GM response needed. Conflicting info regarding the selling of plots.

There are tons of posts with conflicting info going around about whether someone selling first dibs on a plot of land to another player in game for Gil is against the ToS. (The person paying Gil to someone with a plot, for them to relinquish it, so that the buyee may then purchase the plot immediately after.)

There are tickets that have been posted showing GMs saying it is not against the ToS, but is not endorsed. There are others saying that it is against the ToS and can cause action to be taken against your account. I need a GM to clarify this here please. Thank you.

I've put a few reports in and they have said it is against the ToS but at the same like you said some claim there is no violation. Certainly not a good thing to see when people who dictate our future (bans and such) are the ones who are giving out conflicting answers.

Exactly. I just want there to be some sort of clarification once and for all. I've seen tickets replied to from GMs saying completely different things. It would be awesome to receive a response from an LGM or something. I'm in several ffxiv groups and this topic creates a lot of strife in them. Debates get more than heated and insults usually come from it. I want to put an end to that by having a 100% answer that no one can argue with either way. This is the only thing I can really think of. People have linked how easy it is to fake a GM tell in game so no one can go by those. Tickets they can go by, but they're conflicting. So there's currently no way to really know either way.

We can file this thread in the same folder as all the other ones asking the same question that never received a response.

I don't think it could be considered illegal or a violation of the ToS, because is it simply an agreement between two players, people must be aware that it ends up being more expensive than buying a free plot since you have to pay extra for the other player to relinquish the land!...

It would be nice to know an official response to avoid troubles, but then I'd expect it to come from the Producer himself!...

I personally think its just greedy pricks that buy several plots just to hold people randsom for an additional major cost....


if its not against ToS then it deffiantly needs to be!

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie-Amber

I personally think its just greedy pricks that buy several plots just to hold people randsom for an additional major cost....


if its not against ToS then it deffiantly needs to be!

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There are MANY players that own only one house and want to sell it to buy a different one, or because they are transferring servers. There is no way to get back any of the gil invested in buying a house at present short of waiting 45 days for the auto-demolish timer to expire (which isn't really a solution if you want to buy a plot that may not be free in 45 days or if you want to transfer before that 45 day timer is up).

You can't blame these people for not wanting to lose 10-80 million gil due to SE refusing to give players an option to manually sell houses back to the system. All they have to do is give us 80% of the gil back WHENEVER we relinquish a plot, not just after 45 days, and people would no longer have any legitimate reason to sell plots to other players. At that point sure, go ahead and make it a bannable offense, but for now please take your frustrations elsewhere as they're not at all constructive.

@OP: All cases of players being punished over this have involved them trying to sell via the party finder. As long as you don't use the PF to advertise you should be fine.

it definetly needs to be addressed people shouldnt be able to sell plots

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Originally Posted by papichulo123

it definetly needs to be addressed people shouldnt be able to sell plots

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The only way they'll ever stop trying is if SE gives a legitimate alternative to recoup some of the gil invested at will (not after 45 days). Even if they did find a way to stop people selling plots they'll only make the housing shortage worse as people will simply hold onto unused land because they're not allowed to get rid of it.

Man it's just crazy to think that something like this might be a bannable offense and no one can give a straight answer here either way. But I do agree that I wouldn't consider it to be against the ToS personally. It's like you said, it's an agreement between two players. But then again, if people are buying up plots to sell it could be considered interfering with other peoples experience due to them not being able to buy the plot? I dunno. Only thing I could think of that would make it against the rules.

EDIT: I agree with people posting above that this needs to be addressed and at least people need an option to sell their plot back and get most of the gil back. Currently if the house is demolished they get a chunk of what they paid back. There should be a way to do the same thing without waiting 45 days. It's a simple solution. This way they can make it 100% against the ToS to sell a house to someone in game to avoid "plot flippers" but people can still get something back for their investment if they want to upgrade or change areas.

