Fake FCs' Housing Abuse

[CatStarwind]

Okay buddy, obviously the devs disagree, so you can keep complaining about it as much as you want.

Worth reminding everyone that the devs did attempt to patch it once so it's obvious that they agree. It's also obvious with things like Rank permissions being broken that the FC system as a whole is a disaster of code.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

Honestly just requiring a FC to maintain a 4 person membership. If you have more then 1 character from the same service account join the FC; if you leave with 1 character you automatically leave with all of them.

Worst case scenario? You have someone in a "real" FC that gets inconvenienced because they want to pull themselves and their alts from the FC so they lose their rooms. This would mean a single service account could only maintain 2 Shell Fcs; so 4x less. Sure some folks are going to spend money for additional service accounts; but honestly your not going to make it impossible for folks to throw money at SE for stuff.

I'd also take it a step further and require new FC members be required to earn X amount of company credits with the FC before FC ownership can be transferred to them. This would be in addition to the 30 day transfer min requirement.

[Nepentha]

Honestly just requiring a FC to maintain a 4 person membership. If you have more then 1 character from the same service account join the FC; if you leave with 1 character you automatically leave with all of them.

Worst case scenario? You have someone in a "real" FC that gets inconvenienced because they want to pull themselves and their alts from the FC so they lose their rooms. This would mean a single service account could only maintain 2 Shell Fcs; so 4x less. Sure some folks are going to spend money for additional service accounts; but honestly your not going to make it impossible for folks to throw money at SE for stuff.

I'd also take it a step further and require new FC members be required to earn X amount of company credits with the FC before FC ownership can be transferred to them. This would be in addition to the 30 day transfer min requirement.

I'm actually trying to puzzle out how this works.

So if I am in an FC on 3 alts, decide to move one of them to a friend's FC to help them with something that requires me to be in their FC, if I leave on that alt all three of my alts leave at the same time? How... exactly is that a good idea?

And it takes very little time or effort at all to generate FC credits.

There's better ways of doing this.

1. Close the loophole on bidding. Bidding can only be done by characters who have reached lvl 50 and gotten 2nd lieutenant with their grand company, the same requirements for buying personal housing. You can't buy an FC room till you reach those milestones but you can bid on an FC house with a lvl 1 character? Sense, this makes none.
2. Set it so bidding cannot be done if the FC master doesn't meet those criteria. If you try to bid on a house for your FC but your FC master can't purchase land? You get an error message stating such. (Or, you can bid, but if at the time you try to finalize the purchase /then/ you get the error message.)
3. Make it impossible to give FC leader to someone who doesn't meet those criteria if the FC in question has a house. "Free Company leadership cannot be passed down to I'm Analt because they do not meet the criteria for housing ownership."

Mind you this won't really do much other than deter. The way housing is set up, it's virtually impossible to stop anyone wanting to purchase multiple plots. SE either needs to rethink the housing wards and perhaps install instanced housing, or edit and start enforcing their rules.

[Jojoya]

Honestly just requiring a FC to maintain a 4 person membership. If you have more then 1 character from the same service account join the FC; if you leave with 1 character you automatically leave with all of them.

Worst case scenario? You have someone in a "real" FC that gets inconvenienced because they want to pull themselves and their alts from the FC so they lose their rooms. This would mean a single service account could only maintain 2 Shell Fcs; so 4x less. Sure some folks are going to spend money for additional service accounts; but honestly your not going to make it impossible for folks to throw money at SE for stuff.

I'd also take it a step further and require new FC members be required to earn X amount of company credits with the FC before FC ownership can be transferred to them. This would be in addition to the 30 day transfer min requirement.

Forcing all characters on the same service account to be removed from a FC just because the player wants to transfer one of those characters to a different world/FC would be an extremely bad move.

Attaching ownership of the FC house to the FC master would work much better than the current "purchased and maintained by character" provision. Those running the workshop farms would either have to have a separate service account for each FC house or have those houses on different worlds. Someone could still hold an officer rank in multiple FCs on the same world, they just wouldn't be able to be FC master of more than one.

I'm not certain your final suggestion would be effective in any way. Even without a boost, someone could easily get a new character to 2nd Sgt. in its Grand Company within a couple of days then spam Expert Delivery turn ins to meet the remainder of the credit requirement. SE would also have to add a tracker to the game that displayed credits earned by each member. That in itself could lead to toxic behavior in some FCs ("I'm more deserving because I've generated more credits than you").

It would make more sense to move the Land Purchase entitlement from Rank 6 to Rank 20. Back when housing was first added, and even in HW to some degree, reaching Rank 6 was a difficult task unless it was a large FC because the amount of company credits generated was smaller. As expansions have come and gone, the amount of company credits being generated has increased multiple times compared to the original especially when it comes to Expert Deliveries.

A small but active FC with 4-6 members could still get the needed rank in 1-2 months (they're already going to have to wait 30 days before they can buy so it works out well). A solo FC would have a much harder time without spending a crazy amount of gil on the mb.

Another option would be to charge FCs rent in the form of Company Credits. Genuinely active FCs (once they've been established for a few months) are usually swimming in credits even after what's needed to run the subs and airship, and buying FC actions. Credits build up much faster than they get used because there's not anything useful to spend them on outside of the actions, ceruleum tanks and maybe getting Voidrake/Althyk Lavender seeds to grow.

