Suggestion: Do not allow multiple service accounts all own houses.

I hope this is in the right area of the forum since it seemed the feedback area was only for the forum itself and the App.

Anyway, on my server there is a single person who owns at minimum 4 houses from three different service accounts. The houses are completely unused besides making their yard obnoxious to look at, and making it annoying to use the marketboard/retainer bell. I've already contacted a GM, with a reply from GM Verethentus. They were very kind and understood the issue, but are unable to do anything since this person isn't *technically* breaking any rules. I do fully understand that and am not mad at the GM or anything, but the issue is still frustrating in multiple ways. The biggest being it just feels unfair that so many people are trying to fight for a house, while this guy has owned 4 completely unused houses since they added the new wards in last year. Including a Large and a Medium.

if someone has the time/money/effort to have multiple service accounts, i mean it's his money to do with what he wants, no? are they being a jerk by doing so? sure. is it against the rules? no. *shrug* just take solace in the fact that you're not spending that kind of money?

I'm as angry at the folks who use loopholes to gain multiple houses as the next person but this isn't even near that. If somebody is paying for 3 accounts and that somebody wants to have 3 houses, one on each account, there's nothing wrong with that. Is it excessive? Probably, but it's also not even "skirting" the rules in the way that some loopholes are.

As for how the house is used... I'm sorry, but that's not your business, it's nobody's business except for the housing owner. And unless you're on the game at your house 24-7, you have no way of knowing whether or not they are unused. People play at different times. People own a house to decorate when new stuff comes out and never go back otherwise. People take week breaks. People take month breaks. If they're not using it, you'll know when the timer restarts and they lose them - and if they don't lose them, it means they're visiting them enough to keep them open. And that's all the requirements there are.

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Originally Posted by LarryButz

it just feels unfair

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Just because it feels unfair doesn't mean it is. We all play by the same rules.

If SE was really going to consider putting effort into somehow lumping multiple accounts into a single paying player entity purely so they could restrict housing even more, I'd rather they put that effort into FIXING THE HOUSING SYSTEM, which is kind of the actual problem here.

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Originally Posted by InkstainedGwyn

I'm as angry at the folks who use loopholes to gain multiple houses as the next person but this isn't even near that. If somebody is paying for 3 accounts and that somebody wants to have 3 houses, one on each account, there's nothing wrong with that. Is it excessive? Probably, but it's also not even "skirting" the rules in the way that some loopholes are.

As for how the house is used... I'm sorry, but that's not your business, it's nobody's business except for the housing owner. And unless you're on the game at your house 24-7, you have no way of knowing whether or not they are unused. People play at different times. People own a house to decorate when new stuff comes out and never go back otherwise. People take week breaks. People take month breaks. If they're not using it, you'll know when the timer restarts and they lose them - and if they don't lose them, it means they're visiting them enough to keep them open. And that's all the requirements there are.

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I'm fairly sure the houses are unused if they have practically 0 furnishing and the characters have literally been level 1 for over a year lol. But anyway, if a yard causes others to have to go into awkward camera angles to use the Marketboard/Retainer bell, then yes, it is most definitely is other peoples business. I very clearly said that I completely understand they aren't breaking any rule technically, and never said they're doing any loopholes. I'm only saying that it's dumb and shouldn't really be a thing. And pretty scumbaggy to boot.

OR

They could just give us instanced housing and actually fix the problem.

Arguments like this always make me uneasy, because I see it as a slippery slope to "And spouses shouldn't each have a house on their accounts, they should have just one and share it". If someone is paying to maintain another account, they have every right to another house as the rules say, they are doing nothing wrong. I technically have 2 houses because of this, one on my account, and one on my husbands. Are you going to say we're doing something wrong, despite following all of the rules?

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Originally Posted by AriesMouse

OR

They could just give us instanced housing and actually fix the problem.

Arguments like this always make me uneasy, because I see it as a slippery slope to "And spouses shouldn't each have a house on their accounts, they should have just one and share it". If someone is paying to maintain another account, they have every right to another house as the rules say, they are doing nothing wrong. I technically have 2 houses because of this, one on my account, and one on my husbands. Are you going to say we're doing something wrong, despite following all of the rules?

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I feel like most of you are completely missing the point. I'm only saying it's scummy for one single individual player to own 4 houses, and not letting separate service accounts by the same person buy more houses would stop that. That's all. You and your husband are different people with different accounts, so I don't even see how what you said relates to this in the first place. Why even worry about a slippery slope which would very obviously never happen?

