An Open Letter to Yoshida-san: Please Slice One Zero Off the Housing Prices

I think, personally, that Yoshi-P's answer published earlier in this thread is just as bad as the announcement. If they knew they didn't have the infrastructure, then why introduce the housing at all yet? Reading between the lines, if you buy now, you'll be out millions later on when they due reduce the pricing and the reduction in legacy pricing is little comfort. The only way his projection of 80% of Free Companies having housing in three months seems fantastic, I'm certainly not going to farm for the next three months, I want to enjoy content, and I'm assuming that they are not going to flood the servers with gil, it would only serve to devaluate everything.

I really wonder if the factored in the pareto principle when calculating gil circulations and house price fixing, especially on the legacy servers?

Looking forward to earning a house thanks for the explantion yoshi was worried was going to be spoon feed again.

A lot of these issues could have been fixed by adding one more equation into the pricing formula; the number of players in a fc. A fc of 1-50 players won't have the means of a fc with 512 players. I understand that that is where supposedly the size of the house is taken in effect, however I'm not saying it should be that dramatic of a price change. If anything, it would help fcs that are not 500 members strong to be able to afford a house if everyone works for it before the 3 month period that they are saying it would take otherwise (that is if they worked their buns off to make the gil still).

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Originally Posted by HunkyJimpjorps

It's anecdotal, but I remember fairly early on, tome mats on Excalibur commanded about double or three times the price of those on a friend's non-legacy server. The difference has narrowed recently as the gear/level disparity narrows, but I know a lot of new 2.0 players who were able to get in on the ground floor and build up a nice nest egg by selling tome mats to legacy players.

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I'm not going to argue that at all. What I will argue is that it was setup on current prices so that players would not be able to afford it for 3 months according to Yoshi himself. However, they used money people had stockpiled to make the calculation. If it's expected that it will take 3 months to save given current economy, then they need a way to earn that gil within three months that is equivalent to what other servers have available. If their auction house is showing the same prices, or near the same, to the non-legacy servers, and not 5x's higher -now-, then they don't have the ability to generate that gil and it really is unfair to anyone who is not in the very top tier of pricing or was not absolutely hording gil prior to the announcement. 10 players he listed as an example having over 100 mil (I think that was it), how many players on the server, what percent is that exactly of the playerbase? It's not a good example to base things off of.

Rest at an inn 100 gil/night or 36500 gil per year. Buy a house 6 million gil. Guess I have to stay at hotels and let the maids clean up for me. It is cheaper.

So...I find myself wondering...Why is everyone so worried about the housing? Go work and grind just like every other FF ever created. This FF is actually the easiest of the FF's. They taught us that we didn't need to grind to level so now we complain because we need to grind to earn gil...Why don't you guys just start asking Square to make a weekly deposit to your character. If the game requires no time or effort to earn the prestigious items then whats the point in playing. Square has just given everyone in the game a reason to start building an economy that everyone has been complaining about. Typically you choose an MMO to play for a long time, this is supposed to be Call of Duty where you just run through and in 6hrs you have beaten the game and just go pick up something else. Its a game designed around investment and retention, so stop whining on the boards and go make some gil, or just quit playing because no matter what Square does you people won't be happy.

just sold a item for 2 gil , just completed a hunting log got 1 gil, now just to repeat that a billion times and i get a house yay

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Originally Posted by Fumamyena

They taught us that we didn't need to grind to level so now we complain because we need to grind to earn gil...Why don't you guys just start asking Square to make a weekly deposit to your character. If the game requires no time or effort to earn the prestigious items then whats the point in playing. Square has just given everyone in the game a reason to start building an economy that everyone has been complaining about. Typically you choose an MMO to play for a long time, this is supposed to be Call of Duty where you just run through and in 6hrs you have beaten the game and just go pick up something else. Its a game designed around investment and retention, so stop whining on the boards and go make some gil, or just quit playing because no matter what Square does you people won't be happy.

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You are planing to live (play) in this game forever. Ok. But most of players dont have such wishes

The way I see it... it's painful for those on legacy servers right now, but a stepping stone towards removing segregation of legacy players and allowing them to move to non-legacy worlds, by trying to bring the economies closer together.

