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

Eh, I'm wondering how FCs feel about these housing prices.

I went on my server to check out the new housing areas...and no one has bought any of the plots. Not a single one yet. Even the wealthiest players on the servers are balking at these prices.

This is so disappointing all around.

So FFXIV 1.0 was a huge failure because of laziness and fore thought and now it's happening again with FC housing. You people ever learn from your past mistakes?

These prices are so insanely high, you have to be HIGH and really stupid to pay 600+ million gil for what... rested EXP?!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Umero

When are they gonna open mortgages for housing? I need to borrow money from SE. I'll pay the down payment. IF I can't meet the monthly fee, just take away the land.

---

That would be funny if in real life you had to pay upfront for a business to own a building. Not even the richest business man is stupid enough to blow all is money on one purchase.

Copied over a post i made about this on my own... figured it summed up how i felt about it and decided to add my thoughts to this thread as well


So when i heard about the Housing being added into FFXIV with 2.1, I got excited.

Now im frustrated.

After looking into the Housing district's a bit, and looking a the prices for each plot, I realized that they did NOT add in 'player' housing. What they added in, is GUILD housing. (or Free Company Housing, whichever term you wish to use).

And here's why.

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/150...c/826/e1sn.jpg

Yup, you see right. Almost 8 'million' gil. for a 'small' plot within the housing area. 8 'MILLION'. And after waiting for it to 'devalue' to see how much that ridiculous price drops.

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/150...c/198/4su7.jpg

Yup... it only dropped 11,200 gil.

At that current rate, it will take 118 'Devaluations' for it to reach 0 for the price. Or 30 DAYS, for those who don't want to do the math (Unless the amount it devalues by goes up with each cycle)

Which means that no 'average' player will even be able to think of getting a house of their own, till near the end of June. And even then, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if every single lot is taken up by then.

Either by:
1) The Major Free Company's.
2) People who feel 'pushed' towards relying on RMT's in order to get the Gil needed to get a house for their character.

Anyone else feel a bit mislead about the 'housing' that was being added in? Expecting/Hoping to see 'player' housing, only to realize what has actually been added is Guild/Free Company Housing?
:mad:

My FC leader: Okay guys, today we're going to sell Titan runs to make another 40M for a second FC house. Who's coming?

Me: http://images.wikia.com/degrassi/ima...uh-sheldon.gif

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rahspdoy

Epilepsy

---

Keep it coming

for those saying 1 plot for each FC, that's is still too easy to get around. that is as easy as giving xx million to my 3 friends who turn around, create 3 more baby FCs, subordinate to me, (assume i dont' just have 4 or more accounts already), and buy every plot around my main plot, again, freezing out the limited number of plots.

Everyone else s solution is, to tell Squenix to spend a few thousand dollars on data center upgrades on a game, they have no idea how many people will be playing in 6 months. so they roll this out, and hope that the feature keeps enough players to pay for a data center expansion.

1st of all the information they gathered the average amount of gill players have!
Most of the players that have in excess of a mill are obviously RMT Gill seller affiliated.
They may be just holding it for a RMT sale!
2nd on my world there is this one RMT that has a unique signature and that RMT has just changed it letters around but the message is the same all the time!
Funny thing is that this player has been there sense the beta!
Why else would SE charge so much for them because this single event will in fact cause the RMT population to explode like FFXI and absolutely destroy this game before it even has a chance to expand!
It just don't make sense nor is it fair to save up six months to a year mining, fishing, crafting, etc. to get one while the cheaters buying Gill with real money or the RMT's buying one and showing it off could purchase three or more!
All this will lead to is more RMT transactions.

Quote:

---

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. Seeking to avoid this, we made the difficult decision to go forward with the pricing scheme we presented, aware that many players would be unable to afford housing for a while.

---

If the fundamental problem is that individual player currency threatens to affect FC Housing then why use individual currency and not the FC Currency that already exists in game. Let the individual currency be used for individual housing and FC Currency be used for FC housing. This also naturally promotes larger FCs getting the larger plots since, I assume, they accumulate FC Points at a faster rate than smaller FC's.

