Housing discrimination

[Barraind]

Maybe not now but it is a problem that will get worse if SE do not make the purchase restriction on fc houses permanent. Removing that [...]

That restriction was in place for a whopping, staggering, unbelievable...

1 week.

It went live on January 29 2018 and was removed on February 6.

edit - It is possible it wasnt removed until the 4.21 hotfix (which removed FC only restriction in new wards) and not the 4.20 hotfix, on Feb 20, meaning it may have existed for 3 weeks.

[Jojoya]

Maybe not now but it is a problem that will get worse if SE do not make the purchase restriction on fc houses permanent. Removing that has increased the amount of shell fcs quite noticeably on some servers.

Justice is partly being served by that. The reason why so many players want the shell FCs is to run workshops to make gil selling rare items from submersibles.

The number of FCs in general (real and shell) doing this has greatly increased the number of rare items getting to market, driving the prices down rapidly compared to the past. That's led to occasional comments from some players that's it's not worth doing anymore because they feel like the gil being earned wasn't worth the time and effort to level the subs and build a good farming configuration.

But it does hurt the real FCs who were using the workshops to fund FC activities as much as the shell FCs. They're also getting less back as supply increases. We're still making a decent amount from our FC fleet but we're more of a small to mid-sized social FC so we don't really need that much gil for the things we do. Larger FCs would feel it more.

[Penthea]

Justice is partly being served by that. The reason why so many players want the shell FCs is to run workshops to make gil selling rare items from submersibles.

The number of FCs in general (real and shell) doing this has greatly increased the number of rare items getting to market, driving the prices down rapidly compared to the past. That's led to occasional comments from some players that's it's not worth doing anymore because they feel like the gil being earned wasn't worth the time and effort to level the subs and build a good farming configuration.

But it does hurt the real FCs who were using the workshops to fund FC activities as much as the shell FCs. They're also getting less back as supply increases. We're still making a decent amount from our FC fleet but we're more of a small to mid-sized social FC so we don't really need that much gil for the things we do. Larger FCs would feel it more.

Thinking about this it does make me wonder if the workshop needs another look at by SE. Is it perhaps too easy to get a workshop up to date even with a relatively new fc? I don't recall it being difficult for us to achieve this and we're certainly not a fc who heavily concentrate on it. Even when we lag behind it never takes us long to catch up. Could this be a contributing factor as to why it's quite tempting to create shell fcs? Because the amount of workshop effort involved isn't quite as much as it could or even should be? I would be very interested to read people's opinions about this. Especially anyone from a fc who craft with the workshop content very often.

[Arielen]

Thinking about this it does make me wonder if the workshop needs another look at by SE. Is it perhaps too easy to get a workshop up to date even with a relatively new fc? I don't recall it being difficult for us to achieve this and we're certainly not a fc who heavily concentrate on it. Even when we lag behind it never takes us long to catch up. Could this be a contributing factor as to why it's quite tempting to create shell fcs? Because the amount of workshop effort involved isn't quite as much as it could or even should be? I would be very interested to read people's opinions about this. Especially anyone from a fc who craft with the workshop content very often.

You can buy premade sub stuff via the mb or the sub discord so that doesn't help lol. However, shell FCs don't have enough members required to farm for company credits to maintain submarines and airships with any regularity. You can powerlevel a new FC to 6 in the span of like 2 hours of spamming Shisui of the Violet Tides, but you need like 10k credits for 1 voyage or something like that. Shell FCs aren't spamming them in other words. The only real benefit is gardening.

[KayRadley]

There are a lot of people out there that register FC's just to get houses with options, then kick everyone so they are the only people left in that FC. So technically those houses are not being used to form communities, simply because people know FC's get priority when relocating houses and because FC's get benefits.

I've seen a lot of FC's out there that have less then 10 members and the month after that still hasn't changed... some even have only 1 or 3 members and next time you see them weeks after its still the same while those players are clearly online.. Tho its often just 1 or 2 of them at the same time. It's unfair that some people can't get housing because some who "claim" to build communities are not even trying to achieve that.
I'm sure SE only gave them priority in the assumption that an FC that builds a community potentially can persuade people to resub for a longer amount of time assuming they have fun as a group. So I believe everyone not meeting this expectation should lose their benefits!

So please add an option where FC's require at least 10 different members to log in once every 30 days. That way FC's have to be larger then 10 members for it to maintain a constant 10+ logins and fake FC's would lose their housing much faster.

My FC is small, consisting of a relatively miniscule number of friends and some alts, but we use our FC house. Why should we be punished because of less scrupulous players, Karen?

[Jojoya]

Thinking about this it does make me wonder if the workshop needs another look at by SE. Is it perhaps too easy to get a workshop up to date even with a relatively new fc? I don't recall it being difficult for us to achieve this and we're certainly not a fc who heavily concentrate on it. Even when we lag behind it never takes us long to catch up. Could this be a contributing factor as to why it's quite tempting to create shell fcs? Because the amount of workshop effort involved isn't quite as much as it could or even should be? I would be very interested to read people's opinions about this. Especially anyone from a fc who craft with the workshop content very often.

With respect to the workshop, I don't see why any FC should feel penalized for being "new". There's still going to be a time investment to rank up all the vessels assuming no one in the FC is rich and willing to buy the parts off the MB.

Then again, having someone rich in the FC willing to donate the gil is generally the only way the FC will get a house in the first place. FCs have no gil making activities that deposit the gil directly to the FC chest. They're reliant on member donations until they get their first airship/submersible built.

It's not how easy it is to get the workshop up to date that creates an incentive for shell FCs. It's how easy it is for a single player to get a FC to the rank necessary to purchase a house. I remember when the wards were added in 4.2 and SE announced that only FCs would be allowed to buy at first that people were posting guides on how solo players could get an FC to the proper rank within 2 days. It's too easy to spam Expert delivery turn-ins or mass craft HQ items to generate the credits.

If SE wants to promote FCs as active social groups instead of gil making opportunities, they need to take a look at what WoW did with guild levels, perks and challenges - then try to avoid making some of the mistakes that ended up causing the system to suffer. The guild challenges themselves were a good idea - the guild was rewarded for doing things as a guild group. Maybe if FC houses were purchased with company credits instead of gil but company credits could only be earned while doing specific content with a group that includes at least 3 FC members? The game is old enough it's probably not worth SE's time to overhaul the FC system beyond what they're working on for rank permissions to cut down on theft by compromised accounts.

[Barraind]

The number of FCs in general (real and shell) doing this has greatly increased the number of rare items getting to market, driving the prices down rapidly compared to the past

This tier is also absolute garbage compared to prior tiers.

No mount.
No minion.
No rare component for house item crafting.
No uncommon component for sub or house upgrading.
No uncommon or rare component for glam.
No common, high-use component for crafting (either workshop or FOR workshop).
No "oh wow, really?" luxury crafting item from old content. (polarized glass from a couple sub updates ago)

The same sub builds that were good last tier are just as good this tier.There's one new sub build thats seeing use, but it has a 4 day turnaround time, and won't be better than 2x 2day.

The profit this tier is down because the new sectors added 1 thing that people care about, and its a novelty umbrella that anyone who just wants an umbrella won't spend money on because you can get one from restoration for a few k in mats.


You could add hi-mythrite and dress material to the loot table and they would instantly be the most valuable thing added this batch by an unsurpassable margin.