Even if you ignore the fact it's completely unfair for the person paying for multiple subscriptions and then getting less benefits, it'd be completely impossible to actually detect or enforce this.

Not everyone with multiple accounts has them under the same Square Enix account. How is SE going to tie them all together? By the payment card they use? You've just blocked a whole family from each having their own house just because one of the parents pays for everyone.

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

Even if you ignore the fact it's completely unfair for the person paying for multiple subscriptions and then getting less benefits, it'd be completely impossible to actually detect or enforce this.

Not everyone with multiple accounts has them under the same Square Enix account. How is SE going to tie them all together? By the payment card they use? You've just blocked a whole family from each having their own house just because one of the parents pays for everyone.

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Well I was thinking more of a blanket statement type of rule. Where they'll only take care of these issues when they actually arise. Also, yes. It'd be unfair for the people paying for a second or third account just to get extra homes for them to sell for Gil or RMT. I can live saying that. It's scummy. Shouldn't be happening. I'd much rather have as many people have chances to get a home as possible, instead of some individuals having 4+ all to themselves. Sure my idea isn't perfect, but it's better than just doing nothing about it because of no rules/regulations stopping it.

I think the upcoming server shuffle will really help alleviate the housing shortage.

If you're on Balmung, you're not likely to be able to get a house anytime soon. But, you'll soon get a free transfer. You can use that to go live on another Crystal server, such as Malboro, where's a good amount of housing currently available. Then you can use World Visit to do all your adventuring on Balmung.

It's not a perfect solution, but you'd at least be able to buy a house and continue playing with your friends.

And if enough people do this, there'll be less demand for housing on Balmung, making it a bit easier for those who stay there to get a house at some future point.

Also, with the demand for housing spread out more evenly across all servers, we'll be more likely to see more wards added. They don't want to add more wards right now because demand for housing is so much greater on the most heavily populated servers that adding a few new wards wouldn't make enough of an impact there to be worthwhile, and the servers that already have a lot of vacant lots would just get more of them. But, spread enough of that demand out to where the supply is, get the neighborhoods on all servers more evenly filled, and adding new wards more frequently will become much more feasible.

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Originally Posted by LarryButz

I'm fairly sure the houses are unused if they have practically 0 furnishing and the characters have literally been level 1 for over a year lol. But anyway, if a yard causes others to have to go into awkward camera angles to use the Marketboard/Retainer bell, then yes, it is most definitely is other peoples business. I very clearly said that I completely understand they aren't breaking any rule technically, and never said they're doing any loopholes. I'm only saying that it's dumb and shouldn't really be a thing. And pretty scumbaggy to boot.

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If they're level 1, then it's a FC house. The owner is probably operating airships and submersibles if the house appears to otherwise be unused.

SE has no way to know if John Doe in New York City is also John Doe from New York City. There are a lot of John Does in New York City and some of them are probably father and son living under the same roof. As a result, SE would have no way to enforce any per person rules. The best they can do is per service account.

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Originally Posted by BiffWellington

I think the upcoming server shuffle will really help alleviate the housing shortage.

If you're on Balmung, you're not likely to be able to get a house anytime soon. But, you'll soon get a free transfer. You can use that to go live on another Crystal server, such as Malboro, where's a good amount of housing currently available. Then you can use World Visit to do all your adventuring on Balmung.

It's not a perfect solution, but you'd at least be able to buy a house and continue playing with your friends.

And if enough people do this, there'll be less demand for housing on Balmung, making it a bit easier for those who stay there to get a house at some future point.

Also, with the demand for housing spread out more evenly across all servers, we'll be more likely to see more wards added. They don't want to add more wards right now because demand for housing is so much greater on the most heavily populated servers that adding a few new wards wouldn't make enough of an impact there to be worthwhile, and the servers that already have a lot of vacant lots would just get more of them. But, spread enough of that demand out to where the supply is, get the neighborhoods on all servers more evenly filled, and adding new wards more frequently will become much more feasible.

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I think that's a little on the optimistic side. SE has already stated they are working to find a way to prioritize players attempting to return to their home worlds if that world has a queue due to congestion. That's going to make anyone on Balmung who wants to continue to play with friends on Balmung think twice about transferring off world just to get a house.

