Why so many FC plots?

[Soltari]

I was looking through the wards for Empyreum and I noticed the VAST majority of FC only plots have gone unpurchased. WHY SQUARE ENIX did you not prioritize Private player housing AND THEN give the FC's say 4 or 5 wards for their housing.

Also I went into an older housing district and noticed that AGAIN wards 1-18 are reserved for FCs. Is this an accident? I thought ONLY Empyreum has FC housing prioritized because SOME people raised holy hell on the forums saying that there was not enough housing for FCs (of course NOW we know, by the numbers of unpurchased FC reserved plots in Empyreum, that this was not true at all).

Please rethink this FC housing prioritizationfor older housing wards. Also, how about we open up the majority of Empyreum housing wards for the private buyers at this point.

This is simply ridiculous.

[Brygd]

Main reason? SE pursued a housing path that places heavy limitations on the supply and type available. There is a valid argument that FC houses are central hubs for socializing and should be given a slightly higher priority. On the other hand, FC rooms are by no means an adequate substitute for personal housing. Additionally, many FC houses serve fewer than 4 players, at least in my ward. All of these are symptoms that in-game housing availability in its current form is suboptimal.

SE did a great job of creating a housing system that is fun to decorate. However, there is sadly a huge availability issue that I've seen no plans to address effectively, ever.

[Ransu]

Because housing was originally designed to be for FC's only. They never intended for people to use them for personal use.

Also, plots are empty right now because of the lottery bug. No one can transfer/buy anything atm.

[Nepentha]

Housing was originally designed around Free Companies. Players asked for personal as well, and SE capitulated. This eventually was to the detriment of Free Companies, who found themselves competing with a lot of single individuals for space. SE addressed this by adding land and setting a temporary embargo on personals, so FCs had first pick. After a few months they unlocked it to allow people to purchase whatever remained as personal housing.

SE's attitude is that FCs should get a higher priority on housing, and that is how the allotment of FC wards and personal wards came to be. Whether people agree on that or not, well, YMMV.

Personally, I think it's given rise to the 'shell' FCs everyone keeps talking about. It's not as simple as that, of course, but people like to drum it down to '1-4 people automatically = shell FC automatically = bad'. There's a lot more to it than that.

The social structure of the game isn't as it used to be. Players no longer need to be in the same FC, the same World and pretty soon not even the same Data Center. Linkshells and Cross-World Linkshells and Party Finder make communication and coordination possible outside FC chat. You can move to another World to hang out with friends and do Fates or roleplay. Your static can be made up of 8 people from anywhere on the DC. There's no longer a need to contain people in a big free company. There's also outside influences like Discord, where you can join communities and make new friends or connections.

Free companies no longer provide advantages they used to. Actions are nice, but not make or break. FC rooms are ok but you can get an apartment that won't ever be demolished no matter how many times you change your Free Company. The Workshop and gardening are usually not things rank and file FC members ever touch.

It's given rise to smaller FCs, made of 1-4 people. Sometimes just a sub shack shell, but just as often it's a handful of friends who want control over the entirety of the FC, who are part of larger communities. I'll use myself as an example. Yes, I'm the FC master of a company on Brynhildr, but I'm part of several different communities. Roleplay, housing decoration, PvE content, marketboard sales, etc. My friends in my FC? Many of them are more central on other servers now. It doesn't matter to us, we're still in contact. We talk almost every day, do and plan things together. But there's no pressing need for us to all be located on the same server and cloistered into the same FC. And I see this trend spreading across the various communities I hang around in.

Does this make my FC a shell? By current definition, yeah. But honestly I don't see it that way. I have a friend decorating the FC house to make a stage for RP, for dozens of people to enjoy through planned events. I handle the workshop. Another friend is in there to use the gardens.

And this is starting to become the norm. It's not bad, just different, adaptive. We need to stop assuming small FCs are all explotative sub shacks.

