How many housing lotteries do I have to enter before I win?

[PaalHenrik]

So this is the same FC, with just deferent number added. Also.. you can find offers like this:



Which probably was reported but nothing was done about it.

Your last picture is from a scammer website. Why are you looking there?

[justausername]

I mean, you can put two and two together and surmise that the FCs with the same tag on the same housing ward are usually owned by a single player.

I don't know what to say to you if you still insist otherwise.

Its impossible to own multiple FCs on one character, and to own multiple FC houses with one FC unless it was grandfathered in from the times when it was allowed during Stormblood and prior.
What you are seeing is probably someone with multiple characters owning multiple FCs, and then they have a 2nd account as well. Which is not actually against ToS... yes its hella annoying, and I am not a fan of these people either, they are greedy jack butts. But its not against ToS so long as they intend to actually use them and not resell them. ESPECALLY in an RMT trade. But if they aren't reselling, there is nothing stopping them except their non existent conscience from having 8 FC houses per world, per account and having multiple accounts and paying multiple sub fees.

[LaylaTsarra]

Its impossible to own multiple FCs on one character, and to own multiple FC houses with one FC unless it was grandfathered in from the times when it was allowed during Stormblood and prior.

FC's are not grandfathered private home were/are. 4.2 stopped the purchasing of more than one private per character per server. Anyone owning more than one private home before the new rules were grandfathered in. That is over 4 years ago and it's working as intended.

It's on SE to fix the FC fiasco and they've done a pretty poor job of that so far. FC houses belong to the Free Company and the master is essentially the guardian of that house which he/she can lose if they do not log in for 35 days or they can transfer leadership.

[Saya_Shriogane]

Picture popped during discussion on discord about new FC house. If you look long enough into housing you can find such sites, and i highly doubt that SQE doesn't know about them. Yet nothing is being done, instead we are told to be happy that we have all equal chance of winning even if (this from last lottery) they are 0.65%. But its not zero right? Also if you tell me that making 17 FC's (or more) containing 4 characters each naming them ABC [1..N] to buy out whole ward is not for RMT purpose im gonna laugh.
This system is not working ("unless it works" as some like to say) and wont work as influx of players makes it only worse, this is frustrating and going each time to pick up my money (as they cannot be sent apparently) only makes how some of us feel worse. It's like saying "oh here is your money and by the way how do you like this house on plot you didn't win?". I give up on even getting a private house, this is just unnecessary frustration due to system that wasn't prepared to handle growing popularity of the game.
Before it was bots, now its too many people and wards not being cleaned from RMT buyers.

[PaalHenrik]

Also if you tell me that making 17 FC's (or more) containing 4 characters each naming them ABC [1..N] to buy out whole ward is not for RMT purpose im gonna laugh.

Before it was bots, now its too many people and wards not being cleaned from RMT buyers.

Some people just have OCD.

[Reinha]

Before it was bots, now its too many people and wards not being cleaned from RMT buyers.

People may not remember this, but on new ward releases people did not have to wait for any invisible timer that would have given bots an advantage. The bots were only a problem for plots that were demolished or auto-demolished. First come first serve meant that you could zone into a newly released ward, walk to a house that had not been bought, and then simply buy it. I managed to buy a house several times that way.

Then people asked for a lottery and here we are.

[Jojoya]

But its not zero right? Also if you tell me that making 17 FC's (or more) containing 4 characters each naming them ABC [1..N] to buy out whole ward is not for RMT purpose im gonna laugh.

Laughter is the best medicine.

Some are. Most aren't. You have players that love to decorate and want to control how the ward looks. You have other players who love the workshop theorycrafting and want access to more workshops to play with different builds (only 4 subs is not enough to accomplish that).

Of those that are purchased for RMT purposes, most aren't being bought for resale. They're being purchased to get access to gardens and workshop to earn gil from selling shards on the marketboard and vendoring salvaged accessories ("100% hand-farmed! No bots involved!") and then selling that gil. While the initial start up cost is a lot, once the right parts are built and access to the correct sectors gained, a very nice gil income is generated.

We can complain about players taking advantage of what SE allows all we want, but ultimately the problem is SE allowing it because they'd rather rely on what rules can be enforced through programming than pay a couple of employees to run reports and monitor things manually. They'd have to make some pretty significant changes to the housing system to put a stop to it, and those changes would like also negatively impact players who are staying within spirit of the system as much as the letter.

SE backed themselves into a corner when they originally decided that housing should be FC only and that they would use that system to support personal housing as well. They should have made personal separate from the start as they had originally announced.

