Ok so looks like people are still taking advantage and getting multiple houses.

I just stumbled across this.
From the comments people seem to think that its 1 FC that's made sub FC's and bought a heap of houses which is well unfair but i imagine legal.
What i would like to know is how they didn't get the 0 bug, i mean i know some people have been successful but this is multiple houses all without the bug.
This is a new server so cant be grandfathering.

https://i.imgur.com/MOlWyNx.pngs

They did get the 0 bug on plot number 1,2,3,9,10 etc

EDIT: I was proven mistaken further down. Gonna leave the post itself up, but you may ignore this.

Have a close look at where that ward is:
>The Goblet

The only new plots added was the new housing area in Ishgard. Ward 2 of the Goblet has existed since the day housing was first released to this game years ago. All those empty plots are presumably caused by people moving to Ishgard, but obviously that FC is staying there because they own multiple houses there and they can not move those because if they tried to move them the "only one house per FC" rule that exists would stop them. But back when housing was first released, different rules applied, including being able to own multiple houses both privately an as a Free Company. People who obtained multiple houses legally back then did not lose them when the rules changed, since it would be pretty awful to punish people for doing something that was 100% okay when they did it.

Hope that clears up the confusion.

It happens because there's no competition for FC plots, workshops can be lucrative and the player involved will have multiple service accounts to assist in obtaining all those houses (though I doubt very much each is on a separate service account)

SE chose to leave loopholes in the system so players will naturally take advantage. Sometimes I don't think it's as much to upset other players (though it obviously does) but rather to rub in SE's face how idiotic their attempts to automate policing of the system are and to prove that SE does not actually care about their own rules.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KuroMaboroshi

Have a close look at where that ward is:
>The Goblet

The only new plots added was the new housing area in Ishgard. Ward 2 of the Goblet has existed since the day housing was first released to this game years ago. All those empty plots are presumably caused by people moving to Ishgard, but obviously that FC is staying there because they own multiple houses there and they can not move those because if they tried to move them the "only one house per FC" rule that exists would stop them. But back when housing was first released, different rules applied, including being able to own multiple houses both privately an as a Free Company. People who obtained multiple houses legally back then did not lose them when the rules changed, since it would be pretty awful to punish people for doing something that was 100% okay when they did it.

Hope that clears up the confusion.

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Sephorit is one of the Materia worlds that just opened in January. None of their housing was available until this patch. It is impossible for any of that to be grandfathered.

Hope that clears up your confusion.

People defend this system.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Sephorit is one of the Materia worlds that just opened in January. None of their housing was available until this patch. It is impossible for any of that to be grandfathered.

Hope that clears up your confusion.

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It does indeed. I don't know all the server names by heart, so I wasn't aware this on is on OCE. In that case, consider my attempt at an explanation retracted and I would also be curious to know how this happened.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KuroMaboroshi

Have a close look at where that ward is:
>The Goblet

The only new plots added was the new housing area in Ishgard. Ward 2 of the Goblet has existed since the day housing was first released to this game years ago. All those empty plots are presumably caused by people moving to Ishgard, but obviously that FC is staying there because they own multiple houses there and they can not move those because if they tried to move them the "only one house per FC" rule that exists would stop them. But back when housing was first released, different rules applied, including being able to own multiple houses both privately an as a Free Company. People who obtained multiple houses legally back then did not lose them when the rules changed, since it would be pretty awful to punish people for doing something that was 100% okay when they did it.

Hope that clears up the confusion.

---

Yeah nah, as Jojoya says, this on Materia. (OCE)

Goblet is only one day old here when that picture is taken. No grandfathering.

Same person has done it on all five servers in Materia, taken Goblet 2, five times over.

I can imagine how it would be worse if the zero bug didn't happen, but there is the next round eventually, so everyone expects to see then take the whole ward five times over.

Which is an impressive feat, really. World first at owning anentire DC's housing, easily beating grandfathered <<lucis>> on Spriggin, isn't it?