Why is gil even a factor?

I agree with the OP. Slice that Zero!

Many of us here simply because you have fulfilled the promise of an MMO with player housing, something that has not been done right in a decade!

We want our rich fantasy MMO world AND a place within it to call home, a place to decorate with crafted items and collected treasures, to show off to our friends, and to meet and coordinate with our small group.

We are new to this world, we joined a legacy server, and now find out that all of our savings are = to 1/20 of the land price, and that even after 3 MORE months, we will still not be able to afford it. So we have to leave our server now to even hope to afford a house?

It is also a shame that honest players get the shaft based on some back-of-the-envelope math that includes rotten thieving RMT sellers/buyers. Why not take a sample of honest players are re-run your math? Why include the ENTIRE playerbase, which is so very likely to scoop up the baddies.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by V3ndetta

for those saying 1 plot for ......Squenix to spend a few thousand dollars on data center upgrades on a game, they have no idea how many people will be playing in 6 months. so they roll this out, and hope that the feature keeps enough players to pay for a data center expansion.

---

Until I share in their profit, I have no concer for their loss.

It's a realistic view; don't worry about their business model they are profiting plenty!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bluevann

My FC leader: Okay guys, today we're going to sell Titan runs to make another 40M for a second FC house. Who's coming?

Me: http://images.wikia.com/degrassi/ima...uh-sheldon.gif

---

It was obvious that this would happen. And the sad thing is that some people aren't even ashamed of it.

The massively inflated prices do nothing else than making the community worse by encouraging mercenary behavior and discouraging just helping people without a pricetag.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OldGeezer

So? It's an open market. Just because I pay a subscription doesn't mean I'm entitled to FC housing. The individual market is 6 months away and Yoshi said it will be much cheaper. With increased supply prices will come down, it just a matter of when. I can wait.

---

Just to make sure I have this straight. According to you, it's okay to quote Yoshi saying that individual housing is 6 months away and it's going to be much cheaper, but it's not okay to hold those expectations for FC housing when he said those were going to be a fraction of the cost that they actually were. Why is it okay to take his word for one but not the other?

Who is to say he's not going to turn around at patch time (after talking about how personal housing is going to be for 3 months straight) and go "oh, economies are still high and we want to make sure that only 80% of the population ever receives a personal house so we've adjusted all the prices". Cause that is -exactly- what happened here. Except people were actually given a real estimate as opposed to a generalized "much lower" statement that can be interpreted a large number of ways as it means different things to different folks.

This is not the first time he's done a hard turn in what he's said either. I remember being told people just weren't unlocking the full potential of the warrior, and that dark devices was working as intended. Losing the trust of your players, or your consumers/customers, is absolutely not a good thing.

Just as a personal note: What would make -me- happy would be to leave small housing available for 4 million gil. The lower price for the lower server. Allow us to "sell" back our plots of land for around 90% of the cost so that we don't lose out on all of the investment. Keep the higher tiered pricing as is. That's a compromised as I see it. I still wouldn't be happy with that being the entry level price, but it is achievable with a bit of work.

If we're gonna stick with the "server gil dictates the prices" then put the houses up for actual auction and let the player base decide what they're actually worth.

I find it interesting that the numbers for purchase prices are so high. Granted, I was working with a number close to the 2.1 minimum (14,994 Gil per day per player - over a six to seven hour period), I didn't expect them (SE) to go over the 3 million mark per lot on my own server, simply because of the cost inherent to building a house as well as furnishing it with both mechanically useful and vanity items (ignoring the trend of deflating Gil). However, what I am more interested in is the exact math used to calculate the expected average earnings of 15,000 Gil to 18,000 Gil per day. My own math is as follows:
18 FATE’s: 1,800
6 Hunting Leve: 4794(?)
Minimum for 3 WP Runs: 8,400 <-- A greater number was mentioned?
Minimum per DoW/DoM Player per Day: 14,994
Total Minimum Gil for DoW/DoM Population per Day: 8,511,194,160

Seeing as I was incorrect on my prediction of current housing prices, would it be possible for anyone to help me correct the numbers in my personal calculations?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

This is FFXIV: ARR Producer/Director Naoki Yoshida. First of all, allow me to express my thanks to all of you who have offered feedback on the matter of housing prices. Needless to say, I have been following the discussion very closely.