Solo FCs, once again, are going to have a harder time generating the ongoing supply of credits without spending large amounts of gil. The more expenses there are to offset the gil generated by a workshop, the less attractive it becomes to run workshop farms.

[Reinha]

Another option would be to charge FCs rent in the form of Company Credits. Genuinely active FCs (once they've been established for a few months) are usually swimming in credits even after what's needed to run the subs and airship, and buying FC actions. Credits build up much faster than they get used because there's not anything useful to spend them on outside of the actions, ceruleum tanks and maybe getting Voidrake/Althyk Lavender seeds to grow.

Company credits are only accumulated by doing crappy casual and leveling content (that also reward GC seals) which is not something everyone participates in. This kind of "rent" would only be acceptable if it applied equally to the main culprits behind the housing shortage: private house owners. There'd be a lot more houses available if people actually had to pay CG seals to maintain their house, but are we really suggesting people need to slave away doing specific content they don't enjoy just to have a house? Auto-demolition is how the game frees up houses from inactive users.

The only thing that needs to be done is to prevent users from buying a free company house if they have a character in another free company on the same server, and that free company has an estate.

[CatStarwind]

Honestly just requiring a FC to maintain a 4 person membership. If you have more then 1 character from the same service account join the FC; if you leave with 1 character you automatically leave with all of them.

Having all alts in a world share housing and FC like this would be a good idea. But like everyone said, cooling down workshop abuse by closing the shell FC loophole would be ideal.

[Stormpeaks]

Having all alts in a world share housing and FC like this would be a good idea. But like everyone said, cooling down workshop abuse by closing the shell FC loophole would be ideal.

It isnt a loophole, its actually intended in the TOS, good try buddy, as per usual making a fool of yourself.

At this point you are going to become (if you are not already) the joke of the housing forums, congratulations

[Jojoya]

Company credits are only accumulated by doing crappy casual and leveling content (that also reward GC seals) which is not something everyone participates in. This kind of "rent" would only be acceptable if it applied equally to the main culprits behind the housing shortage: private house owners. There'd be a lot more houses available if people actually had to pay CG seals to maintain their house, but are we really suggesting people need to slave away doing specific content they don't enjoy just to have a house? Auto-demolition is how the game frees up houses from inactive users.

The only thing that needs to be done is to prevent users from buying a free company house if they have a character in another free company on the same server, and that free company has an estate.

There are a lot of different ways to generate company credits. No one is forced into specific content, though certainly some ways are more efficient for gaining credits than others. That's something I'd actually like to see SE changed - I think Expert Delivery and HQ crafting are overvalued when it comes to generating credits.

There's no reason to apply it to private house owners because 1) they don't get company credits, those go to the FC, and 2) FCs get additional features in their houses that private owners don't get.

I get why you'd be upset with the idea considering you're in a 3 member FC that owns a large. But you could have also gotten a private house and added the other 2 FC members as tenants. You're part of the problem by creating artificial demand for FC houses by using a FC for personal reasons.

The point of this is to lower demand for plots by fake FCs, which in turn can increase supply for others.

[Stormpeaks]

There are a lot of different ways to generate company credits. No one is forced into specific content, though certainly some ways are more efficient for gaining credits than others. That's something I'd actually like to see SE changed - I think Expert Delivery and HQ crafting are overvalued when it comes to generating credits.

There's no reason to apply it to private house owners because 1) they don't get company credits, those go to the FC, and 2) FCs get additional features in their houses that private owners don't get.

I get why you'd be upset with the idea considering you're in a 3 member FC that owns a large. But you could have also gotten a private house and added the other 2 FC members as tenants. You're part of the problem by creating artificial demand for FC houses by using a FC for personal reasons.

The point of this is to lower demand for plots by fake FCs, which in turn can increase supply for others.

For NA only ? Sure

Not for EU, there are enough houses on EU for everyone.

Also company credits are stupid easy to get, it would literally do nothing but create annoyance even for what you call "real fcs", forcing them to do things they dont want to do because they need to reach x amount of credits.

[Reinha]

There are a lot of different ways to generate company credits. No one is forced into specific content, though certainly some ways are more efficient for gaining credits than others. That's something I'd actually like to see SE changed - I think Expert Delivery and HQ crafting are overvalued when it comes to generating credits.

Savage, extremes, unreal, criterion, S ranks and ultimate don't give company credits, do they? So one would be forced into casual content they wouldn't otherwise do. It's a silly idea Square would never implement, because they know not everyone spends their time doing fates and dungeons lol.

I get why you'd be upset with the idea considering you're in a 3 member FC that owns a large. But you could have also gotten a private house and added the other 2 FC members as tenants. You're part of the problem by creating artificial demand for FC houses by using a FC for personal reasons.

The point of this is to lower demand for plots by fake FCs, which in turn can increase supply for others.

Part of what problem? Odin has hundreds of free company plots. If I want to create and run a free company I have the same ability to do so as any fc leader that formed theirs years ago, despite your insinuation that I or anyone looking to share a free company with their loved ones is only allowed to enjoy what other people have built.

Getting free company credits would be trivial, but the part that upsets me is the idea that I'd suffer repeating a braindead activity someone without endgame experience conveniently considers the best way to earn housing. This expectation of having to waste my time would be there still, should my fc grow into a 4 man fc that might meet your criteria of a "non-fake" fc.