Restrict Personal Houses to 1 Per Server!

[Almagnus1]

One aspect of this housing issue we can all agree on is that SE needs to restrict personal houses to only one per server.

Only one of you characters on that server can buy the house, and then all of your characters have access to that house but none of your characters can buy another one until you release the first house.

If SE is going to do this, SE should give players advance warning so they can divest their housing assets, and any that fail to do so have all houses get immediately destroyed and released except for the one on the character with the most time played.

This one simple policy change which should have been there from the beginning would solve **A LOT** of the issues around housing that we're seeing right now.

Edit:
After further consideration, SE should put a buy restriction into place with 4.2 (ideally 4.15, but I doubt it would be ready by then), so that anyone with more than 1 personal house can no longer buy personal houses, which stops them from accruing more houses. This should be accompanied by a forced release at 4.25 or 4.3 where all houses, except on the character with the most play time, get released.

This way, players have enough time to figure things out and release the extra houses on their terms.

Edit 2:
Also, if a player doesn't release by the deadline, SE should at least refund the player the purchase price of the property and the player should be able to recover all of the cosmetics that were placed on the property. It's going to be painful enough as is, let's not have SE rub salt in the wound.

[Zero_syndicate]

The problem with this though is that it wasn't implemented in the beginning. So you'd be punishing players that are simply doing what they have the right to do. Had this been an initial implementation then it'd be NO problem. But now you'd have to tell the players that have multiple houses, some filled beyond personal storage capacity, "hey we're removing your right to the houses you have to all but one. You must find a place for all that extra furnishings you have or it also be removed." Essentially evicting people for doing nothing wrong.

[ArchangelSavior]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ill-more-Wards I did made this one month ago I knew it this is happened

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...tanced-housing Please sign up!

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...se-Wards-House they moved to dead server left behind me sigh!.... how stressful and upset! but I don't want to move, Levi server is better

anyone knows how long days Auto-Demolishing without build house? I can see the empty plot without build house >_>

I agree with you, Almagnus1

[Jack-Rakan]

Instead of one server, they need to limit it to one per service account. Two if they are a leader of a FC.

Or, impose a 24 time limit from the time you purchased a Plot per service account.

[anzamoni]

They cannot do this, you have to see this guys. For the same reason devs try not to nerf classes but rather buff them up to par with other classes. It is a terrible design and financial strategy to take things away from the people giving you money. And this is a bit different from you didn't have a house, they added more, you still didn't get one. These are legitimate players who probably worked hard in order to purchase additional houses because they enjoy it. Then you suddenly rip away all the time the took farming that gil, leveling that character, and completing MSQ etc.

It hurts just as many people as it helps. Instead of punishing players retroactively because SE failed to vet this system, another housing solution has to be looked at. You see all these people screaming about leaving the game because they couldn't get a house, what do you think will happen to honest players who have their alts houses ripped away from them or do you just not care because you might have a 2% chance of getting a house? And what happens when the revoke those houses and you STILL dont get a house? We are back at square one again.

It's time to think big picture guys, not just some off the cuff reactionary fix that will help a very small portion of the server get a house and probably drive away just as many from the game and probably just really bad financial choice. I'm willing to wager more people would quit the game because their houses were taken away than would leave because they were unable to get a house on patch day.

Add instanced housing, I saw someone else mention it would almost be like the pirates floating island fortress in the Void Ark series. Teleport or talk to an NPC to move to your own or FCs instanced plot, you can open it to other players or invite friends to be able to enter it. It would have an exterior and interior only in this case you wouldn't click on the houses door to enter it, it would just open since its part of the same instance the exterior is. They are available in Small, Medium, and Large. Have an additional perk where you can use whatever housing materials you want on them and not be ward restricted. Use the relocation feature to enable the ability to move your house from your instance to wards if you have an available plot.

I believe that is a much more equitable solution than 'That guy has more than me, give me one of his'.

[HeroLogarin]

I completely agree with Zero and Almagnus1.

What Almagnus1 said: This is very similar to how ESO runs their housing,but they used instanced housing where the houses are scatter across the continent. If they could do a similar style with the districts, I would be all over this.

What Zero said: This will be the biggest problem to overcome as a developer since its like telling real homeowners, that have more than one home, they can only have one house and they have to move all the other furniture out of their other homes.

it becomes a very delicate situation when trying to reallocate data with something that is becoming so large. It can be simple depending on how its designed, but could go terribly wrong. I don't have a house in FFXIV, would like to, and to see personally how fast they sold in just 10 minutes on Faerie surprised me. It was like Black Friday sales at Walmart.

[GirthQuake]

Even as an FC leader I'd be okay with one house per account. It is quite literally ridiculous that people own multiple houses and aren't punished for it. Has SE made any reply to this issue yet?