EDIT: Seems their empire is growing

16-20 homes now on day two of goblet on each of the five servers.

https://i.gyazo.com/381b9aa75e2e673b...f0c853010b.png
https://i.gyazo.com/84446dce1a79e874...ea0003e3aa.png
https://i.gyazo.com/597a9f04dfc00eec...4621e21484.png
https://i.gyazo.com/0a6cb63489aedb6f...8c01b71718.png
https://i.gyazo.com/ad90b3fa7d9ca897...2197c73850.png

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shibi

Which is an impressive feat, really. World first at owning anentire DC's housing, easily beating grandfathered <<lucis>> on Spriggin, isn't it?

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That's the thing, it's not grandfathered. Nothing about ownership permissions has changed. Spriggan isn't "grandfathered". If you're looking for a grandfathered ward owner, that would be the Mateus group. This person is doing this within the guidelines of the system.

The ownership limitations is 1 Personal per server and 1 FC that you, the player, have PURCHASED FROM THE PLACARD. This limitation does not factor in people who have been transferred lead through any means (EX: manual transfer, inactive leadership transfer, etc.). With transfers in mind, a player can theoretically own up to 8 FC houses per server. Assuming 1 is purchased from the placard, and the other 7 have had ownership transferred to the player through any means. The 6.1 changes to the passage of FC leadership/purchase permissions were a way to curb this (or at least make it so that people really have to think about who they're transferring leadership to).

What this person did was make multiple FCs on Materia (likely when they opened the DC up), let them sit for 30 days (with all their alts in there for 30 days too), and then bid on plots in the lottery. They likely shuffled alts around across multiple accounts in order to reset the placard purchase flag (if you leave a fc it resets the flag that goes up when you purchase a fc from the placard). What they did, unfortunately, is completely within the guidelines of our system.

Is it frustrating? Yes. Am I disagreeing with you for being annoyed? No. Do I think Squenix needs to reevaluate how they handle these permissions with a finite housing system? Yes. But I'm correcting the fact that Square Enix did not "grandfather" anything with 6.0/6.1. The only difference between Spriggan and this Materia ward owner is the lottery system and the 30 day FC restriction. That's literally it.

these FCs is going to be sold for profits on some reddit page or the likes, WILL SE handle it now it is brand new data?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Themarvin

these FCs is going to be sold for profits on some reddit page or the likes, WILL SE handle it now it is brand new data?

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Actually, no. This is someone who's been operating on other DCs and has followed the same pattern there. Doesn't resell. I presume has them for the workshop.

And I had hoped SE would make this difficult. But most likely this person has more accounts than Carter has little liver pills and this ownership is entirely above board according to the systems SE has in place.

Which is why I keep saying SE has to actually monitor the housing situation and take action when they see these things. They are loathe to do that, however, so this will continue to happen.

Honestly this entire fiasco is a great time for SE to pay attention to the flaws in housing and figure out how to overhaul it.

I notice that the plots bought successfully are exactly the same in all 5 materia worlds.

If not for the zero bug right now, this person would already have successfully bought the entire ward 2 in all 5 Materia worlds.

And SE still allocates 75% of housing to FC wards so that people like this can abuse the loophole lol.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shibi

Yeah nah, as Jojoya says, this on Materia. (OCE)

Goblet is only one day old here when that picture is taken. No grandfathering.

Same person has done it on all five servers in Materia, taken Goblet 2, five times over.

I can imagine how it would be worse if the zero bug didn't happen, but there is the next round eventually, so everyone expects to see then take the whole ward five times over.

Which is an impressive feat, really. World first at owning anentire DC's housing, easily beating grandfathered <<lucis>> on Spriggin, isn't it?

EDIT: Seems their empire is growing

16-20 homes now on day two of goblet on each of the five servers.

https://i.gyazo.com/381b9aa75e2e673b...f0c853010b.png
https://i.gyazo.com/84446dce1a79e874...ea0003e3aa.png
https://i.gyazo.com/597a9f04dfc00eec...4621e21484.png
https://i.gyazo.com/0a6cb63489aedb6f...8c01b71718.png
https://i.gyazo.com/ad90b3fa7d9ca897...2197c73850.png

---

In the latest Announcement, Yoshi P mentioned:

"While some plots underwent the lottery process and are displaying the results as intended"

I think this implies that all people who've got their plots already will keep their houses.

