Fake FCs' Housing Abuse

[NanaWiloh]

The 2 problems I see with using company credits generated through "normal gameplay" is that there really isn't such a thing (different players enjoy different aspects of the game) and not all forms of game play are equally rewarding for the time invested. Some forms of game play don't reward any at all (such as spending time decorating or touring houses, which is still playing the game).

I might spend one hours crafting HQ Exarchic and possibly end up generating more company credits than a standard 4-6 member doing their "normal game play" that doesn't include crafting.

I probably also play more hours in a week than a small family FC would, especially if they're limited to playing on days they don't have work/school. If I were running a shell FC for the sake of having additional houses, I'd be in less danger of losing the houses than the family would.

It would take a major overhaul of the company credit system to turn it into a fair way to determine if a FC could retain a house. SE would have to cap the number of credits a single account could generate for a specific FC in a weekly or monthly period then adjust credit rewards for all types of content that players engage in. I don't see SE going to that effort and I'm not certain it would really solve the problem even if they did.

Membership seems the better way to go but it's still a matter of figuring out what method could be used that wouldn't be overly restrictive or controlling on how those members need to play the game while also not being subject to exploits.

These ideas of tax and upkeep sound good on paper but with this game. Such ideas will not strip homes from the intended targets but just hand them more homes to gobble up. There is at least 2 FC's here on Lamia who own multiple plots and these not single player FC's. One of them has 100+ members with at least 50-60 members actively playing, Saw some of their members recently hanging around a few open plots. Biggest problem with upkeep systems is they stomp on the small honest player and reward the dishonest players in return. The only way to make upkeep or tax effective against player/FC's who own multilpe homes is too put it so high the average player would suffer as well. Same idea also applies to a gil tax or upkeep as their are owners who have a crap ton of gil so unless the tax is absurd it would have no effect on them.

[KiKat_Coffee]

Multiple FCs with lazy names owning multiple plots for years, all FC houses with the only members being low level leaders with generic or gibberish names who only log on once a month to prevent demolition? By educated guess, they're likely RMT placeholders.

But can you prove it with concrete evidence? No.

Will Square Enix willy-nilly toss out bans based on educated guesses? Probably not.

Fixing the problem will involve changing how FC housing and FC membership promotions work, and that's a lot of work. Better to pray island Sanctuary is the instanced housing people have been begging for.

[Jojoya]

snip.

All the more reason to strip houses of gardens, workshops, and aetherial wheel stands then make those features available through other means. If those items weren't attached to housing, there would be less demand for multiple house ownership because it would become a pointless expense. Gardening we might be getting through Island Sanctuary (depends on if what can be grown on the islands is the same as what we grow in gardens). Workshops could be accessed through the affiliated GC HQ much as we access our Squadron Barracks. The workshops are already instanced separately - all SE has to do is switch the location of the entry portal from the FC house to the GC. Grade 3 FC actions could be sold by GC QMs same as the grade 1 and grade 2.

The limited resource system is always going to be stomping down on a significant part of the player base if SE refuses to fix the core problems - lack of dynamic supply that can expand as needed on a per world basis and lack of enforcement of the posted rules regarding house ownership plus a vague definition of what a FC is (OIC Administrator: Free companies can be described as mercenary groups formed of adventurers.) . Unless those things are addressed, someone is always going to lose out.

Recurring fees don't have to be prohibitively high to be a deterrent for someone who really doesn't care about housing. Every player deterred is another house open for someone who truly wants one. Are they still going to have to compete against those who exploit the system to get multiple houses? Yes, but there would still be more houses in the long run to compete over.

Making gil is also a lot easier than players think if you're actively playing the game. Now I've got all jobs leveled on this character, I'm starting to level additional jobs on my alts (want each to have at least one tank, one healer and one DPS job). The one I've been focused on most recently is my alt I use to run our FC's workshop and finances. I keep her gil on hand to 1 million gil so when I'm doing things for the FC, I can see how much has been earned or spent and transfer the gil to/from the FC chest accordingly.

It also makes it very easy to tell how much she's personally earning from doing content. Every Tuesday, Doman Enclave + weekly hunt bills + custom deliveries (plus getting the bonus gil from challenge log for the deliveries) is 67-69k gil. Switch to leveling a job and it's 37k from MSQ roulette + daily hunt bills + beast tribes. If I were playing that character 3 days a week, I'd be making about 700k gil a month just from those things I listed. That's very casual play and doesn't include gil earned from additional content or retainer ventures.

Things are valued more when you have to put a little effort into keeping/maintaining them. Right now, there's no effort involved in housing. If you think stepping foot into your house once every 45 days is effort, you don't need a house.

