How to fix ALL Housing issues.

[Asari5]

monthly rent and the possibility to pay several months at once.

yeah i know people dont like that, but it would help a lot over time.

[Jojoya]

1. Double the amount of Wards
2. Add a 3rd subdivision to each existing Ward
3. Make plots MUCH cheaper (example 10k gil for small, 100k gil for medium & 500k for large).
3b. Remove the lottery system.
4. Make the permits Free, or a very low sum like 1000 gil.
5. Make apartmets cheaper (example 1000 gil) and FC apartments Free.
6. Let your alts have access to your house.
7. Let us place Glam Dresser & Armoire inside our houses.

Doesn't solve anything to be honest. The list perpetuates the existing problems.

But #6, but #7! #6 won't fix the demand to have multiple houses. #7 could potentially increase demand for housing. (Also, we already can put the Armoire in our houses)

the best thing they could do is add more wards if they added like the same amount of houses we got to the game you would have more homes than interested players.
and shorten the wait times entry periods are 3 days and results periods are 2 days.

More wards is only a temporary solution at best. Housing started with 5 wards and no subdivisions. Now we have 30 wards, each with subdivision and it's still not enough.

Double the wards and the high pop/heavy RP worlds will fill them almost instantly while low pop worlds will have a lot of mostly empty wards.

ETA: also, it's unreasonable in the extreme to expect a development team to not work on other games, lmao.

Development teams don't work on multiple games at the same time. There are usually multiple teams within a development studio, each team working on their own game. Management does frequently oversee multiple at the same time.

What FFXIV is suffering from is the top talent that made the game what it became have been mostly taken away from it to create the new games while those left to work on FFXIV have a different vision of what the game should become. The new vision isn't resonating with a large part of the player base, especially those who weren't already invested in the franchise.

Funny how recently WoW had a housing article earlier this week and stated in it, "If you want a house, you can have a house. No exorbitant requirements or high purchase costs, no lotteries, and no onerous upkeep (and if your subscription lapses, don't worry, your house doesn't get repossessed!)". Which certainly a shot at 14, the dev team really need to figure something out at this point.

Might be a very pointed shot at the FFXIV housing system but WoW also has a history of overpromising and not delivering. I doubt WoW housing is going to up the pressure on the FFXIV housing developers to fix things. Personally I was disappointed that WoW is copying the ward system. Wards are not "deeply social".

> How to fix ALL Housing issues.

1. Scrap the old system.
2. Create a new one with fresh and non-spaghettied code.
3. Optional: Rift had a very good housing system. So maybe take a look at what they did (before the last server is taken down), and implement a copy of that.
4. Win.

/thread

Disclaimer: I know that's not going to happen. But IMO it's the only way to fix ALL Housing issues - everything else is like trying to fix the sinking Titanic with duct tape.

I've found another Dimensions fan.

I would add "sans heavy cash shop influence" to your point 3 though. I don't have an issue with some cash shop being involved but many furnishings only coming from RNG loot boxes and upgrade costs using game currency being exorbitant compared to real money upgrades was bad.

I don't wanna hear "it strains servers" ok then get new servers. WoW is doing it just fine.

WoW hasn't done crap yet other than post a lot of words that sound good on the surface to people who don't think things through. Some of us that play both games already started picking apart what was said in the article.

As for server strain, new servers are not going to solve the core problem - the ward design is very inefficient when it comes to server usage. That is why most games stay with instanced housing.

RIFT showed that it's possible to have a fully instanced housing system while keeping it "deeply social" if you give players the proper search tools to connect with other players' housing.

There's also a middle ground between fully instanced and wards that get ignored in design. The FFXIV apartments were actually on the right track. Have a common area that players must pass through before entering their instanced housing. As the number of players that will need to pass through the same common area increases, the more opportunity there will be for social interaction between players with a common interest (that being housing).

Give the common area other features that encourage players to linger there a little while and the opportunity increases. Having one market board in each ward would have been a good idea. House owners in a ward would have had to go to the same market board making it more likely they would meet up to socialize. Putting a half dozen market boards in a ward was a bad idea. It keeps house owners spread out and unlikely to have interaction.

Yet before the lottery system is when almost everyone I know (myself included) managed to buy plots multiple times.

Also had the freedom to sell, relocate and swap plots with other players before they implemented the invisible cooldown to purchase plots. We were able to purchase plots the moment they became available.

And there were still players that couldn't get a single house pre-lottery as well.

Let's not forget that the active player base pre-Shadowbringers was about the quarter the size that it was at the start of Dawntrail. Submarines were new to the game with Stormblood and Fight Club wasn't yet an efficient way to farm gil because sub stats couldn't be optimized to what's needed to get the good returns.

Because Housing should still be something special, something unique, not something everyone can have with the least amount of effort but thats just my opinion about it.

I disagree that housing shouldn't include every player. Every character should be able to have a home if they want, it's a RPG after all.

But I would say that there should be some additional housing features that can only be obtained with a fair amount of effort. Biggest houses should cost a lot more than the smallest (like they do right now). Start with a reasonable item limit. Let players pay with game currency to increase those item limits.

"Nah. Do a graphical update literally NO ONE asked for."

Not sure where you hang out but there had been a lot of requests for graphics updates.

Never assume that just because you and your friends aren't asking for something that other players also aren't asking. Especially when there's a large separation between the JP and EN speaking portions of the player base and where they post their feedback.

[Hallarem]

Giving us 3 to 4 months minimum on demolition timer might help!