Which raises the question why there are so many FCs with the same tag winning the lottery in places such as the goblet, even with the 30 days and 4 fc member rule measure in place, they were prepared for this housing measure prior of release it almost seem like.

Of course everything I said hinges on that comment in the latest Yoshi P announcement, I could be jumping to conclusions here.

Each FC with airships and subs can generate about 400k a day, you're allowed 1 FC per world per character even with the new rules; not to mention the ones grandfathered over from the previous patches. This is a extremely effective Gil farm and RMT websites buy wholesale from these FC owners.

I don't know how we can fix this, but SE should be at least aware of this.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Papi_Chai

Each FC with airships and subs can generate about 400k a day, you're allowed 1 FC per world per character even with the new rules; not to mention the ones grandfathered over from the previous patches. This is a extremely effective Gil farm and RMT websites buy wholesale from these FC owners.

---

There might be a minority of FC owners who sell workshop gil to RMT websites.

However, generating gil via the workshop is highly inefficient when you can use crafting/gathering/undercutting bots 24/7 to generate RMT gil

It takes 3- 4 months and millions of gil to get a workshop to the point where it can generate ~400k a day.

There are quite a number of RMTers in popular XIV discords and subreddits who openly discuss their methods because they think SE's TOS enforcement is a joke.

I agree, though as inefficient as it may be, it's low effort. low risk and can be botted. Once they have a "gil printer", they have a "IRL currency printer".

The fact this loophole still exists is hilarious. On one hand, legitimate FCs with no history of re-selling being screwed over by the JP worlds regrouping are denied a chance to waive the 30 day FC purchasing limitation. On the other hand, people are still blatantly able to purchase multiple housing slots. "Preserve the integrity of the lottery system" indeed.

The game's vision and story is good but their development team is really out of touch and dropping the ball.

People multiboxed in WoW with 40 characters, that's 40 unique accounts that pays for a subscription a month.

It's not surprising people got the funds and willpower to do something similar with FFXIV.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raiu

People multiboxed in WoW with 40 characters, that's 40 unique accounts that pays for a subscription a month.

It's not surprising people got the funds and willpower to do something similar with FFXIV.

---

biggest problem is and will be, that most of those multiboxer are not playling the game for the game
they have that many service accounts for RMT use only and nothing else ................
sure they pay for multiple accounts, but they abuse the system and destroy the game for thousand others

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KuroMaboroshi

It does indeed. I don't know all the server names by heart, so I wasn't aware this on is on OCE. In that case, consider my attempt at an explanation retracted and I would also be curious to know how this happened.

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Because SE allows it.

The restriction is that an account does not have a character on the same account that "owns as buyer" a FC house on the same world. "Owns as buyer" means the character must be in a FC and was the purchaser of the house that FC owns. If the character leaves that FC, it no longer "owns as buyer" and so any character on the account (including that one) is able to purchase another FC house as long as they have been in their current FC at least 30 days.

It does take multiple service accounts to pull off but it's "legal" under the stated rules. Multiple house ownership has never stopped being a thing. SE has only made it more difficult to accomplish.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Papi_Chai

Which raises the question why there are so many FCs with the same tag winning the lottery in places such as the goblet, even with the 30 days and 4 fc member rule measure in place, they were prepared for this housing measure prior of release it almost seem like.

---

I've no doubt they started making plans back in November when the new data center was announced and were ready to start setting up characters and FCs when it opened in January. They couldn't afford to wait since SE hadn't released the information about how long the new member period would last.

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Potential loopholes in the rules were very easy to spot. Of course there were people ready to capitalize on them with SE's lack of past enforcement of housing rules. They know they would not be stopped, nor would anything be taken away from them.

