Only 6 Personal Wards

Just going to preface this and say I do not have a house and have been trying for a measly 10 days to get a (personal) house via the usual placard-clicking method to no success.

I think the 70%~ divide between FCs to personal wards for Empyreum and all future housing plots is a bit much. I think it should have been a case of 50/50 to begin with (or even 40/60) and work on it from there, to at least give first-time buyers (and presumably, relocators) a shot of getting a personal house in Ishgard and the other housing districts.

I understand that SE's focus on housing is for FCs and the neighbourhood aspect of it all but I can't help but think there could have been another way to go about it without adding to the pre-existing housing "crisis".

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Originally Posted by StarKorg

I think the 70%~ divide between FCs to personal wards for Empyreum and all future housing plots is a bit much.

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It's precisely 75%. It's also not just for future housing, it's all housing wards. Existing plots will be grandfathered in, but when auto demolition returns (or perhaps as people try to relocate to ishgard which um... yeah good luck with that now), the opened plots in 75% of the housing wards will be for FCs only.

Like I said, Private Chamber was their original design for player housing and open it to personal was a decision made during ARR when game is not doing that great.
Let hope their next line of move is to expand size of Private Chamber and Apartment

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Like I said, Private Chamber was their original design for player housing and open it to personal was a decision made during ARR when game is not doing that great.
Let hope their next line of move is to expand size of Private Chamber and Apartment

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They should at the least offer an explanation as to why they've done nothing with apartments when they stated they were looking at small/medium/large back with 4.2. That would at least clarify whether or not it's an option at some point.

(Can't figure out how to quote all in one message apologies)

In regards to Risver - Ah I didn't know the exact numbers thank you, I did intend "all future housing" to include plots on old wards but I see how that may have been unclear.

In regards to Divine - Hopefully they'll offer some more news on this, but I personally want a house to be able to decorate the yard too so unless they'd incorporate a garden into these private chamber style apartments/fc rooms then it wouldn't be a solution for everyone unfortunately as I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting a garden.

In regards to Layla - They should definitely offer an explanation, unless these rumours of the "servers not being able to handle it" (due to real-world circumstances on hardware) are true and act as these explanations. Definitely need some more clarity on this.

Generally -
I had a little think of it and came up with some potential (albeit small) additions to my thoughts on the situation as a whole.
- This first one's perhaps a little bit of a hot take (and maybe something I don't see happening) but a large portion of the Large and Medium houses on the wards going forward should have been reserved for FCs (or at least a large number of them) rather than every single small on the ward. Say instead of the 18 full wards being taken up for FCs it would be the case of 100% of the Large/Mediums and 50% of the Smalls on those wards were reserved for FCs, chosen at random for variety. Unless your FC is very new or very small, you'd probably want (and could maybe afford) a Medium or Large house for your FC's estate.

- Houses should be limited to either one per service account or one per data centre. (This is on the assumption it isn't currently one house per data centre)
This is entirely dependant on how many people feel the need to own a house on multiple servers (I personally believe that one house per service account is enough, but I generally only play on a small handful of characters), but given that we have a little bit of a "housing crisis" it should really be one person per house. But with the addition of this, any alternate accounts that share the same server on said service account should be able to at least teleport (if not be able to decorate/act like a tennant) to their account's house provided they reside on the same server.

Of course other opinions are more than welcome and feel free to share them this is just one stance on how to at least free up a few small plots in the future.

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Originally Posted by StarKorg

Houses should be limited to either one per service account or one per data centre

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Honestly this is something I thought might be under consideration by SE prior to the rules release given the number of new people joining the game but they elected not to go that route. Perhaps seeing the number of people actually bidding on houses might offer more insight into the demand given they can only bid on one house.

I'm particularly interested in seeing what some of the prime location plots will get in the way of lotto entries on a server like Balmung.

What I want to know is how the Japanese player base feels about this? Similar to how NCSoft only cared about the opinion of the Korean market (to some extent,) Square Enix likely only truly values the feedback of the Japanese fan base. There appears to be extremely little interaction from community managers or any other liaisons here in the west.

It’s going to be interesting to see how many of those 18 Wards of 60 houses which equals out to 1,080 homes takes to be sold. Is there actually over 1,000 FCs without a home?

