Please alter the housing system a little bit?

[ERMITANYO]

OT: I just hope that this coming year ushers in more quality of life content improvements in terms of housing, so every player sprouts or not will have something nice that is within reach upon completing requirements, a place to use their creativity in decorating and gardening. It may not be in a plot but at least an alternative that is more than adequately spaced, as well as aesthetically and functionally pleasing.

But untill such time...if a plot is out of reach...get an apartment its better than fc rooms (in terms of displacement in the event of fc disband, transfer, or expulsion) , and inns (in terms of customizability).

[Palindrome3D]

Well I'm glad they've done that at least. Guess they can't make it retroactive or it would be extremely unfair, though arguably I'm not very keen on people who are overly greedy about these things. "I have x amount of houses /flex" - plsss staaahp.

the way SE handled retro active plot holders are, if they lose it they cant get it back. So if someone had 3 plots because of their extra FC's and Extra characters, if at any point they lose the plot, ei :not logging in, they lose it for good. Eventually those players will die out, Either stop playing the game or lose their homes from circumstance, they will be held to the same standards as everyone else hence forth. The players I feel most bad for the active military members who get deployed for months on end, pay for the sub still and lose their homes anyways and are unable to get back into the market because of the lack of plots.

[Frizze]

The timer is good, with out the random timer you get people still using bots, taking the plot, and scalping it out of game for large Gil amounts or for real money cash. They need to at least allow FC's to bypass the timers and prioritize FC's like they do when new housing is implemented, or just simply treat the wards like the pages of Apartment or FC rooms. Once a page is full up, another is added. Just keep adding wards as they fill up if they're not gonna do something about the bots.

If they allow FCs to bypass the timer then the timer is pointless. Most of the people buying plots to resell(including the ones that would use bots to instantly check for openings and teleport hacks to get to the placard instantly) are buying FC houses. So the timer going away for FCs only would be the same as the timer going away in general, and legit players would only see openings when new wards were added. As for dynamic ward generation, theyve been asked specifically about this and said it isnt possible with their setup. Because housing wards are always spawned, they need to physically upgrade hardware every time they expand them.

[Jojoya]

The players I feel most bad for the active military members who get deployed for months on end, pay for the sub still and lose their homes anyways and are unable to get back into the market because of the lack of plots.

I would hope active military members are intelligent enough not to buy in the first place knowing their chances of being deployed and not having access to the game during that time. Being a tenant of a house owned by a family member or good friend is still an option so when they are able to play they can enjoy the house.

People need to play smart. If you know your real life situation is going to conflict with something in a game, don't get invested in that something. If you value something in a game so much that you fear losing it, you need a reality check. It is just a game.

[LaylaTsarra]

What I find hard to understand is the fact that alts can't buy a house on the same server if their main owns a private. They did a pretty good job of preventing that from happening with the rule changes for 4.2.

Why is it they can't set up the system so that only one character owned by that person (and there can be 8 characters per server) can be the leader of a FC. I'm not sure how the coding would work exactly but one could or should not be able to transfer lead of a FC to an alt if one is already run (led) by another alt on that same server. That would stop the multiple purchases and ownership by that particular account.

Relative to the demolition time I still feel a paying sub should be all that is necessary to keep that house. If a sub is inactive for 45 days (or whatever timeframe is deemed appropriate) then demolition should be applicable. I was never a fan of the enter the house model personally.

[Jojoya]

Why is it they can't set up the system so that only one character owned by that person (and there can be 8 characters per server) can be the leader of a FC. I'm not sure how the coding would work exactly but one could or should not be able to transfer lead of a FC to an alt if one is already run (led) by another alt on that same server. That would stop the multiple purchases and ownership by that particular account.

Because it's always possible the player's alts are leaders of legitimate FCs instead of just shell FCs. Maybe one FC is for role play and the other is for raiding. Should the raiding FC be denied a FC house just because of the other character's RP FC. It's probably why they had to relax the purchase restriction of the "one FC house per account" rule added in 4.2 - legitmate FCs were negatively being effective because many players had characters in more than one FC.

What SE really needs to do is redefine what a FC is, and how many active unique player members are required for house ownership. A Free Company with a single active member has stopped being a Free Company and turned into Free Agent for Hire. The game should be disbanding it after a short warning period to allow for recruitment and disbanding it without any warning if it happens a second time.

It's still not going to stop all abuse of the system but it will cut down on some of it.

[LaylaTsarra]

Because it's always possible the player's alts are leaders of legitimate FCs instead of just shell FCs.

They don't need to be leaders of more than one they can be members. One leader per account per server seems like a good and justifiable position for SE to implement. It appeared to be the intent of the rules introduced in 4.2 and should actually be what is allowed to happen in practice.

Relative to active members seems to me 4 is the number needed to create one and 4 should be the minimum to keep that FC viable. There could be a limited time grace period for that FC to recruit other members if they drop below the minimum. Those characters in my opinion should also be different accounts and not simply alts used to populate it.

Furthermore recognizing that some create FC's so they can actually share a house with their alts or family members which is more than justifiable in my opinion currently, the implementation of allowing alts to share a personal house needs to happen to give those alts a viable and justifiable medium to actually use a house their main owns without resorting to a FC purchase. Case in point I have a small FC on Balmung in the Goblet that I personally share with 4 alts but I also have multiple friends who have alts on that same server who are also members of my FC.

[Almagnus1]

They don't need to be leaders of more than one they can be members. One leader per account per server seems like a good and justifying position for SE to implement. It appeared to be the intent of the rules introduced in 4.2 and should actually be what is allowed to happen in practice.

IMO you should be asking a couple of different questions:

Why does SE allow an FC to own an a house that has less members than the number of signers needed to create it?

Why isn't SE freeing houses that have less than four active subscriptions?

As an FYI, you need four different players (and they can't be on the same account as the signer) and that implies that SE intended that there would be four subscriptions going to the FC. I'm generally fine with decoupling the FC housing checks from personal housing provided that the above two checks are made, and a system is in place that's hard to abuse so if someone really wants to throw money at it to get the multiple houses, they can. For that matter, the entire FC system needs to also check that one account isn't leader of more than one FC, and transferring leadership will fail if an account already has a character that's a leader of an FC. All of this should be on a per server basis btw.

[LaylaTsarra]

IMO you should be asking a couple of different questions:

Why does SE allow an FC to own an a house that has less members than the number of signers needed to create it?

Why isn't SE freeing houses that have less than four active subscriptions?

As an FYI, you need four different players (and they can't be on the same account as the signer) and that implies that SE intended that there would be four subscriptions going to the FC. I'm generally fine with decoupling the FC housing checks from personal housing provided that the above two checks are made, and a system is in place that's hard to abuse so if someone really wants to throw money at it to get the multiple houses, they can. For that matter, the entire FC system needs to also check that one account isn't leader of more than one FC, and transferring leadership will fail if an account already has a character that's a leader of an FC. All of this should be on a per server basis btw.

I just updated my post to address this prior to seeing yours. I totally agree.

For that matter, the entire FC system needs to also check that one account isn't leader of more than one FC, and transferring leadership will fail if an account already has a character that's a leader of an FC. All of this should be on a per server basis btw.

That is exactly what i had in mind. Any attempt to make an alt a leader in a FC should be null in void if that character already has his main or another alt as leader somewhere else on that server. A flag is placed on an account the minute a private purchase is made on a server preventing the purchasing of another private house by another character from that account. Similarly a flag needs to be put on that account the minute a character is made the leader of a FC preventing other characters from becoming leaders somewhere else.