Did SE Solve the Housing Shortage?Follow

To any of you on Balmung, what's the apartment situation over there?

I'm on Hyperion, which is a midsize/large server, and over here the housing situation seems completely fixed. I just got an apartment yesterday (nearly a week after the patch) and there are tons of apartments left in all areas.

Even better is that our FC mansion is right next to the apartments in the Mists, so all of my FC mates live in the same building. :)

Glad to see this situation has been remedied possibly everywhere except for Balmung! Took long enough, but everyone in my FC seems to be enjoying their new properties.

Until there's a way for them to produce unlimited on-demand normal housing, there will always be a shortage.

It's a design flaw in the system that should have been spotted immediately. In fact it's so obvious, I'd say it would have to be impossible for them not to have known this problem would exist before they implemented it.

There's quite a big difference between having an Apartment/FC Room and a House, namely the features and benefits of such between the 2 systems so sadly the problem still persists till they figure out something or move everything into an instance, which would kind of go against the general design they wanted initially but it's the ultimate solution.



Not having a yard (most decorations you end up getting event wise are exterior furnishing, very few have been interior and the new seasonal trees are exterior), limited slots for interior decorating, not having access to a mailbox, not having access to aetherial stands (FC housing) not having access to a workship (quite required for some even casual features like certain buffs/buff ties (III+) certain crafting material etc) very limited space to work with (some people like having "themes" for their decorating, e.g upstairs/main floor/downstairs being themed.)

So aside Diadem access, houses are still much sought after than a singular room. So there's still quite a lot of FCs out there on bigger servers who want a house and NEED a house in order to actually utilize a lot of features for the FC since your points will drain almost instantly if you continually purchase tier II buffs instead of use excess materials to produce tier III+ buffs via company workshop, which doubles as a way to gain quick exp for non-capped crafters and gatherers in your FC.

So as said, the problem is mostly fixed for those FCless because the apt room and FC room are the same thing, just APT costs 200k more.

Kind of proof just finding reasons to attack whatever I write, but keep being bitter ;)

No one was being negative.



Meanwhile, housing complaints are still from FCs wanting a house. Which you can't exactly brush off, but that's what happens when you actually interact with more than your little circle on a server, you learn things.



This is due to cross material usage on new items, namely the aquariums, which caused furniture prices on even 'basic' items to go up, but on balmung there's far more gatherer and crafters than any other servers, maybe not all omni-crafters, but the prices bottomed out now that the initial rush is over.

Here's an example:

Terminus putty, this skyrocketed after the update for a short time which is also used in quite a few outdoor furniture. Why would the outdoor furniture go up in price when APT disallows it and no new housing was added?

Because a common item used was part of a new furniture recipe (aquariums.) Gold Ingots SOARED for a while because they're used in new ilvl250 crafting recipes and also in some 'casual items.' So of course everything went up in price after an update to introduce new crafting recipes, this is how it's always been.

The situation is, the problem is not solved and won't be solved until there's housing for everyone. If they remove "Free Company house" requirement on using things like aetherial wheels and the workshop, FC won't complain as much about wanting a house.

I assume you're just FCless to think the complaints, especially on Balmung, is almost non-existent now because one of the bigger linkshells i'm in on Balmung at this very moment are talking about they hope there's enough housing in Ishgard so their FC can actually snag a house.



Edited, Oct 4th 2016 5:04pm by Theonehio

Hio, I don't need to find reasons to criticize you on your negativity. You provide them in such ample amounts I can't stand to read your posts for more than a line or two.

I am, in fact, looking for something remotely redeeming when I glance at your posts, however whatever analytical insight you do have is heavily outweighed by the consistent slant you, without fail, always write into your posts.

If it was even just topical, having a singular spin in which your opinions turn upon besides the broadest brush of uniformed criticism - I'd still have a modicum of respect for you. However, there's zero concessions from you. You will spin anything said or done about the game into the negative, and have done little else but bemoan this game the entirety of your tenure here - which baffles the mind on why you remain a part of the community, let alone a paying member of the playerbase.

I've once said this out of concern for you, but now I'm going to be blunt.

Quit.

If not for your own sake then for the others you bring down by your constant negativity. It's long past the point where any previous justification of your remaining in the game would have remained valid in the face of everything you've put down upon. Find other games to play with your friends, ones that meet your standards. It cannot be put any more clearly that this game is not designed around them, and, in fact, has an outspoken design policy contrary to your own philosophy.

The only reasons I can even speculate that you remain run along the themes of addiction and peer pressure - neither of which are healthy for you. And your conduct isn't healthy for others.

So get yourself somewhere you'll be happy already. All you're accomplishing here is spreading misery.



I've the FC household in Mist, from which I only really have any furniture control of the Apartments my alts have on there (my main is a cooperation between myself and my GF as its their 'shared room'). My house in Lavender Beds is meticulously designed to be a story location for roleplay events - and is currently my greatest joy in my whole fashion obsession in the game. And I just got an apartment in Goblet after the rush died down, which I might turn into some sort of custom shop, so I don't have to keep NPCs in my house.

