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

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Originally Posted by Bearssi

PS. The disparity of the prices on different servers looks like a paid server transfer promotion. Just weird stuff.

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It does, until you remember that the Legacy servers, the ones who CANNOT transfer, are the ones who are getting screwed here. Now, I know many people that if they knew this would be the case, would have rerolled in open beta and actually been able to afford a house now. Seriously though, a large house on the low end servers is 62,500,000. That is 20% of the price on Balmung. 10% of Ridill. How is this, in any way shape or form fair to those who have been playing the game from the start. Five FC's on Asura can buy a large house for the price of one on Balmung.

If they just made the housing a universal price across the board, people would not be as upset I think. Well, as long as the low end was the guide.

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Originally Posted by Exantra

It certainly is a bit of a disappointment. Having recently started up a new Roleplay FC in which the housing was going to be the main focal point of what we intended to do, we were only ever going to have a handful of members at the most. I don't think any of us were expecting to put up any more than a million to the cause, so you can imagine the surprise when we came to realise the smallest plot of land for the server we're situated on had a base cost of 20 million. Making money isn't at the forefront of why we play in the first place, so for now our plans have had to be put on an indefinite hold.

The plight of being non legacy players on a legacy server, I suppose.

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You can roleplay about getting money for your housing. When I used to RP, everything took long and I never had anything asap. ,)

I'm just curious. Is anybody actually going to spend any gil on housing in the current prices?

I'm confused about the price ranges they were now set at. They spent all this time on making this new feature for the game, and right now it seems like nobody is going to be using it.

Well said Abariel, I completely agree with you, but even, I go a little further, as I said in another thread:

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Originally Posted by Dannythm

This is a portion of the game that I will never enjoy.

Thanks for another punch in the face to the legacy players. The more days that go on, the more sure I am I SHOULD not be legacy. This is not the game I was told I supported, not the game I asked for or wanted.

If I'm still here is because I still have hope that some elements of what I liked on 1.0 will ever come back, but after seeing this decision making regarding to housing, I'm not even sure I'm gonna like ANY of the future developments of this game.

I need to cool off, but still, the fact remains the same, that each passing day I dislike the game more and more.

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Originally Posted by Sygmaelle

Im not from legacy, I dont have any craft job and yet I got 40 millions. Didn't buy gold at RMT, only materias sells since release. Soooooooooooo ... it's either people are exageratin or they did it very very wrong

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Originally Posted by Grizzlebeard

Yeah, somehow I don't believe you.

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I am going to call this one a liar as well. NO crafting or gathering jobs, just two jobs leveled over 40, 3 leveled at all. 40 million is ALOT of gil to obtain unless you are selling runs. Which, if this is the case, should have mentioned. You know, since most people really frown of merc runs.

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Originally Posted by StrejdaTom

You can roleplay about getting money for your housing. When I used to RP, everything took long and I never had anything asap. ,)

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A novel idea, however I'm generally forced into that exact same storyline with the character I play in real life. Unfortunately it becomes a bit boring after a while.

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Originally Posted by wilder-polterer

Please SE give me a tent

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Don't afk at home too much, or you may be arrested for loitering within tent.

I also "almost blown morning coffee from the price of housing" (the Google Translate quote), but when I do the math, pricing seems almost reasonable. I mean, have any of you priced a commercial building for 50+ people? Even 25+? They're not at all as cheap as single-family homes. To me, it looks like the three sizes are targeted at 25, 100 and 300-member FCs. I was expecting prices of maybe half what they showed, like around 150,000 gil per member on a new world (~400,000 gil per member on Legacy worlds).

Maybe SE saw the stark reality that too many people had saved more than enough, and knowing they had not enough housing capacity at housing launch, caused them to double the prices to manage the demand. I don't know.

I do know that this introduces a major new goal for gameplay, saving and managing money. Previously the "hard core" players focused all their attention and gil on character progression and gear. Now there is this alternative goal. It's not a "game gives big heroes free property" situation. SE created a new grind.

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Originally Posted by ArkhamNative

I mean, have any of you priced a commercial building for 50+ people? Even 25+? They're not at all as cheap as single-family homes. To me, it looks like the three sizes are targeted at 25, 100 and 300-member FCs. I was expecting prices of maybe half what they showed, like around 150,000 gil per member on a new world (~400,000 gil per member on Legacy worlds).

