We need another Housing purge

Or instanced housing. One or the other with how a single guild can own 10 houses under their name.

I don't understand what you're saying.

Do you mean rip personals from people who have an fc house?

Auto-demo has been back in effect for a while now. So the houses are being used by their owners.

I'll bring the gasoline.... >.> What just a suggestion

sickness must be purged

From what I’m seeing, wards are a lot more active than they used to be. I don’t think we need another purge as housing reclamation effectively keeps plots in the hands of those who want and will use them. What you’re asking for is for SE to forcefully take plots from those who have an excess, which has nothing to do with the original purge tbh. The purge was meant to correct a situation where players would buy houses and quit the game, turning wards into ghost towns and making an already limited resource even scarcer, and was actually a side effect of SE introducing the reclamation mechanic. It happened because so many timers ran out at once, not because SE took any plots away.

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Originally Posted by Sakuraluna

From what I’m seeing, wards are a lot more active than they used to be. I don’t think we need another purge as housing reclamation effectively keeps plots in the hands of those who want and will use them. What you’re asking for is for SE to forcefully take plots from those who have an excess, which has nothing to do with the original purge tbh. The purge was meant to correct a situation where players would buy houses and quit the game, turning wards into ghost towns and making an already limited resource even scarcer, and was actually a side effect of SE introducing the reclamation mechanic. It happened because so many timers ran out at once, not because SE took any plots away.

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No it wasn't. If wards were turned into a ghost town, people would buy those houses gladly once they were reclaimed. SE didn't change the rules regarding this, other than a freeze on reclamation due to natural disasters effecting a large number of players.

The change in rules was regarding specifically the issue addressed, that each players can have one personal house, and that each FC can have one house, while supplies last. It specifically states that any attempts to skirt around these rules are also against the rules, which we can see here. Further changes are being made to make personal houses available for the entire account, further cementing that a personal house is for 1 player, and not for 1 character.

Additional changes were so that FC housing would be reclaimed if the FC had not enough members to consider it legitimate. What we see however is that these FC's are made up of the same people with alternate characters. You only need 4 players to own 16 houses.

What we see here is an obviously violation of the rules, and SE should crack down on it.

I agree, a patch needs to work like this.

The last house you where in before Date X will remain yours all other houses will be returned to the market. And you will be returned items and 50% of the house cost.
With 30 days notice to release a your house and get items returned and 100% value of house resell cost.

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Originally Posted by Freyt

Additional changes were so that FC housing would be reclaimed if the FC had not enough members to consider it legitimate. What we see however is that these FC's are made up of the same people with alternate characters. You only need 4 players to own 16 houses.

What we see here is an obviously violation of the rules, and SE should crack down on it.

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So what? Take someone's house because they choose to be apart of a small FC? It's one thing if that same person has multiple houses on their account between different characters, but another entirely if they just have a small FC with a few friends.

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Originally Posted by DoctorClockwork

how a single guild can own 10 houses under their name.

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They don't and that's not one FC, that's multiple FCs. Yes they're all likely to be the same group of people, but they're still individual FCs that they had to level each up to rank 6 to be able to buy a house. And since one person could only create a maximum of 8 characters on a world, for 10 alt FC houses there's definitely more than one account involved.

I can see how it looks like it's a single FC, but if you look at each house "owner" you'll see a different FC. They just happen to all have the same "short name" because the game doesn't require that to be unique.

The only thing I want to add to this, is in an interview not long ago, when asked about alts being able to use the houses of their mains on the same server, Yoshi P explicitly said they are working on making that happen so that, if you buy a house, every alt on that server can use it and there would be no need to own more than one "personal" house as it essentially becomes all you need. Presumably, any or all alts could be in the same, or different, FC's as well. It would go a ways towards further reducing the need for housing. But honestly, they will never take away someone's house. I myself have one extra house because I was grandfathered in. I think if they want people to give up houses they don't need, they will have to incentivize it in some way. Give out some kind of refund and reward for relinquishing it. A lot of people might not agree, but since we know they won't ever take them, it's kind of the only other option. Honestly, as for my extra, if they do allow alts into main's homes, I may just relinquish it, but if they have some manner of incentive, I would certainly be happier about it, and that may be enough to make a difference for some. And in the end, some is better than none. Especially on places like Gilgamesh, where there really is none.

