The act of camping a house timer is unhealthy for the player base.
I know we're getting new housing soon, and I appreciate that. But the core housing gameplay loop - if you want to call it that - is bad, not just from the "I don't like this thing" point of view, but from the "This encourages unhealthy behaviors" perspective.
Currently, houses that come available for sale are on a random purchase timer. This is invisible to players, presumably to prevent person-to-person transfers. There are problems with this approach:
It's that last point I'd hope to see addressed. While developers can't directly control player behavior, they can take steps to not incentivize detrimental play styles.
The current system encourages players to sit in place, not enjoying FFXIV, while they repeatedly cycle through a limited set of steps to receive an error about the house not being available for purchase. This approach wastes player time and actively lowers their enjoyment of the game. Nothing about it is fun, or rewarding, or exciting. It is exceptionally boring.
And beyond being boring, it's just unhealthy. When the house timers can run to double-digit hours, some players - driven by the fear of missing out on an opportunity to own a home - will sit for that full duration, or as much of it as their body can take. Some won't move, for fear of missing their opportunity. It reminds me of what used to happen in FFXI during the spawn windows for HNMs. The current state of play encourages inactivity, mental idleness, and may lead to repetitive stress injuries (assuming there are any actual humans trying to be luckier than the bots and macro tools).
I think there is room for change here that could spare people from camping the board, hoping their numpad 0-0-0-0-4-0 spam will beat out someone else's 0-0-0-0-4-0 spam.
There must be a way forward that would allow people to attempt to buy a house without having them commit to hours of deliberately miserable game time. For example, maybe the "sale window" for a house could allow people to deposit gil in escrow with an NPC. When the window has closed, a random selection could occur to choose the new owner. That person's gil would be committed; the rest would receive a refund. (Perhaps a "handling fee" could be deducted to make the process a more effective gil sink.)
The current system is so unfulfilling that I can't imagine it's the desired outcome. ugh.
Continue reading...
I know we're getting new housing soon, and I appreciate that. But the core housing gameplay loop - if you want to call it that - is bad, not just from the "I don't like this thing" point of view, but from the "This encourages unhealthy behaviors" perspective.
Currently, houses that come available for sale are on a random purchase timer. This is invisible to players, presumably to prevent person-to-person transfers. There are problems with this approach:
- The purchase timer can span multiple devaluation windows, preventing the gil sink from working as well as it could.
- Illegal tools (botters and automation) have an inherent advantage in not getting tired, hungry, or sick.
- Players will camp the for-sale sign, spamming the same commands over and over, for hours on end, to the exclusion of further involvement with the game world.
It's that last point I'd hope to see addressed. While developers can't directly control player behavior, they can take steps to not incentivize detrimental play styles.
The current system encourages players to sit in place, not enjoying FFXIV, while they repeatedly cycle through a limited set of steps to receive an error about the house not being available for purchase. This approach wastes player time and actively lowers their enjoyment of the game. Nothing about it is fun, or rewarding, or exciting. It is exceptionally boring.
And beyond being boring, it's just unhealthy. When the house timers can run to double-digit hours, some players - driven by the fear of missing out on an opportunity to own a home - will sit for that full duration, or as much of it as their body can take. Some won't move, for fear of missing their opportunity. It reminds me of what used to happen in FFXI during the spawn windows for HNMs. The current state of play encourages inactivity, mental idleness, and may lead to repetitive stress injuries (assuming there are any actual humans trying to be luckier than the bots and macro tools).
I think there is room for change here that could spare people from camping the board, hoping their numpad 0-0-0-0-4-0 spam will beat out someone else's 0-0-0-0-4-0 spam.
There must be a way forward that would allow people to attempt to buy a house without having them commit to hours of deliberately miserable game time. For example, maybe the "sale window" for a house could allow people to deposit gil in escrow with an NPC. When the window has closed, a random selection could occur to choose the new owner. That person's gil would be committed; the rest would receive a refund. (Perhaps a "handling fee" could be deducted to make the process a more effective gil sink.)
The current system is so unfulfilling that I can't imagine it's the desired outcome. ugh.
Continue reading...