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

[Mikki]

Those are 4 reasons to have a house though? They're being used. Even if the purpose is because of laziness. Having a house because of status is fine as long as they don't own more then allowed. Just having a house period, never using it for anything other than going inside every 44 days to keep the house alive is totally fine. As long as they only have that one house (Plus FC house technically). Anyway, the purpose of this thread isn't that they're unused. If they were being used and decorated, it'd still be scummy. I've just been saying it's extra scummy in my personal experience with these people that they're purposely making their yards as ugly as possible and hard to see around the Marketboard/Retainer area unless you zoom in almost all the way.

Also I don't know why I have to keep saying this, but I understand fully that there's no rules against having multiple service accounts just to beat the housing limit. What would be the point of making this suggestion if it was a rule? If the people doing this are doing it for airships only, then this is basically a p2w situation. I don't care that they're spending a lot of money or time doing it. That doesn't make it any more acceptable imo.


As a side note, having instanced housing would kind of ruin the whole neighborhood feel of housing. Not a big fan of that idea. There's surely better ways of handling the overall problem of housing besides dismantling half the reason housing is cool and fun.

Honestly, if a house is used "properly" is subjective. There are tons of ways to enjoy housing and some people will feel one way is ok and others won't. Personally, I feel like if you just want a cheap teleport and MB access but don't want to decorate...why not just get an apartment? As far as submarines, gardening and airships go... I feel like this is just an altogether broken aspect of the game in the first place. Most FCs aren't going to share those items with every person in the FC which then leads to people who really want to craft certain things or have access to those items for whatever reason to make their own FC which is super boring if you don't want to manage it. My friend and I have our own FC for this very reason - we want full control over airships, submarines, gardening, buffs, etc. But we have no desire to keep up with an FC so we just keep it locked to our small friend group. Which is sad, honestly, and I wish they would just let anyone do that on their own or at least make it possible to get those items in some other way as well. I'd really like to join an active FC without having to manage it myself but unfortunately, having access to those things is more important to us. Actually, it occurs to me that perhaps some people may just have a second service account for this reason - to be on an active FC on their main but still enjoy those aspects. Hm. Well, in that case I couldn't even blame them for that. Pfft.

I'm fully aware that you know it's not against the rules. But you want to MAKE it against the rules. There's no way to enforce it. SE can't do that without punishing people living together playing the game under one roof and the problem is so small that it's not worth ruining the experience of all the people who share a household. Many, many husband and wives play this game together.

And, no. I don't think there's much of a reasonable way to fix the housing situation without making it instanced in some capacity. Is it POSSIBLE? Yeah, sure. But not practical for SE. They would need to add wards until there are enough for the active player base on each server. But, this would fluctuate and leave sparsely populated wards.

I think the best solution would be as Brynne mentioned where they would make a combination of wards + DECENT instanced housing. But if SE would ever do that, I have my doubts. They could have done it forever ago and I thought that's what apartments would be (and well, they are in a way but not implemented well). So...who knows.

They should just let apartments be upgradeable Animal Crossing style, to maybe the size of a Small house. Maybe even in between Small and Medium. Similar-ish to what someone said here. Could even add a cool patio thing, who knows. Also add more wards of course, more houses = less people not having them. But I feel like this would fix the major issue of housing, a compromise for instanced housing and non-instanced housing. If people really wanted a house and there were no plots open, they could get an apartment and work on upgrading it.

.....Why not just let apartments be able to be as large as large sized housing? I don't see any reason to restrict it. I have seen some very large apartments/condos in real life.

[LarryButz]

I'm fully aware that you know it's not against the rules. But you want to MAKE it against the rules. There's no way to enforce it. SE can't do that without punishing people living together playing the game under one roof and the problem is so small that it's not worth ruining the experience of all the people who share a household. Many, many husband and wives play this game together.

Only you guys are mentioning punishing people who live together. I never once said, or implied that. I've clearly said what I meant, and that I don't mean for them to just vet every service account then compare them to all existing account. That's just ridiculous. I've already said how they could possibly handle it

.....Why not just let apartments be able to be as large as large sized housing? I don't see any reason to restrict it. I have seen some very large apartments/condos in real life.

Because then the only reason to get a house would be to have a front yard? It would totally ruin what makes owning a house special. And lets be real if they add large size apartments then people would just complain about not having a yard too. The same people who want to scrap wards all together and just want completely instanced housing for some reason. I seriously can't understand why people are against adding new wards. I can see from SE's reasoning because of server space and stuff, but a player not wanting more housing without having to totally rework everything is just silly.

