Housing Ownership System Abuse

[Barraind]

knowingly circumventing the system like this

Its still neither against the rules, nor circumventing anything.

The game flat-out lets you do this. There is absolutely no restriction on the number of FC houses you can own outside the cap of characters per server. You can try this yourself to see.

The change to 1 fc house per character was specifically and deliberately reverted within a couple weeks of the change.

[Almagnus1]

Then it's morally grey.

Bingo.

Grey areas shouldn't exist with rules... because if it exists someone will abuse it.

Aka "this is why we can't have anything nice"

[PewPewPewPewPew]

Bingo.

Grey areas shouldn't exist with rules... because if it exists someone will abuse it.

Aka "this is why we can't have anything nice"

Then the whole game shouldn't exist.
Because everything in the ToS is technically grey area. Rules are not enforced 100% as written. If they were, you'd have already been banned by now for something. SE will have a tough time building a player base if they banned everyone like a totalitarian regime, holding everyone exactly to what is written in the ToS leaving no room for softer interpretation. What you are crying about it a first world problem.

So let's entertain your idea. One person owning all the plots makes you absolutely crazy and you are on a crusade to purge this kind of behavior. Okay.

What do you do when it's an FC with 30 people, everyone using their 1 house 1 fc house rights to own 2 houses and they all coordinate to buy all 60 houses in the ward? Is this also a problem with morals? Is this also grey area? Even though every individual person is a person and they have purchased according to the rules? You going to be mad now because they flawlessly coordinated an effort you are incapable of doing, therefore you need to call foul now? You will never be satisfied because someone will always be ahead of you.

If one person didn't acquire the plots, then 59 other people will have acquired them and you still wouldn't be one of them because there are 59 other more competent people than you who are willing to pull all the stops to get those houses. What's your next complaint then? I'm sure you'll say "Well I'm happy if 59 other people get a house instead of 1 person" to sound like you are taking the high road with your 'morals', but the truth is you still have no house, and you're still going to be bitter.

You will never be satisfied, and now you going so far as to call not just the system wrong, but everything wrong. Look at you making a full interpretation of the rules without consulting GMs while at the same time telling people who are showing you those rules and chat logs that they are wrong. So they are wrong and you are right. Nonsense.

[Sylvastreak]

No one on the forums asking for more housing will ever be satisfied either if anytime housing is added, someone ends up with an entire ward and locks up 60 plots for themselves - whatever DC they're on. But do carry on defending them, at this point I'm really tired of people who claim to not care about other players yelling at me for caring about other players but not caring about this one player's feelings.

[Almagnus1]

What do you do when it's an FC with 30 people, everyone using their 1 house 1 fc house rights to own 2 houses and they all coordinate to buy all 60 houses in the ward?

I already addressed this earlier, and I'm going to ignore the rest of your hyperbolic nonsense that's a total misrepresentation of my position.

Here's the quote:

As long as each account is compliant with the restrictions linked above ( https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes.../housing_land/ ), I'm fine with that. That means operating a ward is going to take 15 accounts, which is going to work out to be like $2250/year for the entire ward. FYI I'm using my sub cost which is roughly $75/six months or $150/year to estimate this. If someone wants to be a whale and waste their money that way - it's funding FFXIV regardless so we might as well let them.

So in other words, each account reduces down to one personal house and one FC house per account and I'm fine with it.

I'm even willing to compromise on that with the following:

• Throw out the asinine FC per account restriction and have a sane demolish timer if the FC drops below four members (which follows the purchase restriction linked above)
• Give everyone a grace period to either divest the houses or spin up additional accounts
• Give people divesting a 100% refund on the house
• Unbind decorations that would normally be sellable on the market

The really big problem with is SE's inability to pick a set of rules, stick with it, and enforce it equally to everyone. SE should normalize housing and stop making exceptions like grandfathering in people because it's only making a scarce resource even scarcer.

Edit:
And if that assumed person was actually following the restrictions, they'd be spending $8,850/year for the 59 subscriptions needed to own that entire ward. That's a huge chunk of change and if this is something you can't afford to do that's not my problem.

[Penthea]

But your point was on whether our in game actions have moral and ethical merit.

No it was not. You'll find I made no mention of this at all. I was merely trying to dispel the notion that: being permitted = cannot selfish and greedy.

Permission to do something doesn't automatically mean doing that thing is incapable of being a selfish or greedy act, or that continuing to cannot be even when the situation changes.

There are a multitude of examples in the real world of selfish acts that are permitted by law. Such as underpaying your employees for the work that they do, outsourcing labour to countries where people can legally get paid pennies and work incredibly long hours that are illegal elsewhere, keeping employees under a contract system so they're technically not employed by you so you do not have to spend extra money to give them access to health insurance and some other employee rights...I could go on for a long while.

