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

A major portion of the playerbase will have left the game before seeing a house. Just seems like entirely too much effort being put into content for 1000 players across all servers to enjoy.

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Originally Posted by AzumaKun

The people voicing their opinion on this forum are the minority: fact.

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My friend stopped playing due to the prices of housing and he hasn't posted on here, just because someone isn't posting on the forums doesn't mean they condone what SE are doing. I know plenty of people have said this already but I felt like echoing them. Also, someone clearly doesn't know what minority means...or fact for that matter.

Soo...really, this was just my FC being silly...and I don't know if we'll really do this every day until the prices drop/we can afford it or not, but we decided after our Christmas event to be 'FC Housing Plot Squatters' I mean, since currently there are no real benefits to owning a house other than those naturally provided by the instance in the first place, why not pick a lot you like, and sit on it...hang out on it, craft on it...etc?
https://scontent-b-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/...60577184_n.jpg

and later that evening....dualing practice:
https://scontent-b-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/...99188656_n.jpg
Note: only a small portion of FC included in picture...but you get the point.

Come play archeage when it releases, housing and castles appear in the real world no instanced crap

I can't understand the total silence on SE's part as to what benefits each size of house will have, if there are any players left to actually buy them. With something this exorbitant, plans need to be made and without information we are just groping around in the dark, and I for one wouldn't ask my FC members to spend this much money on something we know nothing about. Before we consider buying ANY house, presuming of course we actually manage to get the cash together!!....I would like to know:-

1) The benefits of each size of FC house in the future
2) The likely prices of individual housing
3) The benefits of individual houses for EACH SIZE.

Before these questions are answered, our FC money is staying right where it is, hopefully to buy an FC house in the future, if not, to be handed back to respective players for their own individual houses.

By the way, we have several small plots sold now on Odin, and I have to say they are ridiculously small for an FC house....I mean, not just ridiculous but pathetic!! They are even too small for an individual house compared to other games with decent housing. What is even funnier are the guilds who classify these as e-peen material, where in reality it just makes them look totally pathetic :p

I wish games these days would go look at REAL housing as in UO, or if you must have housing instances, the latest but better than most, Rift housing. I do so hate these instances, building in the open world was so much fun. The pvp opportunities when camping neglected housing that was due to fall, was amazing good fun, camping for hours on end when housing was released to get to where you wanted to put your house before anyone else did. Being able to put furniture wherever you wanted, loads of storage chests that actually...*gasp*...stored stuff, your own vendor on your doorstep and a myriad of other benefits. A whole new side feature of gameplay, and not unaffordable to virtually the whole of the playerbase.

i can understand one thing, that SE need to think and plan well how they gonna get themself out of here (without forget that christmas is soon there)
anyway, i want to put something in light since a loooot of people believe it's easier to make money on legacy server.

most of the Auction House price on the legacy server are 2 at 10 times lower than the one on the new server, was said countless time. mostly because people don't need stuff, they have crafter and gatherer. the furniture market on the legacy server will be... low, for the same reason (and because the number of house ^^)
then what it leave us for get gils? the same quest, than on new player server. like said by Yoshida, it's will give you around 20.000gils per day.
let's do some math, will you?

let's take the small house price in the most expensive server.
one small house on the higher price is 40.000.000gils (for the cheapest one) let's divide it by 20.000 gils per day for see the time needed by one person for get the house at this price.
40.000.000/20.000= 2000 days for someone alone ( more of 5 years), but it's a FC house, let's see for a group of 20 person (the number max of people that can enter the house) 2000/20= 100 day, yeah 3 month for get acces to the cheapest plot at give everything you get !

let's make the same math for the cheapest house of the cheapest server, it's easy it's 4.000.000gils, meaning 10 times less. for make it short, a FC of 20 people will need 10 days for get the cheapest house with the exactly same mechanic than the legacy server.

that what people find not normal, why the game is different because of a choice of server 4 month ago (or more of 2 years ago)?

one game, one treatment, is not that hard to understand?

daily bump of justice. Reduce Prices SE.