There's also uncertainty over just how much housing will be available on the lower pop worlds once the data center reorganization happens. We had 665 houses available back in October before SE suspended the demo timer. In November it dropped to 532, December it was down to 400 and there were only 257 when I checked yesterday. At that rate Coeurl will be out of houses by mid March, before the data center reorganization even happens.

Who's going to transfer solely to buy a house if their chance at getting a house will be no better than it is on their current world? The reorganization really won't do much to spread out the demand because there won't be enough still available by then. The only way it might impact it would be for SE to resume the demo timer 8 weeks in advance of the reorganization so every thing that might demo will do so before the free transfer period opens.

If housing were more of an individualized element of gameplay it would be so much better. Being able to walk through neighborhoods of sorts is a nice feature, but I've only had my house for little less than a year due to lack of spaces on my previous server, which forced me to move once I had enough money. Even then I could not get my dream mansion, but I'm quite happy with my cottage in Mist. Limitations due to money reasons-this I'm fine with. Limits on housing due to people being excessively greedy and exploiting weak links in the system is something that seriously bothers me. Although ideally it would be one house per character that was kept separate from others, in the system we actually have in FFXIV it would be more fair to limit houses to one per world that each character could share. However, seeing as how simply sending items to alts isn't even allowed, I doubt we'll ever see this happen since the game encourages you to focus on a single character.

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Originally Posted by LarryButz

Well I was thinking more of a blanket statement type of rule. Where they'll only take care of these issues when they actually arise. Also, yes. It'd be unfair for the people paying for a second or third account just to get extra homes for them to sell for Gil or RMT. I can live saying that. It's scummy. Shouldn't be happening. I'd much rather have as many people have chances to get a home as possible, instead of some individuals having 4+ all to themselves. Sure my idea isn't perfect, but it's better than just doing nothing about it because of no rules/regulations stopping it.

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Said it before, but I'll say it again. The amount of unused houses from players who stopped playing is vastly superior to the amount of grandfathered personal houses/multi-fc house owners out there. If there's a problem with the housing system right now, it's the ridiculously long auto-demolition timer. For every unused house, players have to wait 45 days. Drop the auto-demo timer to 5 days or less if you want more people to have a shot at owning a house.

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Originally Posted by MaybeOliverB

Said it before, but I'll say it again. The amount of unused houses from players who stopped playing is vastly superior to the amount of grandfathered personal houses/multi-fc house owners out there. If there's a problem with the housing system right now, it's the ridiculously long auto-demolition timer. For every unused house, players have to wait 45 days. Drop the auto-demo timer to 5 days or less if you want more people to have a shot at owning a house.

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Says the person with 27 houses on what... 3 characters on the same account?

The solution is to limit houses to one personal and one FC per service account, while letting all characters on those accounts be co-owners.

I've no issue with people paying for multiple accounts having multiple houses.

I don't disagree that one person with several accounts with houses on each is an issue...however is it even possible for SE to determine, without any shred of doubt, that the same person owns multiple accounts?

Sure there are some signs that can point to a person owning several accounts, but that sort of activity isn't unique to it. SE can't use the below criteria to hunt down players with several accounts hoarding houses without the risk of punishing innocent legitimate players.

• It's not unusual for more than one person to play XIV in a single home so looking at the IP address won't work.
• It's not unusual for a person to be paying for subs for more than just themselves, so checking the payment info won't work.
• It's not unusual for several people to use the same gaming devices, so checking that won't work.
• It's not unusual for a group of people to be tenants in one anothers houses, so checking tenancy across suspected accounts won't work.

So what's left then? The ToS? Well as far as I know running multiple XIV applications on pc isn't against the ToS. So as long as the player isn't multi-boxing this doesn't count as an offence.

It's clear an automated system won't work, which means SE would have to get staff to personally inspect the activity of suspected accounts. This would cost a lot of time and money. I don't see SE ever doing this.

I think the only things SE could do to reduce the impact of this issue, without huge changes to the housing system, is to reintroduce the limit of fc houses per server back to one and remove grandfathering for both private and fc homes, and reduce the incentive to hoard houses by allowing all characters in the same server have access to the same private home. But that's not a proper fix because a player with several accounts would still have access to a far larger amount of housing than most players.

The only real fix for housing availability issues is some serious change throughout the housing system, if not an actual overhaul.