[Zhalar]

Sooo... My FC was formed between myself and two friends. We've obviously put several alts apiece into our FC. The FC leader (my one friend) and I have been active since we formed the FC (June 2020), consistently playing at least every day. (That's just two of us for those of you who are doing math.) The third person in the FC was playing a bit but not consistently.

We had no FC house. We were trying to get one, but no luck. It was the housing crisis due to COVID. Tough times.

Our third FC member had some real life stuff go sideways and quit playing around September 2020.

So it's still just the FC leader and myself who are mainly playing consistently every day. (Still just two of us among our various alts in the FC for the math types here.)

Yes, we've tried recruiting. People weren't interested in an FC that didn't have an FC house.

Then the housing expansion in October came and we got an FC house! Yay us!

We've tried recruiting. People want an FC with more members. More activity.

So... how do we get more members... if members won't join because we don't have members? My friend and I are on every day, but we're also grown adults with real life adult responsibilities. I guess that's not enough activity for some people. We're role players. We don't do raiding. We don't do PvP. We enjoy free form role play and people are looking for things we're not offering, so they look for other Free Companies. It's not for lack of trying that we don't have members, but we're not the sort of fit that a lot of people are looking for and we also prefer quality over quantity, so we turn away people who aren't a good fit for us as well.

So, with just myself and the FC leader being the only two active people in the FC (the third person being inactive due to real life situation)... Should we now be kicked off our hard won plot of land that we've sunk millions of gil into not just buying but also decorating as well?

Please explain. I'll wait.

[NanaWiloh]

All the more reason to strip houses of gardens, workshops, and aetherial wheel stands then make those features available through other means. If those items weren't attached to housing, there would be less demand for multiple house ownership because it would become a pointless expense. Gardening we might be getting through Island Sanctuary (depends on if what can be grown on the islands is the same as what we grow in gardens). Workshops could be accessed through the affiliated GC HQ much as we access our Squadron Barracks. The workshops are already instanced separately - all SE has to do is switch the location of the entry portal from the FC house to the GC. Grade 3 FC actions could be sold by GC QMs same as the grade 1 and grade 2.

The limited resource system is always going to be stomping down on a significant part of the player base if SE refuses to fix the core problems - lack of dynamic supply that can expand as needed on a per world basis and lack of enforcement of the posted rules regarding house ownership plus a vague definition of what a FC is (OIC Administrator: Free companies can be described as mercenary groups formed of adventurers.) . Unless those things are addressed, someone is always going to lose out.

Recurring fees don't have to be prohibitively high to be a deterrent for someone who really doesn't care about housing. Every player deterred is another house open for someone who truly wants one. Are they still going to have to compete against those who exploit the system to get multiple houses? Yes, but there would still be more houses in the long run to compete over.

Making gil is also a lot easier than players think if you're actively playing the game. Now I've got all jobs leveled on this character, I'm starting to level additional jobs on my alts (want each to have at least one tank, one healer and one DPS job). The one I've been focused on most recently is my alt I use to run our FC's workshop and finances. I keep her gil on hand to 1 million gil so when I'm doing things for the FC, I can see how much has been earned or spent and transfer the gil to/from the FC chest accordingly.

It also makes it very easy to tell how much she's personally earning from doing content. Every Tuesday, Doman Enclave + weekly hunt bills + custom deliveries (plus getting the bonus gil from challenge log for the deliveries) is 67-69k gil. Switch to leveling a job and it's 37k from MSQ roulette + daily hunt bills + beast tribes. If I were playing that character 3 days a week, I'd be making about 700k gil a month just from those things I listed. That's very casual play and doesn't include gil earned from additional content or retainer ventures.

Things are valued more when you have to put a little effort into keeping/maintaining them. Right now, there's no effort involved in housing. If you think stepping foot into your house once every 45 days is effort, you don't need a house.

Islands should take care of the gardening issue depending on how they work. As for FC's with no house I dont see why they cant add FC aparments, let you choose a small,medium or large interior. Would be no different then buying a house when you go the apartment you choose personal or FC room. There so many empty apartment rooms right now its not even funny, but they will fill fast if FC apartments were added. I am aware of how easy gil is too make, been doing map runs every monday with friends making 300-500k a run. Scored 10 million on one run after selling a golden beaver minion..

[Gravy9]

Like do you bother to read or click the links?

How are character at level one warrior, as their only job, going to invest time in a the FC workshop

Unless there some new mythical PTW access feature you can use them without having any crafter leveled.

As for the temporary delay of auto demolition from SE. It is what it is. After the delay went right back to how it was. Just be thankful you had enough income to pay for a sub still

[Penthea]

If they’re paying their sub and active enough to keep a house, it’s unlikely SE would want to do anything to take them out of their house.

