Housing Revision opinion

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Originally Posted by Arazehl

Two wrongs don't make a right.

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No, but you cant take something away from people and give no alternatives.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

No, but you cant take something away from people and give no alternatives.

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You can if that person intentions were dishonorable and deceiving.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

Then as I said, fix the personal housing issue, and people wont need to create fake/shell fcs, you cant tell people not to make fcs and then leave them in a pool of over 100-150 people for a single small house in shirogane

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A permanent fix of the housing issue would be nice, everything else like the lottery/auto demo/FC ward restrictions is only a bandaid and doesn't solve the underlying problem. But that isn't the topic of this thread. It is about the proposal to put a stop to fake/shell fcs occupying FC slots. Which also is unfortunately just another bandaid.

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Originally Posted by Arazehl

You can if that person intentions were dishonorable and deceiving.

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/facepalm ...

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Originally Posted by Arazehl

Shell FC's want to take away everything that FCs should be about. SE should tighten up restrictions in owning and maintaining an FC, so that people have to actually take on the responsibility of running one. Quit making it easy for these people to find loopholes and make them honestly earn the right to call themselves an FC., so that they need to really give thought to what it means, when it comes to buying up property for their FC. SE has let so many of these shell FCs fall through the cracks, I honestly don't think they even know how to come back from a debacle like this.

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You know, if Square did put some sort of activity requirement on things...say 5 people active per week, and I'm keeping it low because of their view on how people should be able to come and go from the game at their leisure, it would just be circumvented by people making more alts and logging on them for a few minutes. Hell, some people have multiple accounts (whales be whales) and can just fill an FC with alts to bypass any sort of population requirement as well. If you have friends you can even just ask them to put their alts into the FC to take up space/help with activity. An activity/people requirement is not going to achieve what ya'll are looking for either.

To be completely fair, there's no actual way to fix the problem at this point outside of instanced housing being a thing.

creating stricter requirements for fc's alongside the 45 day for solo house owners is honestly quite fair
active players and active fcs should benefit from housing and not those who pay a sub to just occupy a virtual house

for fcs, iirc, you don't even have to be the owner of the house, just go in the house and timer refreshes
it's an unfair advantage
and oft if this is happening that means the fc is just taking up space

if i wanna have it even more my way - if you need an email to tell you to log in bc "house" - ya don't need it.

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Originally Posted by VirusOnline

creating stricter requirements for fc's alongside the 45 day for solo house owners is honestly quite fair
active players and active fcs should benefit from housing and not those who pay a sub to just occupy a virtual house

for fcs, iirc, you don't even have to be the owner of the house, just go in the house and timer refreshes
it's an unfair advantage
and oft if this is happening that means the fc is just taking up space

if i wanna have it even more my way - if you need an email to tell you to log in bc "house" - ya don't need it.

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Yes you do have to be the owner of the house to reset the timer.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

Yes you do have to be the owner of the house to reset the timer.

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FCs are anyone in the FC. Only personals require the homeowner to reset it.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

FCs are anyone in the FC. Only personals require the homeowner to reset it.

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Nevermind then, I stand corrected

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

You know, if Square did put some sort of activity requirement on things...say 5 people active per week, and I'm keeping it low because of their view on how people should be able to come and go from the game at their leisure, it would just be circumvented by people making more alts and logging on them for a few minutes. Hell, some people have multiple accounts (whales be whales) and can just fill an FC with alts to bypass any sort of population requirement as well. An activity/people requirement is not going to achieve what ya'll are looking for either.

To be completely fair, there's no actual way to fix the problem at this point outside of instanced housing being a thing.

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If people had to actually recruit to maintain an FC status it would lessen the problems and I'm talking about active members. This means active members not the inactive. The 1% of people who have more than 5 accounts is the minority. Most people are the one to two account households. You are right in that to fix supply vs demand there needs to be instance housing.

