Why can't we just have unlimited housing?

[Raim]

Besides adding wards theres a lot of retroactive things that would be difficult if not a bit controversial to do. Ideally they would go back and limit housing to one per account rather than one per character. They'd have to strip everyone of all but one house of their choice on accounts with multiple houses being held, and reimburse them for the plot and furniture. Then you would need a system to prevent flipping by making it so you can't relinquish a plot for a few months, or unless you lose access to it from unsubbing.

[Niraves]

Besides adding wards theres a lot of retroactive things that would be difficult if not a bit controversial to do. Ideally they would go back and limit housing to one per account rather than one per character. They'd have to strip everyone of all but one house of their choice on accounts with multiple houses being held, and reimburse them for the plot and furniture. Then you would need a system to prevent flipping by making it so you can't relinquish a plot for a few months, or unless you lose access to it from unsubbing.

Even if they did somehow manage to do this, there still wouldn't be enough housing for some of the more overpopulated worlds. Even with Shirogane there will only be 2,880 plots available across all the wards per server. They would need to double, and for more populated worlds probably triple the number of available plots.

[Arutan]

That's the point. You figure out the costs of additional server space and use pay-for-use housing as a way to get the money to pay for it.

I think you don't know how expensive server space is and how many people would be needed to subscribe at a real money house to make it rentable enough so that everyone doesn't have to pay a scandalous price.

[Lauwen]

I'd happily pay an extra £8-£12 a month for a house.

[KisaiTenshi]

Figure out the costs of the additional server load for housing.

Add "special" housing rental to the mogstation where the cost is split between users (like additional retainers).

Let people who want to spend real life money rent housing on a monthly basis with real life money, reducing the demand for gil-based housing.

Basically let people who can afford it pay IRL money for housing, like additional retainers. And in turn, make it easier for people who can't or don't want to spend IRL money to get get a house.

Because that's not how economics work.

In theory you can create infinite instances, in practice the storage and maintenance costs makes that prohibitive. Plus since the apartments are effectively permanent, that's all you need is for players to earn 500K, buy the apartment and then never log in again. Same with the house. All this maintenance is running on unused parts of the game.

A lot of MMORPG's didn't learn from Ultima Online. It would actually be better if more games stole a page from minecraft and made housing a constantly craftable thing inside an globally accessible world, and just limit the instancing to each server. So you can see and visit houses in the same data center, but you can't see the players from those servers unless you go inside their house.

That way, at least you aren't wasting resources and maintenance on housing areas that are mostly empty on one server and mostly full on another. It would allow really large housing areas, or apartments that are seemless.

But otherwise no, you never want to create incentive paying real money to maintain housing, just like you don't want to create incentive for paying more money for more retainers. It makes RMT users giddy at the prospects of flipping real estate.

If you can't afford it, that's one thing, but if you can't get it, that is a problem that is solved with the apartments, and SE can create as many apartments as they want without having to create additional wards/subdivisions.

Besides adding wards theres a lot of retroactive things that would be difficult if not a bit controversial to do. Ideally they would go back and limit housing to one per account rather than one per character. They'd have to strip everyone of all but one house of their choice on accounts with multiple houses being held, and reimburse them for the plot and furniture. Then you would need a system to prevent flipping by making it so you can't relinquish a plot for a few months, or unless you lose access to it from unsubbing.

And this is where I think SE's users and SE do not see eye to eye.

Yes, players should only be able to have one house, OR, one apartment. If the FC buys a house it should be an upgrade/downgrade option from buying the house, and only the FC leader can upgrade their house to a FC house. If the FC is abandoned or the owner never logs in after 15 days, destroy the house and put the land back up for auction.

If you want to put a cash shop item to deal with housing, put a "housing bond" on the cash shop. You need one per house, but having one extends the demolishment date by 30 days while not logged in/not subscribed. They would cost the same amount as a retainer.

If they implemented data-center cross-realm housing, then it would be easy enough to enforce "one house per account".

[Berret_Snowbear]

I never bought the "Not enough resources" line tbh. This is Square Enix, Final Fantasy is one of the biggest JRPGs out there. They basically chose the wrong type of housing system and then didn't restrict people on how many houses they can buy.

[Lunafreya]

It's so ridiculous that my partner can't log in my house and reset the house removal timer. Seriously.

[NanaWiloh]

Yes, players should only be able to have one house, OR, one apartment. If the FC buys a house it should be an upgrade/downgrade option from buying the house, and only the FC leader can upgrade their house to a FC house. If the FC is abandoned or the owner never logs in after 15 days, destroy the house and put the land back up for auction.

Yes lets punish entire FC for the leader failing to log in after 2 weeks. That's not helping the issue that's just throwing more poeple who can't get a plot or apartment back on too the list of poeple looking.

[Martin_Arcainess]

Would you really add an extra few dollars to your sub per month to rent digital housing?

Ha, thing is SE could charge $16 per month for each person to have Digital housing and people would go for it like hot cakes.

[Gun-Cat]

Would you really add an extra few dollars to your sub per month to rent digital housing?

Considering it is one of the few types of side content that has recieved continious updates since ARR and has content locked exclusive to it... Yes, people would very much do so.