Housing in Materia - after changes to FC only plots

Hi, We currently have an FC house that was originally in an FC only ward.

I understand that they opened the plots up for Private buys to buy, which is great. We had some fc members buy plots and move in. The ward is like 90% empty even after the private buy additions.

We wanted to upgrade out Medium plot to the nearby Large plot that has been empty since release. However it is now marked as private buyers only? It has taken us a while to save up the money to get the larger plot and now we cant get it.

Does this private only and FC only buying rotate every week/lottery period? I cant relocate to an FC only ward because the fc members who bought to be around the FC house cant buy there. Why didn't they just make the plots available for both private and FC buyers when there are SO SO many plots available in all the wards. Do we need to now wait until they remove the private buys only restricitons?

Thanks.

Probably won’t happen as SE seem be of the opinion to keep them separated. I’m guessing it’s a RMT countermeasure.

You could transfer to another Fc ward if there are large plots available. Last two large plots sold in my ward last lotto going to private buyers we were once FC only. This was on Sophia.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Aussiedai84

Hi, We currently have an FC house that was originally in an FC only ward.

I understand that they opened the plots up for Private buys to buy, which is great. We had some fc members buy plots and move in. The ward is like 90% empty even after the private buy additions.

We wanted to upgrade out Medium plot to the nearby Large plot that has been empty since release. However it is now marked as private buyers only? It has taken us a while to save up the money to get the larger plot and now we cant get it.

Does this private only and FC only buying rotate every week/lottery period? I cant relocate to an FC only ward because the fc members who bought to be around the FC house cant buy there. Why didn't they just make the plots available for both private and FC buyers when there are SO SO many plots available in all the wards. Do we need to now wait until they remove the private buys only restricitons?

Thanks.

---

SE is going to adjust ward designation when they feel it's necessary. There's no set schedule for when it might happen other than SE said it is most likely to occur with major patch releases. They may not hold firmly to that depending on how things go over time.

At this point, you would need to find a large available in a FC ward if you want to upgrade the FC house or hope that no one buys the large in your current ward before the ward is changed back to FC. If you did find one in another ward and moved, your FC members wouldn't be able to follow with their personal houses. That will probably continue to be a problem in the future if the goal is to have member houses in the same ward with the FC.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rhea_

Probably won’t happen as SE seem be of the opinion to keep them separated. I’m guessing it’s a RMT countermeasure.

---

I don't think it has anything to do with RMT. I think the goal is to make certain that there are always some houses available for FCs. If all wards fill up on a given world so there is nothing left for FCs, SE might well switch all wards to FC purchase only until such time as there are enough available plots that some of the wards can be set aside for personal purchase.

Once SE starts changing FC/personal ward designations on a per world basis, it will be interesting to see how they handle Balmung and Mateus. Both worlds are effectively sold out with just a few random houses currently available and everything getting heavy bidding.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

You could transfer to another Fc ward if there are large plots available. Last two large plots sold in my ward last lotto going to private buyers we were once FC only. This was on Sophia.

---

But their FC members with personal houses in the ward wouldn't be able to transfer them to be in the same ward with the FC house.

Yeah, sadly all statements by SE that they would adjust the mix on a server-by-server basis never came to be actually true.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shibi

Yeah, sadly all statements by SE that they would adjust the mix on a server-by-server basis never came to be actually true.

---

Like how they promised apartments could be dynamically scaled when all was bought.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Shibi

Yeah, sadly all statements by SE that they would adjust the mix on a server-by-server basis never came to be actually true.

---

Technically it has happened now. The 4 new EU worlds are split 1-12 FC and 13-24 personal. The wards on all other worlds are 1-9 FC and 10-24 personal.

We're still fairly early in the system's history. I imagine we'll see the first individual deviations when 6.2 is released and they have to decide what to do about Balmung and Mateus but most worlds will probably continue to have the same splits for several months.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rhea_

Like how they promised apartments could be dynamically scaled when all was bought.

---

They have expanded them many many many times over the years. Unlike every other mmo ever ff14 has continued to grow its customer base as it got older. I truly doubt back when they said they could add apartments as needed they ever imagined that they would grow their customer base in the way that they have.

At this point if your on an overcrowded server that has no apartments left and you really want one then move to a new server. It looks very much like SE's response to lack of housing for the foreseeable future is going to be new servers. I'd strongly suggest that those who are without housing move to new servers when possible or prepare to do without for a long time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

SE is going to adjust ward designation when they feel it's necessary. There's no set schedule for when it might happen other than SE said it is most likely to occur with major patch releases. They may not hold firmly to that depending on how things go over time.

At this point, you would need to find a large available in a FC ward if you want to upgrade the FC house or hope that no one buys the large in your current ward before the ward is changed back to FC. If you did find one in another ward and moved, your FC members wouldn't be able to follow with their personal houses. That will probably continue to be a problem in the future if the goal is to have member houses in the same ward with the FC.




I don't think it has anything to do with RMT. I think the goal is to make certain that there are always some houses available for FCs. If all wards fill up on a given world so there is nothing left for FCs, SE might well switch all wards to FC purchase only until such time as there are enough available plots that some of the wards can be set aside for personal purchase.

Once SE starts changing FC/personal ward designations on a per world basis, it will be interesting to see how they handle Balmung and Mateus. Both worlds are effectively sold out with just a few random houses currently available and everything getting heavy bidding.


