Decrease the demand for houses with taxes

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Originally Posted by Arrius

You are already paying a sub to actually keep it (since you have to visit it once every month or so from getting it demolished), so it's kinda a chore already.
Taxation would draw from the funds of your retainer you employ there until nothing is left, instead.

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The sub is for access to play the game, not to keep a house. If it was to keep a house, every player would have one.

Quite honestly, it's a very foolish consumer that pays a subscription just to keep a house in a game they don't want to be playing. That money could be getting used elsewhere, such as a game that has housing but no demolition. If the only attraction to the player is housing, they're better off elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

The sub is for access to play the game, not to keep a house. If it was to keep a house, every player would have one.

Quite honestly, it's a very foolish consumer that pays a subscription just to keep a house in a game they don't want to be playing. That money could be getting used elsewhere, such as a game that has housing but no demolition. If the only attraction to the player is housing, they're better off elsewhere.

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That's of course depends on the player - But nothing else is lost than your house if you fail to pay your subscription: You keep your gear and outfits, cash and tomes, even the stuff you keep on extra retainers remain there until you resub to regain access.

So it really is a chore if don't feel for playing or got caught in a lull between patches yet you have to keep your sub running to visit your house in order to prevent it from getting demolished.

Instanced housing, please.

*shot*

No.

/10char

The never ending battle of trying to hurt others to get a house. I'm sure the OP isn't poor but some have to struggle to get the gil to buy one and furnish one. SE needs to address the problem by adding enough housing for everyone. Instanced alongside wards is what would be optimal in my view.

The Op has clearly a very questionable mindsetting. In this game is like in RL you BUY and not rent a pice of land to put a house on it. When you buy a plot and a house it is your own property, why in the world you would pay addional rent for it? If you want house that bad maybe try another server.

How is it a punishmen to pay for maintaince of your property? Alot of games got that, especially if go oldschool.

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Originally Posted by Missbone

In this game is like in RL you BUY and not rent a pice of land to put a house on it. When you buy a plot and a house it is your own property, why in the world you would pay addional rent for it?

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The other day I was paying a property tax for my real life house (which has similar issue, because the tax is so low I keep the house around instead of selling it) so that's from where the idea comes from. Switching servers to get a house would not recommend unless the fc-fs returns. Lottery is too much of gamble in its current state to move servers.

When the supply is so limited it makes sense to want a little bit of effort from players to show they aren't just wasting space. Like I said, I had many houses through the years, the amount of time my houses were unused when I was no longer playing, time when the demolition was stopped due to covid, earthquakes and stuff... it's bonkers. So much wasted time someone else could have used the space if only a tax kicked me out of the property sooner.

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Originally Posted by Themarvin

How is it a punishmen to pay for maintaince of your property? Alot of games got that, especially if go oldschool.

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Just because something else did it doesn't make it a good idea. Seriously, this line of thinking is why there are still so many draconian laws in effect today. 'It was done like this back in the day so clearly it is the only way'. I just don't understand. Especially as another player has pointed out. There are people who are sitting on enough gil where this wouldn't bother them, yet depending on the server your average player probably only ever has 2-3 mil (and that is being generous) on them at any given time unless they specifically save up for things such as a house. Most PvErs don't have much in the way of gil, you'd be surprised how little gil some of the hardcore raiders themselves have. Especially with (again as someone else pointed out) how little crafting can make you these days vs the cost to get to that level. At least on Mateus making a reasonable level of gil requires heavily playing the market and researching market trends and costs. I can bet your average player probably isn't going to do that, hell most of my FC doesn't even do that. So while I could afford several houses and their upkeep, many of my fellow FC members would likely not even afford to maintain a single one with a taxation system because you just don't earn enough gil through basic play.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

The only game I know of that implemented housing taxes in recent years is new world, and I'm pretty sure it was very much disliked than a lot of bad things in that game.

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Even Dark Age of Camelot has you pay a tax on a weekly or monthly basis to keep your house from disappearing. Players still hated it, and still do, and the housing system already holds an account hostage by staying subbed to it.

It wasn't 'terrible' because it was affordable, but there are so many money sinks in FFXIV, it would become questionable to have taxes on housing here.


I have a beetter idea for you OP: Instead of making the current system worse, let's make it better and have instanced housing, like so many have been asking for since it started.

