Fake FCs' Housing Abuse

[Catstab]

Are YOU sure you thought about this for more than 2 seconds?

100%, friend. Thanks for asking.

So I, like many players, pay for more than a month at a time, so I'm a full sub and I can fit up to 7 alts on my account per server.

The proposed change means a head-count requirement for FC housing, similar in concept to the head count requirement for FC forming.

At present, people offer a one-time fee to sign FC charters on frequent occasion. So if alts are for sale to form FCs, alts would be for sale to house them in larges. Hopefully that makes sense.

[Arielen]

100%, friend. Thanks for asking.

So I, like many players, pay for more than a month at a time, so I'm a full sub and I can fit up to 7 alts on my account per server.

The proposed change means a head-count requirement for FC housing, similar in concept to the head count requirement for FC forming.

At present, people offer a one-time fee to sign FC charters on frequent occasion. So if alts are for sale to form FCs, alts would be for sale to house them in larges. Hopefully that makes sense.

To expand on what Catstab said, in case it's unclear: people would just create dummy alts they never intend to play and let them sit and rot in the FC of someone who wants to play solo. And that's only if someone's own alts didn't count towards the 4 character requirement, which they do.

[Jojoya]

I think a good way to fix this, would be to tighten the requirements for being granted any real estate. For example, medium and large houses should be exclusively for FC's with a member count of 50+ for medium, and 100+ for large. If the member count drops below those numbers, the demolish timer starts ticking (timer might need adjustments for this). Also, the FC level would need to be alot higher in order to purchase a House (like lv15-20).

FCs with large and medium houses (or who want to get one) would simply start mass inviting random players and stop culling the ones who go inactive instead of clearing them from their rosters like many currently do.

FC level wouldn't be barrier to those abusing the system, who likely know a lot more about how to rank up a FC quickly than members of a normal social FC do. Do you even know how a FC gains ranks and the most efficient ways of getting them? Ask most players and they'll reply "do quests", which is actually one of the least efficient ways to gain ranks.

There's also no reason to limit mediums and larges to FCs only. Any size house can have an aetherial wheel stand, workshop and private chambers, the only FC specific content in housing. I know of smaller FCs who have more active members online on a regular basis than some of the huge FCs out there. It's not hard to View Company Info for a players to see how many players are online in their FC.

I dislike the abuse of FCs by solo players to get additional housing in a system where houses are a limited resource but the last thing I want to do is see housing become the incentive for FCs to end up like the cesspool guilds of WoW during Cataclysm when the guild perk/level system was introduced. A big FC is not automatically a better FC. A big member count is more often than not solely to boost the FC leader's ego while the general membership gets neglected.

We're right back to square one. If SE would use a housing system that accommodated every player who wanted a house, discussions like these would be unnecessary because the loopholes some individual players use to obtain more housing than the published rules allow wouldn't impede another player's ability to get a house. For that matter, every player who wanted to have multiple houses could do it so there was no special snowflake status for any player when it came to housing.

ESO is an excellent example for what a housing system should offer all players. Imagine what an amazing gil sink it would make for this game if every player could own multiple houses if they wanted, much better than the ugly gold mount reskins are accomplishing as a gil sink.

The FC system in general needs a review but dreaming up more ways to complicate a system that shouldn't need to be complicated in the first place isn't accomplishing anything.

[ReiganCross]

I sort of agree with Housing Auctions acting as Gil Sinks. BUT, it would essentially just be an An-Cap free market nightmare, pretty much like house flippers were. I actually like the idea of making housing the place where you go to burn gil like it was going to fly you to the moon, but you'd also need a very good regulator so that the value of a house doesn't skyrocket so high as to make an RMT gil seller cream his pants.

Instance housing would just increase Player Save File size They're rationing Armory Chest slots by giving the Belt Slot spaces to Main Weapon and Rings, what makes you think it is a good idea to shove an entire house worth of items and respective (Possibly gliched) positions in there? The save file for houses are on the wards, not on the player characters. And finally just giving more houses by way of more wards solves the issue for all of 2 hours before it's absolutely all taken and we're back to Status Quo. This is why Status Quo needs to be improved. This is why single-player FCs only so a player can have his second or third Large House is a disgrace. And this is why the random timer needs to die.

