Housing Scarcity is manufactured

[Jojoya]

but defending 45 day timers is ridiculous when we know if SE wanted to they could easily fix the situation.

Different players are going to have a different idea of what an adequate amount of time is to have to take as a break from the game without losing a house.

It's rather weird, but right now the demo timer lines up well with the schedule for the content releases (outside of the somewhat longer period between .55 and .0). As an example, x.1 patch is released. Player subs, plays the content for a few weeks then goes to play other things. They just need to remember to log in and enter their house by the day their current game time runs out. Now they have a solid month they can be unsubscribed before the x.15 patch is released with more content. They resubscribe for x.15, again play for a few weeks (remembering again to log in to reset demo timer as their game time runs out) then can unsubscribe the following 5-6 weeks at which point x.2 gets released. It doesn't work for those looking for extended breaks but it works well for those who just want the break between content releases.

As for easily fix the situation, I agree they can fix the situation. I don't agree that it would be easy for them to do in the time/cost sense.

Adding a better instanced housing system would be the best route as it would be a long term solution and they already have the bare bones basis for an instanced solution via apartments. What they need to do is to expand it into larger spaces with a variety of backdrop elements (and those spaces do not need to be the size of Island Sanctuary). Players could enter their instances homes through the wards just as we currently enter our apartments through them. Still it would take time to get these elements developed and test before they're implemented.

If they intend to stick only with the ward system being the only source of houses, they then would have to make long term plans in advance. Adding more wards would mean adding more physical servers to host those wards, and that means the physical data centers they use would need to have the additional space available for them before the need occurs. Physical data center juggling hasn't exactly been a strong suit for SE with the player base getting upset for various reasons (location choice affecting ping depending on where players live on a continent, the ATT/NTT node issue dispute recently, etc.)

But definitely I would like to see SE fix housing one way or another so the availability/demolition drama can go away. It's an annoyance that doesn't do the game experience any favors.

The key point is you can't purchase a FC house if your account already has a FC house. there is nothing preventing you from taking control of a FC that already has a house.

Except this isn't true. You can purchase another FC house if you already have a FC house on the same world as long as the account character that originally purchased the first house is no longer in that specific FC. If you're trying to get a second FC house on a different world, there's nothing in your way at all outside of standard get the FC set up and wait out the 30 days.

You could even purchase 2 or more FC houses on the same world in the same lottery period (if you get lucky enough to win that many) by purchasing one house for the first FC, removing the purchasing character from that FC then purchasing the second house with the other winning character. The only thing you would have to avoid doing is using a FC Master character to purchase the first house if there is no other 30 day+ member on your service account in the FC to transfer Master to.

If SE was trying to hinder multiple house ownership under the current system, they did a very poor job of thinking out how players would likely workaround the restriction. It adds in some inconvenience but it's not an obstacle. The hardest part is setting up the FC in the first place (since a second service account is needed whether it's your own or that of a different cooperating player) then waiting out the 30 days for lottery eligibility. Rank 6 is far too easy to achieve now with the current amount of Company credits generated by Expert Deliveries.

[kaynide]

....

I haven't bothered doing this in a LONG time, but when I did do it, this is how I did it. If there are other ways to do it, great. He was asking how to do it, and that is a way to do it.

[Irenia]

I will say that the apartment system is not tenable for instanced housing; it can run out, after all. A true solution would require every character (or at least, account) to be guaranteed a house upon creation. And the problem is that they have said that the current housing system can't scale that way.

The island sanctuary is closer to what we need, but interestingly, it's only outdoors. Given the weird things involving internal housing, I personally believe that's what is holding back housing.

If so, to have instanced housing for the internals as well as outdoors, we would need "Housing Reborn", go scorched earth on the current system and build one up that is built properly. I've floated the idea a few times, and the general consensus is that "the playerbase in general would hate that".

Or maybe we'll get lucky and SE figured out a hack that can give us the golden egg. But would it be worth devoting manpower to that rather than some needed QoL or training new staff or new interesting player facing systems...? Say what you will about Yoshida, but I don't want to be in his shoes.

[VelKallor]

I definitely wouldn't see a 20+ member FC getting a small house but a FC with only 4-8 unique members? A small is plenty of room and the gil saved would give them a very good start on subs. They would have enough gil to buy schematic materials and/or sub parts the moment their sub ranks up enough for an upgrade without having to hope RNG gets them the right schematic materials in sufficient quantity in time.