[Greyhawk]

Hey, yet another post about this, lol.

[Wolfund]

Adding to this, massive and large FC are also almost entirely a western thing, Japanese players mostly play in small -15 players. And ironically enough the slowdown of the FC importance in game has ressurected the old 1.0 way of communicating and connecting with other players, nowadays it's becoming more and more irrelevant what FC you're in compared to what linkshell you're in, what discord server you go to and how active you are in NN for example.

Do shell FC exist ? of course. Because some people will never be satisfied with owning just what they can and need to own more/everything for immaterial clout/sheer greed. But they are a lot fewer of them than what people expect, and most small scale FC are just husband/wife, friends... waiting to play together. For all those peoples there is no difference between one of them owning a house and sharing it with the others and a FC of -5 owning a house. Wait I'm lying, it's actually damn easier to pool a couple of people ressources into a single FC house and to try your luck at owning a FC plot than going at it solo, especially nowadays, plus all the FC perks that might be small but remain.

Would I have prefered to have a 50/50 Fc/solo repartition ? yeah, I would have prefered it that way, either to move to ishgard or just to get the fuck out of Goblet. But I'm not about to throw stone at something I, overall, find a good and healthy thing.

Beside whenever there is a situation/scenario with winners and losers, there is always going to be salt anyway. Best thing to do is just to keep an eye out from time to time and not stress over it.

[Themarvin]

It will open up to normal houses at a later stage, they have done such before and it is a good and working solution.

[katthekat]

Also, plots are empty right now because of the lottery bug. No one can transfer/buy anything atm.

I'm on a small server. I went around and checked the number of bids on some of the FC houses, and you were able to check even with the zero bug happening. Our wards had mansions with zero bids.
Mansions. Zero bids.
The 2/3 split may have worked for larger servers, but for anything less than huge, it'll leave lots of empty FC houses that people have likely shoved FCs together to fill before private buyers come in. By the time they "adjust" the Ward distribution like they've said they will, especially with the whole month we've had to wait before the second lottery, there will be no more private houses.
It doesn't matter if housing used to only be for FCs. They introduced private housing as part of the ward system. They have to accept the consequences. If they want to make it FC-only now, I'm going to ask for a replacement for private buyers, which from what I've heard is something they have no interest in. "But apartments!" Apartments are not equivalent to full housing. You can't garden. You can't share food with your friends. You don't get more than a single room, and you don't get any outdoor space.
I'm a new player. I like this game's housing options, and I like the premise of the housing system. I want to be able to participate, but even with the lottery (which is a step above the previous "waste your entire day and probably hurt your wrist just to be told a barebones FC snagged it", but still pretty awful,) I know I very likely won't get a house of my own. Not unless I create several alts and make an FC and hope that after a month there's still some available. I'm against the idea on principle, as it feels against the spirit of the system itself, but it seems this is how the game is played.

[Mosselyn]

IDC that housing was originally intended for FCs. That was then, this is now. No reason to double down on it.

My FC upgraded to a bigger house in Ishgard. There are a total of 4 houses in our ward. FOUR. It's a wasteland. And, no, we're not on a small server.

Some of the plots probably got hit by the zero bug, but a lot of them had no bids on them to begin with - we looked during the lottery. Some of them will likely fill in during the next lottery period, from FCs that failed to get the size house they wanted settling for less. I do not believe those two factors will go very far towards filling up the ward, though.

The ward allotment feels poorly judged to me. All it does is encourage people to make "fake" FCs to get what amounts to a personal house.

[Vencio]

Unfortunately its our current player base that longs to wanting more and more,

The housing, SAM’s kaiten, PvP.

On this matter of the housing its a sheer display of a frustated particular group that’s on an ongoing train tantrums that just refuse to move along….the game is still huge…buy an apartment & be content with it.

You’re right….it’s a part of sad western mindset that having enough just not enough & strive for more…lovely display of character