Housing Ownership Restrictions

[Catstab]

1. [grandfathered personals]
2. [shell FCs]
3. [lotsa people, itty bitty living space]

1. So few accounts exist with multiple personal houses that this is not a significant contributor to the problem. The number is constantly going down, and never going up.

Adding just a single ward would be more benefit to the homeless, less work for SE, and hurt zero players. Your solution is too much work, too much damage, and produces too little result.

2. This would solve nothing.

A restriction would be put in place similar to auto demolition. "If you have fewer than 4 members for 45 days, we will disband your FC." People with shell FCs for housing would then dedicate 3 alts to roaming between FCs for one day every month and a half, and nothing changes. So, SE spends time programming a change and makes 0 additional dollars for it, and the few players this applies to spend a couple minutes a day clicking away on their FCs to keep them.

I can already hear you saying "No, no, not 45 days! Disband the FCs immediately when they hit 3 members, at least destroy their house!" Here's why that doesn't work: Now any officer who can kick a player also has permission to either destroy the house or disband the FC outright. Solutions have to be made that won't inhibit functional free companies.

3. Demand is indeed increasing! More housing should and is being created. We have "more plots" on the way, per SE. That very likely means new wards, like it has in the past.

It could also mean a pending release of Ishgard, which may be traditional wards, or may be an instanced home for everyone who completes The Firmament quest line. Level those crafters, folks.

Some of the best suggestions beyond new wards / instanced Ishgard include:

-Larger apartments. Possibly with balconies, terraces, or sunrooms for gardening

-FC workshops being tied to your GC headquarters, the same as squads currently are. This eliminates the need for 'shell' FCs except for hardcore roleplayers.


You mention that the increasing population and how to get more of them into housing gets discussed frequently. That's because it is the actual heart of the problem.

5,040 houses gives about 1,260 FCs and 3,780 players places to stay. On your average NA server you have 24,000 players. So more than 20,000 players are left to pick between apartments or nothing. It's definitely a problem. The only way to get 20,000 more houses is open 84 more wards, or give every single player in the game an instanced house and yard. Either of these is a monumental task for SE.

They're certainly doing what they can for us, but they've identified #1 on your list as a non-problem, and #2 as not easily solvable, and anyone who puts real thought into the situation will agree with those designations.