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

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Originally Posted by Icefall

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.

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That's funny, I don't see a whole lot of respect being given to SE for anything they do.

MR YOSHIDA-SAN TARE THIS 0 DOWN!

None of these answers have any merit. Dont want an Fc buying them all lmit to owning one plot at any time. Its been known it would be somewhat limited since start, we have known that no not everyone will be able to get one off the bat, but makeing it unavailabe to the majority except the wealthest is not a solution. And yes there may be players with mass amounts of gil, but they are not the standard by any means. Sometimes i seriously wonder if you have really taken the time to see the state of your games economy, because it is a joke. sure player can do dungeons now w/e make 20k a day, if thats all they wanna do. Im disabled can farm all i want doesnt mean i wanna spend all my time doing it. Nor would or could i hand all of it over to an fc. There is no logic behind it.

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Originally Posted by Fumamyena

Snip.

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I like your enthusiasm here. So with those numbers it'll take you 200 weeks with just the farming profit, to get the best house on my server. Now keep in mind there is more gil in your economy according to SE so you make more because there is more in circulation so we'll say that working the same amount of time doing the same thing that the gill will translate down to the approximate value that is equal which is 1/3ish according to SE server prices. So we would need 300 of you working for 2 weeks with no pay and no real game changing incentive to buy the plot. Then another week for the furniture and so forth with 300 of you i'm sure that we can manage to get some crafters in there. In the end I believe owning something that does nothing other than looks good isn't worth an estimated 10800 man hours that's 3 hours of farming at 4 days a week per person. (This is all in the nature of fun I just wanted to do some equations and get some laughs) :D

What I gathered from Yoshida's response is that ultimately the reasoning for the ridiculous pricing was to help prevent an issue with their servers (i.e. they couldn't actually create any more plots physically to keep up with demand). Instead of delaying until 2.2, which would have made the most sense, they instead decided to slap a large chunk of their playerbase across the face.

Well played, Good Sir.

i agree this is pure non since

yoshida you are choking off the life blood of your player base

What resonates the most with me are the comments about people are going to be hoarding gil to save up and the amount of gil going through the markets is likely going to go down. That would reduce the amount that people can make through anything market related, tons of people crafting trying to make gil, less people buying, supply demand all that jazz. Going to toss anything you used to make money with on the markets on its head

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Originally Posted by am0n

What I gathered from Yoshida's response is that ultimately the reasoning for the ridiculous pricing was to help prevent an issue with their servers (i.e. they couldn't actually create any more plots physically to keep up with demand). Instead of delaying until 2.2, which would have made the most sense, they instead decided to slap a large chunk of their playerbase across the face.

Well played, Good Sir.

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yes, if they were being honest upfront with the facts that 99% wont be able to have a house when they launch it at least we wouldnt look forward to it , but it was proclaimed as one of the major patch features so its completely natural so many are disappointed, delaying + honesty would be a wiser choice in regards to housing

I don't know if I've completely missed the point, but this is Free Company Housing, so how can one person possibly monopolise the market? Surely as its owned by the free company, and you can only belong to one free company, how can you own all the land? Is there no Rare/Ex status of the land that a free company can only own 1 plot in each city state?

And if that's the case then surely Yoshi-p's statement is a mute point?

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Originally Posted by am0n

What I gathered from Yoshida's response is that ultimately the reasoning for the ridiculous pricing was to help prevent an issue with their servers (i.e. they couldn't actually create any more plots physically to keep up with demand). Instead of delaying until 2.2, which would have made the most sense, they instead decided to slap a large chunk of their playerbase across the face.

Well played, Good Sir.

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Things are generally made available to the top 1% of players before it trickles down ward.

The community isnt holding picket signs over most people not downing Twintania, whats the difference? The fact is, there isnt a difference.

The most dedicated and well off players will get houses first and the rest of the community will get them later. (This is coming from someone who probably wont get a house.)

if you want prices to drop like this post

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Originally Posted by Someonewithclap

Things are generally made available to the top 1% of players before it trickles down ward.

The community isnt holding picket signs over most people not downing Twintania, whats the difference? The fact is, there isnt a difference.

