Implement House Sharing For Alts

Hi, there are tons of helpful posts requesting more housing, but as you consider the addition of new housing wards or instanced housing I'd also like you to consider investing real time and money into ensuring that alts within the same server can share a house.

This would require an expansion on the 3 roommates per house to a minimum of 8. But It's very similar in spirit to how FC members share a house. Recreate the house sharing UI and have the home owner of the personal plot set permissions for the "Roommates" same as you would an FC.

This ask directly links to a second: Allowing alts to get added to the friends lists of characters created on the same server/same service account.

I'm not sure if you monitor the NA forums for ideas, but implementing this request in some shape or form would be a big help.

If there are system limitations, even addressing it at a live letter and letting us know if it's possible would be really considerate.

Thank you for all you do.

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Originally Posted by HadesNight

Allowing alts to get added to the friends lists of characters created on the same server/same service account.

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This would be fantastic, but unfortunately it looks unlikely to ever happen. There's been two cases, years apart, where there were ways to ways to friend your alts... and both times SE have patched the game the pretty quickly to stop that.

They've never officially said why they won't let us friend our alts, but those that did it confirmed they could add their alts to their houses and it worked exactly like you'd expect the friend list to work. Given that SE said years ago you'd be able to add your alts to your houses this would seem like the easiest way to do that, but they've never said more on that topic either...

Maybe it causes problems behind the scenes (unlikely as I don't believe they ever cleaned up the friend lists of anyone that did it?) or maybe it's some sort of RMT prevention (also probably unlikely since it's widely known they create fake FCs and use the company chest to trade items) or maybe they just don't want to cut into the sales of extra retainers... (which I don't think it really would as it'd be way too inconvenient to have to constantly logout/mail 5 items at a time).

But sadly we can only speculate as to the why, even though it clearly could work and they add extra steps in to make sure we can't.

SE did state shortly after the 4.2 housing update that one of their goals is to allow alts to share a personal house owned on the same world/account but they had technological hurdles to overcome first. Nothing more has been said since so we don't know if they're still working on those hurdles, if they have it completed but are waiting to add it with the next major housing update or if they had to abandon the plan.

I have been waiting the option to share the house with alts for years, Square Enix should give this a slightly higher priority and get it done already.


I really cannot understand why they wouldn't want to allow alts as friends, if they feared RMT then it could be prevented by imposing limitations they considered necessary.


I really don't know whom is dumber, if RMT trying to scam players or their clients spending money stupidly and at the risk of getting banned permanently!.

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Originally Posted by SigmaOZ

I have been waiting the option to share the house with alts for years, Square Enix should give this a slightly higher priority and get it done already.

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Their priority right now is getting 5.3 out, which, in the grand scheme of things, is more important.

Get an apartment.

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Originally Posted by KayRadley

Their priority right now is getting 5.3 out, which, in the grand scheme of things, is more important.

Get an apartment.

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A lot of us have apartments, but we would like to see housing addressed in a serious way, soon™.
I already have a house myself, and an apartment etc, but I do absolutely hope they inform us soon about the end result of the Ishgardian restoration, so that people do have an informed basis to make the decision to either stick it out and endure living in an apartment or just abandon ship for something like BDO. It may not be "as important" for a lot of people frequenting the forums to have their online slice of life sim in their MMO of choice, but rest assured, there are many players (myself included) that very much enjoy online life sim whether it be some dissatisfaction with real life drama or a personal desire to more deeply withdraw from society and connect with other introverts and bug each other at our online houses.

I did have a nice house on Aion like 8 or 9 years ago, (it has been a while), and at that time it was handled similarly to FFXIV except they had a rent system there, I think you could pay in advance like 3 weeks at a time, but they also had apartments, and I can not remember the details on that, I think they just give you one of those at some point. The rent kept people logging in at least to ensure they put the requisite funds on their house signs to keep their properties, so at least THAT was something. I'm kind of just turned off from many aspects in this game other than housing right now, (pvp is total disappointment for me, and sure let's just say I'm bad at it, but I at least had fun with it at a previous time.) I would not be in the slightest way slighted if at some point they decided that during the course of the msq you are offered a free house, somewhere, whether it be an enormous massively expanded apartment, or even a plot of land that can have a house put on it, that is just a "shell" of a house that when you walk into it, there is no separate instance for the house, but the camera zooms in and only allows you to really view the interior of the house as if it were instanced off ( I am probably explaining this poorly, I do not claim to be well educated or informed, I blame everyone but me for this.. no but really, I blame me.) And this is only offered to the character if they do not already own a ward house. If they DO own a ward house, they are asked to give it up if they want to receive this free house. That kind of helps I guess limit server capacity issues, slightly but they will need to address these limits over time (hopefully much easier to do than blowing out 50+ always active wards each world etc). Would it take coding and "dev resources"? Absolutely. Is that an absolute "no way in hell that'll happen then", No, I don't think so.