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Originally Posted by HakaseNyan

I believe the "against the ToS" only works when you cannot guarantee the deal. If you say you're selling just the house, then the details are vague. You cannot guarantee (100%) the trade of your home to another person. If you put up something like "Pay me ten million for me to relinquish my land" it would be something you could guarantee.

However, what about selling a free company? If you sold a Free Company, with housing, that IS a deal you could guarantee.

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Purely conjecture, but it should make sense to some.

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Originally Posted by HakaseNyan

Purely conjecture, but it should make sense to some.

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The thought crossed my mind about this as well. That it could be considered fraud if you just outright said you were selling someone a plot, rather than just relinquishing the land and giving them first dibs. Fraud IS against the ToS so this would make sense. But again, no one has clearly said if this is the case one way or the other.

My FC bought a plot this way from another player. We gave him 20 mil beforehand, he relinquished his plot, and then we have him another 10 mil. He was genuine and wasn't one of the people who bought out a bunch of plots. If I recall it was a FC house. He gave me a hell of a lot of airship materials too what he no longer needed and I was really thankful. I had no idea it could be against the ToS though!

Most people selling plots are just trying to get back something for what they paid for it. I really feel that if SE isn't going to give them a way to do so without waiting 45 days, then there should be no action taken against anyone for doing this.

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Originally Posted by DarkSeifer

Most people selling plots are just trying to get back something for what they paid for it. I really feel that if SE isn't going to give them a way to do so without waiting 45 days, then there should be no action taken against anyone for doing this.

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I completely agree with this. I can't blame them for selling them based on the price of mansions on large servers.

I think it works like Parsers. As long as its not obvious they will look the other way. The issue is that when they freed up plots you had wealthy players buy up all the plots on multiple alt and then sell them back for 3 to 4 times the price. On top of that, its not even selling the plot. All its doing is giving up the plot. The purchasing player still needs to buy the plot from the game on top of that.

Because this denied so much of the player base access to the housing system GMs started to make a point of enforcing ToS to stop that behaviour. Really its only likely to cause you an issue selling your plot if your reported for doing so. If forced to make a choice on one side or the other expect them to side on making selling plots against the ToS because if it was intended for plots to be sold, players would be actually able to sell the deed directly to other players.

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Originally Posted by Belhi

I think it works like Parsers. As long as its not obvious they will look the other way. The issue is that when they freed up plots you had wealthy players buy up all the plots on multiple alt and then sell them back for 3 to 4 times the price. On top of that, its not even selling the plot. All its doing is giving up the plot. The purchasing player still needs to buy the plot from the game on top of that.

Because this denied so much of the player base access to the housing system GMs started to make a point of enforcing ToS to stop that behaviour. Really its only likely to cause you an issue selling your plot if your reported for doing so. If forced to make a choice on one side or the other expect them to side on making selling plots against the ToS because if it was intended for plots to be sold, players would be actually able to sell the deed directly to other players.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie-Amber

I personally think its just greedy pricks that buy several plots just to hold people randsom for an additional major cost....


if its not against ToS then it deffiantly needs to be!

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Comments like these don't really make any sense...

You guys might want to have a read over these concepts:

Free market

Supply and demand

Real estate economics

Unfortunately the housing system is the direct cause of this issue with a lack of it's of supply for the entire playerbase, which leads to many players treating plots as a commodity much like anything else on the market-board or non marketable goods like clear sales, mounts, etc.

If the issue GMs are taking is strictly with players listing houses on the Party Finder then there needs to be a clear distinction made as to what is and isn't allowed to be put in the PF list as we've seen everything from virtual hookup adverts to memes to popular song references, yet housing adverts are suddenly singled out as a reportable offense?

The fact that this issue has been sitting in a sort of "gray area" means that enforcement is left entirely up to the whims of whichever GM happens to take the report at the time and as others have provided evidence for in the past It is far from equal across the board, especially when trades for in-game currency are not against the ToS as long as they don't involve Real World currency.

