In Regard to Housing in Patch 4.1

[Arkfrost]

The main reason I have been extremely angry after the release of housing was, that within 3 minutes after release all big plots were already sold. But not the fact that they were already sold is what made me angry. The fact that all of them were sold to private people was what made me rage. I absolutely do not comprehend, why a single person needs a big plot. In my opinion it should be restricted, that only FCs are allowed to buy big plots. I'd even go so far to say that private people can only buy small plots, but that may be a bit extreme.

What also made me angry is, that most of them were house sellers, since now most of them are owned by FC's now and that Square Enix still has no way to detect that.
It would be so easy to detect: If a person gives up his private estate and within 24 hours + or - he received more than 5 million gil, a hidden message is instantly sent to the GM team, who then will have to do an investigation about every PF he opened within that timeframe + every chat he had with the buyer within that time.

Also I think there should be a way higher punishment: People buying the plot should get their gil refunded and their house auto-demolished + people selling it should get an instant account suspension of 72 hours minimum (same level as the punishment for using cheat software).

[SendohJin]

I am inclined to agree, but the question is:

How are they going to handle all of those people who already own 16 plots or 30 plots in one ward division? Like will they refund the houses? What if they are inactive for a while and so forth?

the simple thing will be only to apply it to new purchases.

i feel like they will screw up any complex system of trying to force it back from people who already have more than 2 houses on their accounts.

[niwaar]

While I appreciate you finally giving us an actual statement on the subject. We do need this ASAP and not in 3-4 months from now. The Realization that many people are completely disheartened with this situation and thus completely disillusioned with the game as a whole now. Many members of my friend group just haven't logged in since Tuesday Morning because of this. Fixing this situation quickly is something that is necessary for the life of the game. Not pushing this off to an already set patch. This should have a priority that sets itself apart from the base patch schedule.

[Liiath]

After missing out on our chance at a Shirogane plot on Tuesday due to lobby errors, my FC and I were extremely disheartened, and not expecting a response, especially not in such a timely manner. We’re quite surprised now, and cautiously optimistic. Given this opportunity, I would like to express some of our thoughts and possible solutions (which agree with many already proposed):

- One FC house and one personal house per server/account. This should have been implemented from the start, and needs to be now. Simply adding more wards and calling it a day is an insulting band-aid fix; very temporary, and won’t solve the underlying problems.Implement this system, and then a week or so before 4.2, give current players with multiple homes the time to choose which one to keep, and refund the others. Will that upset some players? Of course, but those houses shouldn’t be owned by one person, and people are already enraged. This is the most important fix, I think, and one many others echo. If this sort of system is not implemented, and all we get are more wards, I can’t even imagine the backlash you will likely receive.

- Update apartments - make them a little bigger (so they don’t just feel like a glorified FC room), give an instanced balcony, allow cross-breeding gardening, etc. Right now, apartments aren’t much of an option for players interested in housing. Make them so.

- Increase the amount of tenants allowed per house, make it so we can share our homes with alts, and allow the demo timer to be reset by tenants. This should be an easy, no-brainer fix, and ease some of the housing strain. Players may be more open to sharing houses if they have more options available.

- Give some priority to FCs, and I don’t mean one-man FCs. I saw one player's proposal was to allow two different housing ward instances - one player housing, one FC housing. That might not be a bad idea. Maybe make it so that a plot cannot be purchased by an FC with less than three or five members? I don’t think it should be as high as ten, as some FCs are genuinely smaller. You need three signatures to even create an FC, so maybe four should be the minimum limit? Just some thoughts - it won’t stop every “fake” FC, but it’s something at least.

- Make it harder for house flippers. Limiting housing to one fc/one personal per server/account won’t solve this issue completely (though it should tremendously help), so another solution will need to be layered with it. I’ve seen some propose that, once a house is relinquished, it should not be allowed to be reclaimed for X-amount of time; maybe make this a random amount of time, between 24 and 48 hours? Or, an idea I find interesting, implement a housing market board. When a house is demolished or relinquished, the original owner receives 80% of the purchase price back, and the house goes up for “auction” sale on the marketboard (it CANNOT be purchased immediately at the placard). For 24-72hrs afterward, players may “bid” on the house (I am not proposing a free auction - rather, that interested players may offer the houses price, determined by the system), and at the end of the “auction”, a random player among the bidders is accepted (and then, of course, all other bidders receive their gil back). This should essentially kill the housing market as we know it now.