There was also a point brought up a while back about how some hardcore raiders will have these setups to maximize expedition mats for food/pots or w/e it is raiders need piles of.

Despite being a small niche of the player base, I could understand SE not wanting to greatly disrupt their activity, since they probably also do far more than the average player to promote the game (via streams or vids or guides or whatever).

Whether true or not, I couldn't say.

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Originally Posted by Bellsong

This is the kind of stuff SE needs to take a hard stance on because no single FC should own that many homes.

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Fc tags are not unique labels. You're not looking at one fc owning several houses, you're looking at several different fcs who use the same tag. It is literally impossible for a fc to occupy more than one plot. This is probably why SE haven't done anything about it because they're not breaking any rules by sharing the same fc tag with their neighbours.

Yes it's obvious that this is a bunch of people in the same community coordinating their efforts but the fact remains that strictly speaking each plot has a different owner.

SE could strip them of some vanity and change the tag system so that each has to be unique. Sure we'd probably see "mew", "meww" and so on, but it would look less misleading and probably would turn people off doing this sort of thing if the residency list won't be uniform.

They really should've just imposed a "One house per account period" restriction instead of allowing for FCs to be used as a loophole.

House hording is enough of an issue just with alt accounts involved.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

Fc tags are not unique labels. You're not looking at one fc owning several houses, you're looking at several different fcs who use the same tag. It is literally impossible for a fc to occupy more than one plot. This is probably why SE haven't done anything about it because they're not breaking any rules by sharing the same fc tag with their neighbours.

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It's the same FC taking advantage of the system to profit off of workshops. Greed preventing other FC's and players from owning those plots, this is something SE does not want to happen anymore. They put member requirements on owning an FC estate but that wasn't really enough to stop this at all.

This housing monopoly has been a thing for a while on multiple servers, and you really can't pass this off as just a dozen FC's changing their tag to mew for some reason.

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Originally Posted by Bellsong

It's the same FC taking advantage of the system to profit off of workshops. Greed preventing other FC's and players from owning those plots, this is something SE does not want to happen anymore. They put member requirements on owning an FC estate but that wasn't really enough to stop this at all.

This housing monopoly has been a thing for a while on multiple servers, and you really can't pass this off as just a dozen FC's changing their tag to mew for some reason.

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As someone on Greg server I can concur. It's the same few people running alternate FCs in addition to a main one with the one tag. Some cases of this are blatant or obvious than others.

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Originally Posted by Bellsong

This housing monopoly has been a thing for a while on multiple servers, and you really can't pass this off as just a dozen FC's changing their tag to mew for some reason.

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I didn't. I even said it was obvious that this is one group coordinating their efforts. My point is strictly speaking they're not breaking any rules.

Punishing that fc isn't simple:

• You can't punish them for owning more than one plot because strictly speaking they don't. It's several fcs with the same tag. Not one fc that broke the game and has several houses.
  
• You can't punish players for having a fc with a house on one character, and being in a different fc that also has a house on another. There are many legitimately separate fcs with these exact situations.
  
• You can't punish the fcs for funneling their resources to another fc. It is not against any rules to help another fc.
  
• You can't punish them for taking over a ward. It's very common for fc members to have their houses in the same ward as their fc house.
  
• So what's left then, punish them for sharing the same fc tag? Well then several other fcs who are unaware they share the same tag would be punished too.

I am not disputing that what that mew fc did is scummy. I'm saying that punishing them isn't a no brainer given that the activities they're doing aren't actually offences.

Which is why I said SE needs to take a hard stance on this, and that could be implementing new rules to prevent this, or just flat out saying they can't and aren't going to do anything about it. sure I can see grandfathering in people who had already done this because on a technical level they hadn't broke these new rules or any existing ones, but something needs to be done about it to prevent it happening going forward.

https://i.imgur.com/jFaGx4O.png

Make no mistake, it's clearly against the rules, and the efforts made here are in clear violation of the rules. Just because you've circumvented the hard coded rules doesn't mean you haven't broken them.

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Originally Posted by Freyt

Make no mistake, it's clearly against the rules, and the efforts made here are in clear violation of the rules. Just because you've circumvented the hard coded rules doesn't mean you haven't broken them.

