Quote Originally Posted by ManuelBravo View Post
You misunderstand here, why settle for 100% when you can get almost 10-15x more?
And you seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding one very key point: If the developers had wanted housing to be a freely traded item, like all other commodities in the game, then housing transactions would have been made as easily accessible as market-board trading from Day One.

The plots weren't meant to be flipped. But some people, being greedy, spotted a loophole, and essentially created a black market in FFXIV housing. And because it's a black market, it's essentially unregulated, and price gouging occurs.

Sure, willing buyer, willing seller. But let's not pretend that it's not greed that allowed the seller to inflate the prices as high as he could.

What makes this scenario particularly egregious, however, is that the scarcity is made worse by players who sought to corner the market, and drive up prices. It's monopolistic behaviour, and it shouldn't be so hard for reasonable people to see why this is far from fair. Anti-trust rules exist in real-life precisely because people feel, with good reason, that monopolies unfairly distort prices.

It's fundamentally different from how the market board works. In practice, anyone can enter the market board to sell a commodity, especially if it has become so scarce that it commands a premium.

But, in the FFXIV housing market, supply is absolutely limited by how many the team has released. Only those who have houses can join in the market to sell. And it shouldn't take a genius to realise that those who cornered the sellers' market have abused the situation in order to profiteer.

And that is why there is ethical problem here: Players are attempting to profit from an item that wasn't designed to be traded from the outset.

Be that as it may, no matter how bad the situation is, I can readily agree that it was the developers' fault in the first place, in allowing some players to corner the housing market the way they have.

Which is why I am in no way saying that such players ought to be "punished".

The key word I'm using is to "incentivise" such players to give up an investment that isn't as worthwhile any more. Where is the harm in putting forward an option like that? Once again, it's a potentially win-win situation for all parties involved.