"Flipping" (Hoarding) Housing

[Gyson]

from what I remember I think was proven to be faked

Well that sounds more like wishful thinking than reality. I've read a number of excuses (new GM, uninformed GM, etc) regarding that conversation.. yours is the first time I've seen someone suggest it was faked. I find it much more likely that SE is looking to protect themselves against having to deal with housing trade deals gone bad.

[StouterTaru]

Do you feel that players should be able to own houses on alts?

Any argument against alts owning houses can be used against personal houses in general, or small FC houses. Let's pretend you want to take away someone's personal house so you can have one. Why do you deserve a personal house more than a FC deserves a house? Why does a 4 person FC deserve a house over a 50 person FC?

As far as the widespread and rampant flipping of houses, where are the flippers buying the houses from? All plots are sold out, so they are either getting them from people they paid to relinquish, people who just abandoned them, or they bought them 17 years ago before they all sold out.

[Laerune]

The way they implentented the housing feature was bad from the start. I know there is the whole server issue stuff going on, but this game is showering us with housing stuff, stuff that majority of players on each server are not able to use, because they can not afford or because there is a lack of free housing plot.

I highly recommend SE to play Wildstar for a week or two and learn from them on how to do housing right. Housing should be:
1, There should be a plot for every player, just because someone joined the game a year later, does not mean, they should be punished for it.
2, Housing should be locked behind a questline or it should be very affordable for every player. Maybe they could give a hut for free and you pay to upgrade it into a mansion.
3, Let the players pick their own neighbours, I rather live in a neighbourhood with friends and FC/LS members, then strangers that will never say a word to me.

I doubt any of these features will be added to the game, because SE has a BIG server memory issue, that they need to sort ASAP or else this game will never move forward.

[Xieveral]

2, Housing should be locked behind a questline or it should be very affordable for every player. Maybe they could give a hut for free and you pay to upgrade it into a mansion.

In a perfect hell, they'll make it like the relic quests and you'll have to choose between obtaining/building on/upgrading your plot or upgrading your relic with the items obtained.

[Hakuohsama]

Well soon plots will be free from players who dindt log in for 45 days.
I hope that i get a small Plot for myself cause there no space at all on my server.
But even after looking arround for Plots mby barely 10 Plots will get free from inactiv players.

[SendohJin]

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.

this is not at all common (at least on my server), if it was common you should see plots for sale in PF everyday and i don't.

it also can't be common because someone who wants to do that needs to have open plots to buy and my server never has any open plots.

[viewtyjoe]

Regarding the server limitations, the main issues seem to be maintaining all of the furniture in all of the plots in a subdivision of a ward. Why not move to an instanced system? House exterior and interior are fully instanced, can be culled when not in use, perhaps limited to one house per FC and one personal per player. The whole concept of permissions would stay, so you'd still be able to have guests, so you can bring non-FC members on airship missions or to advance workshop projects. It seems like a more tenable system, plus I imagine it'd make moving easier: just dump everything in the old house into the inventory of the new house upon move. Then the players can re-place furniture and such.

[ToniRomo]

I came across a house flipper the other day. He wanted 20 million gil to release a small house. His highest class was level 50 so he must have just been an alt.

I really want a house, but I'm not giving someone 20 million gil to release an item they aren't even using. The housing system in this game is terrible.

[Callback]

I just don't know why housing isn't all instanced. You have your house which you can teleport to at any time to set up a private instance. Anyone can choose to visit by teleporting from your character menu, whether in FC, friendlist, or in the field. if an instance already exists, they will join it. Permissions can be adjusted if you want to deny certain types of visitor and leave it as friend or FC only. You can save a few favorites, generally houses you have permissions for. Private rooms work that way, why not all of housing? it would also give us bigger yards to work with for the exterior since it wouldn't need to be fenced in so small.