The most dedicated and well off players will get houses first and the rest of the community will get them later. (This is coming from someone who probably wont get a house.)

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Twintania requires effort to obtain the gear needed and a level of skill and coordination with your team.

vs

65 million gil.

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Originally Posted by Someonewithclap

Things are generally made available to the top 1% of players before it trickles down ward.

The community isnt holding picket signs over most people not downing Twintania, whats the difference? The fact is, there isnt a difference.

The most dedicated and well off players will get houses first and the rest of the community will get them later. (This is coming from someone who probably wont get a house.)

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The difference is, no one is barred from entering Coil itself. You can see Turn 1 and the difficulty is such that the large majority of people seem to clear T1 without really any difficulty. In housing you aren't being offered the content at all without meeting gil requirements that just aren't anywhere near player friendly. The actual equivalent in your example would be 1% of the players getting the largest house and then that trickling downwards with most people affording the small sized house with relative ease. (which, btw, I have seen most players against the current housing setup supporting)

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Originally Posted by Argurios

You know what, I agree with Yoshi on this. He says that 80% of FC's will be able to afford a house in 3 months’ time – challenge accepted, it’s doable if you put some effort in. Honestly the majority of people on these forums complain about everything from content to how the game isn’t that difficult, how it’s boring to do this, that and the other and yet when you're presented with a challenge such as saving up to acquire a FC Home - what do you do? Complain again that it’s too difficult, that it’s priced too high, it’s not fair, not viable blah blah blah honestly it’s pathetic. Its embarrassing reading posts on these forums, if you want it bad enough you will work hard to get it if not then shut up and wait for the price to come down.

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I agree. People played and didn't save and now they are shocked that the prices don't match the numbers in their bank accounts. Whose fault is that? SE's? No. SE realized that people we're going to blow their money on teleporting and repair bills so they set a goal achievable in 3 months. 4 million for a small house on most servers. For an FC with 10 people that's 400k each in 3 months. That's totally doable. Hell, I've made 3x that in the last 3 months. That is a very achievable goal. You just can't have it NOW! But that's fine, because you didn't plan for it. It gives your FC an objective besides face rolling your next AK/WP run. People complained about there being nothing to do. Well here's your next challenge. Housing. It's a luxury item and it's a permanent item. There's no property taxes, it will be a permanent fixture until they pull the plug. It shouldn't be something a few people can get in a few days, it should be a dedicated, concerted effort. If you don't like it wait 6 months and buy your own house at a much cheaper price.

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Originally Posted by OldGeezer

It gives your FC an objective besides face rolling your next AK/WP run.

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There is no objective. Donate your money or we don't get a house! Super fun goal for all FCs world-wide.

If they wanted us to have an objective it would have been designed to work together to build the house.

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Originally Posted by Sayura_

Twintania requires effort to obtain the gear needed and a level of skill and coordination with your team.

vs

65 million gil.

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65 Million gil requires a crafter or gather to know what to make or gather and know how the market is going to make a profit off those to make gil requires team effort and skill.

VS

tank/dps/healer

Seem's you forgot about these type of gamers were end goal is dedicated and effort to making gil.

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Originally Posted by Sayura_

There is no objective. Donate your money or we don't get a house! Super fun goal for all FCs world-wide.

If they wanted us to have an objective it would have been designed to work together to build the house.

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Then you can wait like the rest of us who aren't in a FC. Get in line.

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Originally Posted by OldGeezer

I agree. People played and didn't save and now they are shocked that the prices don't match the numbers in their bank accounts. Whose fault is that? SE's? No.

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Incorrect. Many people saved up money based on the cost of housing estimate that Yoshi himself gave stating that the FC housing would cost about the same as 3-5 (can't remember the exact) people going from 1-50. At a maximum, assuming a generous 500k per person and 5 people, that was 2.5million. So who's fault is it that unrealistic expectations for housing prices were set in the first place?

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Originally Posted by Iymala

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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Because we exist.

Please Be Careful has about 350 active members (and more returning from inactivity because of 2.1). We're saving up for a large plot. If you're a small group, then you should work towards a small house.

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

We ask for your patience and understanding as we strive to create a balanced housing system.[/INDENT]

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How many more times are we asked for our patience?

