"Flipping" (Hoarding) Housing

[Rawrz]

Apparently, it's a common thing amongst servers for one person to buy multiple estates, entirely for the purpose of resale, 3-5 times the original price. Since housing is a limited commodity, these prices become realistic.Buying housing with large amounts of money to make ludicrous amounts of money, dominating the housing sector of the economy. Is this acceptable behavior? Do you feel that players should be able to own houses on alts?

[WinterLuna]

I don't agree with it but there's nothing we can really do about it. Each character is entitled to a house.

I completely understand though. Our FC paid someone 30 mil to relinquish a plot (he also gave us a lot of airship mats which we really appreciate) then 28 mil to buy the plot. Another mil went on a building permit and a few more mil on furniture.

This was just a regular purchase and he only owned one plot, but that's just an example of how pricey they can be. The plot is a medium.

[CookieMonsta]

I think from the beginning, it should've been only ONE house per ACCOUNT. That way, if people want hoard and flip, they can at least pay an additional sub fee.

[AnimaAnimus]

I think from the beginning, it should've been only ONE house per ACCOUNT. That way, if people want hoard and flip, they can at least pay an additional sub fee.

2* or you cannot have a personal house and ever lead an fc and there is no reason an fc leader shouldn't be able to own their own house when all other members can.

[Dotsusama]

Yeah 2 houses per account would have been much more reasonable, but even with that + reclamation system in place, there are not nearly enough houses to go around. The fact that people can use the system as-is to make lots of gil just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

[AnimaAnimus]

So I am going to leave these excerpts from past producer letters here for your enjoyment...

I may just get a ban for this but its direct from Yoshi, but it is kindda calling them out on and they aren't responding to housing threads for a reason I assume so idk lol




[0:24:17]
Q: If a housing area becomes full, will it automatically create a new instance? Or is that something you will have to do manually?
A: In order to use the server space efficiently, we will make sure that the housing area is completely full through by checking the server source code and then add instances through updates when necessary. Therefore, the process will not be automatic. We will carefully monitor how much space is available and plan ahead whenever additional space is required.


[0:29:43]
Q: Is it possible to have a storefront with a counter in your housing area?
A: Yes, this is possible. We will continue to add objects for the housing area. In order to set up a store within your house, you will need to place a store-like object within your house, have the house accessible to everyone, and then have the retainer act as the seller.


[0:30:31]
Q: Will the houses have balconies?
A: It will differ depending on the type of house. While some will have balconies, others will not.

Letter from the Producer LIVE VI Q&A

[0:08:26]
Q: What kind of bonuses will players receive by using housing?
A: I've mentioned a couple of things here and there in the past, like placing items such as towers on your property. By placing various items around the house, players can receive a variety of different enhancing effects. As an example, you and your friends or free company members can receive a two-week-long EXP bonus or a bonus to gil received. Of course, we won't create anything that pressures players into buying a house, but they will still have benefits.


[0:09:27]
Q: If you buy a small house and piece of land, when it starts to get too cramped will it be possible to upgrade to a larger house?
A: We're working on a system for moving that will be introduced in a patch. Also, depending on lag and stress on the servers, we may allow players to own a second house. But yes, you can be sure that when we're finished, you'll be able to upgrade to a bigger house.


[0:10:11]
Q: Will it be possible to sell land deeds in the market ward or other places?
A: Yes, it will be possible. They can also be traded. Just as an example, you could give a house to that special someone in your free company as a present.


[0:10:53]
Q:Is it possible to have multiple houses? For example, to have a primary residence in Limsa Lominsa and a villa in Gridania or Ul'dah?
A: Right, it's just like what I was talking about before. Having a main house with another house located in a different country. Once we have a better understanding of the burden this will place on the servers, we might be able to implement this.

Letter from the Producer LIVE Part IV & Q&A Summary

[0:45:55]
Q: Will houses be personal or shared?
A: First it will be joint housing. A house of this size is going to require everyone to dish out some dough. It’s pretty expensive.

You can make furniture available to people of the same free company, or, if you want, you can set permission levels so all of your friends can use the furniture and what not. There are quite a few settings.

The reason why we’ve decided to establish them as free company bases first is because inside of the houses there is a new kind of system that involves parks and towers.

Parks would give a bonus to everyone in the free company, like an extra 25% to experience points earned. It could make crafting faster to level, or maybe give success bonuses for HQ crafting. It's a system that allows members to add things that will give boons to the entire free company. You’ll be able to increase the size of your house, and also your company can rank-up through free company points, allowing you to place more parks and towers around.


