Could we please disconnect Submarines/Airship workshops from Housing?

[illiere]

Proper FCs are in competition with Shell/sub/RMT FCs that buy up housing plots for the Submarine gil output. Why are the workshops tied to housing in the first place? They don't interact with the Housing decoration system, and it prevents FCs who aren't able to own a plot from interacting with the system at all.

Please, it would be great if the FC Submarine/Airship workshop was moved to the Grand Company kiosk in their respective major cities, possibly accessed via the same door used for GC Squadrons (or just an NPC standing there).
It'll allow all FCs access to the workshop, and discourage the practice of hoarding plots purely for the workshop.

On the Materia OCE datacenter, the lowest population server, it's FC wards (particularly in the starter cities), are practically completely full, especially the cheaper/small houses. Comparatively personal housing still has quite a few empty spots, with certain places like Zurvan having entire personal wards empty.
Materia used to be pretty empty for housing on most fronts, but I imagine opening it up for International travel/visiting encouraged RMT/Shell FCs to buy up property and give the gil to accounts on other (JP/NA/EU) servers.

Materia still doesn't have the 6 additional wards added a few years ago (25-30) open for purchasing, nor was the FC/Personal classification system reworked to be more open like the Dynamis worlds in 7.0. Likely due to some worlds still being very empty (see Zurvan personal plots), which will likely not fill up in the near future, though others are definitely full enough to justify unlocking the additional wards (see Sophia).
I want to say, 'hey, could we please unlock those wards on Materia, or make all wards free for all (both personal and FC) to help fill them up', but you know that a lot of those plots available for FCs will be brought up by Shell/RMT FCs for their submarine workshops.







The ones above are obvious shells, but a lot more FC plots are owned by FCs with filler/nonsense names.

There's even Shell FCs that sit on more popular housing plots.. There's an issue with RMT involving FC housing, where people sell housing plots for real money, by transferring FC ownership. The submarine suggestion won't help this, but at least it might reduce the amount of shell FC owned plots.

Would be nice to have 'infinite' housing wards, though it isn't feasible depending on how wards are handled server side. But, given that Materia still hasn't received the 6 additional housing wards from years ago, I doubt any future new ones will be available to us, and it's likely they'll just be eaten up by Shell/RMT FCs anyways due to Materia's international hub usage allowing for easier RMT/gil transfer.

[illiere]

Somewhat fuelled by my small (myself and my siblings) FC losing a housing bid to a shell FC (they had numbered it), unlucky...

Ofc, it would be nice to have actual personal housing as well (private housing instance, which is what I though island sanctuary would turn into; if you maxed it out then you get a private housing plot on the island). My suggestion doesn't help with personal housing much at all, but with the upcoming housing changes, which are all very nice, it would be great if they could address plot availability (especially in regards to Materia becoming a hotbed for shell FCs using it for RMT/gil farming; yeah it's small population but it still sucks for the people who actually play here.)

EDIT: I just want to say, I'm happy that Materia allows for all players on JP/NA/EU to visit, I like that I can see friends from all over and, though I don't think by much, it somewhat helps the low population here (as it allows people to come and socialise/queue while preventing Materia's small population from bleeding out onto other servers.)
Our FC wards were pretty empty prior to this change, now they're mostly full on all worlds despite our low population (with personal wards on certain worlds being comparatively very empty). It sucks seeing the Housing situation being even more dominated by Shell/RMT FCs because Materia's international travel ability encourages this behaviour (transferring gil to accounts on NA/EU/JP, which you can't do elsewhere).
Please, as part of the housing reworks, disconnect the submarine/airship workshop from housing. There's no reason for it to be tied to housing, instead make it available to everyone via the GC kiosk in major cities.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

You're going to get a lot of hate on here from the few people who do this and say its fine lol

[illiere]

You're going to get a lot of hate on here from the few people who do this and say its fine lol

Having the Submarine/Airship Workshop located at the GC kiosk will still allow all the gil farming/Shell FCs to function, and makes the workshop available to all FCs (hopefully helpful for FCs on very populated worlds). It just doesn't encourage them to take up plots that real FCs want to actually use.
It doesn't 'solve' the issue of people using Subs as gil farms, it just moves it further away from affecting regular players' enjoyment.
I guess whoever would be upset at proposing this change just enjoys hoarding plots away from regular players?

[Avoidy]

You're going to get a lot of hate on here from the few people who do this and say its fine lol

Like clockwork, this slow quiet place gets brigaded by people from submarine discords who pull up to downplay the gil they print from these glorified retainers.

[Brynne]

I've been wanting them to do this for years... I wouldn't hold my breath, though, because for whatever reason SE seem to be committed to the design of housing being required for the company workshop. I really hope they do disconnect them, though. It would probably at least free up a few houses for people and FCs who legitimately want to play with housing.

[Ghost_of_Ebina]

I would also like to play with the submarine feature, but in the FCs I am in for my main / sub characters these are being run almost exclusively by the FC owners or people who are high in rank within the FC.
Features like this need to be available to everyone, or be made unlockable somehow.

All the shell FCs the OP mentioned is disturbing though -- a single FC shouldn't be allowed to own multiple houses.

[Havenchild]

Or they can force a limit of housing on one account and on FCs.

Idk why they allow this, it should be reported as abuse and forced demolition after a certain amount of days. What's the point of implementing more wards of housing if 2 / 3 people can just buy up the wards anyway? Granted there is a lottery but not too hard to circumvent with enough entries.

[Gember]

Square needs to figure out how to break the loophole that allows FCs to own many houses.

I have discovered that someone owns 112 FC houses just simply for the gil.

I also have discovered someone took over an entire ward to just decorate every house to make it look like a "fitted" neighborhood.

Regardless of their reasons, it takes away from others in a MMO space. Even if the devs do some minor tweaks to this whole issue; it would help a lot.

[Archeron]

Better get ready for the angry housing mafia to storm in and tell you how evil and wrong you are, or link you all the small cottages in the goblet you should go and buy so they can have the entire ward to themselves.

They should slash the amount of gil subs generate in half.