We were patient at Alpha/Beta of 1.0.
Many were patient after 1.0 release and even after the first big patch in 2010.
With the announcement of 2.0 we did show alot of patience till it got into Beta and finally released.
I was patient when it was said that Housing wont be in for release and that we have to wait for first major-patch.

And now, after a long time of waiting, i do have to realize that i just did wait that long for being told to wait again?

You teased us with all that stuff about housing just to show most ppl the middle finger?
Awesome...

And don't think we believe those "we did want to prevent ppl to buy all plots" arguments, since they dont make any sense.
There are ways like limiting plots a char/FC can have, to prevent such stuff and im really worried about the games future, if the developers can't think of simple stuff like that.

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Originally Posted by Someonewithclap

Found the issue.

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Stop beeing an arrogant brat, you perfectly know that the housing is no more than RP stuff close to what i said. If you have thousands and millions of gils, played 1000000 hours on the game and find yourself beeing the best player in the world, that's your problem, but beeing arrogant against the community on all topics and denying some facts about the game that makes it worst is how you show yourself beeing a selfish kid trying to defend the undefendable. The Housing has issues, the PvP is bad, the patch is full of issues and people have the right to complain/point about them, but on your side you have no right to not respect that. The more posts you make on people around the forum, the more you're just drowning yourself. If the game is what it is now "A Realm Reborn", is because people shouted for the mistakes in 1.0, so it would be lovely for you to quit and stop whining about people complaining on true facts.

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Originally Posted by Sunarie

Incorrect. Many people saved up money based on the cost of housing estimate that Yoshi himself gave stating that the FC housing would cost about the same as 3-5 (can't remember the exact) people going from 1-50. At a maximum, assuming a generous 500k per person and 5 people, that was 2.5million. So who's fault is it that unrealistic expectations for housing prices were set in the first place?

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It was an estimate, not extablished fact. Yoshi explained why the prices are so high. There is a limited number of plots and they don't want the uber rich to buy all the small plots up. You can get your house for 2.5 million, it just won't be now.

Pretty much SE wanted to introduce the housing and wanted people to have to work for it once release and they accounted for people will be saving for it and the influx of gil already in game so to balance it out they made it so people couldn't just first day pay all the land from first day of 2.1.

Instead they put in place a system were prices will gradually go down to were if people saved even more by time those prices reduction go into play people will be able to afford a small house then working over a period of months to upgrade and expand but that asking to much from this community apparently. I don't totally agree with SE im stuck in the middle really on this subject but like the fact ill have to earn a house instead of just given one from the start.

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Originally Posted by Alegis

You teased us with all that stuff about housing just to show most ppl the middle finger?
Awesome...

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Feels like Fable...

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Originally Posted by OldGeezer

It was an estimate, not extablished fact. Yoshi explained why the prices are so high. There is a limited number of plots and they don't want the uber rich to buy all the small plots up. You can get your house for 2.5 million, it just won't be now.

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Yoshi gave the estimate. Players saved based on that estimate. It is downright silly to say it's the player's fault to go off the director of the game's estimate when deciding how to save for housing. My entire point was that you were incorrect in saying that people not saving enough wasn't SE's fault because it is their fault entirely. Not only did they give an estimate that was only about 1/3rd of total cost for the majority of servers, but they literally made it so you couldn't save up enough. As in.. the more you saved, the more they were going to bump up the prices because they didn't want anything more than a small amount of people to have it at patch time. They didn't let us in on that last little tidbit though.

Also, the reason given, just points to SE not having the server capacity to handle that happening. Many people in this very thread have pointed out how that can be prevented without punishing the entire player base with prices next to no one can afford, even after saving up for three months based on Yoshi's own estimations for cost.

To be honest, I like the ridiculous prices. It'll work as a money sink, as intended. Then maybe they'll deem my server not too rich and finally let me transfer away from Legacy with my character that's likely poorer than most DL-geared people in non-Legacy worlds.

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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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What is your plan to address this problem when the wealthiest players decide not to buy housing immediately and wait three months (spending that time accruing more wealth) until prices have been reduced? Will there be a system in place to stop them from being able to "buy out" an entire instance three months from now when prices are lower? If the problem of instances being bought out is not addressed now; then when will you address it? Putting a bigger price tag on the content will not "fix" the issue.

