Quote Originally Posted by Lachesia View Post
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)
It's true that not every FC with 4 or fewer total members (including FC Master) is a failed FC.

It's also true that not every FC with 4 or fewer members is a legitimate FC. Many are shells used to exploit the housing system to sate personal greed.

A FC that drops to a single member (the FC master) immediately after acquiring a house and stays that way is not "exchanging members". Please don't pretend it is. That's a player being inconsiderate of others, especially when that's not the only FC with a house they have on their account.

I doubt "being considerate" was ever a phrase listed as being part of the housing concepts when they were developed. If being considerate was a core philosophy for housing, SE would be doing something about the exploiters. You probably should stop pushing it as such.

I don't agree with the person you quoted that small FCs should have their houses taken away but SE needs to take a closer look at how the housing system is being exploited by some individuals through use of small FCs and how that is blocking access to the content for others.