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Originally Posted by AzumaKun

The people voicing their opinion on this forum are the minority: fact.

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I'm afraid you need a refresher in statistics, and in the meaning of the word "fact." a simple dictionary will help you for the latter.

As for statistics, the forums are an entirely valid statistical pool. Professional polls are often made with smaller pools of respondents.

To put it down simply, since you seem to need it, you're wrong.

Agree with most here, SE needs to change the prices and add more houses if they worry they will run out.

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Originally Posted by Amarae

My friend stopped playing due to the prices of housing and he hasn't posted on here, just because someone isn't posting on the forums doesn't mean they condone what SE are doing. I know plenty of people have said this already but I felt like echoing them. Also, someone clearly doesn't know what minority means...or fact for that matter.

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I'd wager the majority of players really don't care that much. And of the people who do, they probably don't care enough to rant on a forum board about it. Anyone who quit over housing prices was probably searching for a reason to quit anyway. I don't see how it's such a big problem that players may quit before seeing a house, or how that's any different from a player quitting before participating in an Extreme Primal battle.

Yeah, the people who voice on forums are usually a minority, especially ones who are particularly adamant about complaints, which is (almost literally) the only thing I see here.


As someone who hasn't been playing very long, and with peers who are the same way, the opinions i'd expect to see here are the polar opposite of what i'm finding. Everyone I meet seems to be motivated by the prices, but I come online to the forums and everyone is foaming at the mouth.

I was mad about this since the day the patch notes were posted, but the rest of my free company has started to get annoyed at this too. (On Legacy Balmung server.) We are between that rock and a hard place--on the one hand, we are wanting to do the content NOW like we thought we were going to be able to; on the other hand, we don't want to blow all of our accumulated gil to get something NOW because we know that SE is just trying to punish us and everyone on our server for earning gil in 1.0.

Hold out for more reasonable prices, or settle. I suppose it's the question every free company has to face. But one thing is for sure. It's leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouths, and we're starting to bicker and be bitter about it. In reality, the blame for all this devolves squarely on S-E and their terrible implementation of this content.

Reduce the prices. One price per plot across all servers. Eorzeans against housing discrimination.

@Edellis, is not the housing the trouble, is the fact that the playerbase is divided too often by the decision of SE.
when you pay a subscription fee in a mmorpg, you want to have the same game than the other person next to you. the same fair chance to get acces to the same feature.

there, if the person next to you have decide to begin on a new player server at the release of ARR, this person get advantage and you person that play on legacy server get bashed. people think i'm going to far by saying discrimination, but it's one.... an increadible one... for the first time in a mmorpg with sub fee, person that pay don't get the same game... nor the same feature.

for me, and i guess i'm not the only one, it's pretty important to make it know that we don't accept this. you don't have two sort of playerbase, the one on new sever and the one on legacy server... we are only one playerbase... time to stop to kick one while being nice with the other one.

one game, one playerbase...
it's time to stop it... all the people saying that legacy have too much gils or stuff... i will say, we are 4 month since the release, you have people on new server with tons of gils and with all them class to 50 like on legacy server. the best example, Twintania of BC was killed on new server like legacy one. what the hell is the difference between one or the other? gils?....

if that soo much a trouble... do a wipe of the gils... place a hard cap that player can't get over and wipe all the gil over it... indeed it will not please the rich... but if it allows us to have the same game than the new player is maybe a small price to pay for it.

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Originally Posted by silentwindfr

if that soo much a trouble... do a wipe of the gils... place a hard cap that player can't get over and wipe all the gil over it... indeed it will not please the rich... but if it allows us to have the same game than the new player is maybe a small price to pay for it.

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I can almost 100% guarantee you with every fiber of my being that if Square decided to do that, they'd have just as crazy a sh*tstorm of complainers as they do now, probably worse. "Removing our hard earned work", "going back on promises", "stealing", nearly every bad accusation under the dictionary would become ammo for complaints.

