Relo mechanics are Cancer

[Almagnus1]

One of the big problems SE added into housing is how the relo mechanics work... as they have only served to confound the housing issues, and have generally made things worse.

IMO SE needs to either rethink how these work (like by creating a 15 minute - 1 hour raffle that the people wanting to relo must enter alongside all the people that want to outright buy a plot), or remove the relo mechanic from the game and force people that want to move to release the old house and fight for the new one.

Either way, the relo housing mechanic needs to go.

Edit:
And because we have some posters on the forum that can't figure this out, I'm playing devil's advocate to start a discussion in this post.

[Divinemights]

Hard pass.
For one, the idea is absurd and not resolve any present issue.
No point to alter current house ward framework as it has been function as it supposed to be in an environment where supply is unable to meet demand.
Your pointless crusade on grandfathered ownership and house relocate doesn't resolve the supply and demand issue.
It is only worsen the problem and creating unnecessary drama

You can just stop until we see the impact of following 3 factors in 6.0:

1. Ishgard housing ward release (more plots)
2. Island Sanctuary (possible instance with farming to make people happy with apartment able to gardening)
3. Open of Oceanic datacenters that has potential to further free up plots because people from Oceanic will likely migrate

[Almagnus1]

Hard pass.
For one, the idea is absurd and not resolve any present issue.
No point to alter current house ward framework as it has been function as it supposed to be in an environment where supply is unable to meet demand.
Your pointless crusade on grandfathered ownership and house relocate doesn't resolve the supply and demand issue.
It is only worsen the problem and creating unnecessary drama

You can just stop until we see the impact of following 3 factors in 6.0:

1. Ishgard housing ward release (more plots)
2. Island Sanctuary (possible instance with farming to make people happy with apartment able to gardening)
3. Open of Oceanic datacenters that has potential to further free up plots because people from Oceanic will likely migrate

So why should already having a house give you an absurdly significant advantage over someone that doesn't when it comes to Ishgard housing solely because of the relocation mechanic?

Why not level the playing field?

[Catstab]

Either way, the relo housing mechanic needs to go.

It's the timer that needs to go. Re-think the whole system.

"Camping is so fun that people should each get to do it several times over, instead of once" is NOT the answer.

[Catstab]

It's kind of funny that you've edited (quotes of) my posts to contain random unsaid statements like "I want everyone to suffer" but your suggestion is to literally make camping an inescapable hell that one must stay in forever, rather than a one and done hellish experience.

This feels very much like a suggestion made in jest. I guess it could just be a very shortsighted one, though.

[Almagnus1]

It's the timer that needs to go. Re-think the whole system.

"Camping is so fun that people should each get to do it several times over, instead of once" is NOT the answer.

So what does that rethink look like?

[Catstab]

So what does that rethink look like?

Above either of our pay grades, to be quite frank.

Everyone is highly aware the only real fix is instanced housing for all. But we're also aware it flies in the face of Yoshi's vision, and that makes it unlikely.

If limited supply is a must, there's gotta be some way to nuke demand. Hard-cap on server populations would be necessary, since you couldnt prevent people from crowding housing markets on worlds like Balmung otherwise. The only way to make it so ~4350 personal houses will be enough, is ensure that no more than 4350 people are playing on any given server. The only other way to do it is make the houses 40 million gil again. But that won't make people not interested, only not eligible.

But here's the thing, SE isn't going to hobble the game with something like a 4500 person cap on servers to make housing work. Housing isn't a core feature of the game to them. It's vanity and fun feature.

But yeah, this suggestion is basically sadistic. A lot of people spend 20-100 hours camping their first house. You suggest relocators should repeat that process? So someone on their third house will have sunk up to 300 hours into housing? Wow.

[Almagnus1]

About the only serious thing that would make sense (instead of a raffle that the relos have to participate in) is auctioning off the house with the bid paid in full when you make it (relos get a credit for their existing house and the bid is refunded via moogle mail with a delete timer on it if someone gets outbid).

Either way, the relos and first time buyers need to be put on the same playing field so some of the first time buyers have a realistic shot of getting at Ishgard house, otherwise we are going to see history repeat itself yet again.

On the bright side, at least an auction would help to delete a lot of gil from the economy... which wouldn't be a bad thing.

[Catstab]

an auction would help to delete a lot of gil from the economy... which wouldn't be a bad thing.

I mean, I suggested we make housing prices what they used to be. 40 mil smalls, 200m meds, 500m larges. This would be a gil sink of over 30 billion gear a year. Every response was "well then everyone will RMT for housing." So I imagine your auction suggestion will face similar "RMT bait" criticism.

I prefer these larger but fixed prices to your auction idea, since the auction would mean some would get very inexpensive housing and others would pay a great deal. But I do agree a gil sink would be helpful.

[Almagnus1]

I mean, I suggested we make housing prices what they used to be. 40 mil smalls, 200m meds, 500m larges. This would be a gil sink of over 30 billion gear a year. Every response was "well then everyone will RMT for housing." So I imagine your auction suggestion will face similar "RMT bait" criticism.

I prefer these larger but fixed prices to your auction idea, since the auction would mean some would get very inexpensive housing and others would pay a great deal. But I do agree a gil sink would be helpful.

The main idea I'm looking at is how it would be possible to allow for someone other than whomever got there first (or relo'd there first) to have a shot at getting the house.

Once we're at a point where there's a different housing reassignment (be it an auction, raffle, or whatever) and a mechanic that allows for discoverability so a third party is able to disrupt a house flip, then its possible to get rid of the timer and let the market sort itself out.

While RMT is a concern, that may be mitigated by SE creating some sort of time token that is sellable on the market (so players can hoard those instead of gil and also convert gil into subscription time).