Company Housing VS Personal Housing

Now that demolishing is here, and condos are just around the corner. Maybe SE can take this opportunity and make FC housing and personal housing the way they were meant to be.

Once condos are introduced, FC (Personal) houses are no longer available for individual players to be purchased. People who already have a house will be able to keep them of course, but that will be grandfathered. Once you lose your house due to demolishing, or if you demolish it and give up the land rights, you'll never be able to purchase FC house as a personal house again.

And most of the housing efforts in the future should be focused on condo (personal housing). Since everything is instanced, give player an instanced chocobo stable like a parking spot in condos. And for gardening, have an instanced roof or belcony like some of the modern condo/appartment concepts. Eventually as PS3 gets phased out, and hardware/software limitations gets upgraded, start introducing room upgrades where players can spend gil and add rooms to their house, or make existing rooms bigger.

I feel FC housing turning into personal housing is a band-aid fix, especially consider an FC needs to be rank 6 before FC housing is available, and a player can potentially be level 1, pay RMT money, and go buy a house right away. And speaking from personal experience FC bank don't have nearly as much funds compare to a dedicated player who spend most of their time making money. So technically it takes more time to earn the rights to buy a house as a FC, it takes more effort to collect the money to buy a house as a FC. So clearly the original design of FC housing is not meant to be personal housing.

I hope this time the Mansion (condo) Yoshi P mentioned is exactly what he say it is, because there is some good potential where it can go.

I agree on this idea and also perhaps add a member minimum requirement on FC housing, e.g 30 members+

Personal FCs with 5-10 members should not be incorporated into the equation in my personal opinion as housing is so 'limited' and a burden on server limitations, you might as well limit it to 'active' FCs to attempt a community in the current housing areas. Having 500+ FCs on a server with the majoral being small and individually owned FCs does not help alleviate the housing problem if you're incorporating small FCs into the equation.

Private housing with perhaps 10-20+ tenants as a formed party/alliance purchase feature should be an option for people who don't want to be a guild but want a house together, perhaps link shell housing to finally be a realisation?

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Originally Posted by MihaelB

I agree on this idea and also perhaps add a member minimum requirement on FC housing, e.g 30 members+

Personal FCs with 5-10 members should not be incorporated into the equation in my personal opinion as housing is so 'limited' and a burden on server limitations, you might as well limit it to 'active' FCs to attempt a community in the current housing areas.

Private housing with perhaps 10-20+ tenants as a party/alliance feature should be an option for people who don't want to be a guild but want a house together, perhaps link shell housing to finally be a realisation?

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that wont work, people would just invite tons of twinks and alts then and the situation would remain the same

once there are apartements and new wards there wont be anything like that needed anyway

plus it's hard to recruit members sometimes, and I'd feel even worse for the low pop realms. There'd be no way for them to differentiate between private personal FCs and not. An FC is an FC. Membership shouldn't be a determining factor on an FC's value. You're alienating the smaller FCs when you do that.

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

that wont work, people would just invite tons of twinks and alts then and the situation would remain the same
once there are apartements and new wards there wont be anything like that needed anyway

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At least then it'll reduce the amount of alts holding houses & require more time/resources to people to create/invite alts, limiting their account house holding capability.

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Originally Posted by Jinxie

plus it's hard to recruit members sometimes, and I'd feel even worse for the low pop realms. There'd be no way for them to differentiate between private personal FCs and not. An FC is an FC. Membership shouldn't be a determining factor on an FC's value. You're alienating the smaller FCs when you do that.

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Alienation is the purpose for the change. You're alienating personal house owners who don't want to be part of a FC with this change in which case, apartment housing is available.

There's no purpose to change if people can just easily circumvent it with a method that takes very little time. (Creating a personal FC)

I'd rather an active ward in a small server personally than several dead plots/wards in the server which is the case on Lamia.

Well hows about I create a few trial accounts, and pop a few dozen members into a tiny FC and falsely bloat the numbers? This change you're proposing isn't viable, even if it was an option. They have no way to detect which FC is private and which is not, and even if they did they cannot penalize the FC for having droves of inactive members.

