"Free Company Houses" should not exist, they only encourage "personal/solo FC's"

[Erinellza]

Would you RATHER be part of a Free Company community?
Or would you rather have a HOUSE?

Too easy, house of course! People disappoint me on a daily basis but my houses make me smile.

[DeNada]

I really hope SE unlocked the FC wards to personal bidders soon.

My friends have been trying to get their first house (small) or upsizing (from small to medium) and it's really rough seeing them getting disappointed over and over again due to how competitive the personal wards are.

Meanwhile, no one is bidding on the smalls and even a few mediums in FC wards, even by round 3 of the lottery. The frustration of players is only going to get worse if no changes are made to the ward allocation by round 5 or even the next round when the personal plots have completed dried up.

[kaynide]

+1 to just removing personal housing entirely.

+1vto some kind of maintenance to keeping a FC house, though I have no opinion on what that means specifically. It could be money, but really it should be an active body count. (Aka 4+ active accounts (not players) for S, 8+ for M, 16+ for L)

In my FC of 4 active, 2 not so active we have 3 L, 1 M and 4 S. One of the L houses is decorated inside to be a messy 1 room apartment with partitions blocking off like 90% of the building. it started as a funny joke, and the owner honestly just bought the house because he had a plan to do something with it…but never got around to it.

He has considered giving it up, but doesn’t because he doesn’t want to take a loss.

I dare say he isn’t the only player that would happily give up their house for 100% wealth back.

[Zomkei]

theres only 3 people in my fc (and 1 alt) and i like it this way. it is quiet. we dont have to worry about thieves or drama. ive been playing since closed beta and tried different "community" FCs, and let me tell you, they've ruined my experience with the game.

i don't understand why people don't mind their own business and stop trying to dictate what people need to do to enjoy the game lol

[Raven2014]

i don't understand why people don't mind their own business and stop trying to dictate what people need to do to enjoy the game lol

It just comes down to window dressing their own selfishness. No one wants to admit they simply want to kick other people out of the house just so they get theirs, so they all pretend to come up with ridiculous "solution" to hide their desire.

[Padudu]

We have no one but SE for creating this problem in the first place lol

[Doki]

It's incredibly easy to form a small "personal" FC and rank it up to 30 over a week or two.

[Terin]

That's quite an assumption you made mates.

I've been playing this game for like ... 8 years now? And I was in various FCs, including one where I was a member of the core raid group. But by the mid Heavenward, I have been in a solo FC by myself all the way till now, and probably will be until the day I decide to quit the game. Suffice to say, I probably wouldn't play the game that much or even stay in this long had I been in an FC all those years.


There are tons of reason for it:

- First, you are completely oversale the need of an FC. This is not a pre-2015 environment any more where we only have teamspeak and ventrilo, which only used 90% for raid time. We have so many other meaningful way to form group and stay in contact with people of like interest, and often with way better mean than using what available in game. And even without external mean, the game has matured to a point where 99% you can do with FC members, you can do with people outside like Linkshell and world travelling. 99% is just me being cautious in case I may have missed something, but like ... is there anything at all in the game that you can only do with FC members?



- Second, I find by not joining an FC, but being a solo-player while keeping grouping to others method (like discord) give me the right healthy "distance" in relationships with other players. We do stuffs together, have fun, talking crap ...etc... but at the same time there is no string attached. If we lose interest, we say goodbye and that's about it. There is no need nor worry about drama/gosship/backstapping like there is in joining an FC.


So basically, solo-player like myself can enjoy 90% of what an FC player can, while at the same time don't have to worry about 90% of the crap an FC player potentially have to deal with. I used to have a personal house back when I was an FC player (back in 2.0) that I kept for over year, but eventually I sold that "crap" because after the initial honeymoon die down, it's just a piece of oversize trophy that offer almost no benefit. Becoming a solo player with my own FC-house is the best decision I have ever made in the 8 years of playing, and probably the main reason why I still playing after 8 years.

I can respect that point of view.

That said, there is still no reason for you to have your own "free company" kept solely for yourself, EXCEPT that it gives you a house, and access to a workshop.

Converting all housing to Personal housing would make absolutely zero impact on your experience. You could easily still just NOT join a free company. At least you would have that OPTION, because as it stands, doing so would mean giving up your house. And like any community, you might find that first FC isn't a great fit for you, but you'd already be out of a house. Which probably makes you even LESS inclined to consider joining a FC.

[Silverbane]

There is still no reason for you to have your own "free company" kept solely for yourself, EXCEPT that it gives you a house, and access to a workshop.

Not true.

This game is very alt-unfriendly. You cannot send mail to your other characters, and you cannot make then tenants of your personal housing. So if you have alts (like I do) the FC chest is the only way to transfer items and gil between your characters, other than trusting someone else to do it. Now, you may know someone you'd trust to transfer, say, the Varsity Skirt and Boulevardier's Ruffled Shirt your "elder" Auri character made to your new fem Roe (market value: almost three million gil) but it's still a lot simpler just to put it into the FC chest.

Of course, you still need someone in your FC other than yourself in order to invite your alts into the FC.
But that can be an "shell" alt of an in-game friend, and they don't have to have FC chest access.

Or, in my case, it's my spouse. Our FC only includes real-life friends, none of whom are worried about the others jeopardizing the friendship for a mere game item.

[Reinha]

That said, there is still no reason for you to have your own "free company" kept solely for yourself, EXCEPT that it gives you a house, and access to a workshop.

The last one alone is a sufficient reason. You also get a company chest you can use to transfer items to alts or fill with your own items, buffs of your own choosing, a crest and tag you can choose and swap at will, access to items bought with company credits, a house your alts can share and extra storage space for furniture in the FC rooms of your alts which are conveniently inside the house itself.

In case you feel like being in a more social FC, recruiting people into your own FC is risk free, because you have the ability to get rid of individual problem players without losing the social, financial and time investment you've put into the FC. You get to decide how the FC is run and you never have to rely on someone else to give you permission to access features.