SE probably felt that the lottery RNG would reduce the occurrences but they also failed to realize the demand for FC housing just is not there. There is no RNG when there is no competition for the plots. Setting aside 18 wards was a field day for those prepared, especially on a new data center where demand was almost non-existent compared to the supply.

I'm puzzled as to how a single FC can win more than one house in the lottery. How does that work?

I didn't even think that an FC was able to own more than one house at a time.

Was the system intended to let a single FC own more than one house?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Avenger

I'm puzzled as to how a single FC can win more than one house in the lottery. How does that work?

I didn't even think that an FC was able to own more than one house at a time.

Was the system intended to let a single FC own more than one house?

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Because it's not the same FC.

A FC can only own a single FC house.

It's different FCs using the same <<TAG>>

FC tags are not unique.

yeah it's for the workshop and the lengths this individual went to is beyond insane. Although that's exactly how you make gil. 4 submersives etc. Then take the gil and sell it for real money. SE should take at least SOME notice here, coz this is ridiculous.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

There might be a minority of FC owners who sell workshop gil to RMT websites.

However, generating gil via the workshop is highly inefficient when you can use crafting/gathering/undercutting bots 24/7 to generate RMT gil

It takes 3- 4 months and millions of gil to get a workshop to the point where it can generate ~400k a day.

There are quite a number of RMTers in popular XIV discords and subreddits who openly discuss their methods because they think SE's TOS enforcement is a joke.

---

If they are RMT, it's a rare case of one operating FCs for the workshop. Most prefer fast in/fast out. Setting up a new operation takes months, but if this is the same person operating on another DC (which they appear to be) they likely shipped over an alt with all necessary materials the day OCE servers went live. From there it was the simple act of creating alts to form FCs, and then sit and wait.

It's something SE should definitely investigate. Do you hear that devs? You need to look into this if you want to keep the faith of your players.

Yeah I just accepted my refund and I'm pretty much done with housing at this point. It might be sour grapes but housing never really appealed to me in the first place, no point in getting so invested over it.

Worst housing system in the world

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shibi

Yeah nah, as Jojoya says, this on Materia. (OCE)
https://i.gyazo.com/381b9aa75e2e673b...f0c853010b.png
https://i.gyazo.com/84446dce1a79e874...ea0003e3aa.png
https://i.gyazo.com/597a9f04dfc00eec...4621e21484.png
https://i.gyazo.com/0a6cb63489aedb6f...8c01b71718.png
https://i.gyazo.com/ad90b3fa7d9ca897...2197c73850.png

---

who wants to bet, that all plots in those 5 wards that are left open, will go to that multiboxer (RMT Organization) after SE fixed the lottery bug

Please keep in mind that Yoshi-P did express that multiple members of the FC could (with the right permissions) click on a plaquard for a house and bid on that plot and they may have done that to try and guarantee they won a spot somewhere, and unfortunately because of the housing system issue, all the plots were won by various members of the FC, if those FC members completed the transaction they would have won that plot (and if they had the money for it, it's the same thing), but I agree they need to investigate this because the stipulation aforementioned is that you can only have ONE FC plot per character account and I don't know if they expected multiple people in an FC to buy an FC plot and it actually went through? I don't think that's how it was SUPPOSED to work.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lachesia

Please keep in mind that Yoshi-P did express that multiple members of the FC could (with the right permissions) click on a plaquard for a house and bid on that plot and they may have done that to try and guarantee they won a spot somewhere, and unfortunately because of the housing system issue, all the plots were won by various members of the FC, if those FC members completed the transaction they would have won that plot (and if they had the money for it, it's the same thing), but I agree they need to investigate this because the stipulation aforementioned is that you can only have ONE FC plot per character account and I don't know if they expected multiple people in an FC to buy an FC plot and it actually went through? I don't think that's how it was SUPPOSED to work.

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That should not be possilbe and would be a bug thats as extrem as the "0" winner bug

Quote:

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Q: What happens if multiple free company members enter the lottery for multiple free company plots and we win more than one?

