Suggestion: Do not allow multiple service accounts all own houses.

[BiffWellington]

I think the upcoming server shuffle will really help alleviate the housing shortage.

If you're on Balmung, you're not likely to be able to get a house anytime soon. But, you'll soon get a free transfer. You can use that to go live on another Crystal server, such as Malboro, where's a good amount of housing currently available. Then you can use World Visit to do all your adventuring on Balmung.

It's not a perfect solution, but you'd at least be able to buy a house and continue playing with your friends.

And if enough people do this, there'll be less demand for housing on Balmung, making it a bit easier for those who stay there to get a house at some future point.

Also, with the demand for housing spread out more evenly across all servers, we'll be more likely to see more wards added. They don't want to add more wards right now because demand for housing is so much greater on the most heavily populated servers that adding a few new wards wouldn't make enough of an impact there to be worthwhile, and the servers that already have a lot of vacant lots would just get more of them. But, spread enough of that demand out to where the supply is, get the neighborhoods on all servers more evenly filled, and adding new wards more frequently will become much more feasible.

[Jojoya]

I'm fairly sure the houses are unused if they have practically 0 furnishing and the characters have literally been level 1 for over a year lol. But anyway, if a yard causes others to have to go into awkward camera angles to use the Marketboard/Retainer bell, then yes, it is most definitely is other peoples business. I very clearly said that I completely understand they aren't breaking any rule technically, and never said they're doing any loopholes. I'm only saying that it's dumb and shouldn't really be a thing. And pretty scumbaggy to boot.

If they're level 1, then it's a FC house. The owner is probably operating airships and submersibles if the house appears to otherwise be unused.

SE has no way to know if John Doe in New York City is also John Doe from New York City. There are a lot of John Does in New York City and some of them are probably father and son living under the same roof. As a result, SE would have no way to enforce any per person rules. The best they can do is per service account.

I think the upcoming server shuffle will really help alleviate the housing shortage.

If you're on Balmung, you're not likely to be able to get a house anytime soon. But, you'll soon get a free transfer. You can use that to go live on another Crystal server, such as Malboro, where's a good amount of housing currently available. Then you can use World Visit to do all your adventuring on Balmung.

It's not a perfect solution, but you'd at least be able to buy a house and continue playing with your friends.

And if enough people do this, there'll be less demand for housing on Balmung, making it a bit easier for those who stay there to get a house at some future point.

Also, with the demand for housing spread out more evenly across all servers, we'll be more likely to see more wards added. They don't want to add more wards right now because demand for housing is so much greater on the most heavily populated servers that adding a few new wards wouldn't make enough of an impact there to be worthwhile, and the servers that already have a lot of vacant lots would just get more of them. But, spread enough of that demand out to where the supply is, get the neighborhoods on all servers more evenly filled, and adding new wards more frequently will become much more feasible.

I think that's a little on the optimistic side. SE has already stated they are working to find a way to prioritize players attempting to return to their home worlds if that world has a queue due to congestion. That's going to make anyone on Balmung who wants to continue to play with friends on Balmung think twice about transferring off world just to get a house.

There's also uncertainty over just how much housing will be available on the lower pop worlds once the data center reorganization happens. We had 665 houses available back in October before SE suspended the demo timer. In November it dropped to 532, December it was down to 400 and there were only 257 when I checked yesterday. At that rate Coeurl will be out of houses by mid March, before the data center reorganization even happens.

Who's going to transfer solely to buy a house if their chance at getting a house will be no better than it is on their current world? The reorganization really won't do much to spread out the demand because there won't be enough still available by then. The only way it might impact it would be for SE to resume the demo timer 8 weeks in advance of the reorganization so every thing that might demo will do so before the free transfer period opens.

[redcurrant18]

If housing were more of an individualized element of gameplay it would be so much better. Being able to walk through neighborhoods of sorts is a nice feature, but I've only had my house for little less than a year due to lack of spaces on my previous server, which forced me to move once I had enough money. Even then I could not get my dream mansion, but I'm quite happy with my cottage in Mist. Limitations due to money reasons-this I'm fine with. Limits on housing due to people being excessively greedy and exploiting weak links in the system is something that seriously bothers me. Although ideally it would be one house per character that was kept separate from others, in the system we actually have in FFXIV it would be more fair to limit houses to one per world that each character could share. However, seeing as how simply sending items to alts isn't even allowed, I doubt we'll ever see this happen since the game encourages you to focus on a single character.

[MaybeOliverB]

Well I was thinking more of a blanket statement type of rule. Where they'll only take care of these issues when they actually arise. Also, yes. It'd be unfair for the people paying for a second or third account just to get extra homes for them to sell for Gil or RMT. I can live saying that. It's scummy. Shouldn't be happening. I'd much rather have as many people have chances to get a home as possible, instead of some individuals having 4+ all to themselves. Sure my idea isn't perfect, but it's better than just doing nothing about it because of no rules/regulations stopping it.

Said it before, but I'll say it again. The amount of unused houses from players who stopped playing is vastly superior to the amount of grandfathered personal houses/multi-fc house owners out there. If there's a problem with the housing system right now, it's the ridiculously long auto-demolition timer. For every unused house, players have to wait 45 days. Drop the auto-demo timer to 5 days or less if you want more people to have a shot at owning a house.

