Suggestion to reduce FC housing abuse

[8bitbort]

My solution is to block/prevent the transference of FC ownership to accounts that already have ownership of a free company with property on that same server. Right now the system allows for someone to make their own FC and get a house for it, and then have their alts receive ownership of a free company with a house, one for each of them. And then doing this with multiple service accounts.

This has led to servers like Spriggan having a single human being across a handful of service fees owning literally an entire ward. And other servers having people trying to sell groups of FC's with properties for hundreds of millions of gil. This cannot be what the developers intended.

[Luna-M]

Spriggan had empty plots for months though, glad to see them being used for once. You seem to be unaware to why that person bought all those plots too, it's not to goat people's faces.

[Jojoya]

To the best of my knowledge, FCs aren't considered to have specific owners as such. Did you perhaps mean FC leader instead?

And you're correct, it's not what they intended but SE evidently ran into problems shortly after the new ownership rules were implemented in 4.2 so they stopped enforcing the rule regarding FC house ownership.

SE is aware that some players own multiple FC houses on the same world and same service account. It's been reported many times. We don't know if they're ever going to do anything about it.

As for players who pay for multiple service accounts to get multiple houses, there's nothing wrong with that under the rules of the game. Each paid account is getting the same access as any other paid account.

[8bitbort]

As for players who pay for multiple service accounts to get multiple houses, there's nothing wrong with that under the rules of the game. Each paid account is getting the same access as any other paid account.

The multiple accounts thing would be significantly less of an issue if that each account could only be the leader of 1 per server, instead of 8.

Spriggan had empty plots for months though, glad to see them being used for once. You seem to be unaware to why that person bought all those plots too, it's not to goat people's faces.

Empty plots are not a problem that need to be solved. One person holding one percent of all plots on a server is. Even if that person in particular is just a housing decoration enthusiast doesn't require them to own 60 plots or more. And gloating certainly DOES happen, even if passively, simply by having an entire page of housing that says <Lucis>. Then there's <Mew> with a literal BLOG that's pretty full of gloating.

[Kenky]

Empty plots are not a problem that need to be solved. One person holding one percent of all plots on a server is. Even if that person in particular is just a housing decoration enthusiast doesn't require them to own 60 plots or more. And gloating certainly DOES happen, even if passively, simply by having an entire page of housing that says <Lucis>. Then there's <Mew> with a literal BLOG that's pretty full of gloating.

In the case of the Spriggan Hoarder, All of those plots were ignored to the point of lowest-possible value, yet still nobody even thought about touching them. They have no ground to stand on to complain about it, when they had the exact same amount of time to take one of the plots for themselves.

It's only until after they lose the ability to purchase it, do they think it a punishable offense. Which is beyond stupid for several reasons.

And yes, Gloating does happen. But in Mew's case, they're not "gloating" about it, as much as they are proving it can be done. Not to mention Mew seems to be collecting and publicly releasing critical information over Housing plots, timer ratios and the like. SO even if they are "greedy" as people like to label them as, they're offering information that can help minimize camping times and health issues. (repeatedly clicking a placard leading to wrist-damage. You know this whole jist)

But even after -all- of that being known, it's still the delusion that FC's are the issue with housing, when even with Shell FCs and FC-flippers, they take up maybe 20 - 30% (Ballpark estimate) of owned housing plots. You're pointing your crosshair at the wrong crowd.

[8bitbort]

I'm kind of amused. The argument in both of my suggestion threads is that the suggestion alone doesn't solve all the issues, so it isn't worth pursuing. But if we take BOTH suggestions, and we make is significantly more difficult for players to own multiple properties, while also putting a BIG dent into the viability of housing as a player to player market, we fix a pretty sizeable portion of both the supply AND demand of the housing system.

And "just doing it to see if it could be done/prove there's a flaw" has never held up under scrutiny. "No man, this video is just a social experiment where I treat other people like garbage." "I just stole a bunch of credit card numbers to prove it was doable."

Yes, the "majority" of housing isn't held by hoarders, but enough of it to matter IS. And if there wasn't such a thriving market of haves over the have-nots, there wouldn't be nearly as much issue as there is.

And I'll repeat myself again: empty plots are not a problem to be solved. Spriggan having all those plots at the time didn't need a rich "savior" to come scoop them all up. If anything, stunts like that make people even less inclined to populate that server.

[DrWho2010]

some people just want to watch the world burn.

[8bitbort]

some people just want to watch the world burn.

Not really, I just think there's a couple of changes to be made that would significantly improve the housing system for the majority. Obviously folks who currently own stuff would still have their holdings, just like the old personal holdings. But preventing the abuse(and the current system IS being abused) for the future makes things better for folks down the road.

[Jojoya]

I'm kind of amused. The argument in both of my suggestion threads is that the suggestion alone doesn't solve all the issues, so it isn't worth pursuing. But if we take BOTH suggestions, and we make is significantly more difficult for players to own multiple properties, while also putting a BIG dent into the viability of housing as a player to player market, we fix a pretty sizeable portion of both the supply AND demand of the housing system.

It might ease the supply versus demand issue a small amount, but it is not a fix and certainly not a sizeable one.

A fix is changing the system so supply will always meet demand.

Right now, each world has 5,040 houses. The ward expansion next week increases that number to 5,760.

This year, I've seen population estimates for the NA worlds running between 11,000 and 24,000 active players per world (only SE would know the real numbers). Lacking more official population numbers, let's put those estimates to use.

What percentage of those players have a character that is housing eligible? I think 80% is a conservative but reasonable number to use. It's not difficult to reach level 50, obtain Second Lieutenant with a Grand Company and accumulate 3 million gil.

What percentage of housing eligible players actually want to own a house? Going off my personal experience of those I know who own, say they want to own or say they don't care, I'm going to go with 65%.

That puts the number of players per world who want to own a house between 5720 and 12,480.

We also need to factor in the FCs that want to own a house. If we assume every player (regardless of housing eligibility and desire) has one character in a FC that owns or wants to own a house, and the average number of members per FC is 10, we end up with 1100-2400 FCs per world who want to own.

That gives us an overall demand of 6,820 to 14,880 houses per world. After the ward expansion next week, there will still be 1,060 to 9,120 players and FCs per world who are still unable to get a house even with the limit of one personal and one FC house per account per world.

Increase my estimates to 90% of players being housing eligible and 80% of those wanting to own and the numbers look even bleaker. We end up with 3,260 to 13,920 players and FCs still not able to get a house.

Taking away at most 200 houses per world from the players running multiple shell FCs to get access to multiple houses is not a fix and definitely not a sizeable one when on some worlds it would satisfy only 2% of the unmet demand. Chances are good that most worlds have less than 200 houses that would be affected. Not every world has a MEW or LUCIS.

I'm not saying that taking away the multiple houses from those who acquired them after the 4.2 rules went into effect shouldn't be done. Certainly cheaters need to be punished. I'm just saying it's not the amazing fix you seem to think it will be.

[8bitbort]

Nowhere did I say in any of my suggestions that this will solve everything. However, taking relatively small steps that put a pretty hard stop to continued abuse, and reducing the overall drive to become a multiple house holder is still certainly something that I believe should be pursued, while the hardware and software limitations that make it difficult to simply provide more available housing can be implemented. Without curbing the behavior that does serve to put increased strain and demand on an aggressively limited commodity, every time they DO put out new housing, it will continue to be snapped up by the same people doing so right now. One only has to look at a discord like the one <mew> bothered to ping me in, to see the posts from already multiple fc-house owners talking about the additional plots they plan to snatch up as soon as servers go live.