And this is why i'm not mad at Square for trying, even if they may have screwed up. Because in these sorts of situations, it's literally impossible to please everybody and get out without someone taking it deeply personal.

This wouldn't be an issue if Square just forced everyone to restart the same as every newcomer to ARR, but that didn't happen. And, again, if they did, you'd have probably the same group of people taking it personally.

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Originally Posted by Abriael

I'm afraid you need a refresher in statistics, and in the meaning of the word "fact." a simple dictionary will help you for the latter.

As for statistics, the forums are an entirely valid statistical pool. Professional polls are often made with smaller pools of respondents.

To put it down simply, since you seem to need it, you're wrong.

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The forums are not an entirely valid statistical pool. To go along with what the common trend that 'the non-vocals are also quitting', I have 5 RL friends, and none of them post on the forums. I'm willing to bet half of them don't even know the forums exist. To put it simply:

No player here, nor outside, probably know who the majority and who the minority are. But I know of a certain company who probably does....

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Originally Posted by Edellis

I can almost 100% guarantee you with every fiber of my being that if Square decided to do that, they'd have just as crazy a sh*tstorm of complainers as they do now, probably worse. "Removing our hard earned work", "going back on promises", "stealing", nearly every bad accusation under the dictionary would become ammo for complaints.

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Ironically, there's quite a few people out there whom have had the pleasure of having this happen. I do recall quite a few of those quotes being used. It's already happened, and the issue is still that bad. I'm with you though, or should I say, I'm with SE. If they want to make it content that's out of my personal reach, then so be it. Who am I to say they don't know how much gil is out there.

Squee didn't want to purge the lolworthy ammounts of money some Legacy players had back in the day (and won't do it now, either) for fear they will go "Wahh! My money! Screw it, I'm not coming back if I'm not rich!". I bet in their minds those people are called "loyal customers" or something. So instead they are hoping these highly rich players will waste their money at the first extremely expensive venture. But that's not what is going to happen. Rich people don't make their money to throw it away on the first extremely expensive things you offer them. However, I'm sure these prices will only manage to purge only a few of these gil piles. Just not as many as Squee expects.

I also suspect Squee's expecting people to grind content and stay at least for the three months that will take the land prices to drop to their minimum. That's 3 months of "ensured" subscriptions where they don't have to worry about people leaving the game.

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Originally Posted by Ildur

So instead they are hoping these highly rich players will waste their money at the first extremely expensive venture. But that's not what is going to happen. Rich people don't make their money to throw it away on the first extremely expensive things you offer them.

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And that's apparently what's happening. The only house on Balmung (Legacy), was bought with "new money", gil that had been made by current in-game activities (6 weeks of grinding philo items, 36 per week per member), not vast stores of v1 money being spent away in huge chunks.

And as I mentioned earlier, money from market sales comes out of other players' potential housing savings, so making lots of money that way only works if a few are selling to the many. In other words, "every" FC or player could not make lots of money this way.

So.. when they gonna drop the price? :)

I mean.. really drop the price, not the 90 day 50% garbage.

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Originally Posted by GilbertLapine

So.. when they gonna drop the price? :)

I mean.. really drop the price, not the 90 day 50% garbage.

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Who knows? Chances are they will just ignore this and choose not to change prices at all.

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Originally Posted by MortalWare

FC that have just been created this month are buying large houses.. totally legit? Maybe, but more likely they are just purchasing Gil.

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Or it could be simply that multiply small and somehow whealthy FCs disbanded and their former members united in one larger FC to be able to afford the FC house ...

However - the MOST DISTURBING part of all this situation is that since that insulting "FU" reply from Yoshi more than week ago here we've not heard a SINGLE word from him, devs or community reps about this. Are they just hiding and trying to ride the storm out?? This is NOT the way to treat your paying customers SE!!

