Personal Housing *SHOULD* be expensive...aka Yet Another Housing Topic

None of this matters, personal housing shouldn't have been done this way, it was said that it wasn't going to be done this way. Plain and simple.

Yes: cheap but equivalent land has to stay expensive, otherwise:
1) Everyone wants it and they need to provide about 100 times as many lots as they have.
2) FC's would lose a big 'raison d'etre'
3) With everyone having a garden, gardening would become an expensive hobby in stead of a solid contribution to an FC's wealth.

No: direct competition between FC and individuals KILLS FCs
I went online to buy a plot 5 minutes after the server went live and all my first choices had been sold already, not just in the new wards but also in the old wards. By the time I found a decent alternative (20 minutes later), I noticed people running in and buying the first lot that had not yet sold. I bet that by tonight there will not be a single small plot left to buy, and that FCs will have to buy medium or large houses from now on. Also anyone that did not buy a small house today will have to start saving for the next land rush, which will be even more hectic since people know the drill now.

Lowering prices will just make it worse. As it is, small houses are clearly too cheap. Supply is limited by server space (plus, the more wards, the more fragmented the player community becomes). The only thing that can be done is to reduce demand, which you can only do by reducing the desirability of the housing or raising the price. I would probably have bought a house in Coerthas or Mor Dhona where I could not stable a Chocobo (we have a stable at the FC house) but I might not have bought a house where I could not garden (the garden has to pay for the house). So I imagine that you could balance housing demand at lower prices if the new type of housing did not allow for gardens and/or stables.

I fully expect that this type of decontented housing will be coming in later patches. They might even have to start FC-only wards or find some other way to fix the problem that small FCs have now: no available land left.

The bottom line is that no matter what the Lore says, no matter how cheap people may have believed it would be, what was implemented is not personal housing. It is the same housing system we already had, only opened for purchase to folks without needing to be a Free Company.

If personal housing was not viable, they should have abandoned it altogether with an explanation as to why. On my server, Balmung, there are MANY FC's that do not have a house. To sell what are essentially FC houses to individuals not only limits people due to exorbitant costs, it also shuts out FAR more people who are in a houseless FC. That ONE HOUSE could have meant rooms for hundreds of people. Instead, we have a handful of people with houses and the rest?

Too bad for them.

Poorly communicated, poorly implemented. And like it or not, it will cost them players, which will in turn affect the game as a whole.

This is about a lot more than just housing.

Lore-wise speaking...

I'm the warrior of light, they HAVE to give me a free house!
I deserved it!
I saved Eorzea, and all they do is letting me live under a bridge?
UNFAIR!!!!!1111

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Originally Posted by Cynthis

Hi Mae:) I wish I felt like I had something I wanted to spend my money on more than a personal house but sadly this is what I had been saving for only to get completely ripped off. No way I am buying one now though...I'd rather quit to be honest.

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300k is about all I'ma spend tbh, don't really need to be dropping up to 4.5mil for a house at this time. A personal room is just fine for me.

I think it comes down to this:

FCs needed special permits because they are essentially VERY well armed mercenary bands settling down in a base within city limits.

Private citizens of a city state last I looked, weren't all homeless however. Giving players individual housing apartment style would have been perfectly acceptable.

All this update did was shit all over the lore by letting players buy housing that FCs needed special sanctions to buy. You're better off buying a guild house solo than waiting for an FC to get it.

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Originally Posted by Phenidate

I think it comes down to this:

All this update did was shit all over the lore by letting players buy housing that FCs needed special sanctions to buy. You're better off buying a guild house solo than waiting for an FC to get it.

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Unfortunately agreed.

They could have done instanced housing IN the cities. Imagine paying huge amounts of gil to have an apartment that overlooked Ul'dah from up high in the tower, of that had a wonderful ocean view in Limsa. They could make the best apartments limited and have auctions for them, which would be much more effective in draining gil from the economy than this was. I just don't get what happened here.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Personal housing should be expensive, otherwise it utterly invalidates the lore surrounding Free Company Housing. Free Companies are allowed to buy house because the 3 cities/Grand Companies allow it as a special privilege. How much more so would it be special for an individual to purchase a house like a Free Company can afford?

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Actually, the lore says that it's a special privilege that's been given to adventurers, and we're adventurers. (Actually the restriction to FCs only that existed from 2.1 until today has been a bit against lore.) There are refugees that aren't allowed to buy housing, but we're heroes who have saved Eorzea time and again and are high-ranking members of a Grand Company. Being given a personal house for free would fit the lore perfectly well. (It wouldn't be suitable to the game. I'm just talking lore-wise here.) The cities have already decided that as adventurers, we're important enough to the city to have the right to buy land. What the price of that land is is completely irrelevant to that fact.

I have a feeling, that when they were about to mash that "initiate patch" button, they were joking (and knowingly expecting) among themselves, "Place your bets on how many people are gonna be pissed off about this patch lol".