Suggestion to reduce FC housing abuse

[8bitbort]

I'm kind of amused. The argument in both of my suggestion threads is that the suggestion alone doesn't solve all the issues, so it isn't worth pursuing. But if we take BOTH suggestions, and we make is significantly more difficult for players to own multiple properties, while also putting a BIG dent into the viability of housing as a player to player market, we fix a pretty sizeable portion of both the supply AND demand of the housing system.

And "just doing it to see if it could be done/prove there's a flaw" has never held up under scrutiny. "No man, this video is just a social experiment where I treat other people like garbage." "I just stole a bunch of credit card numbers to prove it was doable."

Yes, the "majority" of housing isn't held by hoarders, but enough of it to matter IS. And if there wasn't such a thriving market of haves over the have-nots, there wouldn't be nearly as much issue as there is.

And I'll repeat myself again: empty plots are not a problem to be solved. Spriggan having all those plots at the time didn't need a rich "savior" to come scoop them all up. If anything, stunts like that make people even less inclined to populate that server.

[Jojoya]

I'm kind of amused. The argument in both of my suggestion threads is that the suggestion alone doesn't solve all the issues, so it isn't worth pursuing. But if we take BOTH suggestions, and we make is significantly more difficult for players to own multiple properties, while also putting a BIG dent into the viability of housing as a player to player market, we fix a pretty sizeable portion of both the supply AND demand of the housing system.

It might ease the supply versus demand issue a small amount, but it is not a fix and certainly not a sizeable one.

A fix is changing the system so supply will always meet demand.

Right now, each world has 5,040 houses. The ward expansion next week increases that number to 5,760.

This year, I've seen population estimates for the NA worlds running between 11,000 and 24,000 active players per world (only SE would know the real numbers). Lacking more official population numbers, let's put those estimates to use.

What percentage of those players have a character that is housing eligible? I think 80% is a conservative but reasonable number to use. It's not difficult to reach level 50, obtain Second Lieutenant with a Grand Company and accumulate 3 million gil.

What percentage of housing eligible players actually want to own a house? Going off my personal experience of those I know who own, say they want to own or say they don't care, I'm going to go with 65%.

That puts the number of players per world who want to own a house between 5720 and 12,480.

We also need to factor in the FCs that want to own a house. If we assume every player (regardless of housing eligibility and desire) has one character in a FC that owns or wants to own a house, and the average number of members per FC is 10, we end up with 1100-2400 FCs per world who want to own.

That gives us an overall demand of 6,820 to 14,880 houses per world. After the ward expansion next week, there will still be 1,060 to 9,120 players and FCs per world who are still unable to get a house even with the limit of one personal and one FC house per account per world.

Increase my estimates to 90% of players being housing eligible and 80% of those wanting to own and the numbers look even bleaker. We end up with 3,260 to 13,920 players and FCs still not able to get a house.

Taking away at most 200 houses per world from the players running multiple shell FCs to get access to multiple houses is not a fix and definitely not a sizeable one when on some worlds it would satisfy only 2% of the unmet demand. Chances are good that most worlds have less than 200 houses that would be affected. Not every world has a MEW or LUCIS.

I'm not saying that taking away the multiple houses from those who acquired them after the 4.2 rules went into effect shouldn't be done. Certainly cheaters need to be punished. I'm just saying it's not the amazing fix you seem to think it will be.

[EaMett]

numbers

SE's policy over the past 5 years-ish has always been to maintain the housing availability at around 30% server population (housing eligible?). Fluctuates between housing patches and based on server population, but they've been pretty consistent. This upcoming patch is really just to have us hold until the Ishgard housing opens, which will add another 1/4th available plots.
The argument that should be made is not that people are left out so it should be changed. Since that seems to be the intent with SE wanting housing to be hard/reward/Status symbol. etc.. People not having access to it is kind of one of the founding principles behind it.
Instead, you should probably argue that the number should be something other than 30% or that SE would make significant financial gains by introducing significant changes to the system (to justify the cost). And even then it might be a tough sell since they might not be willing to impact users who already have access to housing. Any feature with over 10% player adoption is a highly used feature, in that sense housing is already tremendously successful.