We don't care about your "re-evaluation" of the "possible" price decrease in mid January (e.g. MONTH after release of the housing / patch so to give you more time to stich up some more crappy servers) - we want the fix NOW or it will be bye bye for many of us - we'll vote with our wallets, simple as that. Stop hiding and face the problem now!

And in case you don't know HOW to fix it:

0. (Again) - DO IT NOW! (Not in a month or after lot of players has already left tired of waiting and your atitude...)
1. Set the SAME prices to all worlds
2. Set the start prices to 1/10th of the curent cheaper tier
3. Limit (lets say for 2 months) amount of Houses / plots for each FC to ONE, this could be increased once the servers are expanded to allow FC to have houses in multiply City states or for multiply purposes
4. Increase the price drop from pathetic 0.14% each six hours to at least 1%
5. List ALL the curresnt specs (dimensions, floor plans) for each size of the house together with current and future bonuses and features (like underground workshop etc.). HOW can you even DARE to sell something for hundreds of millions without even specifying what it is exactly??
6. If possible - set the demo houses.
7. COMMUNICATE! Silence will do you no good - just upset community.

SIMPLE! All you need to do is to LISTEN to your community and not be a jerk.

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Originally Posted by GilbertLapine

So.. when they gonna drop the price? :)
I mean.. really drop the price, not the 90 day 50% garbage.

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Yoshi-P already said on Dec 17:

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

[....]
Upon considering the feedback we have received since the release of the patch notes, we have decided to make the following adjustments:

• From January 2014, devaluation will be adjusted every two weeks
• After three months, final land prices will match those of World Group 3

* World Group 3 (third listed in the patch notes):
Bahamut / Behemoth / Cactuar / Carbuncle / Chocobo / Diabolos / Fenrir / Garuda / Gilgamesh / Ifrit / Leviathan / Mandragora / Midgardsormr / Odin / Ramuh / Shiva / Siren / Tiamat / Titan / Tonberry / Ultros

[....]

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In other words:
Prices will still decrease slightly every 6 hours. Additional starting/ending price reductions will happen every 2 weeks. Before the end of March 2014, Legacy world starting/ending prices will have been reduced to that of new worlds (group 3). That's a starting/ending price drop of 80% on Balmung (in addition to the 50% reduction of a plot over time).

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Originally Posted by Abriael

I'm afraid you need a refresher in statistics, and in the meaning of the word "fact." a simple dictionary will help you for the latter.

As for statistics, the forums are an entirely valid statistical pool. Professional polls are often made with smaller pools of respondents.

To put it down simply, since you seem to need it, you're wrong.

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You are delusional. But keep clinging to the hope that your sad pathetic little attempt to sway the powers that be will be successful. Keep believing that those here are the majority (lol).

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Originally Posted by AzumaKun

You are delusional. But keep clinging to the hope that your sad pathetic little attempt to sway the powers that be will be successful. Keep believing that those here are the majority (lol).

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Abriael is correct and u are still wrong!
Fact is, that for some, fact's can be a butthurt, and looks like ur in pain there...

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Originally Posted by AzumaKun

You are delusional. But keep clinging to the hope that your sad pathetic little attempt to sway the powers that be will be successful. Keep believing that those here are the majority (lol).

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Do you honestly want people to vote with their feet? They've done it to this game before.

Unfortunately I don't see them budging too much from their position. Housing is the carrot on the stick that is supposed to keep us here for the long haul. No one though that land/housing would cost this much. Yes a few have been able to afford it but it's going to be a lot of work for a lot of us. With the economy the way it is I fear our FC won't be seeing a FC house for quite some time, even a small one on a undesirable plot of land on Balmung still costs an arm and a leg. I'm going to keep saving and hold out for personal housing if anything. I'm sure it will be pretty expensive, but I don't mind a small plot and a small house if it's just for me.

Only 1house has been bought on Excalibur as of last night and that was a medium. SE is out of their mind with these prices. The act like that didn't take money from us at the end of 1.0

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Originally Posted by ArkhamNative

Yoshi-P already said on Dec 17:

In other words:
Prices will still decrease slightly every 6 hours. Additional starting/ending price reductions will happen every 2 weeks. Before the end of March 2014, Legacy world starting/ending prices will have been reduced to that of new worlds (group 3). That's a starting/ending price drop of 80% on Balmung (in addition to the 50% reduction of a plot over time).