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Originally Posted by LarryButz

I feel like most of you are completely missing the point. I'm only saying it's scummy for one single individual player to own 4 houses, and not letting separate service accounts by the same person buy more houses would stop that. That's all. You and your husband are different people with different accounts, so I don't even see how what you said relates to this in the first place. Why even worry about a slippery slope which would very obviously never happen?

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My houses are grandfathered and a work in progress... I wasted time and effort to get them way before the rules changed to what they were and I dont use them for scummy purposes.

Also, I know from experience some people dont get a house when they are availalbe just because they dont like the location... which is silly, if they want to have a house get one of the ones available and than eventually you will be able to transfer some day.

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Originally Posted by BiffWellington

I think the upcoming server shuffle will really help alleviate the housing shortage.

If you're on Balmung, you're not likely to be able to get a house anytime soon. But, you'll soon get a free transfer. You can use that to go live on another Crystal server, such as Malboro, where's a good amount of housing currently available. Then you can use World Visit to do all your adventuring on Balmung.

It's not a perfect solution, but you'd at least be able to buy a house and continue playing with your friends.

And if enough people do this, there'll be less demand for housing on Balmung, making it a bit easier for those who stay there to get a house at some future point.

Also, with the demand for housing spread out more evenly across all servers, we'll be more likely to see more wards added. They don't want to add more wards right now because demand for housing is so much greater on the most heavily populated servers that adding a few new wards wouldn't make enough of an impact there to be worthwhile, and the servers that already have a lot of vacant lots would just get more of them. But, spread enough of that demand out to where the supply is, get the neighborhoods on all servers more evenly filled, and adding new wards more frequently will become much more feasible.

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Adding more wards would be beneficial but even than I think we'd still see these threads... because again I feel part of the problem (not all mind you but a decent sized portion) is that folks dont just want a house.. they want the house in their perfect location and if they dont have it, they find it upsetting and complain

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

If they're level 1, then it's a FC house. The owner is probably operating airships and submersibles if the house appears to otherwise be unused.

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I mean... I guess? Yeah, they are FC houses, I knew that already. Still though, that's a pretty iffy statement, but at least it could be possible. They'd have to buy literally everything though, since the one single character in each FC is level 1. I don't buy it, but it's a better response to everything else here so yeah. I can see it at least.

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Originally Posted by MaybeOliverB

Said it before, but I'll say it again. The amount of unused houses from players who stopped playing is vastly superior to the amount of grandfathered personal houses/multi-fc house owners out there. If there's a problem with the housing system right now, it's the ridiculously long auto-demolition timer. For every unused house, players have to wait 45 days. Drop the auto-demo timer to 5 days or less if you want more people to have a shot at owning a house.

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I mean you can keep saying it, but auto-demo timer isn't what I made this thread about. But since you insist. The auto-demo timer being at 5 days or less would be so incredibly awful lol. Like what? Want to go on a week trip somewhere? Say farewell to your house. Or just don't feel like playing the game for a whole gosh dang five days? Goodbye home. The auto timer is totally fine. Maybe reduce it to 30 days minimum, but anything less is just silly. Even then, taking a single month break happens and losing a house because of it would be an awful feeling. I believe the 45 days is a good number.

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Originally Posted by LarryButz

I mean... I guess? Yeah, they are FC houses, I knew that already. Still though, that's a pretty iffy statement, but at least it could be possible. They'd have to buy literally everything though, since the one single character in each FC is level 1. I don't buy it, but it's a better response to everything else here so yeah. I can see it at least.

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Airship/Subparts are tradeable - master FC makes all the parts and then distributes them to the sub-FC's.

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Originally Posted by DrWho2010

Airship/Subparts are tradeable - master FC makes all the parts and then distributes them to the sub-FC's.

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Yeah that's true. I still don't see it being the thing that's happening here though. Not that it doesn't happen ever, just not in the situation I'm specifically talking about is all. But who knows besides them I suppose. Regardless though, even if they are actually using the houses only for airships, I still think there should be some limit on houses per person.

Doesn't have to be my personal idea, I know it's not perfect by any means, so if there's a better option then great. It's just dumb situation that can happen, on top of the fact they make their yard ugly as heck on purpose to troll everyone around the area, and the fact that they're using Large/Medium for this. They could easily have bought 4 smalls instead if they were only going to use it for Airships.

