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

[Awha]

The short of it is that the shell FC goes against SE's intent, and it's also making a bad situation worse. Additionally, shell FCs are a known vehicle for unsanctioned housing RMT - and unsanctioned RMT is generally bad for the health and stability of an MMO and invite some of the bot and inflation problems like what was observed in Classic WoW recently. Unsanctioned RMT also invites in a ton of GM related issues with account theft and other shenanigans.

With resources as scarce as they are and as many new players as we have seen (region breakdown on total characters rolled is NA 2,378,009; JP 1,395,530; EU 1,112,159 - Yoshi-P also cited this in https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...0acb6c23ccd07f ), so while it may not exist now (as many of the WoW refugee sprouts are able to purchase houses yet), this is going to be a problem in the future as many are likely to stick around for a long time. Lookig at the restrictions at https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../housing_land/ , SE seems to indicate that each service account should have a single personal house, specifically:



The problem here, however, is that the FC system is so loose that it's trivial to bypass that even with the restriction in place. The real impact of all of this is around 10,042 to 27,768 properties can be considered shell FCs (depending on the criteria for a shell FC - data from https://www.xivhousing.com/ ), which means that it's displacing that many home owners from joining the system and also denying properties to the legitimate FC owners. That's between 7-22% of all the FC properties worldwide being shell FC properties.

The other issue here, if that number does not have a high degree of certainty that it is only comprised of shell FCs, it's going to do a lot of collateral damage if SE were to, say, demolish all the homes identified as shell FCs.

Though outside of just grandstanding, if SE does not enforce this "intent" then what exactly are you trying accomplish?

Though many of your premises seem to operate on what if scenarios, and at the core just seem like you are upset people are maximizing their own personal enjoyment at the expense of others personal enjoyment. No one will win in that case.

[Almagnus1]

Though outside of just grandstanding, if SE does not enforce this "intent" then what exactly are you trying accomplish?

Figure out how to accurately identify an issue and also highlight the edge cases.

Though many of your premises seem to operate on what if scenarios, and at the core just seem like you are upset people are maximizing their own personal enjoyment at the expense of others personal enjoyment. No one will win in that case.

While it is a creative manipulation of the FC system, it is also facilitating a whole lot of RMT... to the point that SE even pointed this out in the last live letter (exceprt from https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...90#post5614790 , relevant part bolded):

Players will only be permitted to enter the lottery if they meet the requirements necessary to own housing. A number of features have been prepared to prevent RMT and troublemaking, such as depositing the gil upfront and disallowing participation on Free Trial accounts. Furthermore, there will be a gil penalty for those who do not purchase a plot after being selected in the lottery. Please note that this penalty will be quite strict.

It's an open secret that RMT is involved with the shell FC problem, as many FCs have been traded as part of RMT. For me, at least, I don't want to see all the RMT issues I have seen in other MMOs in FFXIV. Our biggest saving grace is that we have GMs ingame that actually do their job.

[Awha]

Thing is we know the issue SE not enforcing their own desired standards due to limitations they place on only using ingame evidence.

Same issue with RMT everything boils down to SE not enforcing their intent due to their standard to require in game evidence.

So why is your crusade against the players when by in large your issue seems to be with SE. Even though at the core I still do believe your core issue is a simple issue of you having a problem with how people are enjoying the game, and are trying to use "data" to support your emotional contrived narrative. Though that is speculation on my part.