Released Properties Need an Invisible Random Timer

First off, let's take https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXIVhousingmarket/ into consideration. We're less than a week after the expansion, and on that page are (at the time of writing) properties in Shirogane up for sale. That's housing that are denied people who will love and use their new property because of greed alone.

House flipping needs to die.

Which is exactly why SE needs to add an invisible random timer when a property is released that puts the property into a limbo state (where no one can own it, and no one can use it) that lasts between one to twenty four hours. The only thing the players should see on the timer is that it exists, and the players should NEVER be able to see how much time is remaining on the timer.

That change would outright kill the house flipping market - which should never have been a thing to begin with.

'I sat at my computer / the house for 23 hours straight and didn't get the house'

Yeah. No.

You're paying the flipper to release their property, not to buy it. Even now you run the risk of someone else snatching it out from under you (unlikely but technically possible). This kind of timer would only increase the risk for the buyer which may or may not drive down the prices for houses on the flipping market but it would definitely not kill it.

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Originally Posted by Alien_Gamer

You're paying the flipper to release their property, not to buy it. Even now you run the risk of someone else snatching it out from under you (unlikely but technically possible). This kind of timer would only increase the risk for the buyer which may or may not drive down the prices for houses on the flipping market but it would definitely not kill it.

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Ok, so what would you suggest to kill the house flipping market?

Great idea. At least everybody will be on the same page for the buying process.

Just make the owner cannot sell/transfer ownership for 1 year and make him pay 12 months monthly fee from the start. If after 6 months if s/he wants to sell/transfer ownership then he'll have to pay 20x the price of land. After 9 months = 10x, and only after 12 months s/he can sell without paying.

The new buyer would have to do the same as well for 12 months.

This will not kill house flippers outright, but it'll discourage average joe house flippers (95% of them) since it requires a major commitment.

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Originally Posted by crashoverdrive

Great idea. At least everybody will be on the same page for the buying process.

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Exactly, as the risk involved wouldn't justify dumping inordinate amounts of gil on what amounts to a gamble.

And also, if the random timer is coupled with other measures that limit how many houses a person can own (so it's not the absurd 16 houses per account per server), that would effectively give the house flipping market the glamour market treatment.

How about no tho.

A random timer set for at least 2 days to 7 days and the house can go up for sale any time during this time is the best way to reduce flipping housing. I have had a house for most of the time since personal housing came out. My first house was a medium in Goblet and I gave it up(demolish didn't sell it) early this year as I was using it less and I was hoping to get a new house when SB came out. I gave a shout that the plot was open just to annoy a few that were selling their houses that day on the server. Even though it gave a bunch a chance at the house it would have been better to have had a random timer on it.

In the new SB housing I did get a house when many of my friends stayed up all night also, some got a house, most didn't. I did see a few of the plots back up for sale later for a crazy price. That should clearly be against the rules. You should not get gil back for auto demolish, you should only get gil back from SE for giving the plot up and letting a random clock pick the time when it can be bought again to prevent players that own land from flipping it or profiting since housing is a very limited resource currently. Maybe one exception to this, allow us to send a bid to a house that is already owned to an SE control market. SE can see our gil and its sources to track for RMT. The owner of the house gets a fixed amount if they accept the offer and SE could request a tax for using the system(gil sink) plus lock the land to you for 90 days. The idea of the tax is to make it unrealistic to make gil flipping a house while allowing the persons house you would like to get a small profit if they chose to sell it to you. As it is now, we have to go straight to the owner and ask if we want their plot and the can profit as much as they want to sell it to you. My idea while pricey, only eliminates flipping the house for profit. ie, house costs 20m, The owner gets 5m to 10m to give it you through the SE sales system(all bids in this system are blind so the owner does not know who wants the house). SE charges you 60m for the house plus say 5m that goes to the owner to give it up. Once you own this house there is no profitable way to sell it because of the tax. Just a side thought.