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Originally Posted by LarryButz

Yeah that's true. I still don't see it being the thing that's happening here though. Not that it doesn't happen ever, just not in the situation I'm specifically talking about is all. But who knows besides them I suppose. Regardless though, even if they are actually using the houses only for airships, I still think there should be some limit on houses per person.

Doesn't have to be my personal idea, I know it's not perfect by any means, so if there's a better option then great. It's just dumb situation that can happen, on top of the fact they make their yard ugly as heck on purpose to troll everyone around the area, and the fact that they're using Large/Medium for this. They could easily have bought 4 smalls instead if they were only going to use it for Airships.

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Trying to restrict things further doesn't solve the core problem - there are not enough available plots to meet demand on many worlds. Enforcing ownership rules in the manner you suggest might open up 5-10% of the housing on each world at best. That's still not going to be enough to meet the demand on the higher population worlds.

They need to come up with a system that will allow every player who wants a house to have one without trying to squeeze everyone into limited wards. Apartments might have been a good solution if players had the ability to choose interiors equal in size to small, medium and large house interiors instead of just a room. I'm still hoping the Ishgard housing they implied in coming will be a new system that is a solution and not just an expansion of the ward system.

Honestly, the 1 house per server per service account is good enough imo. If someone really wants to spend extra money on multiple service accounts and keep up with the hassle of logging into every one of them and going into the houses just to keep them, then I say more power to 'em. It's expensive and a real pain in the behind to do that, so it's not really common. And as long as it's not common, I don't see it as a huge deal.

You keep going on about how the houses are empty and not in use but lets be real for a second here..... a good amount of houses owned by players are empty and never used. So many people only use the house for the status symbol, just because they can or for a cheap teleport to a market board and npcs or for gardening/airships/submarines. I basically live in the housing zone and the number of times I've seen any neighbors could be counted on my fingers (ok, that's probably an exaggeration but not by much and only because I've had a house for a loooong time). Honestly I wish they'd just do instanced housing so everyone can stop complaining about housing and dreams can stop being dashed. But that probably won't ever happen...sigh

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They need to come up with a system that will allow every player who wants a house to have one without trying to squeeze everyone into limited wards. Apartments might have been a good solution if players had the ability to choose interiors equal in size to small, medium and large house interiors instead of just a room. I'm still hoping the Ishgard housing they implied in coming will be a new system that is a solution and not just an expansion of the ward system.

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This!!!!!
Apartments would solve a lot of the issues if they would just allow you to choose different interior sizes - PLUS it would add a lot to the community, since everyone would be going to the same spot so it wouldn't feel as empty. I also had a fever dream where each house was an instance. Walking up to the post in front of the house would allow you to select which person's version of the house you wanted to enter. When entering, it would bring you to an instance where you'd also get to customize the yard. For the version that is on the base map, maybe it could cycle daily between different yards. *shrugs* (when entering an instanced version of the house, the yard would be there but you couldn't leave the yard without leaving the instance)

Really hoping they do something new with the Ishgard housing, too. But I'm not holding my breath for it....

Seems that most servers have at least one or two people doing this (or bought houses while there was a content drought and plots were plentiful). Now plots are all sold out and it's a rat race for anyone wanting player housing.

It's not against TOS so the argument is more on your personal feelings so for me personally yeah I hate it. Especially when the houses or FCs made are exact copies with slight changes to spelling, the FCs no longer have people in them expect for the alt needed to maintain it and once you see upwards of 6 and more houses with the same tag lines in one residential area and more across the other it's annoying.

But again, this is a grievance brought on by other faulty systems, right?

Like I wouldn't be as upset if when I found an available plot I could outright by it instead of the random timer being in place and then tossing up the idea of "do I just not sleep tonight?" and then when I choose to do that, someone comes to the placard and begins running a script to auto click away at it or someone moves to that plot resetting the cycle.

Housing is just a vicious toxic cycle right now that I try to stay away from and hope the expansion alleviates.