Will you be able to invest in more hardware to provide the needed infrastructure or are we going to see similar barriers on personal housing? If you cannot implement it right; don't do it at all. Don't make promises you and your team can't keep.

Sorry for not taking your word on it anymore.

Please explain how you plan to address this.

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Originally Posted by KraggyKor

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

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If it makes you feel better then yep, I haven't studied economics... but as I understood it, top end materia and hq crafted goods were much cheaper on legacy worlds than new ones, due to the larger supply pool coming over from 1.0. I might take a peek again, but certainly seemed to be that way last time I looked.

All my original post said was that I believe SE are trying to use the housing pricing differences to bring the amounts of gil in each economy closer together, as a pre-cursor to opening up world transfers from legacy to non-legacy. Particularly as Yoshi quoted non-legacy servers as the target for the deprecation. You disagree, and think it is completely unrelated. That's fine, we can have different opinions. What do you think the reason they restrict world transfer is then?

People expected housing to be something they would access on Day 1. not only that, seems like most people expected to get the large plots on day 1, even in small FC's. Now, its something to work towards, to set a goal as a FC and accomplish it. Yeah, it kinda sucks that we don't get to buy houses and decorate them all on Day 1 then complain about nothing to do with them. But, if you people would step off the ledge and adjust your expectations where a small or medium house is acceptable, you could still enjoy it. Or just do what I expect most of you to do anyway. QQ here and other forums and proclaim how if you don't get it your way, you and your 500 member FC will quit and the game will be dead.

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Originally Posted by Shaone

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Don't let the bait get you. I'm quite certain you understand the economics as they are in the game quite well.
It's these half wit's that try and use $60K University Degrees to draw parallel's to real world economics that should be laughed at.

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Originally Posted by Dhex

What is your plan to address this problem when the wealthiest players decide not to buy housing immediately and wait three months (spending that time accruing more wealth) until prices have been reduced? Will there be a system in place to stop them from being able to "buy out" an entire instance three months from now when prices are lower? If the problem of instances being bought out is not addressed now; then when will you address it? Putting a bigger price tag on the content will not "fix" the issue.

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Just another proving point that this wasn't about preventing a buy out by the Uncle Moneybags and Uncle Scrooges of the servers. There is nothing in place to prevent land ownership abuse other than cost. This was all just about buying time for SE to trickle users in to stress test their instance infrastructure before properly releasing it in full. This was a way to delay content without having to say it was delayed, but it really was the worst way to go about it since SE chose to dance around the issue instead of being honest and upfront about it.

I don't wanna hear excuses yoship just fix the BS.

Might be late to the party.. Been playing the game.

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

Fundamental Pricing Stance

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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If they are so worried about all the rich people buying up land why didn't they make it so only FC leaders can buy a plot of land and only one?

"In each legacy World, there are more than ten players in possession of over one hundred million gil. Even in non-legacy Worlds, there are a significant number of players with several million gil".

So because more than 10 people on a legacy server has more than 100mil we all have to get stiffed. Way to go 1%.

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Originally Posted by Sunarie

Yoshi gave the estimate. Players saved based on that estimate. It is downright silly to say it's the player's fault to go off the director of the game's estimate when deciding how to save for housing. My entire point was that you were incorrect in saying that people not saving enough wasn't SE's fault because it is their fault entirely. Not only did they give an estimate that was only about 1/3rd of total cost for the majority of servers,...

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It was an estimate but the cold reality is that other people saved more than you. Your 2.5 million won't be enough because initial supply is low. You won't be able to buy a doghouse in the first round. So to give you a shot SE developed a diminishing lottery so all the plots aren't gobbled up right away, but it requires people to wait and people here are very impatient.

My advice to you is to buy 5 individual houses together and throw block parties instead.

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Originally Posted by Dark-Saviour

But....
You knew this was coming.

You knew this was coming from the start.
Actually... You knew this was coming pre-2.Ø...

I just...
Why?
Why has it not been decided that the data centers should be upgraded to handle the game and all of its features in full?
Why does this continue to be such a limiting factor, and how long is this going to keep cropping up?