A: You will need to choose one of the winning plots and then complete the purchase procedure. The other plots will be treated as "failing to claim your plot of land during the results period despite having won the lottery" and a 50% cancellation fee will be deducted from the deposit paid at entry.

---

from Regarding the Sale of Land in Empyreum and the New Housing Lottery System

What? A terrible housing system being exploited? What a shocker.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lachesia

Please keep in mind that Yoshi-P did express that multiple members of the FC could (with the right permissions) click on a plaquard for a house and bid on that plot and they may have done that to try and guarantee they won a spot somewhere, and unfortunately because of the housing system issue, all the plots were won by various members of the FC, if those FC members completed the transaction they would have won that plot (and if they had the money for it, it's the same thing), but I agree they need to investigate this because the stipulation aforementioned is that you can only have ONE FC plot per character account and I don't know if they expected multiple people in an FC to buy an FC plot and it actually went through? I don't think that's how it was SUPPOSED to work.

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Just multi-fc´s with alts and bots. SE don´t give af for ages about such stuff. Just check out the market-board and you know where all the millions for the houses coming from.

The 30 days guild-membership won´t solve anything, they´ll always find poeple who gonna buy that small plot incl. guild for 20 million+.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

Yeah I just accepted my refund and I'm pretty much done with housing at this point. It might be sour grapes but housing never really appealed to me in the first place, no point in getting so invested over it.

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Just to clarify before my comments, I'm not intending to say that you (or others like you) are the problem. It's normal for players to want to try out and experience the content a game offers. I'm talking about how your situation demonstrates some of the underlying problems with the system.

A game system does not work when players with no real interest in the content are able to lock out other players who are interested from experiencing it. You might have won your house without issue and so would now have it. That would have been one less house available to players with a genuine interest in housing.

Despite not being interested in housing, you'd have no reason to give up your house once you had it. Relinquishing a plot means losing all the gil you invested in buying the plot and getting the construction permit to build the Estate Hall. Furnishings are close to useless once placed if you no longer want housing. They can't be resold through normal means, only by adding tenants to your house and letting them remove the furnishings. That's more gil down the drain.

There's also no cost to keeping the house despite not using it. Might as well just keep it. It's not up to you to make certain that there are enough houses available for every player who wants one. That's SE's responsibility.

It makes no sense for a game to design a system that allows a disinterested group of players to block access to content from an interested group of players that would like to experience it. If limiting access is unavoidable, then the system needs to be designed to either encourage disinterested players to relinquish control (like fully refund their gil investment) or to discourage them from keeping control (such as applying a recurring fee on possession of the content so its expensive to keep what's not being used).

Better yet, don't limit access in the first place. Limiting access promotes toxic behavior ("I'm better than you because I have this and you can't get it" *cough* all of Goblet ward 2 on multiple worlds *cough*). That applies just as much to plot sizes as the ability to get a plot at all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SilverSp

Worst housing system in the world

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Not the worst by a long shot, but certainly there are others much better.

This is why the should have nerfed submarine gil years ago. People making shell FCs just to print gil.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Raim

This is why the should have nerfed submarine gil years ago. People making shell FCs just to print gil.

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Yes, please nerf submarine gil - which by the way, takes 3-4 months to setup and costs millions of gil in submarine parts to print ~400k a day.

But let's not do anything about the 24/7 crafting/gathering/MB bots who are the most significant contributors to RMT.

That way SE can pat themselves on the back for doing completely next to nothing, just like when they occasionally ban the low hanging fruit; RMT spam shouters.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Because it's not the same FC.

A FC can only own a single FC house.

It's different FCs using the same <<TAG>>

FC tags are not unique.

---

That's interesting - I've never (until now?) encountered obvious duplicate FC tags in the game, so it's surprising to discover that they are not unique per server! I imagine that might cause some confusion between different FCs that pick the same tag, either intentionally or accidentally.