Personally, I think if they got rid of workshops, gardening and added those in as a feature to island sanctuary, it could cut down on the demand of houses quite a bit. A tax system is not going to do anything except encourage people to find a new way to amass more gill, through cheats or a legit way (or a combination of both). In every game that I've played, including this one, it's only ever been a small percent of the player base that even cares about owning a house. The only real problem, I think, is just that people can make some serious gil with workshops and gardening. Anything that can make a lot of gil is always met with bots/RMT peeps flooding said content in response and if they just nuke that in the bud, would solve so many problems. But, eh, here we are...

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Originally Posted by Themarvin

How is it a punishmen to pay for maintaince of your property?

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One has to consider the new benchmark "they work and have kids and can only play once a week" person. This is the same person held up by multiple people as a prime reason for lottery being a good idea, and for the 5 day window on lottery also being desirable over a shorter one.

This one day a week person will never be able to afford to pay the gil taxes, because in their one single hour a week they won't be able to earn the required 100,000 gil required weekly to maintain their small plot.

(based on the OP's 10% per month)

I can't see the benefit besides locking newer players out of housing and promoting RMT.

When a new player finally earns enough to buy a house after hours of trying to sell items on the mb, they want to relax, enjoy decorating their new purchase and spend the rest of their gil buying nice furniture for it. It's not enjoyable gameplay to have part of your gil cut off and have an additional chore of earning a set sum every month.

The obvious "solution" would end up being RMT. Many players would do it, they'd even justify it in their heads that it's SE's fault for their bad system. RMT sellers would have a rush of customers and botting would become even more rampant.

It also has zero effect on veteran players who hoarded a nice pile of gil back before crafting was ruined. We could pay tax on a mansion we barely use for 10 years without making too much of a dent on our wealth. It's just a bad idea all round.

I'm going to start invading neighboring properties in search of oil WMDs if they begin taxing us.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

The never ending battle of trying to hurt others to get a house. Sure the OP isn't poor but some have to struggle to get the gil to buy one and furnish one. SE needs to address the problem by adding enough housing for everyone. Instanced alongside wards is what would be optimal in my view.

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This has to be let go. That's not to be dismissive of the mindset, but let's say SE finds a way to pull this gigantic rabbit out of a very tiny hat, what then? What happens to all of the current housing? Do you think all that property will just vanish? Many houses out there are works of art with thousands upon thousands of hours put into them. They can't just erase that. So do current property owners get to take part in in the instanced housing? If not, is that fair? If they can, is that fair? If current housing remains along with the instanced, does it really take away or even reduce the demand for current housing? Based off of previous and current methods to handle situations like that, do you think it will be handled in a way that is fair for everyone? Or do you think it would be another clusterfork of issues that blows up in their faces, and these forums?

Those are the kind of things that really need to be taken into mind instead of just regurgitating a proposed solution that ignores pragmatism. What I like about this thread, and the idea of property tax is it's going outside the box to address the issue, and has got people to approach the housing ordeal from a different angle and scratching their heads a bit.

Unfortunately the idea falls short. Taxation doesn't decrease the demand for housing, it decreases a player's/FC's ability to buy and maintain ownership of a home. The demand is still there. But now, along with a bunch of pissed off players who can't get a house, the property owners are now pissed off too because they will feel like they are being punished for SEs own shortcomings.

Taxation of property has no benefit other than to remove gil from circulation, or hoarding. That is really the only reason to implement it, and if they did do this; it could be the only reason mentioned as to why they are doing it. It is certainly more favorable than price gouging mounts, which does not affect players who don't care to have them, or hoard gil; or increasing teleportation costs, which affect everyone, even players who don't have a lot of gil. It most certainly is not a solution to fixing the housing issue.

Or, you know; make more plots/wards.

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Originally Posted by Archaell

We have this situation here in which everybody wants a mansion but there are just not enough of them to go around. Too many of players can afford it and so they feel obliged to get the mansion because there are no drawbacks of owning one. Demolitions help with the issue, but not enough so - introduce property taxes.

For example: Let's start with 10% of plot cost per month.

Large enough upkeep would make players more content with smaller houses or motivate them to join friends/free companies to share the load among members. Also players would be more likely to just let the houses they don't use much go to save on gil. The housing zones would be used more actively and more players would be able to touch the housing.

