It's not an advantage when that's not the problem.
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I don't think solo FCs are a problem, but obviously making FC houses cost more to help offset the increased ability of multiple people to make any particular amount of money relative to a single person. I'm fine with simply letting every prospective buyer, whether they represent an FC or themselves, go for houses at the same time.
Then you live in an alternate reality separate from the rest of us.
You are the one trying to put words into their mouth by guessing what it means. How can you say that it means "they are aware of the situation of FC not being able to get housing, but Shirogane will not be different than any other residential area, blah blah blah". That doesn't make any sense.
And now you are telling that I am the one reading too much into it? Get lost. Their answer can't be more clear. Do you want me to copy paste it again?
"We are currently in the middle of investigating how much of the population owns housing, so this hasn't been decided yet. We will look into this a bit more before making a decision."
tl;dr: "We don't know yet if Shirogane will be open for everyone or not". I have no clue how you can think it means something else.
Thank you! Your character is very pretty! ^_^
On topic, I personally made an FC just in case Shriogane is locked for FCs only at first. SE created this problem by making housing a limited feature when it very clearly should have been instanced so that everyone could own a house. I'm not going to miss out on the chance to buy the Doman style house I've always wanted, and I know its selfish to have an FC house for just me and my two friends, but with so much crafting stuff tied to airships ( and probably submarines when those are released ) its really just too expensive to buy all of the airship items every time we need one to craft something.
Slightly off-topic, but I wish they'd let us build ANY kind of house in ANY of the housing areas. I mean, what's wrong with a Glade house in Mist? Not all houses in a neighborhood in real life look all the same. Well, maybe some places they do. And it's just Stepford Wives creepy. xD But otherwise I don't see why we can building any type of house in any area. Is there a limitation reason or something?
Context.
Q: Is the timing for purchasing plots in Shirogane the same for free companies and individuals?
A: We are currently in the middle of investigating how much of the population owns housing, so this hasn't been decided yet. We will look into this a bit more before making a decision.
Your TLDR is an assumption on your part based on your particular interpretation of the live letter answers. Have you even considered the uproar that would happen if they tried to restrict Shirogane to FC's only? It would end up being a PR nightmare, especially when single player FC's start scooping up houses to flip. So no, I won't "get lost". I am 100% confident that when Shirogane opens up it will pretty much work like all the other residential zones outside of the whole new "moving" feature. Could I be wrong? Sure that's a possibility, but I personally believe its so remote a possibility that its not even worth getting worked up over. I guess we'll just have to see when it goes live won't we? If I am wrong I am wrong. It's no skin off my back. I've got my ideal house already and have no interest in moving. I just think its silly to get people in a tizzy over an "issue" when there has been no indication whatsoever from the devs that it might actually be a thing.
Yoshi-P doesn't seem to regard it as that remote of a possibility if he says they're looking into it and haven't made a decision yet. I'm not sure where you're getting this certainty that that decision will match the one you would make, when the devs themselves aren't sure of it yet.
The housing NPC in Shirogane blatantly says that the houses will be available to both FCs and private individuals so long as they have the money for it. There's nothing in any of the dialogue of the actual Shirogane quests, which are our most recent reliable word on Shirogane housing, that indicates FCs will be given first pick.
According to the E3 interview, "about 4.1" is the time when the housing will be opening.
As I said, we'll just have to wait and see. My confidence stems from several reasons. First and foremost, if they were going to do such a thing, it would have been decided and announced before SB even launched. Secondly, the housing system in place is a system people are familiar with and expect to work a certain way. Suddenly changing how that works for a specific place that's been hyped to the nines would cause a massive amount of fallout among the players. Thirdly, restricting Shirogane to FC's only would serve no purpose since that would not address the lack of housing for FC's in any meaningful way.
The only real way to address the lack of FC housing is for a new system to be put in place that allows an FC to purchase an instanced home much like apartments (but I'd imagine much bigger).
How to Fix Abuse of the Housing System
1. Houses are one per account, instead of one per character.
2. Free Company Houses must have an arbitrary headcount for anyone to access house.
3. House is locked if headcount falls under the threshold. A house that remains locked for 45 days is automatically relinquished. A member that does not log in for the same amount of time is no longer counted.
4. Your membership only counts for the first FC you join that owns or earns a house. This is account-based, so throwaway characters won't count toward the minimum required membership.
Previously he - Yoshida - has said hat they will get the transfer system working before opening new housing. I suspect that it will be general admission from the start, but I am also hoping that there is no transfers first then open for general purchase kind of staged opening, unless they open half the wards for transfers and throw open the gates after that.
FC masters need to be careful with some permissions, but decorating isn't one that we need to be careful with, unless we want the FC house to reflect a certain style and appearance. Remembering that the FC. Master sets the tone/philosophy/style for the FC some may not wish to have the FC house in constant flux with the ideas of 100 different players at work. Also some specific furnishings used to be deleted on removal, I restricted decoration more when that was the case, but loosened up once that was no longer an issue. Not all FC masters will have remembered to change things.
I think it is because your ideas are a bit ridiculous. Especially 2-4. As for the first one, I agree somewhat. Limit should be one personal house AND one FC house. However, this game is NOT very alt friendly, and there are plenty of people that like having alts. So either alts should have access to houses as well, or they need to tweak housing so alts on the same account can all access one house without having to open up permission to all and sundry.
Unless you were here at 2.0 launch, you wouldn't know this but, there *was* a solution to the "land rush" that happens when any land is suddenly put up for sale(and its gone in 2 minutes). The solution used to be at launch that it just was hecka expensive.
There were empty mansions open for months and even mediums and small plots just open for the taking. EVEN SMALL PLOTS...but the thing was, they weren't unreachable expensive just expensive. I earned enough for my own personal large house in about 3 weeks or so of crafting and selling and I didn't even work on it every day, but it did take hours/days of work. The thing was, you had to actually put in some work to get a house, if you wanted it. That was the difference.
See the thing is, a house is merely a pretty boring toy for most players. It's more of a status symbol for them. I know many of you with houses are there every time you play, like I am and actually enjoy it. But most people that have houses forget they are there and hardly decorate them. It was more of a completionist item for them. It exists as part of the game content and they aren't satisfied until they check it off their bucket list. Sure, if they happen to acquire some housing item as a quest reward or some drop or something, then they will go to their house and drop it somewhere...probably in the middle of the floor by the entrance.
What we have now is everyone can afford a house. Even people that couldn't really care less about housing can afford a house so it becomes a impulse purchase. Not only that, people can buy multiple houses cause they are so cheap. And to quote the Incredibles movie to sum up the whole situation: "*Everyone* can be super! And when everyone's super...
[laughs maniacally] ...*no one* will be."
The old solution with it being too expensive wasn't a good solution either really. And there is no reason a completionist (that doesn't really care about housing) shouldn't get a house or something if they want one. I'm just saying the solution we have now of land rush status housing is probably the worst solution we've had yet.