Whether or not this tactic will work, I couldn't say. But each house sold on a legacy world takes 5-10x the amount of cash out of the economy as it does on a non-legacy, and the more that is removed from legacy, the smaller the gap becomes. In theory.

pice of bullshit, i know that shiva 0% of the 910 fc´s with 1-10 members can buy a plot even after 9 months, and form the 416 fc´s with 11-50 are still only 20% able to buy a small plot.
so can someone explain me how this should work with the 80%??? btw only 66fc´s over 50 members

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Originally Posted by Shaone

The way I see it... it's painful for those on legacy servers right now, but a stepping stone towards removing segregation of legacy players and allowing them to move to non-legacy worlds, by trying to bring the economies closer together..

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There's no reason they shouldn't be allowed to do it NOW!

Or don't you know there's a 1M cap on gil you can transfer, which is chump change to many on V2 servers by now.

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Originally Posted by Screaming

pice of bullshit, i know that shiva 0% of the 910 fc´s with 1-10 members can buy a plot even after 9 months, and form the 416 fc´s with 11-50 are still only 20% able to buy a small plot.
so can someone explain me how this should work with the 80%??? btw only 66fc´s over 50 members

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it works that almost noone can get houses although we were teased for months with it
Options:
1.) forget about housing and move on to other aspects of the game
2.) stop playing game because of the insulting price of houses

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

If the initial price of land was easily within the means of wealthy players, one can envision all available plots of land being snatched up immediately, leaving other players—even those possessing the necessary gil—unable to purchase land for an extended period of time.

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This makes things even worse. Basically what's being said here is "To those of you who spent time since launch saving up in anticipation of this feature, we still didn't want you to have it." How is that supposed to give players the warm fuzzy Christmas feeling?

Why not just make a cap for how many plots of land one can own if you're so concerned about wealthy people purchasing too many plots of land? For example, only allow one account to have 2 plots of land at a reasonable cost per server. If you wish to allow them more plots if they so desire, then adjust the price to the ridiculous price you have now for additional plots. (This system should work for individual user housing and free companies if you only allow one free company a limited amount of plots).

I'm new to the game, but decided to join a legacy server. So I find this to be pretty ridiculous when there is a simple solution to the problems you're concerning yourself over, Yoshida.

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Originally Posted by Onyxys

You are planing to live (play) in this game forever. Ok. But most of players dont have such wishes

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I wouldn't say forever but there is content planned every couple months and multiple expansions over the next several years so ya I plan on playing for a while just like i played XI for 7 years. If you don't want to play the game for an extended period of time why are you even playing an MMO, there are plenty of very worthwhile traditional RPG's that you can play for a few months and move on. You can't say the community of an online game because if that were the case you would want to continue playing. Having been a 1.0 player, The main core of my LS ~40+ people are all still playing. Not including the downtime between releases its going on a couple of years since most of us started at launch of 1.0.

People keep mentioning how large guilds should get large plots and small guilds get small plot etc.... There is NO content in this game that can be done with more than 8 premade characters. No, you cannot use Crystal Tower as an example because you cannot queue for it with more than 1 Full group. So with all the content in the game made for 4-8 players.... why is housing being priced around free companies of 100's of people donating?

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Originally Posted by Yuwia

Though on my main I am one of the few you talked about with massive amount of gil(through legit means) I 100% support this. This type of sever segregation is crazy.

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The notion of developers hampering game content to the masses based on the existence of players like you baffles me.

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Originally Posted by Fumamyena

I wouldn't say forever but there is content planned every couple months and multiple expansions over the next several years so ya I plan on playing for a while just like i played XI for 7 years. If you don't want to play the game for an extended period of time why are you even playing an MMO, there are plenty of very worthwhile traditional RPG's that you can play for a few months and move on. You can't say the community of an online game because if that were the case you would want to continue playing. Having been a 1.0 player, The main core of my LS ~40+ people are all still playing. Not including the downtime between releases its going on a couple of years since most of us started at launch of 1.0.

