Personal Housing Too Nice to Have: How Many Houses in Shirogane Are Personal Balmung

Before getting to numbers, I will brief on what the most to least critical reason for the housing shortage:

1) Personal Housing: Numbers below explain it all.
2) Set Prices Across All Servers: Popular servers like Balmung have more currency around and easily 4/5 players who play routinely have 7 million gold.
3) Relocation: It's now less risk for people to get new houses. It doesn't mitigate the odds someone will get a house on their alt ether. All it does is make older wards' plots more likely to be available.
4) How Much Gil the Stormblood MSQ Gives: It easily gave me at least 1.3 million just playing through, more than a third of what you need for a small plot.

SUMMARY
88% of Houses in Shirogane are personal plots.
The plot with the most personal houses is Ward 2 with 51/60
The plot with the least personal houses is Ward 8 with 41/60
The mean average is 12/60 houses belong to free companies.

Opinion
Personal housing should've never been implemented because of high population servers like Balmung. It's simply too nice to have with the scale of some servers and when the possibility of a personal house is denied a larger % of the community have a weakened experience whether you agree they should or not.

People feeling undercut from not having a personal house was a non-issue before it became a feature.

Solution
Get rid of personal housing and refund players with plots. Implementing houses to be FC only encourages more tightly knit communities with users joining one or starting one, and ends the blood bath of the great housing races. Everyone will get over it eventually. FC houses also house infinitely more players and will put at least another hurtle of work required to get a an alt's home.

Look, just because you (or an FC) didn't get a house doesn't mean people should be punished for your misfortune. The current situation sucks, I get it, but...come on now. You are coming across as nothing more than salty.

Nope. They should have enough plots so that if ppl have the money they can get one and not have to take one or buy one from someone else. Everyone should have the size they want.

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Originally Posted by Gotsugo

Get rid of personal housing and refund players with plots.

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Players would just get personal housing through shell fcs instead. Many are already doing that to have full control over two houses on one character.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

Look, just because you (or an FC) didn't get a house doesn't mean people should be punished for your misfortune. The current situation sucks, I get it, but...come on now. You are coming across as nothing more than salty.

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I've actually been well settled into an FC that's had a plot since 2.1, I'm just being objective. Personal housing is too nice of a feature for the sheer scale the community has reached. It just leaves many people feeling undercut when housing races were a non-issue before personal housing was a feature.

Edit: Enabling personal housing objectively created more issues than leaving players wanting personal houses.

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Originally Posted by Gotsugo

I've actually been well settled into an FC that's had a plot since 2.1, I'm just being objective. Personal housing is too nice of a feature for the sheer scale the community has reached. It just leaves many people feeling undercut when housing races were a non-issue before personal housing was a feature.

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Well, even if they did do this, there's a million and one FCs now so it'd still be a race regardless of whether there were individual players or not. Solo players can also make their own (which they do) to get another house even if they already have one, so...yeah. Gotta factor them into the mix too, they're basically solo players getting private plots. This is inaccurate...now. Maybe not 4 years ago, but definitely now. Your "system" just wouldn't work, and it would anger more people than the recent fiasco did.

FC only houses at the very least make another hurdle of effort it takes for people to get alt homes or take a plot in general, and many people who're tied or defined by their resident FC's might not leave to start their own. Even early on in Balmung and Gilgamesh there were plots available in the most congested servers, and personal housing put an end to any plot being available for more than ten minutes.

Additionally I believe between the large scale promotions and the constant enabling of housing this should've been a concern that SE would properly prepare for and addressed in live letters.

Perhaps there should be a system unique to what SE refers as a congested server specifically, but I think it's an unspoken opinion that personal housing should've never been a feature in the first place. Now any solution SE will feature is either not enough, or goes way too far. People would complain still if there were new policies on specifically congested servers.

Personal housing was added because most servers had an abundance of empty plots since implementation when it was FC only.

Changing it back to FC only isn't a solution. Now we have an abundance of FC's that are 5 or less people. Many just 1 person. It will be the same situation, just with different people

We have a number of old FC's still holding plots because the creator placed an alt as the owner of the FC just so they could log in to prevent the demolition timer.

