So this is a thing now?

[Blue]

The most reasonable solution is: do not buy the plot from them and just wait for them to leave. If they're upgrading their house they'll HAVE to sooner or later.

[Kage]

Does that mean that when that buyer turns around and sells it, the next buyer should be expected to pay them 8 mil, plus paying SE 4 for the plot?

 

It's not the way the game is, Kage. The game just says "the relinquisher doesn't get a refund, the new owner pays the housing broker for the plot". Selling the time of relinquishment is entirely a player construct. Blaming the game is a cop out.

Why would someone ever need to pay them 8 mil plus SE for the plot? A person ever needs to get the cost of the plot and that's it. If the buyer is retarded enough to spend over 2x what the plot is worth, that's on the buyer. If someone wants something out of what they paid for, they're allowed to. Simple as that. They are not being greedy. It's not just a thing. It's the way it is if people want to recuperate it. If the game allowed people to sell houses directly, sure as hell would be cheaper. But -the game- does not allow it.

[Kellach Woods]

Player Housing.

 

where the only way to have fun is not to play.

[Aya]

Player Housing.

 

where the only way to have fun is not to play.

Or just to play in other people's houses!  That's my favorite way

[Delilah Scythewood]

I'll add in my two cents as well, since this applies somewhat to my own FC and our position about a month ago when we got our medium.

 

For us (DOVE) personally it was about getting back some of the costs. As well as helping some of our members get their personal rooms by having gil available to reimburse since many people are RPers first and foremost and weren't apt at playing the market and making enough for furniture costs AND room fee. 

 

Plus, the plot we wanted was in high demand and some others were looking to get it since it was in a popular RP ward in the LB. So that few extra million on top of what we had would help us get the house and all that we needed faster. In the end, we sold it to a raid like FC who could afford the extra few million on top of SE, and they were doing dances in the front yard like tribal children. Everyone was happy.

 

But I have to agree with Kage: Because the game doesn't allow a friendlier system to sell houses directly and its all on SE, we make do with what we have. If I was able to sell the house directly to someone, I'd have made it cheaper then what SE did.

 

However, it's just not a thing. At least not now anyways. I don't look down on anyone for doing it, and those who can afford to do it will do it and those who can afford to pay will pay. That's ultimately on them. I can see why it's disheartening, but I personally plan to work with what the game and SE gives me and make the most out of it for myself and especially for my FC members.

[C'kayah Polaali]

My apologies for causing rancor. Please go back to your regular discussions.

[Delilah Scythewood]

Does that mean that when that buyer turns around and sells it, the next buyer should be expected to pay them 8 mil, plus paying SE 4 for the plot?

 

It's not the way the game is, Kage. The game just says "the relinquisher doesn't get a refund, the new owner pays the housing broker for the plot". Selling the time of relinquishment is entirely a player construct. Blaming the game is a cop out.

Why would someone ever need to pay them 8 mil plus SE for the plot? A person ever needs to get the cost of the plot and that's it. If the buyer is retarded enough to spend over 2x what the plot is worth, that's on the buyer. If someone wants something out of what they paid for, they're allowed to. Simple as that. They are not being greedy. It's not just a thing. It's the way it is if people want to recuperate it. If the game allowed people to sell houses directly, sure as hell would be cheaper. But -the game- does not allow it.

 

Well, you're arguing that the seller of the original plot should be able to recoup some of their 4 mil+ by passing on as a fee to the buyer, so why shouldn't *that* buyer then try to recoup some of their 8 mil+ by passing it on as a fee to the next poor sucker? If the first scalping makes sense, why shouldn't the second larger one?

I think it should also be taken into consideration that there is a limit. Very little, if any, would ask that high for a small even if they did try to reimburse what they spent before. Even if they did, most would likely scoff or just wait until the next patch.

 

Because even if the first 'scalping' makes sense, you don't charge $2,000,000 for a house that's only worth $400,000 and expect people to take you seriously. Most would overlook it rather then give it a second chance.

[Ilwe'ran]

I read the whole plot and I think that you have to accept the fact that SE made it really wrong when it comes to the housing :

- It costs the same price for a FC or a player to by a land.

- There are some furnitures that are destroyed while you want to take them off your house (of course those are the most costy / rare or it's not fun)

- You cannot sell your plot to someone else directly. That is extra wrong.

- There aren't enough plots for everybody.

 

To this I'll add some more informations that maybe some people don't know about as it's not that often that a FC relinquish its plot :

- To relinquish a plot when you're a FC, you need every chambers to be destroyed (so every player has to take off their furnitures and destroy their chamber. Which mean at least 300k / chamber waste.. If not more..)

- You need to have no chocobo on the stable to take it off the land..

- Your gardens have to be taken off too, so every crop destroyed (byebye~ onions if you were growing that).

