Ban Service Accounts with more than 1 FC house

[neia]

I'm trying to buy an FC plot on my low population server, however entire wards are owned by gold farmers, as well as players using alt characters with shell FCs to grow their submarine arsenal.

There are players with more than 10 FC plots to one service account. There is NOT enough FC plots to go around and these players use the trick of having the FC formed on a different service account and then transferring the FC to one of their characters to get around current restrictions.

It's absolutely unbelievable that this is not policed more harshly given the limited quantity of FC plots. I'm fighting with gold farmers & greedy players when I'm just trying to give my FC an actual home.

The players who currently have more than one FC plot *ARE* the issue and they should be given the chance to relinquish the plot willingly, or have their service accounts terminated. It's super important this is applied retroactively to the players who currently have amassed these plots, as they will NEVER give them up unless forced.

[Aidorouge]

Housing in general has to be the most grossly overrated piece of content in the game, to the extent I didn't regret abandoning my personal one and giving away my FC one when I left Dynamis, and have no desire to engage with the content again (not even an apartment or FC room).

That said, there SHOULD be a hard cap on house ownership in general per account, and not just FC ones. No sympathy for all of the people who cheated the system prior to the current one and got "grandfathered" into keeping multiple houses on Aether/Primal/Crystal. They knew how much they were screwing over other people when they choose to do that, so it's only right they get screwed back at last and are forced to relinquish excess plots.

I wouldn't threaten them with a ban though, only that they would lose ALL their houses if they don't choose before a deadline because they refused to "secure" the one plot they were allowed to keep. Give them plenty of time to start clearing stuff out of course, but don't provide them any extra storage space (not even temporarily) to really rub in their own hubris and greed.

In exchange however, allow a personal house to be properly shared by all characters on an account (or at least on the same data center) regardless of which worlds they happen to be on thereby further nullifying any need for a single person to own multiple houses. Go even one step more and let players invite their own alts into FCs too in order to share those homes.

And if they insist people can own multiple FC plots? Then they better start nerfing gil farming into the damn ground because that's the ONLY reason these people care to grab up every FC plot in the first place, and if it becomes a penniless hassle (or even a gil LOSS) to run hundreds of submarines everyday, they'll start giving plots up on their own.

[neia]

Here's 2nd Ward, The Goblet on Sophia, Materia. Can clearly see this has 21 wards owned by the same person, probably a gold farmer.

The obvious gold farmers I believe an outright ban is the right thing to do.

As far as individual players, look each and every single person who's service account interacts with multiple FC's submarines etc, should be quiet easy to detect on the server end, and mitigations should be put in place. These players will never give up their wealth generating FC plots.

In an optimal scenario, SE would do some tinkering to work out what FC plots are legit, and what are duplicate shell FC's used to generate wealth, and those accounts should log in one day to see their FC plots vacant.

The current loop hole of being able to transfer an FC to a character on a service account that already runs an FC with a plot also needs to be addressed. Their is so much wrong with housing in this game & it's limited supply, that these baby steps they can do, should absolutely be done. This is not asking for instanced housing, or anything major, just that the playing field is set fairly.

In exchange however, allow a personal house to be properly shared by all characters on an account (or at least on the same data center) regardless of which worlds they happen to be on thereby further nullifying any need for a single person to own multiple houses. Go even one step more and let players invite their own alts into FCs too in order to share those homes.

Big fan of this idea.

[NegativeS]

Where's 'IOwn92FCHouses' when you need him?

Or, maybe, you are a bit ignorant on how housing actually works. Each service account can have a max of 40 fc houses. 3 service accounts are cheap.

If SE refuses to meaningfully increase the amount of available plots (through auto-wards, instanced plots, or functionally-house-apartments), then I'm all for dropping the hammer on people who own multiple. Kind of feels stupid that they implemented a limited system to begin with and didn't restrict it a lot more than they do.

Picture me looking over the fence at WoW players, having a blast with their new cheap, restrictionless system with progression, infinitely generating plots, the ability to save and load layouts, and devs that make popular exploits into features...

[neia]

Jokes aside, if they refuse to actually increase the amount of available plots (through auto-wards, instanced plots, or functionally-house-apartments), then I'm all for dropping the hammer on people who own multiple.

