Housing Scarcity is manufactured

[Zebraoracle]

Okay, an example:

Question: With no demolition timer, what happens to those 5 houses?

Okay sure, if we're gonna go hyperbolic with our examples. 45 days though? REALLY? Your defense of 45 days is... 3 years?

And if Joe comes back, since he still by SE's crappy planning didn't do anything technically wrong (even though it IS crappy of him to hog that many houses even when he's actively playing), he is still entitled to those houses he spent money on. Like... I don't see the need to punish players like this?

And I'd like to know how Joe has five houses? Legitimately asking, I know you can get a surprising number of houses, but how does one obtain five?

This is on SE for poor planning, not properly designing housing to begin with, and their bullheaded refusal to fix the situation. Maybe I'm weird, but I don't like punishing players for the dev's screw ups.

[Boblawblah]

Again, everyone is talking about what they SE SHOULD do. The fact is, this is what they did do. The demolition timer makes sense in the context of the current system. Is it silly? Yes, of course it is. But there needs to be a method of allowing new players to get a house as older players leave. they didn't want it to be a first come first serve forever sort of situation.

[Zebraoracle]

Again, everyone is talking about what they SE SHOULD do. The fact is, this is what they did do. The demolition timer makes sense in the context of the current system. Is it silly? Yes, of course it is. But there needs to be a method of allowing new players to get a house as older players leave. they didn't want it to be a first come first serve forever sort of situation.

Okay sure, but no matter how you dress it up, *45 days* is pretty blatantly "don't you dare unsub to take a break or you'll lose your house!" territory. I'll give you your hyperbolic example of 3 years and 5 houses (still waiting to hear how someone has five houses, I legit want to find out how this is possible if this is something people can actually do) might be a bit much to hold on to a house if you're not playing, but defending 45 day timers is ridiculous when we know if SE wanted to they could easily fix the situation.

[Absurdity]

Oh I'm sorry this is Square Enix a small indie company, nevermind then

I wouldn't be surprised if the way they set housing up is such a mess that they couldn't afford the necessary servers to give everyone a house even if they wanted to.

This doesn't mean I'm defending the system, simply an observation that it's probably a lot more inefficient than it should be because they never planned for the current player numbers when they made it.

[kaynide]

Okay sure, but no matter how you dress it up, *45 days* is pretty blatantly "don't you dare unsub to take a break or you'll lose your house!" territory. I'll give you your hyperbolic example of 3 years and 5 houses (still waiting to hear how someone has five houses, I legit want to find out how this is possible if this is something people can actually do) might be a bit much to hold on to a house if you're not playing, but defending 45 day timers is ridiculous when we know if SE wanted to they could easily fix the situation.

So:
1) You need 2 accounts, (friend or family, whatever); This friend/family should not be a FC leader with a house.
2) Make 4 new characters between the 2 accounts (2:2, 1:3, whatever)
3) Start a new FC, have the 4 characters join up with FRIEND as leader
4) Level the FC to where it can own a house.
5) Get House (I know, not easy)
6) Pass leadership to your character.
7) Boot 3 non-leader characters, including friend.
8) Make a new 4th character on your account.
9) Go to Step 3, rinse repeat.

The key point is you can't purchase a FC house if your account already has a FC house. there is nothing preventing you from taking control of a FC that already has a house.

[VelKallor]

I definitely wouldn't see a 20+ member FC getting a small house but a FC with only 4-8 unique members? A small is plenty of room and the gil saved would give them a very good start on subs. They would have enough gil to buy schematic materials and/or sub parts the moment their sub ranks up enough for an upgrade without having to hope RNG gets them the right schematic materials in sufficient quantity in time.

Im a one man FC , I run subs and airships solo. You dont need gil either, just a good farming schedule and knowing what comes from where. Gil only comes into the issue when you are talking modified hulls, pure titanium, kamacite, cocobolo are a pain to get, vivianite is easy to obtain via basic missions, deep sea 6 and 7 for example.

( Garlond Steel and Galvanised Garlond steel )

There are PFs where you can get materials at a bargain price, or you can organise trades with other FC's.

So, really, it isnt as hard as it seems.

[NekoMataMata]

So, I guess we're not going to discuss that certain people have been lying about the availability of housing by including FC locked wards as proof that it is in fact readily available. Okaaaaay. Moving on then.

An actual defense would be to point out that housing is still somewhat available on Dynamis. I don't really think it's that big of a deal to ask people to move and fill in the gaps over here. You're just going to DC travel and go about your business anyways. I don't consider it reasonable for people to start their own shell FC just to get a house but I do think it's reasonable for people to move DCs in this case.

