Fix Housing Megathread

[Almagnus1]

There's still one outstanding problem with personal ownership restrictions and that is that ownership is per world, not per service account. There are far more active players world wide than there are houses world wide. Each player with houses on multiple worlds is taking away houses from players who don't have one. I have characters on 8 different worlds. If I were to buy a house on each of those worlds, that's 7 other players that would never be able to buy a house. Quite frankly, that sucks.

Until we've got the tech in place where I can teleport from one server to another near instantly... I don't see how this restriction could be changed reasonably. And even then, one personal house per datacenter would work assuming the teleport was reasonably fast.

But one per service account? We've got to be able to quickly hop from one datacenter to another for that to work, and we can't even see outside of our home datacenter at the moment...

No, I would not expect SE to take away houses from players who have already legitimately obtained them under the rules currently in effect if they were to make this change.

The only way this would work (and IMO SE should do it) is only after they have given players several months time to divest and there have been enough other things added where there is no functional loss for the players that have more than one house. Some players need motivation, and sometimes you need to have the choice between the carrot and the stick in order to get the desired result.

[lezard21]

Make alts tenants by default.

[Jojoya]

Make alts tenants by default.

They told us 2 years ago it was something they wanted to do but they had technological hurdles to overcome. Nothing has been said since.

[Almagnus1]

They told us 2 years ago it was something they wanted to do but they had technological hurdles to overcome. Nothing has been said since.

It would be worth raising to the dev team again since a lot can change in two years.

[Jojoya]

It would help to lower the invisible timer. It's 24 hours now, max it at 6. It wouldn't fix the issues but it's a needed change for people's health.
I have a friend who sits & clicks every day for 10+ hours, they are exhausted, neglect their job and it just breaks my heart. I'm glad I grabbed my house in 5.35 because I would never do this to myself.

Sounds like your friend is suffering from a gaming addiction if they're neglecting their real life responsibilities and health for the sake of possessing virtual pixels. Encourage them to seek counseling. It may mean they need to quit playing the game for a few months while they get their life back in order.

[Almagnus1]

So going through a raffle idea again (yes, one of those), here's how I think it should change to address one of the problems with housing: Relos screwing over first time buyers.

So like mentioned previously, houses will keep their random timers, but they will switch to raffle system to award the house. Here's how that works:

• Every 30 minutes after the house comes off timer, it checks if at least one person bought a ticket. If so, the new owner is chosen randomly. If no one has bought a raffle ticket, the house will refresh the raffle window. The remaining raffle window time is displayed
• Anyone new housing owner can buy a raffle ticket as long as they are compliant with the restrictions outlined at https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../housing_land/
• FCs and players are in the same raffle
• A housing relo can only occur if they get a ticket (same costs as currently) and win the raffle
• Anyone who doesn't get the house gets their ticket refunded
• Players can only buy one housing ticket at a time

The main thing I'm trying to figure out a solution to is the need to first clicker, as this allows for a bit fairer way to do it and rewards those that are sticking it out. Time window may need to be adjusted as having a shorter one helps to shut out people that aren't actually there when the house comes to market. The biggest frustration I'm seeing with first time buyers is that the relos have a bit too much "power" in the current system as they are able to take priority over new buyers rather than putting both on equal footing like it is in the real world (arguably first time buyers have it a bit better as they aren't usually dependent upon selling the older property).

It probably needs work, but as Yoshi-P is considering this idea, it's probably a good idea to start figuring out how we can make it suck the least so that way we can guide the dev team with this rather than shutting down any discussion and getting something forced upon us.

[Jojoya]

lol they normally don't play excessively, they just really want a house at this point. I suggested moving to Spriggan because last time I checked it still had plenty of small plots and they are considering it. But I still think that reducing the invisible timer would be better than nothing.

I definitely agree the length of the current timer is excessive. A length of 2-6 hours would be more than sufficient to accomplish the purpose of the timer, which is to deter house flipping. Two hours is more than enough time for prospective buyers to find out the plot is available and be ready to compete for it, especially with all the housing discords that have been organized to scan for and share newly available plot information with their users.

If your friend wants the house that badly, I hope they do choose to move to Spriggan. Cross world linkshells provide a common chat and you can always world visit to do content together. I know a few players that spend most of their time cross world to do things with their various friends circles across our data center.

[Valfreyja]

Sitting with a friend last night who had been trying to get a house plot for 12 hours+. We discussed several options that are better than the current system.

It was down to three people wanting it. The BS part of it was that one of them got their FC to show up and start trying to buy it. I assume so they could pass it off as a "tenant" thing and give them better odds. Which just seems wrong to me in so many ways.

We talked about options in my FC for this.

First, make it a silent auction. A house comes up for sale, you make a bid. One bid per service account per plot. First highest bidder gets the plot. Sure people with more gil get an advantage. But it comes down to whether they are willing to bid 10 or 20 million gil to get a small housing plot.

The second option was presented by someone in my FC. That being putting it to RNG. The house comes up for sale. Every 18 hours a player can walk up and use the Placard. If the RNG hits, and they have the gil to make the purchase, they get the opportunity to buy it. If not, they have to wait 18 hours for another chance at it.

The current system just fosters animosity between players and encourages harsh feelings when players gang up to all bid on a plot in order to give it to their friend. Or stand around the placard to try and throw off targeting on it.

Edit: As an update, my friend lost the house. The one who got her FC to come and all bid on it for her got it. So one of her friends owns it and now she's a "tenant". Which is honestly the sh******t way of doing this.

The tenant system needs to be changed to prevent stuff like this.

[LaylaTsarra]

Edit: As an update, my friend lost the house. The one who got her FC to come and all bid on it for her got it. So one of her friends owns it and now she's a "tenant". Which is honestly the sh******t way of doing this.
The tenant system needs to be changed to prevent stuff like this.

So her friends bid on it so they could own a private house and share it? The house doesn't belong to her it belongs to the person who bought it. I don't see where she needed to do that she could have simply shared another house one of her friends owned. You can't transfer ownership of a personal house.

[Valfreyja]

The friends bid on it simply so one could give it to her, via the Tenant system.

The ones who don't care about owning a house step in and try to buy it, then pass it off.

So a friend bought it, made the one who actually wanted it a Tenant along with their partner, since it's now listed as "X and X's House" on the Placard, neither of which was the actual owner.

As a tenant they can do the following:
Customization - Adding / Removing / Dyeing Furnishings
Gardening - Planting / Harvesting / Crop Disposal
Stable Tending - Stabling Chocobos.
Orchestrion - Orchestrion operation

So, in short, that is what happened. She got multiple friends who came in that didn't likely care about owning their own house, instead having an Apartment and/or FC room, that stacked things in her favor, and the winner simply made her a Tenant with full access. So in essence, it's "her" house now.

It's why Housing is such a BS system right now.