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No, it's not actually. Going against the spirit of the rule is not the same as actually breaking the rule. It may be sleazy and you may not like it (and I agree on that), but that doesn't make it against the rules.

Oho, if we're bringing legality into it then I'm sure we're both talking about terms of service. The intent on the rule has been made abundantly clear. It doesn't have to spell out every which way the rule can possibly be broken.

If you can prove the users in question have multiple service accounts, then you may very well have some ground to stand with that claim of yours, but the likelihood is that these characters belong to the same service accounts and are merely being removed from the FC to purchase land to then be reinvited to the very same FC they were removed from.

This action is clearly intended on infringing upon the the rule and as such the terms of service, which while not punishable by law is in fact legal grounds for the other side of the agreement to take action to annull the agreement.

Ugh... We're really going to start playing this game now?

Fine. Editing my previous post for the sake of semantics.

Your edit didn't change anything. You just clarified your position a little further, and the position you took is exactly what I argued against.

Not liking something doesn't make it against the rules.

Don't be obtuse.

Even if it wasn't against the rules, it should be. Its clearly someone trying to circumvent the rules. Go look them up and see what the estate names and greetings are. Its quite obvious.

The FC doing this most likely has member's with multiple services accounts. Which means they are not violating any rules. As the rules are PER service account, meaning each service account is allowed to have 1 FC house per world. So if you have lets say 4 service accounts you are allowed to own 4 FC homes even if they are on the same world, that comes out to 1 FC home per service account just as the rules state!!

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Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

The FC doing this most likely has member's with multiple services accounts. Which means they are not violating any rules. As the rules are PER service account, meaning each service account is allowed to have 1 FC house per world. So if you have lets say 4 service accounts you are allowed to own 4 FC homes even if they are on the same world, that comes out to 1 FC home per service account just as the rules state!!

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I'm not at all convinced that is actually what is taking place. I laid out a free and easy method of doing it, I doubt people would make additional accounts when such an obvious method is in front of them.

What we really need is different rules with regards to housing based on how populated a server is, and how many housing plots are available. My server has a few wards that are still mostly empty, there's absolutely no reason anyone should have to worry about losing their house if they decide to take some time off.

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Originally Posted by Freyt

I'm not at all convinced that is actually what is taking place. I laid out a free and easy method of doing it, I doubt people would make additional accounts when such an obvious method is in front of them.

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Looked at the housing thing again and I see one way it could be done. But that still fits with in the rules that are in place of 1 FC house per service account as its not multiple FC houses being purchased on one account. This does need to be solved but how, these players are following the rules SE set down.

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Originally Posted by z0na_r0sa

I saw something like this just last night, but didn't get a screenie to document it. I was looking at a ward of the Goblet on Matteus, and a great number of them all had the same <guild-tag> and it seemed like each one was owned by a 1-person FC. The FCs were all similarly named, in addition to having the same tag. E.G. "The Fool's Paradise" "The Fool's Court" "Fool's Inn" etc. (I don't remember the -exact- name, but it was clear that they were all variations on a theme.)

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It's two people who own the entire ward. There was an article about it on Kotaku a while back.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

They really should've just imposed a "One house per account period" restriction instead of allowing for FCs to be used as a loophole.

House hording is enough of an issue just with alt accounts involved.

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This means FC leaders are arbitrarily punished. A friend and I jointly run a FC. Your proposal means one of us will be locked out of keeping our individual personal houses. Why is that fair?

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Originally Posted by Freyt

No it wasn't. If wards were turned into a ghost town, people would buy those houses gladly once they were reclaimed. SE didn't change the rules regarding this, other than a freeze on reclamation due to natural disasters effecting a large number of players.

The change in rules was regarding specifically the issue addressed, that each players can have one personal house, and that each FC can have one house, while supplies last. It specifically states that any attempts to skirt around these rules are also against the rules, which we can see here. Further changes are being made to make personal houses available for the entire account, further cementing that a personal house is for 1 player, and not for 1 character.

Additional changes were so that FC housing would be reclaimed if the FC had not enough members to consider it legitimate. What we see however is that these FC's are made up of the same people with alternate characters. You only need 4 players to own 16 houses.

