FCs buying multiple plots

[Almagnus1]

Shell-FCs do not get any remorse whatsoever. They shouldn't even be a thing, but the "solution" to fixing the shell-FC issue.. Will unintentionally harm smaller communities (single-digit FCs for example) and drive people to have to actually cull their numbers to ensure they have active players to avoid the metaphorical axe.

SE's inaction is going to cause that to happen because they didn't seriously address this issue when people started getting wards (likely because they never expected that FFXIV would have the population issues it is having now).

[Almagnus1]

YoshiP has been very clear that Island Sanctuaries would have no competitive element. The marketboard is the most competitive element in the game. That means whatever we can grow on the Island Sanctuaries will not be the same as what we are currently growing with gardening, nor will we be able to trade/sell whatever it is to other players.

That's something I want more clarification on, as I interpreted that to mean "solo instance" and not "cannot generate stuff that can be sold".

I have to disagree. Every FC owning multiple houses via member alts is another player or FC unable to get a house. Why should certain FCs be special with access to double Grade 3 actions on a daily basis when a FC with only one house can only get is one every 3 days and FCs without a house can't get them at all?

What if it's one legitimate FC and multiple members have personal houses? I would be fine with that tbh.

I also doubt that there are that many legitimate FCs that are multiple house owners. Most of them are going to trace back to solo players operating shells FCs for personal wealth and flexing it at other players by using the same FC tag for all their FCs.

This, on the other hand, needs to stop.

First is to finally set up all characters on same world/same account as co-owners of a house so they're officially tenants.

IMO this should have happened a long time ago, and all alts for the owning account should just be owners (and not tenants), and everyone should get a port to all the houses they own (so players get grandfathered in). And then SE forces them to release ALL but one property should the player ever wish to relo somewhere else.

Second is for them to crack down on the multiple house ownership that has been occurring since the 4.2 changes. If someone had ownership of the house (along with leadership of the FC if it's a FC house) prior to 4.2, then they're grandfathered in. I have no problems with that. It's those who have purchased additional houses since 4.2 that SE needs to address.

This needs to be done carefully and not with an arbitrary line in the sand over date of acquisition. Shell FCs need to go away, and tbh, I don't care when they were created as long as the shell FCs (and ONLY the shell FCs) either get axed or have their houses freed and unable to reacquire land until certain conditions are met that would be basically invisible to a legitimate FC. SE should have never allowed these FCs to exist in the first place as they exemplify "this is why we can't have anything nice".

[worldofneil]

Can we maybe make it so a minimum of 4 people must be in an FC at all times to own a plot?

While your idea does sound good, in reality it would probably just punish more real players than the ones you're targetting.

If you're got an FC of 4 close friends and one of them leaves for another server... what then? That group of friends is now forced to add another character into their group just to keep the house.

It also won't really help. Anyone who has put in the time and effort to make an FC, rank it up to 6, make enough Gil for a house, find an available house and actually buy it even with the housing timer... the four person requirement isn't really going to be much of an issue.

They have two very easy options:

A) Just create more characters. Any standard account allows 8 characters and applying to join an FC, even from the same service account, is very easy, even more so if the FC already has a house with a placard they can click.

B) Buy some cheap copies of FFXIV Starter Edition and in the free 30 days create 8 characters and put them into whatever FCs they wanted. They could then just ignore the account/let it expire, but the character(s) would still remain in the FCs to keep the membership count up.

So then you'd have to make sure the member count was using active members only and that just wouldn't work. Many smallers FCs would be at risk of losing their housing in content droughts such as right now where a lot of people are unsubbed until the expansion.

[Almagnus1]

While your idea does sound good, in reality it would probably just punish more real players than the ones you're targetting.

If you're got an FC of 4 close friends and one of them leaves for another server... what then? That group of friends is now forced to add another character into their group just to keep the house.

It also won't really help. Anyone who has put in the time and effort to make an FC, rank it up to 6, make enough Gil for a house, find an available house and actually buy it even with the housing timer... the four person requirement isn't really going to be much of an issue.

They have two very easy options:

A) Just create more characters. Any standard account allows 8 characters and applying to join an FC, even from the same service account, is very easy, even more so if the FC already has a house with a placard they can click.

B) Buy some cheap copies of FFXIV Starter Edition and in the free 30 days create 8 characters and put them into whatever FCs they wanted. They could then just ignore the account/let it expire, but the character(s) would still remain in the FCs to keep the membership count up.

