Why the housing system makes people quit and possibly not come back

[luckylefty]

Back when housing wasn't a raffle, I owned a large mansion and played fervently.
After quitting, my house was put up for sale, and that's on me. I took the loss but
after realizing what a huge loss it was, it made me hesitant to come back to playing
FFXIV.

I had lost countless hours of building a home, gil/furniture, and most
importantly, the memories of what it meant to me, and the work put in to achieve that
dream home.

This was in the 'early' days of FFXIV where getting a house wasn't as random and
those that REALLY wanted a home could probably attain one by bidding.
After returning to Dawntrail, the random lottery housing system is utterly frustrating.
Failing the Nth lottery, and knowing that you still have to compete with thousands
of other players, who are probably just as frustrated, is something to behold.

If this was done to prevent RMT housing resale, it has not done the job, because it's
easily circumvented with guild transferring FC homes.

The only thing this lottery system does is slow down the progress of players being
able to attain a pretty major goal of this game, especially when a home can have perks
like cross breeding plants and airships/submarines.

The fact that housing gets destroyed if you're not on to keep it claimed, and the already
limited system that it's based on, seems like an almost predatory way to keep you
playing, and active, lest you lose your home and belongings.

I just want to state that while this can keep player retention, and make them keep that
subscription active, it can also have the opposite effect of keeping players from
returning after their home/time/work/memories have been erased. A home is supposed
to be a place to call on any time, a base where you can build, a place you can return to.

This limited, fleeting system isn't much of a home to begin with.
If you can give us hotel rooms, you can give us all houses too.
After 10 years, don't we deserve it?
As a player who's been here since before ARR, when FFXIV was launched as an utter
failure, and then reborn into something amazing, I believe Square Enix has the
capability to do this, and I think all of us deserve houses yesterday.

Thank you.

--- EDIT ---

Wow I didn't know so many people felt similarly, and there were some insightful points.
I was away when IS released, came back recently and tried it, and can frankly say, I wish it was a house instead.

I just want to reiterate, I appreciate this game and its polish, and I'm not here to bash Squenix or Yoshi P.
But I really do think that we all deserve houses because it's part of the subscription based game that we already pay for.
I don't mind if it's 200 million gil or even more for FC homes, it's something that we can work towards in an MMO.

But to create false scarcity on top of RNG, and erasure of homes which can only be remedied by being subscribed
is something that tarnishes this cherished game imo. I'll say it again. If we can get hotel rooms, and IS, why not houses?

--EDIT 2--

I saw the solutions that a lot of us brought up and agree with most of them. Some are downright creative.
There are some that bring up solutions for both Squenix, and the players. I do appreciate that people still care
enough, and feel that it's in fairness to incorporate a meet-in-the-middle solution, and the world does need more people like you.

In this case though, I would have to respectfully disagree on having instanced housing only. I feel like for what we pay, have paid,
and will continue to pay, we should get as many instanced wards as we need, with the neighbors, decoration showing, views, and all.
We shouldn't have to depend on complete RNG in an MMO to gain an existing feature, and a pretty big one at that.
If they can give us our own instances in IS, isnt it technically more efficient to give us instanced servers in a large group such as wards?
I believe it's possible for Square Enix to do such a thing, but I wonder if they will hear us out?

[Rueby]

Let's not sugarcoat it. It IS predatory. It's scarce by design and there's no reason to improve on this system or add an alternative to it- even though we pay a subscription.
Every player should be entitled a house but they refuse to add instanced housing because 'novelty of ~wards~'.
People parrot the whole "YOSHIDA SAN SAID TO PLAY OTHER GAMES", but I think they fail to mention that they'd still like you to remain subbed.

I own two plots opposite of one another and one got grandfathered in. With the current system it'd be impossible to get something like that again even if they add more wards.

[Oizen]

Only the most desperate of loyalist fanboy would tell you the housing system in this game isn't complete dogshit. The game would gain a lot by making it more accessible for everyone by dropping the shitty liminal spaces that are the wards for instanced housing, but the devs flat out do not seem to care.