Part of what is insane as I was recently reading is that the Japanese have more servers than us. Why is that? About the same numbers play on JP data centers as NA data centers. Their servers run so much smoother. I was over on Yojimbo server for a while when SB released and the NA servers were a mess. Even the alts I have on the JP servers work better(runs much smoother and this is with a much higher ping than on my current server Behemoth). Why not add another data center for NA players for a better experience. While that does add more housing I doubt it comes close to the housing we need for NA data centers. Feels like the NA and EU subs are subsidizing the extra JP data center.

In my experience what we need is another data center and the same number of servers as the JP players have. Second, they need to take the current amount of housing on NA servers and double it. Last add another 2 to 3 slots to add friends on your house. I have always had friends on my houses since they don't have theirs or are looking to use a house while waiting for one to get hit with auto demolish. I find while location was nice, many of them liked the decorating part and the gardening features the most. I took a small corner of the house where I can craft and I let them do what they wanted with the rest of the house. This last idea is not the best as many want their own personal home to share with a close friend, RL husband/wife or bf/gf. Though this is a quick cheap fix in my mind, how hard would it be to change from 3 to 6 friends on a house? it doesn't make it an FC. The three friends on my new house often just like being in the ward chilling in the front yard plus they are working together to decorate the house, something I am not good at. I am glad to have them there and I know they love being able to use the house as all three friends missed buying a plot in the new housing. Though I understand many might say six friends is too much or most players would never let their friends do the things I let my friends do which is most likely true.

Last and least popular idea, bring the price back up(across all servers, every house on every NA, JP and EU DC all cost the same) and crack down on RMT. It makes housing something you work forward to get. I have spent many long hours crafting to make my gil. I lost time to do raid and some other content as I was often very busy crafting and had little other time. Gathering is profitable, so are map drops, clusters from hunts and some raid drops that can be sold. So there are more than enough ways to make gil.

These are just a few ideas hoping to help. I know not all of my ideas are good, I just tossed them out there.

Start by accepting that you can't kill it.

To kill it you need 2 things. 1, the removal of the 45 day demo timer and 2, the removal of the ability to relinquish plots. Its safe to say neither is going to happen.

The most extreme measure SE can do to discourage flipping is to not allow players to relinquish housing outside of the 45 day demolition timer which is a bad idea on its own. But even if SE did this house flipping would only slow down and increase the price because of the effort flippers have to go through for it. SE could also implement an function in the game for selling houses and put a limit on how much things will sell for which could put a limit on how much flippers can get away with. Both options taken together would remove a lot of incentive to flip houses but it won't stop it; both options also have their downsides for players too. The bottom line is, if flippers want to flip, they will.

What a terrible idea. There's too much RNG as it is in this game. Camping a lot placard is not what I pay my sub to do.

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Ok, so what would you suggest to kill the house flipping market?

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You can't without killing the demand. It is already against the ToS, so the only way is to have supply meet the demand.

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Originally Posted by Lambdafish

You can't without killing the demand. It is already against the ToS, so the only way is to have supply meet the demand.

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And the only way to do that is with increasing supply (like giving every neighborhood at least two more wards) and by reducing how many houses an account can hold down from a max of 16 to like 2-3.

You really need the timer plus both of those changes to kill off the market.

What a brilliant idea. The housing flipping market is dead :)

This thread aged like milk left out in the sun.

I was wrong to treat Penthea so poorly over the past few months; it was in fact Almagnus1 that shot and killed my dog and also slept with my wife.

Guess we have a candidate for the final boss of the next expansion.

Huh I had no idea this thread even existed. Wow.

Personally I think housing acquisition equally sucks whether there is a timer or not.

I got my house long before the timer was in the game and I very rarely saw plots open, obviously because they were bought in a matter of minutes or less. It took me over a year to get a house. The timer ensures that plots are unbought for long enough to catch many people's attention...but it gives the illusion of hope. Spam clicking for hours is not any better than rarely seeing plots open before the timer came. In both cases your chances of success are super low. It just so happens the manner in which you fail is not the same.

The reason why both suck is because the housing system sucks. We wouldn't need a timer if house flippers didn't go crazy with inflated prices, and house flippers wouldn't have had a market to exploit if houses were abundant enough that there is enough for everyone. Every problem surrounding acquisition and sales can be traced back to a severe shortage in houses.

