Will we ever be able to 'legally' sell plots?

[StouterTaru]

I mean, the government adds laws all the time and doesn't necessarily send you a letter to warn you about it. You don't get an email every time you cross state lines telling you which laws are new/different from the last state you were in.

Sure they could have notified everyone, but since you were never really able to sell the house itself before, there wasn't really anything that changed.

It wasn't even a rule added, it was a change in interpretation and enforcement claiming different existing rules.

It's like the police handing out tickets for buying grapes on a Sunday, and citing Sunday alcohol sale laws. And at the same time, other police handing out tickets for the same thing, but citing public decency statutes.

[Kosmos992k]

Sure they could have notified everyone, but since you were never really able to sell the house itself before, there wasn't really anything that changed.

I'm pretty certain that the ToS and other conditions you accept include a general statement against circumventing game software and mechanics. It's the kind of catch all that lets SE respond flexibly to different situations that do not match a specific rule. So, the question comes down to this, does the game support sale of property from one player to another? The answer is clearly no, since there is no support on the MB for such transactions, and no support in the housing menus for such transactions. So to accomplish these transactions players have to mis-use the intended mechanic of relinquishing a property to work around the lack of direct sales. You are, by definition, circumventing the game software and in-game mechanics of property purchase and ownership. There need be no new rule, it's covered by the catch all.

[Kerii]

There are two things that I would be interested to know. 1) Why is it that you can retain 80% of the gil you invested if you wait for the system to reclaim your house, but not if you choose to give up it up? and 2) What can SE do to dissuade players from simply selling their house on the black market for huge profit margins?

-ToS catch all snip-

In that is why I try to mention it for arguments like this and parsers. There is no aruging intrupretation on these things. It's as black and white as SE says it is.

[StouterTaru]

I'm pretty certain that the ToS and other conditions you accept include a general statement against circumventing game software and mechanics.

The closest it has is "you may not take advantage of game system bugs and exploits during gameplay."

House selling has been around for a while, and I have yet to see it listed as a known issue on patch notes.

[Kerii]

The closest it has is "you may not take advantage of game system bugs and exploits during gameplay."

House selling has been around for a while, and I have yet to see it listed as a known issue on patch notes.

SE's new policy dictates that selling a housing plot amounts to extortion or scamming. While I think that is a bit of an extreme determination, I can't say I disagree with it.

[MicahZerrshia]

Plots were originally intended to be able to be sold player to player in the form of a land deed (not to be confused with the estate deed) but with many many many things they spoke about when it came to housing it was never implemented. What we have now is almost a shell of the housing features we were told about before housing, or even ARR, was even released.

That being said, if they did implement this as a feature it would have to be price capped at the top price for that parcel so the feature is not abused. It really wouldn't be that difficult to add I am sure but SE is too busy coming up with new tomes for us to collect each and every patch to do anything important or that is extremely requested by the player base.

[LadyVal]

The closest it has is "you may not take advantage of game system bugs and exploits during gameplay."

Even then, that's totally up for interpretation by SE, not us. It's like the Doom mechanic in Qarn, you could stand on a ledge to dodge Doom and the entire ledge was removed from the arena. It wasn't any weird glitch or anything, you just jumped up onto a ledge that was in plain site. Conversely, people were unhappy that in T2, you could skip Allagan Rot by forcing enrage mode and making the fight way easier, and yet SE said "The system is working as intended and it is not an exploit."

So, really, what it boils down to is, whether we think it fair or not, we have to play by the rules that SE chooses as they go.

[worldofneil]

Plots were originally intended to be able to be sold player to player in the form of a land deed (not to be confused with the estate deed)

I'm not sure that actually was the case though. As far back as 2013 when housing first came out they said only about trading the deed for the actual house and even back then they said specifically about wouldn't be able to sell it:

From: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...810-30-2013%29

Q: Will we be able to sell our houses (including the furniture)?

A: This will not be possible. You can only trade the deed, so you would have to revert your house back to a deed to do this.

I know there was a later post (in a Live Letter?) that was probably around the time personal housing was released that said about gifting deeds to friends etc, but I am still sure from the context it was only referring to the house deed, not the plot itself.

[kingatlas]

I think you can legally sell plot in colorado

[MicahZerrshia]

I'm not sure that actually was the case though.

He said the land deeds so we were able to give houses to friends, use them as prizes and add wards as needed so housing was available. It was stated in other interviews too that you could actually buy/sell housing plots. But like with a lot of things they promised or said it was not implemented nor was it ever really talked about again.

I wish they would talk to us. I mean if they cannot do something they should say "Hey, we were originally going to do this but we couldn't get it to work/didn't look right/etc" instead of just staying quiet. Especially when it's on topics that are overly discussed within the player community. The silence really makes them seem very inadequate, especially compared to the open dialog other gaming companies have with their players. I would rather them tell us something couldn't be done then have no information at all. Not to mention have them make up their minds and make a definitive statement about player to player sales.

Letter from the Producer LIVE Part VI Q&A Summary (04/17/2013)

[0:10:11]
Q: Will it be possible to sell land deeds in the market ward or other places?

A: Yes, it will be possible. They can also be traded. Just as an example, you could give a house to that special someone in your free company as a present.