IMO, SE needs too do a major adjustment to this, but it’s just sad that it will take another four months for 6.2 to see any adjustments and by the time it does come out, pretty much all of the housing at the Empyreum will be gone.

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Originally Posted by Fenril7

It’s going to be interesting to see how many of those 18 Wards of 60 houses which equals out to 1,080 homes takes to be sold. Is there actually over 1,000 FCs without a home?

IMO, SE needs too do a major adjustment to this, but it’s just sad that it will take another four months for 6.2 to see any adjustments and by the time it does come out, pretty much all of the housing at the Empyreum will be gone.

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I reckon on populated servers ALL of newly opened wards will be taken after first 9 days of initial lottery. On low to mid populated servers all of larges and mediums will be taken and then smalls are slowly going to fill up.

I'm not entirely sure it'll remain with this split, to be honest.

When I was aiming for a house for my FC, I went in for it during the opening of new housing wards in... I want to say Stormblood? They opened the wards but only permit the FC's to take the new plots at first. People were livid, as they always tend to be during new ward openings, but by the time that they opened housing plots for personal housing, there were still so many plots available that plenty of personals were doled out. I don't think even a quarter of my ward was filled when they finally unlocked it for everyone else. Mind, that was before the growth spurt the game had, so this may be an attempt to make sure FC's have a solid shot at getting a slot before they edge it up to more access.

I'd be happier if they would add another sub-division to each ward that was a new map layout with only medium and large estates on it. As it is, I get to hope that maybe one of 108 larges frees up in the 'FC only' areas (most of which are currently held by personals), in the only housing ward I'm interested in. I'm willing to let things play out, but there are just not enough plots for those who have been waiting to make that last upgrade.

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Originally Posted by Nulstat

I'm not entirely sure it'll remain with this split, to be honest.

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There's a few that share that sentiment. The concern I have is how quickly FC shenanigans can proliferate before the next observation period.

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Originally Posted by Basteala

There's a few that share that sentiment. The concern I have is how quickly FC shenanigans can proliferate before the next observation period.

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Yeah. I'm more patient with a lot of the changes because, for better or worse, there have been changes over the course of my playing the game. It'll be interesting to see if GMs are being dispatched to check the validity of plots being purchased, but that's more a curiosity than anything - I know that there were a few instances on Balmung where we had houses released because they were blatant bots/resales.

I'm in the position where I can't see us managing to nab a large simply because there's just not enough. If they only allowed relocations for the current for the first round, it'd be easier to tell... but that would cause problems for all the folks who wanted Ishgard housing. I'm not in that group, but I am in the group that has to hope that others do manage to move, and if they don't then I'm SoL. There's just nothing that I can do, except maybe move into a different medium, but ours is pretty nice and I'm not really keen on a side-grade when we've been saving for the upgrade.

The only thing I probably would have personally changed (aside the addition of another subward of just mediums and larges), is that all new homeowners be required to start with a small. There's more available, they're basically what most folks who are going into housing need for pretty much anything (aside additional garden plots, and character cap space, there's no real difference between them on a mechanics standpoint), and it would allow a better chance for folks who have been trying to upgrade to do so, thus freeing up more spots.

Unfortunately, my FC is an event FC and we are beginning to have character cap issues - so our option is a large.

All that said, I don't think this is going to go as horribly as folks think, but we'll see!

Not going to spell it out, but the honest days of trying to get a house are over for a few people. All this did was push some people over too buying a house RMT.

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Originally Posted by Jagick

What I want to know is how the Japanese player base feels about this?

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Their biggest issue goes like this....

They are getting a new Virtual Data Centre in a short time. A number of FCs decided to transfer from old worlds onto worlds that are going to be moved into the new Virtual Data Centre to take advantage of new housing in Emperyum.

There were two concerns they raised: one was that they wouldn't have 30 days as Master to be able to buy - resulting in the message recently that if you are in that situation to contact the GMs to have your status manually adjusted so you could buy. The other concern being there wouldn't be enough housing for them to get their new FC house in Emperyum... which is the only reason they are moving now in advance of the reorganisation.

One can assume/guess/prosit/imagine/whatever that this split is to help those people settle a little easier.

After the next patch the numbers will be adjusted.