1 House 1 FC per DC Only

[KatiaRelanah]

*swoops in with hot take as new/inexperienced player and/or person without a house*

I feel like a major issue is that, as an outsider looking in, people are too fixated on getting Plot X on World Y (maybe even specifically in Ward Z? Not enough of a housing fan to know if there's anything like "prime wards" in terms of "oh this is the ward that actually has activity" or stuff like that.)

Now, in an ideal world, yes, we might phase reality and allow two homes to exist in one physical place (well, digital I guess?) +1 to the instanced housing suggestion I've seen as I've lurked the forums, absorbing the debate.

Nowhere, I'm guessing (please, correct me if I'm wrong, with citation) it is never advertised "have a home wherever you want, in the neighborhood you want, with the neighbors you want!" My completely random guess is that the advertisements/back of the box bullet points mentioned in these threads probably mention "own the home of your dreams!" in which case...

- A) it's hyperbole, you aren't entitled to a specific plot, just the general concept of a home (and it's up to YOU to decorate or make the most of whatever you end up getting to turn it into the "home of your dreams")

- B) the above notwithstanding, you similarly are not guaranteed/promised that you're gonna get to be in your favorite ward with all your friends on the world you prefer.

I'm, again, guessing, but I don't think anything is promised about "own the home you want, on the world you want!". So that nips in the bud the "oh but all my besties are on [overpopulated Crystal world], why should I have to move?!?!" Because if you want your house, you have to. Or else settle for whatever you can get.

This debate to me, watching from the outside, is like (rich) people moving to LA, only to find out that nope, none of the fancy Beverley Hills mansions are up for sale, best you can do is an overpriced studio downtown (small plots and/or "undesirable" housing zones or wards or whatever); or, you can buy a really nice house in an outlying township, but deal with an hour long commute just to get to the city (getting a home off your preferred world/DC).

As for the FC thing... That's the way the rules are written. If you have the whatever it is, 8 million gil * number of alts you have for a medium (here is where I reveal my lack of housing knowledge lol), then bid away. If you don't, there's nothing stopping you from doing the same thing, other than your morals, I guess? But as has been pointed out exhaustively, far too many loopholes or odd situations, which may not even be intentional/meant to "game the system", exist. Inherited roles, having different characters/alts with entirely different like backstories or whatever, etc. I'm not even really into RPing, but a person's second character with an entirely different friend group and/or setup shouldn't be excluded from owning a home on that character.

[Khryseis_Astra]

It’s literally a shortage on most NA worlds, even after the additional wards were added in January. I don’t think there’s anything like preferred wards, since with lotto RNG, it’s not like you can create neighborhoods with your friends. Sure some people still go for dream plots, but there’s multiple bids on everything and many people have yet to win a lotto. Moving servers isn’t a viable option for everyone, especially those that have been playing for years. The new servers will fill with new players, as they should, now that most NA worlds are locked. At any rate, it seems like a lot of people who “moved” to Dynamis just moved their alts to get a house and not enough moved their mains, hence many people DC traveling to the other NA DCs for liveable que times.

Point being, no matter what server you’re on, there’s not enough houses for the amount of players allowed to be on that server. It’s not like they lock worlds when houses run out. If the game continues to grow in popularity, even Dynamis will have the same issue in a few years. And there will never be enough mediums and larges for those who want upgrades. The old advice of “settle for what you can get and just relocate later” is near impossible with the lottery.

So I’m pretty solidly in the “add instanced already” camp. Let those who want to fight it out in the wards with the lotto go for it. Just add instanced so everyone can have the house they want.

[KatiaRelanah]

Point being, no matter what server you’re on, there’s not enough houses for the amount of players allowed to be on that server.

I suspect this is because they (SE) expect out of X population on any server, only Y% will have interest in housing in the first place. So they project out having enough housing for Y% of players on any given server. Except... You end up with servers that are more disproportionately housing-wanting-player populated, so while they project only needing like idk 10% of the population in plots, some worlds have 50%+ of the population wanting one.

In an ideal world (for the server infrastructure that is), everyone who wants a house spreads out and evenly populates every plot in every ward in every district in every world in every DC. Obviously, that doesn't happen. As you yourself said, and as I alluded to in my initial hot take, there are too many people who value their community too much to uproot - which is understandable, however I don't think the solutiom is that SE should add new instances of the wards and bloat the servers more just so we have 100 different wards where only plots 4, 7, 13, 21 and 22 (just pulling numbers out of the air, hopefully you get the gist) are populated, because yes, having waded through the many threads on the topic there are a nonzero value of people who DO fixate on having a particular plot, or even just a Large specifically, which is limited by the zone design ofc.

Barring that, as I said, dunno if you're the OP of it but yeah I did see the instanced housing thread, and it's a nice sidegrade that can be tucked in on TOP of wards, as opposed to, well, what I just said - adding more and more wards just so the "good plots" get taken and more and more ghost towns get created.

Idk, maybe once I save up a few million more gil and finally try to buy a house (on Dynamis, returning player with no community ties so nothing to lose) and I get screwed over or whatever, I might change my tune... But from what I've seen, there are far too many anecdotes of people mentioning "undesirable plot X, Y, or Z that goes unbidded lottery cycle after lottery cycle" for me to really entertain that being likely.

[PredatoryCatgirl]

It really depends on the server. On Balmung or Mateus, you can expect the worst small to have multiple bids. Balmung literally ran out of apartments at one point (and might have hit that point again). But those are high pop RP servers where the demand for housing is at its highest.