I get that players are upset that others are selling plots but this is exactly what happens when you make a virtual (or any) commodity limited in accessibility, It creates a new market with opportunity for profit. The idea that a housing plot is any more sacred than any item on the market-board is by fault of SE's design and not player mentality. This is made even more of an issue when players are not only unable to willingly relinquish a plot with partial refund (without waiting 45 days) but are also forced to lose the entirety of their investment should they wish to transfer servers (which costs real money by the way) as well as supplement the in-game investment of gil (which for some was upwards of 100mil initially) with their subscription fee (real money again) in order to not lose their land.

It's little wonder that there are plenty of players who want to either transfer servers or upgrade to larger plots that have to pick between a risk of getting reported for advertising the sale of their virtual property or finding avenues of communication outside of the game to avoid GM action.

I really hope an official response is given to this thread or one of the others like it as this really should not be something that just gets brushed under the rug in silence for an issue that many have been calling attention to for well over a year and a half.

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Originally Posted by DarkSeifer

I need a GM to clarify this here please. Thank you.

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GMs don't reply here. The forums aren't even run by Square Enix. Occasionally a community moderator will reply, but never on policy issues like this.

If you want an official response, you need to send a ticket in game asking if you are allowed to relinquish your plot for money. The reply you get will be your official response (and you can then quote that ticket if you get any problems later if they change their mind).

They're not going to officially post to confirm it is/isn't allowed because that means there's no chance of housing sellers who want to just move server/get their money back being able to do that and to the best of my knowledge they're only focusing on people who list publicly (party finder/shouts) and/or are reported by people for it.

The whole housing issue is a clear grey area SE can't get their communication straight on. I would postulate that it probably hinges on a grey zone of, if there's no game system to allow it someone can't be held liable for it. For example if someone cuts and runs with money from a house sale without relinquishing, can they be held liable for selling something they have no actual means to sell? This is just purely my speculation as to what convoluted rational they would have on it that's kept them from ever taking a clear stance on it. I of course would counter my own speculation with, if a crafter ever cut and run with stuff from a commissioned craft, SE will act on it, even though there's no clear way to commission anymore than sell a house, purely verbal and via a trade.

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Originally Posted by DarkSeifer

The thought crossed my mind about this as well. That it could be considered fraud if you just outright said you were selling someone a plot, rather than just relinquishing the land and giving them first dibs. Fraud IS against the ToS so this would make sense. But again, no one has clearly said if this is the case one way or the other.

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This is generally how I always thought of it. You're selling information, the information that you're going to be relinquishing, thusly giving them first dibs. Nothing in the ToS strictly prohibits this aside from the impersonation and scamming bits. As long as the information is accurate, aka you actually do relinquish when you say you do, there shouldn't be anything wrong. If the hang up with SE is that there isn't an actual mechanic to sell the goods (the house), then take the house out of the picture and make it purely information based. Chat logs can be checked, and if the information proved false, it would clearly fall into the scam category in the ToS. Shouldn't cause any hang ups then.

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

GMs don't reply here. The forums aren't even run by Square Enix. Occasionally a community moderator will reply, but never on policy issues like this.

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They do and they are run by SE. Specifically the community team.

GMs have responded to posts before as has the head GM. It's not hard to find.

It's just that often they don't for most things.

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Originally Posted by ruskie

They do and they are run by SE. Specifically the community team.

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I only said that because am sure I've seen posts by people on places like Reddit who have had problems with accessing the forums (because of technical issues or bans) and when contacting SE they've been told they need to contact a different support company. I appreciate that without actual links I have no credibility and likewise even if it's a different technical company running the forums, I do concede that it might be SE staff that actually run it, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on this :)

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Originally Posted by ruskie

GMs have responded to posts before as has the head GM. It's not hard to find.

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Could you give an example or two please? All I see in the support and dev trackers (and all I ever see posting) is community moderators passing information along or dev team confirming they're going to fix some spelling errors. Nothing about confirming policies/rules. Never seen anyone with a title of GM though or anything like that which suggests they actually moderate in the game itself. The most official posts I've seen are from the Yoshi-P account where a translator has posted on his behalf.

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Originally Posted by ruskie

It's just that often they don't for most things.

