PLEASE get rid of Ward Buyouts!!

[Frizze]

Grandfathering has nothing to do with what you are looking at. What you are seeing is something else. The fact is that FCs arent required to have unique tags. Each of those is a different FC using the same tag. Each of those FCs will have different member(s). And especially for the red one, they are sure to not be all on the same service account. If you eliminated grandfathering, none of those houses would open up(the average server would see less then 10 houses open in fact). What needs to be cleaned up to fix the issue you see is some of the loopholes around FC ownership and purchasing rights. Or they could implement something like an instanced housing system(with full yards and different sizes and all) to make sure everyone can have a house who wants one. This would not only get all the "homeless" the option to buy, it would dis-incentivize people making shell FCs just to buy and resell a house.

[alpacaurbags]

Not sure how this happens, but can confirm it in at least one of our wards on Adamantoise. A FC has at least half the sub division to themselves, using each house for a different roleplay-esque thing based on the descriptions. Its kind of excessive...

[Jojoya]

Grandfathering has nothing to do with what you are looking at. What you are seeing is something else. The fact is that FCs arent required to have unique tags. Each of those is a different FC using the same tag. Each of those FCs will have different member(s). And especially for the red one, they are sure to not be all on the same service account. If you eliminated grandfathering, none of those houses would open up(the average server would see less then 10 houses open in fact). What needs to be cleaned up to fix the issue you see is some of the loopholes around FC ownership and purchasing rights. Or they could implement something like an instanced housing system(with full yards and different sizes and all) to make sure everyone can have a house who wants one. This would not only get all the "homeless" the option to buy, it would dis-incentivize people making shell FCs just to buy and resell a house.

I agree that SE's time would be better spent cleaning up the ownership loopholes than going after the grandfathered houses but let's not pretend that the multiple FC house situation doesn't exist. The number of truly unique FCs sharing the same tag is very small and the odds of them all ending up in the same ward is even smaller.

We all know that most of those "different" FCs with the same FC tag are actually shell FCs being run by the same player using multiple characters. In a minority of cases, they're shell FCs being run by alts of characters in a central FC where that FC is trying to get access to more Grade 3 actions and workshop voyages than the game intends a FC to have. If they were legitimate FCs, they would have more than the 1-2 characters most of them have.

[Frizze]

I agree that SE's time would be better spent cleaning up the ownership loopholes than going after the grandfathered houses but let's not pretend that the multiple FC house situation doesn't exist. The number of truly unique FCs sharing the same tag is very small and the odds of them all ending up in the same ward is even smaller.

We all know that most of those "different" FCs with the same FC tag are actually shell FCs being run by the same player using multiple characters. In a minority of cases, they're shell FCs being run by alts of characters in a central FC where that FC is trying to get access to more Grade 3 actions and workshop voyages than the game intends a FC to have. If they were legitimate FCs, they would have more than the 1-2 characters most of them have.

That was sloppily worded on my part. I was merely pointing out that to the system each of them is a unique FC. I did imply that most are single member and i named shell FCs as a problem, but i could certainly have been more clear. Most of the time its 1 person with alts, sometimes its an older bigger FC that split to get more airships/subs/wheels. Exactly as you said.