My experience with housing

[Zetsumei_Tsunarashi]

Let's give a good round of applause to those people who wanted to change a system that worked perfectly fine. /clap

People must not remember how bad it was before the timer was a thing.

I remember when Shirogane was released, it took about 30minutes for every house in every single ward to be purchased. There were numerous reports of people going to placards and finding characters with bot names already at placards instantly (teleport hacking). Then days or weeks after all the land was sold you'd go through the wards and see some wards completely barren (no houses built) because it was all bots that had purchased land solely to resell it.

Then the resellers would way overcharge you the price of the land to relinquish it to you, upwards of 50m for smalls for example. A lot of people also didnt understand how reselling worked either, so they would spend all their gil paying the reseller, not realizing that you then also need to have the gil to purchase the land for yourself. The end up not even being able to purchase the house because they didnt have anymore gil. It was a very shady practice and often the sellers made off with the persons gil because to admit that you engaged in reselling was to admit that you broke the ToS and no one got reported. Even if they did get reported, most of the arrangements were made out of game in discord or reddit and GMs couldn't do anything about it.

It's the same reason why content sellers never get banned, and those guys are charging real money, not gil. But that's another issue.

[Mew_FC]

Lets deconstruct some of this...

I remember when Shirogane was released, it took about 30minutes for every house in every single ward to be purchased. There were numerous reports of people going to placards and finding characters with bot names already at placards instantly (teleport hacking). Then days or weeks after all the land was sold you'd go through the wards and see some wards completely barren (no houses built) because it was all bots that had purchased land solely to resell it.

Just because a player's name is not something you would use doesn't mean they are a "bot". Just so you know, teleport hacking is the fastest way to get banned in this game. Especially when there are other players around. So much that automation softwares are warning you about it, publicly. No one in their right mind would use a tele hack when you can use aetherytes or speed modifiers. Not that it matters, those "bots" you speak of had to go through the login queue. Just like everyone else. Some players are so poor, even though housing has never been this cheap, that they can't even afford a housing permit. If you have well documented cases in which "barren wards with the sole purpose of being resold" have actually existed, then please bring your evidence forward. Until then, the situation you are describing is either false due to your perception of what a bot is or anecdotal at best.

Then the resellers would way overcharge you the price of the land to relinquish it to you, upwards of 50m for smalls for example. A lot of people also didnt understand how reselling worked either, so they would spend all their gil paying the reseller, not realizing that you then also need to have the gil to purchase the land for yourself. The end up not even being able to purchase the house because they didnt have anymore gil. It was a very shady practice and often the sellers made off with the persons gil because to admit that you engaged in reselling was to admit that you broke the ToS and no one got reported. Even if they did get reported, most of the arrangements were made out of game in discord or reddit and GMs couldn't do anything about it.

It's the same reason why content sellers never get banned, and those guys are charging real money, not gil. But that's another issue.

Who cares what amount of gil players are asking out of anything in this game when there's literally people in party finder selling the weapons from UWU (which are in fewer numbers than houses). The ToS clearly states that you cannot value anything in this game for real money. It doesn't mention anything regarding trading items, mounts, weapons, gear or houses.

If players don't understand how something works, even though it is clearly explained on the lodestone, and are willing to spend 50M... that's on them. Nobody forced them to hand out that gil. You know, there's something in the ToS called Fraud. It's not very lengthy, but you are no allowed to fraud other players in any way. If someone's smart, they will put all the transaction details in the game chat. GMs will absolutely take action when someone isn't holding on to their end of the deal. Yes, even with houses. Once again, you cannot find anything mentioning that trading houses is a prohibited activity. Not in the ToS, not in the game rules, not on lodestone.

To reiterate, if a player forks over 50m without understanding how any of this works and that they didn't include the details of the trade in the game chat to prevent being scammed, then they should read about Charles Darwin...