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Wondering if perhaps you were meaning GM as in being a community moderator on the forums and I was meaning a GM as being a person who actually moderates in the game who has the title GM?

Either way though, if the OP wants an official answer, they need to literally ask in a ticket to SE in the game itself if it's okay to charge someone to relinquish their house. Wording needs to be careful, specifically saying about charging for relinquishing, not selling. The response they give will be the official answer.

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

Could you give an example or two please?

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LGM or Head GM Enkrateia has responded to various complaints or concerns. Here is one on the lotteries people held.

Here's another following up an FC leader's concerns about policies in place about reports following an incident with a player who expressed lots of suicidal tendencies.

FC Chest Raiding Investigations

GM possibilities of returning items that are used for quest progression


In regards to this topic in particular, I've made a thread asking for clarification and someone else did too after Christmas when people on reddit reported receiving warnings for advertising in Party Finder.

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Originally Posted by ExKage

LGM or Head GM Enkrateia has responded to various complaints or concerns.

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Thank you for taking the time to reply with links and that was very helpful. I read the forums quite actively, although clearly I had missed their posts and was wrong on this matter so I apologise for my mistake.

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

Thank you for taking the time to reply with links and that was very helpful. I read the forums quite actively, although clearly I had missed their posts and was wrong on this matter so I apologise for my mistake.

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Was happy to be of help. It's actually one of the reasons why I suggest people to post or look to the Official Forums when they have some concerns.

I've also seen some GM posts (especially when someone has posted thanking them after they've been assisted) but that would have taken far more time to find as GM posts aren't tracked in the dev tracker.

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Originally Posted by AlphaFox

I've put a few reports in and they have said it is against the ToS but at the same like you said some claim there is no violation. Certainly not a good thing to see when people who dictate our future (bans and such) are the ones who are giving out conflicting answers.

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Not to state the obvious, but the exact circumstances in each and every case are not known to us, so we cannot know all the factors that weigh on their decision about whether or not to act. Also, if this is something that falls within the realm of a judgement call, and is not laid out specifically, it is natural that there will be some variation.

It could very well be a judgement call thing like you mentioned, but either way, the fact that no GM has responded to this question in any threads made on this forum is a bit... strange. Here you have people that can link screenshots of GMs giving polar opposite answers to the same question in game. So people need to know what the real answer is. I'm not even trying to sell a house or anything. I just want an answer to give people in the communities that I'm a part of.

Frankly, when they implemented housing reclamation and getting a portion of investment returned in gil upon reclamation, they should have implemented the same thing upon relinquishing land - people may have still asked for payment, but prices would drop dramatically and if people are planning to server transfer, they wouldn't feel obligated to sell the plot before leaving and still get something back no matter what. The reason there is a market for buying and selling houses is because you don't get any compensation in-game for letting it go.

http://i.imgur.com/doDOWmc.png

http://imgur.com/a/3H52u

http://imgur.com/a/38RVa

http://i.imgur.com/56CCQHv.png

How many times does SE-NA need to respond on this matter before people accept that selling plots to other players is against their rules? The only reason people keep asking for more clarification is because they don't want it to be true, not because there hasn't been enough proof provided already.

Break the rules or don't, but don't pretend that there's still some confusing doubt on the matter.

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Originally Posted by Gyson

http://i.imgur.com/doDOWmc.png

http://imgur.com/a/3H52u

http://imgur.com/a/38RVa

http://i.imgur.com/56CCQHv.png

How many times does SE-NA need to respond on this matter before people accept that selling plots to other players is against their rules? The only reason people keep asking for more clarification is because they don't want it to be true, not because there hasn't been enough proof provided already.

Break the rules or don't, but don't pretend that there's still some confusing doubt on the matter.

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Well, that's a shame. Wanted to sell my plot, but I guess I'll be keeping it after all. Sorry guys!

It is against the TOS for players to sell plots among themselves. There is a portion of the TOS that states very clearly that SE can and at any time decide what is and is not against the TOS. Whether it is reflected or not in the TOS does not matter as we have all agreed to the TOS and SE changing the rules whenever they please.

