Housing abandoned plots, this is needed SE!!! Thank you!

[Syrehn]

The second point I want to make about your post is that it's hard to make a distinction between the "scumbag" player you describe and someone who just enjoys having alts and occasionally playing the game with them. It's really hard to devote time to alts but alts provide a change of pace now and then; I don't think players should be penalized for having them. Besides, how would you make a system not based on subs? If you based it on activity, that player just logs on with his/her alts once per day/week/month/whatever.

Your point does touch on an interesting issue that deserves to be addressed though: why would someone want to own multiple houses? I personally think it's about the gardening. Gardening was (is?) a very low-effort way of making quite a lot of gil.

Scumbag might have been a bit strong... >.> <.<

Gardening was a very hot commodity when housing first launched and greatly contributed to alt FC's picking up multiple housing plots (which was sort of scummy to other homeless FC's imo); it's likely still a factor though not as big as it once was. Greed and epeen status is another reason.

I don't personally think anyone's alt character or FC should be holding additional housing space and a viable solution would be to implement something like 1 personal house per account per server.

I'd also like to see a restriction for future plots that keep M/L houses for FC purchase only; individuals really don't need that much space all to themselves.

[Niwashi]

I don't personally think anyone's alt character or FC should be holding additional housing space and a viable solution would be to implement something like 1 personal house per account per server.

That wouldn't be bad provided that all characters on that account are given full access to using the house. Currently, that's not the case, and buying up a house per alt is the only way to have access to a house.

[MageBlack]

That wouldn't be bad provided that all characters on that account are given full access to using the house. Currently, that's not the case, and buying up a house per alt is the only way to have access to a house.

At least have some level restriction or MSQ requirement on housing. The Ideas and concept of housing is grea, I love it, that's why I want a house. But with the current system there will forever be a wall keeping the majority of players from enjoying it. Bottom line, Greater availability needs to be implemented. The demand is high, time to increase the supply.

[StouterTaru]

At least have some level restriction or MSQ requirement on housing.

There is already a substantial wall before you can buy a house:
-Personal house requires highest current GC rank, which involves doing DD and AV
-FC house requires rank 5 for the FC

[MageBlack]

There is already a substantial wall before you can buy a house:
-Personal house requires highest current GC rank, which involves doing DD and AV
-FC house requires rank 5 for the FC

Oh, then thats good. I didnt realize that, my bad. Thanks for pointing it out cause I thought once you unlocked the wards you could just buy a house.

[Niwashi]

At least have some level restriction or MSQ requirement on housing.

It currently requires level 50 and being a 2nd Lieutenant in your Grand Company before you can buy a personal house, and an FC rank of 6 for FC houses. I think if anything the requirements are a bit steep already (and the prices even more so). Both requirements and prices were designed to limit the number of players who would try to buy houses, because SE wasn't providing enough of them. They need to take care of the deplorable limits on space, so that they can safely allow everyone to get houses, and then drop the requirements and prices down to something more reasonable.

The Ideas and concept of housing is grea, I love it, that's why I want a house. But with the current system there will forever be a wall keeping the majority of players from enjoying it. Bottom line, Greater availability needs to be implemented. The demand is high, time to increase the supply.

Agreed. They need a new model that allows them to dramatically increase the space, not just settle for adding a ward or two every 6 months to a year and act like that will satisfy the demand. They need to redesign the system so there will be enough houses for everybody, even on the high-population servers.

Instancing the personal houses is the most obvious way to remove the limit on space, but not the only one. Take LOTRO as an example: It has a similar housing system to FFXIV, with a few locations (four in their case compared to three here) that each have a collection of wards (or neighborhoods by LOTRO's terminology) where a bunch of people have houses together. Both games have 30 houses per ward or neighborhood. The difference is that LOTRO has up to 250 neighborhoods in each of four areas, whereas FFXIV has 16 wards (well, 8 wards and 8 subdivisions which are essentially the same thing) in each of three areas. That difference between 1,000 neighborhoods in one game and 48 in the other is what makes that shared neighborhood pattern work there and not here. If SE wants to keep using this type of shared housing ward, then they need to actually devote the necessary servers to housing, just like Turbine did for LOTRO. We're stuck with these ridiculous limits on housing for the same reason a lot of other things are lacking in this game, because SE doesn't want to spend anything on their infrastructure.


As to how LOTRO handles the abandoned house issue, they have a maintenance fee of a few silver per week that can be paid ahead up to six months in advance. Past that, if your maintenance fees aren't paid your house is locked so you can't use it, and after a period of time (another month IIRC) a locked house will be foreclosed with all contents going into escrow for the owner to pick up when/if they return. Combined with the fact that houses there are drastically cheaper than here, and there are plenty so you can always get another, not many people are upset with the foreclosure system. (There were, however, lots of complaints about their first attempt at it, because initially the escrow that holds the items from your house was going to be time limited as well. To get a system that players would accept, they had to drop that rule, and keep escrow indefinitely. There were a few other changes as well, like extending the amount of time you could pay ahead to 6 months as it was originally shorter.)

