Ok so looks like people are still taking advantage and getting multiple houses.

[Illmaeran]

Ah yes, these loopholes through which people can hog large amounts of houses, barring lots of other people from owning one. I came here to bring up this exact issue, only to find out that it is much, much worse on other DCs.
What confuses me is this: The inclusion of the one-house-per-account and one-house-per-fc rules would imply that SE actually wants housing to be limited so that more people have a shot at owning a plot. But then why leave things this way? Why implement restrictions in the first place if they come with very obvious ways to circumvent them?

Because, being Japanese, they expect people to follow the letter of the rules, the spirit of the rules, be considerate of others, and not try to game the system. For the great percent of people on JP servers, this is exactly how they behave. Things are different in NA, and in general, the West, where more people will find any loophole they can to get what they want even at the expense of others. This is a fundamental difference between Japanese and Western cultures; Japan is very communally-oriented whereas the West is heavily individual-oriented. There are similar trends on the Elemental DC, though to a much lesser extent than NA/EU/OCE, and wouldn't you know it, Elemental's where the vast majority of non-Japanese players from that side of the world play/played prior to Materia opening.

I think SE are finding out the hard way just how different things go on Western DCs and are trying to come up with reasonable restrictions that don't significantly inconvenience the general player base who do follow the letter and spirit of the rules. Players, as a generalized group, will find a way to bypass any restrictions that aren't hard-coded into the game to get what they want if they think they can get away with it. Unfortunately, the people taking up large swaths of new wards are following the letter of the law (many multiple accounts), but are totally disregarding the spirit of the law because they can. As they say, one bad apple spoils the bunch. A disproportionally small portion of the player base is able to acquire a disproportionally large portion of plots which makes them visible. If they used unique FC tags that looked like actual FCs instead of randomly picked three letters, they'd fly under our collective radar and be a non-issue because we wouldn't know they're there.

[Big_Bap]

Because, being Japanese, they expect people to follow the letter of the rules, the spirit of the rules, be considerate of others, and not try to game the system. For the great percent of people on JP servers, this is exactly how they behave. Things are different in NA, and in general, the West, where more people will find any loophole they can to get what they want even at the expense of others. This is a fundamental difference between Japanese and Western cultures; Japan is very communally-oriented whereas the West is heavily individual-oriented. There are similar trends on the Elemental DC, though to a much lesser extent than NA/EU/OCE, and wouldn't you know it, Elemental's where the vast majority of non-Japanese players from that side of the world play/played prior to Materia opening.

Well, these pictures invalidate everything you've just said and the active NA pop outweighs JP's...

https://i.imgur.com/M2pIFv9.png



https://i.imgur.com/YJVKSMs.png



https://i.imgur.com/f6u810E.png