I think the dev team is seeing they have a clear issue to address, which boils back down to give us something to go on with this Ishgardian Restoration stuff. We can speculate and say "Oh it's just gonna be another stack of wards in "X" amount" but has the development team openly said this? Nope. We could say "It's gonna be instanced housing" again, where has this been said? No where aside from speculative people here on the forum. I've chatted with several friends about what they thought it would be, in game and in discord channels, I've tossed ideas around, about just how I would address the issue if it were me calling shots (I am not, and am glad for us I am not), but the biggest hope and suggestion I DO have for the development team is to please give us insight into just what we can expect with the fully "restored" Isghardian housing district. Weirdly enough if you look through some threads here, there's like a weird hostility a lot of people seem to have toward others either for having a house already or someone coming in and just stating what has obviously been stated maybe several hundred times before. I think some of it is just everyone involved being sick of the situation. I feel bad for some people who don't have houses that really do want a house in game and like me work work work work work work work work work.. Many of them have children and a wife / husband / girlfriend or are taking care of other personal things in their lives, and for whatever combination of reasons, just can't get one. They do not flinch from obeying the Terms of Service, while people advocating the use of bot programs and openly sharing code or methods of automating even here on the forum prosper in this current dumpster fire system. And the development team chugs along (probably in all reality doing the utmost in their power) doing what we see as seemingly nothing while frustrated players come in here and blow the doors down with complaints / anger / vitriol. It is a bad time right now, with people all over the spectrum about this COVID-19 madness, housing demolitions frozen, people thoroughly advocating botting programs spitting directly in the face of everyone else with their "Oh I won't sit here for 9+ hours clicking this thing" defenses, and Square Enix (Not the dev team) probably looking at the 'longevity' factor of this game and refusing to allot necessary funds to address these issues.

There is a clear way to get the point across to them. Unsubscribe. Don't settle for an apartment. Don't pay them any more money. And you'll eventually see (if enough take that stand) a message in your email about "Great time to return" "Instanced Housing" or another letter saying "It's been a glorious X amount of years, but we're finally shutting down the servers". If they do not want to cater to their player base as divided as it is, then they have failed to uphold the standard they hold for themselves. One of these two things will occur.

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Originally Posted by Sauteed

but I do absolutely hope they inform us soon about the end result of the Ishgardian restoration, so that people do have an informed basis to make the decision to either stick it out and endure living in an apartment or just abandon ship for something like BDO.

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They almost never give us details until the content is about to be released (usually one of the live letters before the release patch). I don't expect it to be any different for Ishgard housing.

Based on the pacing of the Restoration so far, housing won't be getting released until the 5.5 patch. They're highly unlikely to make any significant changes to the housing system before Ishgard's release. Maybe they'll add on another 3 wards in the meantime like they did in 5.1? I doubt it.

"Gimme this one thing I want or I quit" has never been a successful tactic to try with game developers. Housing in general, and houses in particular, are a very small part of the overall content in the game. If people are going to quit over not being able to buy a house, then it sounds like they're really not enjoying FFXIV overall and the lack of a house is just the excuse they pick for why they're leaving. Getting a house probably wouldn't change their overall satisfaction enough to keep them from quitting.

If the player doesn't plan to quit completely but just wants to take a break from the game to play other things for a while while waiting for more content to be released, the dev team actively encourages players to do that regardless. They don't want anyone getting burned out.

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Originally Posted by KayRadley

Their priority right now is getting 5.3 out, which, in the grand scheme of things, is more important.

Get an apartment.

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is it because honestly its not going to get people to stay on longer than 3 months ... they will add like 7 quest tops to the msq a little grind on relic part and then another raid phase...

I hate to say this .. but honestly adding more housing options and stuff is almost more important than a temp moment of enjoyment

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Originally Posted by LolitaBansheeMeru

I hate to say this .. but honestly adding more housing options and stuff is almost more important than a temp moment of enjoyment

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Collectively the player base spends a lot more time in that other content than they do in housing, even if that might be different in your specific case.

So honestly, no. More housing stuff isn't more important than the rest of the game. That's not saying that the housing system isn't in need of improvement. It's saying that it doesn't deserve top priority.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Collectively the player base spends a lot more time in that other content than they do in housing, even if that might be different in your specific case.

So honestly, no. More housing stuff isn't more important than the rest of the game. That's not saying that the housing system isn't in need of improvement. It's saying that it doesn't deserve top priority.

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i never said it was overall but its more important than a patch that won't satisfy longer than 3 months while waiting for the next one lol

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Originally Posted by LolitaBansheeMeru

i never said it was overall but its more important than a patch that won't satisfy longer than 3 months while waiting for the next one lol

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Better a patch with multiple content additions that keeps the player engaged for 3 months than a patch that just adds more houses so the player is engaged only for a week.

Stop and truly think about what you're asking for. We know 5.3 is bringing us:
A new chapter in the MSQ that includes both a new dungeon and a new trial (with EX version as well)
The second part of the YoRHa Alliance raid
The new Unreal Trials, which does something a lot of players have been asking for - scales old content up to max level instead of scaling down players down to the old level plus adds in a new mini-game with special prizes for those who complete the trial each week.
New beast tribe quests
A new phase of the Ishgard Restoration, including a new leaderboard competition
The next phase of the relic weapon chain, which should be fairly grind heavy

But you'd rather see SE discard all of that and just give players more houses instead. Players who don't have a house already will be able to get one, then they'll decorate it (takes a week, maybe two, when you never had a chance to decorate before and you're playing with ideas), then they'll...

Sit at their house staring into space the next 5 months because they don't have anything else to do?

House decorating really doesn't offer a lot of game play by itself. Even The Sims, the game that pops into everyone's head when someone says "housing game", figured that out. They added night clubs and amusement parks and vacation resorts (probably other things after I stopped playing it) to keep the game interesting.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy housing. I'm glad it's part of the game. There's something satisfying about being able to go into my own house (or apartment in the case of the my alts) when I log in to check my retainers, do a little crafting, instead of being stuck in one of the cities to do those things.

But without all the other content that gets added in content patches, housing would not be enough to keep me playing the game. On the other hand they could take away housing and while I would be disappointed, I would continue to play the game because that the content is what I spend most of my time doing when I'm logged in.

Fortunately, SE is capable of working on updates to housing along with all the other content. We know we've got housing updates coming when Ishgard Restoration is completed, with at least a new housing district if not the wild dream of instanced house plots. Try being patient until then. Apartments are still there if you need a housing fix. They might be small but there are players doing amazing things with apartments just as they have with houses.