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Originally Posted by Mikki

You keep going on about how the houses are empty and not in use but lets be real for a second here..... a good amount of houses owned by players are empty and never used. So many people only use the house for the status symbol, just because they can or for a cheap teleport to a market board and npcs or for gardening/airships/submarines. I basically live in the housing zone and the number of times I've seen any neighbors could be counted on my fingers (ok, that's probably an exaggeration but not by much and only because I've had a house for a loooong time). Honestly I wish they'd just do instanced housing so everyone can stop complaining about housing and dreams can stop being dashed. But that probably won't ever happen...sigh

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Those are 4 reasons to have a house though? They're being used. Even if the purpose is because of laziness. Having a house because of status is fine as long as they don't own more then allowed. Just having a house period, never using it for anything other than going inside every 44 days to keep the house alive is totally fine. As long as they only have that one house (Plus FC house technically). Anyway, the purpose of this thread isn't that they're unused. If they were being used and decorated, it'd still be scummy. I've just been saying it's extra scummy in my personal experience with these people that they're purposely making their yards as ugly as possible and hard to see around the Marketboard/Retainer area unless you zoom in almost all the way.

Also I don't know why I have to keep saying this, but I understand fully that there's no rules against having multiple service accounts just to beat the housing limit. What would be the point of making this suggestion if it was a rule? If the people doing this are doing it for airships only, then this is basically a p2w situation. I don't care that they're spending a lot of money or time doing it. That doesn't make it any more acceptable imo.


As a side note, having instanced housing would kind of ruin the whole neighborhood feel of housing. Not a big fan of that idea. There's surely better ways of handling the overall problem of housing besides dismantling half the reason housing is cool and fun.

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Originally Posted by LarryButz

As a side note, having instanced housing would kind of ruin the whole neighborhood feel of housing. Not a big fan of that idea. There's surely better ways of handling the overall problem of housing besides dismantling half the reason housing is cool and fun.

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Most players already complain about how empty their wards feel, though. I'm lucky, I have a couple of active neighbors at my house that I see a few times a week while I'm gardening. I also garden at a friend's house and I never see his neighbors at all. I almost never see the neighbors at my alt's FC house when I'm gardening there.

Neighborhood feeling could still be achieved with instanced housing. We'd just lose the ability to have our exterior decoration on display to those randomly passing by. Considering the complaints about ugly neighbor yards, that may not be a bad thing.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Neighborhood feeling could still be achieved with instanced housing.

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Leave the wards as they are, and add in instanced housing on top of that. Make it so players can transfer their existing houses into the instanced housing system and vice versa (you can't have both a ward house and an instanced house, just one or the other). Include perks as incentive for the instanced houses (examples: ability to upgrade size, more space in the yard for items, lack of demolition timer, etc). Those players who like the wards can stay there, and you'll probably find more like-minded neighbors as those who prefer instanced housing and/or want the perks move out.

This is exactly what I'm hoping they're going to introduce with Ishgard housing. I know logically that they probably won't, but I still have hope right now.

Normally I'd support some restrictions, like 1 FC and 1 personal house per server, but some in this thread have honestly made me realize the obvious...it doesn't fix the real problem, and that is the supply/demand issue. We need more houses, plain and simple.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

Normally I'd support some restrictions, like 1 FC and 1 personal house per server, but some in this thread have honestly made me realize the obvious...it doesn't fix the real problem, and that is the supply/demand issue. We need more houses, plain and simple.

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We don't need more houses. We need to bring the housing prices back to what they used to be. Housing is the only gil sink in this game aside from the marketboard sale taxes...

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Originally Posted by MaybeOliverB

We don't need more houses. We need to bring the housing prices back to what they used to be. Housing is the only gil sink in this game aside from the marketboard sale taxes...

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Oh look, this again. Like I've said before in regards to your argument, no. Just no. That won't fix the underlying problem. Take your nonsense elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

Oh look, this again. Like I've said before in regards to your argument, no. Just no. That won't fix the underlying problem. Take your nonsense elsewhere.

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The "underlying problem" only showed up after prices were reduced dramatically as more and more wards were added to meet the demand caused by personal houses. How can you even deny that?

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Originally Posted by MaybeOliverB

The "underlying problem" only showed up after prices were reduced dramatically as more and more wards were added to meet the demand caused by personal houses. How can you even deny that?

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It has always existed, especially on high pop servers. Not enough supply, too much demand. We need more supply. How can you even deny that?

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

It has always existed, especially on high pop servers. Not enough supply, too much demand. We need more supply. How can you even deny that?