I’d first like to create a strong community within FFXIV. When new members join, you’ll be able to get more points, and we’d like to establish a system that encourages people to support new players coming into the game. Once the community has had time to come together we will then allow players to have their own private housing and branch out from there

Even for an MMO, I believe it’s nice to have a place to call home.

Letter from the Producer LIVE Part III & Q&A Summary (09/27/2012)

[0:59:26]
Q: Can you explain housing in more detail?
A: The image that we just showed was concept art for the Limsa Lominsa housing area. We’ve been working on mock-ups, and you can see a dummy house right here. This house is just a placeholder we’re using to check house sizes and such, and it’s not an actual design. In this picture, you can see a wider view of the same area. There are several areas where players can build houses, and a large open area. Basically, there will be three different types of housing areas areas: desert, forest, and sea. Here we have the concept art for the forest housing area. This isn’t finalized, of course. We’ll publish more information as soon as we can.

Players will first choose an area they prefer and then purchase land there. Kind of like “I like this spot!” Once they purchase the land with gil at the signboard, players will buy the right to build a house there.

Once players have constructed a basic house, they can open a special housing widget to browse and purchase housing materials, such as roofing. You could also commission crafters to build roofing, which could then be equipped, in a sense, onto your house to change its external appearance. You can even hang tapestries on your walls. So that’s basically how you can change your house.

The yard… I shouldn’t show anymore actually… As I mentioned previously, houses will also have yards where you can place objects. For example, if you place a chocobo stable in your yard, you will be able to raise several chocobos there.

There will be updates dedicated specifically to the housing system. Content won’t end with a single release; we plan to introduce new features, such as additional ways to play with your yard. Additionally, players will be able to drag and drop objects within their house easily, in both the PC and PS3 versions. We’re working hard to create a very flexible system.

Houses can be used as headquarters for linkshells and Free Companies, and they can eventually be expanded to allow individual rooms. To prevent disputes over land, housing areas will be instanced. After the maximum number of houses are sold in one instance, players will be asked to purchase land in a different one. More instances will be added as necessary.

Also, land will be available in small, medium, and large sizes. Certain structures will require huge tracts of land to build.

We should be able to provide more details near the conclusion of the Beta Test.



And this just for fun lol....

44:17
Q: This wasn't mentioned in the FFXIV 2.0 announcement, but are there any updates on jumping and swimming?
A: Let's start with jumping. Since we're completely renovating the map for FFXIV 2.0, we'll have to perform a lot of tests when implementing jumping. We've debated waiting until Version 2.0 to do so. We are currently running various tests on it actually.

For swimming, we're looking at implementation sometime after 2.0. We think that being able to swim wouldn't be much fun by itself, so we'll also be adding areas that you can explore underwater, temples and the like. Please keep in mind that we're still in the very early stages of development.
* A work-in-progress video of jumping animations was shown at 44:52.

[Ryel]

2* or you cannot have a personal house and ever lead an fc and there is no reason an fc leader shouldn't be able to own their own house when all other members can.

In that case you could easily count the FC as it's own entity and have player limits based on the plot size to FC member ratio but i can already see the pitchforks rising if they did something like that.

[AnimaAnimus]

In what I copy/pasted above they stated they were going to constantly monitor it to add more space as needed and you could buy a standard size house and add towers with fc points to make it more spacious inside and to encourage people to help new players, so a small house wouldn't really have been that bad for a larger sized fc.

My guess is more of it was planned but either fell to the wayside or couldn't be implemented. Either way their silence on the subject seems to make them seem more and more like they just don't care. They need to learn that silence on a subject that is greatly discussed speaks volumes.

[BreathlessTao]

The same thing as the reclamation system: with how absurdly limited the availability is, especially when directly compared to demand - a "one personal house per account" policy should have been there right from the very start. Just another example of that phenomenally awesome mindset of SE that seems to surface in certain cases, you know where they go "leaving it to the players is the best thing to do". And as all others, this is one is also just another example of why that mindset does not work. Personally, I'm utterly disgusted at the whole concept of house hoarding and wouldn't mind seeing the offenders banned (or at least suspended).

As for all the things that have been planned and mentioned in live letters...... I guess all that just fell through. And I'm willing to bet all that ultimately came down to money, beneath the "more priority" issues and the "deadlines to meet" issues.

[AnimaAnimus]

This is true, but SE does have its set of default answers.

In version 1 it was "wait til version 2"
in version 2 it was "we are looking into it"
now its dwindled down to just dead silence which is why I think people are getting so antsy, frustrated and nay sayery