[Jojoya]

Only you guys are mentioning punishing people who live together. I never once said, or implied that. I've clearly said what I meant, and that I don't mean for them to just vet every service account then compare them to all existing account. That's just ridiculous. I've already said how they could possibly handle it



Because then the only reason to get a house would be to have a front yard? It would totally ruin what makes owning a house special. And lets be real if they add large size apartments then people would just complain about not having a yard too. The same people who want to scrap wards all together and just want completely instanced housing for some reason. I seriously can't understand why people are against adding new wards. I can see from SE's reasoning because of server space and stuff, but a player not wanting more housing without having to totally rework everything is just silly.

Not everyone wants that yard, or to be able to garden, or to feel part of a neighborhood. Then there are others who want to feel like they do live in a neighborhood and would buy those houses over a large apartment if they could get one.

I don't understand why you think a large apartment would ruin anything when our house interiors already are instanced as it is. They don't load until you're ready to enter.

Options are generally a good thing. Let people get something that best fits what they really want.

The argument against new wards comes from it both not solving the problem on high pop worlds where demand will continue to outstrip supply and by creating a new problem in its place - mostly empty wards on lower pop worlds when players who want that neighborhood feeling want to be seeing other players with houses in their ward, not a series of empty plots. If SE could expand the wards dynamically on a world by world basis so only worlds that needed more wards would get them, the objection to wards would mostly go away.

Instanced housing solves the issue of dynamic housing expansion and could even let players own multiple houses without impacting the ability of other players to buy their first. Leave the wards in place as a prestige system for players to fight over ownership at premium prices while guaranteeing every character one instanced house if the player wants their character to own a house.

[LarryButz]

The argument against new wards comes from it both not solving the problem on high pop worlds where demand will continue to outstrip supply and by creating a new problem in its place - mostly empty wards on lower pop worlds when players who want that neighborhood feeling want to be seeing other players with houses in their ward, not a series of empty plots. If SE could expand the wards dynamically on a world by world basis so only worlds that needed more wards would get them, the objection to wards would mostly go away.

Lol that low pop arguement is silly. Don't buy a house on a ward that's empty. Easy. Or don't pick a low-pop server if you want to be around more people? And your argument about not adding wards because of high pop servers is literally solved by adding more wards so..

These suggestions that might add <100 houses max back into the market (not even per server) always amuse me because it's pretty clear that the posters are tunnel-visioning with the idea that they'll get a house, so it doesn't really matter how infeasible the goal is or whether it's actually fixing the system, does it? (Which, here's to hoping you're able to identify the empty houses, get there, and outclick whoever's waiting at the placard.)

I'm not even worried about suggestions like this because not only are they completely unreasonable, but far too much work (especially considering SE would lose money - lots of people with multiple accounts do it solely to get an extra house, so they wouldn't be paying SE for those accounts anymore.) It's just amusing how many complaints on the forums (not just housing, but it's a lot of it) break down into "I want a thing and I don't think someone else deserves their thing, it's not fair, so give me their thing."

Like half of what you said has nothing anything to do with what any of this thread has been about dude. You say it would only clear up <100 but then later say lots of people do it. Okay lol. And who cares it would free up <100 houses? That's not the point. I've very, very clearly stated that yes it's a very niche thing, but it's still stupid and scummy.

Even if it’s the same player, they are literally four separate people in this scenario.
I think this is fair game.

This makes absolutely no sense lol. If you mean four separate characters however, then that doesn't matter to me. Who cares how many characters they have? I'm saying one real person should only be allowed to have the same amount of houses as everyone else no matter what. It's just pay to win otherwise (as in now what these guys are doing). I literally could not care less how much "Work", "Time" or "Money" they spend. It's still basically flat out pay to win nonsense.

[Canadane]

This makes absolutely no sense lol. If you mean four separate characters however, then that doesn't matter to me. Who cares how many characters they have? I'm saying one real person should only be allowed to have the same amount of houses as everyone else no matter what. It's just pay to win otherwise (as in now what these guys are doing). I literally could not care less how much "Work", "Time" or "Money" they spend. It's still basically flat out pay to win nonsense.

If there are four individual service accounts being paid for, by all rights they are four individual people. It makes a lot of sense when viewed through the lense of the company, customer service, and logic. You may not like it but to say it doesn’t make sense, well...

[Mikki]

It's way more trouble than it's worth for SE to vet people for something that very few people do in the first place.....

