Turn on Demolish for Housing and fix housing please.

[Shibi]

I doubt that having a FC house does all that much for growing FC communities when the house and its features tends to end up the plaything of the officers.

Not sure Jojo, maybe your experience just hasn't been great?

I know back in the dim dark past when I was in someone elses FC the house was very important for us. We gathered there and were all great friends.

Our own genuine FC house is very important to us (and we worked very hard for that), and opposite us are a very friendly raiding FC who pop up for expansions, and all seem to gather in the plaza area between us.

I've also seen a lot of fresh genuine FCs who advertise in their ads they are grinding towards a house.

Just because one doesn't notice one's FC neighbors when you run from your gate to the front door, doesn't mean they are not there.


I do consider that no matter what we believe though, SE sees them as important and will retain the split. And that of course - going back to the original point of the discussion - still adds evidence to me that a FC door inside the citystate won't free up houses.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I don't get it. Why do you want to apply a monk dot on your house?

[Linadae]

Wanted to come back to this as I missed it I believe.

I don't really think it's criminal to take away part of a service if you aren't paying for said service anymore. You also didn't buy the house with actual money so there's nothing criminal going on in that sense (unless you RMTd in which case that's your own problem). This isn't a single player game where you buy it as a hard copy and it's yours forever, you're paying a monthly fee to access an online game that could have servers shut down tomorrow if the devs wanted to. What happens to all of your stuff then? Poof. It will also eventually happen too, btw.

If you aren't playing the game or paying for a sub for months on end, why do you need a house that you aren't using and could go to someone else who will use it? Like, realistically, why? What purpose is it serving you collecting dust in a ward? If you care that much about your house, play the game or find someone else to pay your sub for you.

If they won't put in instanced housing or some form of housing that is accessible to all (not apartments because apartment does not equal house), auto demo will eventually go back on. It's not fair to the people who don't have housing and want to experience that part of the content to be locked out because people who don't even play the game anymore care about a house they don't use.

That's just it, Apartments COULD equal house, if SE would put in the work. I have repeatedly made the suggestion that Apartments and FC rooms should be upgradeable using gil with FC rooms having cheaper upgrades (due to the possibility of being kicked from FCs). Imagine an Apartment/FC room that over time you could expand into a small, medium, and large size house, complete with glassed in outdoor section for your outdoor furniture (like a conservatory). For the Apartments the upgraded versions could even have tenets added as you upgrade.

Hell, even have an special upgrade option either for gil or a crafted item or both that would allow you to change the view outside your conservatory. And changing the outside walls of the Conservatory will also change the inside of your apartment/fc room. So this will also rejuvenate the crafting scene as well.

This will also allow SE to just make wards with JUST apartments for the larger servers when there's not a demand world wide for more wards.

[Jojoya]

Not sure Jojo, maybe your experience just hasn't been great?

I know back in the dim dark past when I was in someone elses FC the house was very important for us. We gathered there and were all great friends.

Our own genuine FC house is very important to us (and we worked very hard for that), and opposite us are a very friendly raiding FC who pop up for expansions, and all seem to gather in the plaza area between us.

I've also seen a lot of fresh genuine FCs who advertise in their ads they are grinding towards a house.

Just because one doesn't notice one's FC neighbors when you run from your gate to the front door, doesn't mean they are not there.


I do consider that no matter what we believe though, SE sees them as important and will retain the split. And that of course - going back to the original point of the discussion - still adds evidence to me that a FC door inside the citystate won't free up houses.

I doubt don't that a FC house is important to some players and FCs. I do question how important one is to all players and FCs.

My own experience is that the FCs I've been in wouldn't have been any less social in the absence of a FC house. One of the FCs I was in actually spent a fair amount of time hanging around the outside of the Thaumaturge's Guild together even though we could have done it at the FC house. It's the members that create and grow the community, not the house.