It wouldn't be a popular change but it has its benefits.

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Don't feel like reading through the entire topic so... No, this is a terrible, awful, horrible idea. Stop trying to punish players for SE's crappy housing system.

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Originally Posted by Vrankyl

Especially as another player has pointed out. There are people who are sitting on enough gil where this wouldn't bother them

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Yeah this. I know folks who are as you said, only have like 2-3 mil and can never make more than that, and then there's the folks I know that have a shit ton of gil they don't even know what to do with it.

For the folks that are loaded, this will do next to absolutely nothing while poor folks will be the only ones suffering.

House taxes won't do shit.

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Originally Posted by Coletergeist

Yeah this. I know folks who are as you said, only have like 2-3 mil and can never make more than that, and then there's the folks I know that have a shit ton of gil they don't even know what to do with it.

For the folks that are loaded, this will do next to absolutely nothing while poor folks will be the only ones suffering.

House taxes won't do shit.

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I stopped selling seriously back in 4.2 and this tax wouldn't hurt me in the least and i own multiple homes on different servers. It's unfair to people who skimp to get one and then having to pay a maintenance fee on top of it. I doubt SE would ever entertain the idea but then again many of us never expected a lottery.

Add crossbreeding gardening in Apartments.

Nah, We already pay a sub

A 100% better suggestion would be to just make instanced housing

Or make apartments better by making them equal to a private cottage (small house)

Or make more private plots available - or all of this

*Throws your tea in the harbor's watery depths*

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Originally Posted by Soge01

*Throws your tea in the harbor's watery depths*

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Roight! That's it! I know you ain't got a tea-dumping License.

You're getting a strongly-worded letter, young Sir/Madam!

Your idea will only worsen the amount of people using BOT or buying Gil through RMT.

Put a fee, and it will further encourage players to buy Gil, with that more BOTs will come, and the problem of houses will remain one way or another.

If the new goal is to decrease demand for housing, there's a much easier way to do it: make apartments more appealing. Up the furniture cap on apartments from 100 to, say, 300. Let people purchase upgrades if you have to. Implement a patio section for outdoor furniture and gardening. Make submarine ventures something anyone can do at an inn.
Basically, stop locking features behind owning a home, and a lot more people won't want one.

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

If the new goal is to decrease demand for housing, there's a much easier way to do it: make apartments more appealing. Up the furniture cap on apartments from 100 to, say, 300. Let people purchase upgrades if you have to. Implement a patio section for outdoor furniture and gardening. Make submarine ventures something anyone can do at an inn.
Basically, stop locking features behind owning a home, and a lot more people won't want one.

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Submarine ventures are an FC thing though. The primary complaints are for private homes.

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Originally Posted by RitsukoSonoda

Submarine ventures are an FC thing though. The primary complaints are for private homes.

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I'm sleepy and I keep editing this post to try and get my point across. Sorry if it changes a lot on your end.
Basically I think that if less people wanted an individual home, there wouldn't be as much demand for them, which would translate to individual wards feeling less of a pinch, which would lead to less people feeling compelled to make these fake FCs to break into the FC wards. The route we're going down right now has a bunch of shell FCs set to win a ton of FC ward real estate soon despite being an "FC" composed of like... 1 guy and his 3 alts. And these people would have to be stupid not to do submarine ventures as soon as they can; it's free money once you set it up. At that point, when we have a bunch of solo players doing ventures anyway, you'd be hard pressed to call it "an FC thing," and you might as well just make it a thing anyone can do.

Additionally, the majority of my post addressed private home issues because -- yeah, I'd rather see those addressed. I only brought up subs because I also know several people who legit just left their FC and made a fake FC because they wanted to do submarine ventures. So in that context, it really doesn't matter that it's an FC thing. It's a reason for people to want a limited resource, that could easily be addressed by just making it accessible through other means. Why is it bad for anyone to access a submarine from an inn, but it's okay for a bunch of fake one-man FCs to do it from their solo FC home? In my experience, the only people in love with this are the people making loadsa Gil from that system in the first place.

Dude no. Nope.

