The housing system in this game NEEDS A COMPLETE GD OVERHALL. Complete stupidity....

[Melichoir]

Do you seriously think even 10m a month is going to affect someone who owns 8 FC houses?

Or that multi-house owners will not find ways to game the system, so they end up paying lower upkeep tax?

There are no loopholes. The rules permit ownership of 8 FC houses per server/per service account.

Perhaps when SE can properly resolve the FC Master inheritance issue, then this 'loophole' might be closed.

It would be more productive to request SE to introduce proper instanced housing along with workshop/garden access alongside existing housing. There will never be enough houses for every individual player under the current persistent ward system. Surveys conducted on NA data centers, have shown that personal house owners are occupying the majority of houses. ~70% Personal houses vs ~30% FC houses.

The solution was built into the plan and even I didnt account for it: The deposit as a cap. If you have to pay 1 mil in rent, but can only put 100k into the deposit, you will get penalized and be unable to pay the deposit. It doesnt matter what you do, you will not be able to fulfill the cost and be forced out of property. The way it would be handled is to force the player to abandon properties until they can pay for the rent.

Now some people may argue that this is a terrible and backwards system that punishes players for 'following the rules' but as I suggested, the loop hole wasnt in owning property. It was in in providing money to alts using intermediaries and other aspects that would make it unlikely a person would be able to purchase said property in any case without a ton of investment as it were.

You focus on rich people forgetting all the others : more gils sink will just punish people who would be interested in housing but can't compet with bots and people who can spend a lot of time IG. You just see on half of the problem totally skiping the other side.

One time and again, you will make things even worse, rare items (as the ones you get with airship/submarine) will become even more expensive achieving the vicious circle.

You don't make people rich poor with tax, you just favor the most greddy ones and make things worst. There are always people who understand the system and can trick it. And the ones who can't compete are punished achieving the opposite result to the one you expect.

Since there's no bank, no financial system, the only way to make prices decrease and make rich less rich is to make things easier to obtain. Little is the reward, litlle is the incentive. People will be less greedy if the reward doesn't worth it. Kill the exclusivity will solve the problem, a gils sink is all the opposite since the availabilty of the ressource doesn't change.

*Sigh*....As in real life, theres a reason why wealthy people dont like taxes. Unlike in real life, there is no migrating to another country to avoid taxes. So in a closed system like an MMO, universal taxes would actually work pretty effectively at controlling inflation and economies.

Furthermore, you need Gil sinks in games where money is 'printed'. Every time you turn in a quest, sell things to NPCs, etc etc, that money is printed and added to the economy, but far less of it actually leaves the economy. It is the exact reason why inflation occurs in MMOs. Some MMOs are better than others about this, but because NPCs dont have a finite amount of wealth themselves (i.e. you can literally keep seling scrap to an NPC and they will still have money to buy it from you), you are continously adding money into the economy. To make this point clear, Clear Demimateria III is worth 5k to an NPCs. Thats not a whole lot of gil, but hey, 5k in your pocket. If 1000 players sell just 1 each, the economy now has 5 Million extra gil than it did before sales. And 1000 players making this one sale is a pittance of the player population. Now take that idea and multiply it out a by the entire player population with every item that gets vendored to an NPC and you can very quickly start seeing how the game is adding in more gil daily. Individually it may not be much, but it adds up overtime.

You need money sinks to exist to pull money out of the economy to increase the individual value of Gil OR you need to make Gil from standard sources very finite (So NPCs only have so much Gil for the entire player base.) The latter isnt very feasible in an MMO. Furthermore, Gil sinks dont negatively hurt poor people as much as you feel, because unlike in real life where a poor person has overhead costs like food/shelter/etc, these considerations are not present in an MMO. You dont need to eat, you dont need to sleep, you dont need to have shelter in an MMO. You can spend your entire day performing services and generating profit, or banking your luck on things that are high demand and worth something to wealthier players. The sole limiting factor of generating wealth in FFXIV isnt taxes or gil sinks - its the output of the player. You dont want to be poor? Pick up the crafting professions. Monitor the MB and find out what is worth things. Grind content to get rare items. There is plenty in the game for you to do to actually make a decent buck. If anything, devaluing gil and eliminating gil sinks ends up hurting poorer players more because the little gil they have is worth even less due to inflation.

Furthermore, as long as player demand is the point of exclusivity, prices will always be 'high'. What changes is the relative nature of how high it is. Is 'x' mount harder to get than y mount? Then x is more exclusive, therefore will be worth more. Player demand dictates this. It is basic market forces working. If anything, proposing that you remove exclusivity and everything 'comes easy' would probably end up killing an MMO because then nothing you do has worth. Despite what a vocal minority says, exclusivity and challenge actually are benefits to MMOs and help with player retention. Of course you dont want to go so hard its damn near impossible to get anything. There is a balance, but go to easy, and the things you do does beocome meaningless and not worth troubling yourself with. As in, not even worth playing the game.

It's also worth noting that if you dont have time to play the game, dont expect to have the same benefits of people who do invest in it. Like most anything, the more you invest, the more youd be rewarded. If you struggle to even play a few hours per week, dont expect to be handed things like housing, glamours, gear, and etc. Thats just the gist of it.

Lastly, I become annoyed by the "Its all the bots fault" arguments. They do eliminate avenues of wealth generation due to unreasonable competition and in huge unchecked numbers can break a game's econ, but they are not the sole reason for inflation or player wealth disparity currently. A frank reality is most players dont actually pursue wealth generation in games. Most players dont observe the MB, or maximize their profits, or pursue paths of wealth generation. As an example, knowing when to sell items makes a huge difference in making money. Playing certain content and achieving rarer items helps immensely. Having crafters and what not so you dont buy crafted gear/equipment and can make your own saves you money. There is a lot of things you can do to improve your lot in FFXIV life, but a lot of players dont put the time and effort into doing this. That isnt anyones fault but their own. Bots dont stop you from farming content they cant operate in. Bots dont stop you from leveling crafters and gatherers. They dont stop you from playing the Market board or determining when to sell items. They do contribute to some issues, but by and large, they are not the sole source of issues economy wise in the game.

Taxes and driving down inflation would probably have some negative short term effects, but as the markets adjust and balance out, I predict you will see more long term benefits that would help benefit poorer players who actually engage in making money more so than wealthier players.