But their FC members with personal houses in the ward wouldn't be able to transfer them to be in the same ward with the FC house.

---

Yeah we would liike to have the personal house close to the FC house. There are SO SO SO many plots in every ward on my server because it is fairly low population. it is just silly to restrict the wards to FC or private. They should be available to both. I don't think any of the wards in any housing area apart from maybe Shirogane are even remotely full.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bladehawk

They have expanded them many many many times over the years. Unlike every other mmo ever ff14 has continued to grow its customer base as it got older. I truly doubt back when they said they could add apartments as needed they ever imagined that they would grow their customer base in the way that they have.

At this point if your on an overcrowded server that has no apartments left and you really want one then move to a new server. It looks very much like SE's response to lack of housing for the foreseeable future is going to be new servers. I'd strongly suggest that those who are without housing move to new servers when possible or prepare to do without for a long time.

---

Expanded as a result they added more housing wards yes. That’s not what they said originally.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bladehawk

They have expanded them many many many times over the years. Unlike every other mmo ever ff14 has continued to grow its customer base as it got older. I truly doubt back when they said they could add apartments as needed they ever imagined that they would grow their customer base in the way that they have.

---

What they told us was that it would be fairly easy for them to add more wings to apartment buildings if demand got so great that a world no longer had available apartments left.

I think why it hasn't happened is because the demand for more houses has been so great, adding new wards for houses also adds more apartments. The only world to date that has seen all apartments fill up is Balmung though Mateus seems to be getting close.

If more worlds fill up or get close to filling up their apartment buildings and SE hits a roadblock when it comes to adding more wards to meet house demand, we might see the additional apartment wings added at that point.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

What they told us was that it would be fairly easy for them to add more wings to apartment buildings if demand got so great that a world no longer had available apartments left.

I think why it hasn't happened is because the demand for more houses has been so great, adding new wards for houses also adds more apartments. The only world to date that has seen all apartments fill up is Balmung though Mateus seems to be getting close.

If more worlds fill up or get close to filling up their apartment buildings and SE hits a roadblock when it comes to adding more wards to meet house demand, we might see the additional apartment wings added at that point.

---

I'd suspect it may be due to that imbalance that they're not putting any rush on expansion. So many of the efforts to date have been towards balancing world populations. To their views, the solution to "one world has totally filled every apartment" is "more players should transfer to different worlds."

It's kinda the same problem Balmung has always had. I've been around long enough to see the calls from Balmung that SE should just close/merge Mateus (the low pop world at the time) to make more room for Balmung. From an outside perspective, it just feels kinda selfish to demand that one world get special treatment just because everyone keeps trying to get in when it's so crowded.

Balmung being out of apartments incentivizes players to filter off to other worlds. SE catering to Balmung to always make sure they have "more" of everything just means more players will continue to push in, eventually resulting in the near-permanent Congested lock, which, we've already seen the crying when that happens.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

I'd suspect it may be due to that imbalance that they're not putting any rush on expansion. So many of the efforts to date have been towards balancing world populations. To their views, the solution to "one world has totally filled every apartment" is "more players should transfer to different worlds."

It's kinda the same problem Balmung has always had. I've been around long enough to see the calls from Balmung that SE should just close/merge Mateus (the low pop world at the time) to make more room for Balmung. From an outside perspective, it just feels kinda selfish to demand that one world get special treatment just because everyone keeps trying to get in when it's so crowded.

Balmung being out of apartments incentivizes players to filter off to other worlds. SE catering to Balmung to always make sure they have "more" of everything just means more players will continue to push in, eventually resulting in the near-permanent Congested lock, which, we've already seen the crying when that happens.

---

So then there's a near permanent Congested status due to the server have characters for more accounts than it can reliably hold. That's why the Congested status exists and where there's also the temporary hold on character creation/transfers - to help keep populations more balanced. It's not to balance housing demand versus supply.

Something that can be easy to overlook is that a character is not the same thing as a player (account). As an example, I have multiple characters on Coeurl. Because I have a single player account, I can only be logged onto one of them at a time. But each of those characters has an apartment while I can only have 1 personal house. If I create another character for Coeurl, it does not truly add to the server population but it does add to the demand for apartments if I want that character to get an apartment as well.

That's Balmung's problem. There are more players on Balmung with multiple characters than you'd see on other worlds. They want each of their characters to have housing, which means apartments in most cases since there's the house restriction.

Not allowing those characters to get an apartment is rarely to get those players to create their new characters on other worlds - they want them on Balmung for their RP purposes and a lot of times that means having them in a specific FC or local linkshell that's on Balmung. Creating the character off world means the character can't be in that FC or linkshell (cwls are still limited to 64 members compared to 128 for locals so they may not be a viable option depending on the RP group size).

Maybe their FC was lucky enough to get a house and they're able to create a FC room but if not, an apartment is their only option (or perhaps they have reasons for not wanting a room at the FC house). When it comes to server memory usage, a FC room and an apartment aren't going to be any different.

It wouldn't surprised me if apartment buildings were basically designed off how FC houses function. It would help to explain why SE was so confident in their statement that they could easily increase the number of wings in an apartment building if needed - the same thing already automatically happens with a FC house.