4.2 Housing Update

[Elamys]

Well, there it is lol. That sucks

[Rymm]

Greetings,



Yoshida mentioned during the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part XLI that the rules being added in Patch 4.2 will be applicable to new purchases only. Players who already possess more than one FC estate and 1 personal estate per world will not lose their existing housing.

We appreciate all the feedback shared so far and will continue to pass your thoughts along to the dev. team!

Thank you for the confirmation Luxpheras, you cleared up a lot of confusion floating around on the forum. For the record, I think allowing hoarders to keep their collection of houses is a terrible idea, pretty much for all the reasons outlined here and in other threads. It's just my small opinion, but I figured I would express it since you are still taking feedback.

[illgot]

Thank you for the confirmation Luxpheras, you cleared up a lot of confusion floating around on the forum. For the record, I think allowing hoarders to keep their collection of houses is a terrible idea, pretty much for all the reasons outlined here and in other threads. It's just my small opinion, but I figured I would express it since you are still taking feedback.

If they ever set up instanced housing for personal and FC use it won't make a difference. I really hope they do something like this because the current housing situation is a crap design no matter how many rules you create.

[Thayos]

Allowing hoarders to be grandfathered in is a huge mistake. They should be given reasonable deadlines to decide which of their houses they would like to keep and offered generous refunds for houses they'd be forced to relinquish. Perhaps even give them in-game vouchers they can use to pass their houses along to friends or FC mates... one-time transfer only, of course.

[Besame]

Allowing hoarders to be grandfathered in is a huge mistake. They should be given reasonable deadlines to decide which of their houses they would like to keep and offered generous refunds for houses they'd be forced to relinquish. Perhaps even give them in-game vouchers they can use to pass their houses along to friends or FC mates... one-time transfer only, of course.

Just whom would you have decide what number is classified as "hoarding"? Is 2-3 enough, is 8 too many? Unless you have a medical professional in SE's cluster, I don't know who else would be able to make that determination hehe. SE allowed this behavior to begin and flourish sans consequences since 2013 and now it is up to them to try and make it fair for the rest of their playerbase. Can they? Well not everyone will be happy however, they have to start somewhere which is what they are doing now.

[MeridaQ]

Why is it a huge mistake? They are going to continue adding wards, and are planning on updating apartments to Small/Medium/Large. They understand the desire for houses and will continue closing the gap between players subscribed and houses/apartments. With 4.2 I think every FC that wants a house will have one. With a few more ward additions, the desire for personal houses will also be satiated. So what is the issue with them grandfather some players in? Over time many of them will be reclaimed through auto demos.

[Sairys]

Just whom would you have decide what number is classified as "hoarding"? Is 2-3 enough, is 8 too many? Unless you have a medical professional in SE's cluster, I don't know who else would be able to make that determination hehe. SE allowed this behavior to begin and flourish sans consequences since 2013 and now it is up to them to try and make it fair for the rest of their playerbase. Can they? Well not everyone will be happy however, they have to start somewhere which is what they are doing now.

It's actually rather simple, if you have more than one private and one fc house, you have too many because that's all a new character would be able to get to after 4.2. Personally, I'd even start the demolition timer on any FC that drops below 4 active accounts.

You can talk about fairness, but realistically, it's not fair that FCs haven't been able to get houses. Nor will it be fair that many will struggle to get one house while others maintain their extras for, potentially, years to come.

Why is it a huge mistake? They are going to continue adding wards, and are planning on updating apartments to Small/Medium/Large. They understand the desire for houses and will continue closing the gap between players subscribed and houses/apartments. With 4.2 I think every FC that wants a house will have one. With a few more ward additions, the desire for personal houses will also be satiated. So what is the issue with them grandfather some players in? Over time many of them will be reclaimed through auto demos.

Forcing those who have extra homes to relinquish them would free up more wards in the patch that it happens. This helps ensure that not every house will sell out during the FC only stage so there are some left when private ownership is opened.

This is an action that can be taken right now to alleviate the issue, it won't solve it but it would buy some more goodwill with those players who are still stuck outside the housing system trying to get in while they work up to more wards. Also, the more unique individuals you have in the housing the more chances there are someone will go inactivate and get auto demo'd.