Absolutely agree with you here, it's just pure greed. People should actually engage with the game if they want to make Gil.. It's unfortunate that SE has incentivized hoarding of limited FC plots to passively generate Gil, but the players who eat from this are at fault for ultimately making the decision to abuse the system.

Where's 'IOwn92FCHouses' when you need him?

LOL. Well unfortunately IOwn92FCHouses speaks the truth. Your only limited by the amount of characters your service account is limited to, you can have that amount of FC houses and unfortunately people do. And have multiple service accounts like that guy. At least he's kind enough to succinctly personify the issue so clearly.

[Kaurhz]

I don't really think this is fair. Ultimately, you can't ban people for acting within the confines of what the game actually permits in terms of just housing alone

They need to increase the capacity, dramatically of housing on certain servers, or they need to rework the housing system entirely.

Since people are already highlighting Gil farming through submarines (e.g., Salvaged Accessories), I do honestly think they need to address this point.. Whether it is outright nerfing salvaged accessories into the ground, or whether it means decoupling the airship/submarine system from FCs and housing entirely (and nerfing the accessories)

[lievaordiea]

i think they will try to do this.
once they work out a fool proof method that also allows the full black list and /block across alts on one account that doesn't infringe on personal data

currently it doesn't work and the ones that *might* work DO infringe on personal data - not to mention are creepy AF and need to be consta banned.

plus once they got that tied down they'd need to work out a way to find the different email addresses/payment methods i'm sure these bots use.

i would imagine its something they're constantly attempting to do but with privacy laws being more and more stringent it will be harder for them to access personal data to use to actually do it.

[neia]

I'll address each of your points here:

I don't really think this is fair. Ultimately, you can't ban people for acting within the confines of what the game actually permits in terms of just housing alone

Regardless of if we want it to be. Housing is not currently infinite. I'm not advocating for outright bans. However SE needs to recognize that the rules are badly designed, not enforced, and being deliberately exploited at scale by players. When a single service account controls 3, 5, 10, 20 FC houses via Shell FCs and transfers, it stops being normal, and is systemic abuse of a loophole. Simply stating that "the game allows it" doesn't make it fair, it just means that the rules are being broken.

They need to increase the capacity, dramatically of housing on certain servers, or they need to rework the housing system entirely.

In a perfect world this would be optimal. However that requires a lot more resources than simply enforcing the current rules would.

[CeriseLavanille]

Since people are already highlighting Gil farming through submarines (e.g., Salvaged Accessories), I do honestly think they need to address this point.. Whether it is outright nerfing salvaged accessories into the ground, or whether it means decoupling the airship/submarine system from FCs and housing entirely (and nerfing the accessories)

I don't think that would be a fix but could rather exacerbate the issue with the people needing and taking more plots to increase their revenue. They really need to either increase the amount of wards and plots, or not allow the blatant hoarding of plots by a single group or worse, person. Especially when the only way people can get a house atm is wait for those that have unsubbed to not refresh the timer on their houses, which these people clearly keep up with and take more when new plots open up.

It's kind of messed up how they inflate the amount of gil coming in while also keeping out active players from owning a house of their own, so until they decide everyone else can get a house anytime, then I say they punish those that are greedy and hoarding everything for their own.

[LaylaTsarra]

I'm trying to buy an FC plot on my low population server, however entire wards are owned by gold farmers, as well as players using alt characters with shell FCs to grow their submarine arsenal.

There are players with more than 10 FC plots to one service account. There is NOT enough FC plots to go around and these players use the trick of having the FC formed on a different service account and then transferring the FC to one of their characters to get around current restrictions.

It's absolutely unbelievable that this is not policed more harshly given the limited quantity of FC plots. I'm fighting with gold farmers & greedy players when I'm just trying to give my FC an actual home.

The players who currently have more than one FC plot *ARE* the issue and they should be given the chance to relinquish the plot willingly, or have their service accounts terminated. It's super important this is applied retroactively to the players who currently have amassed these plots, as they will NEVER give them up unless forced.

There are tons of houses on Sophia. I don't quite understand your comments here. In my ward there are only 7 houses sold used to be more but people left. So exactly why is it you can't get a house?

Of all places Materia is a utopia for anyone who wants a house.