Multiple Houses

[Frizze]

Taking away grandfathered houses does not help fix the problem. There will probably never be enough ward housing until this game dies out some time in the future which may be sooner than some expect with new mmos around the corner that look to be taking notes from current mmo failings. Making a few new worlds on a data center might help considerably and making them where no houses are grandfathered in from the onset. Make them not able to be world visited for the first month they are introduced imo. Allow transfers maybe after 1 week. That will probably be the best thing we could see for people genuinely wanting a straight shot at a house outside of the dev's just giving every player a house straight up for free of any size and style the player wants. Anyhow I do hope a good solution arrives at some point like most others do but it's not a perfect world and this is not a perfect game. So the perfect solution is madness to expect.

If they added 3 new servers, one each to the Aether Crystal and Primal data centers, it would actually do a lot to solve the housing issues on the NA side. You over complicate the solution though. The only people with grandfathered houses bought them more then 2 years ago. They dont get to keep them if they change servers because no one keeps housing when they server swap. So just being a new server eliminates that "concern". World visiting is irrelevant to housing, because you can only buy a house on your home server. If you instead intended that to prevent gil transfers, it takes far less time to make the money to buy a house then some people seem to think. They could open a window for free transfers(they did this when they added new worlds to the EU centers a couple years back), and then just set the servers as preferred until they reached the desired player counts. Most people still wouldnt move, because housing isnt as important as they say it is. Some people would, and they would have free reign to snap up whichever house they want for their personal or FC. And there would still be houses available months from now, because there are still houses open on the newest EU servers too.

[Jojoya]

If they added 3 new servers, one each to the Aether Crystal and Primal data centers, it would actually do a lot to solve the housing issues on the NA side.

Anything that adds more house plots is an improvement at this point, but I don't think one new server per data center would be enough to solve the problem. That's still only 5760 more houses per data center when I've seen unofficial census information putting the player populations on NA worlds between 12,000 and 24,000.

If we go conservative based on those numbers and say average per world is 16,000, that's 128,000 players per NA data center. Currently there are 46,080 houses per data center. Adding one more server increases that to 51,840. Remove the ability of FCs to own houses and limit houses to one per account period (not per server), and that's still only 40% of players able to get a house. Allow FCs to own houses and the number gets reduced further. Assuming they would continue to hold 30% of houses as others claim they do right now means only 28% of players would be able to get a house.

We really need a new way of adding house plots to the game that doesn't rely on the ward system.

[Almagnus1]

I probably do not deserve a response but I'll go back to my original post in this thread and say taking grandfathered houses away is not the answer but veering away from the ward system itself for future house districts would be.. and I mean something akin to apartments but vastly improved upon. Allowing tenants for starters and also allowing alts to share housing would be a good start. Then perhaps increased sized and item allowances. These new "super apartments" should also be subject to the 45 day timer ward houses are as well, and you may not have a normal house in a ward and one of these styles of apartments. You can have a regular apartment alongside one of them tho. That is my suggestion.

IMO the best way forward is to have a bunch of options for people. Like keep the wards, but offer instanced housing along side. Give us the option to have an airship home (while a sub home would be cool... that's not nearly as practical). Make apartments something actually useful. Give us public access to the crafting workshop through Garlond Ironworks or Skysteel Manufactury. Let us launch airship and sub missions without needing to be in an FC to do it. Give us cross gardening without requiring a house.

Doing most of the above would help mitigate a lot of the housing issues, and I imagine if players suddenly had teleports to all their personal houses from all their characters on the same server, some would likely release the duplicate houses as that's a feature that's LONG overdue IMO.

[Basch1990]

I probably do not deserve a response but I'll go back to my original post in this thread and say taking grandfathered houses away is not the answer but veering away from the ward system itself for future house districts would be.. and I mean something akin to apartments but vastly improved upon. Allowing tenants for starters and also allowing alts to share housing would be a good start. Then perhaps increased sized and item allowances. These new "super apartments" should also be subject to the 45 day timer ward houses are as well, and you may not have a normal house in a ward and one of these styles of apartments. You can have a regular apartment alongside one of them tho. That is my suggestion.


Taking away grandfathered houses does not help fix the problem. There will probably never be enough ward housing until this game dies out some time in the future which may be sooner than some expect with new mmos around the corner that look to be taking notes from current mmo failings. Making a few new worlds on a data center might help considerably and making them where no houses are grandfathered in from the onset. Make them not able to be world visited for the first month they are introduced imo. Allow transfers maybe after 1 week. That will probably be the best thing we could see for people genuinely wanting a straight shot at a house outside of the dev's just giving every player a house straight up for free of any size and style the player wants. Anyhow I do hope a good solution arrives at some point like most others do but it's not a perfect world and this is not a perfect game. So the perfect solution is madness to expect.

Taking them away DOES help fix the problem. Albeit a small fix but it still opens up housing for many players allowing them a little more time to pump out more wards. Having 2+ houses and keeping them, as I'm sure most take a break and come back just to keep their housing, is unreasonable in the first place. So in they were taken, it would help a great number of people overall at the risk of a few players.

[Basch1990]

I've had my account since 2010 (1.0) and it has never been possible to have more than 8 characters on a world on a single service account.

So the most houses you could ever get on an world on a single service account was 16 (8 personal, 8 FC).

The most houses you can get right now on a single service account is 9 (1 personal, 8 FC).

I have no idea where you are getting your figures from, but you should probably check your facts before going on a crusade.

Dude. 8 HOUSES! MORE THEN 8 HOUSES! LEARN TO READ!

[Basch1990]

So, the 16 houses described in my post are the highest maximum ever possible. Not the maximum current. Not sure why you'd think 8 personals is the current rule? But as you say: 'you do you'

Past rules were 8 personal houses per account and 8 FCs per account = 16 houses per account.

