Shell FCs are a bigger problem than we think...

[Almagnus1]

After lookign through the data at https://www.xivhousing.com/ (which has greatly improved since the last time I saw this), and using https://www.xivhousing.com/2021-cens...enters-regions to slice the data, of the roughly 120k FC houses worldwide, roughly 23k of those are shell FC houses. Shell FCs being FCs that have 1-3 members usually created for the sole purpose of getting a house, while a legitimate FC is 4+ members (which is the total number of signatures needed to create an FC btw).

That's roughly 20% of all FC houses worldwide are shell FC houses.

Like I have been saying for a long time, the shell FCs need to be dealt with because they are exacerbating the housing problem. Of all the servers, Chocobo is the poster child for this problem with 891 of the 2613 FC houses belonging to a shell FC.

While we definitely need more wards, the shell FC issue CANNOT continued to be ignored because all it's doing is making this entire housing thing harder than it really needs to be.

[ItMe]

After lookign through the data at [...] of the roughly 120k FC houses worldwide, roughly 23k of those are shell FC houses. Shell FCs being FCs that have 1-3 members usually created for the sole purpose of getting a house,

I don't follow.
How can you tell with this data that these FCs are shell FCs and not just, ya know, small?

[Almagnus1]

I don't follow.
How can you tell with this data that these FCs are shell FCs and not just, ya know, small?

Goto https://www.xivhousing.com/2021-cens...enters-regions , click the max number for members, set to 3, drill up to the region level, pull data.

Better question: Why is it considered acceptable that an FC with less people than is needed to create it can hold land given the extreme land shortages that FFXIV has been experiencing?

[ItMe]

Goto https://www.xivhousing.com/2021-cens...enters-regions , click the max number for members, set to 3, drill up to the region level, pull data.

That gives me data about FCs with 3 or less people.
How can we tell from this data which are shell FCs and which are simply small FCs?
That is the part I can't follow.

[Almagnus1]

That gives me data about FCs with 3 or less people.
How can we tell from this data which are shell FCs and which are simply small FCs?
That is the part I can't follow.

Why should a failed FC with less members than what was needed to create it be able to hold land?

All FCs with less than 3 members should lose their houses BECAUSE of the shell FC problem. That frees up roughly 10% of the houses worldwide to either become personal houses (which there is a strong demand for) or gets them to FCs that don't have a house and have at least 4 members (which about half of the FCs that are 4+ members don't have an FC house IIRC).

Edit:
10% is a guesstimate, too lazy to actually math this out >.>

[Canadane]

Why should a failed FC with less members than what was needed to create it be able to hold land?

All FCs with less than 3 members should lose their houses BECAUSE of the shell FC problem. That frees up roughly 10% of the houses worldwide to either become personal houses (which there is a strong demand for) or gets them to FCs that don't have a house and have at least 4 members (which about half of the FCs that are 4+ members don't have an FC house IIRC).

All that would happen is the FCs throw on a couple extra alts to that shell FC.
An automated system will simply be bypassed one way or another.
We need GM crackdowns, but, like it or not they're playing by the games rules. So this will likely never happen.

There's a lovely large house unused by a shell FC that I've kept my eye on but it's never gone up for sale. It would be nice upgrade to have I'm pretty restricted in my current house lol.
While I can't tell by looking at a random FC if it's a shell or not this particular one doesn't really try to hide it, knowing the 'real' FC behind it.

[worldofneil]

Why should a failed FC with less members than what was needed to create it be able to hold land?

Feels a bit harsh to suggest any FC with less than 4 members has "failed". But regardless, what about a group of 4 friends who form an FC then buy a house... what if one of them leaves? (maybe they fell out, maybe they moved to another server or maybe just joined another FC, why they left doesn't really matter though...)

You're suggesting that they should lose their house and then the only solution they would have would be to recruit someone into their small group of friends. I'm sure that wouldn't feel weird at all having a have a stranger forced into your group just so you can keep your home.

It also wouldn't actually work to stop the "shell FCs". Anyone who has put in enough effort to create an FC, get it up to rank 6, make enough Gil and then actually find and buy the house... an actual four person requirement isn't going to be a problem at all.

Of the top of my head they have at least have two easy options:

A) Just create more alt characters. Any standard account allows 8 characters and once an FC is already formed it's a simple matter to apply to join an FC, especially if you have a house with a placard that they can click. All They would ask to join FC on one character, accept it on the other. Done.

B) Pick up a cheap copy/copies of FFXIV Starter Edition. Using the free 30 days they could create 8 characters and put them in whatever "shell FCs" they wanted. Then they could just ignore the account and never touch it ever again.