I wasn't likely to get FC housing anyway due to the rank requirement and the fact that, even at 'reasonable' prices, it'd be probably beyond a 1-person FC, but the thing that's been eating at me through all of this and what has made me so negative is specifically the concern expressed above; we keep running into issues because not enough investment is being made into the hardware...

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The subscription numbers exceeded Square's expectations. They continue to upgrade hardware as we go trying to minimize downtime whenever possible. Like with patch 2.1. There were hardware upgrades.

All I know if my FC had been saving since day one so we could work on the housing when released. We enjoy crafting and housing most but at this point are small FC will be likely moving on to a game that may care a little more about the needs of the players. I was fully expecting the Large House to be maybe 20-30 mil and that would have been perfect. We thought our 2 mil that took us since release to build would of have been more then enough for a small plot at least!

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Originally Posted by Icefall

Just another proving point that this wasn't about preventing a buy out.

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I merely asked because it seems like Yoshida is either trying to divert attention from the fact that they could not implement this content properly, or he is being honest with this presentation of what they wanted to do and what they would like to do but has failed to observe the blatant fallacy in the argument for this pricing. In short the explanation he's presenting falls short in addressing the issue driving the decision making.

Which makes me wary of trusting his insights with us (the community) on content his team is developing.

This makes ZERO sense from a ''keep players in game'' mind set... Why in the WORLD would you out price 80% of the player base in a new feature you added into the game. Then blame it on server capacity and the ''rich''? That is the worst excuse I have seen for an MMO screw up in YEARS. Why wouldn't you just limit it to one house per account, accessible by all characters on the account? This and other ''features'' you added to the game are why I will no longer be supporting Square or FFXIV... I'm sorry, this could have been a home run for most of the player base, but instead you opted for a bunt and struck out.

Lando: We've got to be able to get some kind of a reading on that shield, up or down. Well, how could they be jamming us if they don't know... if we're coming. Break off the attack! The shield is still up.

Ackbar: It's a trap!

So, my fellow conspiracy theorists ... why would Yoshida-san deploy a seemingly limited (yet operational) feature such as housing, that can only be utilized by those player (or groups of players) with ludicrously large piles of gil available to them, in which more than one can be acquired in order to potentially corner the housing market ... yet provides ZERO in-game tactical or economic advantages??

I submit these facts to you:

• Yoshida-san's team knows precisely who has how much gil (thanks to that survey).
• Yoshida-san's team knows how much gil a given server can produce in a day/week/month based on the population on that server.
• The patch notes clearly states (multiple times) that if they detect RMT activity regarding housing, ALL the gil used to purchase those lots (I am deliberately using plural) will be eliminated from the server.
• Housing provides no immediately tangible benefits.

So if I wanted to destroy ... let's say the entire Rebel Fleet in one fell swoop. I would present a very valuable Death Star that seems to be quite vulnerable to typical rebel guerrilla tactics, let them go about their tactics, and when they think they're about to succeed in their strategy, spring the trap. Replace "Rebel Fleet" with "RMT" and you see what I am getting at.

Housing right now is RMT bait. It is setup in such a way that ONLY the extremely rich (which Yoshida-san know who they are thanks to the survey) and RMT can participate in at launch. It's almost deliberately designed to exclude normal players for at least a couple months. Why would you want to exclude your normal rank and file players from something that is good?? Unless it is not good. Unless it's a trap, and you don't want any chance of them being caught in it at launch.

Yoshida-san had to know (again the survey) that he didn't have enough server capacity right now to accommodate every Free Company wanting housing. He could have just delayed it 3 months to the next patch, when housing benefits are also supposed to added. But he didn't. Why?? Because Yoshida-san is a general, and not only is he fighting for good things in the game, he is fighting against bad things ... like RMT. Why not use this seeming setback as an opportunity to remove BILLIONS of RMT gil from the the servers?

If an RMT FC buys up 10 top tier lots on a server and even 1 gil from it is proved to be RMT, the deed is seized and all 3+ billion gil paid for those deeds is removed from the server.

Anyway, that's what I would do. If that is the plan (and it works) it will be most impressive, indeed.