Other factors are people that made alts just to buy more housing plots. IMO I think this needs to be addressed before trying to change anything else.

Housing situations also vary by world. And overpopulated world will likely have a majority of its housing bought as private homes. An underpopulated one not so much.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Personal housing was added because most servers had an abundance of empty plots since implementation when it was FC only.

Other factors are people that made alts just to buy more housing plots. IMO I think this needs to be addressed before trying to change anything else.

We have a number of old FC's still holding plots because the creator placed an alt as the owner of the FC just so they could log in t

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1) True, but as the subscriber base reached 10 million those plots would've filled up eventually.
2) That was an issue before demolition which some people think FC plot demolitions should have a more intricate process.
3) I think a one house per account (FC owner or personal possibly) is a decent start.

I have to disagree with this. Yes i'm on Balmung and Yes i'm homeless but making it just FC only would do nothing but fuel the fire that's already sky high. That's not the answer becasue SE should be able to have housing for both FC AND personal. I do want a home. I used to have a small on Gilgamesh. I'd love a medium.

Making people loose their personal house is too harsh.. cuz some people only have 1 personal house.. and if things dont go well with their FC they can have a home to go back to (I personally dont have a house.. but been trying to get an FC house for years).

My solution is.. if somone has multiple personal houses (on different alts) he/she keeps 1 house only and gets refunded for the rest he/she gonna lose.. AND make personal houses and FC houses in different wards.. like when making new wards .. ward 13 (FC only) ward 14 (personal only) and let the alts fight there away from us...

Attempting to restrict housing to just FC again would simply lead to baby sized FCs. People who aren't inherently social shouldn't be denied housing simply because they prefer keeping to themselves. Now what they could do is make the current neighborhood system FC only and release instanced personal housing.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Attempting to restrict housing to just FC again would simply lead to baby sized FCs. People who aren't inherently social shouldn't be denied housing simply because they prefer keeping to themselves. Now what they could do is make the current neighborhood system FC only and release instanced personal housing.

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Even if u make a baby FC you wont be able to buy a house unless you reach lvl 6.. and you can still buy your personal house so not excluding the solo players like you said.. you get to have 1 personal house only so where is the problem? get your personal house in the personal house ward... and let us get our fc house in the fc ward... look at Shirogane 80% is personal houses... and FCs are left homeless.. and a single person can own multiple personal houses.. this isnt right.

Highly doubtful but with the new wards coming in 4.2 I'd like to see more large homes locked to FCs only with small/medium for both personal and fc. They could go even further with FCs being given priority to pay in advance in a way with the server selling houses first to FCs that have been around longer and have more active members. Personal housing can't just be taken away even if you refund them the money, what about all the items they got to put in that house? I think my system above for fc housing stops shell FCs from picking up all the houses before legit FCs can, if you want to go even further allow FCs to pay in advance for large and medium while leaving small houses to the current system we have.

While I believe your idea has good intentions, it comes across as resentful for individuals owning a home. Full disclosure, I was able to log in and able to buy plot 30 on my server for myself, then warped to the Ferry Skipper and helped my FC scope plots and scored a plot 60 in a different Ward. It really was just luck of the draw.

I'll ask the question: As a personal house owner, why should I be stripped of my plot?

I did not commit RMT like so many others have
I did not /tell or spam people so they couldn't engage with any placards
I did not abuse any system for teleport hacks to get a leg up or use alts/bots to purchase more plots
I did not have any tech advantages like SSD, high end graphics cards or 1Gbps internet like PC users have.

I play on a PS4 with the regular HDD
I did raise gil since missing out on a plot in 3.3 from 500K to 200M because I wanted a Large plot. I hate the medium layout and small is too small for the sheer amount of stuff I have. Getting the large was part of my personal end-game since I no longer raid
I did log in at the same time as everyone else did when 4.1 launched and did not have any advantage to beat the login queue that so many lost to
I played by the same rules as everyone else in the game did and we all knew this was going to be a blood bath

FC'S had baked in advantages over me since they can potentially raise more gil and disperse it to other members who had rights to purchase plots. Also if they owned a plot they got a 30% discount so they had more buying power than I did.