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

Additionally, the majority of my post addressed private home issues because -- yeah, I'd rather see those addressed. I only brought up subs because I also know several people who legit just left their FC and made a fake FC because they wanted to do submarine ventures. So in that context, it really doesn't matter that it's an FC thing. It's a reason for people to want a limited resource, that could easily be addressed by just making it accessible through other means. Why is it bad for anyone to access a submarine from an inn, but it's okay for a bunch of fake one-man FCs to do it from their solo FC home? In my experience, the only people in love with this are the people making loadsa Gil from that system in the first place.

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If small FC's making a lot of gil are a problem, then put restrictions on it. One sub per 10 members up to a maximum of 4 submarines or something like that.

If submarines were made available to all players they would absolutely have to nerf all gil income from them. This would be a nasty blow to legitimate FC's. My own FC puts every bit of gil from our submarines back into the FC and it's an amazing positive, we have endless free food, pots, materia, chocobo items, various minions and furniture and events with lots of prizes and it would be a shame if all that was taken away because some players abused a system that should have been restricted properly in the first place.

I also wish people would stop joining FC's with leaders who treat the submarines as a personal income. It just encourages it. There are a ton of legitimate FC's where you can get your buffs and a lot of extra bonuses. There's no reason to park in a bad FC.

No to taxation. It's bad enough we can lose our houses and furniture while paying a sub, no way would I endorse making the system even more punitive.
It would definitely encourage RMT and honestly I cannot see any benefit except to a handful of richer players.

FIX THE SUPPLY
That's the real issue, there are simply not enough houses for the player base.

Dig into that a little further and it turns out that desirable houses are in even shorter supply. Houses near the Market Board and Retainer bell with nice views are not exactly plentiful. Many plots in the wards would probably go unsold if it wasn't for the fact that housing is so scarce (looking at you, Goblet) but the poor design of the wards is something most of us overlook because getting any house is an achievement in itself.

If the devs can give everyone their own little instanced island, then they definitely had the resources to give us instanced houses. I can see no reason why instanced houses shouldn't be introduced alongside the wards, that way everyone's happy. The people who don't care about neighbourhoods can get an instanced house and the people who love the wards can continue with the system we have.

Has to be the stupidest take I've seen on here yet

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

If small FC's making a lot of gil are a problem, then put restrictions on it. One sub per 10 members up to a maximum of 4 submarines or something like that.

If submarines were made available to all players they would absolutely have to nerf all gil income from them. This would be a nasty blow to legitimate FC's. My own FC puts every bit of gil from our submarines back into the FC and it's an amazing positive, we have endless free food, pots, materia, chocobo items, various minions and furniture and events with lots of prizes and it would be a shame if all that was taken away because some players abused a system that should have been restricted properly in the first place.

I also wish people would stop joining FC's with leaders who treat the submarines as a personal income. It just encourages it. There are a ton of legitimate FC's where you can get your buffs and a lot of extra bonuses. There's no reason to park in a bad FC.

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That's cool. Tbh, I didn't mean for this to be about subs when I wrote it. I just mentioned it because I notice it's another thing that drives people to want a house in this game, same with gardening or simply having more space. My main point was that lots of desired features are gated behind owning a home, and if the devs ever wanted to cut demand for housing (as this was the thread topic), then they could simply provide those desired features through other means.

To wrap this up, I'd 100% agree on putting more restrictions in the sub system, because at the moment the notion of it being a group activity is kind of a joke in 90% of FCs. At best there'll be one guy who manages it in a large group. At worst you'll see these empty fc houses all the time where it's obvious that it's just some dude's submarine workshop. And very soon an army of shell FCs will gobble up the FC wards and begin using subs as well. When it gets to that point, I won't care if everyone has sub access or not. There'll be so many people using the system and undercutting each other on materials they get from it, that the end result will be the same. Good luck to you!

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Originally Posted by Solarra

No to taxation. It's bad enough we can lose our houses and furniture while paying a sub, no way would I endorse making the system even more punitive.
It would definitely encourage RMT and honestly I cannot see any benefit except to a handful of richer players.

FIX THE SUPPLY
That's the real issue, there are simply not enough houses for the player base.

Dig into that a little further and it turns out that desirable houses are in even shorter supply. Houses near the Market Board and Retainer bell with nice views are not exactly plentiful. Many plots in the wards would probably go unsold if it wasn't for the fact that housing is so scarce (looking at you, Goblet) but the poor design of the wards is something most of us overlook because getting any house is an achievement in itself.