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The demand was never an issue on high pop servers when housing was restricted to FCs only, what are you even saying lol

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Originally Posted by MaybeOliverB

The demand was never an issue on high pop servers when housing was restricted to FCs only, what are you even saying lol

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It isn't restricted to FCs now and hasn't been since early ARR. That isn't even relevant at this point. The housing system we have now is what we have and a lot of people want it to be better. That means more houses. What in the world do you possibly not understand here? Improving it does not mean going backwards.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

It isn't restricted to FCs now and hasn't been since early ARR. That isn't even relevant at this point. The housing system we have now is what we have and a lot of people want it to be better. That means more houses. What in the world do you possibly not understand here? Improving it does not mean going backwards.

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Early ARR? Personal houses were added shortly before 2.4. Check your facts. You go and try to find me threads regarding your "underlying problem" pre 2.4 (good luck with that). This situation has only gotten progressively worse as they added more wards to compensate for personal houses that have also progressively been made cheaper to purchase. If you cannot understand that, you don't understand the concept of supply and demand.

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Originally Posted by MaybeOliverB

Early ARR? Personal houses were added shortly before 2.4. Check your facts. You go and try to find me threads regarding your "underlying problem" pre 2.4 (good luck with that). This situation has only gotten progressively worse as they added more wards to compensate for personal houses that have also progressively been made cheaper to purchase. If you cannot understand that, you don't understand the concept of supply and demand.

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Mid-late ARR then, my apologies. Regardless it has been a thing for a long time. I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make though. Seriously, I want to understand. But if there's a method to your madness I'm not seeing it. I wish I could say you are a troll, but you've been spouting this stuff for a long time and I think you genuinely believe it lol

They should just let apartments be upgradeable Animal Crossing style, to maybe the size of a Small house. Maybe even in between Small and Medium. Similar-ish to what someone said here. Could even add a cool patio thing, who knows. Also add more wards of course, more houses = less people not having them. But I feel like this would fix the major issue of housing, a compromise for instanced housing and non-instanced housing. If people really wanted a house and there were no plots open, they could get an apartment and work on upgrading it.

I think in a perfect housing world, they would have a few wards be FC only and a few be personal only. Also have whole purchasable wards (not counting towards the public ward limit) that FC's can have all to themselves. FC members could have their individual house and it'd be a neighborhood of just your friends and FC mates. This would obviously never happen, but the idea is really cool. Wards/Neighborhoods are such a neat idea that work out really well when you actually have a house. The problem is actually getting one in the first place though, it's an awful experience to try and get your first house at the moment.

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Originally Posted by LarryButz

Those are 4 reasons to have a house though? They're being used. Even if the purpose is because of laziness. Having a house because of status is fine as long as they don't own more then allowed. Just having a house period, never using it for anything other than going inside every 44 days to keep the house alive is totally fine. As long as they only have that one house (Plus FC house technically). Anyway, the purpose of this thread isn't that they're unused. If they were being used and decorated, it'd still be scummy. I've just been saying it's extra scummy in my personal experience with these people that they're purposely making their yards as ugly as possible and hard to see around the Marketboard/Retainer area unless you zoom in almost all the way.

Also I don't know why I have to keep saying this, but I understand fully that there's no rules against having multiple service accounts just to beat the housing limit. What would be the point of making this suggestion if it was a rule? If the people doing this are doing it for airships only, then this is basically a p2w situation. I don't care that they're spending a lot of money or time doing it. That doesn't make it any more acceptable imo.


As a side note, having instanced housing would kind of ruin the whole neighborhood feel of housing. Not a big fan of that idea. There's surely better ways of handling the overall problem of housing besides dismantling half the reason housing is cool and fun.

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Honestly, if a house is used "properly" is subjective. There are tons of ways to enjoy housing and some people will feel one way is ok and others won't. Personally, I feel like if you just want a cheap teleport and MB access but don't want to decorate...why not just get an apartment? As far as submarines, gardening and airships go... I feel like this is just an altogether broken aspect of the game in the first place. Most FCs aren't going to share those items with every person in the FC which then leads to people who really want to craft certain things or have access to those items for whatever reason to make their own FC which is super boring if you don't want to manage it. My friend and I have our own FC for this very reason - we want full control over airships, submarines, gardening, buffs, etc. But we have no desire to keep up with an FC so we just keep it locked to our small friend group. Which is sad, honestly, and I wish they would just let anyone do that on their own or at least make it possible to get those items in some other way as well. I'd really like to join an active FC without having to manage it myself but unfortunately, having access to those things is more important to us. Actually, it occurs to me that perhaps some people may just have a second service account for this reason - to be on an active FC on their main but still enjoy those aspects. Hm. Well, in that case I couldn't even blame them for that. Pfft.

