Housing Ownership Restrictions

[Penthea]

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.

We have no way to know exactly at what rate these grandfathered plots fall because we don't have access to SE's internal statistics. Also there is no guarantee that the number will ever reach zero. Not every grandfathered player is going to eventually be careless with demolition timers, have unfortunate life circumstances, or quit the game.

Perhaps of those you know of and yourself included, you only have a small handful of grandfathered houses each, and this makes you feel you're being harshly targeted despite having a small impact. But there are some players who have gone very far beyond that, and others who have done it to that degree on several accounts. It's these players in particular that have made some people exceptionally angry.

Certainly in my case when I think of the major players in the issue of grandfathering I'm not thinking of someone who only has three or four houses. I'm thinking of people who have eight or more. Sure every grandfathered player is causing an issue to some degree, but there are those whose impact on other players is ludicrously high. A famous pair of players who own an entire ward are a prime example of this.

However to look at the full picture we must recognise it is not only grandfathered plots that are an issue, but also the removal of the restriction on the amount of fc houses that can be purchased. Since this restriction has been lifted players have been creating shell fcs for personal use, or for the expansion of their fc.

If this trend of turning fc purchase restriction on and off continues every time we get new wards, then this particular issue will one day end up far outpacing the issues grandfathered plots cause. I'm really curious to see what happens with this in the future. If players know by now that many fcs and players are able to increase how many houses they can own because the active restrictions are inconsistent, then SE obviously knows it too.

And honestly the above issue I mentioned is actually causing problems for people like you, because they draw more attention to players or fcs who own many plots regardless of when or how they got them.

Adding just a single ward would be more benefit to the homeless, less work for SE, and hurt zero players.

As long as the purchase restrictions on fc houses continues to get turned on and off, it's not as beneficial as it could be. But that specific issue is not related to grandfathering. It's SE making some very questionable decisions that go against some of the things they set out to fix. It's very strange. It was a completely unnecessary step backwards.

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

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

Introducing this would be an excellent way to make the competition for housing fall without even needing to add any wards. If apartments were bigger and had access to all the same mechanics and features as houses, regardless of whether you are a private owner or a fc, then the amount of players unhappy with housing would very significantly fall. Some would end up no longer caring about hoarders at all.

-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.

I am not really sure what you are suggesting here. Care to elaborate? Are you suggesting workshops be tied to GCs to prevent abuse? Or to have more/different features? Or something else?

Both problems get solved by instanced house plots. When every player can be guaranteed a house plot regardless of how many are owned by other players, then owning multiple houses doesn't matter.

We know instanced housing works successfully in meeting player demand because of all the other MMOs that use it. You don't see players complaining "I can't get a house" in those games. Their complaints are related to what they're able to do with housing (usually items limits just like we see complaints about item limits here). If instanced housing was just as if not more stressful on server resources as the wards are like some players here want to claim, instanced housing wouldn't be as extensive as it is in those other games.

Ah the dream, this is the exact solution that I want above all others but for such a long time now SE have made it clear they have no intention of doing this. I don't know whether it's because the game's spaghetti code won't allow it without significant expensive changes, or they utterly fail to see the real solution to housing as a whole. Whatever the case may be, it's so disappointing to know that the likelihood of ever seeing this in the game is close to zero. The best we can realistically hope for is tweaks