[Jojoya]

Instance housing would just increase Player Save File size They're rationing Armory Chest slots by giving the Belt Slot spaces to Main Weapon and Rings, what makes you think it is a good idea to shove an entire house worth of items and respective (Possibly gliched) positions in there? The save file for houses are on the wards, not on the player characters. And finally just giving more houses by way of more wards solves the issue for all of 2 hours before it's absolutely all taken and we're back to Status Quo. This is why Status Quo needs to be improved. This is why single-player FCs only so a player can have his second or third Large House is a disgrace. And this is why the random timer needs to die.

Items placed/stored in housing aren't handled any different for apartments than they are for houses. The items are part of the apartment's inventory, not the character's. That inventory data doesn't move around with the character as they go from zone to zone (which is what SE struggles with).

It would be nice to see SE enforce their published rules regarding multiple house ownership per account. It's puzzling why they don't considering how many of those players with multiple FC houses are clearly only doing it to earn personal gil instead of actually running active free companies.

The random timer is the only thing giving players a chance to be able to directly buy a house without having to pay crazy fees to a flipper. Remove the random timer and flippers go back to dominating house sales just as they did prior to 4.2. The timer system could stand improvements but it's a necessary evil as long as the wards are the only way to get a house.

Please before anyone else posts a suggestion on how to fix housing take a step back. Take a look at all the flaws and loop holes your idea may have and how it could possibily be taken advantage of. A Housing fix should fix the issue of getting a house for Honest players while making it hard for dishonest players to keep or get more. If a fix punishes Honest players by making it harder to keep a house or harder to obtain one, then its not a GOOD FIX to the problem.

It's good to go ahead and post a new idea. Sometimes those flaws only become apparent in discussion with others who take a different approach or have different experience from you.

But players should take a moment to search the forums to see if their idea is truly new. Too many separate "I have a great new idea - let's have a lottery!" threads have been started over the past 4 years because the poster didn't bother to search. If I do a search using the keyword lottery in the Housing forum, I get over 100 search results. It's not a new idea, the pros and cons have been debated many times over. Another thread is not going to accomplish anything.

[NanaWiloh]

Please before anyone else posts a suggestion on how to fix housing take a step back. Take a look at all the flaws and loop holes your idea may have and how it could possibily be taken advantage of. A Housing fix should fix the issue of getting a house for Honest players while making it hard for dishonest players to keep or get more. If a fix punishes Honest players by making it harder to keep a house or harder to obtain one, then its not a GOOD FIX to the problem.

[Themarvin]

Require 6 players from 6 different accounts for house to stay active and it will go into demolition mode... or put on tax on FC houses like 2millions per month, which means more people would eb better in one, and with that involve a player tax of coin drops like 5% or something that will stack up, untill fulfilling the requirements, also would promote more active FCs.

[Arielen]

Require 6 players from 6 different accounts for house to stay active and it will go into demolition mode... or put on tax on FC houses like 2millions per month, which means more people would eb better in one, and with that involve a player tax of coin drops like 5% or something that will stack up, untill fulfilling the requirements, also would promote more active FCs.

1. They can't even figure out how to let you mail your own alts or visit another one of your own character's personal house, they won't be able to sort out '6 different accounts'. And even then, people would just pay or ask for friend alts to bloat their fc artificially.
2. Taxes are dumb and also bad. There are tons of people that bust their cheeks affording so much as a small house and they'd never be able to handle upkeep. This doesn't mean they somehow don't deesrve a house.
3. Taxing player coin drops isn't a system that exists either, and it seems very silly in general. Far too complicated just to stop less than solo fcs from existing. And even then less than 5% of housing is owned by FCs.

These suggestions aren't even worth the effort of implementing as FCs aren't the cause for housing deficit anyway, as less than 30% of all houses are owned by FCs in general.

[Sotaris]

That would probably punish more people than you think.

[Mykll]

I admit to wanting to create a FC just for myself, no alts, no friends, and get a single house, finally, to be that FC house, because it has things not available for a private house. I don't want 2 houses, I just want the 1. Eventually.