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Originally Posted by Arielen

I was wrong to treat Penthea so poorly over the past few months; it was in fact Almagnus1 that shot and killed my dog and also slept with my wife.

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I'll bite.

I'm against grandfathering because there are a very small amount of limited plots in the game. If plots were unlimited or there were so many that every server constantly had open plots, then I really wouldn't care much about grandfathered players at all. Just like acquisition and sales, the issue with grandfathering can be traced back to a severe shortage of houses....and anyway grandfathering wouldn't have been necessary if the housing system was even good in the first place.

Grandfathered players make a bad situation worse but I recognise that they are absolutely not the root of the issue. Even if grandfathering is removed tomorrow there would still be a large number of homeless players. There would be less, noticeably less on some few servers...but not enough to consider the issue of availability fixed.

Hell if grandfathering and the placard timer gets taken away tomorrow along with the return of demolition there would still be an incredibly large amount of homeless players. None of these tweaks are fixes and tweaking the tweaks doesn't help either.

But as long as there is this horrendous shortage of houses then I will continue to advocate for more even distribution of them. If we ever get to the point that there are always plots available to buy everywhere, then I'll hang my coat and hat on this issue. I just want more people to enjoy housing. That's all.

Also I love dogs. I would never shoot a dog.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

I'll bite.

I'm against grandfathering because there are a very small amount of limited plots in the game. If plots were unlimited or there were so many that every server constantly had open plots, then I really wouldn't care much about grandfathered players at all. Just like acquisition and sales, the issue with grandfathering can be traced back to a severe shortage of houses....and anyway grandfathering wouldn't have been necessary if the housing system was even good in the first place.

Grandfathered players make a bad situation worse but I recognise that they are absolutely not the root of the issue. Even if grandfathering is removed tomorrow there would still be a large number of homeless players. There would be less, noticeably less on some few servers...but not enough to consider the issue of availability fixed.

Hell if grandfathering and the placard timer gets taken away tomorrow along with the return of demolition there would still be an incredibly large amount of homeless players. None of these tweaks are fixes and tweaking the tweaks doesn't help either.

But as long as there is this horrendous shortage of houses then I will continue to advocate for more even distribution of them. If we ever get to the point that there are always plots available to buy everywhere, then I'll hang my coat and hat on this issue. I just want more people to enjoy housing. That's all.

Also I love dogs. I would never shoot a dog.

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I think the timer wouldn't be so bad if it was just 1-4 hours. A 24 hour span is just horrible, not that I think housing resale is a significant issue in the first place: people were selling at near to placard price before the timer was implemented (with some notable exceptions due to high profile plots such as 11/41 LB, 5/35 Mists etc). In other words, most housing resale was not done for profit but rather to recoup the cost of ones house in the first place without having to wait for the 45day autodemo timer refund.

And in regards to grandfathered houses: I think that the 5-10 designers across all the DCs that own several plots still make up for less of a problem than the sheer volume of people that have houses and leave them empty altogether. I ran around the wards on Mateus recently for shits and the volume of plots that I see where it's just people throwing whatever furniture they have into their house (regardless of size) is huge. I don't mean poorly decorated houses, I mean houses that are deliberately used as storage or not decorated at all. That chaps my cheeks way more than anything else.

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Originally Posted by Arielen

I think the timer wouldn't be so bad if it was just 1-4 hours. A 24 hour span is just horrible

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I honestly very often think the same thing myself. I really am unsure as to why it can be up to a full day. I don't think there's any server in the game with constantly full wards that would let a vacant plot go unnoticed for more than an hour.

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Originally Posted by Arielen

not that I think housing resale is a significant issue in the first place: people were selling at near to placard price before the timer was implemented (with some notable exceptions due to high profile plots such as 11/41 LB, 5/35 Mists etc).

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I have no idea as to where you get your house flipping info from, but personally I subbed to the housing market subreddit out of sheer curiosity quite some time before Shirogane was released. Usually only on massively populated servers had some super high prices and even then it very much depended on the plot location and size, and if the player was in a rush to leave the server. While the prices were often very high, they were realistic for the most part. However when Shirogane launched everyone and their mother went freaking crazy with the mark-up. I saw many cottage Shirogane plot posts stating a price at over 50 million gil, I clearly remember one being at 80 (it was on the beach) and the highest price I saw was a Shirogane mansion for 500 million gil. And this did not fly under the radar at all. Many players in the official forums posted about this.

