Being generous and being a landlord are not compatible concepts.

That said, look forward to something with the Slums in 1.3 (the Faeona update).

Originally posted by ManaBrent:

Being generous and being a landlord are not compatible concepts.

That said, look forward to something with the Slums in 1.3 (the Faeona update).

I'm not sure, but maybe I'm lucky because I've had great experiences with good landlords. When Covid hit and we had to declare bankruptcy for our business, our landlord waived the next payment and extended future payment dates even before it became illegal in our country to evict people during the pandemic. In that regard, we did have a generous landlord. I would argue that being a landlord is just another job, and you can find both greedy individuals and good people in that role.

I'm also glad to hear you have updates planned for the future. The game had more depth than I initially imagined when I started playing. What began as my trying out a game I was ready to abandon at the first sign of a poor mechanics became a quest to uncover all the hidden secrets. So rare to see good RPG maker games these days. Thanks for the effort dev.

You're welcome, please recommend it to your friends!

Originally posted by jase_LV:

Originally posted by ManaBrent:

Being generous and being a landlord are not compatible concepts.

I would argue that being a landlord is just another job, and you can find both greedy individuals and good people in that role.

Not trying to get too deep into politics on a steam discussion thread, but I figure I'd throw my two cents in. Caveat that I live in the US and this may vary from country to country.

'Landlord' isn't actually a job. Landlord just means you own the property that you are allowing someone else to use. There's no actual work involved in simply owning the property. Now, some lardlords do take on the actual labor of renting out the property, such as property management, maintenance, customer service, that kind of thing-- but those aren't required to be a landlord, and many landlords simply farm that stuff out to other people or companies so they can sit back and let the cash roll in while doing literally nothing after the point of hiring those people.

The main problem with this is that it's taking something you need-- shelter is required to survive even on the most basic level-- and charging money for you to *temporarily* be provided it. The tenant does not grow their own equity in the property(they're actually building equity for the landlord, who, again, is not required to do any work themselves), has few rights in regards to what they can or can't do the property to make it feel more like home, and often enough the prices are so exorbitant as to not allow them to save for their own home, and banks do not take rental history into account when they are looking at someone's ability to pay a mortgage(despite mortgages often, though not always, being cheaper month to month than the rent they are paying).

All of that wouldn't even be quite so bad if it was just a few landlords who own a handful of properties in competition with another(although I'd still argue that hoarding a necessity and letting other people borrow it for a price is.... well, not great behavior!). At least you'd be able to go somewhere else owned by someone else if there was a problem. In the US, however, more and more property is being bought up by big investment banks-- HUGE faceless corporations who think of people in terms of the numbers they provide to the lines on their graph, which must always go up. They're consistently outbidding everyday people who are just trying to buy a home to live in, which makes it even harder to buy a home and further drives the prices up to a ridiculous cost out of reach of even more people. Because these investment banks are not viewing housing as shelter, they see housing as something they can squeeze a whole lotta money out of with little to no work. Which is exactly how it's framed with Madame Biz as well.

Essentially, someone's need for shelter should not be anyone else's "passive income" in a generous world.

(Feel free to ask me to delete this is it's too much, Dev. XD)

No need to delete, I broadly agree. Even a landlord that is trying to be pleasant will contribute to all these problems by engaging with the broken system. Widening the wealth gap and reducing supply of affordable housing.

Originally posted by .simplymad__xx:

Originally posted by jase_LV:

I would argue that being a landlord is just another job, and you can find both greedy individuals and good people in that role.

Not trying to get to..........

Well, that just seems like a problem with the USA system. It’s not really something you deal with in the EU, as the tenancy agreement includes clauses that make the house/apartment owner responsible for fixing major problems with the property that were not caused by the tenant. The owner is also responsible for general structural maintenance. As such, I actually prefer not to own my own house but to rent an apartment, as it's less of a hassle. The signed document helps both sides avoid taking advantage of one another and ensures that the landlord is no different from any other occupation.

For a game that keeps including chances to say "No, I don't value extra profit over the health of others," this one thing felt strange to me. Being a landowner would imply Biz is now responsible for maintaining the slums or, better yet, improving them to get a more productive populace. Beggars and barely surviving people don't drive the economy (not to mention, as a former Fae queen, she is kind of incentivized to help her own people).

Let's not even mention that instead of a huge thousand-person corporation, she is an individual with no major shareholders to please, so there is no reason to be an unkind landowner when you, as a player, have kept her purely generous with zero ruthlessness.

I'd like this. I bought up all the properties going for completionist and copped ruthless points.

I'd love a system where you can choose to exploit the slums, say cheap labour for a project, or invest to build it up and improve their lives, create jobs etc, maybe with a payoff of higher rent, but missing out on x project, or a different project with its own benefits.

An idea for the project could be to (ruthless) build a factory to produce a product (fae gems maybe?) cheaply and 'employ' the slum residents vs maybe (generous) hire the residents to work on infrastructure around Faeona, maintain the greens, buildings etc so they can afford to upgrade their homes.

I'm looking forward to whatever you have in mind for 1.3

So far, there's been plenty of opportunities to not be exploitative, so it'd be really neat to see something comparable to council housing.

Originally posted by jase_LV:

Originally posted by .simplymad__xx:

Not trying to get to..........

Well, that just seems like a problem with the USA system. It’s not really something you deal with in the EU, as the tenancy agreement includes clauses that make the house/apartment owner responsible for fixing major problems with the property that were not caused by the tenant. The owner is also responsible for general structural maintenance. As such, I actually prefer not to own my own house but to rent an apartment, as it's less of a hassle. The signed document helps both sides avoid taking advantage of one another and ensures that the landlord is no different from any other occupation.

For a game that keeps including chances to say "No, I don't value extra profit over the health of others," this one thing felt strange to me. Being a landowner would imply Biz is now responsible for maintaining the slums or, better yet, improving them to get a more productive populace. Beggars and barely surviving people don't drive the economy (not to mention, as a former Fae queen, she is kind of incentivized to help her own people).

Let's not even mention that instead of a huge thousand-person corporation, she is an individual with no major shareholders to please, so there is no reason to be an unkind landowner when you, as a player, have kept her purely generous with zero ruthlessness.

the problem is, even a purely benevolent dictator is still a dictator... and even if mab has been nothing but helpful - she at that point holds all these people wellbeing in her hands... they are subject to her whims, whatever they may be
and should mab ever die (or otherwise inherit her property to someone) - all bets are off... whoever then has it could be a ruthless greedy capitalist with no regard for peoples wellbeing
thats why these accumulations of power are problematic
though to be fair - the entire games quest has that underlying problem of "what happens after you succeed?" and "what about all the damage you did on the way to get there?"
remember the coffee and lootbox addiction problems from tutetown?
its a legitimate dilemma... how do you dismantle a capitalist system and can you avoid becoming what you are trying to stop in the process?

It would be nice if we could help out the slums in some sort of way like set up a government welfare program. Or something like that, but at the end day working with a broken system will only get broken results

I understand the developers mindset, it is fundamentally impossible to be a good person while profiteering off of a basic necessity such as housing. However, this is supposed to be a fantasy game, particularly one in which you infiltrate the broken capitalist system and attempt to remold it from within. We should have the options to play out a purely generous fantasy.

Originally posted by KageSama19:

I understand the developers mindset, it is fundamentally impossible to be a good person while profiteering off of a basic necessity such as housing. However, this is supposed to be a fantasy game, particularly one in which you infiltrate the broken capitalist system and attempt to remold it from within. We should have the options to play out a purely generous fantasy.

You do, by not buying real estate.