Suggestion: Do not allow multiple service accounts all own houses.

[BiffWellington]

I think the upcoming server shuffle will really help alleviate the housing shortage.

If you're on Balmung, you're not likely to be able to get a house anytime soon. But, you'll soon get a free transfer. You can use that to go live on another Crystal server, such as Malboro, where's a good amount of housing currently available. Then you can use World Visit to do all your adventuring on Balmung.

It's not a perfect solution, but you'd at least be able to buy a house and continue playing with your friends.

And if enough people do this, there'll be less demand for housing on Balmung, making it a bit easier for those who stay there to get a house at some future point.

Also, with the demand for housing spread out more evenly across all servers, we'll be more likely to see more wards added. They don't want to add more wards right now because demand for housing is so much greater on the most heavily populated servers that adding a few new wards wouldn't make enough of an impact there to be worthwhile, and the servers that already have a lot of vacant lots would just get more of them. But, spread enough of that demand out to where the supply is, get the neighborhoods on all servers more evenly filled, and adding new wards more frequently will become much more feasible.

[Jojoya]

I'm fairly sure the houses are unused if they have practically 0 furnishing and the characters have literally been level 1 for over a year lol. But anyway, if a yard causes others to have to go into awkward camera angles to use the Marketboard/Retainer bell, then yes, it is most definitely is other peoples business. I very clearly said that I completely understand they aren't breaking any rule technically, and never said they're doing any loopholes. I'm only saying that it's dumb and shouldn't really be a thing. And pretty scumbaggy to boot.

If they're level 1, then it's a FC house. The owner is probably operating airships and submersibles if the house appears to otherwise be unused.

SE has no way to know if John Doe in New York City is also John Doe from New York City. There are a lot of John Does in New York City and some of them are probably father and son living under the same roof. As a result, SE would have no way to enforce any per person rules. The best they can do is per service account.

I think the upcoming server shuffle will really help alleviate the housing shortage.

If you're on Balmung, you're not likely to be able to get a house anytime soon. But, you'll soon get a free transfer. You can use that to go live on another Crystal server, such as Malboro, where's a good amount of housing currently available. Then you can use World Visit to do all your adventuring on Balmung.

It's not a perfect solution, but you'd at least be able to buy a house and continue playing with your friends.

And if enough people do this, there'll be less demand for housing on Balmung, making it a bit easier for those who stay there to get a house at some future point.

Also, with the demand for housing spread out more evenly across all servers, we'll be more likely to see more wards added. They don't want to add more wards right now because demand for housing is so much greater on the most heavily populated servers that adding a few new wards wouldn't make enough of an impact there to be worthwhile, and the servers that already have a lot of vacant lots would just get more of them. But, spread enough of that demand out to where the supply is, get the neighborhoods on all servers more evenly filled, and adding new wards more frequently will become much more feasible.

I think that's a little on the optimistic side. SE has already stated they are working to find a way to prioritize players attempting to return to their home worlds if that world has a queue due to congestion. That's going to make anyone on Balmung who wants to continue to play with friends on Balmung think twice about transferring off world just to get a house.

There's also uncertainty over just how much housing will be available on the lower pop worlds once the data center reorganization happens. We had 665 houses available back in October before SE suspended the demo timer. In November it dropped to 532, December it was down to 400 and there were only 257 when I checked yesterday. At that rate Coeurl will be out of houses by mid March, before the data center reorganization even happens.

Who's going to transfer solely to buy a house if their chance at getting a house will be no better than it is on their current world? The reorganization really won't do much to spread out the demand because there won't be enough still available by then. The only way it might impact it would be for SE to resume the demo timer 8 weeks in advance of the reorganization so every thing that might demo will do so before the free transfer period opens.

[LarryButz]

If they're level 1, then it's a FC house. The owner is probably operating airships and submersibles if the house appears to otherwise be unused.

I mean... I guess? Yeah, they are FC houses, I knew that already. Still though, that's a pretty iffy statement, but at least it could be possible. They'd have to buy literally everything though, since the one single character in each FC is level 1. I don't buy it, but it's a better response to everything else here so yeah. I can see it at least.

