People will be exceptionally disappointed at how many houses this doesn't free up.
I'm not against the one and one idea, per se; but it's not a cure-all, just a bandaid.
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People will be exceptionally disappointed at how many houses this doesn't free up.
I'm not against the one and one idea, per se; but it's not a cure-all, just a bandaid.
I wouldn't call this a bandaid, but part of the larger set of changes that need to go live to actually solve the problem.
That said, this is the one part of a more comprehensive solution that almost everyone can agree upon, which is why I believe this restriction to be worth pushing first. Getting this in place would set the precedent for other more forceful changes that would need to happen, as housing isn't something that SE needs to approach as gently as possible because a lot of people (especially for the couple that own a ward) probably have a lot of emotional investment tied up in their houses.
Why? Take the 2 people on Mateus that bought the 28 homes that made news. They purchased them when Mateus was a ghost town and there were literally whole wards completely empty with all their land available. When they bought those houses they were hurting NOBODY. They did nothing wrong buying those houses and they do not deserve to be punished for doing it.
No, stripping houses from people that already have them is not the right answer by any means and only serves to punish people so salty people without a house can have some satisfaction in watching people lose one.
And yet, if they did strip houses from them, you're screwing over 2 people to make like 24-26 other players and FCs happy.
The utilitarian argument here ACTUALLY favors stripping houses from the hoarders. Personally, I'm up for giving them a grace period where they can (of their own accord) yield their houses prior to a deadline.
They had their fun, but it's time for that to end.
Again, how was it selfish? When they purchased them Mateus was one of those servers that was so empty that literally every day there was 100+ plots unsold sitting around. There would be entire wards without a house purchased. They bought up 28 houses and there was still over 100 homes out there sitting unpurchased. What was WRONG in purchasing them? They were purchased when there was no demand for housing. They literally were just buying up unwanted plots sitting around doing nothing.
That is not selfish, it is not wrong, and it certainly is not something that they deserve punishment for.
And again, when they bought their houses there was nobody else to make happy. They didn't screw anyone out of any houses. Those wards didn't fill up until months later when the Kotaku article hit and people realized there were servers with empty wards, and then SE offering incentives to go to lower servers. Those 2 people didn't do a damn thing that warrants SE coming in and stripping them of their houses.