Adressing the roots of the housing problem

[LalaRu]

Players will be permitted to own only one private and one free company estate

Owning a free company estate, how is it intended? The FC Master's account?

If master changes, the old Master can form a new FC and buy a plot?

If I am Master of a FC with the estate, can one of my alts be promoted to Master in another FC with already an estate?

[Cylla]

Snip

Biggest problem is the poor translation. I've seen so many debates on what "could" happen and theories that I've lost count now. WTB - better translation.
Don't see why they would lock large plots from private ownership though. Every size house has the same benefits, only difference is the amount of items you can have in and outside of the house. It would be stupid for them to make such a move and we'd probably see even more of an uproar of unfairness when people who do own one right now get to keep theirs.

From what been going around and I hope this one theory is right, is that the relocation system will be active at the time of patch dropping. It was in the live letter information:

Q&A

Q: Can you relocate if you already own several free company estates?
A: Relocating and purchasing are processed differently, so you are able to relocate.

Q: If you already own an estate, would I be restricted in purchasing one on a different World?
A: The restrictions are not by data centers, but per Worlds. Characters on other Worlds will be able to purchase an estate.

Unless they turn off relocating, it sounds to me like anyone who own a house right now can relocate. However, if you're theory is correct and they are now going to limit the large plots to FC, then to me they just went a step backwards big time.
I'm not going to get excited or disappoint just yet until we see the patch notes come live and hopefully find out the FULL detail of what their plan is for handling this. With all the broken translation, it hard to understand just what the heck they mean. There to many theories on what could happen. I still believe they may pop us with a lottery system of some sort, but I could be way off on that thought. Either way, it all going to come to light once that special site is posted.

Further details will be announced on a special site which will be released later.

My only true worry right now is we got all these people breaking off from their FC's and making baby FC's just to buy a house. If they don't slap a restriction against these newly made FC's, it just going to upset those who have been around the longest and still in need of a house. Not only that but as I said earlier, with servers like Balmung, once they do lift the personal buying restriction, there won't be any houses to buy.

[LalaRu]

There were no words about how much big the new plot can be. So far, you can relocate anywhere, paying what is missed from the full price if your previous plot was smaller or cheaper.

I don't see problems on relocation, one free slot continue to exists. Maybe smaller but still a free slot.

[Dustytome]

Owning a free company estate, how is it intended? The FC Master's account?

If master changes, the old Master can form a new FC and buy a plot?

If I am Master of a FC with the estate, can one of my alts be promoted to Master in another FC with already an estate?

It's clarified a little later as enrollment in an fc, not just the master. So anyone that's in an FC that owns a house on a world, cannot buy further fc houses on any other character on that same world. However, unless unmentioned restrictions were put into place you can still have someone that doesn't meet the restriction with purchase rights snag a house for an fc or hand over the keys to an fc that has a house to someone that would otherwise be restricted.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

Which trouble? They monopolized a resource and now we have to give them a reward for doing so?

They went through the trouble of earning the gil, purchasing the properties, decorating them, and by giving them up will no longer have use of them. I can understand why you might want to see people who "monopolize a resource" as bad guys, but that's not really fair when the system itself was designed so that anyone with the resources could buy as many homes as they wanted. That was a mistake on SE's part.

Just taking those properties away without any compensation is obviously unfair and likely not on the table at all, so the next best thing is to give those grandfathered in some incentive to voluntarily release those properties. Expecting someone to just give something up without any sort of compensation is unrealistic and demonizing them for using the system exactly as it worked is entirely unfair.

[Flashgordon1975]

So because these people played by the rules they should get screwed over? In many cases people with multiple houses are neither hoarders or flippers. These people in most cases use these houses on multiple characters and have different themes for different houses. The argument that SE does not expect alternate characters to be relevant or have the same privileges as the main character is a silly argument....the have a a price structure that allows you to pay a sub that lets you have up to eight characters.

So many of you have no clue and can't see past your own salt and spite. Yes the housing system is not optimal, no you should not punish those legitimate players playing by the rules.

All of this reminds me of what is going on in Israel and Palestine....that is working out great isn't it...

[Flashgordon1975]

You underestimate my generosity to the people I care about... there is a reason I lose gil so quickly ( not mention the random strangers I have given 1mil too when they ask for teleport money or petty cash to buy new NPC gear. )... So no sorry I still I don't understand your backward reasoning. I didn't realize my helping friends and strangers was such a selfish act. I'm clearly a monster.

We'll just leave it at that ( no point in going around in circles, since we will never see eye to eye ). Have a lovely day!

It is not backwards reasoning. You are advocating something being taken away for a "want", not a "need". That is selfish.

[Kytrin]

Not only are there not enough houses, there's not enough larger sized houses. So even if we did have the proper amount of wards, people would just be popping new wards forever wanting that largest possible plot. I think the only fix is instanced personal housing, maybe leave the wards for FCs.

If they did some serious QoL changes for apartments (increased size or upgradeable to something at least comparable to a regular medium sized house, indoor gardening, indoor striking dummies) I would be all for moving to an apartment and letting an FC buy my personal one after it demolished. I'd have most of my furnishings, and I'd get back most of my gil. The difference would be negligible enough I wouldn't care.

[Beelhi]

If they did some serious QoL changes for apartments (increased size or upgradeable to something at least comparable to a regular medium sized house, indoor gardening, indoor striking dummies) I would be all for moving to an apartment and letting an FC buy my personal one after it demolished. I'd have most of my furnishings, and I'd get back most of my gil. The difference would be negligible enough I wouldn't care.

THIS!
They can just make an instanced balcony with say 10 items or something.
Only difference is you can't show off your house in the ward, wich is pointless anyways seeing as every ward is a ghosttown.
Make future wards FC only (maybe with only L and M houses but less to even out the stress it puts on the server). And I'm sure alot of people would gladly give up their house for an apartment without demolishion timer, so whoever wants to be tied to the sub can just get a normal house.

[Kytrin]

They can just make an instanced balcony with say 10 items or something.

There was actually a winner from the furnishing design contest that had a brilliant idea for an indoor garden furnishing. If I remember correctly it would be approximately the size of an oriental bathtub and feature 6 or 8 plots you could plant things in. There was even koi fish and other things to make it decorative even without plants. That alone would work well enough for most people I reckon.