Petition for More Wards - ITS ABOUT TIME

[Awha]

Greatly increasing the plot prices doesn't turn housing into a true gil sink, though.
True gil sinks affect a majority of players, slowly draining gil that's in active circulation from the game economy to offset the new gil being generated through game play. The amount being drained doesn't unduly burden less wealthy players or block them from content.

Increase housing prices to an extreme level and you're not draining the gil in active circulation from many players. You're draining inactive gil from a few wealthy players that had been hoarding it, gil that likely would never have made it back into active circulation. Sure a tax route would also be helpful and I brought that up many moons ago but going based off that discussion I did come to realize that the tax route would be sort moot. Since it cannot be too large of a mount cause then it would drive people do go extra lengths to just pay that months taxes, and if it is too low then it serves no purpose.

Removing the means to craft items for one's house removing content away from crafters.

I can think of 2 methods for housing to have effective gil sinks. The first is to move all housing items currently acquired through crafting/loot drops to vendors and sell them for gil only. It's still not a great gil sink because it's dependent on how much a player wants to decorate/redecorate but it doesn't unduly burden less wealthy players since they can choose how much they spend.

The second has been suggested before and gets a lot of hate. Add a monthly property tax. Set the value to a few percent of a house's minimum purchase price, say 2% for smalls, 3% for mediums, 4% for larges. Taxes on the smalls would be affordable for less wealthy players. Taxes on the mediums and larges would still be reasonable for wealthy players who make more gil. FCs running an active workshop shouldn't have a problem paying the tax on any size house.

Such a tax would steady drain gil from a larger portion of the player base like a good gil sink should do.

It has the added benefit of reducing demand for houses, leaving more available for those who would actually be using them. People are a lot more likely to make purchases that have a one time cost than they are to make purchases that involve a recurring fee.

How many players not currently using their house would keep it if they had to pay a monthly tax? How many would demand more medium and large houses if they had to pay 10-40 times more a month in taxes than they would have to pay for a small?

If SE is going to stick to the ward system, a tax would do a far better job of leveling out demand than increasing the one time cost would. Players could go the RMT route to buy what they want if they needed to. They're not likely to go the RMT route to pay a tax since their normal game play (whether running roulettes or selling things on the MB from crafting/treasure maps) would already provide what they need.

I mean the longboy mount in WoW is considsred a gil sink, and it just an astronomically expensive mount. Though a tax system would have the greatest overall impact I agree. Though I have changed my stance since people did bring up fair points that it would be fairly hard to balance.

Make the price too low it becomes irrelevant, make the price too high and you punish the little guy not so much the ones with gil to burn. As it stands when Ishgard comes out I will relocate multiple plots, though if i did not have multiple plots I could easily afford in a theoretical world to buy multiple large plots and still have gil to burn.

Depending on the amount a tax system would deter me from owning many plots but I highly doubt SE would put the taxes at such a rate in the first place. I get things like teleport, and repair costs are gil sinks, but they do very little to remove gil from the game. Though if housing did cost a pretty penny that would maybe have the potential to remove a decent chunk of gil from the game, and could also maybe limit the time frame in which people cod try and compete for a plot since they would either have to have the funds or wait until it devalues to a point at which one could afford it.

I also do not think raising the prices bars people from content since the game has a devalue system in place so overtime if the demand is not high enough sooner or later it will reach a price point that reasonably fits ones budget.