If the devs can give everyone their own little instanced island, then they definitely had the resources to give us instanced houses. I can see no reason why instanced houses shouldn't be introduced alongside the wards, that way everyone's happy. The people who don't care about neighbourhoods can get an instanced house and the people who love the wards can continue with the system we have.

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This is the ideal answer. But Square keeps insisting that they can't add more wards or more houses ... until suddenly they can make a whole new housing district. It's really weird. I don't know what's going on with that. So addressing demand is an alternative that "fixes" the problem without touching the supply. And they could easily do it by just making apartments more attractive. But they won't even do this.

I 100% agree with everything you said though; I don't understand how they're gonna do island sanctuary if they can't handle instanced housing. Just give people who don't care about the neighborhood their own little house floating in the void and call it a day. Games with less money coming in have done this from the start; it blows my mind that XIV has had ... what, 8 years? to fix this? And now with the new system, we're right back at the RMT issues that the clicking system was designed to alleviate, since it directly incentivized shell fc creation for a shell fc house. Can't wait to see how many people just sell ownership of their solo FC for real money in the future, when housing becomes even more dire than it already is. All they had to do was give priority to individual buyers and this level of scarcity could have been prevented for several lottery cycles. Instead they gave FCs an advantage, and also paused the timer on bidding so that shell FCs would be able to enter the ring as well. It's almost comical at this point, how literally everything that could have gone wrong, did.

I’ve advocated for housing taxes in the past, some I’m on board with the idea. It solves two problem at once.

One, currently there’s no incentive to give up houses you own but don’t use.

Two, it’s incredibly easy to generate hundreds of millions of Gil in FFXIV and there nothing to spend it on.

I like housing being rare, or challenging to acquire. This brings players together at -so and so’s- house to hang out and concentrates the player base into these social hotspots. If everyone had easy access to housing then everyone would just be off alone on their own islands.

Again I'd say the 2 factors causing the massive housing demand are the following.

1. Players have little else to spend gil on because the game lacks meaningful gil sinks to balance out the rate players generate gil out of activities. Buying things off the market board just moves the gil minus the tax to another player's pocket. The game needs more things that would have players feed gil into the system removing it from circulation.

2. A very large portion if not majority of the people wanting a house only want it because the resource is limited. It's no different from people buying limited edition versions of RL items just because quantities are limited or what we saw during the pandemic of people trying to buy up as much as possible of all kinds of things just because supply was limited essentially just making the supply problem worse.

My "tax" is my monthly sub fee. Don't pay it for a few months, lose the house.

What if we made housing a Time Share?

You bid on the house, and on what day of the week it is yours?

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Originally Posted by Archaell

We have this situation here in which everybody wants a mansion but there are just not enough of them to go around. Too many of players can afford it and so they feel obliged to get the mansion because there are no drawbacks of owning one. Demolitions help with the issue, but not enough so - introduce property taxes.

For example: Let's start with 10% of plot cost per month.

Large enough upkeep would make players more content with smaller houses or motivate them to join friends/free companies to share the load among members. Also players would be more likely to just let the houses they don't use much go to save on gil. The housing zones would be used more actively and more players would be able to touch the housing.

It wouldn't be a popular change but it has its benefits.

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I already pay property taxes IRL. I don't want to have to be reminded about it in an MMO fantasy game too.

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Originally Posted by Vav2021

I already pay property taxes IRL. I don't want to have to be reminded about it in an MMO fantasy game too.

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You pay taxes irl and so do you for any MB related transactions. Where's your tantrum about MB taxes huh?

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Originally Posted by Yshtola_Cat

You pay taxes irl and so do you for any MB related transactions. Where's your tantrum about MB taxes huh?

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to be honest, I never used the MB enough for me to even notice that. I think I only used it for the fat cat and getting a few mats. But now that you mention it, you're right. What are the taxes that we pay on the MB used for? Or does it just disappear into the wind?

Good eye, Yshtola.

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Originally Posted by Vav2021

What are the taxes that we pay on the MB used for? Or does it just disappear into the wind?

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Gameplay-wise? It gets eaten. Little by little.

Canonically? I believe it's used to pay for transport and labour fees for shipping that item to you, perhaps? Or the Grand Company (or City you purchase it in) takes a small cut for facilitating the purchase?