Ideas to free up more plots

[Nepentha]

1 House per service account is more feasible than instanced housing. Even if technically possible, there is no way to get people to use instanced houses without pissing off people who have ward houses. If you give everyone an instanced house, including those with a ward house, that's incredibly unfair to the people who can't get a house otherwise. If you make Instanced houses worse than ward houses, no one will use them, if you make them better, those with ward houses will be upset. There is no solution to this without making someone mad, it's better to just limit ownership than try to thread the needle on how good to make instanced housing so no one gets mad or has an unfair advantage.

No, it really isn't. People play on more than one world. And how in the world would instanced houses be angering the ward housing owners? They'd get them, too. That's the point of instanced housing: Everyone gets one. Some people would just have a ward house on top of their instanced plot.

It is not best to limit ownership, that's just your opinion because you can't get the prime plot you want so badly.

[Shibi]

...If you make Instanced houses worse than ward houses, no one will use them, if you make them better, those with ward houses will be upset...

I am curious what you were thinking when you wrote this. Not the first part which is just hyperbole, but the part I italicised.

People can own a house and an apartment and an island - the latter two are instanced - why do you think that someone owning a ward house won't have access to an instanced house too? And if it's better, they may well drop the ward house and free it up - or they may keep both.

Rift, SWTOR, and EQ2 housing come to mind when describing potential instanced housing benefits. Imagine being able to own your very own copy of Limsa as your house, and decorate it how you like. (Likely not in FFXIV due to spaghetti and PS3 compatibility limitations, but we could in other games. Rift as an example allowed one to own a huge slice of a few major towns, and some very sizable other areas)

I'd love to own/earn Vesper bay as mine and make a bronze statue in the middle of me, pointing to the horizon. It would be a hoot telling my friends, "pray return to the Waking Sands", and they zone in and we all sit in the square - under my bronze statue.

(Ah yes, I know that's an unlikely dream, hehe, but, anything would be nice) One would really dream that FFXIV instanced housing would be as spectacular as Rift does. Whole islands, cities, Floating rocks in the sky, Huge desirable and collectable expanses where you can own 2, or 3, or many more and collect them as "keys" from raids, crafting questlines, marketplace and more.

Make it good enough and people may well leave ward housing in droves. And that's a good thing!

[Acesfool]

1 House per account, not per world, not per character, but per subscription.
People who have more than one house are given the option to forfeit and obviously get refunded 100% of their money used to buy said house.

I'd say one house per account per region. But only if they make it so alts (in the same region) can also claim the house and it can be used as a way to transfer items and gil to alts.

[Elevin]

OR, OR, OR...just enable auto demolition in which case, there would be a steady supply of houses. What was the case the last time auto demo was paused? 1/3 of the houses went up for sale?

[Jojoya]

OR, OR, OR...just enable auto demolition in which case, there would be a steady supply of houses. What was the case the last time auto demo was paused? 1/3 of the houses went up for sale?

It was about 2%, not 33%.

[Themarvin]

1. Removal of grandfathering
2. Removal of shell FC's
3. permit ONLY 1 house per DC per account and 1 FC Ownership per DC per account.

All of above they can do just following the ToS, there is an uproar everything these methods is mentioned, but I stand strong in that everyone should be standing on equal foot, also everytime SE needs to add more wards it costs them due to additional servers and the likes.

[Shibi]

permit ONLY 1 house per DC per account

You have lowered your goals I see!

[Themarvin]

You have lowered your goals I see!

That is a good sign is it not? But it has always been like that, glad you like these limitations as well, it is the only way ahead.

[Nepentha]

That is a good sign is it not? But it has always been like that, glad you like these limitations as well, it is the only way ahead.

They weren't necessarily agreeing with you. Just noting you've loosened your stance every so slightly.

Before you assume I agree, too, I do not.

[Shibi]

That is a good sign is it not? But it has always been like that

It's a start, yes. And it is a clear shift from your previous one house per account position in the past, a shift towards the actual rules. So well done.

In time I hope you can keep shifting towards the current rules of the day as SE set them.