[PassinLay]

Only the most desperate of loyalist fanboy would tell you the housing system in this game isn't complete dogshit. The game would gain a lot by making it more accessible for everyone by dropping the shitty liminal spaces that are the wards for instanced housing, but the devs flat out do not seem to care.

Instanced is a terrible and just boring idea in general, the way FFXIV should work would be to keep its ward system that has been in the game since housing was created, and to instead just keep auto-adding ward until demand is filled.

It's really that simple.

[Vensaval]

It took ages for me to get a house again after being away from the game for a year. Now that I have it... I don't care for it much anymore?

I was really excited to get the new country walls. I got them. I absolutely love them. Yet, my fun with it ends when I go in the house and my immersion is completely destroyed. I personally like to try to make the interior match the exterior as much as possible. That's simply not doable with how atrocious the current house decoration system is. It's practically impossible to go with certain themes without resorting to glitches. Most of which are tedious. I don't even go near my home anymore. Like a failed project I don't even want to set eyes on.

Instanced is a terrible and just boring idea in general, the way FFXIV should work would be to keep its ward system that has been in the game since housing was created, and to instead just keep auto-adding ward until demand is filled.

It's really that simple.

If you really think it's that simple, then you know game design even more poorly than I do.

[Oizen]

Instanced is a terrible and just boring idea in general, the way FFXIV should work would be to keep its ward system that has been in the game since housing was created, and to instead just keep auto-adding ward until demand is filled.

It's really that simple.

Having dead spaces that only 60 players in the entire game have a reason to visit is so much more interesting. No thanks. Its a shit system that could never scale to meet the demand, hence why any time new wards are added they get instantly gobbled up everywhere except dead servers like dynamis

[Hanayumi]

We had the instance space too... but got used for IS instead, really makes you wonder why?.. Im sure an overwhelming majority would be all for them quietly removing IS for actual instance housing instead...

[PassinLay]

Having dead spaces that only 60 players in the entire game have a reason to visit is so much more interesting. No thanks. Its a shit system that could never scale to meet the demand, hence why any time new wards are added they get instantly gobbled up everywhere except dead servers like dynamis

Well then sadly you'll have to find a different game for it, because this game is not getting instanced housing, it would remove the force subscription from auto demo and would make them lose a lot of money, and we both know how much SE cares about money.

Plus as I mentioned earlier, but that part is just my personal opinion, instanced housing would be an absolute bore, I would rather have paissa houses around my house and gingerbreads ruining my view than to have instanced housing, at least they're real players even if some are alts and/or never log on, but that's just me.

[ZXN]

I don't know about "quitting and not coming back", but the current housing is definitely predatory with how it's handled and is also pretty fucking terrible system wise.

Maybe I am remembering wrong, and if anyone was around way back then you can correct me, but if I recall correctly originally Yoshi-P said they weren't going to ever implement the auto-demolition of housing...until they did anyway. So now you HAVE to keep paying your sub along with visiting your house once every 45 days to keep it. Add on the fact there are several houses to almost entire wards owned by just one or two people on pretty much every server. The whole "neighborhood" aesthetic is just...not there, and they should stop trying to force that mindset because it's just not going to happen with how the system is currently being handled. Housing is ultimately just a mess that they don't really want to fix because it would either take too much time and development to do so, or they don't want to step on the toes of the players who own multiple houses by forcing them to give up all but 1.

Island Sanctuary could've been seen as a "beta test" of sorts to instanced housing with how it was implemented. Given how shit I.S turned out at the end with how they treated the entire thing though, they probably don't have too much desire to focus on instanced housing in the future and this was just a one and done deal, especially because they know if players want a house, they'll do the lottery, and then if they win the house they'll HAVE to keep subbing to keep it, even if it's during a content drought or they are just burned out and not having fun playing, lest they lose it.

Hell if they do actually implement instance personal housing one day, you know there is no way they are going to pull an Oprah with houses and go "AND YOU GET A HOUSE! AND YOU GET A HOUSE! EVERYONE GETS A HOUSE!" They absolutely WILL make it so instanced housing requires a separate monthly fee of like 5-15+ bucks a month depending on what and how they choose to implement it because they KNOW people will do it and it'll make them a ton of money.

[Mr_Gyactus]

There are 600+ open plots in Cerberus.