Thread: 4.2 Housing Update

Originally Posted by Besame

Just whom would you have decide what number is classified as "hoarding"? Is 2-3 enough, is 8 too many? Unless you have a medical professional in SE's cluster, I don't know who else would be able to make that determination hehe. SE allowed this behavior to begin and flourish sans consequences since 2013 and now it is up to them to try and make it fair for the rest of their playerbase. Can they? Well not everyone will be happy however, they have to start somewhere which is what they are doing now.

It's actually rather simple, if you have more than one private and one fc house, you have too many because that's all a new character would be able to get to after 4.2. Personally, I'd even start the demolition timer on any FC that drops below 4 active accounts.

You can talk about fairness, but realistically, it's not fair that FCs haven't been able to get houses. Nor will it be fair that many will struggle to get one house while others maintain their extras for, potentially, years to come.

Originally Posted by MeridaQ

Why is it a huge mistake? They are going to continue adding wards, and are planning on updating apartments to Small/Medium/Large. They understand the desire for houses and will continue closing the gap between players subscribed and houses/apartments. With 4.2 I think every FC that wants a house will have one. With a few more ward additions, the desire for personal houses will also be satiated. So what is the issue with them grandfather some players in? Over time many of them will be reclaimed through auto demos.

Forcing those who have extra homes to relinquish them would free up more wards in the patch that it happens. This helps ensure that not every house will sell out during the FC only stage so there are some left when private ownership is opened.

This is an action that can be taken right now to alleviate the issue, it won't solve it but it would buy some more goodwill with those players who are still stuck outside the housing system trying to get in while they work up to more wards. Also, the more unique individuals you have in the housing the more chances there are someone will go inactivate and get auto demo'd.


Regarding the outcome of the patch... personally, I expect that the houses will likely sell out before private ownership opens up. Not being able to get a FC house seems to be a fairly consistent complaint and there are ways houseflippers could work even with the restrictions.

Also, if every FC without a house wants one, the number of wards being released wouldn't be enough on the random servers I'm searching. They wouldn't even be enough if half of them wanted one.

And then the moment they do sell out, if there are still people sitting on extra houses, the complaints about those people will just start up again. Where if you take them away, those people will be upset for a while but it will no longer be something to complain about. The only thing left would be waiting for more wards to open.

Originally Posted by Sairys

snip

Excluding one popularized story where a guild/couple own 30 houses, I think you overestimate how many players own more than 2 houses. And the only reason the people who bought up 30 houses could buy up 30 houses was they were on a dead server. It takes about 295 million gil just to buy the properties, 3 accounts to own the houses and maybe 1-2 months just to grind 28 FCs to rank 6 (as I don't think jump potions were available at the time they initially bought the houses).

Think of the time it took to earn 295 million gil, level 28 FCs to rank 6, and all during this time someone random could have showed up and bought any of those properties. Instead no one ever showed up during their whole execution of the land grabs.

months had to have gone by where no one was interested in any of the properties.

Originally Posted by illgot

.... I think you overestimate how many players own more than 2 houses. ....

Exactly this. Too many people look at the exception and make it the norm. There aren't enough players with more than one house to make a dent in the demand for housing. By forcing the return of houses SE does nothing more than make more of their player base upset and causes additional problems related to cash shop item handling. It is better to grandfather current multi-house owners and let them come to the market through attrition. If they wan to incent people to freely give up extra houses adding the automatic ability for alts to share housing would go a long way. Even this won't fix the problem. There are only two options for SE to resolve the housing issue. Add enough wards so every FC and player can have a house or create a fully instanced housing system where housing is effectively unlimited. They could even keep both, keeping the current wards for those who are willing to live with its restrictions and a parallel instanced system where they lift the item number restrictions, allow for upgrades on the same plot, etc.

Originally Posted by Claviusnex

Exactly this. Too many people look at the exception and make it the norm. There aren't enough players with more than one house to make a dent in the demand for housing. By forcing the return of houses SE does nothing more than make more of their player base upset and causes additional problems related to cash shop item handling. It is better to grandfather current multi-house owners and let them come to the market through attrition. If they wan to incent people to freely give up extra houses adding the automatic ability for alts to share housing would go a long way. Even this won't fix the problem. There are only two options for SE to resolve the housing issue. Add enough wards so every FC and player can have a house or create a fully instanced housing system where housing is effectively unlimited. They could even keep both, keeping the current wards for those who are willing to live with its restrictions and a parallel instanced system where they lift the item number restrictions, allow for upgrades on the same plot, etc.

The people who will be upset will almost exclusively be the people who have the extra houses, along with a handful of unaffected people with misplaced empathy. I don't have a lot of sympathy for them, as they knowingly abused the system to horde an extremely limited resource. And, as was stated, there aren't many of these people. Even if 100% of the folks affected quit the game in disgust after having their homes taken away, it would hardly put a dent in the subscription base. It should go without saying that not even close to 100% of folks affected will do this; maybe a small handful, with the remainder grumbling on the forums a while before everyone eventually forgets about it all.

By the same token, there aren't many of these people. Taking their homes away will not suddenly flood the servers with available housing. To me, though, gaining new housing is not the reason to do it, but rather to FINALLY address an injustice that has been tolerated for far too long. I mean, seriously; the moment SE announced that FC housing was going to be our personal housing as well, folks knew it was going to be a limited resource. Hoarders did not go in blind.