I'm not trying to come off as uncaring but why should people like myself be talked down to because we own plots on our own regardless of size? Is my sub money worth less than anyone else?

Balmung has so many players it wouldn't matter if all the houses were only bought by legitimate fcs. There would still be a massive population of very unhappy homeless players. Changing who owns the small amount of houses won't help very much. You would just be shifting the salt elsewhere instead of lessening it.

As someone who does not have a FC and owns a personal plot I can tell you that if such a change were to come I'd simply start up a FC, pay a few people to sign the charter, and level it. Getting to rank 6 is horrifyingly easy, helped someone do it before and two people did it in a single weekend. If I really wanted to I could do the same because I can simply insta queue into any content and farm gear for turn ins to rank up. The biggest change needed is to simply limit the amount of plots a single person can own down to one. There are far too many people who own multiples, and more than a few on Balmung were purchased by scalpers. Also 10 million players does not equal 10 million subscribers. It just means that 10 million accounts have been created world wide to include accounts on Chinese servers. The actual subscriber count is far less. It's like WoW saying they have 100 million players, it's a pr stunt.

I see where your intentions are nice but please understand "FC" locking does not stop people from making a small (1 - 4 alts that are level 1) FC and buying up what they want as basically another personal house to a way to flip and make gil anyways. That is already happening and part of the problem. I'm also on Balmung and trust me, I understand how dire it is on our server. We are so popular people are willing to pay $200+ real cash (not gil) to have a place. If we made flipping and arranged buying impossible we would be much better off.

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Originally Posted by gbe931

I play on a PS4 with the regular HDD
I did raise gil since missing out on a plot in 3.3 from 500K to 200M because I wanted a Large plot. I hate the medium layout and small is too small for the sheer amount of stuff I have. Getting the large was part of my personal end-game since I no longer raid

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Damn good on you for getting 30 on a PS4, mine is so damn slow at downloading it wasn't even finished when servers went up. But your point on the lay out has me thinking SE could add in new layouts to pick from to make someone like you be more inclined to pick a medium leaving large houses more so for FCs.

I've had my medium plot in Lavender Beds since personal housing was first released. If they suddenly revoked it, I would quit playing, even if I was reimbursed. I get a lot of enjoyment out of my personal house, and I know a lot of other people do too, especially considering Balmung is the unofficially designated RP server. The housing situation is unfortunate and absolutely broken, but kicking players who have personal houses in the teeth is not the way to solve things.

Yep, my subscription would be gone instantly if I lost my house (which I've had since 2.4). I've put so much care into it. If the developers want us to care about things in this game (the scions, our squadron, our FC, our homes), they shouldn't just rip them out of our hands because others were less fortunate ... and I'm not even on Balmung.

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Originally Posted by Pastahnak

Damn good on you for getting 30 on a PS4, mine is so damn slow at downloading it wasn't even finished when servers went up. But your point on the lay out has me thinking SE could add in new layouts to pick from to make someone like you be more inclined to pick a medium leaving large houses more so for FCs.

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Personally in Shirogane with the way it was laid out, the only mediums of worth would have been plot 8 and 28. I hated plot 7 because while it was on the beach...it faced the wrong way at a small house and plot 16 would have been my fallback if I didn't get 30 simply because it was the lowest cost large even thought the view left something to be desired in my opinion.

So many of the plots in Shirogane face their neighbors and not outward like in the Mist. None of the beach properties face the water, they all face their neighbors and some just face other houses like 7 and 24 lol

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Originally Posted by Lady_Venus

Even if u make a baby FC you wont be able to buy a house unless you reach lvl 6.. and you can still buy your personal house so not excluding the solo players like you said.. you get to have 1 personal house only so where is the problem? get your personal house in the personal house ward... and let us get our fc house in the fc ward... look at Shirogane 80% is personal houses... and FCs are left homeless.. and a single person can own multiple personal houses.. this isnt right.