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you you're saying restricting most people from content such as housing is the right way to go? especially for ps3 players that couldnt play forever its discriminating to calculate prices based on most rich people playing since launch

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Originally Posted by Shinalia

How is that supposed to give players the warm fuzzy Christmas feeling?

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You can do your letter to Santa... erh to RMT you know ? For this price i guess they can give you a Merry Christmas or a Christmas song.

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Originally Posted by KraggyKor

There's no reason they shouldn't be allowed to do it NOW!

Or don't you know there's a 1M cap on gil you can transfer, which is chump change to many on V2 servers by now.

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Gil is just one asset that you transfer with. I can still go and buy a ton of quick selling expensive items until I am below the cap (like Tier IV materia) and then perform a steaming dump on the market boards with them on the new world.

One of the most serious problem- FC's now start to find ways how to earn money to buy house- selling materia, gathering, crafting. All resources FC's dont buy, because it is a gil loss- only self gathering. And every earned GIL FC's keep in the chest. Now, just imagine- most of FC's begin work of accumulating gils to buy house. It means, that FC's begin to MOVE OUT gils from the game and begin to keep it in pockets. And now lets see- for example, house price is 625.000.000, but each FC's have in pockets 300.000.000 and none of these FC's will spend money- only accumulating. How much time will elapse before FC's will earn gil enough to buy house? The problem is- NO GIL MOVING between FC's and players of these FC's. What Yoshi is going to think about this?

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Originally Posted by Cubester

You know what also annoys me about your post, Mr. Yoshida?
The fact that even though the forums are on fire about the matter, and that a large part of your player base is angry about it, you still insist that you're right and we should just shut up and deal with it. Because, no matter how long and elaborate your post is, that's what it boils down to.
I have honestly never, not once in my life, seen a company handle a poor decision with such arrogance.

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You've never dealt with EA in any of the games that they've flopped then. I do agree however that the response seemed along the lines of we're right and we're sticking to it. The whole we wanted to combat people miss using the system by making the system unusable for almost the entire player base is a weak argument.

Forcing people to stay subbed for 3 months so they can enjoy content that was introduced 3 months past has got to be one of the worst tactics for subscription retention in modern MMOs. Of course "no one forces you to sub, if you don't like it leave!". I get the long term goal thing, paying for 3 months and playing to reach end game or turns 6-10 of Coil is a great long term goal, paying for 3 months to farm gil isn't. "But it's totally irrelevant and unnecessary content" you say, sure that's why it was hyped up for over a year including an entire live letter dedicated to it and also a whole new section in our crafting logs for it right?

I was ready to plop down for another 180 day sub easily but now I don't really know, it's just battered wife syndrome at this point.

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Originally Posted by Shaone

Gil is just one asset that you transfer with. I can still go and buy a ton of quick selling expensive items until I am below the cap (like Tier IV materia) and then perform a steaming dump on the market boards with them on the new world.

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LOL, you never studied economics, did you?

I can bring an infinite number of high priced items but that doesn't create ONE SINGLE GIL! They're high priced where they come from not where they're transferred to, they're high value on the server with a lot of gil, their value plummets on a server with nothing like as much.

*I* may end up a BIT richer but nett total gil on the server HAS NOT CHANGED! The idea that a V1 player transferring will disrupt a V2 server is economic illiteracy, and an AH 'dump' would collapse the market, not make me even richer.

Please stop talking economics, you're clearly ignorant about it.

Last I checked you were not restricted from purchasing land. What I am saying is that just like any other FF game released you have to work for what you want. On a regular basis after leveling crafts and DoL I can turn around about ~1-2mil a week if I only focused on making money. In reality farming a few hours a few times a week i can walk away with about 500k in profit a week. Just because you don't want to take the time to do that doesn't mean that the prices SE set on the houses are wrong. As for the PS3 players, ya it sucks that the game was delayed for so long, but how should that diminish all the hard work that I have done to earn my gil? Legacy players for the most part have been of the mindset that gil is a total joke in this game because it was not needed for anything until this point in time.

House prices are fine and that's coming from someone with only 150k gil to his name.