I'm fully aware that you know it's not against the rules. But you want to MAKE it against the rules. There's no way to enforce it. SE can't do that without punishing people living together playing the game under one roof and the problem is so small that it's not worth ruining the experience of all the people who share a household. Many, many husband and wives play this game together.

And, no. I don't think there's much of a reasonable way to fix the housing situation without making it instanced in some capacity. Is it POSSIBLE? Yeah, sure. But not practical for SE. They would need to add wards until there are enough for the active player base on each server. But, this would fluctuate and leave sparsely populated wards.

I think the best solution would be as Brynne mentioned where they would make a combination of wards + DECENT instanced housing. But if SE would ever do that, I have my doubts. They could have done it forever ago and I thought that's what apartments would be (and well, they are in a way but not implemented well). So...who knows.

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Originally Posted by LarryButz

They should just let apartments be upgradeable Animal Crossing style, to maybe the size of a Small house. Maybe even in between Small and Medium. Similar-ish to what someone said here. Could even add a cool patio thing, who knows. Also add more wards of course, more houses = less people not having them. But I feel like this would fix the major issue of housing, a compromise for instanced housing and non-instanced housing. If people really wanted a house and there were no plots open, they could get an apartment and work on upgrading it.

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.....Why not just let apartments be able to be as large as large sized housing? I don't see any reason to restrict it. I have seen some very large apartments/condos in real life.

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Originally Posted by Mikki

I'm fully aware that you know it's not against the rules. But you want to MAKE it against the rules. There's no way to enforce it. SE can't do that without punishing people living together playing the game under one roof and the problem is so small that it's not worth ruining the experience of all the people who share a household. Many, many husband and wives play this game together.

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Only you guys are mentioning punishing people who live together. I never once said, or implied that. I've clearly said what I meant, and that I don't mean for them to just vet every service account then compare them to all existing account. That's just ridiculous. I've already said how they could possibly handle it

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Originally Posted by Mikki;

.....Why not just let apartments be able to be as large as large sized housing? I don't see any reason to restrict it. I have seen some very large apartments/condos in real life.

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Because then the only reason to get a house would be to have a front yard? It would totally ruin what makes owning a house special. And lets be real if they add large size apartments then people would just complain about not having a yard too. The same people who want to scrap wards all together and just want completely instanced housing for some reason. I seriously can't understand why people are against adding new wards. I can see from SE's reasoning because of server space and stuff, but a player not wanting more housing without having to totally rework everything is just silly.

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Originally Posted by LarryButz

Only you guys are mentioning punishing people who live together. I never once said, or implied that. I've clearly said what I meant, and that I don't mean for them to just vet every service account then compare them to all existing account. That's just ridiculous. I've already said how they could possibly handle it



Because then the only reason to get a house would be to have a front yard? It would totally ruin what makes owning a house special. And lets be real if they add large size apartments then people would just complain about not having a yard too. The same people who want to scrap wards all together and just want completely instanced housing for some reason. I seriously can't understand why people are against adding new wards. I can see from SE's reasoning because of server space and stuff, but a player not wanting more housing without having to totally rework everything is just silly.

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Not everyone wants that yard, or to be able to garden, or to feel part of a neighborhood. Then there are others who want to feel like they do live in a neighborhood and would buy those houses over a large apartment if they could get one.

I don't understand why you think a large apartment would ruin anything when our house interiors already are instanced as it is. They don't load until you're ready to enter.

Options are generally a good thing. Let people get something that best fits what they really want.

The argument against new wards comes from it both not solving the problem on high pop worlds where demand will continue to outstrip supply and by creating a new problem in its place - mostly empty wards on lower pop worlds when players who want that neighborhood feeling want to be seeing other players with houses in their ward, not a series of empty plots. If SE could expand the wards dynamically on a world by world basis so only worlds that needed more wards would get them, the objection to wards would mostly go away.

Instanced housing solves the issue of dynamic housing expansion and could even let players own multiple houses without impacting the ability of other players to buy their first. Leave the wards in place as a prestige system for players to fight over ownership at premium prices while guaranteeing every character one instanced house if the player wants their character to own a house.