Fix Housing Megathread

[Almagnus1]

Edit:
NOTE: I'm quoting myself throughout this post because Catstab has broken up the first sentence of the post they responded to and without my quotes it makes Catstab's quotes lose context.

Player A cares about their 8 characters and their 8 houses. Each character has a house decorated to just their liking. Some are libraries, some are dungeons, some are gyms, and some are studies. SE says "I know we said in 2018 you could keep those, and you earned them fairly through hours of gameplay, but we're taking all but one of them. Choose." Player A is heartbroken and quits ff14.

And your still ignoring that while SE lost a single subscription, 8 more people just got houses. If SE outright banned all the grandfathered in housing owners, then more people would be able to participate in with housing

shell FCs

While 4 people are needed to buy a house for an FC, only 1 member is required to retain or relocate an FC house. Changes to this system would have to be applied carefully - otherwise anyone who can kick people (or enough people leaving) can effectively demolish the house and disband the FC. This would be an intolerable side effect.

This is something that needs to end as it's pretty clear from the signature requirement of the FC, and also that there are subscriptions that allow for only one character per server, that SE intended the FC to be formed from four unique subscriptions. I get that there may be people that want access to the gardens and workshops and don't want to be part of an FC that will roll their own FC, or that you have people that are in a failed (or failing FC), and that is the main reason why I have advocated for moving the gardening and workshop content out of the FC (which would also make it generally more accessible as I would assume most FCs do not allow most of their members to garden nor have workshop access). Getting that content detached from housing would be in everyone's best interest as you provide a carrot before implementing the stick (which in this case would be a mechanism to strip housing from FCs that fall below four unique subscriptions or just disband the FC).

We still have grandfathered in houses, shell FCs, and people owning wards.

This is two separate issues, actually, so I'll discuss them separately for you.

NOTE: Catstab's response is being read as "[grandfathered in houses and shell FCs] and [people owning wards] are two separate issues, actually, so I'll discuss them separately for you." Both quotes are included for context.

People owning wards cannot be done without grandfathered in houses and shell FCs. Or put another way, because we have grandfathered in houses and shell FC housing, people are able to own wards.

These two issues are connected whether you want to acknowledge it or not.