[Numenor1379]

Said it before, but I'll say it again. The amount of unused houses from players who stopped playing is vastly superior to the amount of grandfathered personal houses/multi-fc house owners out there. If there's a problem with the housing system right now, it's the ridiculously long auto-demolition timer. For every unused house, players have to wait 45 days. Drop the auto-demo timer to 5 days or less if you want more people to have a shot at owning a house.

Says the person with 27 houses on what... 3 characters on the same account?

The solution is to limit houses to one personal and one FC per service account, while letting all characters on those accounts be co-owners.

I've no issue with people paying for multiple accounts having multiple houses.

[Penthea]

I don't disagree that one person with several accounts with houses on each is an issue...however is it even possible for SE to determine, without any shred of doubt, that the same person owns multiple accounts?

Sure there are some signs that can point to a person owning several accounts, but that sort of activity isn't unique to it. SE can't use the below criteria to hunt down players with several accounts hoarding houses without the risk of punishing innocent legitimate players.

• It's not unusual for more than one person to play XIV in a single home so looking at the IP address won't work.
• It's not unusual for a person to be paying for subs for more than just themselves, so checking the payment info won't work.
• It's not unusual for several people to use the same gaming devices, so checking that won't work.
• It's not unusual for a group of people to be tenants in one anothers houses, so checking tenancy across suspected accounts won't work.

So what's left then? The ToS? Well as far as I know running multiple XIV applications on pc isn't against the ToS. So as long as the player isn't multi-boxing this doesn't count as an offence.

It's clear an automated system won't work, which means SE would have to get staff to personally inspect the activity of suspected accounts. This would cost a lot of time and money. I don't see SE ever doing this.

I think the only things SE could do to reduce the impact of this issue, without huge changes to the housing system, is to reintroduce the limit of fc houses per server back to one and remove grandfathering for both private and fc homes, and reduce the incentive to hoard houses by allowing all characters in the same server have access to the same private home. But that's not a proper fix because a player with several accounts would still have access to a far larger amount of housing than most players.

The only real fix for housing availability issues is some serious change throughout the housing system, if not an actual overhaul.

[Wiccan026]

I feel like most of you are completely missing the point. I'm only saying it's scummy for one single individual player to own 4 houses, and not letting separate service accounts by the same person buy more houses would stop that. That's all. You and your husband are different people with different accounts, so I don't even see how what you said relates to this in the first place. Why even worry about a slippery slope which would very obviously never happen?

My houses are grandfathered and a work in progress... I wasted time and effort to get them way before the rules changed to what they were and I dont use them for scummy purposes.

Also, I know from experience some people dont get a house when they are availalbe just because they dont like the location... which is silly, if they want to have a house get one of the ones available and than eventually you will be able to transfer some day.

[Wiccan026]

I think the upcoming server shuffle will really help alleviate the housing shortage.

If you're on Balmung, you're not likely to be able to get a house anytime soon. But, you'll soon get a free transfer. You can use that to go live on another Crystal server, such as Malboro, where's a good amount of housing currently available. Then you can use World Visit to do all your adventuring on Balmung.

It's not a perfect solution, but you'd at least be able to buy a house and continue playing with your friends.

And if enough people do this, there'll be less demand for housing on Balmung, making it a bit easier for those who stay there to get a house at some future point.

Also, with the demand for housing spread out more evenly across all servers, we'll be more likely to see more wards added. They don't want to add more wards right now because demand for housing is so much greater on the most heavily populated servers that adding a few new wards wouldn't make enough of an impact there to be worthwhile, and the servers that already have a lot of vacant lots would just get more of them. But, spread enough of that demand out to where the supply is, get the neighborhoods on all servers more evenly filled, and adding new wards more frequently will become much more feasible.

Adding more wards would be beneficial but even than I think we'd still see these threads... because again I feel part of the problem (not all mind you but a decent sized portion) is that folks dont just want a house.. they want the house in their perfect location and if they dont have it, they find it upsetting and complain

[LarryButz]

If they're level 1, then it's a FC house. The owner is probably operating airships and submersibles if the house appears to otherwise be unused.

I mean... I guess? Yeah, they are FC houses, I knew that already. Still though, that's a pretty iffy statement, but at least it could be possible. They'd have to buy literally everything though, since the one single character in each FC is level 1. I don't buy it, but it's a better response to everything else here so yeah. I can see it at least.

Said it before, but I'll say it again. The amount of unused houses from players who stopped playing is vastly superior to the amount of grandfathered personal houses/multi-fc house owners out there. If there's a problem with the housing system right now, it's the ridiculously long auto-demolition timer. For every unused house, players have to wait 45 days. Drop the auto-demo timer to 5 days or less if you want more people to have a shot at owning a house.

I mean you can keep saying it, but auto-demo timer isn't what I made this thread about. But since you insist. The auto-demo timer being at 5 days or less would be so incredibly awful lol. Like what? Want to go on a week trip somewhere? Say farewell to your house. Or just don't feel like playing the game for a whole gosh dang five days? Goodbye home. The auto timer is totally fine. Maybe reduce it to 30 days minimum, but anything less is just silly. Even then, taking a single month break happens and losing a house because of it would be an awful feeling. I believe the 45 days is a good number.

[DrWho2010]

I mean... I guess? Yeah, they are FC houses, I knew that already. Still though, that's a pretty iffy statement, but at least it could be possible. They'd have to buy literally everything though, since the one single character in each FC is level 1. I don't buy it, but it's a better response to everything else here so yeah. I can see it at least.

Airship/Subparts are tradeable - master FC makes all the parts and then distributes them to the sub-FC's.