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The Live letter showed us the interior of every size housing. The small one looks like the Mog house in FFXI. Having 25 people in it make it look like a real clusterfuck.

This is a feature that was promised to FCs and now it is locked out for a majority of them. I don't think you really understand the grind this means... Those prices are astronomical. The money they have the intention of taking away from servers are held by like... 2% of the playerbase, most likely those that merc'd run Titan runs and manipulated the market to their advantage but to the disadvantage of others.

If I was running an FC that had 300m+ for an FC house, I certainly wouldn't spend it on an FC house. In fact I would bar my members from ever considering even doing so. That is an insane gil sink.

Unless the house gave game-breaking buffs (it wont), investing in it would be absolute lunacy, even AFTER waiting 3 months for its price to reduce.

I am willing to bet many people who can afford this simply wont participate.

If I worked as a RMTer I would already be planning my 2.1 release sale with offers on gil amounts that could insta-buy you a medium/large FC house. There must have been a seriously thick haze around the office when they thought extortionate prices for housing would counter RMT.... Unless SE plan to sell gil or items like "PLEX" (1 month sub purchasable with in-game money) from EVE Online, then it'd all make so much sense.

My guess is SE will drop the prices once they have optimized housing and have the capacity to host a house for every FC without servers crashing.

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Originally Posted by ArkhamNative

I also "almost blown morning coffee from the price of housing" (the Google Translate quote), but when I do the math, pricing seems almost reasonable. I mean, have any of you priced a commercial building for 50+ people? Even 25+? They're not at all as cheap as single-family homes. To me, it looks like the three sizes are targeted at 25, 100 and 300-member FCs. I was expecting prices of maybe half what they showed, like around 150,000 gil per member on a new world (~400,000 gil per member on Legacy worlds).

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Are there any 300+ (active) FC in this game? Any at all? Genuinely curious.

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Originally Posted by Tadacho

Are there any 300+ (active) FC in this game? Any at all? Genuinely curious.

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Lodestone search caps them at 51 so its exceedingly difficult to tell. The largest I saw on my server was 140~, cannot remember who it was though.

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Originally Posted by Dashuto

Lodestone search caps them at 51 so its exceedingly difficult to tell. The largest I saw on my server was 140~, cannot remember who it was though.

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So even SE thinks have more than 51 people in a FC is a waste of resources. Yes Moogle Apocalypse and CDK on Hyperion have around 140~ but this is the highest I've seen. There's a MA member stood next to me right now though; his FC has 10 people online. Out of 145.

My FC is screwed. We rolled on a Legacy server because a few members played 1.0 just high level enough to get Goobue mounts back then (low 20s IIRC). Everyone else is brand new with 2.0.

I feel pretty angry that an entire gameplay system is locked behind a fee that we can't afford, because we guessed wrong about factors affecting server choice back in August. Money sinks should be cosmetics, convenience only, IMO. Instead, our $15/mo somehow worth LESS than folks who managed to rack up a fortune in 1.0. We're out in the cold and won't be able to experience gameplay that similar FCs on other servers can.

:(

My question is are people really going to be buying items on MB or is everyone gonna try to save every penny to get a house?

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Originally Posted by Coraline

My question is are people really going to be buying items on MB or is everyone gonna try to save every penny to get a house?

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Exactly. People will be hoarding money so much so that nobody will be buying. Which means nobody is selling. So how are we to make money?

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Originally Posted by Tadacho

Exactly. People will be hoarding money so much so that nobody will be buying. Which means nobody is selling. So how are we to make money?

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Obviously by zooming out.

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Originally Posted by Nero

40 People, in a Room as small as the Inn, with a Limit of 50 Items to place in. So right.. 1 Chair for each of the 40 Members, a couple flowers and the room will burst, since there is not enough room..... <_<

People need to stop thinking that Small houses are meant to be used by FC's with around 40 Members. Have you actually seen the Size of a Small House from the Inside? With around 12 people it will start looking like a clusterfuck.

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On Hyperion a hypothetical fc with 40 members would need to each chip in 1,875,000g for the cheapest medium plot at 2.1 launch. I have saved pretty much every gold/silver/bronze/tin piece from quests on my retainers and I could still cover that cost without cashing any of those in. I don't even farm items for money so what the heck are people doing with their money? I don't want to hear about "Oh that's the ghetto one though." Not everyone gets to fly first class. You get what you pay for.