So then you'd have to make sure the member count was using active members only and that just wouldn't work. Many smallers FCs would be at risk of losing their housing in content droughts such as right now where a lot of people are unsubbed until the expansion.

The problem we're facing is that the FC system is a bit too loose atm, and that's allowing people to accrue a bunch of land. I think that's an exploit, others disagree, YMMV.

[worldofneil]

The problem we're facing is that the FC system is a bit too loose atm, and that's allowing people to accrue a bunch of land.

Well right now SE allow 1 service account to own 9 houses on a world (1 personal and 8 FC - the temporary FC limitation was removed after only a week) so that's what SE have said is allowed. I know isn't what people want to hear, but the fact they actually removed the temporary FC limitations suggests that for Square Enix it is "working as intended".

I don't know how much of a dent it'll make on other worlds, but on the world I'm on the 1440* extra houses added in 6.1 might actually be enough (small houses anyway), especially as they will probably be a new server per datacentre too, each with their own housing so that'll distribute people better too. We always have a few small houses available and whilst they have that invisible timer, everyone I know who's actively tried to get a house has managed to get one within a few days.

*That's assuming they add the same number of wards as they have in the other housing areas right now. This figure will be higher if they add more wards everywhere.

[Bladehawk]

SE has told us Ishgard will have the same number of wards/plots as other housing zones. I did not see anything about new worlds other then the new dc in Australia and possibly again in 7.0. When you mention new worlds per dc is that from something you saw posted or just some hope on your part?

[Ramesses]

Ok so on a few servers ive visited ive noticed that there are alot of plots taken up by the same FCs, using slightly different names. They all have 1 member in the meaning they are creating FCs buying land then leaving 1 character in the FC making another FC similar name doing the same again. Sadly this is taking up ALOT of plots that are already very limited and they are circumventing the 4 person in an FC to buy a plot rule in place. Can we maybe make it so a minimum of 4 people must be in an FC at all times to own a plot? this would free up alot of plots and stop people griefing others by taking up more than they realistically need.

This doesn't compare to the two players on Mateus server who bought up 28 out of the 30 available plots in an entire ward (Source)

This happened in 2017 or 2018-- and back then, the rage unleashed from the FFXIV community on the forums (and on both reddit and discord) was palatable. And absolutely justified-- especially when there were thousands of players who couldn't purchase even a small sized house.

it was then I finally concluded that the entire housing system was horribly broken.

[Jojoya]

This doesn't compare to the two players on Mateus server who bought up 28 out of the 30 available plots in an entire ward (Source)

This happened in 2017 or 2018-- and back then, the rage unleashed from the FFXIV community on the forums (and on both reddit and discord) was palatable. And absolutely justified-- especially when there were thousands of players who couldn't purchase even a small sized house.

it was then I finally concluded that the entire housing system was horribly broken.

When those two players bought out that ward, Mateus was a dead world. There were available plots all over the place. That's why it had been so easy for them to get almost a full ward to themselves. On any world that had an active housing community, they would have had to spread those houses out over multiple wards.

The rage was coming from players who didn't even have characters on Mateus and weren't willing to transfer there to get a house.

Mateus players didn't start getting upset about it until later, after Mateus was adopted by the RP community as an unofficial second home when Balmung got stuck on Congested status and housing on all worlds had started filling up because of Stormblood launch..

It was not those two players at fault for others not being able to get a house. They did nothing wrong - multiple personal house ownership per account was allowed at the time. They had intentionally transferred to a dead world to buy those houses because it wasn't preventing anyone else on that world from getting a house and there had still been plenty of available plots for other players to buy at the time.

It was SE at fault but as usual, players directed their anger at the wrong place..

[Almagnus1]

It was not those two players at fault for others not being able to get a house. They did nothing wrong - multiple personal house ownership per account was allowed at the time. They had intentionally transferred to a dead world to buy those houses because it wasn't preventing anyone else on that world from getting a house and there had still been plenty of available plots for other players to buy at the time.

It's definitely one of those "you had to be there" moments.

They had their fun, and hopefully they have managed to divest many of their properties so others can join as any NA server is going to be under Housing Ultimate for a long while still.

[Nepentha]

It's definitely one of those "you had to be there" moments.

They had their fun, and hopefully they have managed to divest many of their properties so others can join as any NA server is going to be under Housing Ultimate for a long while still.

They have not.