[HyoMinPark]

They cannot do this, you have to see this guys. For the same reason devs try not to nerf classes but rather buff them up to par with other classes. It is a terrible design and financial strategy to take things away from the people giving you money. And this is a bit different from you didn't have a house, they added more, you still didn't get one. These are legitimate players who probably worked hard in order to purchase additional houses because they enjoy it. Then you suddenly rip away all the time the took farming that gil, leveling that character, and completing MSQ etc.

SE shot themselves in the foot here by not implementing the “One house per account per server” limitation from the get-go; however, housing initially started out as FC Only, and and FCs can only own one plot. I’m not excusing the lack of this limitation; rather, I’m chastising SE for not thinking to implement such a thing.

Regardless of how “hard” those players worked to own 20 houses, other players worked equally as hard to earn Gil to own just 1. Besides, are you going to tell me that these players use those houses equally? I have alts, but I would only want a house on my main because I play my alts sporadically (once a month, maybe), where as I’m on my main every day. I know other people have other routines with their alts, but I feel like I can say most people are going to be on their main character far more often than an alt. I’m sorry, the system may allow this exploitation, but that doesn’t make it “okay.”

It hurts just as many people as it helps. Instead of punishing players retroactively because SE failed to vet this system, another housing solution has to be looked at. You see all these people screaming about leaving the game because they couldn't get a house, what do you think will happen to honest players who have their alts houses ripped away from them or do you just not care because you might have a 2% chance of getting a house? And what happens when the revoke those houses and you STILL dont get a house? We are back at square one again.

Again, SE shot themselves in the foot here, but there is no reason really to own 20 different houses. I’m sorry, but that’s my opinion. There are far more glaring issues with the housing system (like you insinuated, the shortage being the major one here), but that doesn’t mean that other issues (i.e., being able to make alts and shell FCs to own multiple houses per account) should just have a blind eye turned to them. It wouldn’t really hurt as many people as it would help—take a person with 8 alts on a server, each with their own FC, who owns 16 plots. Making that one person choose a single house (or two, for FC and personal) would benefit 14~15 other characters.

It's time to think big picture guys, not just some off the cuff reactionary fix that will help a very small portion of the server get a house and probably drive away just as many from the game and probably just really bad financial choice. I'm willing to wager more people would quit the game because their houses were taken away than would leave because they were unable to get a house on patch day.

Honestly, I can understand the frustration with the housing situation, even though I would never personally unsubscribe (however, I have felt an increase in apathy towards the game, and I have been mostly idling since the Shirogane release fiasco—most of my time spent playing after I finished the main MSQ and leveled up my favorite jobs to 70 was spent earning money and prepping to get a Shirogane plot, and now I’m without a plot and just feel sort of “meh” towards the game right now). If others unsubscribed just because their alts had their houses taken from them to give others a shot at something everyone should, quite frankly, be able to have, well, then that’s their problem. Not trying to sound mean or anything, but why should one group be chastised or looked down upon for unsubscribing or be told to “get over it” (those who didn’t get a plot this go around), but another “protected” because of their “feelings”—read that as “wallets” (those who have alts that own multiple houses)?

Add instanced housing, I saw someone else mention it would almost be like the pirates floating island fortress in the Void Ark series. Teleport or talk to an NPC to move to your own or FCs instanced plot, you can open it to other players or invite friends to be able to enter it. It would have an exterior and interior only in this case you wouldn't click on the houses door to enter it, it would just open since its part of the same instance the exterior is. They are available in Small, Medium, and Large. Have an additional perk where you can use whatever housing materials you want on them and not be ward restricted. Use the relocation feature to enable the ability to move your house from your instance to wards if you have an available plot.

I believe that is a much more equitable solution than 'That guy has more than me, give me one of his'.

Instanced housing is a good idea, and a good way to go. However, it seems SE is pretty stubborn when it comes to this (there is no way it hasn’t been brought to their attention before—I feel like I recall them saying something about how they “liked” the wards concept currently in place), so, if they continue to cling to the current system, something else is going to have to change. As it stands, if one character were to own one house, that’s only ~20% of the active characters that are eligible to purchase a house (taking into consideration Lucky’s census and his roughly 650,000 estimate on the amount of characters that are level 50 or higher, and can purchase plots). With alts owning multiple houses, that percentage dwindles even more. And we aren’t even taking into consideration active FCs here (not talking about the shell FCs).

[anzamoni]

Housing couldn't have been 1 per server from the get go because it was originally developed ONLY for FCs. The team was working on a personal housing system but players would not stop hounding about housing and the team just allowed players purchase FC housing. A few weeks later the prices were reduced leading to the current issue. So this is just as much the players fault demanding systems be rushed or scraped as it is SE's for not putting their foot down and saying that players would get it when it was ready.

