This new SYSTEM DOESN'T Work

[Nepentha]

Technically you can - I have no doubt RMTers are selling boosted toons and a name change/fanta.
Furthermore the topic covers more then personal homes; as the exploitation of personal FC's has resulted is some owning entire wards.

Well that's where SE needs to actually enforce their ToS. Considering we have divisions made now between FCs and personals and instant relocation has been removed, there's no way for people to sell personal plots. If someone is RMTing selling entire accounts, it should be reported to SE, and they should take action on it. (Would they? Hard to say. They don't have a great track record.)

As for multiple FCs and owning entire wards, it's possible but you'd have to be running more than one account.

[dspguy]

+But there is no demolition.

That is probably reason #2 for a housing shortage. There probably still wouldn't be enough, but it would make a difference if auto-demo was back on. (Reason #1 is simply not enough plots in general).

+People own multiple homes.

While this is a problem, and it "isn't fair" - it probably isn't tying up as many homes as the first point you made. Yes, there will be that one instance that people talk about - some guy or FC has nearly an entire ward. But that isn't common. There's an FC on my server that has multiple homes... but they literally have thousands of players in their FC. More than the maximum. So they own more than one plot.

+People only bid on the "perfect" house

That right there is the reason why it is so easy to get a small in week #1 of the lottery (new server or new zone or new wards). People with no housing are bidding against people looking to upgrade - on mediums and larges in the "perfect spot." All the while, plenty of other players snatch up smalls with little-to-no competition. Then week #2 comes and we already at 100+ bids on a small since that's all that is left.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

Well that's where SE needs to actually enforce their ToS. Considering we have divisions made now between FCs and personals and instant relocation has been removed, there's no way for people to sell personal plots. If someone is RMTing selling entire accounts, it should be reported to SE, and they should take action on it. (Would they? Hard to say. They don't have a great track record.)

As for multiple FCs and owning entire wards, it's possible but you'd have to be running more than one account.

Aye - but to be honest...how do they track it? I mean if someone sold their account its not like source IP's do not change. Short of a interrogation or SE scrutinizing your payment info it would be a hard thing to investigate and even then...CC's change when you got kids accounts being paid by parents etc.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

While this is a problem, and it "isn't fair" - it probably isn't tying up as many homes as the first point you made. Yes, there will be that one instance that people talk about - some guy or FC has nearly an entire ward. But that isn't common. There's an FC on my server that has multiple homes... but they literally have thousands of players in their FC. More than the maximum. So they own more than one plot.

I think this is far more prevalent then you might believe. I make it a point to "tour" housing wards; its easy to find the case as those homes typically have next to no decor and are owned by a FC with 1 person in it (confirmable by checking the placard)
I kind of feel 1 person FC's really should not be a thing so that people need to ATLEAST fill their personal FC with their alts.

[Frizze]

I think this is far more prevalent then you might believe.

Its really not. Last time someone did an organized census across all the servers, the number was just under 3%. Even conceding that its probly gone up a bit since then, its not a major determining factor in any way. Meanwhile, a count earlier this week showed that the new DC had over 4000 personal homes just sitting waiting to be bought. And no 1 person or shell FC houses, because the servers havent been up long enough for FCs to bid yet.

[Shibi]

<snip>That right there is the reason why it is so easy to get a small in week #1 of the lottery (new server or new zone or new wards). People with no housing are bidding against people looking to upgrade - on mediums and larges in the "perfect spot." All the while, plenty of other players snatch up smalls with little-to-no competition. Then week #2 comes and we already at 100+ bids on a small since that's all that is left.

This is absolutely true, and baffling so.

Anyone who has done housing for a while has likely seen the advice for many many years "Get the worst house you can to start, then upgrade later" (pretty much like gearing up to raid, really) and that advice hasn't changed.

Just get a house, any house, the worst house out if you want to play it safe, on the outer rim of goblet surrounded by Paissas on one side and cliffs the other. You can upgrade later, and without any of the stress.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

Its really not. Last time someone did an organized census across all the servers, the number was just under 3%. Even conceding that its probably gone up a bit since then, its not a major determining factor in any way. Meanwhile, a count earlier this week showed that the new DC had over 4000 personal homes just sitting waiting to be bought. And no 1 person or shell FC houses, because the servers havent been up long enough for FCs to bid yet.

I'd need to see the census and the method used to gather the data; as the notion seems anecdotal to me given my own first hand experience. Ironically you also need to be careful to do stuff like determine sample - because no one is making shell FC's on ghost town servers really (because why would you; there is a over-abundance of housing supply) I would suggest taking just a tour from some of the more active places (Leviathan, Balmung, Alexander, Omega as examples) and compare that with the dead servers. Then again I mean I wonder if you could just scrape the lodestone for # of 1 man FC's that own property which might be more effective for a data analyst.

Because the problem with including all places in the data set is your going to get undesirable servers included in there; a example is on Raiden there are Venues that do not provide rooms for rent...they provide houses for rent within the ward..its kind of crazy how much supply there is there.

[VerdeLuck]

Its really not. Last time someone did an organized census across all the servers, the number was just under 3%. Even conceding that its probly gone up a bit since then, its not a major determining factor in any way. Meanwhile, a count earlier this week showed that the new DC had over 4000 personal homes just sitting waiting to be bought. And no 1 person or shell FC houses, because the servers havent been up long enough for FCs to bid yet.

3% of the housing supply is significant. If those 3% were returned back to the pool of available homes, there definitely wouldn't be as much of a shortage.

[Avoidy]

Supply was always going to be the issue longterm, but it became a problem much quicker than expected due to SE's mishandled FC:Individual ward ratio. They seriously dragged their feet on opening more wards to individual sale as well, despite every individual buyer begging them to do it for months, and by the time they opened it up it was too late. Now there's no demolition either, so homes only come available when someone straight up annihilates their account, moves to another world, or (why?) opts to demolish their own place.

Really love Square's promise in like early 2022 to monitor housing closely and adjust wards on a case by case basis, and then sitting here in almost 2023 on Balmung and watching us get the same number of wards as some empty world on Materia. "Six for everyone! Woohoo!" Would be cool as hell if underpopulated worlds had their housing resources redirected to worlds that need the help, but idk how they could even make that happen.

[DPZ2]

Really love Square's promise in like early 2022 to monitor housing closely and adjust wards on a case by case basis...

Would you be so kind as to provide a link to the Japanese text (or translated text) with that promise?