- If a member isn't there while you want to relinquish and has a chamber / a chocobo stabled : You have to kick this member out of your FC.

 

If you pile those things together, you can easily understand how people can end to sell the relinquishing of their plot. I myself did it which allowed me to move in my M house.

What I think wrong is those trying to sell the relinquishing for more than the price they paid. I saw, those pasts days, some people selling more than one house and clearly those people were just making money out of the housing market.

Either than that, I'm sorry, but I find pretty normal to sell your plot and, as said Ashren Snow, you can't say "Hey the community should do that because we're RPer!" and things of that sort or there will be some fingers pointed at those who won't follow that "rule" which, itself, shouldn't exist.

People should do what they want out of the plot they bought, it is like wanting to move yourself IRL to another house, it's not because you do it that you will give your previous house and yard for free, even if the house is going to be destroyed to build something else instead.

 

(And just as bonus, to tell you how much SE f*cked up the system as they launched it : Before you couldn't even kick a member who had a chamber or a chocobo stabled. Which mean you could have a troll or someone causing big drama, as long as his chocobo was stabled - which is an easy thing - you had no other choice than to deal with that person in your FC and had no way to change anything).

[Oli!]

This could all be solved if you could just sell plots to other players. You know, like how housing works in real life.

 

 

but muh goldsink

[Nebbs]

There is more demand than supply, so people will make gil out of it any way they can.

 

There are many games that do this far more equitably, so as it was created this way you must consider it is working as intended.

[Maril]

This happened even back when FC's were the only ones that could get houses. Small ones tended to get sold around and about. So I wouldn't call it a new trend. Personally if I had to sign over my house, and I knew that the one taking over was an active RPer and/or a friend of mine, I would not charge anything - but if it was just to a random person I would probably ask for a % of the money I spent. It would be neat if Square invented a system that lets you sell houses, even fully decorated, to others. Like real-estate - where what people pay is the price of the lot + an estimation of the interior, where most of the money goes to the owner. Rather than just down the moneysink-drain. I doubt they ever will, but it would be nice.

[Ilwe'ran]

Also, I should add that if the game was allowing it, pretty sure that 100% of players / FCs would sell their house directly to another player / FC . What makes you frowing isn't the fact that players / FCs are bad person wanting to make money out of other people, it's the fact the game lack of this essential feature which is FC A sell his house to FC B.

[Delilah Scythewood]

This happened even back when FC's were the only ones that could get houses. Small ones tended to get sold around and about. So I wouldn't call it a new trend. Personally if I had to sign over my house, and I knew that the one taking over was an active RPer and/or a friend of mine, I would not charge anything - but if it was just to a random person I would probably ask for a % of the money I spent. It would be neat if Square invented a system that lets you sell houses, even fully decorated, to others. Like real-estate - where what people pay is the price of the lot + an estimation of the interior, where most of the money goes to the owner. Rather than just down the moneysink-drain. I doubt they ever will, but it would be nice.

 Yeah, I agree here If it was someone I knew who could afford the plot I likely wouldnt have asked for anything extra. Though since a random FC more then happily met our extra few million asking price (3 million on top of the 4 or so million for the plot itself) I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

 

In the Sims games when you create your own houses its a similar system. Either make the house and sell it empty or sell it plus whatever furniture and fixtures that were put into it.

[Hiro]

The other practice going around is to sell the Free Company that owns the house in it's entirety. 

 

Beyond Balmung and the trend of selling timing/relinquishment, there is another market of selling FC's entirely.

 

With an active membership it's easy to leave an alt in charge of an existing FC start a new one and have everyone hop on over. There are pro's, con's, and obvious sentimental reasoning one may be for and against such practices. FC's being started for these reasons are becoming more and more prominent, with many players leveling an alt to 50 just to start an alt FC to boost to rank 8, buy a house and hold for sales. There are also Free Companies doing this now recycling their FC statuses as well getting to Rank 8 then leaving an alt in charge after purchasing a lot/house, starting a new FC and rinsing and repeating the process. They then sell the Rank 8 FC and house to players looking to buy. A strange work around but it does provide solo players with a Rank 8 FC and house which in turn allows for Private Rooms as opposed to the Personal Houses which do not get access to such a feature.

 

This is less prominent on Balmung to my understanding however it is a practice I've noticed gaining momentum there as well. It is a reddit work around that was put into practise shortly after the second expansion of available plots became a thing.

[Steel Wolf]

I'm not a particularly large fan of the behavior, but it's all stemming from an already horribly designed housing system. Limiting instances and selling them at exorbitant prices is probably one of the dumbest design decisions, and continues to illustrate this game's love affair with grinds and treadmills.