Regarding the outcome of the patch... personally, I expect that the houses will likely sell out before private ownership opens up. Not being able to get a FC house seems to be a fairly consistent complaint and there are ways houseflippers could work even with the restrictions.

Also, if every FC without a house wants one, the number of wards being released wouldn't be enough on the random servers I'm searching. They wouldn't even be enough if half of them wanted one.

And then the moment they do sell out, if there are still people sitting on extra houses, the complaints about those people will just start up again. Where if you take them away, those people will be upset for a while but it will no longer be something to complain about. The only thing left would be waiting for more wards to open.

[illgot]

snip

Excluding one popularized story where a guild/couple own 30 houses, I think you overestimate how many players own more than 2 houses. And the only reason the people who bought up 30 houses could buy up 30 houses was they were on a dead server. It takes about 295 million gil just to buy the properties, 3 accounts to own the houses and maybe 1-2 months just to grind 28 FCs to rank 6 (as I don't think jump potions were available at the time they initially bought the houses).

Think of the time it took to earn 295 million gil, level 28 FCs to rank 6, and all during this time someone random could have showed up and bought any of those properties. Instead no one ever showed up during their whole execution of the land grabs.

months had to have gone by where no one was interested in any of the properties.

[MeridaQ]

Forcing those who have extra homes to relinquish them would free up more wards in the patch that it happens. This helps ensure that not every house will sell out during the FC only stage so there are some left when private ownership is opened.

This is an action that can be taken right now to alleviate the issue, it won't solve it but it would buy some more goodwill with those players who are still stuck outside the housing system trying to get in while they work up to more wards. Also, the more unique individuals you have in the housing the more chances there are someone will go inactivate and get auto demo'd.


Regarding the outcome of the patch... personally, I expect that the houses will likely sell out before private ownership opens up. Not being able to get a FC house seems to be a fairly consistent complaint and there are ways houseflippers could work even with the restrictions.

Also, if every FC without a house wants one, the number of wards being released wouldn't be enough on the random servers I'm searching. They wouldn't even be enough if half of them wanted one.

I will address the comments I put in bold. Removing houses from multi-house owners will not ensure anything but a PR nightmare and loss of subscriptions. There are many people who are fundamentally against the idea of removing homes from people who have them under completely legitimate means.

Second this "goodwill" isn't being very honest. People will be upset if they lost their homes and people who don't have multiple homes also will be upset. There are many people that have said this both on the forums and reddit. There will be some that are happy, but from what I have read on the forums, go ahead and look back a few pages there are some very vindictive people who are getting extremely upset at the idea of grandfathering people. Reddit had even more and harsher comments but I can't quote those on the official forum.

Lastly if you randomly search the servers are you being specific with your search? Did you choose FC's currently without an estate or plot? Did you add number of active members to that search? Because then you get much closer to the accurate count. For example on Ultros there are 2770 FCs out of that there are 1919 FCs without a house/plot. Then after checking active members there are 355 FCs that don't have 4 or more members so 1919-355 = 1564. They are adding 1440 more plots for 4.2 so only 124 FCs would not get a house if every FC on Ultros purchased a house. I would say that is more than half, and I also did random searches and this is similar across other servers. This does not account for the houses that will explode because of auto demos and I would also not assume that every FC on each server are planning on buying a house.

I ask again why is it necessary to remove houses from multi-owners? They will continue to add housing and apartments and as of 4.2 most of the FC's will have houses. It took me a year and a half to get my personal house, yes it takes a while to get but if you watch the wards you can get it much faster than I did. Let's also keep in mind not everyone wants a house or apartment. I said this before but I think if they had enough houses for 80% of the server population everyone that wants houses will have a house.

[missarielle]

Question

Will the single-house for FC per person impact those who are not the FC leader?
Example.
I have multiple characters on a server.
Character A is in FC 1, they have a small plot in the Mists currently.
Character B is in FC 2, they don't have a house and are planning to buy one.

I am not the leader in either Free Company.
Will my membership within the company prevent FC 2 from buying a house?