Said it before, but I'll say it again. The amount of unused houses from players who stopped playing is vastly superior to the amount of grandfathered personal houses/multi-fc house owners out there. If there's a problem with the housing system right now, it's the ridiculously long auto-demolition timer. For every unused house, players have to wait 45 days. Drop the auto-demo timer to 5 days or less if you want more people to have a shot at owning a house.

I mean you can keep saying it, but auto-demo timer isn't what I made this thread about. But since you insist. The auto-demo timer being at 5 days or less would be so incredibly awful lol. Like what? Want to go on a week trip somewhere? Say farewell to your house. Or just don't feel like playing the game for a whole gosh dang five days? Goodbye home. The auto timer is totally fine. Maybe reduce it to 30 days minimum, but anything less is just silly. Even then, taking a single month break happens and losing a house because of it would be an awful feeling. I believe the 45 days is a good number.

[DrWho2010]

I mean... I guess? Yeah, they are FC houses, I knew that already. Still though, that's a pretty iffy statement, but at least it could be possible. They'd have to buy literally everything though, since the one single character in each FC is level 1. I don't buy it, but it's a better response to everything else here so yeah. I can see it at least.

Airship/Subparts are tradeable - master FC makes all the parts and then distributes them to the sub-FC's.

[LarryButz]

Airship/Subparts are tradeable - master FC makes all the parts and then distributes them to the sub-FC's.

Yeah that's true. I still don't see it being the thing that's happening here though. Not that it doesn't happen ever, just not in the situation I'm specifically talking about is all. But who knows besides them I suppose. Regardless though, even if they are actually using the houses only for airships, I still think there should be some limit on houses per person.

Doesn't have to be my personal idea, I know it's not perfect by any means, so if there's a better option then great. It's just dumb situation that can happen, on top of the fact they make their yard ugly as heck on purpose to troll everyone around the area, and the fact that they're using Large/Medium for this. They could easily have bought 4 smalls instead if they were only going to use it for Airships.

[Jojoya]

Yeah that's true. I still don't see it being the thing that's happening here though. Not that it doesn't happen ever, just not in the situation I'm specifically talking about is all. But who knows besides them I suppose. Regardless though, even if they are actually using the houses only for airships, I still think there should be some limit on houses per person.

Doesn't have to be my personal idea, I know it's not perfect by any means, so if there's a better option then great. It's just dumb situation that can happen, on top of the fact they make their yard ugly as heck on purpose to troll everyone around the area, and the fact that they're using Large/Medium for this. They could easily have bought 4 smalls instead if they were only going to use it for Airships.

Trying to restrict things further doesn't solve the core problem - there are not enough available plots to meet demand on many worlds. Enforcing ownership rules in the manner you suggest might open up 5-10% of the housing on each world at best. That's still not going to be enough to meet the demand on the higher population worlds.

They need to come up with a system that will allow every player who wants a house to have one without trying to squeeze everyone into limited wards. Apartments might have been a good solution if players had the ability to choose interiors equal in size to small, medium and large house interiors instead of just a room. I'm still hoping the Ishgard housing they implied in coming will be a new system that is a solution and not just an expansion of the ward system.

[Wiccan026]

I think the upcoming server shuffle will really help alleviate the housing shortage.

If you're on Balmung, you're not likely to be able to get a house anytime soon. But, you'll soon get a free transfer. You can use that to go live on another Crystal server, such as Malboro, where's a good amount of housing currently available. Then you can use World Visit to do all your adventuring on Balmung.

It's not a perfect solution, but you'd at least be able to buy a house and continue playing with your friends.

And if enough people do this, there'll be less demand for housing on Balmung, making it a bit easier for those who stay there to get a house at some future point.

Also, with the demand for housing spread out more evenly across all servers, we'll be more likely to see more wards added. They don't want to add more wards right now because demand for housing is so much greater on the most heavily populated servers that adding a few new wards wouldn't make enough of an impact there to be worthwhile, and the servers that already have a lot of vacant lots would just get more of them. But, spread enough of that demand out to where the supply is, get the neighborhoods on all servers more evenly filled, and adding new wards more frequently will become much more feasible.

Adding more wards would be beneficial but even than I think we'd still see these threads... because again I feel part of the problem (not all mind you but a decent sized portion) is that folks dont just want a house.. they want the house in their perfect location and if they dont have it, they find it upsetting and complain