---

First of all, thanks for taking the time to respond, but I'm afraid I have to say that I don't find the response very satisfactory, if at all.

Here are the reasons why and a few possible solutions:

1: if you don't want all the land to be grabbed by "the wealthiest players" immediately, the solution is very simple: just allow each Free Company to own only one plot of land/deed. No one needs more than than one now anyway, and with this kind of prices there's no market for land outside of just scraping the bottom of the barrel to get one for your free company. The ability to sell land deeds to other players is an accessory we can easily do without for now. Locking a large portion of your playerbase out of the whole feature for an extended period of time is much more damaging.

2: I'm afraid you underestimate the problem of having to wait for multiple months before being able to purchase a house for many free companies. Free Company housing was hyped and publicized for December 17th, 2013, not for March 17th, 2014. And it was hyped probably a lot more than it was warranted. It was hyped so much that the President and CEO of Square Enix worked up the hype himself basically during every single Live Letter by becoming "housing ojisan". In the past you also said that three level 50 players would have been able to afford a FC house by putting their savings together and three days ago you contradicted that.

I'm sure you understand that announcing that a large portion of your playerbase is now locked out of the feature for three months is simply not cool, and should be addressed a lot faster than in three months. The announcement of the prices just three days before the patch was a low blow.

Even due to the hype generated by your company, many were looking forward to patch 2.1 mainly for the housing feature, and I'd like to see Square Enix take responsibility for that and amend the prices to make them accessible immediately*. I'm quite sure you have the tools to do so.

3: I'm confident that you looked at a lot of metrics, but the fact remains that a LOT of players on legacy servers aren't as rich as you believe, and their free companies are being penalized for the sake of those that are rich. It's also unjust that players on legacy servers are penalized compared to players on non legacy servers, because we all pay the same monthly fees, and that IMHO, gives us the right to access the same features in game at the same rate. It's not right to penalize a whole category of players because SOME players within that category are richer.

4: the difference in housing prices that will still be retained even in three months will make legacy servers much less popular between new players coming with the PS4 and Steam versions of the game, than non legacy worlds, which will result in us having trouble convincing our friends to join us on our servers. This difference in popularity might easily lead to underpopulation on the long run, as a number of players will naturally leave while less players join. This kind of discrepancy should be avoided at all costs.

Ultimately, Yoshida-san, I think that we need something done a faster than three months from now, for the reasons mentioned above. Here are my suggestions:

1: Limit ownership of land deeds to 1 per Free Company
2: enact one of the following at the most immediate possible time.
a: slice one zero off all prices
b: slice one zero off prices of small land plots, halve medium, keep large as is.
c: immediately* unify prices of legacy servers to category 3 and drop all servers to category 1 in three months OR immediately* unify prices of legacy servers to category 3 raise prices of category 1 and 2 to category 3 in three months. Whichever more appropriate.

*Immediately is intended as "at the earliest technically possible time", of course no one is demanding for it to happen right now.

I'm sorry, but I see no other solution. As they are now, the prices are massively unjust towards a large part of the community in order to address problems that they didn't cause (IE you're penalizing those that aren't rich in order to dry the money of those that are), and I don't think it's right to ask those that are being penalized to just wait for three months in order to enjoy a feature that was massively hyped as the primary feature of the first large content patch of the game, and for which we already waited for several months (actually more than a year since it was announced).

