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

[UkcsAlias]

I disagree, this game has very much been an FC game, even with Linkshells. It's the players who've used social media / third party social programs that have come about since the game's inception to take the social out of the game.

For pure raiding purposes, an FC would have been at most a list of players as a group, and feature no extra benefits on that, other than making parties easier to start.

However, in FCs there are actions that benefit you, which as solo player you cannot get. A shell FC can cover these features.

Shell FC are on that not a problem, its just that there are always players who abuse these things. And most important would be that SE should simply just ban those abusers. Its very clear when this was done, and in this case which accounts were involved (i bet all of them were trial accounts, and only the winners ended up becoming a sub). At such scale you nearly always will notice a pattern (same FC name, same email domain that isnt a large hoster, same bank account, all trial). It would be efficient if SE can react on that.

Personaly i would even say that trial members are still excluded from housing, unless they already made a payment (in which cancelling the payment before the trial ended must have something as an additional requirement that your account must not have been used in housing - where technicaly they only will not accept refunds on those shell fc abusers, while most accounts are going to be fine). The payment is there to make spamming trial accounts harder, and also to fund SE into preventing abuse (because you will know they will abuse it anyway). Payment info will also be harder to get a lot of identities in (as governments will prevent this), so you can restrict a lot on that already. Also, abusers will usualy also use stolen creditcards etc (using your own information makes you vulnerable in being targeted by the company). Which is information that can also be used to remove the house again (as this information is often shared in order to counter abuse).

[Nepentha]

Shell FC are on that not a problem, its just that there are always players who abuse these things. And most important would be that SE should simply just ban those abusers. Its very clear when this was done, and in this case which accounts were involved


(i bet all of them were trial accounts, and only the winners ended up becoming a sub). At such scale you nearly always will notice a pattern (same FC name, same email domain that isnt a large hoster, same bank account, all trial). It would be efficient if SE can react on that.

But they don't, that's the problem. For some reason you can report obvious ToS violations till the cows come home, but SE will not read and/or act on them. Their solution to these people abusing the system is to change the system to try to stop them. But humans (being ingenious when it comes to finding ways to exploit things for money) will always find a way around any new obstacles you toss into their path.

I'm not saying don't take these measures to combat housing cheats, but like... translate and read the reports people send in, investigate them, and actually remove the problem players, too.

Also trial accounts can't participate in the housing lotto as far as I know.