The notion of room sizes getting bigger as consoles are dropped isn't going to happen because of one little thing. They did make houses bigger by adding basements, all with the consoles right there still supported. They added whole new housing wards, all with the consoles right there still supported. It's not the consoles keeping houses the size they are, it's the server space they've dedicated to it. It's why they are foreclosing on homes instead of adding yet more housing wards. So that housing doesn't use up more server space while attempting to provide players with homes. They can't help if the 'housing mafia' swooped in and started squatting.

I am not sure this idea would fully work on a small server, but would be of much greater benefit to a large one. Of course I am on a small server and I live in the Goblet, so there isn’t as much foot traffic in the neighborhood as I would like. Adding FC houses to my area would make it lively, but we still have plots available, even in the tier 1 areas (yes I know, it is still the Goblet). With the future (3.3?) bringing wards, a new zone and new condos - aka Yoship Towers – completely removing the ability to buy an individual estate (present housing zones) may leave some areas on some servers barren. Plus I would like to someday upgrade from my medium house on the water to a mansion elsewhere, or maybe a medium in a more visually appealing zone.

I have been on the higher population servers, specifically: Diabolos, Ultros, Leviathan, and Balmung. From my experience, and it may just be the hours I'm on. But the wards are pretty empty anyways. Balmung have some foot traffic in the wards, but people never say hi. It's literally no different than any capital city. As a matter of fact I see more player to player interaction on capital cities than home wards.

Besides if SE is going to focus more on condos that's obviously where most of the foot traffic is, as a matter of fact condos will probably bring more foot traffic than any FC houses ever will.

Don't forget that we get around 3.3 mansions with enough rooms for 500 players in each

http://pix4.agoda.net/hotelimages/66....jpg?s=800x600

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Originally Posted by Felis

Don't forget that we get around 3.3 mansions with enough rooms for 500 players in each

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And with the consoles right there still supported at the same time.

Im in Ultros in a "private" FC. Few irl friends only. We are aaaalways in our house. Specially my BF and I. We are in the mist. Its literally dead. All the time. I only ever see maybe one or two people on MB or summoning bells, say hi and never get a response. /sh has more social people than wards honestly. I dont think anything anyone does will change it. People talk among their own FCs. Thats it sadly lol Not allowing people to not buy their own wont change that. Plus, some people like me enjoy decorating outside too! Condos wont have that option.

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Originally Posted by Aushi

Im in Ultros in a "private" FC. Few irl friends only. We are aaaalways in our house. Specially my BF and I. We are in the mist. Its literally dead. All the time. I only ever see maybe one or two people on MB or summoning bells, say hi and never get a response. /sh has more social people than wards honestly. I dont think anything anyone does will change it. People talk among their own FCs. Thats it sadly lol Not allowing people to not buy their own wont change that. Plus, some people like me enjoy decorating outside too! Condos wont have that option.

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Exactly. Anyways on the subject of outdoor furnishing, I think they can definitely experiment with the roof/balcony idea if they are considering it. I mean asking for a roof/balcony the size of a small plot yard size is not really out of question IMO (instanced of course). Besides, I'm not sure if the original personal housing was suppose to even include a yard since they never gave any details.

If they want to grandfather people in, by all means. Otherwise absolutely not. So what if some people have 5-10 players. I have 7, and it's all family. Only 3 of us actually play frequently, and low numbers aren't indicative of suspicious behavior or conniving attitudes.

I spent over 60m on airships, probably 15m on housing glam, 10 on furnishings, and built my FC with my sparse family. Just because some stupid people decided to ruin your experience doesn't give anyone a right to ruin mine.

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Originally Posted by thunderbreak

I feel FC housing turning into personal housing is a band-aid fix,

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I honestly feel it's where they went terribly wrong and broke the housing system, ending up with the mess we have now.

