Decrease the demand for houses with taxes

[SasakiItou-Malboro]

Has to be the stupidest take I've seen on here yet

[Avoidy]

If small FC's making a lot of gil are a problem, then put restrictions on it. One sub per 10 members up to a maximum of 4 submarines or something like that.

If submarines were made available to all players they would absolutely have to nerf all gil income from them. This would be a nasty blow to legitimate FC's. My own FC puts every bit of gil from our submarines back into the FC and it's an amazing positive, we have endless free food, pots, materia, chocobo items, various minions and furniture and events with lots of prizes and it would be a shame if all that was taken away because some players abused a system that should have been restricted properly in the first place.

I also wish people would stop joining FC's with leaders who treat the submarines as a personal income. It just encourages it. There are a ton of legitimate FC's where you can get your buffs and a lot of extra bonuses. There's no reason to park in a bad FC.

That's cool. Tbh, I didn't mean for this to be about subs when I wrote it. I just mentioned it because I notice it's another thing that drives people to want a house in this game, same with gardening or simply having more space. My main point was that lots of desired features are gated behind owning a home, and if the devs ever wanted to cut demand for housing (as this was the thread topic), then they could simply provide those desired features through other means.

To wrap this up, I'd 100% agree on putting more restrictions in the sub system, because at the moment the notion of it being a group activity is kind of a joke in 90% of FCs. At best there'll be one guy who manages it in a large group. At worst you'll see these empty fc houses all the time where it's obvious that it's just some dude's submarine workshop. And very soon an army of shell FCs will gobble up the FC wards and begin using subs as well. When it gets to that point, I won't care if everyone has sub access or not. There'll be so many people using the system and undercutting each other on materials they get from it, that the end result will be the same. Good luck to you!

No to taxation. It's bad enough we can lose our houses and furniture while paying a sub, no way would I endorse making the system even more punitive.
It would definitely encourage RMT and honestly I cannot see any benefit except to a handful of richer players.

FIX THE SUPPLY
That's the real issue, there are simply not enough houses for the player base.

Dig into that a little further and it turns out that desirable houses are in even shorter supply. Houses near the Market Board and Retainer bell with nice views are not exactly plentiful. Many plots in the wards would probably go unsold if it wasn't for the fact that housing is so scarce (looking at you, Goblet) but the poor design of the wards is something most of us overlook because getting any house is an achievement in itself.

If the devs can give everyone their own little instanced island, then they definitely had the resources to give us instanced houses. I can see no reason why instanced houses shouldn't be introduced alongside the wards, that way everyone's happy. The people who don't care about neighbourhoods can get an instanced house and the people who love the wards can continue with the system we have.

This is the ideal answer. But Square keeps insisting that they can't add more wards or more houses ... until suddenly they can make a whole new housing district. It's really weird. I don't know what's going on with that. So addressing demand is an alternative that "fixes" the problem without touching the supply. And they could easily do it by just making apartments more attractive. But they won't even do this.

I 100% agree with everything you said though; I don't understand how they're gonna do island sanctuary if they can't handle instanced housing. Just give people who don't care about the neighborhood their own little house floating in the void and call it a day. Games with less money coming in have done this from the start; it blows my mind that XIV has had ... what, 8 years? to fix this? And now with the new system, we're right back at the RMT issues that the clicking system was designed to alleviate, since it directly incentivized shell fc creation for a shell fc house. Can't wait to see how many people just sell ownership of their solo FC for real money in the future, when housing becomes even more dire than it already is. All they had to do was give priority to individual buyers and this level of scarcity could have been prevented for several lottery cycles. Instead they gave FCs an advantage, and also paused the timer on bidding so that shell FCs would be able to enter the ring as well. It's almost comical at this point, how literally everything that could have gone wrong, did.

[Havoc5J]

I’ve advocated for housing taxes in the past, some I’m on board with the idea. It solves two problem at once.

One, currently there’s no incentive to give up houses you own but don’t use.

Two, it’s incredibly easy to generate hundreds of millions of Gil in FFXIV and there nothing to spend it on.

I like housing being rare, or challenging to acquire. This brings players together at -so and so’s- house to hang out and concentrates the player base into these social hotspots. If everyone had easy access to housing then everyone would just be off alone on their own islands.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Again I'd say the 2 factors causing the massive housing demand are the following.

1. Players have little else to spend gil on because the game lacks meaningful gil sinks to balance out the rate players generate gil out of activities. Buying things off the market board just moves the gil minus the tax to another player's pocket. The game needs more things that would have players feed gil into the system removing it from circulation.

2. A very large portion if not majority of the people wanting a house only want it because the resource is limited. It's no different from people buying limited edition versions of RL items just because quantities are limited or what we saw during the pandemic of people trying to buy up as much as possible of all kinds of things just because supply was limited essentially just making the supply problem worse.

[Deceptus]

My "tax" is my monthly sub fee. Don't pay it for a few months, lose the house.

[Necrotica]

What if we made housing a Time Share?

You bid on the house, and on what day of the week it is yours?

[Vav2021]

We have this situation here in which everybody wants a mansion but there are just not enough of them to go around. Too many of players can afford it and so they feel obliged to get the mansion because there are no drawbacks of owning one. Demolitions help with the issue, but not enough so - introduce property taxes.

For example: Let's start with 10% of plot cost per month.

Large enough upkeep would make players more content with smaller houses or motivate them to join friends/free companies to share the load among members. Also players would be more likely to just let the houses they don't use much go to save on gil. The housing zones would be used more actively and more players would be able to touch the housing.

It wouldn't be a popular change but it has its benefits.

I already pay property taxes IRL. I don't want to have to be reminded about it in an MMO fantasy game too.

[Yshtola_Cat]

I already pay property taxes IRL. I don't want to have to be reminded about it in an MMO fantasy game too.

You pay taxes irl and so do you for any MB related transactions. Where's your tantrum about MB taxes huh?

[Vav2021]

You pay taxes irl and so do you for any MB related transactions. Where's your tantrum about MB taxes huh?

to be honest, I never used the MB enough for me to even notice that. I think I only used it for the fat cat and getting a few mats. But now that you mention it, you're right. What are the taxes that we pay on the MB used for? Or does it just disappear into the wind?

Good eye, Yshtola.

[Kenky]

What are the taxes that we pay on the MB used for? Or does it just disappear into the wind?

Gameplay-wise? It gets eaten. Little by little.

Canonically? I believe it's used to pay for transport and labour fees for shipping that item to you, perhaps? Or the Grand Company (or City you purchase it in) takes a small cut for facilitating the purchase?