[MageBlack]

We're stuck with these ridiculous limits on housing for the same reason a lot of other things are lacking in this game, because SE doesn't want to spend anything on their infrastructure.

I'm curious to know if SE is back in the black now after the 1.0 disaster. They spent a lot of money on that then spent even more trying to fix the error. I know the company is wealthy but each project has its budget and financial expectations. I would like to hope that by now they are finally seeing a profit after all their prior debts being payed but when they were already working in a deficit then you get frugal with your spending. Not something I begrudge the team for this game. But I would imagine with the unexpected success of 2.0 that by now they are able to final devote some of the income to going above and beyond what they felt safe. I also keep in mind that they plan their content several years out and if there is a big change, it wont be something they can implement immediately. As for housing servers, Buy a few more then C&P your wards across them. We need more space! I would rather have it and not need it then need it and not have it.

Other than that, I totally agree with the rest of your post. I like the current system, I just wish there was more spots available. The instance housing is a sacrifice I would be willing to make for personal homes if it would mean a house for everyone.

[Syrehn]

That wouldn't be bad provided that all characters on that account are given full access to using the house. Currently, that's not the case, and buying up a house per alt is the only way to have access to a house.

I guess my question is... if you already have one personal house on your main character (garden, decorate etc.) why do you need to buy up a house per alt? All this does is take away from others being able to access a limited resource on their main character.

[Niwashi]

I guess my question is... if you already have one personal house on your main character (garden, decorate etc.) why do you need to buy up a house per alt? All this does is take away from others being able to access a limited resource on their main character.

If you're playing multiple characters, then your second or third character, etc. has just as much need of a place to garden or stable their chocobo and so on as your first character does. By the current rules they cannot do any of that at your first character's house.

I think it should be changed so that all your alts can share the house, and all have full access to using it. If that were the case, then a rule that you could only have one would work. But so far, SE has refused to allow any association between characters on the same account. We can't even friend our own alts or send mail to them, let alone share a house.

[Syrehn]

If you're playing multiple characters, then your second or third character, etc. has just as much need of a place to garden or stable their chocobo and so on as your first character does. By the current rules they cannot do any of that at your first character's house.

I think it should be changed so that all your alts can share the house, and all have full access to using it. If that were the case, then a rule that you could only have one would work. But so far, SE has refused to allow any association between characters on the same account. We can't even friend our own alts or send mail to them, let alone share a house.

IMO there is no need to have more gardens via more houses if you already have access to one on your main character a character on your server. You're already reaping benefits of the garden on one character, spreading it to alt's additional characters for personal gain is just individual player greed and takes away from a limited resource (a.k.a housing) for other players on their main characters with a single character attempting to get housing. This is why I believe a 1 house per character per server rule would be a good addition.

In terms of a place to stable an alt chocobo the chocobo for additional characters... I'm not trying to come off a being against alt additional characters but I don't feel this should warrant the consumption of a limited resource (a.k.a housing) on an non primary character additional character on the same server.

It would be ideal, like you said, to have 1 personal house shared between alt multiple characters (I fully support this) but let's face it the game isn't super multi-character friendly as it is. You can do anything you want on your main a single character with the exception of running extra raid lockouts and for aesthetics.

A good alternative to the chocobo issue would be if SE put a community stable at Bentbranch to allow for leveling/colouring of chocobo's for players (including alt's player's with multiple characters) with no personal/fc house.

Edited: For the need to eliminate the difference between main/alt's since it seems to be causing a ruckus.

How are gardens a limited resource again? Your opinion makes no sense outside of just trying to arbitrarily restrict players for no reason. He is talking about all of your characters (alts) sharing houses. This is the perfect solution.

Also you do realize that what he is suggesting would essentially drop the demand of an alt to have it's own house while what you are promoting would increase the necessity of having a house for the alt if you wanted to do those things.

Also it's pretty selfish to imply that someone shouldn't be a be to have access to their house with their characters when it has absolutely zero net effect on you what so ever.

I guess all in all it's good that they aren't letting the community decide these things as we have bitter people trying to limit other players for no reason what so ever due to jealousy and selfishness.

Or maybe you just didn't read his comment because he is talking about alts sharing houses and you said no and then suggest that alts should share houses.

Or maybe if you re-read my post again you'll see that I clearly stated that I support Niwashi's idea of having multiple characters share the same property; it would be a welcome change. What I personally don't support is the current premise that multiple characters should have multiple properties since it's a limited resource and it does take away from the players that have none, hence my original suggestion of 1 house per character per server.