant:

I seriously doubt the island sanctuary will be much more than a novelty, and better for crafters/gatherers. Anyway, a proper instanced housing feature would pretty much make the housing wards obsolete. I mean something on par with the idea suggested here, like ESO's or something - I hesitate to mention ESO however, due to how monetized the system is/was.

Not that the housing wards aren't already empty.

Elder Scrolls Online. In ESO housing, much of the player housing exists as a location in the game world. By this I mean, you can walk up to like the gates of the property, or the building inside a town, and enter an instance. Some are private islands, I myself have this gigantic island mansion I got for free a few years back even. They can be small, or massive. If someone wants to see proper instanced housing, ESO is one of the good ones. However, it is heavily monetized. To the point they charge(d) $100 for some houses, "limited" time sales (fomo), housing items in lootboxes, the cash shop, etc..

If done well, instanced housing could be a lot better than the plots we have now. Not only could it be more creative in terms of locale, but also theoretically everyone could have a mansion. I don't see why someone wouldn't want it.

ESO charges $150 for some of those houses. And has full blown lootboxes where all the cosmetics go these days.

Really not a standard to be aiming for.

While that is true, I have gotten houses for free. Years ago I got massive castle for free. You can still do a lot without having to spend a lot, but yes, I'd say it's overly monetized, and it ruins how good it could be.

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I encourage people like the OP, and others, to continue putting pressure on SE to properly fix or better their housing system.

I agree. I do not believe moving to a dead world is a good "solution" to the current issues surrounding the housing wards. At the very least, apartments should probably be expanded.

[ASkellington]

If you can't really get a house, an apartment is also just as good to get a taste of decorating your own little slice of Eorzea.

The only thing it's missing is outdoor gardening and no one really misses that since it's mostly tedious busywork with little rewards since the value of onions have gone down dramatically that it's barely worth the effort to do it anymore.

Apartments are trash tbh. And this is coming from someone who has owned several.

Part of that is because housing customization in general is equally as bad. We have lofts, but can only place certain things on them. We have stairs, and yet they have specifications to where they can go.

Apartments aren't even customizable by size. I get FC rooms should look like rooms, but if I am buying an apartment, why do I NOT get the option to choose S, M or L OR sink gil into upgrading it.

No. Apartments =/= housing until they fix those issues. If we aren't going to have different sizes of apartments or different styles, then at least fix lofts so we can make them ffs!