Current and proposed housing changes do not address rampant RMT issues

[wei_t_a_minute]

RMT house sellers can easily put in multiple lottery entries for their "free company" and significantly outbid real FCs, since they already have multiple accounts and characters, plus a plethora of gil.

If the proposed changes allow FCs to increase their chances of winning the lottery solely by the number of lottery tickets and do not address any other aspect of FC house buying/ownership, the house buying process will be more difficult for legitimate FC owners and will not change the current RMT issue that is rampant in FF14 housing.

Other changes involving increasing the requirements for purchasing a house for an FC are needed. Examples include establishing a minimum player level, not allowing level and job boosted characters buy until a certain play time has reached, etc.

[Tyjacon]

One house per account
One house per FC
Players stop buying gil

Problem solved

[Jojoya]

RMT house sellers can easily put in multiple lottery entries for their "free company" and significantly outbid real FCs, since they already have multiple accounts and characters, plus a plethora of gil.

If the proposed changes allow FCs to increase their chances of winning the lottery solely by the number of lottery tickets and do not address any other aspect of FC house buying/ownership, the house buying process will be more difficult for legitimate FC owners and will not change the current RMT issue that is rampant in FF14 housing.

Other changes involving increasing the requirements for purchasing a house for an FC are needed. Examples include establishing a minimum player level, not allowing level and job boosted characters buy until a certain play time has reached, etc.

It's not a bid system. It's a raffle system. Having more entries doesn't "outbid" other FCs though it does shift the chance of winning depending on how many total entries there are. Having 10 entries out of 20 would be a significant advantage but having 10 out of 200 won't.

This system will actually work better for medium to large FCs that can have multiple members entering on the FC's behalf for the same plot. The RMT FCs usually only have the minimum 4 members. The house buying process becomes significantly easier for legitimate FCs because members no longer need to camp a placard against the click bots. As long as the FC isn't going after a medium or large, most members should have sufficient gil to buy an entry then get reimbursed after the drawing (by the game if the entry doesn't win, by the FC if the entry is the winner).

They are adding a waiting period before new members can be granted land acquisition permissions or given FC Master rank. That will serve equally as well as what you mention.

In the end, the only thing that will address the rampant RMT in housing is to either remove FC housing or go to a fully instanced system where every player and every FC can get a house just by telling the game "I want to buy". As long as it's a limited resource system with the ability to transfer ownership player to player, RMT will always exist.

[TwistedTea]

The RMT FCs usually only have the minimum 4 members.

Not to be pedantic but this is naive.

RMT house flippers usually have multiple accounts and can move around their characters between FCs as needed.

They also have vast gil reserves to fund each of their low level alts with 50m - which is what they are gonna do come 6.1

Also currently, if you delete the character which is the FC Master, the next appropriate member in the FC gets automatically promoted to FC Master - this allows for FC house sales to bypass whatever waiting period SE puts in place.

In the end, the only thing that will address the rampant RMT in housing is to either remove FC housing or go to a fully instanced system where every player and every FC can get a house just by telling the game "I want to buy". As long as it's a limited resource system with the ability to transfer ownership player to player, RMT will always exist.

Agreed on the fully instanced system. Ward housing is profitable to RMTers because it is limited.

[Nepentha]

It's not a bid system. It's a raffle system. Having more entries doesn't "outbid" other FCs though it does shift the chance of winning depending on how many total entries there are. Having 10 entries out of 20 would be a significant advantage but having 10 out of 200 won't.

This system will actually work better for medium to large FCs that can have multiple members entering on the FC's behalf for the same plot. The RMT FCs usually only have the minimum 4 members. The house buying process becomes significantly easier for legitimate FCs because members no longer need to camp a placard against the click bots. As long as the FC isn't going after a medium or large, most members should have sufficient gil to buy an entry then get reimbursed after the drawing (by the game if the entry doesn't win, by the FC if the entry is the winner).

They are adding a waiting period before new members can be granted land acquisition permissions or given FC Master rank. That will serve equally as well as what you mention.

In the end, the only thing that will address the rampant RMT in housing is to either remove FC housing or go to a fully instanced system where every player and every FC can get a house just by telling the game "I want to buy". As long as it's a limited resource system with the ability to transfer ownership player to player, RMT will always exist.

I don't think you really understand the scope of RMT operations. They have billions of gil on hand and operate with multiple accounts. One operation I've been tracking for the last ten months has to have, bare minimum, 9 accounts they use to move around. That's potentially 72 ticket purchases. 10 out of 200 might not be significant, but 72 out of 200 increases the odds sharply. The other advantage they have is they don't have to worry about trusting members with the gil, it's all the same operation. They can balloon their target FC to 72 people and have them all bid on whatever large just demolished. Have a decent chance of winning it, and if they do sell it a pretty penny in whatever currency they deal in.

Will they clean up when Ishgard housing releases? Maybe, maybe not. But after that, when the housing situation is full again and there's just he occasional house demo'ing and everyone bidding on it, this is when they'll dominate all over again.

The only way to stop that is for the devs to finally realize this isn't tenable and figure out a way for all players to have housing without this system even being necessary.

[Big_Bap]

Jojoya with the koolaid overdose again lmaoooo

[Jojoya]

Not to be pedantic but this is naive.

RMT house flippers usually have multiple accounts and can move around their characters between FCs as needed.

They also have vast gil reserves to fund each of their low level alts with 50m - which is what they are gonna do come 6.1

Also currently, if you delete the character which is the FC Master, the next appropriate member in the FC gets automatically promoted to FC Master - this allows for FC house sales to bypass whatever waiting period SE puts in place.