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Originally Posted by MihaelB

I agree on this idea and also perhaps add a member minimum requirement on FC housing, e.g 30 members+

Personal FCs with 5-10 members should not be incorporated into the equation in my personal opinion

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5-10 members isn't a "personal" FC, though. My own FC is a good example. Myself and several friends broke off from a previous FC and formed our own due to not getting along with a couple of members. With only 5 members when we founded it, we ground up the FC points to reach rank 6 and we got the money together for a Medium house. I really see no need for a membership requirement just for house ownership. Add to that the fact that a house is a huge selling point for recruitment. With so many FC's out there that already have houses and all the benefits that go with them, it'd be quite silly to expect people to stay for long in one that doesn't.

Show me a big FC and I'll show you an FC that was small at one point. Everyone starts somewhere. Over time we've picked up more members and now have around 30. It may not seem like much, but I personally don't believe in standing in town inviting random sprouts or shouting my head off every 2 minutes just to achieve some arbitrary number. I'd rather stick with our tight-knit core of good friends and the wonderful new people we've met along the way that join us by choice. I put up a PF once in awhile and leave recruitment open and that's about it. I get that you want to discourage single-person FC's from house ownership, but there's got to be a better way to do that than to completely bar small but 100% legitimate groups of people from it.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

5-10 members isn't a "personal" FC, though. My own FC is a good example. Myself and several friends broke off from a previous FC and formed our own due to not getting along with a couple of members. With only 5 members when we founded it, we ground up the FC points to reach rank 6 and we got the money together for a Medium house. I really see no need for a membership requirement just for house ownership. Add to that the fact that a house is a huge selling point for recruitment. With so many FC's out there that already have houses and all the benefits that go with them, it'd be quite silly to expect people to stay for long in one that doesn't.

Show me a big FC and I'll show you an FC that was small at one point. Everyone starts somewhere. Over time we've picked up more members and now have around 30. It may not seem like much, but I personally don't believe in standing in town inviting random sprouts or shouting my head off every 2 minutes just to achieve some arbitrary number. I'd rather stick with our tight-knit core of good friends and the wonderful new people we've met along the way that join us by choice. I put up a PF once in awhile and leave recruitment open and that's about it. I get that you want to discourage single-person FC's from house ownership, but there's got to be a better way to do that than to completely bar small but 100% legitimate groups of people from it.

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It's about occupancy and changing the system, not sentimental reasoning. If you're not going to add a member limit or login requirement then it is a useless idea in the first place and more selfish reasoning to add more wards/ housing.

The current system is 1 personal house + 1 FC house per account. 6 alts can be used to hold a FC house each with no level requirement, this will essentially do nothing if the system does get changed to FC housing only and has absolutely no impact. People can still buy up whole wards with alts + personal FCs, nothing gets changed, people will still have no housing and no way to deter the current problem.

Same with 1 account per service account, people will buy housing with $5 codes, it's not difficult to get access.

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Originally Posted by MihaelB

It's about occupancy and changing the system, not sentimental reasoning. If you're not going to add a member limit or login requirement then it is a useless idea in the first place and more selfish reasoning to add more wards/ housing.

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With 5 members we'd be able to make enough lame sprout alts to bypass the arbitrary number, so it achieves nothing anyway.

People shouldn't have to be forced into big FC's just to get the benefit of FC housing.

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The current system is 1 personal house + 1 FC house per account. 6 alts can be used to hold a FC house each with no level requirement, this will essentially do nothing if the system does get changed to FC housing only and has absolutely no impact. People can still buy up whole wards with alts + personal FCs, nothing gets changed, people will still have no housing and no way to deter the current problem.

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Part of the current problem is that you aren't limited to 1 personal house and 1 FC house per account, but I honestly think it should be. Right now it's on a per character basis but there's no real reason to have several alts with houses. It'd be better if they set it up so that all of your alts could share the same house and only allowed one of each type per account, period.

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Same with 1 account per service account, people will buy housing with $5 codes, it's not difficult to get access.

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Can trial accounts or accounts in their first 30 days actually buy housing? I wouldn't think they'd be able to.

You should at least have to pay a sub to purchase housing.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

With 5 members we'd be able to make enough lame sprout alts to bypass the arbitrary number, so it achieves nothing anyway.