[Kahnha]

Yet before the lottery system is when almost everyone I know (myself included) managed to buy plots multiple times.

Also had the freedom to sell, relocate and swap plots with other players before they implemented the invisible cooldown to purchase plots. We were able to purchase plots the moment they became available.

You and your friends that were fortunate do not speak for everyone when the system you mentioned was a thing it was still hard to get a plot because people were being greedy and buying more than one house.

I got a house for my FC back when they added more wards in 2018 I'm far from homeless at this point but I can acknowledge that the housing system was dumb and is now still dumb all they have to do is slowly add more wards, (2 FC 2 hybrid and 2 personal), lower the wait times of the lotto system and it would release a lot of pressure on people who were not around 8 years ago. This should not be hard to do for square; a multi million dollar game company to do.

[Yeol]

You and your friends that were fortunate do not speak for everyone when the system you mentioned was a thing it was still hard to get a plot because people were being greedy and buying more than one house.

I got a house for my FC back when they added more wards in 2018 I'm far from homeless at this point but I can acknowledge that the housing system was dumb and is now still dumb all they have to do is slowly add more wards, (2 FC 2 hybrid and 2 personal), lower the wait times of the lotto system and it would release a lot of pressure on people who were not around 8 years ago. This should not be hard to do for square; a multi million dollar game company to do.

Not saying the old system was good, but the lottery system isn't much better. Bots still bid on the most popular plots and sell them for real money later. If I want to say anything good about the lottery system, it's that players do have a chance to win the plot even if it was 1 legit user entry V.S 100 bots.

Also looking at this https://www.xiv-housing.com/ made me realize how different the state of housing is between EU and NA.

[Basteala]

7. Not happening unfortunately. Devs tried implementing this, and it literally crashed the entire test server when someone moved the glamour dresser whilst it was being used.

Woof. You know, I always wondered about this. Thank you for sating my curiosity, even though that wasn't the intent.

Not saying the old system was good, but the lottery system isn't much better. Bots still bid on the most popular plots and sell them for real money later. If I want to say anything good about the lottery system, it's that players do have a chance to win the plot even if it was 1 legit user entry V.S 100 bots.

At least you don't have the sinking feeling of wasting hours of your life. That hurt enough in a work from home lifestyle. I can't even imagine what hell that would be like now.

Also looking at this https://www.xiv-housing.com/ made me realize how different the state of housing is between EU and NA.

Insert American Housing joke here?

[Wasselin]

I think the best thing they could do is make apartments expandable (and maybe cheaper).

They should be able to be at least two bedrooms and they need an outdoor patio/balcony area.

This would solve everything because in my understanding apartments are instanced, which makes them much less server load than neighborhoods. This would allow every player access the housing system without a demolition timer.

Ironically the only place I run into other players in the neighborhoods is outside the apartment building.

[MicahZerrshia]

Yet before the lottery system is when almost everyone I know (myself included) managed to buy plots multiple times.

Also had the freedom to sell, relocate and swap plots with other players before they implemented the invisible cooldown to purchase plots. We were able to purchase plots the moment they became available.

I have a large estate on Aether, that I got just before they went to lotto. When I saw it available I had already confirmed entrance into an alliance or leveling or something roulette. I entered, thought the house would be gone anyway even if I left immediately since it was peak play time so just played through it. Got out, the large house was still sitting open, so I ran up and bought it. No muss no fuss.

It did indeed stink to get a house due to scarcity, but some sat open for quite awhile, even larges. You just had to check the wards at the top of the hour when abandoned plots opened, which could easily be done. I got my house that way, my spouse got theirs that way, a handful of fc mates did it that way, we even got our fc house that way. So many ppl just thought it was impossible due to rmt or scarcity and just didn't bother doing the bare minimum of checking the wards now and then. I would see houses sitting open for days sometimes, some smalls for weeks. Yet I would hear ppl on my server, where there were houses open, complain that there were none.

We do need new, more abundant and better housing, but the problem was with the ppl sometimes, not the system.

[Sho86]

SE is not new to the concept of decent housing. For its time, XI Mog Homes were brilliant and had no shortages. All these elaborate fixes are not needed. The problem lies in SE's greed once they saw the sub trap for housing demolition and got lazy.

My guess they'll wait to see how much damage WoW actually does to their current trap system,which by then any response is gonna be too late. The appropriate response would be to make good on the original old promise of personal housing being entirely separate than the FC ward system. (alongside fixing things like the balcony door on 2nd floor still not being usable.) Then they can actively watch how many wards actually need to be up versus how many are fine with instanced areas (that are more than a hole in the wall like apartments; I highly doubt a 2025 XI Mog Home with the original dev team would've been this limited.)

[Wasselin]

SE is not new to the concept of decent housing. For its time, XI Mog Homes were brilliant and had no shortages. All these elaborate fixes are not needed. The problem lies in SE's greed once they saw the sub trap for housing demolition and got lazy.

My guess they'll wait to see how much damage WoW actually does to their current trap system,which by then any response is gonna be too late. The appropriate response would be to make good on the original old promise of personal housing being entirely separate than the FC ward system. (alongside fixing things like the balcony door on 2nd floor still not being usable.) Then they can actively watch how many wards actually need to be up versus how many are fine with instanced areas (that are more than a hole in the wall like apartments; I highly doubt a 2025 XI Mog Home with the original dev team would've been this limited.)

I really don't think housing is a sub trap just to make them money. If they wanted to go that route there would be a lot more effective ways to "trap" players than housing, which isn't something everyone can even get to become "trapped".