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Originally Posted by LianaThorne

You know, if Square did put some sort of activity requirement on things...say 5 people active per week, and I'm keeping it low because of their view on how people should be able to come and go from the game at their leisure, it would just be circumvented by people making more alts and logging on them for a few minutes. Hell, some people have multiple accounts (whales be whales) and can just fill an FC with alts to bypass any sort of population requirement as well. If you have friends you can even just ask them to put their alts into the FC to take up space/help with activity. An activity/people requirement is not going to achieve what ya'll are looking for either.

To be completely fair, there's no actual way to fix the problem at this point outside of instanced housing being a thing.

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it doesn't help that yoship is vehemently against the idea of instanced housing bc he needs those community feels
so we'll keep piling up that spaghetti code

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Originally Posted by VirusOnline

so we'll keep piling up that spaghetti code

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And then Yoshi P will complain that implementing simple features is too hard later on due to server load or something.

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Originally Posted by Arazehl

If people had to actually recruit to maintain an FC status it would lessen the problems and I'm talking about active members. This means active members not the inactive. The 1% of people who have more than 5 accounts is the minority. Most people are the one to two account households. You are right in that to fix supply vs demand there needs to be instance housing.

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What is actually recruiting? As far as I'm aware of, sending an invitation is the recruiting. I highly doubt they'll require you to spam your FC advertisements in Limsa...I'm cringing already from that massive amount of spam.

Also, what is considered active? Logging in once a day? Again, can just log on all of your characters daily to circumvent that.

You also misunderstood me, I didn't mean 5 active accounts, I meant 5 active characters in a single account. They're not going to make "FC activity checks" account based because you couldn't count for any other FCs your alts may be in, if you're in another server with another legit FC..just the one your main is in or whichever you choose to log in first. It's just going to make things even more of a mess than they are now.

Very rude of you to insinuate that I, an MMORPG player, should actually have to play with others and that if I want what's intended to be a group feature that I should actually have a group. HELLO??????????????? I'm above all rules.

I wonder if it is too little too late. Lots of shell FCs have popped up in recent days (since the lottery was announced and the requirements made known). FCs where players split off from the main FC, joined the new FC - zerged the FC rank up. Left a few players in there to bid, and the rest either went back to the main FC or moved on to zerg another shell FC.

Lots of these plots are already snapped up. I guess better late than never. SE should have just used the first lottery round as the barometer for actual demand for FC plots and switched it up during the lottery hiatus to fix the bug.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

I wonder if it is too little too late. Lots of shell FCs have popped up in recent days (since the lottery was announced and the requirements made known). FCs where players split off from the main FC, joined the new FC - zerged the FC rank up. Left a few players in there to bid, and the rest either went back to the main FC or moved on to zerg another shell FC.

Lots of these plots are already snapped up. I guess better late than never. SE should have just used the first lottery round as the barometer for actual demand for FC plots and switched it up during the lottery hiatus to fix the bug.

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There's still a ton of smalls left in the Empyreum on my server. If FCs (social or solo) don't snag them up between now and the 10th, chances are there will be plenty left for solo players to buy up. In my FC plot's ward alone, I own one of the only 2/3 smalls that were actually snagged during the lottery cycles. The bulk of them are in what is currently FC only wards, but they will be opened to personals soon. Like I've said in another thread, if anyone is desperate for a plot, come on over. lol

Why is my FC fake OP, just coz there's not many people in it?

We're a family and you wanna take our home, huh? I'll remember that.

Like there's not myriads of other, better ideas for solving the housing crisis.

But it's up to SE in the end and not you, luckily.

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Originally Posted by Harriks

Yes. Put a stop to all those fake/shell FCs.

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Nothing will stop those from being formed as long as having control of a FC improves access to the content the player is interested in.

They want access to a workshop? Then they need to be a FC officer since few FCs give all their members unrestricted access. That usually means starting your own FC.

They want access to a garden? Having a FC creates two (or more) chances to obtain a house in a lottery period instead of being limited to one.