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

The people who will be upset will almost exclusively be the people who have the extra houses, along with a handful of unaffected people with misplaced empathy. I don't have a lot of sympathy for them, as they knowingly abused the system to horde an extremely limited resource.

There has been no abuse of the system. They bought houses in exactly the manner SE wanted them to buy houses. When SE designed the system and allowed personal houses they decided that it was on a character basis so intended for a player to have the ability to own more than one house. Since it is as designed it isn't abuse. You and others keep blaming the players when housing is entirely SE's fault. Instead of crying selfishly, "If I can't have it then nobody should" maybe y'all should worry that SE is still not doing enough to ensure adequate housing for the player base with 4.2.

Originally Posted by Besame

The only people that abused housing are the ones that buy and flip for huge profits.

Originally Posted by Besame

SE did allow multiples per account after all so to me, one house per alt was not abuse.

Agreed, the system was setup so players could buy 1 personal character and 1 FC house per character. Not abuse, just how the system was designed.

Originally Posted by Besame

The multiple plot owners should be given "X" amount of time to sell/demolish/give away, whatever, any more than 1 plot per main

Woah there! You just said they did nothing wrong. Why are you trying to punish them now? Because they have something you'll now never be able to get? (multiple houses).

Also sell/giveaway won't really be options with 4.2 either. There is no official sell function and I can't see many people wanting to "buy" a plot if they can't have some guarantee that they'll get it with the new random timer.

Same for giveaway, no guarantee that the person you're giving it to will be able to get it. That only leaves demolish and literally no incentive for anyone to do that.

Originally Posted by Besame

Now that housing has become such an issue SE needs to step up and deal with it.

Well going forward people will only be able to buy 1 personal house etc.

Originally Posted by Besame

I could of bought a house on my alt but I chose not to.

Okay. The option was there though.

Originally Posted by Besame

There is something to be said for not being a glutton and sharing with others.

You just said at the start of your post "SE did allow multiples per account after all so to me, one house per alt was not abuse", but anyone that actually did that is a glutton?

Originally Posted by Sairys

Forcing those who have extra homes to relinquish them would free up more wards in the patch that it happens. This helps ensure that not every house will sell out during the FC only stage so there are some left when private ownership is opened.

This is an action that can be taken right now to alleviate the issue, it won't solve it but it would buy some more goodwill with those players who are still stuck outside the housing system trying to get in while they work up to more wards. Also, the more unique individuals you have in the housing the more chances there are someone will go inactivate and get auto demo'd.


Regarding the outcome of the patch... personally, I expect that the houses will likely sell out before private ownership opens up. Not being able to get a FC house seems to be a fairly consistent complaint and there are ways houseflippers could work even with the restrictions.

Also, if every FC without a house wants one, the number of wards being released wouldn't be enough on the random servers I'm searching. They wouldn't even be enough if half of them wanted one.

I will address the comments I put in bold. Removing houses from multi-house owners will not ensure anything but a PR nightmare and loss of subscriptions. There are many people who are fundamentally against the idea of removing homes from people who have them under completely legitimate means.

Second this "goodwill" isn't being very honest. People will be upset if they lost their homes and people who don't have multiple homes also will be upset. There are many people that have said this both on the forums and reddit. There will be some that are happy, but from what I have read on the forums, go ahead and look back a few pages there are some very vindictive people who are getting extremely upset at the idea of grandfathering people. Reddit had even more and harsher comments but I can't quote those on the official forum.

Lastly if you randomly search the servers are you being specific with your search? Did you choose FC's currently without an estate or plot? Did you add number of active members to that search? Because then you get much closer to the accurate count. For example on Ultros there are 2770 FCs out of that there are 1919 FCs without a house/plot. Then after checking active members there are 355 FCs that don't have 4 or more members so 1919-355 = 1564. They are adding 1440 more plots for 4.2 so only 124 FCs would not get a house if every FC on Ultros purchased a house. I would say that is more than half, and I also did random searches and this is similar across other servers. This does not account for the houses that will explode because of auto demos and I would also not assume that every FC on each server are planning on buying a house.

I ask again why is it necessary to remove houses from multi-owners? They will continue to add housing and apartments and as of 4.2 most of the FC's will have houses. It took me a year and a half to get my personal house, yes it takes a while to get but if you watch the wards you can get it much faster than I did. Let's also keep in mind not everyone wants a house or apartment. I said this before but I think if they had enough houses for 80% of the server population everyone that wants houses will have a house.

Question

Will the single-house for FC per person impact those who are not the FC leader?
Example.
I have multiple characters on a server.
Character A is in FC 1, they have a small plot in the Mists currently.
Character B is in FC 2, they don't have a house and are planning to buy one.

I am not the leader in either Free Company.
Will my membership within the company prevent FC 2 from buying a house?

Originally Posted by missarielle

Question

Will the single-house for FC per person impact those who are not the FC leader?
Example.
I have multiple characters on a server.
Character A is in FC 1, they have a small plot in the Mists currently.
Character B is in FC 2, they don't have a house and are planning to buy one.

I am not the leader in either Free Company.
Will my membership within the company prevent FC 2 from buying a house?

Your membership in FC 1 will prevent you from buying a house for FC 2, however anyone else with land permissions in FC 2 (provided they don't also have an alt character in a different FC) can still purchase a house for FC 2.