Agreed on the fully instanced system. Ward housing is profitable to RMTers because it is limited.

I'm well aware that they have multiple accounts and will move their members around.

They still usually only operate with 4 members per FC to spread things out since 4 is the minimum needed to be eligible to purchase. Do they have all those FCs bid on the same house, or do they have them bid on different houses?

In either case, they're still left competing against all the FCs with multiple members buying their own entries.

As you said, currently a FC Master can be deleted because any member can be made FC Master. We don't know if that will still be true in 6.1 when the new restrictions get implemented. It could be the game won't allow the character to be deleted if it's a FC Master, and a player can't transfer FC Master to a different FC member if none are eligible. That's something we'll have to wait until 6.1 to find out. It still won't be a true obstacle but it will still hinder RMT operations, which is the most we can reasonably expect as long as SE wants to continue to use a limited resource system.

I don't think you really understand the scope of RMT operations. They have billions of gil on hand and operate with multiple accounts. One operation I've been tracking for the last ten months has to have, bare minimum, 9 accounts they use to move around. That's potentially 72 ticket purchases. 10 out of 200 might not be significant, but 72 out of 200 increases the odds sharply. The other advantage they have is they don't have to worry about trusting members with the gil, it's all the same operation. They can balloon their target FC to 72 people and have them all bid on whatever large just demolished. Have a decent chance of winning it, and if they do sell it a pretty penny in whatever currency they deal in.

Will they clean up when Ishgard housing releases? Maybe, maybe not. But after that, when the housing situation is full again and there's just he occasional house demo'ing and everyone bidding on it, this is when they'll dominate all over again.

The only way to stop that is for the devs to finally realize this isn't tenable and figure out a way for all players to have housing without this system even being necessary.

I get the scope of operations. They're still going to have far more competition than they did in the past and that's going to hinder them.

I also expect their advantage to primarily be during new ward additions, not after the initial supply sells out. Once the initial supply sells out, you're going to have hundreds to thousands of players competing over the few plots that become available. Having 72 entries out of 800 is still 728 chances you don't win.

RMT isn't going to go away as long as the ward system exists. But at least the lottery will narrow the gap between RMT advantage and player/FC advantage in getting a house.

[Fenril7]

As long as it is 1 person per ACCOUNT to sign up, not 8 alts on one account.
Pay full price UPFRONT when you sign up.
Put some kind of time frame (30-60 days) before you can transfer.
1-FC house, per FC.

I can live with the new system with those changes above.

[Shibi]

They're still going to have far more competition than they did in the past and that's going to hinder them.

Eventually; if you only think at a single server level and after Ishgard is all over in a few days, and we return to ~1 demolish a day, on average (or worse, 1 every 4 days as I saw on my old server a lot).

But it's still potentially 8 entries per account on 73 servers at the same time. 584 tickets per account. They play the long game, and they don't care which server the house is on, just that they get one to sell, so they can get cash.

10 accounts, so almost 6,000 entries, and spin that wheel when possible. Yes, on a worldwide basis they will still win houses, and in the grand scheme of things (not at a single server level) over a long time they will still win them often.

Hard to get rid of, outside of (1) SE implemeting instanced housing, which won't happen until after 2025 or later... servers and all that (2) the Special Task Force being increased in staff numbers, and actively looking for clear and obvious sales.

But neither of these will happen. Lotto won't stop the RMT house sellers.

[Jojoya]

As long as it is 1 person per ACCOUNT to sign up, not 8 alts on one account.
Pay full price UPFRONT when you sign up.
Put some kind of time frame (30-60 days) before you can transfer.
1-FC house, per FC.

I can live with the new system with those changes above.

For FCs, it looks like any alts will be able to enter as long as there isn't another alt on the same account in another FC that owns the house "as buyer".

We've already been told that entering will require the full price to be paid upfront for each entry (land devaluation is also being removed).

We've already been told that a new member waiting period is being added to FCs in 6.1. A character still in that new member waiting period cannot be made FC Master or be given land acquisition permission.

FCs are already limited to a single house. Those who think that some FCs have multiple houses are incorrect - those are actually unique FCs, though sometimes those FCs are held by alts of members of a specific FC who are using the additional FCs to gain access to additional grade 3 FC actions, gardens and workshops to benefit their main FC. SE really can't stop that from happening unless they're going to state that all characters on the same world and same account can only belong to the same FC, and I don't see that ever happening.

But it's still potentially 8 entries per account on 73 servers at the same time. 584 tickets per account.

That's impossible. Even with a standard subscription we're limited to 40 total characters per account. They'd only be able to get 8 entries on 5 worlds each per service account.

To get to 6,000 possible entries per waiting period, RMT would need a minimum of 150 service accounts at a cost of US$1950-2250 per month (depending on if they go with a recurring subscription). Keep in mind that winning a house puts the other 7 characters on that same world out of commission until FC Master for that house can be transferred to the buyer.

I genuinely have no idea how much money a single RMT vendor makes from housing resales in a month but I doubt it's enough to justify spending that sort of money for multiple subscription, especially when the amount of competition they have for housing is about to increase from a relative handful of players to hundreds outside of the periods when new wards are first added. After all, the point is to get the money to pay for things in real life and not to get the money to buy more subscriptions.

RMT is always going to have an advantage, that I don't deny. But at least some of the changes being added help to narrow the gap by increasing competition for what houses are available then slowing down how fast RMT can complete their sales and start over.