Housing in Final Fantasy XIV Online Problems and Solutions:

This petition is being drafted for several reasons.

1)  In order to address the growing hostility in the community of Final Fantasy XIV Online in regards to housing.

2) The years SE has spent ignoring the issue or flippantly addressing it without any real solution or half promises of "soon" with a couple of band-aid solutions that only fix the problem temporarily for a small portion of the player base.

3) Address the "whales" in game that own whole wards or more than 3 houses and are negatively impacting the whole user base with their actions.

4) The content gate keeping that owning a house is currently locked behind. Finding a solution for gardening and airship building so that all Free Companies can access gardening, Airship building, Submarine Building.

5) Guaranteeing housing as a right in FF XIV Online for Free Companies for those who are willing to put the work in so they don't fall victim to the "RNG" of the purchasing process as well as the random log in issues when new housing wards drops and remove the "exclusivity" of the housing system and make it more "inclusive" since we all pay the same subscription amount. In this scenario guaranteeing it as a right means right to purchase. We are not asking for free housing.

6) Draft a list of player request and possible solutions as a call to action for the Square Enix staff responsible for making decisions regarding Final Fantasy XIV Online and what those who sign will do if a compromise isn't reached.

Respectfully Square Enix,

We, the player base, the players that provide the revenue to keep your game operational are for lack of better term: fed up with your housing system.

This has been a topic of both debate and contention in your playerbase for years and years. You release new wards only for them to get immediately bought up by those lucky enough to be able to get into the game to purchase the plots on time. Those that are left with lobby errors or unable to log in due to technical issues are left in the dust and are able to get in just in time to watch others buy the houses they would have wanted for their Free Companies.

The system you have made is abusive.
People have to stand for hours and hours racing against numerous other players and sometimes bots clicking a sign post or mashing buttons to try and purchase a house on your RNG timer.
Professional "house sellers" meanwhile plot behind the honest players and move plots to trip them up and create an environment where it is nearly impossible to purchase a house honestly in this game.
Players are expected to stay awake or wake up at impossible hours for their timezone sometimes at 2am-6am in the morning for even a chance at trying to purchase a house.

You have illicit markets for housing that you refuse to crackdown on. Players exploit each other for millions more than what the house is valued at. You aren't banning these people and refuse to action their accounts or with any significant results. There is a whole subreddit where people charge obscene mark ups on housing and make it impossible for a budding free company to start a community in this game.

But why do free companies need housing?
For gardening
So they can build airships
So they can build submarines
If you want to be taken seriously as a free company you must own a house.
People are more likely to join a free company with a house over one without.
Players need a common teleport point to gather and fellowship with their free company members or a common meeting spot for raids or other group content.

By continuing your practice you are putting these players at a severe disadvantage and obstructing their gameplay only because they were unlucky and were not able to secure housing during the rush or lost to another player or set of players that were clicking the sign post and managed to get lucky.

 

We are proposing a series of solutions for you that would potentially resolve the problem entirely:

A) You continue to make more wards available regularly as the playerbase increases. With this: You make the limitation that you should have put in place from day one of: ONE house per account.

B) You keep persistent housing but also provide a viable instanced housing similar to the system that Elder Scrolls Online uses where the housing is within its own private "instance" and make these available to all players. You can make these available for purchase either in game or through the Final Fantasy Online Store.

C) You curtail the third party players who sell houses and continue to have an active task force to ensure that others do not repeat the practice and provide an ultimatum to the people who own whole wards to either relinquish their houses for fair compensation either in game or out or ban their accounts and ask them to leave the game if they don't accept the deal. They are negatively impacting thousands of others with their actions. One persons subscription are not valued higher than hundreds of others that also pay to play your game. People are being gated from enjoying content via Airships and Submarines that they pay to access which we feel falls under "Obstruction of play" within your terms of service or "Behavior that disrupts the game balance". The practice of owning a large volume of housing when the housing is already scarce is blatantly unfair to the larger onset of the population, bottom-line. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or in some cases the needs of just one subscriber versus thousands of others.

D) You provide a means for Free Companies to build airships and garden separate from the persistent housing. This could tie into separate housing instance where the free company can build out a more prominent free company housing as a group effort. Example: The Free Company builds a "
Airship" that acts as an actual house that you continue to build on.

E)You expand on the apartment system and make it viable for gardening and airship building and allow free companies to have an "apartment" of sorts. Simultaneously make larger apartments available for Free Companies and personal within the system. Allow teleports to take you directly to the apartment if possible.

 

If one of these solutions are not met by Square Enix within the coming year or at least a solid promise is made to resolve it in other words at least a statement is made addressing the community on one of these solutions. The players signing will immediately withdraw their support from your game.