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

[PercibelTheren]

Instanced housing would be a soulless place, it would be atrocious in itself, there's already enough games with atrocious housing, and I sincerely hope it never comes to FFXIV.

And ward housing isn't soulless? The wards are deserted. Outside of venues, you never see anyone out and about. I hang out in our FC house a LOT and I have yet to see a single neighbor in over two years.

And that's not even getting into the horrendous visual incongruity of half of Empyreum being Asian-style houses that do not even kind of fit in, Gingerbread abominations and those horrendous massive Namazu decorations.

I would take instanced housing where people could visit your house over this garbage any day.

[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.

[Cheapshot]

It took me 5 and a half years to get a small plot on Balmung. I spent many days sitting there clicking the placard for up to 10 hours straight, a,most always losing to someone botting. I’d sigh and walk away while 5 to 10 characters remained targeting the placard over and over despite the plot already being sold. I quit the game for several months due to burnout from that system. Then they implemented the lotto and I knew my odds of getting a place were even less now but I was relieved that at least bots had no advantage over me. I collected my deposit back every cycle and tried again and again and again, aiming for the plots with the least bids. Both times they added new wards, I lost a 50/50 for a small plot.

Then last month, I decided I was quitting the game because of the character graphics change. My character wasn’t familiar to me anymore and I lost motivation to play. I stopped feeling connected to the story and the world and I figured I wouldn’t enjoy a house much anymore because of it. So I went to collect my deposit back as usual before letting my account go dormant. Of course that’s the day I won.

Now I’m stuck continuing my sub while I wrestle with the decision of letting it go or not. I have no confidence that this next round of character updates will restore the facial features changed in 7.0. It’s frustrating that I have to lose this small plot I’ve been trying so hard to get for actual years of my life if I want to put my account on hold.

[MsQi]

I would say that Yoshi P telling people to take breaks and do other things to be one of the healthiest thing anyone ever said in regards to an mmo...

If it were not for the housing system. Basically it's "Take a break as long as it doesn't exceed the demolition timer." I know they turn it off a lot, but knowing it's a thing makes people anxious.

[Jojoya]

If you feel like housing in this game is designed to hold you hostage, why do you engage with it? You're only validating the effectiveness of the system by doing so and lending the impression that you're actually okay with it.

Don't forget that you can at least have an apartment and it will not demo. Engage with the system that doesn't hold you hostage instead of the one that does if you want to make a point.

Unpopular Opinion: People should be allowed to sell their homes. But it should be in an open bidding process through the housing system, so home owners can get back their gil. Right now they have no reason to let go of a house, when doing so means they lose all the gil they put into it. You give me a way to get back my gil, or maybe even more, and I'd let go of most of my houses in a heartbeat. That's how it works IRL.

SE could refund the full plot purchase price when a plot is voluntarily relinquished. It would get unused houses back into the system faster. Right now players that don't want their house have to wait 45 days to get 80% of their gil back.

I still wouldn't be in favor of player to player sales. All players should have access to a house, not just the wealthy players who can win a bidding war to pick up their 6th house. The lottery doesn't prevent the latter from happening but it makes it a lot more difficult to accomplish for those not interesting in moving to low pop worlds.

[Divinemights]

The irony of people blaming on housing demolition when it is the player community requesting this feature to begin with

[luckylefty]

The irony of people blaming on housing demolition when it is the player community requesting this feature to begin with

The reason people wanted demolition was because of the same reason that we want instanced housing: the lack of houses, which is still the main problem that isn't solved.

[CuteBucket]

I know the lottery system sucks, but in it's slight defense, placard clicking was pure hell.

You were pretty much in a lotto of all the people at that plot clicking on a placard while an invisible timer counted down.

I tried for months to get a single small house this way. I didn't even care where it was, I just wanted one because I like decorating virtual video game houses in any game that lets me. I lost sleep over it. I worked in shifts with my partner to keep clicking. I set an alarm and woke up at 6am some days to hop on and get clicking after clicking until 4am the previous night (bad idea, felt awful). I injured my wrist clicking so much. Truly the stupidest video game injury to get. Finally, I got a small in Mist one morning. I got cursed out by the other people at the placard because "you weren't even here as many hours as me and you won the plot? fuck off" and went back to sleep.

That system SUCKED HARD and I'm glad its gone. Yes, the lotto still sucks, but it's less likely to give you repetitive stress injuries at least. And even though there was less competition due to the need to physically park your character at the house and click, I still knew people who had been trying for months and even years to get a house and had never "won" the clicking lottery. Those were dark times.

The real answer is just to add enough housing for everyone so none of this would be necessary in the first place, of course. But alas.

[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.