Aside from that, I think we could at least make some compromises.

On the demolition timer we could at least extend it to around 6 months to a year. SE still gets to hold you on a leash for your house but it's not nearly as obnoxious as "so help you if you ever unsubscribe for more than two months."

Upgradeable apartments. Just let it happen. Let people upgrade their apartment space and let them upgrade to having a balcony that they can plant on. I know they're trying to remedy housing with island sanctuary but isn't that a bit against the spirit of housing since it's instanced? Apartments are a part of the wards and there's plenty of them. It'd be a nice touch.

[Jojoya]

but defending 45 day timers is ridiculous when we know if SE wanted to they could easily fix the situation.

Different players are going to have a different idea of what an adequate amount of time is to have to take as a break from the game without losing a house.

It's rather weird, but right now the demo timer lines up well with the schedule for the content releases (outside of the somewhat longer period between .55 and .0). As an example, x.1 patch is released. Player subs, plays the content for a few weeks then goes to play other things. They just need to remember to log in and enter their house by the day their current game time runs out. Now they have a solid month they can be unsubscribed before the x.15 patch is released with more content. They resubscribe for x.15, again play for a few weeks (remembering again to log in to reset demo timer as their game time runs out) then can unsubscribe the following 5-6 weeks at which point x.2 gets released. It doesn't work for those looking for extended breaks but it works well for those who just want the break between content releases.

As for easily fix the situation, I agree they can fix the situation. I don't agree that it would be easy for them to do in the time/cost sense.

Adding a better instanced housing system would be the best route as it would be a long term solution and they already have the bare bones basis for an instanced solution via apartments. What they need to do is to expand it into larger spaces with a variety of backdrop elements (and those spaces do not need to be the size of Island Sanctuary). Players could enter their instances homes through the wards just as we currently enter our apartments through them. Still it would take time to get these elements developed and test before they're implemented.

If they intend to stick only with the ward system being the only source of houses, they then would have to make long term plans in advance. Adding more wards would mean adding more physical servers to host those wards, and that means the physical data centers they use would need to have the additional space available for them before the need occurs. Physical data center juggling hasn't exactly been a strong suit for SE with the player base getting upset for various reasons (location choice affecting ping depending on where players live on a continent, the ATT/NTT node issue dispute recently, etc.)

But definitely I would like to see SE fix housing one way or another so the availability/demolition drama can go away. It's an annoyance that doesn't do the game experience any favors.

The key point is you can't purchase a FC house if your account already has a FC house. there is nothing preventing you from taking control of a FC that already has a house.

Except this isn't true. You can purchase another FC house if you already have a FC house on the same world as long as the account character that originally purchased the first house is no longer in that specific FC. If you're trying to get a second FC house on a different world, there's nothing in your way at all outside of standard get the FC set up and wait out the 30 days.

You could even purchase 2 or more FC houses on the same world in the same lottery period (if you get lucky enough to win that many) by purchasing one house for the first FC, removing the purchasing character from that FC then purchasing the second house with the other winning character. The only thing you would have to avoid doing is using a FC Master character to purchase the first house if there is no other 30 day+ member on your service account in the FC to transfer Master to.

If SE was trying to hinder multiple house ownership under the current system, they did a very poor job of thinking out how players would likely workaround the restriction. It adds in some inconvenience but it's not an obstacle. The hardest part is setting up the FC in the first place (since a second service account is needed whether it's your own or that of a different cooperating player) then waiting out the 30 days for lottery eligibility. Rank 6 is far too easy to achieve now with the current amount of Company credits generated by Expert Deliveries.

[kaynide]

....

I haven't bothered doing this in a LONG time, but when I did do it, this is how I did it. If there are other ways to do it, great. He was asking how to do it, and that is a way to do it.

[Zebraoracle]

So:
1) You need 2 accounts, (friend or family, whatever); This friend/family should not be a FC leader with a house.
2) Make 4 new characters between the 2 accounts (2:2, 1:3, whatever)
3) Start a new FC, have the 4 characters join up with FRIEND as leader
4) Level the FC to where it can own a house.
5) Get House (I know, not easy)
6) Pass leadership to your character.
7) Boot 3 non-leader characters, including friend.
8) Make a new 4th character on your account.
9) Go to Step 3, rinse repeat.

The key point is you can't purchase a FC house if your account already has a FC house. there is nothing preventing you from taking control of a FC that already has a house.

Wow that sounds like a massive oversight on SE's part. I'd say I'm surprised it hasn't been addressed, buuut here we are with several busted things in the game already, so...