Suggestion: Nerf Airships/Workshops

[Shibi]

...With housing likely to be withheld for months as we saw with Materia and Spriggan/Twintania, what's the point of transferring?

For those currently without a house, the point of transferring is a chance of a large in an almost empty ward:



And unlike us on Materia, youse guys will be able to DC travel to the other NA datacentres, so you won't have queue nor market problems like us.

100% of the benefits, 0% of the pain.

[GeminiReed]

And unlike us on Materia, youse guys will be able to DC travel to the other NA datacentres, so you won't have queue nor market problems like us.

We've been told two things about DC travel. It involves logging out to character or server select and we'll be able to group. What hasn't been clarified is if we'll be able to trade. Currently CWLS and FC chat works while visiting other worlds within your DC but I have no expectation that it'll work cross DC.

Statics won't have to break up but people won't use DC travel casually. If trade is prohibited then I doubt it'll see much more than very occasional use.

[Jojoya]

For those currently without a house, the point of transferring is a chance of a large in an almost empty ward:

And unlike us on Materia, youse guys will be able to DC travel to the other NA datacentres, so you won't have queue nor market problems like us.

100% of the benefits, 0% of the pain.

Stop and think about the practical situation, not the hypothetical.

FC chat and all linkshells are cut off when you data center travel (unless you join a cross world linkshell on that data center). You end up in a silent world other than what's happening in shout chat or party chat if you've joined a party.

You have no access to your house or your retainers when you're on that other data center.

You can stay on your home world and data center but as you point out, it's pretty dead. Part of the MMO experience is being around other players. If you're finding yourself spending most of your time on another data center because that's where players are, why would you leave it? Little point in having a house if you're always traveling abroad so you almost never see it.

At the same time, your absence from your home data center does nothing to help improve it. You're spending your money elsewhere instead of helping your local economy. You're doing content elsewhere, doing nothing to help fill queues/parties on your home data center.

Imagine how dead Materia would feel right now if you could data center travel. Players from other data centers have little reason to visit Materia while Materia players have reasons to visit the other data centers. What already feels lacking to many Materia players would lack even more.

We've been told two things about DC travel. It involves logging out to character or server select and we'll be able to group. What hasn't been clarified is if we'll be able to trade. Currently CWLS and FC chat works while visiting other worlds within your DC but I have no expectation that it'll work cross DC.

Statics won't have to break up but people won't use DC travel casually. If trade is prohibited then I doubt it'll see much more than very occasional use.

They went over the differences between data center travel and world visit in one of the recent live letters.

The main difference is the chat restrictions. No access to FC chat or home world linkshells while using data center travel. Cross world linkshells will only work when you're on the data center where the cwl was created but we'll be able to join the cwls on other data centers if we want.

Trading and marketboards will work just like they do with world visit. I imagine legendary node gathering being restricted to home world only will also remain in place (not that the chances of doubling up on a node would be likely with the time needed to transfer between data centers and get back to the node).

[ForbiddenMonk]

There seems to be a misconception that empty FC houses are not being used because they only run subs. If you only know the work it takes to level up 4 subs and outfit them to farm gil, you wouldn’t say much. It takes longer to rank 1 sub to max than to decorate a house 10 times over. Yall sound extremely ignorant when saying nonsense like that.

Submersibles are effort gated in this game.

Alot of Large FCs don’t even touch their workshops, and that is probably the biggest waste of all.

What if there was a post saying all FCs without a max ranked workshop should lose their house because they are not even using it?

Try having some standards and maybe the devs will take your suggestions seriously.

[GeminiReed]

They went over the differences between data center travel and world visit in one of the recent live letters.

I missed the last one or two. I expected trading and MB to work, happy to have that confirmed. Would suck to find yourself w/o pots on raid night and have to transfer back to get more.

[GeminiReed]

There seems to be a misconception that empty FC houses are not being used because they only run subs. If you only know the work it takes to level up 4 subs and outfit them to farm gil, you wouldn’t say much. It takes longer to rank 1 sub to max than to decorate a house 10 times over. Yall sound extremely ignorant when saying nonsense like that.

