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LiadansWhisper · **10-20-2015, 01:38 PM**

(10-20-2015, 12:34 PM)Calliope Cloverbloom Wrote: Perhaps this has been answered elsewhere, but has SE given any reason for the lack of demand-driven wards?

Housing in another MMO, Lord of the Rings Online, was very much like it is in FFXIV - wards of houses, and each ward had the same layout as the other wards. Their system was set up to generate two (or three? I don't remember) vacant wards if the existing wards were 90% of a given house size (there were three sizes) were purchased, or if the existing wards were just 80% full overall across all sizes. Servers with low populations just ended up with few wards, while the popular ones had many wards.

I'm totally at a loss as to why that wouldn't work for FFXIV. Has there been a dev explanation for the current Super Restricted Availability Policy?

PS3 limitations.Â

._.

Ignacius · **10-20-2015, 01:54 PM**

(10-20-2015, 12:34 PM)Calliope Cloverbloom Wrote: Perhaps this has been answered elsewhere, but has SE given any reason for the lack of demand-driven wards?

Housing in another MMO, Lord of the Rings Online, was very much like it is in FFXIV - wards of houses, and each ward had the same layout as the other wards. Their system was set up to generate two (or three? I don't remember) vacant wards if the existing wards were 90% of a given house size (there were three sizes) were purchased, or if the existing wards were just 80% full overall across all sizes. Servers with low populations just ended up with few wards, while the popular ones had many wards.

I'm totally at a loss as to why that wouldn't work for FFXIV. Has there been a dev explanation for the current Super Restricted Availability Policy?

Wildstar was an even better example. Â I built this for my guild to use as a hangout on Wildstar. Â This kind of plot is achievable by every single individual character. Â Every single one is granted a plot of land, for free, at level 14 with a full thousand item limit inside, thousand item limit outside, with 40 items inside and 40 items outside permitted to be lighting. Â That's every single individual character over level 14.

Now, why this can't be implemented in FFXIV might be related to age or how the housing parses from the server. Â However, if it's being limited simply because the wards are the point of limitation, then the wards are liabilities.

They could simply give everyone a personal housing area. Â Then, allow them to purchase wards for vast sums. Â Then, if they want to get fancy, let the people who own the wards build even larger upgrades. Â That would allow whole groups of FCs to get together for the ward, but would also mean that there could only be wards as needed.

Then, if someone is being removed from a ward, they don't have to have their house sold and demolished, it can just be kicked off the ward and packed up on off-site storage until the account is reactivated.

But, as they're moving to demo the houses, it seems that SE is going the route of trying to keep subs active and not using the wards as a developmental opportunity.

SessionZero · **10-20-2015, 02:02 PM**

(10-20-2015, 01:54 PM)Ignacius Wrote:
(10-20-2015, 12:34 PM)Calliope Cloverbloom Wrote: Perhaps this has been answered elsewhere, but has SE given any reason for the lack of demand-driven wards?

Housing in another MMO, Lord of the Rings Online, was very much like it is in FFXIV - wards of houses, and each ward had the same layout as the other wards. Their system was set up to generate two (or three? I don't remember) vacant wards if the existing wards were 90% of a given house size (there were three sizes) were purchased, or if the existing wards were just 80% full overall across all sizes. Servers with low populations just ended up with few wards, while the popular ones had many wards.

I'm totally at a loss as to why that wouldn't work for FFXIV. Has there been a dev explanation for the current Super Restricted Availability Policy?

Wildstar was an even better example. Â I built this for my guild to use as a hangout on Wildstar. Â This kind of plot is achievable by every single individual character. Â Every single one is granted a plot of land, for free, at level 14 with a full thousand item limit inside, thousand item limit outside, with 40 items inside and 40 items outside permitted to be lighting. Â That's every single individual character over level 14.

Now, why this can't be implemented in FFXIV might be related to age or how the housing parses from the server. Â However, if it's being limited simply because the wards are the point of limitation, then the wards are liabilities.