People may not remember this, but on new ward releases people did not have to wait for any invisible timer that would have given bots an advantage. The bots were only a problem for plots that were demolished or auto-demolished. First come first serve meant that you could zone into a newly released ward, walk to a house that had not been bought, and then simply buy it. I managed to buy a house several times that way.

Then people asked for a lottery and here we are.

I remember those days. I got my first house and my current house that way.

It's also days long past. It hasn't been possible on any NA servers since Spring 2019 because SE wouldn't take steps to make certain supply kept up with demand and made shell FCs a more reliable way to obtain a house for personal use since the advent of the lottery than buying a personal house directly.

[Yodada]

Of those that are purchased for RMT purposes, most aren't being bought for resale. They're being purchased to get access to gardens and workshop to earn gil from selling shards on the marketboard and vendoring salvaged accessories ("100% hand-farmed! No bots involved!") and then selling that gil.

You highly overestimate people who gobble up houses doing it for the whole purpose of selling gil. The time / gil invest isnt worth month of setup till you see a penny gained back for a RMT Service. RMT is done due to quick access and quickly repeatable farms like the shard desynth farming back in the days or the still existing Eureka Bun Bots

SE backed themselves into a corner when they originally decided that housing should be FC only and that they would use that system to support personal housing as well. They should have made personal separate from the start as they had originally announced.

That's what you get from listening to the forum.

Square: Introducing FC Housing
Players: I WANT PERSONAL HOUSES ! I WANT THEM NOW !
Square: Here, but I warn you that the riches could take more then one.
Players: DONT CARE - WANT HOUSE
~ Not enough Houses available ~
Players: *sadPikachuFace*
Square: Told you so.

Players: NO HOUSES. IM NOT ONLINE. ALL ARE ALREADY GONE. AS A 5 MIN WARRIOR OF LIGHT I HAVE NO CHANCES TO BE ON TIME FOR AUTODEMO.
Square: Introducing Placard Timer
Players: I DONT WANT TO CLICK for 2 HOURS. I DONT WANT TO COMPETE AGAINST WHOLE FCs. ITS UNFAIR. ALL SHALL HAVE THE SAME CHANCES. SCREE
Square: Are you sure about that?
Players: SCREE. GIMME LOTTERY.
Square: Introducing Lottery with One Ticket per Person
Players: *sadPikachuFace*
Square: Told you so.

Players: PEOPLE MAKING SHELLS TO GET A HOUSE !
Square: 4 Characters / Rank 6 FC. Working as intended.
Players: BUT THOSE ARE SOLO FC ! I WANT PERSONALS !
Square: Introducing more Wards.
Players: BUT I DONT WANT TO LIVE IN GOBLET. I WANT MIST 5 OR LAVENDER 41.

Let me guess whats next?

Players: ALL SHOULD BE PUNISHED ! HOUSE TAXES FOR EVERYONE !
Square: Are you sure about that?
Players: HELL YEAH. PUNISH EVERYONE - DONT CARE.
Square: Introducing Taxes.
Players: TAXES ARE PUNISHING. I CANT AFFORD MY HOUSE WITH JUST SITTING IN LIMSA TO PRESENT MY SLUT GLAM *sadPikachuFace*

[dspguy]

That is actually a relatively accurate portrayal of the playerbase on the whole (not any specific individual).

You did leave one out though:

Players: EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE A HOUSE!
Square: Ok, we will make that our priority now.
Square: Introducing housing for all!
Players: Housing isn't special anymore!
Players: Wait, why haven't we had a new content update in a few months?
Square: We spent the money on hardware and rewriting code to make it so everyone could have a house.
Players: But I don't want to just hang around my house wearing my glam. I want to slay dragons! /ragequit
Square: Told you so.

[Jojoya]

You highly overestimate people who gobble up houses doing it for the whole purpose of selling gil. The time / gil invest isnt worth month of setup till you see a penny gained back for a RMT Service. RMT is done due to quick access and quickly repeatable farms like the shard desynth farming back in the days or the still existing Eureka Bun Bots

How am I overestimating when I never stated any sort of number are doing it?

Do some players do it? Yes. I'm not even referring to organized RMT services. I'm talking players selling gil "under the table" to other players. I know of one player that was doing it as recently as 5.5 though I haven't seen him around in Endwalker so maybe he got caught and banned, or maybe he gave up. But I know for certain he had been buying houses to set up gardens and workshops to farm gil to sell casually.

The long term costs for those running workshop farms is less than the cost of setting up those workshops individually because parts no longer needed in one workshop can be transferred to another. There's still some time investment to get sectors unlocked but that's not going to matter to those who are doing this casually almost as a hobby/side job instead of as an organized business.

Is the number using housing to make and sell gil high? No. There's probably no more than a handful per server doing it.