So I'm sure now you'll say that the member count should be active members only and from different services account, but that is just not realistic. At times like this where many people are unsubscribed until the expansion, many small FCs would be at risk of losing their house.

[Lachesia]

Why should a failed FC with less members than what was needed to create it be able to hold land?

All FCs with less than 3 members should lose their houses BECAUSE of the shell FC problem.
Edit:
10% is a guesstimate, too lazy to actually math this out >.>

I think you're missing the point everyone is trying to make. The small FCs are not 'failed' FCs, Free Companies are in no-way hundreds of people big, free companies can be a small group of friends that adventure together, in Japan the market for Free Companies is not a huge group of people all running content at the same time, it's a small group of friends usually between 4-8 people large that get together to play the game, that's the reason most of the content only requires at max, 8 people to run, unlike other RPGs that want upwards of 24+ people at the same time.

The difference between FFXIV and an American game like, (gasp) WoW is that the developers for Blizzard cater more towards larger groups which in Japan is considered unnecessary. The restriction on the housing being that it had to be a free company of 4 people or more to establish a house is because the party system only requires 4 people to get anything done in normal content, 8 for higher content.

You keep calling any FC with less than 4 people a "Shell FC" and it may simply be a small FC that is exchanging out members. The fact that you don't take into consideration, the small groups that have people they are going or cycling through the FC shows that no only did you not actually correctly math the statistics FFXIVhousing.com provides, but you failed to work with the invisible variables, something that other players tried to point out and you blatantly ignored. Stop calling them 'shell FCs', they are *small* FCs and you don't know the background of said FCs. You don't know if they're recruiting, or if they're changing out members, or if they just lost a member for one reason or another, and denying them fair access to housing is the same as limiting the number of personal housing to be for a single person. As you can share a personal house with up to 4 people, are you suggesting that small FCs use personal houses and just add their small number of members to that single plot? What about when the numbers grow beyond that? What then?

Being considerate towards others is why Yoshi-P and the devs built the housing system this way, I agree that the split for FC and Personal housing should have been more even, but even I know that small FCs that are just building, or prefer to keep their number small because it's a group of friends that play together, are NOT shells. They just don't meet YOUR criteria of being a Free Company.

(P.S. 3 active members isn't including the FC lead. The FC lead is member number 4)

[Big_Bap]

Look at you, failing to use data properly. I will point out that you are, yet again, blowing things out of proportion.

You might want to take a look at the amount of FCs of various sizes... with or without a house. You will quickly realize that Japanese players are not very interested in anything but small FCs.

(Page 5)

*Gasp*

Could it be that because they have a lot more servers for their amount of players... being part of small FCs is just... normal... damn...


Additionally, regardless of what you call a shell FC, the amount of players that benefit from FC housing is higher than what personal housing could ever achieve.

So yeah, you are barking at the wrong tree.

Better question: Why is it considered acceptable that an FC with less people than is needed to create it can hold land given the extreme land shortages that FFXIV has been experiencing?

Why don't you go and ask the JP players why they are playing the way they are? It's really funny how you are projecting your own definition of acceptability on a group of players you don't even interact with.

[Almagnus1]

Look at you, failing to use data properly. I will point out that you are, yet again, blowing things out of proportion.

Your data shows that NA has 38,772 FC houses, 6053 of which have less than 4 members to them (which is 15.61%), while EU has 18,342 FC houses and roughly 3,519 have less than 4 members, which is 19.19%. So the 20% worldwide is actually higher because the problem is worse in JP than it is in the other regions.

You might want to take a look at the amount of FCs of various sizes... with or without a house. You will quickly realize that Japanese players are not very interested in anything but small FCs.

So you're saying that of the 62,681 FC houses in Japan, 48,527 of them which are for FCs that are 4+ members (which is what I consider to be a legitimate FC in the scope of this post) don't care about small FCs?

I'm not talking about them, only the 14,154 FC houses for FCs that have 1-3 members, which comprise 22.58% of the FC houses in JP.

Additionally, regardless of what you call a shell FC, the amount of players that benefit from FC housing is higher than what personal housing could ever achieve.

So then why does the data at https://www.xivhousing.com/ show that there's a worldwide total of 266,703 personal houses (and/or vacant - your data lumps these two together for whatever reason) and only 124,977 FC houses? (For that matter, there is no datacenter that has more FC houses than personal houses).

If what you are saying is true, shouldn't that ratio be reversed?

Why don't you go and ask the JP players why they are playing the way they are? It's really funny how you are projecting your own definition of acceptability on a group of players you don't even interact with.

Because this isn't a JP only thing.