They could simply give everyone a personal housing area. Â Then, allow them to purchase wards for vast sums. Â Then, if they want to get fancy, let the people who own the wards build even larger upgrades. Â That would allow whole groups of FCs to get together for the ward, but would also mean that there could only be wards as needed.

Then, if someone is being removed from a ward, they don't have to have their house sold and demolished, it can just be kicked off the ward and packed up on off-site storage until the account is reactivated.

But, as they're moving to demo the houses, it seems that SE is going the route of trying to keep subs active and not using the wards as a developmental opportunity.

FFXI did this to an extent. Right away at the beginning of the game (at least when I played it) you got your Mog Home and that was your house. Just for free. They just gave you one. Why this was done away with when its predecessor did it, WildStar does it, and Rift does it, all to wild success, is beyond me.

Leggerless · **10-20-2015, 02:11 PM**

There's two ways I see housing.

Door #1

Out of X people, Y people want to get housing.
Out of Y people, Z people can afford housing.
Because Y doesn't believe Z should take up all of the spaces willy nilly, they demand changes from Square.

Alternatively!

Door #2

Housing: "lol, I got mine."
Housing on the RPC: "RIOT!"

Warren Castille · **10-20-2015, 02:14 PM**

I'm convinced anything SE does regarding housing will be The Wrong Thing, just short of opening up infinite wards.

miqotedragoonsascianswhitemagessoulstones

Hammersmith · **10-20-2015, 02:21 PM**

(10-20-2015, 02:14 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: I'm convinced anything SE does regarding housing will be The Wrong Thing, just short of opening up infinite wards.

miqotedragoonsascianswhitemagessoulstones

Show Content

It's pretty much proven fact any move SE makes will be a bad one. Â It's how us gamers are wired.

Oli! · **10-20-2015, 02:27 PM**

(10-20-2015, 12:28 PM)Virella Wrote: Oh if we speak about gardening for example? Maybe the FC is using the garden just to grow minions, glazenuts to make gil for the FC ect, so the FC leader is locked out for using it for his or her own personal gain. My old FC never had the leader doing anything with the house, an officer did the decoration, the gardening and all that, he was really just the FC leader in name, and I think most FCs are ran like that.

I feel as if I'm bashing my head against a brick wall now though, and you're only willing to see it from one side, whereas I already said the system is stupid multiply times, but every argument you've brought up can be turned around so easily as well.
Not everyone is some greedy booman who happens to own a FC house you know? If you don't like how it is being ran, well, there's always other options, such as making gil to buy your own home, joining another FC ect.

That said, people without a FC, and with a personal house, don't have access to a personal rooms in their house. Should we go whine about that as well? I don't see anyone making a massive issue out of that as well, whereas I see plenty of FCs using alts ect to make rooms for their roleplay purposes, while people without a FC but a personal house have just a house to roleplay in. Housing system is massively flawed. Yes this is one step, but trying to bash down the people who happen to have gil for both just sounds like jealously.

I'd love to make Gil and buy my own home.

Too bad there's no homes to buy.

What you're mentioning is not the problem. The problem is that the thought process you're subscribing to either assumes an infinite number of houses, or simply doesn't care about people being locked out of certain features.

By buying multiple items of which there are a limited amount, you are denying other people of that item. Add into that the fact that those items allow for entry into content that people will otherwise be unable to experience, and people will be understandably frustrated that other people are buying multiple things of which there is a shortage.

It's not a question of jealousy. It's people being annoyed that they are unable to access content, regardless of eligibility, because someone logged in while they were at work or whatever and snapped up their second or third house, which would be of mostly redundant use, mechanically. This is not an unreasonable complaint.

The argument that people should not do so therefore stems from the following: Do you have absolute control over all the content you want? If so, then don't buy a second house. If not, then do. Living in an FC chamber does not fulfill that first value if you want unrestricted access to certain things. Having control over an FC house, meanwhile, does fulfill this, which brings into question why someone might buy a second house under that circumstance.