What we see here is an obviously violation of the rules, and SE should crack down on it.

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you are making up rules.

The rules state that each character can only have one personal house and own one FC house.

Character, not player. You keep insisting it is player based but the housing rules are character based.

It is impossible for a character to now acquire more than 1 personal house and own one FC house. There is no "skirting" the rule because it is impossible to now bypass that rule. The characters who were grandfathered in are also not breaking any rules... because they were grandfathered in to the new system intentionally.

Of course it's gonna be hard to get a house in a really populated server, also it's not against the rules to own multiple FC houses, as said by people above if you are willing to pay for more then one service account go on, from a business perspective this is a wet dream for SE. And i'm sure they would love for everyone to have 2 subs instead of one.

I can see why people are annoyed by what appears to be one FC owning almost an entire ward but at the same time I don't want the rules tightened further because those proposals are going to hit innocent players far harder than the people you want to target. We already have reclamation, most worlds have empty properties and the people who were grandfathered need to stay active to keep their houses. If the people who own multiple properties did not break any rules at the time they purchased them, then they should be allowed to keep them.

Instanced housing I can get behind far more for the following reasons:
- No need for reclamation
- It should be possible to have a much larger outdoor furniture limit
- It would provide a much needed gil sink
- Potential to put housing in desired areas like Ishgard or the Sea of Clouds which are not suitable for wards due to lore or story-locked access

FFXIV housing is something that has the potential to be great, instanced houses would let players get really creative. I'd happily swap my personal in Mist for a private island in the Sea of Clouds or even one off-shore from Mist.
I'd like to see more people enjoying housing rather than trying to punish players who have a house and making them jump through hoops if they want to keep it.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

They really should've just imposed a "One house per account period" restriction instead of allowing for FCs to be used as a loophole.

House hording is enough of an issue just with alt accounts involved.

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That gets iffy though, since I inherited an FC (the leader stopped playing) while I owned a personal house. It wouldn't be right for the fc house to be destroyed, just because I already had one, other people still use the FC house.

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Originally Posted by Freyt

Make no mistake, it's clearly against the rules, and the efforts made here are in clear violation of the rules. Just because you've circumvented the hard coded rules doesn't mean you haven't broken them.

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So submit your evidence to SE that they broke the rules instead of benefiting from the grandfather clause for those who had owned multiple houses prior to 4.2's release. It easily could have been someone who had already owned multiple houses across scattered wards and then took advantage of relocation when the new wards were opened to move them all to the same ward.

SE is still the final arbitrator when it comes to who is breaking the rules and who isn't. Report for cheating if you feel the need but you'd better be certain that you know more than one of those FCs is owned by the same account and that those houses were new purchases after 4.2.

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Originally Posted by illgot

you are making up rules.

The rules state that each character can only have one personal house and own one FC house.

Character, not player. You keep insisting it is player based but the housing rules are character based.

It is impossible for a character to now acquire more than 1 personal house and own one FC house. There is no "skirting" the rule because it is impossible to now bypass that rule. The characters who were grandfathered in are also not breaking any rules... because they were grandfathered in to the new system intentionally.

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Read the policy page again.

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Each service account may only possess one free company estate hall and one private estate per World.

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If it was only per character, then I could be buying my alt a house since there are hundreds of houses available on Coeurl right now but I can't.

It does not prevent a player from having multiple active service accounts so they can have multiple houses per world spread across those service accounts.

Is it ok OP if a service account owns a house on multiple servers. Can I own a house on 8 different servers and be within the rules and would that be fine with you? Just checking before i do that with my alts. I want to be sure you approve.

Edit: Oh and how about if I create a small FC on each of them as well and get two, one FC and one personal?

The mistake SE made was announcing the change in rules before the patch went live. On a few servers this caused FCs to "break up". They made LSs to stay in contact, and the individual members started their own FCs with similar names. They used the 2-ish weeks the new rules were known to level their new FCs up to house buying levels, and then when new wards went live they swarmed in and bought FC houses for their new 1-member dummy FCs. Every member willing to put in the work could now have their own airships(and later subs) - which personal housing doesnt allow for.

Mew is my FC, ask me anything.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with what they are doing, nor is it against the rules.