I know and appreciate that you're working very hard to make this game a success, but this blunder is counterproductive to that success, and is penalizing many of your most faithful supporters, while there'd be way to handle it much more gracefully and without penalizing people that don't deserve that kind of treatment.

All the best,

Any "faithful" supporter most likely played FFXI and doesn't bat an eye at the thought of it taking 3 months to earn something. The amount of crying in this thread is hilarious.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Abriael

I know and appreciate that you're working very hard to make this game a success, but this blunder is counterproductive to that success, and is penalizing many of your most faithful supporters, while there'd be way to handle it much more gracefully and without penalizing people that don't deserve that kind of treatment.

All the best,

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rok

Any "faithful" supporter most likely played FFXI and doesn't bat an eye at the thought of it taking 3 months to earn something. The amount of crying in this thread is hilarious.

---

Too bad that in FFXI housing was completely free.

And in FFXI Square Enix didn't ride the hype train as it did for housing in FFXIV.

Try again :D

I just want to say I am an OG when it comes to hating on Yoshi and the 95 pages of this thread warms my heart.

I'm not sure if Free Company Credits has been addressed by the DEV team yet.

Did you consider having FC Housing purchased with FC credits and decided against it?

Is there a possibility that FC credits may be used to off-set the Housing costs still?

I can't see any reason why they weren't the primary currency used to purchase housing. I also don't see why they could not be used right now to buy a discount voucher for the purchase of FC housing.

I think last time I checked our FC had around 500,000 FC credits (from memory here). That represents the actual combined achievements of the FC, which is exactly what the FC housing size and location should represent.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Abriael

Too bad that in FFXI housing was completely free.

And in FFXI Square Enix didn't ride the hype train as it did for housing in FFXIV.

Try again :D

---

You miss his point entirely. To achieve anything worthwhile in FF11 it took awhile.....some things took years.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tazo

You miss his point entirely. To achieve anything worthwhile in FF11 it took awhile.....some things took years.

---

I didn't miss the point. As a matter of fact, he missed it. Nothing of that was a vanity feature hyped as much as Housing in FFXIV has been, and all of it had entry levels. The problem with FFXIV's housing is that it does not have an entry level at all. If your company can't afford the overly exaggerated prices of a land plot, you're completely locked out of the feature for the time being.

Of course those trying to defend this blunder try to resort to every possible fallacy and unfitting comparison, exactly like you're doing, but it doesn't really work.

So many other ways of fixing this issue than what they chose. They could have easily limited the amount of homes an FC could buy, or basically make it so a house has to be owned for a % of time before it can be let go, or sold, or whatever it is they're so afraid of. The guild rank requirements alone could prevent an FC from just making new puppet FCs for housing. -sigh- SE you're so green at this it hurts.

Yoshida, you make us wait months for this release, then want us to wait THREE more months before we can even consider if housing is an option. That is such a scumbag thing to do to Legacy players. If you were a player in this game, even you would fucking hate this. I honestly question if you'd even stick around and play it.

He follows the thread closely! This is cool. Who in MMO does that? Only mr. cool yoshi does! lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tazo

You miss his point entirely. To achieve anything worthwhile in FF11 it took awhile.....some things took years.

---

Adoulin gives you an entire island for free. We aren't asking for that, we just want prices to not be crazy high for something that is generally catered more towards the casual audience in the first place. The hardcores with 600 million generally don't give a flying flip about buying housing anyway.

What about people new to the game and just starting there FC mind you we have 130+ members but still hard to get 8 mill for 1st small plot. I understand that the total gil of all players so the less fortunate get to wait a decade before they see there own land. who would want to wait 90 days for it to be affordable and if your gonna expand more instances then why not make it more workable

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Smashington

I'm not sure if Free Company Credits has been addressed by the DEV team yet.

Did you consider having FC Housing purchased with FC credits and decided against it?

Is there a possibility that FC credits may be used to off-set the Housing costs still?

I can't see any reason why they weren't the primary currency used to purchase housing...