The experience you shared has a factor that I think a lot of FCs these days don't have - you worked together to be able to get the house. How many FCs truly work together to do that as opposed to just one or two members footing the entire bill to purchase the plot? How many players never had to sit through the wait to get a house because the FC already had one at the time they joined?

I see FC advertise their recruitment AND mentioning a house as well but how many will end up joining those FCs because of the house? How many of those players discover the FC chat is quiet and people don't do anything together? That the house just kind of sits there unused because only the officers have permissions to decorate, garden, etc.?

Some FCs are good. Some aren't. If the FC is good then great. But as I said above, it's not going to be a house that turn a fair to bad FC into a good one,

I agree that regardless of reasons, the ward split is here to stay.

When it comes to the effectiveness of giving workshops an access point at the Grand Companies or other location, I think it would make a small difference though probably not as large as some might hope. Any house going to a player or FC that actually wants the house itself instead of just wanting access to another workshop is a plus.

[Shibi]

I doubt don't that a FC house is important to some players and FCs. I do question how important one is to all players and FCs.

I really don't think it matters to the question at hand. I still doubt many FCs would give up their home for a submarine hole in the wall. That's the be-all and end-all of my point.

[Dzian]

The experience you shared has a factor that I think a lot of FCs these days don't have - you worked together to be able to get the house. How many FCs truly work together to do that as opposed to just one or two members footing the entire bill to purchase the plot? How many players never had to sit through the wait to get a house because the FC already had one at the time they joined?

It's the aftermath of a change in game design.. FCs and a whole bunch of associated content long since abandoned all built around the idea of building connections and bonds between groups of players forming communities and friendships in a very group centric fashion. The idea was group goals group projects groups working together. One of the earlier concepts involved free Co.panies being able to fight and summon primals. And the effects would cover entire areas.. if you summonsed shiva in southern thanalan it would literally start to snow. Or if you summoned ifrit the sky would turn red in a blaze of fire..

They were meant to return 1.0s hamlet defence in some fashion as FC based content but that never happened either and a few other examples I can't quite recall as so many years have passed.

But then came a massive shift in direction and the game moved away from community or groups or you know an actual MMO. And instead went down the path of single player or solo centric game. Devolving FCs into nothing more than a glorified chat channel. And creating this huge issue that exists with housing as the system was designed to be community / group centric rather than a solo based game. The developers want it to be a community thing and feel like neighbourhoods but the game discourages working together and building bonds and friendships so players won't invest in anything like that..

[LianaThorne]

That's just it, Apartments COULD equal house, if SE would put in the work. I have repeatedly made the suggestion that Apartments and FC rooms should be upgradeable using gil with FC rooms having cheaper upgrades (due to the possibility of being kicked from FCs). Imagine an Apartment/FC room that over time you could expand into a small, medium, and large size house, complete with glassed in outdoor section for your outdoor furniture (like a conservatory). For the Apartments the upgraded versions could even have tenets added as you upgrade.

Hell, even have an special upgrade option either for gil or a crafted item or both that would allow you to change the view outside your conservatory. And changing the outside walls of the Conservatory will also change the inside of your apartment/fc room. So this will also rejuvenate the crafting scene as well.

This will also allow SE to just make wards with JUST apartments for the larger servers when there's not a demand world wide for more wards.

I wish but doubt we're gonna see much of an apartment revamp. If they do though I'll be pleasantly surprised as it'll give me a reason to actually use my apartment lol.

[LianaThorne]

I doubt don't that a FC house is important to some players and FCs. I do question how important one is to all players and FCs.

My own experience is that the FCs I've been in wouldn't have been any less social in the absence of a FC house. One of the FCs I was in actually spent a fair amount of time hanging around the outside of the Thaumaturge's Guild together even though we could have done it at the FC house. It's the members that create and grow the community, not the house.

The experience you shared has a factor that I think a lot of FCs these days don't have - you worked together to be able to get the house. How many FCs truly work together to do that as opposed to just one or two members footing the entire bill to purchase the plot? How many players never had to sit through the wait to get a house because the FC already had one at the time they joined?

