One free company owns 13 houses in one Empyreum ward on my server.

[Shibi]

Because it’s one house per FC.

Would you prefer 14 houses were used or 13?

This is just a group of friends who decided to build houses together, but do it in the FC wards. It's no different to any other player building a house near their FC back when ward splits were not there.

Lots of FCs had personal housing near them, combos are good for that.

Ask yourself, 14 houses or 13.... which is better?

[axetastic]

Sorry, but this is a ridiculous argument. A free company should be entitled to purchase a house and share it as a free company. This goes double for mediums and larges. Some of us are, you know, free companies. We want to use the houses as designed. Free company housing is not a substitute for personal. I recognize that people use it as that. I even understand it to an extent. But taking over the entire ward, locking all legitimate free companies from bidding on the mediums and larges, is nasty.

The person here calling me a liar wrote in their discord that they are the owner of all the FC houses. That's not 13 buds being neighbors. That is one person being selfish at the expense of an entire ward.

[Shibi]

We will disagree then, I think it's a quite clever way to do it, and it frees up housing for other people.

[SweetEquity]

Because it’s one house per FC. Not one ward per FC. And they admitted all the houses belonged to the same person.

Yeah, um... wtfever. Have a nice day cupcake. Good luck with remedial math!

[Azuri]

Sigh, for how entertaining this whole thread is I think it would be prudent to mention: it's completely impossible for one FC to own multiple houses. This is a hard technical limitation installed by SE. What is not a technical limitation - and not even a ToS offense - is having characters on the same or multiple accounts in different FCs. Not a single rule was broken in the whole situation you are describing. None.

The appeal to morality is cute but that's exactly what it is. A toothless "please be nice" that has no ground to stand upon to be enforced.

[axetastic]

The appeal to morality is cute but that's exactly what it is. A toothless "please be nice" that has no ground to stand upon to be enforced.

The appeal to morality was for the sake of the person doing the hoarding (which I'm sure, judging by their vitriolic responses to me, will fall on deaf ears). But whether or not my argument is toothless is up for SE to decide. There's enough evidence for SE to see that all these little mini FC's with slight misspellings and identical guild tags were intended to operate as one. Hell, they even admitted it on their placard note, before the owner of the houses changed all the messages on the multiple houses that they own.

If you're right, and this is all technically permissible, then so be it. Maybe nothing happens. But it's my right to bring attention to it, and staying quiet about people abusing the system doesn't get anything done.

At the very least, glad someone found it entertaining.

[Oizen]

Squeenix loves RMT trading, thats why they specifically designed Empyrum for it, and every limitation they put into place to prevent it was completely bypassed by the fact that it took them over a month to fix a random number generator.

[Jojoya]

If you're right, and this is all technically permissible, then so be it. Maybe nothing happens. But it's my right to bring attention to it, and staying quiet about people abusing the system doesn't get anything done.

Unfortunately, bringing it up here in the forums doesn't get anything done either.

SE is not unaware of what is happening with the system. It's within their power to change the system if they want it to work differently. It's not within ours.

The most that might happen from a post like this is people making accusations that you're trying to start a witch hunt against players who are not breaking any rules. Many of us will agree that players should not be allowed to do it but it doesn't change that SE does allow it.

Squeenix loves RMT trading, thats why they specifically designed Empyrum for it, and every limitation they put into place to prevent it was completely bypassed by the fact that it took them over a month to fix a random number generator.

Empyreum isn't designed differently or have different rules from any other housing district so it's incorrect to state it was designed specifically for RMT.

Remember that some players are the ones that were convincing SE to add a wait time before FC Master could be transferred to a new member, claiming it would kill RMT. Many of us kept pointing out it would not stop RMT, it would merely be a minor obstacle. and that if players really wanted RMT killed then they should be encouraging SE to work on an instanced housing system that allowed every player to get the house of their choice. If players could get what they want directly from the game, RMT would have no foothold in housing.

Well, here we are back at square one because SE followed the advice of the players who prefer band-aids over fixes. Nothing about the system has improved. RMT still exists. Multiple house ownership on the same world is still possible. Players are still gated by RNG when it comes to their chance to get a house, it's just the "flavor" of the RNG that's changed.

If all people do is focus their complaints at those players using the system as SE allows instead of focusing their complaints at SE for their design choices, we'll never see any improvement because SE will inevitably take the easy way out as long as players give them the excuse to do so.

It also wasn't the random number generator that was flawed in the first lottery. It was the transfer of data between the lottery server and the housing server that was flawed. Do people not read when SE goes to the effort of explaining exactly what went wrong and what steps they were taking to both fix it and do their best to make certain it does not happen again?

[axetastic]

Unfortunately, bringing it up here in the forums doesn't get anything done either.

SE is not unaware of what is happening with the system. It's within their power to change the system if they want it to work differently. It's not within ours.

The most that might happen from a post like this is people making accusations that you're trying to start a witch hunt against players who are not breaking any rules. Many of us will agree that players should not be allowed to do it but it doesn't change that SE does allow it.

We're well out of "witch hunt" territory when the owner of the houses came and outed themself. Actually, I'm kind of impressed by how quickly they found this thread, but that's beside the point.

I did my best to be respectful. I did not list character names, free company names, or the name of the public discord. I'm not going to let comments like yours keep me silent when I see blatant abuse of the system. Every single thing I posted about here was very, very public at the time of my posting. And again, I did not name any names.

Why is it that people tell others not to bother trying to make a difference? It's my time being wasted, if anything, so it should be no skin off your teeth. Worst case scenario, nothing happens, and I wasted my time. Or someone gets pissy at me because I didn't like them hoarding all the houses. That's already happened, so there you go. And yes, you're right. It is ONLY within SE's power to change the system. They might not be aware of all the little ways their system is abused. But we are entrenched in it, so our feedback counts for something.

And if they don't care to change it? Whatever, then I'm the one who wasted her time and energy, and that's that.

[axetastic]

Be ready to get attacked by ppl defending this: "you have to fight the system not the people" they'll Said..well, sometimes It seems your have to fight ppl too..

Huh, turns out you were right.

So, does anyone have a better idea on how to fight the system, besides "don't bother?" Because I'm in agreement that the system - and the abusers - are both a problem.