"Because they can and want to" is always a reason you can use, but that doesn't take away anyone's right to complain. I have the legal right to buy up every bottle of soda in the world and say none of you can have any, but that would still make me an asshole.

Also the bit about having personal rooms in a personal house is irrelevant, considering that a personal house serves all purposes of a personal room, and then some. No one raises a fuss about it because it would be a redundant feature.

Telluride · **10-20-2015, 02:29 PM**

Maybe it's because other games have managed to handle housing, even with a ward system, just fine, and a long time ago, so any problem in FFXIV is one of either dev willingness or older choices interfering with implementation, which is a dev issue, no matter how much anyone would ask the playerbase to stop complaining about it.

Ignacius · **10-20-2015, 02:41 PM**

(10-20-2015, 02:21 PM)Hammersmith Wrote:
(10-20-2015, 02:14 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: I'm convinced anything SE does regarding housing will be The Wrong Thing, just short of opening up infinite wards.

miqotedragoonsascianswhitemagessoulstones

Show Content

he said it

It's pretty much proven fact any move SE makes will be a bad one. Â It's how us gamers are wired.

That's not necessarily true, though. Â SE has made a foreseeable and obvious misstep with housing. Â When you limit absolute supply in an MMORPG, that particular area will be limited in the number of people participating in it, the price will rise, and you set up a bad player choice situation (either make that portion of the game as insignificant as you can to avoid player anger, or you risk having your playerbase revolt over the forced exclusivity).

This has been pretty well-known in the MMORPG business for a long time. Â SE went with their ward system because, I think, they wanted to make that housing a more public sort of system, more clearly mimicking housing in the real world. Â Unfortunately, that hasn't worked out; despite the intention they've created a sore spot in their gaming. Â Their housing is good, it's popular, they could expand its scope if it was widely and freely available and make every player very happy. Â However, as they're limited by sockets on wards, they'll be accused of wasting their time if they put more work and fun into the housing system.

Given all that, the good decision would be to make the housing widely and freely available since it's so popular and it provides such a useful gil sink. Â SE seems to be going the direction of making the housing less necessary and useful so that it's simply a sidelong niche that a player doesn't really "need", or even that many would necessarily want if they could get all the services and fun elsewhere. Â While that won't earn them ill will, it's not the best decision.

Still, that doesn't mean they're damned if they do, damned if they don't. Â They're only certainly damned if they do nothing.

Momo · **10-20-2015, 02:42 PM**

This is not the last feature of change to the wards, there will be a three step system to make changes over the next year, this is simply the first.

No matter what your opinion will be, this will do something, though I think it will be a small change because as much as people complain about empty houses, I rarely if ever see these "empty" houses. Â This will either cause players to return, or houses to be up for sale later this year, and either of those things would be a good thing.

Some things to consider that you have already discussed:

~Not all FC leaders are power and money hungry monsters!

~There are houses up for sale (nearly all the time), and the market is inflated yes, but everything on Balmung is inflated (including egos and personalities...#RPServer)

~There are ways of making a lot of money among FC members, and so the costs of most of the houses I am seeing be sold, aren't so far out of the range of reasonable as to gripe about it. (Though I agree, they should be sold not far over the original amount myself, some of those you buy from are selling for what they paid themselves!)

~If your FC is an RPFC and has no money, this may be a signal to actually play the game to make money to get the house you really want

Some amendments to the above, I am an FC leader, an RPFC who has a small amount of members, but we make sure from the start that those members value game play as well as role play, and in the very short time that we have been together, we have generated tons of rank and money together, without even being very vigilant about it. Â If your FC cannot do this, it is time to rethink your priorities in the game, and place value in game play, so that in the future making money is much easier and faster.

