Housing exposes a fundamental flaw in institutionalized ethics.

[Vidu]

Are you implying that ethics stop existing because it's a video game? When we're talking about how one person's actions affect another--that involves ethics. It's not like it's a video game in a vacuum.

My guess would be that talking about ethics when it comes to virtual houses feels a bit blown out of proportion... I've taken a few ethic classes at uni and would have gotten really weird looks if I'd wanted to discuss this. Not because my prof wouldnt have understood video games but because "...are you sure this is an issue you want to discuss in an ethics-class?"

Correct me if I'm wrong but your stance seem to be that no one should own more than one house, regardless of circumstances. You're basically asking people to be holier than holy. (I'm excluding houseflippers.)
You seem to forget yourself that this a video game. A place people come to, to (partially) escape real life for a bit. Not a place to ask yourself "Is it morally wrong if I buy this open plot that no one else seems to want because I enjoy decoarting?"
Are you assuming that people owning multiple houses doing this with the ill intend of withholding them from other people (again: houseflippers excluded)?
I dont believe any of those people have those ill intends - and I dont require them to be saints either, what you seem to do.
First come, first serve - no need to get all high and mighty and ethical over a bunch of virtual houses.
Because the only logical conclusion I can draw here is that, ethically speaking, personal housing should have never been a thing and it should have been FC-only all the way.
It isnt - and now everyone has theoretically speaking the same chance to purchase a house. And if someone goes through the trouble of leveling up multiple characters and earning the gil, they're very much entitled to buy a second house as far as I'm concerned. Because they've earned it. And if someone else didnt went through all that trouble, checked for open plots etc. they didnt earn it. Simple as that.

Everyone has an equal chance here - but equal chance doesnt mean equal results.

[JackHatchet]

I'm not saying houses should be given to those who don't have them. Houses have a cost, and that cost should be met.

You're right that there's not enough houses. That's the crux of the problem. Square-Enix dun goofed. There's no way around that. However, "knowing" that Square-Enix created a problem, and knowing that it would come to a head at some point. Do you think the players who hoarded houses took any time to consider that their actions were already on shaky ground.

It was a blatantly obvious problem. There not being enough houses. And people who hoarded them contributed to the intensity of said problem. And that kind of rounds back to the ethical thing. If one knows that their actions will contribute to making a problem worse--should they take responsibility for that?

[MizArai]

The truth of housing is that it is limited. It's a limited resource. So ethically speaking, could I really justify having additional houses for alts? Is it "the right thing to do?" When you get down to the black and white of it--there's no logically way one can reason owning more than one house other than pure selfish greed.

There are many, many servers in which houses sat empty for many months, hitting rock bottom prices and sitting there un-used. While housing is a limited resource, is it really right to look at people who bought a second or third house for themselves on one of these super empty/ low population servers and say that now that SE did free transfers and there are more people there that they should give up these houses for the good of the community? The community that refused to play there until SE basically paid them to move there?

[JackHatchet]

My guess would be that talking about ethics when it comes to virtual houses feels a bit blown out of proportion... I've taken a few ethic classes at uni and would have gotten really weird looks if I'd wanted to discuss this. Not because my prof wouldnt have understood video games but because "...are you sure this is an issue you want to discuss in an ethics-class?"

One of the beauty points about philosophy is that it's suppose to be the pursuit of ALL knowledge. Not just the ones with higher priority. I would find it awkward for any philosophy class to actively discourage a legitimate discussion simply based on the strangeness of it. Some of the most fun discussions are the weird ones. Spices it up after you've talked about self-driving cars for the better part of 5 years.

[StouterTaru]

(I'm excluding houseflippers.)

I honestly don't understand the hatred of the house flippers.

• They buy a plot, then sell it off, so they're not hogging up the resource.
• Twice as much gil gets dumped out of the economy.
• Someone that really wants a house ends up with it, and has an opportunity to earn it other than winning the login lottery.
• The flipper won the login lottery, and gets a reward for it.

FYI: No, I haven't flipped or bought a flipped house

[Lenaru]

It's kinda extreme how far this threads had go lol. Btw, I think OP is confusing ethics and morals.

[JackHatchet]

I honestly don't understand the hatred of the house flippers.

Scalpers in general get a bad rap, because they circumvent the intentions of the seller in order to get personal greed.

Say for example, you want to give back to the community. So you whip up 10,000 glamour prisms, and you decide to list them all for 100gil each. Dirt cheap, but you want to help everyone out. Do a nice thing. Well, someone can swoop in, scalp up all of your product, and then jack up the price. They undermine your act of kindness out of personal greed.

If Square-Enix wanted to charge more for houses they would--but they want people to afford them. So scalpers undermine SE's intention, for greed. That's why it's bannable.

[StouterTaru]

Scalpers in general get a bad rap, because they circumvent the intentions of the seller in order to get personal greed.

Ticket scalping is legal here, as is buying the latest limited edition gaming system/iPhone/whatever and putting it up on EBay. I don't have any issues with it, and certainly don't assign ethics or morals to capitalistic reassignment of limited luxury items.

[JackHatchet]

Well, to be fair. I was responding to your post of "I don't understand." So I provided a logical example of why people would be upset. I'm not asking you to tolerate, support, hate, or love the philosophy of it. I was simply explaining the mechanics behind why people don't like scalpers.

[Raven2014]

You know, I sometime wonder why incompetent leaders or dictatorships can stay in power for a long time. They just have to go to the podium and delivery speech of how the country's woe is due to certain evil foreign countries and "opportunist" among themselves. I wonder why people keep buying into that years after years, but then thread like this always remind me why that tactic work so well.

Look, how many houses do you think the hoarders manage to keep per server? 100, 200, 300?!? There are 12000 accounts per server on average, if say all those houses are released, do you think it will even remotely affect anything? Basic math indicates there are needs of 24000 houses per server if you let people own 2 each per account, even if you gonna half that number for "reasons", how much those extra 300 houses gonna do!?!?

Frankly what they are doing with this patch is not even a bandage, more like a calculated PR effort, and people like the TC of this thread is giving the SE the exact reaction they're looking for. By making their "fix" target the hoarders, they seek to make these few players the "bad guys". Their hope is the same of those "leaders", to make people think that "these hoarders are the source of your problem, and we're fixing them, we're the good guys, see?" and forget about the real issue at hand.

You are essentially try to fight a guy sitting next to you for his piece of bread, and never question why do you even have to fight for his piece of bread. Why can't everyone have a piece of bread. Well, I hope you will be more informed and think things more thoroughly then you do here before the next election (if you're living in a democracy of course). And no, even if you ration everyone to strictly 1 piece of bread, the fact will still remain that the majority of the server population will stay hungry, that's the issue