SE needs to take a close look at how all players actually engage with content instead of assuming all players will automatically adhere to JP cultural norms.

it's pretty infuriating that so much content is locked behind housing.

i want a garden

"oh. er. sorry, yeah. uh... well you can get a flower pot but y'know. you need a house to have a real garden."

i want to use the workshop and send out ships and subs

"oh, hm. yes. er. yeaaah... only FCs get those and they can restrict access to it so only their leaders benefit from it. sucks to be you i guess."

ok, so i want a house so i can do all that.

"... err. about that."

I'd prefer they allow an option of Instanced housing. Probably will never happen though.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

There's still a ton of smalls left in the Empyreum on my server. If FCs (social or solo) don't snag them up between now and the 10th, chances are there will be plenty left for solo players to buy up. In my FC plot's ward alone, I own one of the only 2/3 smalls that were actually snagged during the lottery cycles. The bulk of them are in what is currently FC only wards, but they will be opened to personals soon. Like I've said in another thread, if anyone is desperate for a plot, come on over. lol

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That's great. If it pans out that there are still plenty of players getting these houses, that's great. It looks to me that many of these smalls were snapped up by shell FCs. Maybe not all servers are like that.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

That's great. If it pans out that there are still plenty of players getting these houses, that's great. It looks to me that many of these smalls were snapped up by shell FCs. Maybe not all servers are like that.

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Yeah, it's definitely not every server. I'm just saying that there's some available on Diabolos still. They've survived every lottery cycle so far, so the chances are probably decent that they will largely remain that way until they are opened to personal plot owners.

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Originally Posted by Jetex

-Create a stricter system for FC's, making it to where 6 players have to be online at one time within 45 days in order to keep the property from demo-ing. This allows more plots to open up for actual active FC's.

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SE have a history of implementing the stupidest ideas from the forums. So please, let's not suggest another, that won't achieve anything of note outside pain.

Instead, please put your effort into asking for a meaningful housing solution that can fix demand. On demand, instanced housing, with all the many good features that were suggested instead.

While 6 members is excessive, I would say a minimum of 4 active players in a FC is rather reasonable since that's the number of characters needed to create a FC.

That way, the suggested restrictions would not hurt any legitimate small FC but would put a clamp on the shell FCs which are often just a single character left in the FC once the shell FC plot is obtained.

That way, a single account can at most game to have 2 shell FC houses at most (8 divided by 4) instead of a maximum of 8 shell FC houses per world.

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Originally Posted by Harriks

That's exactly the reason why single person FCs should not exist.

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So, just because my FC only has 6 characters (only 4 unique actual people) and i'm the only one that logs on more for more than .... say ... 2 hours a week (a few characters haven't been on in almost a year now); which effectively renders mine a "single person" FC, it should just be deleted?

So the fact that, being essentially a single player FC, I managed to rank it to 30, earned the money to buy the house, crafted said house and literally every craftable furnishing in it, then proceeded to build and manage 3 airships and 3 submersibles by myself is just ... invalid to you? FFS, I do more as a "single player" FC than some larger FCs I know of. I suppose, by your logic, I'll have to hold off on adding those public RP venues I had planned. Shame ... I was looking forward to those.

Would I have liked it if my FC-mates contributed in some way? Sure, I'd love my FC to have a few more active people in it, but I'm not going to go out of my way. It's been less than a year .. if it grows, it grows. If not, I'm happy in my own little world.

Your generalization of "single person" FCs is a little over reaching. I understand that the housing situation is in bad shape, but trying to completely invalidate the effort of actual people in a ham-fisted attempt to solve a perceived problem isn't going to help the matter any. If you want to have input in helping to solve the issue, perhaps come back with a more reasonably thought out idea.

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Originally Posted by DeNada

While 6 members is excessive, I would say a minimum of 4 active players in a FC is rather reasonable since that's the number of characters needed to create a FC.

That way, the suggested restrictions would not hurt any legitimate small FC but would put a clamp on the shell FCs which are often just a single character left in the FC once the shell FC plot is obtained.