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That isn't what the OP suggested. They never mentioned personal houses having a separate ward but wards in their entirely being exclusive to FCs. Regardless, it takes less than a week to grind a solo FC up to rank six. Friend of mine has done it several times. Now if you mean to proposal two separate housing areas; one for FCs and one for personal. I'm happy to support such a feature. Likewise, if Apartments weren't just glorified FC rooms, it could be a viable solution.

Hmm, maybe it is best not to give people the idea how to do this, or that fact they have done this multiple times.

As to the player to personal housing wards and auto demo, I think they would give us notice, and even make a provision for us "lucky" folk. I for one like my personal house next to the frat-house just behind me. It is good humor, and over the last few days saying saying hello, and teaching people how to level their gatherers without leves, and level their crafters at the same time. I know that is blasphemy to some; but I have gotten to help them out, and never would have run across them in that capacity. in three days they have come very far as small group of young people, and even said if you come to our fc well give you a special rank. My point is saying FC's in one ward and personal in another is a giant drain to the slice of life mmo experience.

That said, I do think if they gave apartments a porch with a small lawn area that could hold an 8 plant garden would be the ideal fix. Give them half the yard space of a small and a 50 item limit. For the FC's include an option for a workshop buy in Ishgard, and make the FC houses link their workshop to Ishgard, hell offer a free transport there to spice it up, and the option to dip out in Ishgard instead of go back to the fc house, this fixes the gated content for airship issues altogether. A few no house FC's asked me if they could run with me on my airships if we coordinated the nights. many FC's don't want the house or the headache and the argument that comes with what furniture is there and what isn't, I think SE would be smart to do this!

I somewhat agree, I don't think owning a small house is a problem but that most medium and large plots are owned by single person as well and FC's would need them the most and are looking for them. If they add new wards they should change that to a few wards but it would be unfair still to take all plots from users at this point.

Terrible solution, not because I happen to have a house but why punish the honest people who save up and then woke up for housing release in hopes to snag a house of their own and then the excitement that they got a home. Why punish those people by saying their home should be taken away. That's like knocking on someone's and saying hey you need to leave your home because this family over here needs it more than you do and it's just you and one other person. Kinda sounds like a slap in the face right? In which yes I'm aware that this is a game but all because it is a game doesn't mean that people should be injusticed just because its a game either. Even if I didn't own a home and SE were to try and take people's homes away because they want all wards to go back being FC only, it would leave a sour taste in my mouth just because I felt like the community members would have been wronged. Now I do think they need to add new wards and have some of them be FC only wards but the current wards as of now remained mixed wards and not have personal owners stripped of their plots.

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Originally Posted by gbe931

Personally in Shirogane with the way it was laid out, the only mediums of worth would have been plot 8 and 28. I hated plot 7 because while it was on the beach...it faced the wrong way at a small house and plot 16 would have been my fallback if I didn't get 30 simply because it was the lowest cost large even thought the view left something to be desired in my opinion.

So many of the plots in Shirogane face their neighbors and not outward like in the Mist. None of the beach properties face the water, they all face their neighbors and some just face other houses like 7 and 24 lol

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I honestly find the layout of Shirogane to be simply awful. Only a handful of plots were well placed and nicely orientated. The only mansion beside the beach has its back to it. Why? WHY?

My fc were thinking of moving to Shirogane but when we finally saw the ward for ourselves we were very disappointed. We decided to move only if we could get very specific plots because our old Goblet plot was actually in a nicer looking spot than most Shirogane plots. Well when we saw the pools the Goblet would have in 4.1 we just lost interest in Shirogane altogether, so we relocated to a plot beside those pools instead.

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Originally Posted by Nuna

Nope. They should have enough plots so that if ppl have the money they can get one and not have to take one or buy one from someone else. Everyone should have the size they want.

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But why? I don't understand this mentality at all that everyone should have everything. I beg to ask this question: what is wrong with exclusivity in a game? Satisfaction in getting stuff comes from the challenge, not in having it handed to you. Housing is special and so sought after because of the very fact not everyone can have it. If SE just made it so everyone could have it then it wouldn't be special and nobody would really care that much about it. It would feel empty owning one then.