And wasn't it you who said earlier you wanted the wards rather than instanced housing because you like the way wards are????? The reason to get a non-instanced house would be because you can show off your yard and have that neighborhood feel- plus, there would still be a sort of prestige to it. For people who don't give two flying flamingos about that, they can opt for instanced housing. A lot of people enjoy decorating but don't care if it's instanced or not. And there's really no reason why instanced housing couldn't have a yard too - look at Kugane's inn room. There's a garden off of it. Sure, you can't access it. But it would be possible to make it so that you could.

And Jojoya put it well. Options are good. I'm all for it if they want to do away with the ward system entirely but I'd prefer it a lot more if they'd give us the options so that at least everyone can have a house that's a nice size and fun to decorate AND allow people who really want to live in the ward to do that as well. Personally, I like having the wards. I really do. If I had a choice, even if an apartment could be literally the exact same size as a large house, I would still prefer the ward because I like the potential for a neighborhood feeling. Even if you could have a yard in the apartments, I'd still rather an actual house. BUT at least I'd feel happier knowing that if I lose my house for some reason or another, I can still get something just as nice at the apartments and not have to worry about losing it if I drop my sub for a couple of months.

But yeah, as Jojoya said.... the problem is that it wouldn't solve anything. Logically, you'd think "just add more wards to the populated servers and not to the low pop servers" but SE said that the system wasn't built to do that, so they can't do that. They'd have to rebuild the system if they wanted to do that and at that point, if they're rebuilding it anyway...they'd probably do something more sustainable and easier on their servers. And if they just added more wards as the system is, then it's a problem of there STILL not being enough on high pop servers AND there being tons of empty wards in low pop servers, which is a waste in SE's eyes and also it kind of devalues the experience for players on low pop servers because if you wanted an empty ward you could have just gotten instanced housing in the first place and then you wouldn't have to keep your sub up just to keep it, too.

In a perfect world, yeah. We'd have enough wards and houses for everyone. But we're just being realistic here; it's probably not going to happen sadly. Instanced housing is just more player friendly in every way. Literally the only thing it lacks is that neighborhood feel and I'd argue that it hardly exists anyway - as someone who basically lives in the housing ward. The number of times I've seen my neighbors is pretty laughable. The only time I do is if I'm near a huge FC house with tons of active members.

[LarryButz]

It's way more trouble than it's worth for SE to vet people for something that very few people do in the first place.....

And wasn't it you who said earlier you wanted the wards rather than instanced housing because you like the way wards are????? The reason to get a non-instanced house would be because you can show off your yard and have that neighborhood feel- plus, there would still be a sort of prestige to it. For people who don't give two flying flamingos about that, they can opt for instanced housing. A lot of people enjoy decorating but don't care if it's instanced or not. And there's really no reason why instanced housing couldn't have a yard too - look at Kugane's inn room. There's a garden off of it. Sure, you can't access it. But it would be possible to make it so that you could.

And Jojoya put it well. Options are good. I'm all for it if they want to do away with the ward system entirely but I'd prefer it a lot more if they'd give us the options so that at least everyone can have a house that's a nice size and fun to decorate AND allow people who really want to live in the ward to do that as well. Personally, I like having the wards. I really do. If I had a choice, even if an apartment could be literally the exact same size as a large house, I would still prefer the ward because I like the potential for a neighborhood feeling. Even if you could have a yard in the apartments, I'd still rather an actual house. BUT at least I'd feel happier knowing that if I lose my house for some reason or another, I can still get something just as nice at the apartments and not have to worry about losing it if I drop my sub for a couple of months.

But yeah, as Jojoya said.... the problem is that it wouldn't solve anything. Logically, you'd think "just add more wards to the populated servers and not to the low pop servers" but SE said that the system wasn't built to do that, so they can't do that. They'd have to rebuild the system if they wanted to do that and at that point, if they're rebuilding it anyway...they'd probably do something more sustainable and easier on their servers. And if they just added more wards as the system is, then it's a problem of there STILL not being enough on high pop servers AND there being tons of empty wards in low pop servers, which is a waste in SE's eyes and also it kind of devalues the experience for players on low pop servers because if you wanted an empty ward you could have just gotten instanced housing in the first place and then you wouldn't have to keep your sub up just to keep it, too.

It's obvious you did not read what I said, or just read it wrong. I've literally said I do not want them to vet people, and that having a mix of more wards and instanced, bigger apartments would be the best solution to the overall housing issue. Still wouldn't stop people from buying way more houses than they should be limited to though, which is what this is mostly about.