Don't people want to feel rewarded for hard work anymore?

its not about not wanting to "work" for a house , im almost lv50 on all battle classes and got like 40K in my pocket , teleporting and repairs cover all my income , im virtually restricted getting a house by the prices because they are not realistic to achieve for me

While I appreciate Yoshida responding, it doesn't make it any better at all. They say they are trying to avoid the wealthiest 1% of players getting all the land, yet, that is all who can and will afford these crazy prices. There should just be a restrictions somehow placed on FCs or players in how many they can buy. Making an FC only able to buy one plot at a time till things settle down, or they sell their existing plot would make more sense. Also only gaining access to said plots through FC achievements or ranks, so people aren't able to create and quickly establish an FC buying up lots and moving from one FC to another.

Either way, this is absolutely terrible flop for 2.1's largest most touted feature. Maybe they should have put an i90 requirement on Crystal Tower, and slowly lower the cap so in 3 months i55 people can get in. Everyone who can't get in should just be patient, in 3 months they can enjoy 2.1!

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Originally Posted by AmnesiaHaze

its not about now wanting to "work" for a house , im almost lv50 on all battle classes and got like 40K in my pocket , teleporting and repairs cover all my income , im virtually restricted getting a house by the prices because they are not realistic to achieve for me

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Well, if you want a house, then it would make sense to stop leveling all of these battle classes and start doing something productive to make money.

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Originally Posted by Someonewithclap

Well, if you want a house, then it would make sense to stop leveling all of these battle classes and start doing something productive to make money.

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if you mean selling items , good luck with people hoarding each and every gil for their own houses , actually yea i want a house but so do i want a sports car in real life , it remains a dream

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Originally Posted by AmnesiaHaze

its not about now wanting to "work" for a house , im almost lv50 on all battle classes and got like 40K in my pocket , teleporting and repairs cover all my income , im virtually restricted getting a house by the prices because they are not realistic to achieve for me

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That's fantastic that you are almost 50 on all DoW/M classes, but how were you planning on making money past questing, mob farming? By doing that you really on appeal to a small amount of crafters in the game Weaver and Leather. Let me ask you have you spent any time on you DoH/L classes? If you haven't there is your problem. This game is about being a well rounded character. BTW teleporting is not an excuse for being broke, one its cheap, and two, its a luxury. Last I checked all the zones are connected and you get basically a free choco that you don't even have to feed to ride it. Oh and repairs, maybe a DoH class would help you out there instead of giving your money back to SE.

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Originally Posted by Doki

snip.

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Thank you, I mean it thank you I don't understand the point of housing. People were saying that it "might" carry buffs along with it, but I don't see any of that. All I'm seeing is a house that only the super rich can afford even for a medium house ghetto range, and it doesn't serve any purpose. One of the largest features in this patch and it's completely worthless to anyone other than RP players and even they can't afford it. So most of the fc's that are large in my server stated they had anywhere from 5million-10 million saved up from months of work. This will only buy a tier 5 small house for an fc of 50-100 people. I guess if they can have a ghetto cottage for all 50 of them to take turns sleeping in.... I had heard that in ffxi that there were buffs that came with the housing and that would have been amazing i'd pour all of my assets into it, but right now this is a major bummer.

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

Our fundamental stance toward housing prices was that we wanted to ensure that plots would be evenly distributed, avoiding a situation in which the wealthiest players could easily buy up all available plots of land.

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The easy way to do that would be to only allow a free company to own one plot of land, total. That would have far fewer unintended consequences.

P. S. The other part of the FC housing prices that stings is how late they were announced. You could have gotten this feedback weeks ago had you announced the prices then, rather than three days before the patch hit.

