In Regard to Housing in Patch 4.1

[NaoTenbe]

Okay, main ideas currently,

-1 house, 1 guild house per account, per server.
-Letting all alts have access to the house in case of 1 plot per account per server.
Lot of people are agreeing this is fair, and will also help alleviate issues with having alts on the server, and trying to get houses for them.
One of the big issues that'll end up happening, is those who already have multiple alts and houses on each one, WITH FC's as well.
I don't believe in grandfathering this in. A person has X amount of time to divest themselves of extra properties or loose them.
As far as having extra accounts, if someone is willing to pay the cash per month for extra property..
however... there IS a way of cheating the system that way. Buy slave account, build up chara to own guild, give guild to slave account, slave account gives master full access, except not the guild owner. Stop paying monthly, but keep showing up and using house.
cont...

[NaoTenbe]

If someone is willing to go that far... I dunno. Can't really stop them. *shrug* Just make it more inconvenient to do so.

-Giving priority to FCs in some way.
I actually like the idea of FC only wards, but even still, you're looking at maybe... 1-2 wards like that, and most guilds are gonna want the big houses.
While remaking the ward so it's only big houses is problematic at best, I have to wonder if it's possible to make it so that a small and medium house have the perks of a large house. The main things of which are full 3 plot garden, full 5 shopkeeps, and all the crafting tables.
Considering the insides are customized instances anyway, they could at least change that. The outside might be more difficult to deal with.

-Having a random time window between relinquishing a plot and when it's back on the market.
I'm not to keen on a random time frame, but even a 16-32 hour window would be good.

[NaoTenbe]

-A system for selling plots player to player with a fixed sell price. And option to give the plot away.
That... is the whole issue with people buying up properties.
As much as we'd like to be able to transfer things to friends, even without any recompensation, it will still be abused.

-Allow for more tenants and make them prevent demolition.
So the whole 'share the house' thing. I was under the impression that if you share the house already, and someone comes in and uses it, that cuts demo time off.
Or is that only for FC house?

-Private mini islands sound like a fun idea.
Yeah sure. why not. Gil sellers aren't selling enough gil anyway.

[WanderingStar]

You are going to get a lot of hate because you are a massive part of the problem. You have the gil sure, but you are flippantly ignoring the housing crisis and making things far worse for a lot of people. If house flippers are breaking the ToS for "ruining the play experience for others", what is it that you are doing?

At this point it's a design flaw. The only rule she's breaking is just being selfish which isn't against ToS.

There needs to be enough housing to go around or SE will need to employ Draconian restrictions which will not be taken well.

[Mature]

1 house per server and not 1 house per character.

[Bongaboi]

<the notice>

All right boss. Cheers.

[Sousei]

It might be due to an inherent flaw in the housing system, but it doesn't change that as long as the system remains like this, buying multiple houses for alts only contributes to the problem. As this is a thread about that exact problem, I'm surprised that someone would expect to not be called out for it, to be honest.

Anyway, although I'm glad to hear that there are plans to add new wards, I also agree with the people who have been saying that the housing system in general ultimately needs revising- as it is, I feel like only adding new wards will just end up being a redux of 4.1 (they'd need to add a /lot/ of new wards to ensure the same doesn't happen, and that wouldn't fix the core issue). I'll just dump my thoughts/ideas that I've liked here, as it seems others are doing the same:

- One personal house and one FC house per account (or at least per server/data center, if people have characters they use a lot on other servers), with letting all alts have access to the house if the same server

- Measures to counteract resellers/house flippers, and harsher consequences. The idea of a random timer after relinquishing the house seems like a good idea, as does the idea of a regulated plot market (where the maximum you can sell a house at is 100% of its original value). karionsiand brought up some good points, I think.

- FC only wards (subdivisions?) might help with FCs being unable to get housing... although I personally don't like the idea of M and L being restricted to FCs/haven't liked seeing the blame for the housing shortage being laid on people who purchased personal housing. Both FCs and individuals have valid reasons for wanting M and L plots.

- I like the idea of being able to choose which size house you want when you buy the plot, although I don't know how much work this would be for the devs/how logistics would work (ward layout/appearance, etc). Adding more M/L plots might ease the problem, but there might always be a shortage even if that were to be implemented.

- Although a lottery system isn't ideal, I feel like it would be about as fair as it is now (and less stressful, to be honest, as it would restrict the element of luck just to whether or not you get a house and not things like queues and server errors). I liked the ideas that MalRage had (putting in bids for plots in advance so SE could get an idea for demand/what players were looking for, as well as a system where you could get housing near people you would want to be neighbours with).

Just my two cents, though. Although I still have my doubts as to whether they'll be able to fix this, I do appreciate the fast official response (and that there was even one at all), as one of the people who ended up disappointed on Tuesday after the patch dropped. I really do hope something can be done to improve the current system- scrambling for housing should not be more stressful than high-end content, haha.

[MStowastiqVahlshdeh]

Thank you so much Yoshida for the prompt answer and the new changes planned!

[Alleo]

Should we not hold our thanks until they fixed the problem or even show us what they are planning?

- Although a lottery system isn't ideal, I feel like it would be about as fair as it is now (and less stressful, to be honest, as it would restrict the element of luck just to whether or not you get a house and not things like queues and server errors).

A lottery system is still the same luck like now but instead of having the luck to not wait with other players to log in, have errors or losing the rush to the wards, you simply need luck to be chosen. That for me just transfers from one kind of luck to another. In the end this will still leave enough people without a house which means that enough people would be disappointed or angry. (And since many people want medium or large houses this will still end in a lot of rage just with less error messages on the way)

Also if you have a lottery system will you allow people who want to relocate in this or not? If you do, you will decrease the chance for all those people and FC who dont even have one house but if you leave them out, they wont even stand a chance to relocate because they would probably have all houses in the lottery thus all would be gone. The housing timer might free up some houses to relocate to but the chance is also not that big so you would kinda make that feature a bit useless for most people.

In the end they need to restrict at least the amount of houses someone can buy (but not the size of it), at least double the amount of wards in all districts and maybe dont open them immediately when the patch goes live otherwise you will just have another repeat of the recent situation..but in the end if you do not have enough houses for everyone you will always anger your customers..

So imo: Please think about a instanced solution. This would also be better for your servers (since those would not need to be constantly up), you wont have a problem if you need to merge servers and on top of that you give everyone the chance to own a house (thus they finally get the content they are already paying for..) If you then on top of that make it possible to upgrade these houses in size you will have even more happy people.

[Galborion]

Lottery system is terrible idea. It is no different than what we had now after maintenance. Chance that you will be able to log in is a lottery. So I REALLY hope they have something else in mind!