I argue that SE should leave the housing where it is now, and allow deeds to plots to be sold on the Market Board. Let the economy dictate pricing of plots. Let it be like real life Real Estate.

Notone would want to be on a FC then lol, Free Company would become the next Private Housing system.
Because FC are useless,well no useless but no really a must, we don't really need anyone to use buff lol

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Originally Posted by Wolftamer

But why? I don't understand this mentality at all that everyone should have everything. I beg to ask this question: what is wrong with exclusivity in a game? Satisfaction in getting stuff comes from the challenge, not in having it handed to you. Housing is special and so sought after because of the very fact not everyone can have it. If SE just made it so everyone could have it then it wouldn't be special and nobody would really care that much about it. It would feel empty owning one then.

I argue that SE should leave the housing where it is now, and allow deeds to plots to be sold on the Market Board. Let the economy dictate pricing of plots. Let it be like real life Real Estate.

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Everyone pays a subscription to the game. That means everyone should have access to all of the content. Explain to me how housing is challenging. I have a home, and I fail to see where the challenge was? & no, let's not make it be like "real life" real estate because this is not real life. This is a fantasy game.

It's 96% chance that this house flip is scam. Especially for Balmung. There hasn't been actually a person in congested server to take the chance of purchasing two large plots like that.

People want to decorate their own house, which isn't necessarily possible with a FC house. Unless they overhaul Apartments and allow us to customize the size, eliminating personal housing will infuriate the community even further.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

People want to decorate their own house, which isn't necessarily possible with a FC house. Unless they overhaul Apartments and allow us to customize the size, eliminating personal housing will infuriate the community even further.

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Honestly, why couldn't they make Free Company to purchase their ward so that FC members can purchase plot in there? After reading your post, I am kind of asking myself about this still today.

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Originally Posted by AlthusRitoto

Honestly, why couldn't they make Free Company to purchase their ward so that FC members can purchase plot in there? After reading your post, I am kind of asking myself about this still today.

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Allowing 1 FC to control an entire ward by default isn't that great of an idea either. If an FC does this without default control (FC and personals alike) then that's what I call good planning, but 1 FC controlling them all by default would just bring more monopolization...which we need less of.

I dont think personal houses should be removed, but larges should be limited to FCs only. That big a space is wasted on 4 players.

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Originally Posted by Gotsugo

Opinion
Personal housing should've never been implemented because of high population servers like Balmung. It's simply too nice to have with the scale of some servers and when the possibility of a personal house is denied a larger % of the community have a weakened experience whether you agree they should or not.

People feeling undercut from not having a personal house was a non-issue before it became a feature.

Solution
Get rid of personal housing and refund players with plots. Implementing houses to be FC only encourages more tightly knit communities with users joining one or starting one, and ends the blood bath of the great housing races. Everyone will get over it eventually. FC houses also house infinitely more players and will put at least another hurtle of work required to get a an alt's home.

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If they take my medium house in the beds, they will lose 4x accounts.

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Originally Posted by Wolftamer

But why? I don't understand this mentality at all that everyone should have everything. I beg to ask this question: what is wrong with exclusivity in a game? Satisfaction in getting stuff comes from the challenge, not in having it handed to you.

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Players don't consider things like server queues and lobby errors as legitimate forms of challenge in a game.

The gardening excuse is old 3 plots for gardening is no where near what you need to cross breed to even just make onions..our fc runs 14-17 gardens just to cross breed for onions, vegi minions and stuffies,blood peppers etc... our fc members use there person house gardens to help the fc...Like alot stated if u remove personal houseing and say hers ur money back well guess what im with alot of people my sub ends.. This whole lets put a small band aid on the problem by punishing people who did nothing wrong is NOT the answer... They flat out need a ton more wards ..take the player base multiply that by even the basic subsciption cost and try to grasp the amount of money they make a month not counting moggstation stuff and upgrades like 8 chars 8 retiners.. They can spare some to add 50+ more wards to each zone