Sorry, where are the "thousands of people"?
No offense, but pulling figures and facts from the ether isn't good journalism.
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Yeah... on Balmung, even after the 50% decrease in 90 days, to get a large plot (just the plot, not the house), you'd have to have between 125-156 members contributing a million gil each. To get a plot anytime sooner than that will cost much more.
I can't think of more than 5-10 FCs on my server that possibly have that many members, and assuming for the sake of argument that their members are all mains with regular gil streams (not alts for RP or whatever), I still can't imagine more than a fraction of those players having more than a few 100k on hand. Maybe 1m, at which point theyd be donating their entire savings.
Indeed, most FC's I've seen of that size (not all, but most) are the kind of roflguilds that tend towards "invite first, ask questions later," so I can't imagine they'd have enough loyal players willing to cough up a million or more to fund this kind of venture.
So.. who exactly is going to be buying these?
It's a dutch auction. Not everyone needs everything on day one.
I love how everyone firmly believes it will be *THEIR* guild getting that plot with "50% OFF" label.
Near the end of the 90-day price drop cycle everyone and their cat will be lining up to buy those plots cheap. Everyone. Meaning that plots in demand will be eyed by dozens of buyers, out of which one FC will get it and the others will have to wait at least ANOTHER 90 days until prices in the next copy of the housing zone (remember how Yoshi said new instances will only open up after old ones are full?) drop again. And again.
90 days? Unless you don't give a darn about where your FCs HQ is going to be, i.e. you're ready to settle for ANYTHING you were fast enough to purchase, you're looking at almost a year of waiting...
No of course not, it was supposed to be 4-5 players according to Yoshi's gushing statements (made more than once) earlier.
It was on this basis that most players expected it to be at least within a small FC's ability to pay, not the mega-FCs-only-need-apply situation SE have created now.
The white knights on this thread and in the forums are getting a little annoying.
Nobody has wanted houses handed to them, but Yoshi gave us expectations of what housing would cost and players have planned accordingly. God forbid we should trust the owner of the game and take him at his word .... They even teased that housing trailer before showing housing being 800k....
Players expected about 800k for a small house, and around 5m for a large - as much as 15 or 20m. Something one player doesn't generally obtain on their own unless they had a lot leftover from 1.0.
Even a 20m house would be 200,000,000 1.0 money, which is a lot .... Even I only had 20m left after 1.0 relics.
My first thought on seeing the prices was "RMT companies must have thought Christmas has come early" I didn't think SE could shock me anymore than when they torpedoed Relics in FF11 with the release of Delve weapons but they managed it with housing. Those prices are so far out of reach for so much of the playerbase, all that development time to see deserted wards would be disappointing to say the least, or do they actually think people have that kind of money? that's a frightening thought, as is anyone who thinks this won't drive RMT profits soaring.
I doubt Ishgard will ever open up for housing. I remember it being said in a previous live letter that Ishgard would open up if there was enough of a request for it. Right now, the only thing people are requesting are the prices to drop so they can actually buy a house in the first place...
This strawman arguement needs to go away.
If Atmos/Echo Drops REALLY are the issue, THEN SE SHOULD HAVE FIXED IT THEN...not wait until now, in ARR to address it. (Which btw, when they found the exploit...they DID kinda fix it, a little bit from what I understand). Even so, most people who did the Atmos thing, did it to get the Company Seals for Grand Company Items/Rank Ups/Relic Quest Key items etc. They didn't do it for Millions of gil... Still 90% of all 1.0 gil was removed from the game already.
SE shouldn't be using a key 'casual' feature of the game to 'fix' RMT and exploit issues they themselves let happen, turned a blind eye to and/or don't know how to solve another way. All this ends up doing is punishing the honest players...and gives them a bad taste in the mouth towards the whole project. Nor should prices vary across servers...it might in SE's mind solve a current problem, but it has the potential to create many more problems down the road. Heck, right now, why should a Non-Legacy FC stay on an 'expensive' server...as so as they can, they should transfer to the cheapest server and live like kings. Even on Legacy...you on Durandal? Wanna double your buying power? Move to Ragnarok.
This was just beyond Stupid.
Oh and:
Check this person's post out, it's a link to just ONE post on the housing topic on the JA forum's where the OP is basically saying the pricing is too high and why. Over 1K likes to his OP...that is 1 post. And the majority of players/people who are following this topic, aren't making posts/liking posts on the forums. They are talking about it in-game with their FC's...