Remove FC housing entirely

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sindele

That is committing the exact sin being spoken of. To improve the personal situation by a fraction by taking away housing from all FCs forever is naked in its ambition. There is no 'to be fair' about this sentiment. There is no way you could even begin to make it fair this late in the game.

The advantages of using a shell FC to a house towards someone who doesnt:
- The possibility for owning 2 houses
- FC workshop capabilities
- FC house has a less strict tenant system to avoid demolition (so even after the timer expired, you can still have 1 of your houses remaining)
- Special wards in which individuals cant compete (due to certain FC requirements)

Its not about taking away anything, its about individuals missing out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

Its not about taking away anything, its about individuals missing out.

No one is missing out against their free will. Individuals can make an fc whenever they want and run it however they like. If they don't want to run an fc, then they don't get access to everything fc masters have access to. That's fair.

Oh, yes, sure. I don't disagree that FC houses are mechanically superior. I disagree that this is at all a problem, when personal housing is the bolted-on afterthought that has single-handedly driven the accessibility crisis - and I disagree wholeheartedly with the notion that a solo FC is pure advantage unless you derive nothing from social connections. Mind you, I say this living in what is now effectively a solo FC: this is not a life for people who don't have backup communities and a near-sociopathic resistance to loneliness.

Let's first address the numerical absurdity of the claim - you're only "missing out" because personal housing is the locust tide that devours all availability. When the last known good housing censuses were being run last year, personal housing ate up nearly 70% of all availability on NA DCs. Those same censuses also showed that FCs with <4 members owned somewhere around, at most, 10% of all FC houses in existence - so, being generous to a bad argument and classing every small FC as a shell, you're looking at about 2-3% of all houses in the game, biased towards less populated servers because there are unsurprisingly far fewer shells on highly contended servers. Mateus' total bid counts exceed 15% and frequently 20% of all housing capacity every single lottery. You could turn over every single FC house and run out of capacity again in three weeks. Then what'll you campaign to destroy next?

But maybe numbers alone aren't convincing, so let's bring out the rhetoric: your intent stops mattering when what you are advocating will have the effect of destroying the places that already exist. Your intent is no comfort to those it would harm, all because you can't stop handwringing over a single digit percentage of houses that you feel you should have had a shot at. For this crime, you want to take every house away from every FC, be it a shell, a sole proprietorship, the house a pair of friends went in on, the hub a dozen old friends have lived in since 2014, or the RP venue used by hundreds every week. You don't care that an FC is a community - some are quiet, some have decayed, some are toxic, yes; but others remain vibrant and flourishing groups that keep people connected and in tune with the game (and, for the capitalists out there, propping up subscriptions that would otherwise be allowed to lapse). You don't care that to some of these groups, these houses are more than just places to play with decor and post screenshots of a place that only looks good from two angles before leaving it untouched for three months - that these places are foundational parts of their history and a fond reminder of memories. You don't care about the many, many individuals you'd hurt doing this - because the truth is that you only really care about one individual, here. Yourself.

... and that's fine. You don't have to care. Realistically, we should both know well that this is never going to happen, so maybe I shouldn't take it so seriously - but what offends me is the unmistakable selfishness that shines through every time this argument is made. You want to swing at people like me, fine, take your best shot at crafting some good criteria to cut me out. You want to swing at sub farmers and the loophole - go for it, I only really care about the technical accuracy of those arguments. Going after the genuinely innocent groups out of sheer greed is not in the slightest fine, and I think it's necessary to stamp it out as soon as it appears.

TL;DR: No, absolutely not, and may you never speak of this again.