I'm on Sarg, which is a high pop server focused on raiding. Its hard to find a personal here, but they didn't all go in the first couple of rounds. There are still a few smalls kicking around. And FC housing is easy to get. Mediums and larges are all taken, but a small FC house is ready for anyone who can claim it, and I don't see that changing in the near future.

[KatiaRelanah]

It really depends on the server. On Balmung or Mateus, you can expect the worst small to have multiple bids. Balmung literally ran out of apartments at one point (and might have hit that point again). But those are high pop RP servers where the demand for housing is at its highest.

I'm on Sarg, which is a high pop server focused on raiding. Its hard to find a personal here, but they didn't all go in the first couple of rounds. There are still a few smalls kicking around. And FC housing is easy to get. Mediums and larges are all taken, but a small FC house is ready for anyone who can claim it, and I don't see that changing in the near future.

This is kinda the point I was getting at. I haven't chimed in there yet (maybe I should haha) but I saw a similar discussion in the Hunts section here, where people are infuriated that SE isn't going out of its way to add a bunch of mechanics to the system because of the "Hunt culture" that's developed (trains, discord coordination, theoretical tools that tell you when/where rare stuff spawns etc.). It's working as intended, and if everyone didn't minmax the shit out of it, issues of people "being late to a pull" wouldn't happen.

Similarly, here, the unofficial designation/recognition of certain servers as "the hip RPing world" or "the hardcore raid world" are just that, unofficial. Just because everyone conglomerated on (what is currently) 1/14th of the available worlds in NA for RPing doesn't mean that those worlds should get some sort of ad-hoc additional capacity that other servers DON'T get because they weren't picked out as the places-to-be.

So once again, I know it's antithetical to the "DC/World Culture" that everyone treats as basically-canon, but there is no reason an RPer MUST be on Balmung, and SE makes no recognition of such concepts. And if they want to organize off game to all collectively move their posse of FCs or whatever to a Dynamis server or something, cool... they can hang out with the people they actually want to hang out with or whatever? But SE shouldn't be obligated to give special privvies to specific DCs or worlds because people REALLY wanna be on a server with all the nightclubs or whatever.

[PredatoryCatgirl]

I get what you're saying, to a point. There's nothing geographically special about, say, Silicon Valley. But if you want a job in tech, that's the best place to look. Not the only place, but certainly the best one.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Honestly I could care less about the “title” given to a world, ie: this is the RP world, this is the raid world, etc. I can DC travel if I need to to find parties for things. Only reason I don’t want to leave Bryn is my friends, my FC and the fact that I’ve simply accumulated too much stuff over the years to transfer without losing a hefty chunk of it. lol

[Jojoya]

Honestly I could care less about the “title” given to a world, ie: this is the RP world, this is the raid world, etc. I can DC travel if I need to to find parties for things. Only reason I don’t want to leave Bryn is my friends, my FC and the fact that I’ve simply accumulated too much stuff over the years to transfer without losing a hefty chunk of it. lol

What stuff do you think you would lose by transferring? A transfer shouldn't result in losing anything other than maybe the interior fixtures in an apartment/house and if those are that valuable to you they're easily replaced with cheap ones from the marketboard before moving.

I can understand not wanting to leave your FC is it's a very active one that you're always doing things with. Most players aren't that lucky, though.

[Khryseis_Astra]

What stuff do you think you would lose by transferring? A transfer shouldn't result in losing anything other than maybe the interior fixtures in an apartment/house and if those are that valuable to you they're easily replaced with cheap ones from the marketboard before moving.

I can understand not wanting to leave your FC is it's a very active one that you're always doing things with. Most players aren't that lucky, though.

I know I’m a hoarder. lol but I have 8 retainers with maybe 10 items slots open on most of them. So if I had to pack up my FC room, my apartment and my current house, I just don’t have enough room to hold everything. A lot of it is glam pieces I had to grind dungeons for but won’t fit in my dresser (yes it’s almost maxed out again already lol), bits and bobs for Eureka because I still haven’t run BA yet, Bozja stuff in case I decide to go back and do more relics, seasonal housing items that I rotate through retainers because I don’t have the slots to store them, crafting mats, etc. And of course the expensive fish I lose if I don’t do a straight relocation. Some of it could be replaced, but it would be a hassle. I’m one of those people that as soon as I decide to throw something away, I end up needing it for something a week later, which makes me hold on to way more than I probably should.

[Jojoya]

I know I’m a hoarder. lol but I have 8 retainers with maybe 10 items slots open on most of them. So if I had to pack up my FC room, my apartment and my current house, I just don’t have enough room to hold everything. A lot of it is glam pieces I had to grind dungeons for but won’t fit in my dresser (yes it’s almost maxed out again already lol), bits and bobs for Eureka because I still haven’t run BA yet, Bozja stuff in case I decide to go back and do more relics, seasonal housing items that I rotate through retainers because I don’t have the slots to store them, crafting mats, etc. And of course the expensive fish I lose if I don’t do a straight relocation. Some of it could be replaced, but it would be a hassle. I’m one of those people that as soon as I decide to throw something away, I end up needing it for something a week later, which makes me hold on to way more than I probably should.

But you say you have a current house so the need for you to transfer to get a house doesn't exist.

The suggestions to transfer are generally directed at those who say they haven't been able to get a house at all.