1 House 1 FC per DC Only

[Eraden]

you know.......
There's this game called League of legends....it so happens that, in South Korea, they limit people to their use of the game to their social security #.

....people complaining that there's not enough supply. okay. Let's assume the devs do increase the supply. That's not going to stop people from, not having a house. Moreover, that's going to just give those who enjoy hoarding the houses...MORE to hoard.

you want a solution. ....radical as it may be....tie your ability to play this game, to your social security #, afterward take out the grandfathered houses that are traceable to a single individual (be that by tracking purchases from credit cards or debit cards by name or whatever means they have available to them). Then, wow, all of a sudden. there's only 1 house for a personal, and 1 house for an FC for you. Crazy.

Now...all that being said ....this is a horrible idea. and S.E. would never do it, because it would require MASSIVE amounts of work on multiple nations' teams coordinating with governments. - won't happen - not to mention, that's an incredibly large invasion to personal records. (though it could lead to a real-life version of SAO...not a bad thought, but not wanted)


Now,...i actually do have a theory, probably not a very good one, but a theory nonetheless.
What if...the devs, never intended for us to have enough houses? ....seriously. what if. what if their goal with the housing system was to ensure that those who put in the time and effort to consistently make money and actually utilize their house, were the ones who were able (outside of the obvious bots) to obtain houses?
like i said...probably not a very good theory...but a theory none the less.

With all due respect, your theory does not hold water. At least with respect to the rationale you suggested as the developers' benchmark for who should be allowed a house. There are THOUSANDS of people on my server alone who have accumulated enough Gil to buy a small plot. Now, this is not to say that they don't want housing to be limited. We simply do not know why there is so little housing available because the developers have given us little to no information on why housing continues to be so scarce. But given the number of people who have gathered up enough Gil for houses and have participated in the Lottery, it's a safe bet that player enthusiasm and effort are NOT limiting factors in the developers' equation.

What may be at play here is the possibility that the developers previously did not put much effort into ascertaining the demand for housing. The results of successive rounds of the Lottery should be more than enough data for them to establish a benchmark to strive for. But, as Jojoya has mentioned previously, it is incumbent upon us to continue participating in the Lottery in order to continue to demonstrate to the developers that the demand is real.

[XiaoShengwu]

With all due respect, your theory does not hold water. At least with respect to the rationale you suggested as the developers' benchmark for who should be allowed a house.

Hence why it's only a theory.

That point noted - going off of what you mentioned about the devs not ascertaining the demand for housing though; I would imagine, that ORIGINALLY speaking, they didn't see too much demand for it. IIRC when I joined back in 2013 on my first account, the housing situation wasn't particularly in a good spot for a number of reasons, but there were still hundreds of plots open and Gil still had a 1:1 worth. However as time has gone on, there's been a buy-out (within the bounds of several methods, legitimate or not) of the housing market. That coupled with a larger player base with each expansion, has led to the current shortage. ... I doubt very much that they intended it to be an issue. but at the same time, from my knowledge base of the housing in the game,... I don't think they ever meant for the housing to be so numerous as to accommodate each player with one. This is not to say I don't think they hear the outcry for it currently (which, i hope they do, it would be nice to have more wards of availability to people, i.e. another 24). I just personally believe they don't have the system set up to be able to handle that kind of data burden.

(which is why -fingers crossed- i'm desperately clinging to the hope, that they build/test/implement a new game engine with the oncoming story arc/graphics and further changes/updates) <- don't pop my copium ballon. it's the only one I have and the only one I want XD since I'm literally content with almost every other aspect of the game.


P.S.
also, I cringe every time I see people refer to the current system as a lottery. because it's not. It's a raffle. The only aspect that made the system a lottery was an accident and wasn't supposed to be there.
Lotteries hold the chance, that no one wins. (i.e. the player 0 "bug" )
Raffles have a decided winner. (don't care that that's how they named it it's just a pet peeve of mine.)

[GeminiReed]

We simply do not know why there is so little housing available because the developers have given us little to no information on why housing continues to be so scarce.

Based on statements they've made in the past -- housing expansion delayed due to inability to acquire server hardware -- we've got a fairly good idea. Something about their server code is ridiculously inefficient or something related to the ward design causes server or client problems. Heck, we know that when too many people are in housing the server(s) running the instances choke and won't let people enter house interiors or apartments.

My hope is that Island Sanctuary is the stress test for a new instancing system that will help address whatever is preventing them from adding enough wards to meet supply. If true then I wouldn't expect any real relief until after 7.0.