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

[Avoidy]

It's funny how people tend to complain about their neighbors more than anything ("grrr, he made a paissa home!"), but then they'll turn around and clutch their nuts over the idea of just letting everyone build a home in a personalized customizable instanced void or something. Because it was never really about preserving the uniqueness of ward housing for them. They just want their scarce thing to stay scarce so they can pretend that they own something valuable. There's probably also an element of sunk cost fallacy thrown in; lots of these people who barely play the game only log in to keep their house, so some of them feel like if the housing system became less exclusive, all this money they've spent maintaining their mansion that nobody ever visits would be a waste.

Seriously, I used to browse the housing forums and we'd get people defending wards all day. It's hard to really take them seriously, because it's like watching someone eat out of a trash can and tell me it's a delicacy or something. I can understand liking the way a ward looks, but if you had the ability to build a home in an instanced room that resembled your favorite ward anyway, why would it matter that your home wasn't also surrounded by people's empty front lawns and locked submarine factories? And I say this as someone who owns a house, before you come at me calling me a bitter homeless dude with sour grapes. This current system is very limiting and and it's done that way to keep people subbed. That's all there is to it. People who paid for this game and want a house might actually never get one or have to wait years before they win one unless they play on some dead world, and it's all kept this way even with cloud solutions and island sanctuary tech because they wanna keep homeowners anchored to the game even when it's crap for 9 months straight. Defending this predatory BS as a player is like being a lamb and getting eaten by a wolf, but you're like "nah I'm sure the wolf has a good reason for eating me you guys. Actually I like being eaten, I find it preferable to not being eaten." Game'll never get better because people like this exist in droves and constantly write square a blank check to make the game worse; except instead of providing no pushback, they go the extra mile and try to shout down anyone who just asks for things to be better. Hell, I've once proposed just making an instanced system in addition to the wards so that people who really love wards can have their wards and people who don't care can just decorate a house in peace, and they STILL had a problem with it. It's weird to me that people like this exist. Like I said before, it's hard to take them seriously.

[PassinLay]

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What a ridiculous take lmao, you can just like ward housing for what it is you know, it aint a conspiracy of wanting people to stay without houses.

[Mr_Gyactus]

It's funny how people tend to complain about their neighbors more than anything ("grrr, he made a paissa home!"), but then they'll turn around and clutch their nuts over the idea of just letting everyone build a home in a personalized customizable instanced void or something. Because it was never really about preserving the uniqueness of ward housing for them. They just want their scarce thing to stay scarce so they can pretend that they own something valuable. There's probably also an element of sunk cost fallacy thrown in; lots of these people who barely play the game only log in to keep their house, so some of them feel like if the housing system became less exclusive, all this money they've spent maintaining their mansion that nobody ever visits would be a waste.
Like I said before, it's hard to take them seriously.

An opinion is an opinion, not the absolute truth, yours makes no difference.

LOTRO has housing wards. Tons of wards.
The cost of a LOTRO house is (in ffxiv currency) ~10k gil, a lot of wards are ghost towns. Despite everything (high availability, low economic value, lack of use) players pay the monthly rent to avoid auto-demolition AND many players have premium homes (cost 40-80 dollars, require a rent or auto-demolition).
I don't see ANY reason to think that ffxiv player would act differently.

WoW had 2 forms of instanced housing, one in Pandaria (the farm) and one in Warlord of Draenor. No one cares about these instances anymore.


I don't think ffxiv players buy an house because they wanna show at the world their architecture master degree or have a shower of praises, nor they care about submarines, nor about their value in some shady forum or discord channel, they just want a "fixed" piece of Eorzea and an instance where there is only your house does not meet the requirements, the island sanctuary is "bad" for that reason.

What about this?
Apartments in the cities (for example in Ul'dah, Limsa, Kugane) using existing buildings.
Maybe SE could "rebuild" Ala Mhigo and after this event they could sell apartments in Ala Mhigo.

the lack of houses, which is still the main problem that isn't solved.

Tomberry has 650+ open plots.

[Jojoya]

WoW had 2 forms of instanced housing, one in Pandaria (the farm) and one in Warlord of Draenor. No one cares about these instances anymore.

Those weren't instanced housing. They were phased quest hubs for content specific to their respective expansions. The Garrison didn't even give you your own bed to sleep in. WoW has always been extremely good at adding content that no one cares about once a new expansion is released. Even with the overhaul done for the new expansion, I doubt that has changed.

If they had been instanced housing, players absolutely would still care about them just as players in other MMOs with instanced housing continue to care about theirs. Genuine player housing is evergreen content because new expansions don't change what makes player housing desirable.

LotRO housing is a ghost town because it sucks. Same ward style design this game has (ie you'd never see another players because there weren't enough houses in a Neighborhood to get regular player traffic, very limited number of item slots, items could only be placed on the correct type of hook and those hooks were in set (and frequently stupid) locations.

Players already act differently here because the decorating options are far, far better than what LotRO offered.

Island Sanctuary is bad because it's not housing. It's a mammet sweatshop we're allowed to decorate. We can't touch the one structure in the place that represents a home other than to switch between pre-sets.

I'd be very happy to have my little slice of Eorzea in an instance as long as I could customize it to be what I want and not have to worry about the aesthetic tastes of others clashing with it.

Tonberry might have 650 open plots. Crystal + Primal + Aether worlds combined don't. What little becomes available each lottery period on those data centers immediately gets snapped up.

Tonberry might be the most populated JP world at the moment but it still doesn't come close to the lowest pop NA world that isn't on Dynamis. Even Seraph, the highest population Dynamis world (but still lower than all worlds on the other NA data centers) has over 22,000 active characters that are level 71 or higher. Tonberry only has 15,500.

You don't have a housing problem because you don't have a population problem. NA has a population problem and that negatively impacts housing availability.

A good instanced housing system would remove most of the availability problems caused by population.

[Kuroka]

It's funny how people tend to complain about their neighbors more than anything ("grrr, he made a paissa home!")

tbf thats on SE and how the wards are arranged and how some newer skins just go over the top. I got the Large house at shirogane's top right corner, wheres a small right in front of it with the MB in front of that. Sweet view, but once i had other neighbors there that used the forge skin which really ruined it... just as that castle wall would. And there are some ppl that just love to troll and place large pillars etc all over it lol