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Your 80% assumes that each time they "devalue" every two weeks that they don't reset all unpurchased houses to the max. value in their bracket. It may be after 3 months we are just at the top-end of Tier 3 bracket (which is still a huge benefit over where we are now, of course).

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Yoshi-P already said on Dec 17:

[....]
Upon considering the feedback we have received since the release of the patch notes, we have decided to make the following adjustments:

•From January 2014, devaluation will be adjusted every two weeks
•After three months, final land prices will match those of World Group 3
[....]

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I forgot to mention early, but I'm from Group 3.
To see that they are applying a "fair" kind of reasoning to Legacy and thus giving them the same prices than our Group, makes me realize that, when it will happen, WE will be the one treated unfairly.

I mean, think about it: if they think discriminating Legacy for their savings was unfair to a minority of the population, shouldn't that apply to every minority of population on every server? And if that's the case, shouldn't everyone have the same prices on all servers?

Either they calculate the prices on actual money on each server, or they don't.

The limited supply argument by SE is bad as well. There are 450 plots available for sale a the very beginning of housing per server. Does anybody actually think there are anywhere close to 450 FCs who are going to or even able to save up to buy a house at these prices or anywhere near these prices? I doubt in 3 months there will even be 50 in each server. I would guess more people will give up and save up for their own personal house. The whole enjoyment of housing is getting to build something yourself, not watch others do it.

It was mentioned earlier but I think this was a stop gap as they weren't ready to implement housing for the masses so they outpriced 99% of their community. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here, I think this is the first official black mark on the re release of the game for me.

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Originally Posted by Kassatsu

Only 1house has been bought on Excalibur as of last night and that was a medium. SE is out of their mind with these prices. The act like that didn't take money from us at the end of 1.0

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Correct, no one is buying houses.

But this is exactly what SE wanted. The truth is they do not have the infrastructure to support lots of FCs buying houses so they made pricing crazy high while they implement more servers.

If Yoshi hadn't led everyone to believe housing would be reasonably affordable then this would be fine. But SE promised 3-4 people after leveling 1-50 would be able to pool their gil and buy a house. This is simply a lie. Everyone was working towards that goal and SE pulled the rug out from under everyone because it would have been too embarrassing to delay housing or patch 2.1 until they had fixed their issues. To add insult to injury, they then concocted excuses about RMT, server economy, and gil issues. While these issues may be true, there are certainly other ways to deal with them than to screw everyone over with high housing prices. And the fact that no one is buying (which I'm sure they KNEW would happen) negates their reasoning that high prices would get gil out of circulation.

So much fail SE. Get your act together and fix this mess.

House prices should be based on a percentage of the total Guild members' savings. For example, 50% of the total guild members' savings. This way, it can effectively remove money from the richest people, as well as providing houses to those who are poor. This is because the poor are not lazy people, yet they are disadvantaged (due to environment, less intelligence, etc), and they are the most vulnerable. This 50% rate will hit everyone fairly.

Honestly, I don't think housing prices are such a problem. It has brought our free company together more. We do treasure hunts together to add to the pot. Crafters help other members with HQ gear so those people can save money for the pot. People are just working together more.

The reason noone has bought houses is because they are waiting 3 months so they can buy the best house for the money they have, not necessarily that they don't have money for a cheaper one now.

With that said, yoshi stated the reason they were so high was so those few individuals with over 100mils didn't buy all the land. A better fix would've been to just limit each company to 1 plot for now.

For those people that want to stay in a super small FC, sorry it is true you get shafted but if they were cheaper I'm sure you'd be complaining you can't buy the big plots of land. How about you join a bigger FC and just have a LS just for your small group of friends. It's the way the game is, adapt and overcome.