... [Credits represent] the actual combined achievements of the FC, which is exactly what the FC housing size and location should represent.

---

When it was first announced that FC housing would be rolled out first (majorly bad decision, in my opinion), I assumed it would cost Company Credits. It makes absolutely perfect sense to use them to buy a Guild Hall for the reason I bolded in the quote above. Aside from buffs, they don't seem to be used for anything else.

I brought this up a few times in FC chat but never posted it on the forums, because I assumed I must have missed a discussion somewhere where it was explained why this obvious-to-me option was decided against. Surely, the Powers-That-Be must have some sort of reasonable explanation.

I'd like to hear it.

and dgsoil is right its only the hardcore FC like excel who sell titan runs for 200k each that can afford it

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rok

Any "faithful" supporter most likely played FFXI and doesn't bat an eye at the thought of it taking 3 months to earn something. The amount of crying in this thread is hilarious.

---

Oh, look! Yet another person from the cheaper server telling us we're whining.

Go. Away.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dyne_Fellpool

Its a house. You dont NEED one. People need to calm down and just wait patiently until they can afford one. Geez
How is this even a huge issue? Prices will come down.

---

Don't come in here and tell us what we need or don't need. Not everyone is into this game for the "epic loots" and 24 man raid content.
This "just a house" happens to be a major part of the 2.1 patch, a part I and a lot of other people were looking forward to enjoying at the release of 2.1 after being teased about it for so long. But we now find ourselves barred from purchasing a house because of SE's ridiculous pricing scheme.
If they knew that we couldn't actually use the houses until three bloody months down the road then perhaps they should've just told us so and released it in a next patch, avoiding all of this drama in the first place!

I don't care if things took years in FF11. My small guild house for my buddies shouldn't cost 20 goddamn million. There is nothing we can't buy in this game already, with the few of us having millions on our retainers. It's crazy to think we can't even come close to buying the smallest, worst plots until maybe 3 months from now.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TrystWildkey

Oh, look! Yet another person from the cheaper server telling us we're whining.

Go. Away.

---

not all people that are on NA are so bad. Titan's Freedom Army on Exodus has some the nicest people ive met in mmorpg's, couldnt be a happier FC owner to have such awesome members. Rok is probly one them players who is a member and not someone who owns or manages one. Lets just not feed the trolls here.

People keep throwing 3 months around. That's three months in his own words grinding gil 7 days a week, and assuming everyone in your FC will do the same in that time. Who wants to do that for something so trivial? Ridiculous.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cubester

Don't come in here and tell us what we need or don't need. Not everyone is into this game for the "epic loots" and 24 man raid content. This "just a house" happens to be a major part of the 2.1 patch, a part I and a lot of other people were looking forward to enjoying at the release of 2.1 after being teased about it for so long. But we now find ourselves barred from purchasing a house because if SE's ridiculous pricing scheme.

---

I would muchly agree as i own my own FC and i myself am taking my time and building things up for my members as the house is to give bonuses and such as well the underground airship building and there Claim "to have the biggest housing in MMORPG history" thats something im looking for and just not expecting it to be soo much. It was hard to get my FC to 2 mill.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Amiabelle

When it was first announced that FC housing would be rolled out first (majorly bad decision, in my opinion), I assumed it would cost Company Credits... Surely, the Powers-That-Be must have some sort of reasonable explanation. I'd like to hear it.

---

Should we keep bringing it up until it is addressed?

It seems too obvious to have just been completely overlooked by the DEV team. It seems like housing bought with FC credits solves a majority of the issues stated in the reply letter (except the lack of stable server space).

If housing was bought with FC credits, people would be spending all day looking at the currently irrelevant in-game achievements and doing all they can to pick the low-hanging fruit. You know, level a crafter to 10, go fishing for the first time, etc. From a content diversity point-of-view, this seems like an ideal situation.