There are active players who lost their house because they misunderstood how the demo timer works (they thought being in the garden was enough). While there are players who have been lvl 50 for several years who do nothing on those characters aside from reset the timer on a house with no decor or aetheryte. Which one of these types of players is more active in the game? And no not entering your house doesn't mean you're not using the plot. You can grow plants and decorate the garden without ever entering the house.

And please no one come to me with "well people who know how the demo timer works obviously love housing more because they did research" because believing this means thinking human error isn't a thing, thinking language barriers don't exist, and ignoring that you can use your garden every single day without entering your house. A player who merely teleports to their house every single day is still using it significantly more than a person who logs in once every 45 days for less than a minute.

In my opinion the system isn't working very well if all you have to do to keep a house is log in for less than a minute to reset a timer once every 45 days. If SE tied the timer to just having an active sub it wouldn't change much of anything for these "active" characters, which just shows what a joke SE consider basic activity to be.

Shell fcs are a problem and they need to be tackled somehow. Personals being hoarded is still a problem but it's significantly smaller due to the limitations on how many you can have in a server per account severely stunting their hoarding growth. Whereas an account can own eight fc houses per server so the problem with shell fcs continues to grow.

I would prefer if everyone could do whatever they want with housing, even to the realms of ridiculousness, but the system we have doesn't allow everyone to. It's already a limited resource and those who are pushing their use of it as far as they can go are depriving others of content by hoarding so much for themselves. So as long as housing is a limited resource, I will always be of the opinion that hoarding is an issue that needs to be dealt with.

I hope hope hope HOPE that island sanctuaries will provide some manner of housing with both indoor and outdoor decoration so a big chunk of this issue can finally be put to rest. There would still be issues for fcs getting houses but at least individuals would be fine which would dramatically decrease the demand for houses in wards. But considering SE's track record with how they handle housing the possibility of this boon happening is sadly very low.

[Big_Bap]

Like do you bother to read or click the links?

How are character at level one warrior, as their only job, going to invest time in a the FC workshop

Unless there some new mythical PTW access feature you can use them without having any crafter leveled.

As for the temporary delay of auto demolition from SE. It is what it is. After the delay went right back to how it was. Just be thankful you had enough income to pay for a sub still

Yes, I do.

You can deploy/repair/outfit/dismantle airships and submarines with any character. Guess what those FCs are used for? Don't worry, it's okay to be wrong about something but in your case, you really should educate yourself before talking about things you are oblivious about.

The issue isn't the suspension of the auto demolition. The issue is that you are visibly upset at someone who's using their FC houses, but don't give a **** about people that don't use their personal/FC house.

[Adrameliya]

(...)

So, with just myself and the FC leader being the only two active people in the FC (the third person being inactive due to real life situation)... Should we now be kicked off our hard won plot of land that we've sunk millions of gil into not just buying but also decorating as well?

Please explain. I'll wait.

I’m in a somewhat similar situation, except that I’m alone in my fc because I don’t want to go through the headache of managing people and activities anymore. We used to be 5 at some point but people left.

Because of my work and times zones I can’t always be here at the same time as others during the week, and I have some activities I need to attend to on weekends as well. So most of the time when I logged in it was late for the other members except one who was in the same time zone. And we couldn’t do much all together.
So we ended up being two for a while, then they stopped playing a bit after Shadowbringer release.

The time zone issue is because I’m in the wrong server, should’ve went to a NA one but choose Europe because of language (I didn’t speak English fluently yet back then). But I like it here, and I don’t wanna leave.

The fc is mine (I always been the leader), house is mine, I bought it myself and decorated it, the airship is mine and the submersible is a gift from the member who stopped playing.
I shouldn’t have to loose all that just because I now play alone

You can’t kick people out of their hard earned propriety because their play style doesn’t match your ideals. It’s unfair.

[LaylaTsarra]

You can’t kick people out of their hard earned propriety because their play style doesn’t match your ideals. It’s unfair.

They are not going to kick people (take away their properties) with FC's regardless of size. There were no stipulations other than needing 4 members to start one and being a certain rank in GC in order to purchase a property. The take away crowd isn't going to win this one. If there are new rules implemented it will affect new FC's after the date of the new rule implementation and i highly doubt they'll change them.

What they do need to fix however is the ownership issue where ONLY one alt/character can be leader of a FC per server. That is the crux of the problem with people owning multiple FC's.

And frankly I'd have no problem with those with alts who all own multiple FC's on the same server and who have bypassed the intent of the rules to actually have to transfer ownership or have them taken away.