"Free Company Houses" should not exist, or at least be re-defined

[Zaddi]

As an FC leader who inherited the FC when I already had my own, private house, I say no. Why should I have to lose my medium house because I ended up with a FC mansion too? My private house is decorated after my personal taste. The FC mansion is decorated to look more like a meeting place for several people. I don't consider the FC house my house, even if I technically own it.

We need a better housing system, not to take away houses from players who have them.

[Packetdancer]

I love having an FC house. My FC's lucky; we have a big house in a prime spot, and it's thus a gathering point for our FC. Teleport to the FC house and you can always find someone at the marketboard, or crafting, or using the vendors/resources inside the house, or trying out a rotation at the training dummies in the yard. It's great, and I think a lot of what helps the FC I'm in feel active and inclusive is that you do constantly find FC-mates at the FC house when they're between instanced duties or crafting or whatever.

(I recognize it is luck, and that many FCs don't have a house.)

I dislike the idea of designating a given player's house as the FC house, for a variety of reasons... but a big one is "what happens if that person leaves the FC?" Does the FC house just go "poof", along with anything people had put in it? Or does it reassign the property to the first person on the FC roster who doesn't own a house, so thus you lose your house if you leave the FC? Etc. There's too many weird edge cases there, and no clean way I can see to solve them that someone couldn't abuse.

What I do wish they'd do -- and I've pitched this idea on this forum before -- is make instanced airship housing.

Each FC would have an instanced company airship. The airship would have a greenhouse (thus opening up gardening), personal quarters (so you can still have basically an apartment in your FC housing), a company workshop (for working on and launching the mammet-piloted expedition airships and submersibles) and the top deck would serve like a yard (allowing you to put down outdoor decorations).

Moreover, since it's an airship, you aren't limited to the existing housing neighborhoods.

Want to park your FC airship over the ruins of Mhach in the Yfaem Saltmoor? Sure, why not. Park it off the coast of Eureka, looking at all the crazy weather going on over there? Hey, that sounds cool! Park it over Mor Dhona, with the Crystal Tower on the horizon? Done! All you need is a sort of generalized view of the area you could see when you looked over the railing of the airship (or out a window), and if you got bored of one area an FC officer could just 'pilot' the airship somewhere new for a new view.

This would ensure all Free Companies had access to the systems gated on home ownership (mostly gardening and the company workshop), and it would free up the housing plots currently used by Free Company houses for personal home ownership. It wouldn't solve all the problems with this housing system, but it would help alleviate pressure in those two spots at least.

[Divinemights]

Not mentioning this won't go through with YoshiP but how is this going to address anything?
At the best you free up about 300 plots each server, how is that going to help when player base is more than 17,000 per server?
No, you don't kill FC House just for this stupid reason.

[Veliaire]

I understand where you're coming from and share many of your concerns. I feel as if though you are suggesting a patch-up when what is really needed is a complete re-work. Even if you eliminated FC housing, wards will still fill up on popular servers.

What is needed is more instanced housing. There is no reason why apartment buildings can’t have penthouses with 2 or even 3 floors. Maybe a nice outdoor area with a garden overlooking the ward from on high? In effect, it would be like a house only it would not have any outdoor decorations. I would actually prefer something like this. Currently, I own a medium house. I can’t take a long break, ever, because if I do, I might lose the house—but I love the layout of a medium home and I love to decorate. Housing is like my end-game. If I had an Apartment with the space of a medium, I would be totally satisfied with that.

There are also other things, like saving layouts, increasing item limits, having more control over guest access and who can visit. I would like to see more control over design, so that a person can change elevation of items, or even resize items. There is just so much work that needs to be done.

[Packetdancer]

I understand where you're coming from and share many of your concerns. I feel as if though you are suggesting a patch-up when what is really needed is a complete re-work. Even if you eliminated FC housing, wards will still fill up on popular servers.

Honestly, while I agree with you on this, I personally feel like the bigger problem is the inability for a Free Company to obtain a house. Because there are systems that are gated on housing; if you want to do gardening with cross-breeding, you need a house with a yard, and if you want to have a company workshop you need to have a house to have that workshop in.

It's bad that individual players who want housing can't get it. It's even worse that an FC has to scramble for housing if they want to participate in entire systems within this game, like gardening or submersible expeditions.

(Hence my FC airship suggestion.)

[DezereDawn]

So you want to kick a bunch of FCs out of houses and also perpetuate your dumb house trading idea in the other thread?

This reeks of house flipper to me, tbh

[SahreeYurblu]

What I do wish they'd do -- and I've pitched this idea on this forum before -- is make instanced airship housing.

Each FC would have an instanced company airship. The airship would have a greenhouse (thus opening up gardening), personal quarters (so you can still have basically an apartment in your FC housing), a company workshop (for working on and launching the mammet-piloted expedition airships and submersibles) and the top deck would serve like a yard (allowing you to put down outdoor decorations).

Moreover, since it's an airship, you aren't limited to the existing housing neighborhoods.

Want to park your FC airship over the ruins of Mhach in the Yfaem Saltmoor? Sure, why not. Park it off the coast of Eureka, looking at all the crazy weather going on over there? Hey, that sounds cool! Park it over Mor Dhona, with the Crystal Tower on the horizon? Done! All you need is a sort of generalized view of the area you could see when you looked over the railing of the airship (or out a window), and if you got bored of one area an FC officer could just 'pilot' the airship somewhere new for a new view.

Why should the head of an FC not be able to have their own private housing, and have a house for the FC. They serve completely different purposes. My house is for myself and SO and friends to relax in and is decorated to my tastes. I don't have a garden or stables. The FC house is set up for the benefit of all of the members. It's a more communal set up with vendors/menders, stables, garden, training dummies etc. It's not there for ME, it's there for the FC members that may or may not have their own housing to have access to anything they might need, and a place to hang out together and be social. MY house is MY retreat.

Now this airship idea is AMAZING! Hell, go ahead and make it a big old platform like the first boss of Dun Scaith platform and just put an instanced house on it if you don't want to have to redesign the whole look of things. As long as there's something to decorate and keeps the stables, gardens, training dummies, and workshop, that's really all that's needed. It would be fantastic to be able to travel to different areas and change up the view as well. I can't tell you how much I adore this idea. We have a medium in the Lavender beds because the location is in my opinion one of the best in the game. We have a nice extended area in front of our yard with summoning bell, marketboard, aetheryte, and of course can swim there as well. I won't give up that plot for any other plot in the game, but if I could trade that in for a mobile FC house that had all the same amenities, I'd do that in a heartbeat.

[Kolaina]

I say get rid of private housing. Have FC only housing. Then more people benefit

[Waaltar]

The one true solution is to pay for housing. Any solution basically has to involve that because housing is system resource intensive. They wanted it to be where 1 sub price gets you everything, but that philosophy failed when it came to housing. It failed because everyone pays the same sub but many players don't get housing, and so in effect the many without housing end up subsidizing the housing system for the lucky few who get housing.

This means the only fair systems are things like:

1) charge a higher subscription price to everyone, but include housing for everyone in this price, so everyone gets housing.

2) charge a separate fee for housing, and so anyone who wants housing can pay the fee and cover the system resource costs associated with housing and so get housing. And if you don't want housing, you don't have to pay the fee.

It's crazy that for so long now they never made a decision to fix this and just let the winners exploit the rest of their player base.

[DamianFatale]

A much better solution would be to just add a new type of ward within the housing wards that are for free companies only. Adding some extra tabs to the housing wards that don't have to compete between personal or FC housing would go a long way at ensuring server growth. I know a lot of people that want to start a free company, but won't because there isn't any housing to do it with.