Can't afford FC housing? Go find some achievements and complete them!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Abriael

Snip

---

Wholeheartedly agree with everything you've said. But alas, SE seems to love doing things the absolute hardest way possible. If they limited FC land titles to one per FC, all the concerns Yoshi said in his statement here would be addressed. How they overlooked something so dreadfully simple is beyond me.

Clearly, the driving force behind this is to eliminate gil from the richest of the rich, but why does that even bother them? It's not like the 10+ people (with hundreds of millions of gil) on a server of thousands will bother gaming the market so much that it destroys the economy. If anything, now that the land prices are so impossibly expensive, it totally promotes the richest of the rich to game the market to profit from others that are trying to save up to afford even the smallest plots of land.

Too bad this game just keeps getting more and more heat for how poorly they are delivering stuff to their playerbase. I really wanted to enjoy this game and spread the word at how awesome it is, but man sh*t like this makes it so, so hard.

Look if I'm honest this will end up being fine. They It was already stated that prices will fall (albeit it'll take a while but it will fall) and that more plots will eventually be added. As well as that the dev team are looking at prices and will adjust the accordingly. While it may seem quite pricey for a house, i understand what they are doing here and am willing to wait. Plus we have a but load of other content to play while we wait (which can generate us more gil).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

With this pricing scheme, we sought a balance in which roughly 80% of all existing free companies will be able to purchase at least a small-sized plot in three months’ time.

---

OMG, someone give this guy a clue, almost NONE OF US want the small ass crappy Inn-Sized house, it's so small and shitty that it's not worth the gil, not even if the small house was way under 1 million gil, it would not be worth it. It's basically a moghouse from FFXI that you have to share with 2-500 people...who the hell wants that? Geez, making me hate this game, cut the crap already, I'm not paying you to screw me over.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Fal13nMetalGod

Look if I'm honest this will end up being fine. They It was already stated that prices will fall (albeit it'll take a while but it will fall) and that more plots will eventually be added. As well as that the dev team are looking at prices and will adjust the accordingly. While it may seem quite pricey for a house, i understand what they are doing here and am willing to wait. Plus we have a but load of other content to play while we wait (which can generate us more gil).

---

What if you chose a Legacy server because your friends were there. But due to the Legacy server having a higher population that already had relics, they decided to slow down this progression for everyone. Now, instead of going through the same amount of effort to get a relic as other servers, because you're on Legacy and other players already have them, you have to win Chimera 10 times instead of 1. You also have to beat each hard primal 10 times as opposed to 1. You have to get the base weapon and meld it 10 times instead of just 1.

But, that's not fair!!! Oh, but you see, there are so many people that already have relics, even some players that have a relic for every job, so you see, we needed to limit the number of people that got relics. So sorry, these requirements will ease up in the next 3-6 months. In the meantime, enjoy the rest of the content!

Why does this response only have a like / thumbs up option...? IMO this is an unacceptable response to just say "Hey we're sorry for the thousands of people that disagree with our "Fundamental Pricing Stance", but it is what it is, so deal with it". As a community, the majority of the people who have been looking forward to housing who play this game were expecting to be able to participate in this content upon release of the patch.. And now you're saying less than maybe 10% are able to afford the housing? and probably less than 1/2 will be able to afford it within the next 3 months?! THANK YOU for taking the interest in the COMMUNITY to heart in your decision, because I'm sure that's what's really in the forefront of your mind and not the millions that you'll make off of subscription fees in the next 3 months to have this content dragged out, considering that so many people are bored with the content that is available right now!

I haven't gone through the 96 or so pages of this. Let me see if I'm getting this right. If I'm wrong, someone correct me on this please.

If I grind 7 days a week for 5 hours and get what... 20k gil a day, I'll be able to afford a house on a small plot.

20,000 x 90 = 1,800,000 gil

So that's not even enough to get a small plot on Balmung.

Unfortunately, some of us don't have 5 hours a day to spare. We have jobs and other things we need to take care of. So for us, this 3 month deal will end up being 5-6, maybe even 7 months...