- (My bf just proposed this one, wanted to add it in) Edit the wards so that every plot of land is the same size, and when you purchase said plot, you can choose what size house to build. So, every plot would cost the same amount, and then you pay an additional amount per the size of the house, and you can upgrade later if you need/want to start small. I thought this was genius (and I believe I've seen a few others here echo this solution) - then anyone can have whatever size house they want on a plot, thus eliminating this arbitrary limitation on larger houses. Adding onto this thought, make it so we can change a plot between personal and FC, and vice versa, without first having to demolish and repurchase. I'm not even sure why that one wasn't implemented from the start.

I am apprehensive to learn what manner of changes are to come, but will remain hopeful. I do love the wards and neighborhoods, and would not like to see instanced housing, but that would at least also be a solution. I hope we don’t see a “free” auction system either - that would simply promote RMT and leave many genuine players out of luck. Regardless, I hope this issue is being taken seriously, and that we can all look forward to the coming months.

[DarthRok]

Very happy to see a response to this issue, especially so quickly. As of last night there were a few small plots in the old districts on Zalera.

[Niadissa]

Before I go into this more, I do want to say thank you for adding more wards.

The problem with this is that unless there are more than a few wards added this does nothing to alleviate the problem, just a few more people will get lucky and able to buy a house in Shirogane.

On top of that, I am sure that there are more than a few people like myself and my brother, who decided that we would just get a house in the goblet, mist, or lavender beds and spent all of our money on that. We are a small FC and that was all of the funds our small group had been able to pull together. We are not great crafters and the money we spent on a medium plot represents all of the money we had scrapped together from just before 4.0. So even though you are adding new wards, this does nothing for us, who have spent everything.

[ViaEorzea]

My only suggestions for would be:

• One personal house per account (or per server) that is automatically shared with all characters on that account that are on that server. As players cannot make their alts into tenants & many want their alts to be able to access housing features, this will hopefully cut down on people buying a house for their alts.
• Make it easier for an FC member to turn their personal home into an FC home.
• Optional instanced housing for those who wish it.

For housing issues that don't have to do with actually purchasing a plot I would suggest:

• Opening up gardening to people who do not own a house, like a public garden off of the Botanist guild. Alternatively, create gardening plots that can be used by apartment-dwellers.
• Same for company workshops. Open them up to non-homeowners, like a public workshop off of the Garlond Ironworks in Mor Dhona or Skysteel Manufacturing in Ishgard.

[Elisaveta]

While it's nice to hear more wards will be added something else needs to be done as well to give everyone the ability to own a home. So I hope whatever solution they come up with makes it so everyone would be able to own a home (instanced housing?).

[Ayerinn]

My only suggestions for would be:
[LIST][*]One personal house per account (or per server) that is automatically shared with all characters on that account that are on that server. As players cannot make their alts into tenants & many want their alts to be able to access housing features, this will hopefully cut down on people buying a house for their alts.

*SNIP*

Seems fine since I know SE wouldn't be stupid enough to take away houses people already own, regardless of new restrictions...would love to be able to share houses with all of our alts.

[Lyaha]

That's what I expected, a half arsed solution, more wards doesn't fix anything, with 4.2 (which is 3-4 months away) we'll see the exact same issue pop up again and probably another apology, which seems to be the only thing Yoshi-P is good at these days.

There's plenty of other better solutions, instanced housing, or a more realistic solution: upgradeable apartments, which would make a lot of folks happy. I don't even want a house that I'll loose after my sub ends, I don't have the money nor time to sub all year round, the demolition thing was made up to free up some houses, all it did is piss off people who like to take a break.

I'm sorry if I'm a bit rude in this post, but after years of this, I don't want to see another apology in 3-4 months with another hotfix that doesn't address the issue properly. As for folks happy about this, hope you get lucky next time, because if you're not, have fun waiting for another apology a few days after 4.2 comes out.