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Originally Posted by Arielen

And in regards to grandfathered houses: I think that the 5-10 designers across all the DCs that own several plots still make up for less of a problem than the sheer volume of people that have houses and leave them empty altogether.

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Ehhh while that number of players may seem small it could be a large number of houses altogether. A few years ago I did some lodestone digging with a friend about a few plots in our fc ward we were curious about (the gardens are mostly empty and have no aetherytes) and we pieced together that the same person owns seven houses. And these are just the plots we found in our fc's ward. They could have more elsewhere.

But I do get what you're saying. Some grandfathered players only have two or three houses. My point is knowing the amount of players who engage in it doesn't really give an accurate picture of the amount of houses that is because the amount each person owns can wildly vary.

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Originally Posted by Arielen

I think that the 5-10 designers across all the DCs that own several plots still make up for less of a problem than the sheer volume of people that have houses and leave them empty altogether. I ran around the wards on Mateus recently for shits and the volume of plots that I see where it's just people throwing whatever furniture they have into their house (regardless of size) is huge. I don't mean poorly decorated houses, I mean houses that are deliberately used as storage or not decorated at all. That chaps my cheeks way more than anything else.

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Well anyone can do what they like with their house, even if it's nothing or just for storage. Though I do completely understand why this is infuriating to see. It annoys me as well.

As someone who redecorates a lot there is a bit of a storage problem. All of the private residences I have access to are decorated except for my apartment but I do use their storage as additional storage for the fc house.

I redecorate the entrance floor and the garden of the fc house for every in-game event. Xmas, Halloween, etc. Because of this I have accumulated a tremendous amount of furniture, a lot of which is costly and irritating to replace. The storage in the fc house on its own is not enough. That plus a dedicated retainer for furniture is not enough. Outdoor furniture is particularly troublesome because the amount of storage slots is tiny.

I truly can understand why someone would use a residence for furniture storage because I have been doing it for a long time now. Though I suppose the main difference between me and some others is that you wouldn't know unless I told you because anything strangers can access is fully decorated.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

Well anyone can do what they like with their house, even if it's nothing or just for storage. Though I do completely understand why this is infuriating to see. It annoys me as well.

As someone who redecorates a lot there is a bit of a storage problem. All of the private residences I have access to are decorated except for my apartment but I do use their storage as additional storage for the fc house.

I redecorate the entrance floor and the garden of the fc house for every in-game event. Xmas, Halloween, etc. Because of this I have accumulated a tremendous amount of furniture, a lot of which is costly and irritating to replace. The storage in the fc house on its own is not enough. That plus a dedicated retainer for furniture is not enough. Outdoor furniture is particularly troublesome because the amount of storage slots is tiny.

I truly can understand why someone would use a residence for furniture storage because I have been doing it for a long time now. Though I suppose the main difference between me and some others is that you wouldn't know unless I told you because anything strangers can access is fully decorated.

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To be clear, I don't care if people use apartments as storage. They can essentially hold 200 slots of whatever shit you want to throw in there, and they're an essentially unlimited resource. It's a drag to see people with actual concepts get shimmed by people who don't use their houses for anything (most people don't even garden, in my FC's ward there's 2 gardens, ours and someone else's). But if the argument is that people who buy into a system have every right to do what they want with their property, including not using it, then I guess the whole idea of grandfathered houses isn't an issue regardless.

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Originally Posted by Arielen

But if the argument is that people who buy into a system have every right to do what they want with their property, including not using it, then I guess the whole idea of grandfathered houses isn't an issue regardless.

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Nice try but no.

My issues with grandfathering are:

1 These people are knowingly hoarding something that is a limited resource under huge demand, which is directly depriving other players of content. They could let go of multiple houses and not lose complete access to housing content on that account.

However! I understand that it would suck to have alts suddenly homeless, so I think that if grandfathering is ever removed then it should only be done when all characters in the same server can share the same private home. I also think players should be able to invite their alts to their own fc without needing to use a third party to help them.

