New Wards Alone Aren't Going to Solve the Housing Issue

[Amomomo]

Is not the issue of house flipping one within the community?

Unfortunately players have limited protection outside of the game, as most of the house trading are done outside of the game in websites such as the FFXIV Housing Sub-reddit page. Unless you have detailed screenshots of the entire transaction IN GAME, in addition that the asking price was outrageous, GMs generally don't really lift a finger.

Maybe limit housing to one per account as opposed to per character?

I greatly support this idea. Woes to housing monopolizers who owns multiple houses! There are many other solutions if you browse through the existing housing threads, including having instanced personal housing and/or placing character achievement requirements to prevent level 1 shell alts from acquiring houses. However some solutions can be a bit fanciful...

[Almagnus1]

How would we solve this? Maybe limit housing to one per account as opposed to per character?

I kinda outlined several additional fixes in the OP =3

That's why they need to restrict personal houses to one per server.

That's why appartments need access to yard space (so we have true instanced housing).

That's why there needs to be a random, invisibile, timer that lasts between 1 to 24 hours when house is released so the risk involved with getting your house from a house flipper is so great, that many will not want to do just that.

That's also why the alt shell FCs intended solely to take up housing slots need to be dealt with.

[Penthea]

I am wondering if this is something to appease the players a bit until something that is really game changing comes along. I hope so.

[Mikki]

I'm hoping that they will make some changes to apartments to make them more appealing and that they will lock housing to one house per person per server. But until they state specifically what they plan to do, how many wards they plan to add and what restrictions they want to set in place... it's a bit premature to say that the issue won't be solved. Certainly just adding wards won't solve it, but that wasn't the only thing they said they were going to do. Soooo, lets have some faith and pray for something miles better than what we currently have!

I was fortunate enough to get a house in Shirogane, but it sure would be nice not to stress out at the thought of losing internet for a month for some reason or another and losing it! Long term solutions to this crisis would be in absolutely everyone's best interest (except rotten resellers) so lets hope it happens!

Although a small part of me does pessimistically wonder if they only paid attention to this because they screwed up the relocation feature and that's a lot harder to pretend not to notice and sweep under the rug than just the lack of housing plots available. But I'll just kick that thought under the bed. I like to try to stay positive.

[Mikki]

How would we solve this? Maybe limit housing to one per account as opposed to per character?

One per server would be best I feel. Although personally I think one per account with an FC house too is plenty but I do know some people who actively play on two different servers with different friends and would argue that they'd like to have housing on both. *shrugs*

I'm on Zalera which is really small. A day or two after 4.1 dropped, there were still houses in lavender beds, mist and goblet. Despite this though, I saw some plots near my house in Shirogane just ....sitting there. I checked the owners. Lo and behold, today finally they built a house on the land. Only..........the person who owns it now is different. Which means of course... someone resold it. On ZALERA. A server which still had plots available in other housing wards for 2 days after 4.1 dropped. I'm disappointed and I wonder if I should report it, but I don't want to cause trouble for the people who spent tons of gil to get their house showing that they clearly really wanted it.

[Lady_Venus]

Making new wards with the same setup wont solve anything... I KNOW i will be camping my screen all the maintenance hours, log INSTANTLY to only be chain booted out of the game for 10,20 mins then log to find everyhting purchased and 80% is personal houses again!!

Make personal and FC houses in different wards!

Ward 13 (FC housing Ward)
Ward 14 (Personal housing Ward) .. etc.

Let the alts fight each other in their wards and get them off our backs.. we want to get our fc house!

[Mikki]

snip

But you'd still be fighting alts. There were some really lovely plots I've been eyeing for my FC for months but sadly many times after investigating I was met with the realization that they were just shell FCs squatting on the house. An FC with two people in it, both level 1 characters and the house locked most of the time. I wondered what the point of that even was, honestly. You can't enjoy that house at all. Why are you squatting on it? Probably to resell. It seems common to sell a house under the guise of selling an FC. Other times, it was unlocked and I'm guessing they had fun decorating it. So the point here is......... you'll still be competing with alts, scalpers and all of that junk no matter what.

[Lady_Venus]

snip

but alteast it will limit it to an extent.. you still have to have a lvl 6 FC to be able to buy an FC house... thats harder compared to just an alt running in and taking a personal house with no requirements (except for having gil and being able to access the housing areas) and another nice solution people requested 1 personal house per account.. or 1 personal house per server (for those people who have characters on different servers) along with FC wards and personal wards.. combine all those things and we will make the housing system better and less painful.

[Penthea]

thats harder compared to just an alt running in and taking a personal house with no requirements (except for having gil and being able to access the housing areas)

Actually I think they need to be also at least level 50 and have a certain gc rank. The same prerequisite to buy fc rooms, with the exception of price of course.

[Mikki]

Actually I think they need to be also at least level 50 and have a certain gc rank. The same prerequisite to buy fc rooms, with the exception of price of course.

This. You need to be level 50 and have the rank of second serpent lieutenant. If people really want to hoard houses, they'll do it. :/