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Originally Posted by Gyson

http://i.imgur.com/56CCQHv.png

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Interesting, I haven't ever seen them quote the exact passage of the ToS before that they consider this an affront to. I find it extremely odd that the disruption of services would be the issue, as I don't even quite understand how it is. Now I'm going to be extremely perturbed as to exactly how this is considered a disruption of services.

Well you can thank the people buying up houses just to flip them for insane amount of gil don't think SE even cared about it until people started doing that.

I can link you several GM tickets that were replied to stating clearly that it is not against the ToS as well. I'll do so when I get home if needed. But all it takes is 5 minutes of research to see many tickets answered this way. There IS still confusion and conflicting information. And there will continue to be until we hear an official response here.

Seriously though, the only thing needet would be an option to return the plot to the system and get money back, then it would make sense to make it be against the ToS. But it seems that is just too easy for SE.

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Originally Posted by Rakiria

Seriously though, the only thing needet would be an option to return the plot to the system and get money back, then it would make sense to make it be against the ToS. But it seems that is just too easy for SE.

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I agree 100%

It's crazy to not have an option to get some of your Gil back unless you don't step in your house for 45 days.

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Originally Posted by DarkSeifer

I agree 100%

It's crazy to not have an option to get some of your Gil back unless you don't step in your house for 45 days.

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Why? That was always the case from when the housing system was implemented. The demolition thing is an addition that came later, and the money back is a way of softening the blow for players who are unsubbed and return to find their home gone.

If someone bought a plot and doesn't intend to use it, then they need to relinquish it. That's the price they pay for not thinking through their purchase. If they bought it for speculation, then too bad, so sad.

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Originally Posted by Rakiria

Seriously though, the only thing needet would be an option to return the plot to the system and get money back, then it would make sense to make it be against the ToS. But it seems that is just too easy for SE.

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Yeah, I'd be fine if we just had the same refund as the timed force relinquish. The entire thing would be moot if there was just that.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Why? That was always the case from when the housing system was implemented. The demolition thing is an addition that came later, and the money back is a way of softening the blow for players who are unsubbed and return to find their home gone.

If someone bought a plot and doesn't intend to use it, then they need to relinquish it. That's the price they pay for not thinking through their purchase. If they bought it for speculation, then too bad, so sad.

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I'd agree to some degree, IF, they hadn't given gil refunds for timed relinquish. The fact that people that no longer play will get a refund yet someone currently playing that is willing to give up their current one has no actual means of any refund seems fairly backwards. If anything I'd have expected current players to get the refund while timed to get nothing. If anything, IF they take a hardline stance on selling being bad, it straight up encourages no one to relinquish and instead force the timer to get money back.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Why? That was always the case from when the housing system was implemented. The demolition thing is an addition that came later, and the money back is a way of softening the blow for players who are unsubbed and return to find their home gone.

If someone bought a plot and doesn't intend to use it, then they need to relinquish it. That's the price they pay for not thinking through their purchase. If they bought it for speculation, then too bad, so sad.

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And there is the problem. Almost no one would relinquish the plot and lose most the money they spent. So they are left with waiting 45 days to get money back.

This means people who are wanting a house now need to wait for peoples 45 days to be up most of the time. Which means even less opportunity for people to get houses.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

If someone bought a plot and doesn't intend to use it, then they need to relinquish it. That's the price they pay for not thinking through their purchase. If they bought it for speculation, then too bad, so sad.

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Or... they can keep it. And people who actually want a house can suffer for it. Thanks SE.

I don't get what the problem is with flipping FCs/houses. If it's buying a plot to sit on and force people to pay you to get off (then they need to pay money to get the plot themselves...) yeah, I see that. But its a valid tactic to earn money, in my opinion, to flip fcs/houses and make gil like that; some people I know are really good at making a house look spiffy and put a lot of work into getting all sorts of rare and high quality furniture to put in to make the house look better to sell.