Some Cash-Raising Ideas:

~Dungeon Spams for rare items, schedule revolving among your group
~Look to your crafters, if they can make things, or have a real desire to craft, invest time and money in them so as to get a return that will help the entire group
~Sell everything! Make a week, or some times of the week, where everyone agrees to sell all their useless items, and donate that money to the FC
~Daily/Weekly/Monthly donations to the FC chest, make a minimum for all members of the FC to donate after a certain amount of time, not too much though!
~Le Gasp...throw an RP event with donations...we are groups of RPers after all, do something simple, and invite friends, and LSs, if you don't have many of those...back to the drawing board!

And so on, these are just a few of the easier ideas, but they would each probably manage to help you raise a good bit of money for your own house. Â I cannot tell you, as someone who values FFXIV as a game and a mode of Roleplay, how frustrating it is to have people who do not care to contribute to a group through gameplay as well as RP. Â This is a game, and should you be joining with others to accomplish goals, be sure that you can handle the level of their goals, and be a contributing member, instead of a leech who "just feels like RPing", because it is not in anyway unreasonable for your FC, or hell, even your friends in general IG, to expect some amount of FFXIV gameplay out of you from time to time.

If you didn't like this change, wait for the nest two! Â You will probably manage to hate those as well! Â In the coming months, to a year we will also be getting:

2. Moving and Trading Housing, so we sort of heard about the Ishgard housing transfer system, they said that this will be phase 2, and include proper trading of housing to other players as well as transfer from one place to another, or it was implied as such, not given a whole lot of detail

3. Add New Wards, this will be the last step in the process, and they have been stating that both new wards will be added and/or Ishgardian wards will be added, so it is a toss up on what they decide to include in this last step. Â The time frame they gave was a year or more for this last step to take place. Â So there is a wait for this last step certainly.

To check the above information, please refer to the Gamescon 2015 interview!

Now...let us go talk about Halloween stuff, because they are basically loading us up with junk we all absolutely need!

C'kayah Polaali · **10-20-2015, 02:47 PM**

(10-20-2015, 01:35 PM)Calliope Cloverbloom Wrote:
(10-20-2015, 12:46 PM)Kage Wrote: I've read that LotRO reached similar issues according to this post.

There is housing in other worlds so the issue is that the far more populated wards reach full much faster. Their system applies to the worlds at large and not per world so there's plenty of housing on the other worlds but the more active ones got full. They implemented essentially what SE is doing now.

It did... sort of. People didn't understand the system, and so they would complain because they couldn't get the exact specific land spot that they wanted (certain spots in a ward are always more popular than others due to the view or whatever, I'm sure that's the case in FFXIV too). What they didn't realize was that if they and a friend paid a little gold to buy up the last couple spots for houses of that size, it would trigger the server to generate new wards due to crossing that "availability threshold", which it wasn't currently wasn't due to those couple of "not in the popular spot" houses of the given size being available.

Yep, this. What would typically happen was all the small houses in a ward would get snapped up, then the big ones would linger a while and it would be hard to get small houses where you wanted. It wasn't a terribly big deal - my first house in LOTRO, I really wanted one specific spot. I ended up waiting about 4 days until I could get it. My second house there was part of an attempt by my guild to fill up a neighborhood with only guild members, so with that one I ended up getting a leftover deluxe house in a spot I didn't love, but that was sort of an artificial restriction.

In general, housing in LOTRO is far more functional than in FF. If you simply want a house, and you have the money, you can get it without a problem, even on the more populated servers (my first character was on Landroval, my second on Laurelin, both of which are highly populated servers), because it spawns new wards on demand.

I've argued (both here and on the SE forums) that a hacky variant of that could be implemented by SE fairly easily: The take the existing number of wards and pool them. Each server starts with 1-2 wards, and then they draw new wards from the pool as those wards fill up, LOTRO-style. The hardware costs don't change, as it's still the same number of instances. You simply have those wards allocated unevenly between the servers. Low population servers might be fine with their initial 1-2 wards, while servers like Balmung might have 12-48 wards. It doesn't solve the problem, but it at least mitigates it.

