Quote Originally Posted by Shougun View Post
I believe that actually further dissuades house use.

Buy something, that for most casual players, very expensive that you can very readily lose if you decide to take a break for whatever reason (besides wanting to take a break because maybe you were burnt out or playing something else at the time there is of course just life being life, covid, job, natural disaster, etc - which SE tries to help with but they can't fully because it would mean locking houses).

Added with other reasons of course like the system doesn't flow very smoothly. like if the system started you out either massively tiny but free but then pointed you towards upgrading that to apartment scale, then to small, etc, etc (location theme also being like this in terms of smoother far friendlier transitions)- meanwhile the game wont threaten to remove progress either. I strongly believe people would more eagerly interact with the system then. At first maybe just because they can store seasonals, but each time you get in it would be like "how about that extra space.. eh? you want a garden don't you, it's right here just press upgrade ;3".

Instead we have situations where people are actively told to buy houses they don't want just so they can then later pay more to get the house they actually did want. Freaking what? It actually works, but seriously that's the way that is a "good way" to interact with the system? It's awful.
Square clearly doesn’t want every player to own a house. The systems in place actively discourage players from easily buying one. Placard camping is intentionally awful to do; they want you to give up.

Even if someone buys a house in a bad location and relocates to a better location, they’re still paying less than the house is worth. Demand for these should be high as a mark of an aspirational goal, is high, and will continue to be high. The problem is Square hasn’t matched the price of these to the demand; one or two good map runs can “buy” an estate, but that doesn’t even come close to their actual value on a congested server.

Perhaps they don’t increase the cost to discourage gil buying, but that only opens the market for rmt housing which will only become more pervasive as more and more players want an estate. Additional wards help in the short term, but that’s only putting off the problem until later.

Either Square embraces the “everyone can have a house” pricing they’ve established by adding enough wards for every player to own an estate OR they open an actual limitless auction system that can reflect the actual value of an estate and price people out of the content we’ll never see an effective solution.

There are real-money service costs associated with adding that much housing, so they may not be able to offer everyone a house. The problem is they’re trying to have this system both ways, and it can’t function both ways.