 

Exacerbating the problem is the fact that the market is not going to shrink anytime soon. If there's someone willing to sell their plot at full tort, there's someone else who's going to buy it. It's meeting a demand, and I can't say I'm shocked that people want to recoup their initial costs...ESPECIALLY if they bought in to a feature that didn't turn out the way they hoped, or their FC dissolved or what have you.

[Gegenji]

I find myself trying to think of a way for SE to improve this situation so this sort of thing doesn't happen...

 

Now I'm going by the assumption that the owner just straight up gives up the house and then the buyer snaps it up. If this is wrong, please don't hesitate to correct me.  As I see it, there's two ways to do this:

 

1.) You "sell" the house back to an NPC to put it back on the market. It wouldn't be full price, but it WOULD be adjusted by what furnishings you leave in and around the place (most likely based off item sell price to avoid over-complication and the need to track going rates for such things). You wouldn't get all the money sunk into it back, but you'd hopefully get a decent bit of it. Which can all go towards upgrading or whatever you need the gil for. Basically a way to vendor your manor.

 

2.) Give the owner of the manor the ability to put it up for sale. On the map you could have a little "FOR SALE" marker by the place, and you could look at the asking price off that little sign thing that's outside the place anyway. Then, if you'd like, you could place a bid on the thing using a method not unlike sending in an application to join a Free Company. The owner can pick one of these and, after are "are you sure" prompt, can sell the house. Once it's sold, all those people who had bids up would immediately be refunded their gil.

 

There's plenty of holes in some of these ideas, I'm sure, but that's the two ways I'd approach it.

[C'kayah Polaali]

My apologies for causing rancor. Please go back to your regular discussions.

[Faye]

Supply and demand! Why pass up the opportunity to make easy gil (especially for something you've already sunk millions of gil into)? To me, it's as silly as the people complaining when folks were selling fast queues in the midst of the ninja hype. Sure, it's nice to think people would do it for free... but no one is obligated to. Charity isn't mandatory. Why sell items on the market board when you could give them away to other players for free? It's the same principle.

[Hiro]

Supply and demand! Why pass up the opportunity to make easy gil (especially for something you've already sunk millions of gil into)? To me, it's as silly as the people complaining when folks were selling fast queues in the midst of the ninja hype. Sure, it's nice to think people would do it for free... but no one is obligated to. Charity isn't mandatory. Why sell items on the market board when you could give them away to other players for free? It's the same principle.

 

I made well over 5m selling speed runs through DD and AV with a WHM FC-mate to NIN's. If people will pay I don't see it as exploiting, especially for something like the NIN hype, some people simply wanted to hit NIN as fast as possible.

[Melkire]

Why sell items on the market board when you could give them away to other players for free? It's the same principle.

 

No, what C'kayah is complaining about is more along the lines of listing some high-demand item on the marketboard, but then throwing up an advert in PF saying, "if you pay me this item's value, I'll take it off the market and reserve it for you; you can then trade me the listed price for the item itself".

[Faye]

Why sell items on the market board when you could give them away to other players for free? It's the same principle.

 

No, what C'kayah is complaining about is more along the lines of listing some high-demand item on the marketboard, but then throwing up an advert in PF saying, "if you pay me this item's value, I'll take it off the market and reserve it for you; you can then trade me the listed price for the item itself".

 

But I don't see what's wrong with that, either? If people are willing to pay it, it's not exploitation, it's business. Either you want something badly enough to pay the extra gil, or you don't. It's not as if housing is mandatory or extremely important. Sadly that's just how it works when it comes to limited resources.

[Kage]

Except in Melkire's example the person on the Marketboard and PF is benefiting twice whereas the person selling a plot of land is not.

[Hiro]

Something missed in these is that the FC doesn't need to relinquish the plot if they've done things in their favor. A lot are doing this as a final push for their spot which enables them to kill two birds with one stone.

 

The other thing is, dependent on where the plot is there will be some hype on availability. Marketing is important here and some have done a fine job at this, advertising their lot being put up for sale and knowing there are multiple parties interested well before they're actually -ready- to do it. The reason why a lot of these lots didn't go into the first come first serve slot is because there were people willing to pay for the spot because they knew others were looking at it as well. If people didn't pay then the FC's that weren't willing to put in the few days it took to reform and make a new Rank 8 for their purchase probably would have put it up for grabs once they sold their plot. Someone didn't want to risk losing their shot and bought it, I don't see a reason to blame the people putting a bar up there and seeing who'll grab for it and disliking the fact that they did and someone grabbed it. If no one had taken it for their asking price then there wouldn't even be a problem, people would scoff and the standard would be set to watch them flounder and wait until they "give in or get smart".

[ArmachiA]

Back in beta they talked about letting people sell their property. I honestly wonder what made them change their mind on that.

[C'kayah Polaali]

My apologies for causing rancor. Please go back to your regular discussions.