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Originally Posted by Nica

Obviously by zooming out.

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That joke is getting so old now...

But yea, players will start farming and selling mats more, whilst not buying anything because they want to save all the gil they can. This will create a very high supply on mats but a very low demand.

Also I don't know about you all but 625mil gil leaving the realm seems like a lot of money considering gil generation is so limited at 50 (Around 1.8k per WP after repairs). There are a lot less low level players in the game at this point. Funny considering the whole repair cost debacle we had a while back.

I think I've got less than 100k gil so far. It's going to be awhile...

I wonder what the prices for individual housing will be like if that materializes.

@Leandras I want to hug your sig ^_^

Just adding my name to this.

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Originally Posted by Tadacho

Are there any 300+ (active) FC in this game? Any at all? Genuinely curious.

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Well, if the reality is that housing sizes are designed for half that (i.e., for 12, 50 and 150-member FCs), then I would say the pricing is 4x more than I expected, rather than just double. Still not 10x though, IMHO.

As far as capacity, what % of an FC are on at the same time? 50%? So houses could still be designed for FCs larger than they can reasonably hold.

The benefits of an FC house aren't just to contain its members. (However crowded 100% attendance would be, it would be private). It also offers benefits and buffs that are available no other way. It may be the only way to craft FC airships, for example. There will be value in owning an FC house, and they should cost more than just members' "disposable income", but currently the prices do seem much too high.

Anyway, despite the pretty presentations and welcoming tone, SE never intended every FC to be able to buy a first-class house, especially in the first month the feature was released. But I am in agreement that these prices seem too high. Even at half these prices, SE will need to increase the gil fountains and improve the economies, or it will indeed only be "the 1%" that get the big houses, by extracting gil from "the 99%" to do so.

When equipment that costs 1000 gil each to craft sells for 300 gil at most, it kinda puts things in perspective.

I completely agree. This is something that we were anticipating being available, not something we were looking forward to anticipating. All of the prerequisites make sense except for the price-point. We're talking about months and months of grinding for the folks out there who are used to the grind, and who knows what it will mean for the casual gamer.

I can say as leader of my FC, we wont be buying an FC house. Not at these extortion level prices. We will casually save some gil, but there's no way in hells we are going to buy a house till they drop the prices to reasonable amounts. My FC is small, we get maybe 3-5 active at any given time. And far as I know, none of us are legacy. Our old FC leader was legacy but even he couldn't get up more than 1.4 million gil in 2.0. He didn't even hoard in 1.0.

It's a shame too. We are roleplayers. Most of Balmung are roleplayers. And the only FC that might be able to buy a house is one that sells titan run on a regular basis. I believe they are the only ones that sell titan runs too, don't know their name. Regardless, such a waste of resources releasing something this awesome, only to set it at a price no one would be willing to ever pay for a cosmetic feature. And I am predicting when 2.1 comes out, there wont be any FC houses being built at all. Hopefully Yoshi will rethink this terrible terrible mistake he's made.

I will put my name to this OP.

But all i would like to see is price parity between the NA/EU and JP Legacy servers as my FC is mainly EN and on Masamune. Why double the price? How can new players who joined a JP Legacy server compete with these prices? Madness!

I like this letter, and proud of it...
too much 0...

Are different prices by server even LEGAL?

My subscription fee for the FFXIV service is the same to folks on other servers but, because I play on a legacy server, my access to content is not equal to an identical character on a non-legacy server.

In other words, I'm not being barred from content based on progress of my character: an identical character on another server would be able to access the content.

Legal? Not legal?

I agree 100%

1 zero off and and large house would be 12.5mil on my server, much more acceptable and makes housing available to more.

They should have made furniture require a *lot* of mats to make, so crafters and gatherers have more to do, as things stand most fc's cant buy a house, so hardly anyone will be crafting / gathering for furniture.

A huge letdown.

Legal? Certainly. A gil is not real-world money. And many real-world companies price the exact same product extremely differently in different countries.

I suppose SE believes that even new characters on legacy worlds benefit from being able to sell things at the 6x and 10x market board prices as compared to other worlds. Unfortunately "most" players don't get most of their gil from those inflated prices. They get it at the same price as on every server, from NPCs and quests. They do spend a lot of it at inflated market board prices, though, so it's extremely regressive.