Punishing players for working within the games parameters will not end well, and it is not an exploit. Flipping said plots is an exploit and should be punished, I personally would go as far as having a task force to monitor and catch people doing it through third parties like eCommerce sites and reddit. Imagine if you were to tell everyone that owned a vacation home that they had to either move into that one or sell it because they can only have one home due to the housing shortage. Its the same instance, these people earned the wealth to own a second home(leveled up and alt/fc and earned the gil), they may not use it as frequently as their primary dwelling (Spend most of the time on their main), and it is completely within the 'rules' for them to have that second or third home (The game allows anyone with a Rank 6 FC or level 50 with 2nd Lt. rank purchase a home). Let's go even further, out of 150 thousand (2200 plots x 67 servers rough numbers, doesn't have to be exact though) total homes taking those homes back from those greedy home owners means 75 thousand are free for purchase/use but we have half a million homeless. So you have a few thousand less home less people, but you have a few thousand angry homeowners that their property was seized and still have hundreds of thousands of angry homeless people. Its a drop in the bucket and thats assuming 50% of the plots are owned by people with multiple homes, I am sure it is no where near this number.

Currently housing is limited, the number of players is not. Revoking homes is a very short sighted way to make very few players happy, and more probably unhappy. I imagine the players losing their homes would be pretty angry, and then imagine all the other players rushing to log on to get one of the revoked houses and yet again, not able to get it because they were grabbed up by other FCs and players. It would be this exact same situation all over again, so instead of trying to come up with a short term fix that harms just as many if not more players than it helps why don't we stick to forcing SE to look for another solution.

They tested the waters with an instanced form of housing the apartments, and if I remember correctly it was met pretty much with criticism and not much of it constructive. It happens a lot people just come on here to rage and rant. Not to mention the number of people who would argue against instanced housing just a year or two ago despite it meaning everyone could own a home all because they preferred the appeal of wards. So you have people saying the instanced apartments suck(And they do to their credit) and that they want to live in a ward, not an instance. So it looks like SE was just following what the forums were asking for at that time BUT I agree with you that I believe I recall them saying they liked the wards but that doesn't mean they don't like the idea of having instances alongside Wards. Especially with the relocation feature they added you could feasibly move a house from an instance to a ward or vice versa.

I get why people are frustrated, I am. I made sure that I and my girlfriend (The owner of this account, I was banned I guess for using bad words or something) had enough gil for at least a medium and if another friend got on I was going to give him some as well so we had better chances to secure a house. None of us could get in, her PS4 wouldn't download the patch fast enough and I kept getting server/lobby errors at 5AM with nearly no sleep and having to go to work shortly. I really do get it. I am not telling anyone to get over it or they shouldn't have a house I am saying it is a bad idea for the longevity of the game. Here is a game, that if enough people are upset with something the developers did, the developers will take away your thing to give to someone else. It isn't good for marketing once that gets out.

So why should we anger even more people by trying to get SE to revoke players items, when we could keep encouraging/hounding them to go with a solution that would make most players happy by providing everyone the option to finally own a home.

I could see your argument if there was a million houses and only 650k players, but not everyone had a house. If revoking those plots with the 1 per server rule ensured everyone had a home, I would be more inclined to agree with you but what is being suggested here is lose-lose and would ultimatly just end up with us right back here the day after with people upset again that they didn't get a house, in addition to the people who lost their house.

And while I don't agree with the people telling people who missed a house to stop being salty or whatever, I think everyone can agree this same attitude would be thrown back at the people upset they lost houses they worked for. 'I don't feel bad for them, they shouldn't have been so greedy', 'Get over it', 'So much salt', etc.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

They cannot do this, you have to see this guys. For the same reason devs try not to nerf classes but rather buff them up to par with other classes. It is a terrible design and financial strategy to take things away from the people giving you money. And this is a bit different from you didn't have a house, they added more, you still didn't get one. These are legitimate players who probably worked hard in order to purchase additional houses because they enjoy it. Then you suddenly rip away all the time the took farming that gil, leveling that character, and completing MSQ etc.

It hurts just as many people as it helps. Instead of punishing players retroactively because SE failed to vet this system, another housing solution has to be looked at. You see all these people screaming about leaving the game because they couldn't get a house, what do you think will happen to honest players who have their alts houses ripped away from them or do you just not care because you might have a 2% chance of getting a house? And what happens when the revoke those houses and you STILL dont get a house? We are back at square one again.

Their continual buff to jobs led to the balance disaster of Heavensward where Bard and Machinist completely destroyed Casters while Warrior dominated and Paladin fell into obscurity-- a trend that has gradually continued as Dark Knights drop due to being decidedly inferior. Regardless, which audience is better to potentially anger? The 10-15% of owners who exploited a known problem or the 85-90% who currently have nothing? SE stands to lose considerably more money from disappointed and homeless players compared to the Mateus couple who own twenty six plots between them.

How many are honest players though? A significant number of alt owned houses on the same server are intended for nothing more than a quick flip. Even if every single one of these players quit, it wouldn't come close to the numbers of players contemplating quitting now that Shirogane is gone.