People shouldn't have to be forced into big FC's just to get the benefit of FC housing.

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That's the problem in a nutshell isn't it? We have housing for enough people on most servers (I wouldn't know about high popularity ones like Gilgamesh) but people want their OWN housing for their OWN group of friends. People come and go in their small friendship groups but still demand a house for their period of game time.

It's the same as the problem in real life, we want our own needs and our own desired fulfilled whilst stepping on everyone else around us as long as we're satisfied and feeling entitled.

There are so many houses on my server with individual FCs/ private housing and the wards are essentially dead leaving it only to be used as a silent crafting area.

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Originally Posted by MihaelB

That's the problem in a nutshell isn't it? We have housing for enough people on most servers (I wouldn't know about high popularity ones like Gilgamesh) but people want their OWN housing for their OWN group of friends. People come and go in their small friendship groups but still demand a house for their period of game time.

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Even with your arbitrary limitation in place, there still wouldn't be enough housing to go around on my server and several others. You talk about people "coming and going" with small friendship groups, but my small FC has been active nonstop since it was founded in May 2014. We were able to get housing when it was plentiful and have gotten tons of use out of it in the year and a half since then. I say this as someone that owns both an FC house and a personal house - the single biggest problem with housing right now is personal housing being combined with FC housing. That's where SE went wrong. Having to have a rank 6 FC at least provided some kind of gating. What we need now is a limit on how many houses any one person can own per account.

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It's the same as the problem in real life, we want our own needs and our own desired fulfilled whilst stepping on everyone else around us as long as we're satisfied and feeling entitled.

There are so many houses on my server with individual FCs/ private housing and the wards are essentially dead leaving it only to be used as a silent crafting area.

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No, I just think that there's got to be better ways of going about it than having an arbitrary membership requirement for FC's.

I absolutely hate the idea, that a person who doesn't yet have a personal house would never be able to get the same enjoyment as I'm currently getting from mine. Not everyone's fc has a house. Not everyone has furnishing rights to their fc house. Not everyone wants to debate with their fc members who gets to garden this week and who furnishes what corner. Not everyone is going to be satisfied by a fc room / mansion room. It simply wouldn't be fair to deny future and current players the opportunity for artistic expression and customization which only a lucky few have been able to obtain. Active private house owners are a thousand times better than the solo fc's created for house trading and dead fc's IMO, and therefore fc's shouldn't have priority. Activity should be the determining factor, and that has already been addressed by adding a demolish timer.

A lot of people want their personal house and yard because it offers a huge play time sink limited only by one's creativity. However, there are also people who only want housing because of convenience, chocobo raising and gardening. If those three points can be solved by mansion rooms, then that alone will lessen the demand for actual houses by a huge amount. Make the flats cheap and don't give them a demolish timer, and they are even more desirable. I don't believe the mansion rooms are going to be a magical cure for the housing problem but if they are done right they will help. Regular housing should still remain an option though, because locking it to fc's only would do nothing to help the issue seeing as people can simply make or buy a solo fc. It would only needlessly punish players who have dreamed of their own cottage since the beginning but want to remain in their current fc.

I think the biggest factor is going to be the total amount of houses and flats compared to the amount of active players. Hopefully the devs add a decent amount of new wards and mansion-hotels instead of a measly handful. The house flipping market would eventually die off when the re-sellers run out of money or alts to monopolize the market. Surely if they can afford an EU data center they can afford some server hardware, right?

(Edit: I should probably clarify that I don't hate your suggestion, OP, only one of the effects it would have. It would probably have some positive effects too.)

No thanks. I vote no.

I like other ideas. Like limiting one house per account(all alts being able to share it). I think coupling that with the decay system, adding new wards every year-ish and this condo feature, a lot less people will be housing starved.

They could also have an auto-spawn system. A system that "spawns" a new ward once all wards have been filled for X amount of months. This way small servers don't get an overload of housing/take up server space when it's not needed.

Have you guys considered what they can/will do with the condos? They never said you can't do outdoor decoration did they?