So this is ostensibly a confederation of FCs operated by a single entity, one so shameless and untouchable that it flaunts its power by using identical FC tags and buying an entire ward?

Seems like maintaining all of those FCs to avoid losing the houses would cost a lot of money in subscription fees.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Yes, please nerf submarine gil - which by the way, takes 3-4 months to setup and costs millions of gil in submarine parts to print ~400k a day.

But let's not do anything about the 24/7 crafting/gathering/MB bots who are the most significant contributors to RMT.

That way SE can pat themselves on the back for doing completely next to nothing, just like when they occasionally ban the low hanging fruit; RMT spam shouters.

---

I won´t even see the biggest issue in RMT. It´s personal bots and server-travelling. Just check out the market boards especially polycrystals and you see dozens of accounts with botting in the background, which never get banned, even if you report them via the helpers name. SE don´t even do anything against bot-websites and has no anti-cheat.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Avenger

Seems like maintaining all of those FCs to avoid losing the houses would cost a lot of money in subscription fees.

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It's really weird how some people think subscriptions are paid only to avoid losing a house instead of the subscription being paid to play the game content.

Those players are in no danger of losing those houses because they're in them daily. It only takes about 10 minutes to log in, collect voyage loot, redeploy all 4 vessels, sort the loot for vendoring/MB then log out.

As for paying for multiple subscriptions, that's still a lot less than the "whales" typically spend in F2P/gacha games.

This is pay to win. Ruins economy and others enjoyment.
When you have a method to print Gil with workshops and gardening, you can run a monopoly.
It disincentivizes other to try. If i am a single person, or a single FC trying to make some gil. I will have to compete with someone who owns multiple of anything i could ever think to produce.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TwistedTea

Yes, please nerf submarine gil - which by the way, takes 3-4 months to setup and costs millions of gil in submarine parts to print ~400k a day.

But let's not do anything about the 24/7 crafting/gathering/MB bots who are the most significant contributors to RMT.

That way SE can pat themselves on the back for doing completely next to nothing, just like when they occasionally ban the low hanging fruit; RMT spam shouters.

---

Totally agree, it cost a ton of gil and time to set up and keep the subs running for a maybe or maybe not item. Get rid of the 25% of game population that are empty gil trolls and bot accounts. Back when I played, a r/l friend that did GM work for them told me WoW was getting kick backs from a gil seller, I wonder....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Besame

Totally agree, it cost a ton of gil and time to set up and keep the subs running for a maybe or maybe not item. Get rid of the 25% of game population that are empty gil trolls and bot accounts. Back when I played, a r/l friend that did GM work for them told me WoW was getting kick backs from a gil seller, I wonder....

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I know a lot of people who got their subs up and running and quit the marketboard entirely. 0-400k every other day was a lot better than the frustration of dealing with marketboard bots.

On the submarine issue, I wonder if the easiest change is just making fuel non-tradable. Genuine FCs won't be affected and can retain the needed benefit of being able to fund their operations, but the more solo FCs someone has doing it, the greater the cost and larger the effort.

Put in a 30 day requirement to buy the non-tradable tanks. Or better, make all tanks in inventory dissolve if someone leaves an FC with any.

A housing primal would need to grind many millions of GC seals a day to buy all that fuel, rather than just buying up people's spare fuel cheaply and transferring it around.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Shibi

I wonder if the easiest change is just making fuel non-tradable. Genuine FCs won't be affected

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I can't speak for other FCs, but I know ours would be affected. Specificially because the people using the submarines don't necessarily have permissions to spend company credits to actually buy the fuel.

Right now fuel is purchased for them and placed in a company chest for them to use as needed. If there was no way to trade the fuel that would forces the only people using the workshop vehicles to also have permissions to spend company credits.

If the company credit usage could be restricted to certain things only, or limit how much could be spent in a time period, that might be less of an issue, but as it is right now anyone with FC company credit access could empty out an FC so such things should be restricted. The person themselves might be trustworthy, but whos to say they use two factor authentication? Or maybe just outright fall for phishing scams...