NPC: Why are we not allowed to buy or sell used furnishings?

In Lavender Beds (and I assume the other housing areas), there is an NPC, Resident Caretaker, that answers some questions. The question "Why are we not allowed to buy or sell used furnishings?" is selectable from the menu; if selected the following is said:

"Placing a furnishing will bind it to you, preventing future trade or sale to other players."

While I (kind of) understand the reason this restriction was put in the game, that line does nothing to answer the question asked. "You can not sell it because you can not sell it," is basically what it says.

I'm sure whoever writes dialog can think of something, probably something involving the flow of aether and the calamity. This just seems lazy...

They could say that the various crafting guilds throughout Eorzea came together and agreed to ban the reselling of used goods in order to protect their collective incomes.

Found you ^^^ Lol Lore.

Everything about housing is a gil market sponge, even the furniture. This isn't all a bad idea. If time went on without gil sponge holes, things would be crazy expensive. Something simple that would sell for 100gil now would be like 10,000gil in due time. This way stuff isn't scary high priced to the noobies.

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Originally Posted by sgbbad5

Everything about housing is a gil market sponge, even the furniture. This isn't all a bad idea. If time went on without gil sponge holes, things would be crazy expensive. Something simple that would sell for 100gil now would be like 10,000gil in due time. This way stuff isn't scary high priced to the noobies.

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Yea it's scary...look at the housing cost lol. I have been playing arr since release and I'm mortified.

What it seems to me, is that SE is being paranoid about the economy and placing gil-sinks into the game before adding any gil fountains. Given how painful teleports and repairs were originally as well, it's like they are choosing to design things to suck gil out of the economy as much as possible and then slowly adding in ways to offset the drain.

At least, that's what I hope they are doing. =P

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Originally Posted by Nialle

What it seems to me, is that SE is being paranoid about the economy and placing gil-sinks into the game before adding any gil fountains.

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I thought the odd mat drops from treasure hunting were for furniture, but they're also for PvP and vanity items, and maybe other things. Regardless, the result is that these drops are all but worthless for selling on the market board. Rather than a gil sink or fountain, SE seems to have made a "preemptive strike" at high market prices by flooding the game with these items.

This and the OP make me think SE's strategy is to make most income come from content and severely limit player-to-player trading. Many other games have a cycle that maintains a healthy market (combat -> drops -> crafter -> gear -> combat ?). This one gives everything through content and leaves little for a market to thrive on.

I don't care about the restrictions, they are understandable as they've already messed up the economy completely, with so many guaranteed melds, not losing the item if you fail, not being able to sell gear, and (almost) only being able to synth gear that is complete garbage compared to other, easily-obtainable, armour sets.

What I do care about is good writing. There is nothing in the world of Eorzea that explains why it is completely impossible to move a chair to your neighbour. They even bothered with adding an NPC who is supposed to answer why, but he just says "you can't because you can't".

It's for the same reason gear works that way too. Trust me, its actually a good thing. Its something that helps keep crafters in business. If you have something that can switch hands and is basically indestructible, it ends up flooding the market with said item and effectively making the craft that made it useless. The way that they have it now, it's taking something that ordinarily wouldn't be consumable and making it so.

I say this is a good thing, having played plenty of MMO's where this wasn't the case.