I hope SE can resolve this by getting prices to reasonable levels in a hurry, but they haven't been able to manage the economies even in 3 months. I don't have high hopes. SE all but admitted being too harsh with gil sinks with the sharp reduction in transportation, repair and other prices already. Their fear of gil had them confiscating it all from early crafters who earned it legitimately at launch, yet bizarrely SE prices the houses so only those type of players can afford it (pre-seizure, of course).

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Originally Posted by ArkhamNative

Legal? Certainly.

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I'm not so sure it's legal in the USA. I pay a subscription to SE for a service, but receive LESS for my fee than others who pay for the same service, all other factors being identical -- including the country of the subscriber. This isn't a case a market-specific pricing.

I have no problem with gil sinks but they should be equal regardless of which server I play on.

I agree with your other points. As a new player in 2.0, I found leveling on a legacy server quite expensive. Most of my cash has come from quests and leves, and I've otherwise had to be quite thrifty.

While back in 1.0 there were RMT's, and months and months later, they were STILL there. SE NEVER Banned them. Then more and more started showing up. In Cedarwood for the skins spamming leves. By the Karakul's taking the spawns. IF you got a few you felt lucky.

Fast forward, and now we are dealing with this? Pay more attention to the reports that your players are giving out, and combat the problem instead of letting it happen. This is exactly the reason why the ones who have stayed true this whole time to SE from Beta are unable keep getting discouraged and quit playing. Even those who did make decent money in 1.0 lost that when you hacked off 90% of it to combat the RMT's. Once again screwing the actual players. Yes there are some who are rich beyond their means, but they equate to what? 1% ?

Slash a 0 and combat the RMT's, not attack ones' who are being loyal to your game and playing fairly.

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Originally Posted by AyaneKiwara

We're in the same boat. My company has saved up 2m, thinking it would at least put us close, only to find out that we're only 10% of the way to the smallest land.

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Our FC on Sargatanas, which has the same starting price, had saved up 8 million and thought we were golden. The prices of these land plots are ridiculous. They need to have a chat with whichever analysts thought it would be good idea to take a snapshot of the gil on the server and sum it all up to come up with their amazing calculations.

bump for truth

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Originally Posted by ArkhamNative

I suppose SE believes that even new characters on legacy worlds benefit from being able to sell things at the 6x and 10x market board prices as compared to other worlds. Unfortunately "most" players don't get most of their gil from those inflated prices.

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Actually I just did a random check on a Tier 2 Legacy server and shocked to find most items sell equal to or less than they do on my server. What ever they did to figure out cost, it's flawed. A FC starting out on the Legacy world is at a big disadvantage than they would be on a Tier 4 or 5 server.

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Originally Posted by Xelsiar

While back in 1.0 there were RMT's, and months and months later, they were STILL there. SE NEVER Banned them. Then more and more started showing up. In Cedarwood for the skins spamming leves. By the Karakul's taking the spawns. IF you got a few you felt lucky.

Fast forward, and now we are dealing with this? Pay more attention to the reports that your players are giving out, and combat the problem instead of letting it happen. This is exactly the reason why the ones who have stayed true this whole time to SE from Beta are unable keep getting discouraged and quit playing. Even those who did make decent money in 1.0 lost that when you hacked off 90% of it to combat the RMT's.

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I think this is the key problem. The truth is SE has just made the RMT ten times worse than making it better. For a small guild of 40 on a Tier 2 server, they need 20mil to buy a small lot, when on a tier 4 or 5 that'll buy a decent medium lot. The only chose you gave them is move to another server, RMT, or disband. All negative options.

I fully agree. At this point, the prices on this are a slap in the face to the little people. This only goes to serve the top guilds, who are selling Titan runs and already controlling prices on the servers. Way to let the elitist pricks screw everyone over once again SE!

I have an FC of about 10 people, all close friends we didn't expect to get the best house and we don't play 24/7 most of us are college and working at the same time...and even though we knew at the start we wouldn't have the "castle" we cant even afford the small house on the crappiest lot, I was expecting maybe more reasonable prices for housing (since the vast majority of games that do have housing are reasonable priced) this is incredibly harsh pricing...I apologize to all the hard core gamers who think this is fair and that im demanding freebie stuff, I totally don't mind working toward something but I think America's deficit will be paid off before most of us can purchase a house.

THESE PRICES ARE TOO DAMN HIGH! seriously bump for justice. ^_^