How many people have multiple houses?

[Airmid_Caduceus]

This never made sense to me. If they don't want people selling houses, make the game mechanics work to prevent it. If they don't mind it up to a certain point then just tell us what that point is. Being vague is not helpful on either front, all it does is create more work for the GMs because we don't know what is and isn't reportable, so report everything and more frustration for us the users because when we don't know the exact rules it feels like everyone's breaking them and getting away with it.

Part of it has to do with Japanese culture. In Japanese society, it's considered offensive to outright tell someone "no" or making firm statements like that. So instead of being rude, they say things like "that may be difficult" or "we shall see". Combine that with the concept of "face" (roughly similar to honor, for us Western devils) where admitting fault is one of the worst things that can happen to you, and you get stuff like what happens with SE. They don't want to be rude by making firm statements, but they also can't risk losing face by admitting error. That's why pretty much the entire 1.0 team was either laid off or in the case of the previous executive in charge, resigned in shame when they shut it down.

But that's only part of it, I'm not saying that's all the reason, just that it plays a role.

[Alleo]

So I have asked them this question on the liveletter thread (page 54). Would be nice to get some likes so that they might see it and get to know the problem.

[Reinha]

This never made sense to me. If they don't want people selling houses, make the game mechanics work to prevent it.

The game mechanics already work to prevent it. Personal plot ownership cannot be transferred and plots cannot be traded. The sellers ask for a ransom and then release the plot after which it's the buyer's job to buy it from the game. The only way to stop people from circumventing the restrictions is by removing face-to-face gil trading entirely.

[Kosmos992k]

The game mechanics already work to prevent it. Personal plot ownership cannot be transferred and plots cannot be traded. The sellers ask for a ransom and then release the plot after which it's the buyer's job to buy it from the game. The only way to stop people from circumventing the restrictions is by removing face-to-face gil trading entirely.

Actually if the house plot relinquished wen on a RNG based cooldown before becoming available to buy, say 12 hours +/- 1-12 hours based on RNG, it would completely break the ability to relinquish a plot to someone else for gil.

[Stormfur]

So what happens if a character (who owns a home) tries to purchase another one?

[Coatl]

Tbh I am sort of glad these guys bought 28 houses on their own server. It's wrong yes, but it speaks very loud and draws the necessary attention to this problem that it lacked previously. Sometimes you need a necessary evil to push the envelope, and I think these guys did it, for better or worse.

[Paladinleeds]

Actually if the house plot relinquished wen on a RNG based cooldown before becoming available to buy, say 12 hours +/- 1-12 hours based on RNG, it would completely break the ability to relinquish a plot to someone else for gil.

Personally I am not convinced that would be enough. I think a bigger variance is needed. You can quite easily stay awake for 24 hours (the max your idea suggests).

[Kosmos992k]

Personally I am not convinced that would be enough. I think a bigger variance is needed. You can quite easily stay awake for 24 hours (the max your idea suggests).

Oh, I'm fine with a longer cooldown. Make is a week +/- 1-7 days and a random time after that. I'd just like to break the ability of players to effectively relinquish a lot to another player for a payment. Unless a third player happens to be right there are the moment they have no chance of obtaining the relinquished plot, and that's not very fair IMHO. But by forcing a cooling off period of undetermined length, it is much fairer to everyone.

[Paladinleeds]

Oh, I'm fine with a longer cooldown. Make is a week +/- 1-7 days and a random time after that. I'd just like to break the ability of players to effectively relinquish a lot to another player for a payment. Unless a third player happens to be right there are the moment they have no chance of obtaining the relinquished plot, and that's not very fair IMHO. But by forcing a cooling off period of undetermined length, it is much fairer to everyone.

I was thinking more within the range of months. Say, a random time between 90 and 180 days maybe? I'm thinking that way you'll probably forget who you bought the plot from, etc. Which would ruin it even further by people not wanting to risk forgetting it because of the timescales involved. Or am I overdoing it there?

Anyway, on to the math and tech of how I think this should work. I shall use the 90-180 day relinquishment as an example here.
So, let's work out how many seconds there are between say 1st July and 1st October. Roll a random integer (behind the scenes), between 1 and 7'776'000 (that's how many seconds there are in 90 days). Whatever that number is that's rolled, that's in how many seconds after the 90 day marker is reached, until it relinquishes. Yes, I'm thinking of doing it by seconds. That would make it much more difficult to track. If you did it by hours, you could just check on the hour every hour, but seconds? You wouldn't be able to do anything else. Because at any second that plot could come up, and you might be in duty when it happens, and someone comes in and takes it.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

The game mechanics already work to prevent it. Personal plot ownership cannot be transferred and plots cannot be traded. The sellers ask for a ransom and then release the plot after which it's the buyer's job to buy it from the game. The only way to stop people from circumventing the restrictions is by removing face-to-face gil trading entirely.

That isn't a prevention though. People put all sorts of things on the market board to absurdly high prices with no restrictions. Since the devs dislike house selling, they should just lock it based on your account.

Tbh I am sort of glad these guys bought 28 houses on their own server. It's wrong yes, but it speaks very loud and draws the necessary attention to this problem that it lacked previously. Sometimes you need a necessary evil to push the envelope, and I think these guys did it, for better or worse.

I was thinking the same. If this doesn't scream "fix your awful housing system, SE." I don't think anything ever will.