That way, a single account can at most game to have 2 shell FC houses at most (8 divided by 4) instead of a maximum of 8 shell FC houses per world.

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I appreciate your thought process on clamping down on the idea of "shell FCs", but this simply not a feasible idea, either. I know of more than a dozen FCs that are similar to mine, in that they only contain one or two active people (a few by circumstance, a few by design). Not everyone wants to join a "mega FC" .. nor are we all that great at chatting people up in order to get more than a single person here or there. That in no way should exclude us from taking part in what the game has to offer by design, nor should it invalidate the work that a lot of these tiny FCs have actually put into getting where they are. Solutions to the housing issue are not going to be found in any measure that will exclude people from it .. all it will do is create an entirely new set of problems. It's just robbing Peter to pay Paul.

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Originally Posted by Jetex

-Create a stricter system for FC's, making it to where 6 players have to be online at one time within 45 days in order to keep the property from demo-ing. This allows more plots to open up for actual active FC's.

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Wow, this idea is basically just as ineffective and simultaneously annoying as that one suggestion where everyone had to pay a "tax" to keep their house.

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Originally Posted by MintnHoney

Wow, this idea is basically just as ineffective and simultaneously annoying as that one suggestion where everyone had to pay a "tax" to keep their house.

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Oh lord, Archeage flashbacks. *curls up in the corner and whimpers*

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Originally Posted by Devlyn

So the fact that, being essentially a single player FC, I managed to rank it to 30, earned the money to buy the house, crafted said house and literally every craftable furnishing in it, then proceeded to build and manage 3 airships and 3 submersibles by myself is just ... invalid to you? FFS, I do more as a "single player" FC than some larger FCs I know of. I suppose, by your logic, I'll have to hold off on adding those public RP venues I had planned. Shame ... I was looking forward to those.

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A single player doesn't make a "company". You want to keep your workshops, rank and amenities that comes with an FC, then yeah you should be made to do something that should also be the responsibility in owning an FC and recruit to keep the FC status and title. So you made every stick of furniture, crafted up subs and airships all for your own personal gain. How is that remotely a Free Company? That's just a "You Company" using the Free Company title and all that comes with it. You don't want to grow your FC, because you want your cake and eat it too. You just want to turn it into singular ran Party House someday for your own personal gains, is my guess. Even if you do that to be a success you have to "hire". If you can hire than you can recruit.

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Originally Posted by Arazehl

A single player doesn't make a "company". You want to keep your workshops, rank and amenities that comes with an FC, then yeah you should be made to do something that should also be the responsibility in owning an FC and recruit to keep the FC status and title. So you made every stick of furniture, crafted up subs and airships all for your own personal gain. How is that remotely a Free Company? That's just a "You Company" using the Free Company title and all that comes with it. You don't want to grow your FC, because you want your cake and eat it too. You just want to turn it into singular ran Party House someday for your own personal gains, is my guess. Even if you do that to be a success you have to "hire". If you can hire than you can recruit.

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Not happening, just stop. And thank god it's not happening.

Seriously, many of you need to mind their own businesses.
I'll never understand why people feel anything against solo FCs. Even if all of them disappeared, you'd still not get your house. Lmao

I don't really have an issue with anyone who might want to form a solo FC for all his alt characters to be in if he/she is dissatisfied with the social FC they have been with.

What I take issue with is players who take advantage of the loopholes to amass multiple FC houses simply because of greed. If there's any changes to restrict FC ownership of plots, it's those players that should be targeted first and foremost so as to nip the issue in the bud and prevent it from ballooning out of control.

