Remove the FC and Personal Housing Ward Split

[Johners]

It's been long enough on the 75-25 split of ward allocation. The Empyreum FC wards have the vast majority of small plots and a noticeable amount of medium plots still available (on Lich anyway). Any vacant plots in the FC wards of existing districts have been vacant ever since they were vacated.

This split can end now, all the actual FCs got a house and there's an uptick in small FCs that are basically just solo players getting a housings (I know multiple people that started FCs to get houses and then removed the members afterwards).

If it takes an emergency maintenance to change the allocation, then do it, don't hold it for an actual patch like 6.18 (or w/e DC travel is) or even all the way to 6.2.

[Oizen]

Cant wait for that to fill in a single cycle and not even dent the supply issue

[Johners]

Cant wait for that to fill in a single cycle and not even dent the supply issue

It's a start at least and something they can do relatively quickly in comparison to other things. It doesn't help that European servers are more densely populated than other regions but that'll slow ease up in July when both European DCs get two new home worlds. Not to mention the entirely new data centre that'll be launching in Summer 2023.

Beyond things already announced, they should reprioritise content and push something back, potentially into next expansion, to add at least one new housing district this expansion. Old Sharlayan, Radz-at-Han and Smileton would all be more than ideal locations for housing from the new Endwalker locations and given the current lore situation, you could even go to Doma or Ala Mhigo.

[Wolwosh]

The house in front of mine has been empty for a long time and i thought that was weird *its a nice plot* until I read the placard and saw my district is a FC ward now

[Liam_Harper]

It'll be interesting when they do, because it will really highlight how bad the housing shortage is.

Right now I feel players are holding out hope for when FC houses are released to private buyers, but in reality it'll be a drop of water in a bucket of hot sand. Once they release FC houses and they all get instantly bought up, we're down to waiting for the occasional plot to free up and about 5000 bidders to leap on each one.

[angienessyo]

Here on the bigger servers like Cactuar we'll likely never ever have enough houses for the number of players that want them on our server. I'm fortunate to have been playing a long time so I got one just by walking up to it with 0 competition back in Stormblood, but those days are long gone after our population exploded.

[Canadane]

You want to completely stop any FC's from having a chance of housing so people can have their own?
This is absolutely count to what housing was supposed to be like, and how SE continues to push it.

[Leohra]

Don't forget to also start up demolitions again. Without it, there will be no incoming supply at all

[Vahlnir]

You want to completely stop any FC's from having a chance of housing so people can have their own?
This is absolutely count to what housing was supposed to be like, and how SE continues to push it.

The further we get from their intended design, the better.

[Jojoya]

It'll be interesting when they do, because it will really highlight how bad the housing shortage is.

Right now I feel players are holding out hope for when FC houses are released to private buyers, but in reality it'll be a drop of water in a bucket of hot sand. Once they release FC houses and they all get instantly bought up, we're down to waiting for the occasional plot to free up and about 5000 bidders to leap on each one.

Except we're not seeing that many total bidders right now on any world right now. Some players are tracking entries on personal houses and they seem to be in the 1000-2000 range per world (worlds like Balmung somewhat higher) depending on how many medium and large houses are available, which causes numbers to get inflated by players trying to relocate as opposed to making their initial purchase.

It's still a problem. Switching the FC wards to personal won't be enough, especially as shell FCs are whittling down the FC houses still left lottery period by lottery period. For Coeurl, the FC plots still remaining would only satisfy about 1/3 of what our unmet personal demand appears to be.

You want to completely stop any FC's from having a chance of housing so people can have their own?
This is absolutely count to what housing was supposed to be like, and how SE continues to push it.

SE can continue to push it that way all they want but it's not what players want. Players want access to personal houses because then they get to fully engage with the system instead of being limited to visiting a house while the FC officers get to keep all the fun parts for their personal use.

IF SE truly wants housing to be limited to FCs only, then they need to take away the rank hierarchy settings that allow FC officers to exclude their members from house related content. It will cause absolute chaos, of course, but it will also show why prioritizing FC needs while ignoring personal needs is the wrong way to design the content.