Instanced Housing

[ErikMynhier]

one issues about housing they should fix is not allowing a FC leader to own a personal house too. Cause I know a few who run a active FC has a med-large house and spend whatever free time at said house and yet they own a personal medium or large themselves what they rarely go to and when they do it just to reset the 45day count down.

The problem there is found in the nature of a FC. Say your FC has a house and so do you. If you become the leader should your personal be auto-demolished? Of course not. What if you are next in line to be the leader of your FC as the old leader never came back. You have been there a year and the next guy in line hates you. Does the system skip you over because you have a house? Is everyone with a personal not allowed to start a FC? "The guy that started this FC has a house so we as a FC will never get one... forget this."

A lot of issues that are avoided because a FC and personal house is not the same thing.

As for a fix to the argument over instance vs neighborhoods, why not both? Have the wards as they are now and introduce special spots in the world for instance housing? A massive airship that "links" to the aether of a town or settlement and can be moved? A private tropical island that you get to by rowboat npc? An underwater base? A witch's cave? We could have a blast with all of this.

[Rymm]

if it was FCs only, we'd already have enough housing available across all servers and our only issue would be the uneven population

While I agree that having both personal owners and FCs competing for the same houses certainly exacerbated the problem, claiming that limiting it to FCs only would fix the problem is being overly optimistic. Lamia is fairly middling in population and we have multiple FCs who (using 'shell' FCs with a single member and almost the exact same name) own multiple plots. One FC even has no less than seven plots in addition to their main FC mansion, in just the Mists alone.

Limiting housing to FCs would just increase the number of shell FCs.

In general, I feel that apartments are a (baby)step in the right direction. Square should leave the wards as they are, maybe occasionally add more (like they do now) or open a new housing district (like they are with SB,) but their main focus for housing should be in improving and expanding the apartment system. Adding more size tiers at a range of prices, giving the larger ones access to gardening somehow (greenhouses or balconies,) allowing owners to share them with other players, and maybe even giving them workshop access (slapping a door in the lobby that can take you to your FC's workshop can't be that hard to swing) would do wonders for the housing situation.

[Zojha]

Limiting housing to FCs would just increase the number of shell FCs.

Oh, it would do that in part - but I very much doubt that it would get anywhere CLOSE to the competition player characters cause.

We have 300k people in endgame alone. Even if you'd arbitrarily double the current amount of FCs due "shell" FCs, you'd still have only half the competition for housing plots as you do with personal houses allowed.
That's not even considering that you can have a personal house IN ADDITION to a FC house. So you can have your shell FCs and then have the same characters hog an additional house each.

There is no possible way housing can be fixed while personal housing remains in the wards. The first step to a solution is acknowledging and accepting that. Until then, housing will remain effed up.

[Penthea]

There is no possible way housing can be fixed while personal housing remains in the wards. The first step to a solution is acknowledging and accepting that. Until then, housing will remain effed up.

Yea but the other side of it is people could make shell fcs on their alts...a player could still have up to eight houses on a server. And eight apartments on top of that.

Again I stress; before putting more restrictions on the current system SE need to expand on what we already have. Restrictions on top of restrictions will not solve anything. We need more options, not less.

A great first step would be to increase the amount of tenants a personal house can have (really makes no sense that medium and large houses can only have up to four players) and introduce tenancy for apartments. This would most certainly not be a difficult thing to do given that tenancy already exists in the game.

[Solowing]

While I agree that having both personal owners and FCs competing for the same houses certainly exacerbated the problem, claiming that limiting it to FCs only would fix the problem is being overly optimistic. Lamia is fairly middling in population and we have multiple FCs who (using 'shell' FCs with a single member and almost the exact same name) own multiple plots. One FC even has no less than seven plots in addition to their main FC mansion, in just the Mists alone.

there is an FC on excalibur that owns 22 or 23 houses <HOME>

[worldofneil]

there is an FC on excalibur that owns 22 or 23 houses

Each FC can only have one house so that'll be 22 completely different FCs that just have the same short short tag so they all look the same.

If you visit/view any of their house details you'll see the actual free company names are different as they have to be unique, the short tag does not.

I'm sure it probably is the same people behind them all, but they would have had to level each FC up to rank 6 to be able to buy a house which is an impressive amount of effort...

[ManuelBravo]

Actual instances are inside of houses. Apartments was a temporary solution and hopefully with new area coming soon people may start selling their plots. Housing is a minor part of the game ( people seem to like decorating though ) and the only real benefit I see in it is if its a FC house even if it's a one man FC. You might as well rent your home to an FC and make gill that way lol.

[Naria]

While I wish that they had never opened the housing wards to personal housing (especially if the wanted the wards to feel alive and busy) and instead come up with a separate system, "shell" FCs have been around since the wards launched. The biggest step forward they could make to help spread the current resources would be to limit the amount of houses that could be owned by a single account going forward. Even if they grandfathered in multi-house owning accounts and still let a person have one FC house and one personal house per server it would prevent someone from snatching up nine houses in Shirogane on a single account (it is going to happen).

I'm a FC leader and we have a house and I'm not the sole decorator of it. Personally, I wouldn't mind if they limited it to one house per account and therefore I couldn't have my own (which I don't) but I can understand why other FC owners don't feel the same.

[Acilith]

Nobody on Balmung is gonna snatch up 9 houses, those houses are going to be gone in 5min flat. No time to log over onto alts and slog through the 2k+ person queue.

[Rymm]

Nobody on Balmung is gonna snatch up 9 houses, those houses are going to be gone in 5min flat. No time to log over onto alts and slog through the 2k+ person queue.

You are probably right if you are talking about a single person, but in my post I specifically mentioned FCs who were controlling large swaths of plots. A decently sized FC would be more than capable of coordinating between multiple members and of having already prepped shell FCs, being ready to log on and snatch up several houses simultaneously. Given the login queue and the fierce competition on higher pop servers it is unlikely they could get all the houses they tried for, but they could still feasibly get multiples with relative ease.