I see FC advertise their recruitment AND mentioning a house as well but how many will end up joining those FCs because of the house? How many of those players discover the FC chat is quiet and people don't do anything together? That the house just kind of sits there unused because only the officers have permissions to decorate, garden, etc.?

Some FCs are good. Some aren't. If the FC is good then great. But as I said above, it's not going to be a house that turn a fair to bad FC into a good one,

I agree that regardless of reasons, the ward split is here to stay.

When it comes to the effectiveness of giving workshops an access point at the Grand Companies or other location, I think it would make a small difference though probably not as large as some might hope. Any house going to a player or FC that actually wants the house itself instead of just wanting access to another workshop is a plus.

Owning a house is usually incentive for new members to join, compared to not. As much as the social aspect is the point of being in an FC (even though theres been a rise in people wishing for a single player experience), the house provides extras that you can't get anywhere else. Personally all of the FCs I've been in, including my own, have held events at the FC house rather than out in the world and it's been used as the primary hangout spot.

To put it bluntly, it shows that the FC has more to offer than one that doesn't. That's why people list it in their ad on the PF.

Side note: Not all FCs gatekeep the workshop and such from members. One in particular had a great system where you'd sign up for a "workshop group" and be given a special rank to access it. My own I let people do whatever they want in there lol, no skin off my bones if someone wants to craft something to sell.

[Jojoya]

I really don't think it matters to the question at hand. I still doubt many FCs would give up their home for a submarine hole in the wall. That's the be-all and end-all of my point.

It doesn't have to be a "many" to be a gain for the current situation. Not a solution, but would still get more houses in the hands of players who want a house for the sake of having the house instead of just gaining access to the features that require a house.

The same would go for gardening. Giving players an instanced area to garden the same items currently grown on house plots would take away the part of demand driven solely by a desire for gardening access.

It's the aftermath of a change in game design.. FCs and a whole bunch of associated content long since abandoned all built around the idea of building connections and bonds between groups of players forming communities and friendships in a very group centric fashion. The idea was group goals group projects groups working together. One of the earlier concepts involved free Co.panies being able to fight and summon primals. And the effects would cover entire areas.. if you summonsed shiva in southern thanalan it would literally start to snow. Or if you summoned ifrit the sky would turn red in a blaze of fire..

They were meant to return 1.0s hamlet defence in some fashion as FC based content but that never happened either and a few other examples I can't quite recall as so many years have passed.

But then came a massive shift in direction and the game moved away from community or groups or you know an actual MMO. And instead went down the path of single player or solo centric game. Devolving FCs into nothing more than a glorified chat channel. And creating this huge issue that exists with housing as the system was designed to be community / group centric rather than a solo based game. The developers want it to be a community thing and feel like neighbourhoods but the game discourages working together and building bonds and friendships so players won't invest in anything like that..

I don't think I've seen those types of communities form on a large scale in any MMO that didn't also include some form of world PvP so players were effectively forced to join large groups for protection against enemy players. Those communities typically revolved around that world PvP and not other content.

Of course, I haven't played every MMO there's ever been so there could have been some without world PvP that did have solid community building. Does anyone have any examples of where it did happen and work out well?

But it's really hard to create a large community that interacts without it collapsing into some sort of drama. That's why players tend to form small to medium social groups (though they'll usually belong to more than one group). It's easier to have everyone like-minded in a small group than a large group.

I think a lot of players forget that MMO doesn't mean you have be playing with hundreds of others at the same time in the same activity. It simply means there will be large numbers of players online at the same time that you might encounter and interact with. Trying to force socialization in large groups will end up backfiring. If it actually worked well, it would have long since become a standard of content design.

[ReynTime]

Speaking as someone who owned houses in the past and simply let them go way prior to this, it's crazy (and a little sad) how much drama people make over what is a useless feature that can be pretty limiting and feel unfinished sometimes. Would be wild if people put this same energy into actually demanding the battle content be made less shallow.