Current rules are 1 personal and 8 FCs per account = 9 houses per account.

In 2017 and before then, 5 accounts could collect 80 houses total if they tried (and these houses would still exist today.) Currently, 5 accounts can only collect 45 houses. Your hyperbolic situation where 5 accounts had 120 houses is not possible and never has been.

Disappointed that there's nothing here after two days other than this opportunity to help you develop your reading comprehension.

Ima have to stop you there. I have 2 FC's in my server that own more then 10 FC houses. 1 HAS 11 the other 13. That right there seems to be more then 8

[Jojoya]

Ima have to stop you there. I have 2 FC's in my server that own more then 10 FC houses. 1 HAS 11 the other 13. That right there seems to be more then 8

You seem to need information about how the game works.

That's not 2 FCs owning a combined 24 houses. It's impossible for a single FC to own more than one house. That's 24 different FCs owning one house each. If you're going "but the FC tag!", FC tags are not unique. Multiple FCs can use the same tag.

What is possible is for those 24 FCs to be led by a single player who is paying for 3 service accounts and has created 8 characters on each account with each character leading a different one of those FCs. The game itself doesn't know what real person owns an account. To it, each service account represents a separate person. Actual account owner identity will be tracked by the accounts and billing system outside of the game programming.

Is that greedy? It depends on when the player established those FCs and the houses purchased.

If it was done on or before Jan.29, 2018, then no. The game allowed it until that date.

If the FC was created on or after Jan. 30th, 2018 or it was a second FC house purchase on the account then yes, it's greed and exploiting loopholes in the game's system.

Unfortunately, it's outside GM authority to enforce the housing rules posted on the Lodestone just as it's outside their authority to handle bot related issues. Unlike bots, SE evidently didn't set up a team to handle housing ownership exploits so the player base has no recourse when someone chooses to exploit the system.

I do not think giving individuals the ability to have workshop access is a good idea. That should remain as a perk for a free company. It keeps what is there scarce which I think is good for the particular resources to have some sort of value. If a player does not like that within an fc they can found their own tho, as I have and many others like me who were not pleased with how many fcs run things. I do think better apartments is a HUGE step in the right direction.

Except there are multiple individual players who do have access to workshops because they set up shell FCs to get it.

It's not like legitimate FCs can make all that much gil off a workshop anymore with the number of individual players running those multiple workshops for personal profit. SE might as well release workshops to all players in that case and find some other perks for FCs.

I'm also on Siren and ours isn't even a server with a housing shortage.

I think you need to look again. This isn't early 2019 anymore.

I am passionate for xiv housing. I get it , a lot of people are and many WAY more passionate than I am. But as one of them that is passionate for it, I am disgusted by it's current incarnation and what seems to be glee in seeing the garbage getting slung around by angry people at each other. Step up SE. Your forums have a TON of feedback with a slew of what seems like pretty reasonable suggestions.

They've got a major housing update already in the works. We know it's coming after every world has completed its Ishgard Restoration so hopefully that means 5.5.

At this point we need patience. It doesn't hurt to continue to give feedback about changes we'd like to see but we need to stop with the "you need to do something, SE". They are. Once the new update is released, we can give feedback on any problems we still see.

[Sauteed]

SE might as well release workshops to all players in that case and find some other perks for FCs.

It is a massive problem that SE needs to deal with in some form, but what kind of perk would you suggest letting FC's have? How would the shell FC's be kept from obtaining those as well? The whole system; as it stands; is something the devs can probably look back and say "well hindsight is 20/20". I think a first step should definitely be increasing housing supply whether through an "improved apartment" system or just open the flood gates on wards and create many times the amount of wards there are now.

[Jojoya]

It is a massive problem that SE needs to deal with in some form, but what kind of perk would you suggest letting FC's have? How would the shell FC's be kept from obtaining those as well? The whole system; as it stands; is something the devs can probably look back and say "well hindsight is 20/20". I think a first step should definitely be increasing housing supply whether through an "improved apartment" system or just open the flood gates on wards and create many times the amount of wards there are now.

First, take rewards out of house ownership when not everyone gets to own. Move those rewards elsewhere. That alone would reduce demand for houses if SE doesn't plan to enhance the instanced housing system.

Add in rewards that are unlocked by FC members doing content together. Blizzard had done this with WoW guilds but screwed up the system by tying guild ranks and guild member reputation into completing solo content instead of doing group content as a FC.

With respect to making gil, that's a tough one because any time gil is involved there will be someone trying to abuse it for personal gain (was another problem seen in WoW's guild system). How do FCs invest their gil back into their members? Add in ways to get those things without spending gil would be a possible solution. Our FC looks at the massive number of company credits we have but there's little to spend them. Adding more desirable items to the list of what can be purchased with the credits would help.

I missed that one, you got a link to it?

It was in one of the interviews YoshiP did just before last week's Live Letter. The FFXIV reddit discord has the translation (with a link to the original interview) in their translations channel. You'll have to scroll back quite a ways to get to it since the Live Letter translation is the most current info in the channel.

I do not think a weekly/monthly 'rent' cost is a good idea, but it is not the worst I've seen floated around. But also Yoshi P. has stated they do not want that for their housing system.

If they're going to stick to the limited ward system, I think it's an excellent idea. Players are far less likely to buy a house they aren't actively using if they have to keep paying a recurring in-game fee to keep it. It also acts as an additional gil sink the game desperately needs. Any fee could scale based on the house size so it's very affordable on a small but sizeable on a medium or large.

As for things they do or don't want for the system, that can change over time. Maybe they feel differently 6 years later after seeing how the system has worked out.