"Free Company Houses" should not exist, or at least be re-defined

Hourly reminder that personal housing is inherently inferior to FC housing.

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Originally Posted by Terin

I'm going to be real with you guys; I am actually currently guilty of this. However, I recognize it is an issue that the Devs honestly need to address.

I think most people are aware of the issues of "Free Company houses". If you're not, let me explain; currently, you can own a "Private estate" and ALSO have a "Free Company estate" if you are the head of a Free Company.

Now, some players will "sell" Free Companies that have a House. So it's effectively "selling a house". That's not what I did, and truthfully, I actually don't consider that the real problem.

The REAL problem, is that it effectively allows players to "own two houses". So, technically one is Private and the other is Free Company, but the distinction is largely irrelevant.

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I'm going to call for it the other way around.

Private houses should not exist. Given that they're not instanced there's a very limited number of them - so they should be for FCs only, with apartments for individual characters.

They should take back all the houses not owned by an FC - refunding 100% of the cost.

I've never owned an FC with a house (there was a brief one hour period or so in 2014 where I owned an FC because I came back after taking 6 months off to find out I was the only person of the people I'd joined at launch with who still had a sub. Lasted until I figure out how to hand the FC back to the account it belonged to, and then quit) - so I don't know how FC houses work...

But they should be linked to the FC, not to any account in the FC, not even the FC leader. If an FC with a house finds itself with less than 8 active people (a full party), it's house should get taken back with a 100% refund. I know that sounds brutal - but there are a LOT more active FCs out there than there are houses. If people are just camping a resource, or using a pile of dead accounts to make a private home - that spot should go to people in communities.

Weren't we getting freecompany/private ownership wards with Ishgard housing?

As an owner of two houses I disagree with this idea. This would only hurt the FC leader..they would have to give up one of their houses while the rest of the FC can not only hang out in the new FC house but also can buy their own houses too...

In the end its on SE to provide us with enough housing. Lets stop with always trying to punish the playerbase for this bad limited system. We already need to log in to keep our houses, lets not make it even worse.

They need to have a better housing system, period.
The entire system is a horrible mess and needs a rework.

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Originally Posted by Juun

Weren't we getting freecompany/private ownership wards with Ishgard housing?

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That doesn't solve the general supply problem. All that does is ensure a small number of houses are reserved for private ownership and another small number is reserved for FCs.

It does not add enough housing so every FC and every player who wants one can have a house. The number of players and FCs who can own a house is further diminished by the number of accounts that own multiple houses. People forget the current ownership limitation is per world, not per account. Someone with a standard subscription theoretically could have 80 houses, two on each of 40 different worlds. That's 79 other players/FCs that will never be able to get a house because that one player has purchased what they're allowed under the current system.

These discussions end up pointless when SE has no interest in addressing the underlying problems with the system.

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Originally Posted by Dewslam

The solution to any and all housing is the same: add instanced housing so every FC And every player can have a house. Let people still fight over the prestige of having their houses in the visitable public spaces and districts - but at least give people access to the mechanics locked off by not having a house or FC house.

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I think this is the best solution. Some people just want access to housing activities like the airship or garden. Those who care about a place to show off can do so still.

This whole post is focused on the wrong thing , if we had instanced housing everyone would have a home. FF14 is creating artificial scarcity by running its housing the way it does.

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Originally Posted by Terin

I mean... FC houses are literally no different, other than setting permissions. You could have the same permissions, or even more extensive if need be. At the end of the day, the FC house isn't *really* shared property, because the FC only has the permissions granted by the FC leader, which can be given or taken away at their discretion. No reason that would change at all.

The ONLY difference is that FC leaders would not own separate houses; thus if you DO own a private estate AND a FC estate, you would either give one of them up, or give the FC estate to a trusted member. And if you don't have a member you would trust enough to give the estate to... well, that sounds kind of like a "second house" for you.

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FC members can buy their own rooms in an FC house. I dunno if you're lying or actually that incorrect.

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Originally Posted by Makeda

I'm going to call for it the other way around.

Private houses should not exist. Given that they're not instanced there's a very limited number of them - so they should be for FCs only, with apartments for individual characters.

They should take back all the houses not owned by an FC - refunding 100% of the cost.

I've never owned an FC with a house (there was a brief one hour period or so in 2014 where I owned an FC because I came back after taking 6 months off to find out I was the only person of the people I'd joined at launch with who still had a sub. Lasted until I figure out how to hand the FC back to the account it belonged to, and then quit) - so I don't know how FC houses work...

But they should be linked to the FC, not to any account in the FC, not even the FC leader. If an FC with a house finds itself with less than 8 active people (a full party), it's house should get taken back with a 100% refund. I know that sounds brutal - but there are a LOT more active FCs out there than there are houses. If people are just camping a resource, or using a pile of dead accounts to make a private home - that spot should go to people in communities.

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I agree with pretty much everything you've said, but 8 players is way too much. Here's a report just for you: https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/re...328/page/ez06B

Average member count per FC house:

• Japan: 10.24
• North America: 26.13
• Europe: 19.43

Free Company houses

• Japan: 67,172
• North America: 42,811
• Europe: 20,578

Free Company houses with less than 8 members

• Japan: 40,667
• North America: 15,881
• Europe: 9,270

Your proposal would nuke:

• 60.5% of the FC houses on the JP DCs
• 37% of the FC houses on the NA DCs
• 45% of the FC houses on the EU DCs

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FC housing represents roughly 30% of all housing. Nuking personal housing and the FC houses that fail to meet 8 members would effectively bring us back to a peak of 1,400 FC houses on Balmung and 722 FC houses as the bottom (Shinryu). That's patch 2.38/2.4 level of supply and would leave us with, at the bare minimum, 4,300 available plots per server.

Do you know how long it would take for your average server to come up with that many FCs? I'll give you a hint, the average amount of FCs on all servers since 2.0 is 5,090. Considering most of those FCs are long dead and their status isn't going to change (https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/re...603/page/BBs5B), it will take at least a decade to fill the gap.

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Bottom line:

Personal housing was a mistake.
Japan never needed 32 servers.
NA should have been given more than 1 server since 2013... way before Yoshipizza could cry about covid or any other pathetic excuses.