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Originally Posted by Arazehl

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Wow, you are angry, or jaded ... or both. Have a cup of tea and take a deep breath, kiddo. You take a lot of liberties in your summation of my intent both current and future. None of which have any basis in reality. You have neither the position nor authority to define what does or does not make a "company". I own, operate and hold an LLC in real life ... as owner and sole employee. Am I not .. a company? No where in my post did I infer nor insinuate that my ownership and operation of an FC house was for "personal gain". I get that you're a veteran player and have probably seen everything there is to see in this game, but I'll thank you not to apply your blanket cynicism and presuppositions on to me. Not once in my post did I say that I didn't want to grow my FC ... and you saying so is just flat out false. Nor did I say anything about a "party house" ... that's another assumption. What I stated was "public RP venues". I'm sorry if that was a misnomer and confused you, but as I stated, I've been playing less than a year; I'm not hip to all the lingo you kids are using these days, but I assure you, I've zero interest in any sort of nightclub/disco type setting. If you actually want to know my plans, approach the subject with a medium of civility rather than half-assed assumptions and less than thought out contrivances.

As to my intent for ... literally anything I do in this game .. well ... that's just none of your damn business, honestly. So long as I play within the rules set forth, you've absolutely no position from which to argue. As for my "personal gain" from running an FC house ... you are once again being disingenuous since I made it rather clear in my post that it wasn't by design. You seem to think that I've some sort of nefarious, clandestine goal in mind to .. what .. make myself rich? Your naivety is refreshing. You and I both know how laughably easy it is to make money, and I was well on my way to cap long before the notion of an FC house crossed my mind. So, sorry to disappoint, but in my case, an FC house has done exactly what the dev team intended housing to do ... eat gil.

I'm honestly unsure where your hostility is coming from, superstar. But, I assure you, it's misguided. At the end of the day, you and I are on the same team here. I want to see the housing system improved as much as anyone. I want everyone to have a plot of land and find it mind numbingly short sighted of the dev team to NOT see that housing would be coveted a long time ago and take the appropriate steps to mitigate it. But perhaps before we go cutting people off at the knees (I promise that's not a Lalafell joke), we all put our collective noodles in the same bowl and come up with some well constructed ideas that the devs actually take seriously instead of lambasting each other with half cocked scenarios that will ultimately only serve to fracture the community further and alienate a wide portion of the player base.

If we make up arbitrary dumb rules...

... Housing lottery should go by FC and character age, not by RNG! That way the most senior players will be rewarded for their loyalty. To make it better, older FCs and charachters should be able to evict people if they ever wanted a plot.

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Originally Posted by Devlyn

I'm honestly unsure where your hostility is coming from, superstar. But, I assure you, it's misguided. At the end of the day, you and I are on the same team here. I want to see the housing system improved as much as anyone. I want everyone to have a plot of land and find it mind numbingly short sighted of the dev team to NOT see that housing would be coveted a long time ago and take the appropriate steps to mitigate it. But perhaps before we go cutting people off at the knees (I promise that's not a Lalafell joke), we all put our collective noodles in the same bowl and come up with some well constructed ideas that the devs actually take seriously instead of lambasting each other with half cocked scenarios that will ultimately only serve to fracture the community further and alienate a wide portion of the player base.

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You mistaken hostility for being passionate toward an idea and garnering an opinion base what you made public by posting. Just because currently there is very limited restrictions and guidelines in place regarding what makes a Free Company and the responsibility of maintaining one, it shouldn't ever make owning a shell FC the new norm. It goes against the grain and as it stands now it's pushing out real FCs who work extra hard to give back to it's members.

With shell FCs there is tons wrong with it and it grows month after month, year after year. SE needs to suck it up and fix things with housing in more ways than one. Besides what are you afraid of? That you'll lose your FC play things, because you're not really an FC anymore? You could be with a little effort. If there were tighter restrictions and I had an FC like you describe in your post, I would probably lash out against the idea too, but thing is I don't. I have a real honest to goodness FC and that FC doesn't belong to me but to my members. So I'm not going to excuse myself to you for being passionate towards things I hold dear in this game or when I see things that are somewhat off kilter.

