Fix Housing Megathread

[Almagnus1]

Everything you suggested is decent except this. Thinking about this one for about 4 seconds will tell you that it is not a material change from what currently exists.

Current: FC house goes boom if untouched 45 days
Suggested: FC house goes boom if members list is not maintenanced for 45 days

"They're the same picture"

Literally asking SE to do a bunch of work to zero end on that one.

That is suggested specifically to address the shell FCs, since you are correct that it's completely invisible to a healthy FC. However, that's the entire point as it's a deterrent to make it harder for the shell FCs to tie up housing while not affecting the legitimate FCs.

That said, if someone is willing to fork over the money to maintain the account subscriptions needed to pass the FC check, they can keep the house as I'm not distinguishing who is controlling the subs, only stating that they should exist and it should be applied to all FC housing equally. And really, if someone has the disposable income to fund it, who am I to tell them how they should spend their money since it's more money going to FFXIV and we all benefit from that.

Running the math on this, if you have four service accounts, with 8 characters each, they would only be able to tie up 12 houses between the accounts assuming you had 32 characters rolled and ready to go. That's 8 FC houses (as IMO the FC housing restriction that SE has isn't good and it should go), plus the four personal houses from the service account as each FC would need to have a character from each service account to stay compliant, so in essence, each account could only tie up 3 houses. To own a ward, you'd need 12 service accounts (which would be a theoretical maximum of 36 houses which IIRC is slightly larger than the size of a ward allowing for some flex in the houses), and if someone is willing to pay 12*$15 USD = $180/month to keep the ward (or more realistically $150 USD * 12 = $1800/year as 2 six month subs are about $75 USD) then more power to them as they are helping fund FFXIV. However, when you start getting into that much of an annual expense, the financial cost starts to become it's own deterrent and most people would seek to divest the houses at that point... which is why everything listed needs to be present for it to work together correctly.

[Catstab]

Running the math on this, if you have four service accounts, with 8 characters each, they would only be able to tie up 12 houses between the accounts assuming you had 32 characters rolled and ready to go.

My math says 29 FC houses for 4 accounts. 4 accounts x 8 characters = 32, minus 3 to float from one FC to the next. You join the 3 floaters into a different FC for each day of the month, keeps the grace period rolling. This only has to be done from day 1-29, from day 30-45 you can just focus subs.

And you could always run all 32, provided you have a friend willing to run 3 alts for you.

Unless the system is sophisticated enough to avoid being exploited in this manner, it wouldnt be effective.

[Jojoya]

Could flip the housing system from the way it originally started. Originally it was intended to be Free Company only. Change it so it's personal only.

Create a new system to serve FCs as meeting halls for their members. Keep it to the theme of what a Free Company is - a group of adventurers contracting their services to the Grand Companies. Workshops could be attached. Customization with housing furnishings could be allowed. They might lose gardening (though Island Sanctuaries suggest that they've solved the gardening in an instance problem) but if most FCs use the garden mainly to grow Thavnairian Onions for their members, those could be placed on a vendor in Thavnair (would make sense) at the approximate price that has been seen across the MBs in recent months (somewhere between 100-150k).

There's still one outstanding problem with personal ownership restrictions and that is that ownership is per world, not per service account. There are far more active players world wide than there are houses world wide. Each player with houses on multiple worlds is taking away houses from players who don't have one. I have characters on 8 different worlds. If I were to buy a house on each of those worlds, that's 7 other players that would never be able to buy a house. Quite frankly, that sucks.

No one needs a house for each of their characters even if they want it (sorry, someone's RP head canon is not a reason to deprive other players of game content). A player can pick which character gets a house and the remaining characters can get an apartment. No, I would not expect SE to take away houses from players who have already legitimately obtained them under the rules currently in effect if they were to make this change. It would only apply to future purchases.

Above all, SE needs to get its act together and make certain that every player that wants a house can get one. It is shameful that they continue to cling to a system that does not serve their players adequately when they do so well in other regards. Housing drama like this does not exist in other games. Why does SE want it to exist here?

[Almagnus1]

There's still one outstanding problem with personal ownership restrictions and that is that ownership is per world, not per service account. There are far more active players world wide than there are houses world wide. Each player with houses on multiple worlds is taking away houses from players who don't have one. I have characters on 8 different worlds. If I were to buy a house on each of those worlds, that's 7 other players that would never be able to buy a house. Quite frankly, that sucks.

Until we've got the tech in place where I can teleport from one server to another near instantly... I don't see how this restriction could be changed reasonably. And even then, one personal house per datacenter would work assuming the teleport was reasonably fast.

But one per service account? We've got to be able to quickly hop from one datacenter to another for that to work, and we can't even see outside of our home datacenter at the moment...

No, I would not expect SE to take away houses from players who have already legitimately obtained them under the rules currently in effect if they were to make this change.

The only way this would work (and IMO SE should do it) is only after they have given players several months time to divest and there have been enough other things added where there is no functional loss for the players that have more than one house. Some players need motivation, and sometimes you need to have the choice between the carrot and the stick in order to get the desired result.

[lezard21]

Make alts tenants by default.

[Jojoya]

Make alts tenants by default.

They told us 2 years ago it was something they wanted to do but they had technological hurdles to overcome. Nothing has been said since.

[Almagnus1]

They told us 2 years ago it was something they wanted to do but they had technological hurdles to overcome. Nothing has been said since.

It would be worth raising to the dev team again since a lot can change in two years.

[Jojoya]

It would help to lower the invisible timer. It's 24 hours now, max it at 6. It wouldn't fix the issues but it's a needed change for people's health.
I have a friend who sits & clicks every day for 10+ hours, they are exhausted, neglect their job and it just breaks my heart. I'm glad I grabbed my house in 5.35 because I would never do this to myself.

Sounds like your friend is suffering from a gaming addiction if they're neglecting their real life responsibilities and health for the sake of possessing virtual pixels. Encourage them to seek counseling. It may mean they need to quit playing the game for a few months while they get their life back in order.