Making money ?
But all stuff got their prices divided by 2.
We used to sell tokens stuff for 70k, today it's 10k
What do we gain from farming ? How do we make money anymore ?!
I get like 1k per dungeon, do i need to do 1000 dungeons in order to buy a house ?
But yet for that, i'll have to make a FC and have everyone agree with me on where and how i'll build it.
Damn, why so complicated ? I just wanna play Animal Crossing on FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Fumamyena

That's fantastic that you are almost 50 on all DoW/M classes, but how were you planning on making money past questing, mob farming? By doing that you really on appeal to a small amount of crafters in the game Weaver and Leather. Let me ask you have you spent any time on you DoH/L classes? If you haven't there is your problem. This game is about being a well rounded character. BTW teleporting is not an excuse for being broke, one its cheap, and two, its a luxury. Last I checked all the zones are connected and you get basically a free choco that you don't even have to feed to ride it. Oh and repairs, maybe a DoH class would help you out there instead of giving your money back to SE.

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Logic? Get out of here with that! Dont you know what forums you are in!?

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Originally Posted by lukesneeringer

The easy way to do that would be to only allow a free company to own one plot of land, total.

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to be fair now they "evenly distributed" indeed, nobody can afford em :D

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Originally Posted by LastDream

Damn, why so complicated ? I just wanna play Animal Crossing on FFXIV.

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Found the issue.

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

Our fundamental stance toward housing prices was that we wanted to ensure that plots would be evenly distributed, avoiding a situation in which the wealthiest players could easily buy up all available plots of land. Please understand that while we will be adding servers and expanding housing areas as soon as we can, it is simply physically impossible for us to accomplish this easily, in a matter of one or two weeks.

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^^ This is all the info we needed. ^^

As I suspected... the housing servers are simply not ready or stable enough to accept a huge influx of players yet.

Thank you Yoshi P for the clarification (and the quasi-fix to legacy prices). I'll look forward to housing when the servers are ready for it. :)

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Originally Posted by Grizzlebeard

What I take from this statement is that housing wasn't ready for this update so you artificially priced it out of all but the richest players' grasp. If this is the case I feel I would have had more respect for you were you to hold up your hands and admit you needed more time to deliver a product everyone could enjoy. Right now you have a huge part of the playerbase who feels let down, deceived, or downright lied to.

Legacy players are understandably feeling heartily disappointed. Try to remember, the Legacy servers represent people who stuck with you through all the highs and lows of the initial release through to the greatly improved product we have now. I feel you have seriously failed to reward their faith in you.

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This this this this this. This is what I was talking about last night. I'd have much more respected Yoshida and the team if they were honest with us that it wasn't ready due to server issues, than toy us along like this. I'd much rather see the highly promoted feature be stable and secure and ready for the strain of a server fully participating in it than this little dance of carrot on a stick for 3 months. Anyone with the funds available to even afford these outrageous prices is pretty much paying gil right now to beta test for SE. If they'd been honest and said "Hey, this isn't quite ready yet, but we'd like some players to help us test this for a few months", I think players would have been a lot more understanding.

As for the whole bit about fears of server multimillionaires buying out the entire zone. What the heck? Are you seriously saying that your vastly creative team couldn't come up with a better means to prevent housing abuse? Just a few ideas off the top of my head:
- 1 FC land ownership per FC initially. Maybe later FC ranks in future updates allow for more house purchases, or just allow more later in general once you have that server stuff sorted out
- 1 FC land ownership per character. Wow, those multimillionaires now can't buy out the zone now, can they?
- 1 FC land ownership per account on a server. They thought they could get around this by passing off some gil to a new character through a third party? NOPE!
If anyone tries to throw their money around to abuse the zone beyond these checks, you can track gil transactions, no? If it comes up, investigate and handle accordingly.

With the current costs and lack of using logical lockouts like listed above, its so very blatant that you really didn't want people actually using the housing feature right now, but you were afraid to delay it again. Stop insulting us with weak excuses and you'd be surprised at how much respect your customers are ready to give you.

introducing houses for ridiculous prices before servers are ready is a huge mistake imo and they should have waited for the release of them

1.) now people who cant afford it (majority) are pissed of cause the prices are nor realistic to achieve
2.) later when servers will be ready and prices may become affordable the top hardcore players will be pissed off they were robbed for billions and the others can get it cheaper
3.) some people may even unsubscribe if housing was one of their major aspect they were looking for but its out of reach for average players

in any case the current situation is a lose-lose , except for RMT sellers