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Originally Posted by ameliaw

I'll never understand why people feel anything against solo FCs. Even if all of them disappeared, you'd still not get your house. Lmao

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IIRC FCs and People relocating use to have priority in getting houses. You could be camping a placard and a FC swoops in and take your spot. Or even worse you could get you could get someone from that certain FC discord that would troll relocate to reset the timer on the placard and do this multiple times for the luls.

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

If we make up arbitrary dumb rules...

... Housing lottery should go by FC and character age, not by RNG! That way the most senior players will be rewarded for their loyalty. To make it better, older FCs and charachters should be able to evict people if they ever wanted a plot.

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Great... the mostly inactive FC of a 7y old account has 400 members of which at most 20 are active players, which are barely having any interaction, gets the advantage.
In the meantime, a recent player from a year ago which has a fresh fc with a lot of active members (basicly carried over the WoW group) would be denied because of that.

RNG is better.

At most some modifiers for activity could work (lets say the total number of members that was online during the past month gives a bonus ticket count up to 10 tickets max). This makes shell FCs a lot less likely to win. And actualy prioritizes active FCs regardless of account age.

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Originally Posted by Hustensaft

If we make up arbitrary dumb rules...

... Housing lottery should go by FC and character age, not by RNG! That way the most senior players will be rewarded for their loyalty. To make it better, older FCs and charachters should be able to evict people if they ever wanted a plot.

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This has to be one of the dumbest takes I've ever seen. The entire concept of just catering to whoever played the longest is just dumb because honestly, especially legacy players, they have the worst takes. Nobody cares that you've played since 1.0 or ARR, get over it. Square Enix don't owe ARR players a house over someone that got one from the raffle but started in ShB.

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Originally Posted by Arazehl

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I don't believe it was I that made any such mistake. You can dress your sanctimony up in all the pretty bows you want, but hostility is hostility. There are better, and more effective ways to convey one's passion for a given cause. I would venture to believe that I'm just as passionate about rectifying the housing issue as anyone, and will always openly advocate for its fair availability to all players. However, I'm not going to do so at the cost of invalidating another player's effort. I don't delude myself to think myself or my situation to be better than anyone else, which you seem to have no trouble with. And you didn't make opinions about what I posted ... you made assumptions. Subtle though it may be, there is a difference. The fact of the matter is, you're conflating two entirely separate issues when it comes to housing. Personal FCs are NOT the problem you think they are. They're a side effect of a larger issue that you either seem to be willfully ignorant of addressing or simply ignore in lieu of making ad hoc attacks at anyone that doesn't have a "real honest to goodness FC."

That's an awfully tall horse you've got there, chief. How's the air up there? Spare me your incredulity.

And let's just be totally clear here, I'm not lashing out at the idea of FC "restrictions" nor am I afraid of anything regarding it. Because when push comes to shove, you know as well as I do that it's a non-starter; even if you can't admit it to yourself. It will never happen. Ever. Like .. ever ever. This is not the hill you want to die on when it comes to housing. So how about instead of taking pot shots at people and attempting to devalue the work they may have put in, you use that big ol' brain of yours to come up with some ideas for actual solutions that aren't simply a veiled attempt to let everyone know you have such an awesome FC while trying to appear somehow seemingly insightful into the mysterious inner workings of housing in this game? I'll wait.

What I will lash out against is this notion that simply because a lot of people chose to not be a part of a large FC, they should be excluded from access to the opportunity FC housing provides for the members they DO have. Just because we're few in number, doesn't make us any less valid.

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Originally Posted by Arazehl

as it stands now it's pushing out real FCs who work extra hard to give back to it's members.

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The number of FCs is not capped so solo FCs don't take anything away from larger FCs. There is even plenty of housing for both kinds of FCs.

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Originally Posted by Harriks

Creating a FC only to circumvent the FC/Personal ward restriction might not technically be cheating, but still not the way it is intended to work.

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It's literally the way it's intended to work. The same player character can buy and own both a personal house and a free company house. Two houses. FC houses are not an alternative to personal housing, they are an addition to it. One that is available to everyone with no extra Gil cost or botting required.