Personally, happy as a clam. I've made out like a bandit when it comes to housing and I darn well appreciate it.

But I keep my ear out on things going on, and right now, housing complaints just aren't there. Today's biggest complaints seem to be focused on the raids being 'too easy' which, honestly, I disagree with as well. They're skill tuned, not gear tuned - like I always wanted. Once my current home crisis is resolved I'll be looking for a static.

But housing? Even if it's a stopgap measure, it was one hell of a stopgap.

It's funny to see Hyrist criticize Hio for being negative when Hyrist is the biggest condescending douchebag on these forums, lol. Stop taking yourself so seriously dude.

Anyway I bought an apartment in the Goblet, but I haven't done anything with it yet. The only piece of furniture I have is that Hildebrand painting from the vet rewards.

I suddenly feel like I need reassess my definition of condescending douchebag.

BTW Hyrist, I'd love to see pics of your different residential units. Same goes for the rest of you -- even Hio's House of Pain. I'll post pics of my apartment later on... haven't decorated my FC room yet, so I'll leave that out.

This is the one issue that upsets me. As a crafter, I'd really like access to the tier 3 buffs.

What exactly did they even do to the housing system?

I know they introduced apartments, but that's not really the same thing. From my understanding they aren't really any different from FC private rooms except they aren't tied to a FC (and its house) but cost a little bit more.

Edited, Oct 6th 2016 2:15am by Fynlar

It's a matter of priorities.

FC functions, honestly, are cute little additions at best. Aethereal Wheel and Private Airship ventures are the only things that amount to an income of exclusive items above personal housing.

Cross-breeding garden patching and exterior design are really the only things above an apartment from the housing level.

The largest of the complaints, however, was having housing that wasn't dependent on the FC system (And therefore subject to removal by being kicked from an FC) to have. It was repeated over and over again on how FFXI's housing system would have been the obvious solution to this problem - and that's pretty much what we got here.

This isn't so much of a distraction as it addressed what was perceived as the largest issues on people's minds. Small FCs that want houses, or larger ones that did not get access to a plot - still need to get a form of FC housing - but the functions themselves are really not all that attractive - especially as Diadem flopped so hard.

So, sadly, one of my criticisms kinda takes away from this criticism. There's really no true 'FC function' that's broadly attractive right now - even in FC housing. If there was, like say Diadem being what it was hoped to be - there'd be a bit more urgency behind the idea that FCs without houses are jipped on these functions.

The question is, between these two, which should be the higher priority: fixing the housing plot issue for FCs? Or providing content to further value having a housed FC?

My opinion is currently leaning on the former, which this fix did not address. But we already given and idea of the update pipeline - (apartments, ishgardian housing, item limit expansion) and so far things seem to be taking the way they were intended to.

So bluntly - personal housing shortage? Pseudo fixed - anyone who wants their own personal space can have it.

FC function housing - not fixed, twice over as FC housing functioning isn't really lucrative or attractive right now to begin with.

Overall climate of player's feedback - Happy with the apartments, but awaiting further fixes as they were promised down the pipeline.

I'm fairly sure casual players also join and run free companies too. As I assume the whole "accessibility" argument isn't subjective, there's still quite a lot of benefit to having an FC house that if you happen to run or join a FC that has no housing, you're not getting full use of the FC system. I get what you were trying to say but, I'm fairly sure there's more casual FCs than there are any other kind of focused FCs :p

However, for people who never really seen the benefits of some of the FC housing perks, it makes sense to find it "no big deal", the extra 15 control and craftsmanship is god tier when trying to hit the HQ tier for even patch recipes, especially 3.4's that requires a BASE of 995/955. So people can say "it's just a bonus!" but realistically, they spent so much time and effort (and not to mention resources, resources, resources) pushing "GROUP CRAFTING!" "PERSONALIZED AIRSHIPS!" and a lot of FCs on bigger servers can't even partake in that, even if it's "not important to you it is to others" as a popular saying on ZAM goes but seems to only be said under certain circumstances...



Honestly - Look at the GC Barracks for the Squadron system - There's literally nothing stopping them from having the same kind of system in place for a "workshop" for FC's without a house since all a workshop does is allow you to access a bunch of menus in a pretty interface. The airship is just a cutscene that shows your airship parts together and nothing more, since well, it's not like we actually control it, and the levels and route just calculate your % of which ever item(s) you obtain after 18-75 hours.

Considering the next step yoshida said are "mansions" that's supposedly separate from housing, that's when we'll see if they do anything specific, but for now, there's still a fair bit of stuff tied to FC Estates that remains sought after. Hell, they could mimic the mog garden system and go a step further to completely negate the need of FC housing and they can't hide behind a lore shield either, because these apartments kind of just "popped out of nowhere" so to speak.

As an idea. Apartment structures for free companies could do the trick. Onlu difficult matter would be workshop stuff... bit seriously just hace a public workshop in each apartment building.