Im a one man FC , I run subs and airships solo. You dont need gil either, just a good farming schedule and knowing what comes from where. Gil only comes into the issue when you are talking modified hulls, pure titanium, kamacite, cocobolo are a pain to get, vivianite is easy to obtain via basic missions, deep sea 6 and 7 for example.

( Garlond Steel and Galvanised Garlond steel )

There are PFs where you can get materials at a bargain price, or you can organise trades with other FC's.

So, really, it isnt as hard as it seems.

[NekoMataMata]

So, I guess we're not going to discuss that certain people have been lying about the availability of housing by including FC locked wards as proof that it is in fact readily available. Okaaaaay. Moving on then.

An actual defense would be to point out that housing is still somewhat available on Dynamis. I don't really think it's that big of a deal to ask people to move and fill in the gaps over here. You're just going to DC travel and go about your business anyways. I don't consider it reasonable for people to start their own shell FC just to get a house but I do think it's reasonable for people to move DCs in this case.

Aside from that, I think we could at least make some compromises.

On the demolition timer we could at least extend it to around 6 months to a year. SE still gets to hold you on a leash for your house but it's not nearly as obnoxious as "so help you if you ever unsubscribe for more than two months."

Upgradeable apartments. Just let it happen. Let people upgrade their apartment space and let them upgrade to having a balcony that they can plant on. I know they're trying to remedy housing with island sanctuary but isn't that a bit against the spirit of housing since it's instanced? Apartments are a part of the wards and there's plenty of them. It'd be a nice touch.

[thevanguard]

Different players are going to have a different idea of what an adequate amount of time is to have to take as a break from the game without losing a house.

Classic argument that you've made in a million different forms. But ultimately they're all a clever rhetorical trick.

It's true that different players have different ideas, but that does not mean we can't draw a line in the sand somewhere on the distribution, such as the median.

You always pull this trick, countering every argument you don't like with "some players like this, some don't, some really love this, some really hate it".

And what should we do if 80% of players hate it and 19% dislike it, while 0.9% like and 0.1% love? In your trick they all get represented by the same four categories. In words, they seem commensurably large. In numbers, they don't.

[Fhaerron]

What scarcity?


Housing zones are ghost towns here, there's entire wards just abandoned.



Got my house very soon after I moved to this world (I moved here like 2 weeks after the world was made), I'm at my house daily and I've never ever seen somebody running around here. Except for the 3 times a friend came to see me but that's it.

[Stormpeaks]

Letter from the Producer LIVE Part IX Q&A Summary (10/30/2013)
Q: Will there be any maintenance fees or other costs for housing, besides the cost of the land and house?
A: In older MMOs, such as Ultima Online, there was a house maintenance fee you had to pay weekly, but in FFXIV: ARR we decided against this system. Similarly, these older MMOs also had a system where your house would break down if you didn’t log in after a while in order to have you continue your subscription, but this is a thing of the past and we won't have any system like that.

God I love that quote, thank you Fhaerron, it did not age well

[Zebraoracle]

What scarcity?


Housing zones are ghost towns here, there's entire wards just abandoned.



Got my house very soon after I moved to this world (I moved here like 2 weeks after the world was made), I'm at my house daily and I've never ever seen somebody running around here. Except for the 3 times a friend came to see me but that's it.

Did you transfer to a dead world? I don't know Phantom's population, but that's not the case for every world. I also wouldn't use the number of people you see running around in housing wards as proof of anything lol.

Also, not everyone is in a position to world transfer for a house, I've seen that thrown around multiple times on this forum, "Just server/data center transfer if you REALLY want a house!" Yeah, because that's totally a fair compromise...

God I love that quote, thank you Fhaerron, it did not age well

I giggle every time someone brings this up, it's so funny and sad at the same time. It absolutely did not age well lmao

[Stormpeaks]

Did you transfer to a dead world? I don't know Phantom's population, but that's not the case for every world. I also wouldn't use the number of people you see running around in housing wards as proof of anything lol.

Also, not everyone is in a position to world transfer for a house, I've seen that thrown around multiple times on this forum, "Just server/data center transfer if you REALLY want a house!" Yeah, because that's totally a fair compromise...



I giggle every time someone brings this up, it's so funny and sad at the same time. It absolutely did not age well lmao

Phantom is the new Chaos world that was created along with Sagittarius, Phantom is pretty high pop having (from the look of it) the same pop as other older worlds, while Sagi is the one that a lot less people went to, housing is absolutely wide open on Sagi, while pretty much saturated on Phantom except Goblet/Empy