2 They're not following the same rules as everyone else. I really don't like the idea of seniority perks, especially when said perks have impact on other people.

Yes legacy players do get a cheaper sub but this does not grant them an in-game advantage. The in-game extras they have don't affect someone else's game experience and are purely cosmetic. Housing doesn't fit into this category.

But like I said before I wouldn't care much about these people if there was no shortage of houses. Every single issue with the system always goes back to not enough houses.

Hello from the future. I'm here to say that I hate your idea with a burning passion Ifrit could not hope to generate. That is all, have a nice day.

just make random time from 24 hours to 7 days on small house, 48 hours to 14 days on medium houses, and on large make it 72 hours to 28 days.

and make relocation possible on each after minimum wait time.

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Originally Posted by ReiganCross

Hello from the future. I'm here to say that I hate your idea with a burning passion Ifrit could not hope to generate. That is all, have a nice day.

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You would have hated the old system even more. This is by no means perfect, or even good, but we're better off than we were at the time the original post was made.

Interesting, isn't this is the same guy who is criticizing the invisible random timer a while ago?
Are you telling me he is criticizing his own idea?

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Originally Posted by Almagnus1

First off, let's take https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXIVhousingmarket/ into consideration. We're less than a week after the expansion, and on that page are (at the time of writing) properties in Shirogane up for sale. That's housing that are denied people who will love and use their new property because of greed alone.

House flipping needs to die.

Which is exactly why SE needs to add an invisible random timer when a property is released that puts the property into a limbo state (where no one can own it, and no one can use it) that lasts between one to twenty four hours. The only thing the players should see on the timer is that it exists, and the players should NEVER be able to see how much time is remaining on the timer.

That change would outright kill the house flipping market - which should never have been a thing to begin with.

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This tweet did not age well.

There is an old saying be careful what you ask.

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Interesting, isn't this is the same guy who is criticizing the invisible random timer a while ago?
Are you telling me he is criticizing his own idea?

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Sometimes the pitfalls aren't apparent until after the fact. It's okay to have an idea then later decide it didn't work. Games over the years have been filled with failed ideas.

I doubt he anticipated that the timer would create camping wars, nor did anyone else at the time. At least fewer first time buyers are going through the flippers to even get a house. That part of it worked short of those players desperate enough for a house to give up being part of an active FC to buy a shell FC from a flipper.

The failure of SE to keep up supply to meet demand is what has really caused the camping problem. If the supply was there, no one would worry about camping because there would always be a few random houses available and waiting for first time buyers.

Let be honest yourself, Housing is a limited resource. It is practically impossible to meet the increasing FF14 population with their current server infrastructure and outdated technology. Not even Blizzatd has the same capability and Garrison is merely a delusional phasing technology with premade gaming assets.

People nowadays that hunt for a house is merely a social status seeker, nothing more. This guy merely proven he (like many other gamers) are short-sighed (including those who ask for raffle or lottery). By knowing the resource is limited you need to ask for the correct thing. The discussion and request should be focus on expanding apartment feature such as bigger space etc. N

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Let be honest yourself, Housing is a limited resource. It is practically impossible to meet the increasing FF14 population with their current server infrastructure and outdated technology. Not even Blizzatd has the same capability and Garrison is merely a delusional phasing technology with premade gaming assets.

People nowadays that hunt for a house is merely a social status seeker, nothing more. This guy merely proven he (like many other gamers) are short-sighed (including those who ask for raffle or lottery). By knowing the resource is limited you need to ask for the correct thing. The discussion and request should be focus on expanding apartment feature such as bigger space etc. N

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It's not impossible. Instanced housing, which is already part of the game. All SE needs to do is stop throwing more resources at the ward system and put them into developing a better instanced housing.

Other MMOs have been doing it for years. There's zero reason why SE can't other than they choose not to.

It's pretty sad of you to dismiss those who want a house as social status seekers. Housing is fun by itself for those seeking a creative outlet. Are you not okay with people having things just for the fun value?

edit: I suppose I should add that instanced housing does not need to be limited to apartments, though those are certainly a path to a temporary fix for the supply problem.