I'm just curious if anyone was able to keep a tally of how much gil they earned each day (non-crafters)
I really want to see who was able to make 15k-20k/day just by running through duty finer contents and for casual 2-3 hour play per day.

So far I make about 10k-13k last couple days.

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Originally Posted by am0n

Your 80% assumes that each time they "devalue" every two weeks that they don't reset all unpurchased houses to the max. value in their bracket. It may be after 3 months we are just at the top-end of Tier 3 bracket (which is still a huge benefit over where we are now, of course).

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No, the 80% is based on the starting/ending prices (like the small plot price dropping from a start price of 20M on NA Legacy worlds to a new start price of 8M). However, at this rapid drop, the new 2-week starting prices may indeed be less than the previous time-devaluated prices. (At 15 days a 20M house would be devaluated to 18.32M but the transition-to-group-3 new starting price would be 18M, so even if it reverted to its new starting price it would be lower, rather than higher.)

Ultimately we may see the 90-day price start over at its new starting price of 8M, but that's better than its old 90-day price of 9.92M. And I think it's pretty clear that Yoshi-P's message means that the new 8M price will then devalue as described, to 50% (~4M after 90 more days).

Edit: quick clarification: Yes, we could be at the top end of the world group 3 prices after 90 days, but that's the 80% drop in starting prices. SE's motivation seems to be to delay true affordability until their capacity catches up. Maybe if things go well they can accelerate the devaluations even more. I wouldn't expect that, though.

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Originally Posted by TommyGuns

The reason noone has bought houses is because they are waiting 3 months so they can buy the best house for the money they have, not necessarily that they don't have money for a cheaper one now.

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So why have the reducing scale in at all then? Rich players will wait three months just like the poorer ones. The reasoning behind their explanation is pure idiocy at best and blatant deception at worst.

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Originally Posted by Reinheart

I'm just curious if anyone was able to keep a tally of how much gil they earned each day (non-crafters)
I really want to see who was able to make 15k-20k/day just by running through duty finer contents and for casual 2-3 hour play per day.

So far I make about 10k-13k last couple days.

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Your findings pretty much match my own. Granted I'm levelling Mnk so the bonuses from Roulette never apply to me as it's generally Tank with the odd Healer bonus.

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Originally Posted by Edellis

As someone who hasn't been playing very long, and with peers who are the same way, the opinions i'd expect to see here are the polar opposite of what i'm finding. Everyone I meet seems to be motivated by the prices, but I come online to the forums and everyone is foaming at the mouth.

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*sigh* We're foaming at the mouth because of the prices on our servers.

You're on Brynhildr, of course the prices there are motivating you. For the price you would pay for the biggest, bestest plot of land, I could get a small house. I couldn't even afford a medium house for 62.5 million. THIS is why we are upset, and THIS is why not everyone else is. EDIT: I'd just like to add, that I'd have to amass almost 2 1/2 times the 62.5 million you would pay for the biggest, best plot of land to afford the lowest quality medium house on my server.

Prices are different between servers. Does everyone not realize that yet? Has anyone looked at the most expensive server prices in comparison and wondered how on earth a FC of moderate size (not to mention smaller ones) could afford anything? How is empathy so freaking difficult to muster up??

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Originally Posted by Reinheart

I'm just curious if anyone was able to keep a tally of how much gil they earned each day (non-crafters)
I really want to see who was able to make 15k-20k/day just by running through duty finer contents and for casual 2-3 hour play per day.

So far I make about 10k-13k last couple days.

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it's about what i get too :x
i can get a bit more when i sell map

I think Yoshi-P was talking about income from game content (quests, dungeons, etc.). Selling stuff on market boards is a little different. That's getting a part of someone else's 15-20k/day. :)

Also, the 20k was if you got the role bonuses from Duty Roulette. And I didn't see where he gave a time frame ("casual 2-3 hour day"). Was that in the original Japanese post? As for me, I think I'm getting less than 15k gil for more than 2-3 hours per day.