The level of effort has nothing to do with it. More than likely it's something that's been automated by the RMT crowd so they don't really care how much effort is involved. After a certain amount of time they'll be making even more effortless gil. The best part is that it's an activity that is normally invisible to other players which means there's nobody to report them. And that makes FC housing so very attractive to them.

While decoupling workshops from FC housing won't stop the RMT it will remove one of the supply stressors by making housing less attractive for RMT purposes. It would also be a huge QoL fix for FC's struggling to even get a house.

If Square was serious about combating RMT the high value vendor trash from voyage returns needs to be nerfed.

[Nepentha]

The level of effort has nothing to do with it. More than likely it's something that's been automated by the RMT crowd so they don't really care how much effort is involved. After a certain amount of time they'll be making even more effortless gil. The best part is that it's an activity that is normally invisible to other players which means there's nobody to report them. And that makes FC housing so very attractive to them.

While decoupling workshops from FC housing won't stop the RMT it will remove one of the supply stressors by making housing less attractive for RMT purposes. It would also be a huge QoL fix for FC's struggling to even get a house.

If Square was serious about combating RMT the high value vendor trash from voyage returns needs to be nerfed.

The problem with this line of thinking is a misunderstanding of what RMTers prefer. They don't want to spend months waiting for subs to be at the point they can farm for vendor trash. It's a huge time and gil sink to get those subs up and running. And you can't speed it up or automate it. RMTers want fast in, fast out, and that is why most of them use bot software to automate their operations (gathering, crafting and previous to 6.1, camping housing placards), and why they sold houses before 6.1. Fast in, fast out, money in the bank and not sitting there possibly losing value or the account holding it being banned.

[DeNada]

Even if it's not RMTers who are building subs, it doesn't detract from the point that houses are being hoarded in the tens or even hundreds by one single player account (40 FC houses * 4 regions = 160 FC houses per account).

There are several hoarders who are just utilizing this method to get gil and this massive influx of gil can lead to market manipulation which hurts ordinary players, not to mention these houses end up being locked away from other players who want them for their intended use.

[Jojoya]

The problem with this line of thinking is a misunderstanding of what RMTers prefer. They don't want to spend months waiting for subs to be at the point they can farm for vendor trash. It's a huge time and gil sink to get those subs up and running. And you can't speed it up or automate it. RMTers want fast in, fast out, and that is why most of them use bot software to automate their operations (gathering, crafting and previous to 6.1, camping housing placards), and why they sold houses before 6.1. Fast in, fast out, money in the bank and not sitting there possibly losing value or the account holding it being banned.

Professional RMT wants rapid turnover, of course.

What about the hobbyists using it as a way to generate a little extra income on the side? Player to player RMT "under the table" has been a thing in MMOs all along. They're not going to be deterred by the short term investment and effort because it's just a hobby.

Even if it's not RMTers who are building subs, it doesn't detract from the point that houses are being hoarded in the tens or even hundreds by one single player account (40 FC houses * 4 regions = 160 FC houses per account).

There are several hoarders who are just utilizing this method to get gil and this massive influx of gil can lead to market manipulation which hurts ordinary players, not to mention these houses end up being locked away from other players who want them for their intended use.

The standard subscription is 40 characters total per account, not per region, so it would cap at 40 FC houses per account. That's still a considerable number for the hoarders to work with, of course.

[Nepentha]

Professional RMT wants rapid turnover, of course.

What about the hobbyists using it as a way to generate a little extra income on the side? Player to player RMT "under the table" has been a thing in MMOs all along. They're not going to be deterred by the short term investment and effort because it's just a hobby.

In this instance, SE would have to actually, yanno, research and act on their own ToS. Or like, read the reports that people send in, and handle the few cases of small time player run RMT operations.

Which... they aren't apparently willing to do.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