Again I say permission and restriction are not automatically indicative of moral standing. Some rules and laws are intended to be, but the harsh truth is that a lot of things that have very negative effects are permitted. This happens everywhere, even in games.

could be seen as selfish in an environment that doesn't have real world consequences.

So just because there are no real world consequences an act cannot be selfish? Experiencing or the risk of consequences as a result of certain types of behaviour is not the definition of selfish.

Taken directly from google: Selfish: (of a person, action, or motive) lacking consideration for other people; concerned chiefly with one's own personal profit or pleasure.

There is nothing about the definition that says an act cannot be selfish if there are no real world consequences. The definition doesn't even make any mention of consequences. In fact a lot of people engage in certain types of selfish acts because they know they will not get any truly harsh negative consequences for it.

Engaging in your right to do something doesn't mean that the act of doing so cannot be selfish. It only means you're permitted to do certain things. Nothing more.

[Catstab]

No one on the forums asking for more housing will ever be satisfied either if anytime housing is added, someone ends up with an entire ward and locks up 60 plots for themselves - whatever DC they're on. But do carry on defending them, at this point I'm really tired of people who claim to not care about other players yelling at me for caring about other players but not caring about this one player's feelings.

The long and the short of it is: SE allows 1 personal house, 8 FC houses per account (or up to 8 personal, 8 FC houses for grandfathered characters.) No one acting within those limits, or purchasing multiple accounts to expand those limits is doing anything wrong.

You can certainly protest that a single account can hold 8 FC houses, but it would seem that is the way SE wants their game to be. I could see the merit of leading multiple FCs on an RP server where each FC has more of a unique 'feel' and 'purpose' rather than just being a gaggle of buddies who want a chat window and a workshop. You don't seem to agree, but unless we get instanced housing for every character and FC, more wards is the best solution.

Might enterprising players who have multiple accounts buy all 60 in one ward like people have done? Maybe, but for that to happen, the entire ward would have to go unclaimed for weeks on end. So show the newly opened wards some love and fill them up organically, rather than letting them rot for a month or three until someone gets inspired to make something out of the empty space by themselves.

[Awha]

If someone calls you selfish own up to it, it is not inherently wrong being selfish. If you have time and money that you wish to use on your hobby go for it. Do not ever feel bad enjoying your hobby if it is within the rules never let someone try to put you down.

Being selfish is not inherently a bad thing. it js your time and money use it as you see fit just operate with the rules.

[Sylvastreak]

unless we get instanced housing for every character and FC

Ah there it is, the instanced housing.

You've already made it clear that your stance on this is extremely black and white when you said "In general, "right" encompasses all things that are not wrong, and are allowable."
Just because a single account can hold up to 8 FC houses doesn't mean that's necessarily what SE want people to do. Giving you the possibility to do something doesn't mean "hey go do it!" Nor does it mean it's right and fair.

And as for being on an rp server? Spriggan is in no way an rp server. If it was, you could probably easily co-ordinate between several people in an FC to move their personals to the same area and transform them into a mini neighbourhood without the need for multiple accounts or dummy FCs.

[Penthea]

If someone calls you selfish own up to it, it is not inherently wrong being selfish. If you have time and money that you wish to use on your hobby go for it. Do not ever feel bad enjoying your hobby if it is within the rules never let someone try to put you down.

Being selfish is not inherently a bad thing. it js your time and money use it as you see fit just operate with the rules.

It is true that selfishness is not inherently a bad thing. It really depends on what you do with the selfishness and your motives. Everyone needs to be a bit selfish at times for the preservation of their own well-being. Whether that's things like making sure you have enough food to eat, or cutting someone out of your life who is a source of stress.

But going too far one way or the other is bad. Being too selfless can mean denying your own well-being, and being too selfish can mean denying the well-being of others. It is especially damaging when neither end of the spectrum is even necessary.

However this is a philosophical debate that is going into the realms of being off-topic.

There is a supply and demand issue, and those hoarding plots are making a bad situation worse. They are most definitely not the core of the issue, but it is clear SE are not willing to take very decisive action on the core issue...so then people look at other issues, and one of those is players who are hoarding a large number of plots. So then threads like this happen over and over again.

And these threads will never stop being made unless SE meet the demands of the playerbase so that no one could ever be unable to buy a house due to availability issues, or unless SE decide to revoke hoarded plots so they can be more evenly distributed among players.

As long as nothing changes, neither will threads like these or the debates in them.