Suggestion for 3.3 housing and alts

[PArcher]

However, I want a large house but will have to relinquish the small house I have now to gamble on trying to get a large house this patch.

Moving won't let you move a small house into a large plot, you'll only be able to move a small into a small. You'll still have to demolish your current house if you want to upgrade or downgrade

[MugenMugetsu]

Regarding housing and alts, I agree with the account bound house being able to be used by alts on the account. It's the most sensible solution. Also, if this were implemented, ownership of houses should be limited to 1 personal house per account. This would allow more people to be able to own houses, and would also prevent people from being able to hog up all the housing if they can afford to do so.

To prevent the flipping of houses, if you decide that you would like to relinquish ownership of a house/plot, you should be refunded 80% of the gil you put into it, and the house should go back up on the market for anyone to purchase. While in an ideal world being able to sell houses/plots to friends would be ok, people purchasing a house/plot for 8mil and turning around and attempting to sell, or actually selling, the property for twice what they paid is not something that should be able to happen. Preventative measures should be put in place to prevent this from even being a possibility.

[Niwashi]

One house per account/per server is how it should have been from the get go.

I'd agree with that only if it also included letting all alts on the account share the house equally. Currently, the only way for a player who legitimately plays multiple characters to give their characters house access is to get a house for each of them.

However, if instead of a permanent restriction, it were (as OP suggested) a week long restriction whenever new housing is added, that much I could accept even with the current character-specific rules on personal houses. (It wouldn't be ideal, but so long as availability remains limited no rule is going to make the system ideal.)

I wish they would have added the move feature with this patch as well.

Has anyone heard when that's planned for release?

[Jpec07]

House reselling is a symptom of inadequate supply. Housing is a luxury in this game, and the developers build content that is exclusive to the housing system. In this way, they ensure that there is always a demand - but there is almost never enough supply. This means that any vacancy will be immediately filled - without satisfying demand. All this extra demand thereby creates a "black market" of sorts, where people will bypass the "legal" means to acquire a house, often at extreme premiums. The fact that they're now banning for it does cut back on it some, but will make what transactions persist more costly (risk vs. reward).

The true solution is to ensure that there is always ample supply, which means building the housing system in a scalable fashion. It would not be even slightly difficult to configure, and could be easily accomplished if they were to migrate their housing servers to a cloud-based host (AWS, Azure, etc.). It would be easy to abolish the reclamation system, and would also allow a user to take their house with them across servers.

[Lan_Mantear]

The true solution is to ensure that there is always ample supply, which means building the housing system in a scalable fashion. It would not be even slightly difficult to configure, and could be easily accomplished if they were to migrate their housing servers to a cloud-based host (AWS, Azure, etc.).

I had always assumed that 'Resource Limitations' was analogous to 'Budget'. The issue isn't the technology or the development team's competence, but prioritizing development efforts based on the budget they are given.

[MomomiMomi]

What do you consider "own a house on their account"? Is an FC house a "house on their account"? Are people who own an FC house not allowed a personal house? If a person has a personal house, can they not buy one for their FC?

As long as people can buy an FC house even if they have a personal, people can buy up to 8 extra houses.

[ToffeeCoffee]

What do you consider "own a house on their account"? Is an FC house a "house on their account"? Are people who own an FC house not allowed a personal house? If a person has a personal house, can they not buy one for their FC?

As long as people can buy an FC house even if they have a personal, people can buy up to 8 extra houses.

A way to look at it is to compare someone who is in an FC that owns a house or is part of an FC that owns a house, to someone who is either in or not in an FC that does not own a house. There are people who do not have access to housing at all, that wish to take up the opportunity in patch 3.3.
They should be allowed to do so without having to compete with those that already have access to a house. If people weren't flipping houses it might be a different story. If SE put a stop to people flipping houses it might be a different story.

[Colt47]

The only thing I've concluded about housing is that they should never have included housing. If they can't even put the items for midan and gordean gear grinding nor the anima stuff into the quest items tab, how the heck can we expect them to fix the housing problems? Banning almost never works for stopping people from reselling houses.

After a while it starts to feel like these live letters are a repeat in how the developers keep biting off more than they can chew. They don't address the problems that need to get addressed to make the game great and keep slapping content on in hopes that if they fire-hose content people will keep playing. So far their strategy is working, but in the long term it's going to fail, as even Blizzard had to fix systems by the mid point of their third expansion to retain subscribers.

[worldofneil]

Moving won't let you move a small house into a large plot, you'll only be able to move a small into a small.

We don't know that for sure yet, they haven't released any details. It would seem very unlikely they can "place" the furniture back again give the size differences and I think it'll probably all go to the Housing Caretaker. But the actual move process should at the very least automate buying one house and selling/deleting another so the person doesn't end up with no house. Anything else (moving airship progress, moving lights/floors/wallpapers etc) would be a bonus.

But until they release details, and not until sometime after 3.4, we don't know anything at all and we're all just guessing.

Has anyone heard when that's planned for release?

After 3.4 I'm afraid, so probably late September at the very earliest (and that seems unlikely):

A:Just as I mentioned on a previous occasion, we'll be adding land in Patch 3.3, and we're aiming to have apartment-style housing in Patch 3.4. The moving feature will come after that.

[Sardonia]

That is how I understood the move feature that you will probably need to remove the items in your original house first, then when you buy the new plot it demoiishes your original plot making it open to buy.

I just think it is too late to add the move feature after 3.4. Should have been with this patch. Once the new wards open up, the housing will be all gone anyways so the move feature will be kind of useless since housing will be all taken by then. At least on the larger servers. I can work around it but I am going to have to gamble that I can get a larger house after demolishing my original, although I am probably going to try to have an FC member hold on to my original just in case. And if I do get a larger house, my FC member can have the original at no cost to them since I would give them the money to buy it