T'shina · **10-20-2015, 02:50 PM**

Well, it has been stated that this is only phase one. Phase one said that they were going to free up unused property. Then they'd move to phase two and open up more wards. Then phase 3 was actually opening up Ishgard wards. Or phase 3 and phase 2 are reversed... I don't remember which but I do remember seeing this discussed when the reclaiming of housing came into question.

Sig · **10-20-2015, 03:14 PM**

The FFXIV housing system is fundamentally flawed because supply is so beneath demand that it has priced a substantial portion of players out of the market. This will continue until supply is dramatically increased. Â The current lack of housing is highly detrimental to new players, RP'ers, and casual players in particular for obvious reasons.Â

The solution to the housing problem is not to apologize on behalf of SE, or encourage players to grind out unreasonable sums of gil for purely aesthetic elements of gameplay. Â These approaches will only increase market inflation and exacerbate the problem. The only solution to the housing problem is increasing supply. Â

Housing is an important element of the game for many roleplayers. Â It should not be a luxury contingent on certain social connections or obscene quantities of PVE farming. Â Until supply can keep up with demand, housing will remain critically flawed. Â It doesn't matter how supply is increased (i.e. Â more wards, aggressive reclamation, etc.), but SE's current proposals are unsatisfying vague.

Lydia Lightfoot · **10-20-2015, 03:47 PM**

(10-20-2015, 01:38 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote:
(10-20-2015, 12:34 PM)Calliope Cloverbloom Wrote: Perhaps this has been answered elsewhere, but has SE given any reason for the lack of demand-driven wards?

Housing in another MMO, Lord of the Rings Online, was very much like it is in FFXIV - wards of houses, and each ward had the same layout as the other wards. Their system was set up to generate two (or three? I don't remember) vacant wards if the existing wards were 90% of a given house size (there were three sizes) were purchased, or if the existing wards were just 80% full overall across all sizes. Servers with low populations just ended up with few wards, while the popular ones had many wards.

I'm totally at a loss as to why that wouldn't work for FFXIV. Has there been a dev explanation for the current Super Restricted Availability Policy?

PS3 limitations.Â

._.

I'm not sure what additional housing wards has to do with PS3. A player can only be in one given ward at any time, and client-side you only process data relevant to where you are right then in the game.... so the existence of 5 wards or 500 wards shouldn't impact any player's processing load.

**Unnamed Mercenary** · **10-20-2015, 03:53 PM**

(10-20-2015, 03:47 PM)Calliope Cloverbloom Wrote:
(10-20-2015, 01:38 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote:
(10-20-2015, 12:34 PM)Calliope Cloverbloom Wrote: Perhaps this has been answered elsewhere, but has SE given any reason for the lack of demand-driven wards?

Housing in another MMO, Lord of the Rings Online, was very much like it is in FFXIV - wards of houses, and each ward had the same layout as the other wards. Their system was set up to generate two (or three? I don't remember) vacant wards if the existing wards were 90% of a given house size (there were three sizes) were purchased, or if the existing wards were just 80% full overall across all sizes. Servers with low populations just ended up with few wards, while the popular ones had many wards.

I'm totally at a loss as to why that wouldn't work for FFXIV. Has there been a dev explanation for the current Super Restricted Availability Policy?

PS3 limitations.Â

._.

I'm not sure what additional housing wards has to do with PS3. A player can only be in one given ward at any time, and client-side you only process data relevant to where you are right then in the game.... so the existence of 5 wards or 500 wards shouldn't impact any player's processing load.

I think heat was a tongue in cheek response.

But actually, it is a console issue. A window/UI box can only lost so many things because it becomes visually difficult to read. Especially if someone is sitting a "recommended" distance from their TV.

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Reclamation of Inactive Housing (details)

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes