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

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Originally Posted by Nica

same things were said by some about FF14.


... for 1.0

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...There's a big...BIG difference here...between 1.0 and just one aspect of an already successful game.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings everyone,

First off, we'd like to thank you for all of your feedback thus far, and as usual, we're working to get it all collected and delivered to the dev. team. That said, last night our counterparts in Japan hosted a live patch notes reading for those that might not want to read the full wall of text. Yoshida joined in to offer commentary on specific aspects, and we'd like to share what was said regarding the pricing for the Free Company housing.

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Thanks for the reply, but I HIGHLY doubt the prices are going to come down so much to where us on Legacy servers don't have to settle for the smallest of the small... >_>

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings everyone,

First off, we'd like to thank you for all of your feedback thus far, and as usual, we're working to get it all collected and delivered to the dev. team. That said, last night our counterparts in Japan hosted a live patch notes reading for those that might not want to read the full wall of text. Yoshida joined in to offer commentary on specific aspects, and we'd like to share what was said regarding the pricing for the Free Company housing.

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First off, I appreciate the time that Yoshida took to reiterate what he had said in the letter from the producer using slightly different words. That said, this response fails to address the mass of extremely unhappy people who are not only expressing themselves on this forum, but on gaming forums and in gaming blogs across the web. I am concerned that failing to address these issues in a substantive way will accelerate the decline of the game; it is a shame it will end so quickly.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings everyone,

First off, we'd like to thank you for all of your feedback thus far, and as usual, we're working to get it all collected and delivered to the dev. team. That said, last night our counterparts in Japan hosted a live patch notes reading for those that might not want to read the full wall of text. Yoshida joined in to offer commentary on specific aspects, and we'd like to share what was said regarding the pricing for the Free Company housing.

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That's wonderful, but they should start lower, not simply go lower when people don't buy. Why should all but the most insane players have to wait 2-3 months (by then, the next patch will be out) before they can possibly enjoy this content.

And again, I would like to stress the current pricing scheme punishes both legacy players and non-legacy players that chose to join a legacy world (often not knowing what the difference is). The non legacy world prices should be the same prices everywhere.

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One thing we wanted to avoid was situations where free companies wanted to build a house but couldn't because the land was sold out.

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Replacing this with "situations where free companies wanted to build a house but couldn't because they couldn't afford it" doesn't really change anything.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Please look forward to it.

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Typical...

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Originally Posted by Camate

In patch 2.1 you'll be able to generate a bit more gil. Battle classes can earn an average of 15,000-18,000 gil per day, and with role bonuses in the Duty Roulette this can exceed 20,000 gil. Doing this several days a week you can save up quite a bit of gil, and if all FC members do the same, it will become a considerable amount. We estimate that by doing this for around three months you should be able to purchase land.

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20,000 gil per day, limited by daily Roulette bonuses.

It's like all those endgame (Myth, Coil, CT) lockouts that people have been defending, except now they impact everyone!

FFXIV: A Lockout Reborn

2.1: Now featuring lockouts against poor casual players! Say hello to your version of tome/primal grinding hell, now in the form of dungeon/guildhest grinds!

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Originally Posted by Camate

We understand that the initial prices for housing are extremely high, but this is a patch filled with a lot of content, so as you are having fun and enjoying everything the price will come down.

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Some people looked forward to housing and mainly wanted to focus on that.
So...no.

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One thing we wanted to avoid was situations where free companies wanted to build a house but couldn't because the land was sold out.

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Make more land.

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In patch 2.1 you'll be able to generate a bit more gil.

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a bit- Good thing! I was worried I'd have to spend months upon months farming gil along with the rest of my FC!

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Farm Duty Roulette

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Of course these estimates don't take into account 1. the size of the free company 2. the play time of said members in the free company and 3. the world they're on which will determine how long they have to farm Duty Roulette for.
The price of land across worlds is different. The amount of Gil put out by content is not.

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We estimate that by doing this for around three months you should be able to purchase land.

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Housing is in 2.1, not 2.2.

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We understand that the initial prices for housing are extremely high- do other stuff and wait for price to drop

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You acknowledge the high prices, and tell us to simply wait? Why not set the prices down to the point in which you think we'll start actually buying the land?

That's pretty rich. "This is a patch filled with content so go do other things instead of complaining about this. Kthx"

Cool. So now we have confirmation that Yoshi-P really is out of touch with the playerbase. =/

Three months of griding? Wow, it would seem SE wants us subscribed and paying for atleast another three months to even see what sharing a house with a FC would be like... o.O

Oh, oooooh... I see what you did there! ¬_¬

I will just re-post my thoughts from another thread I've replied to earlier:

First of all - the housing pricing is TOTALLY ridiculous!! And on Legacy? Just joke! 100 mills at least for large? Get reall SE ... I've put aside 2 Mills for housing but that would not get me even the crappiest small house on the "poorest" server. No change of getting large - as main carfter player I was hoping to have the underground workshop as that was my main intention and purpose of getting the FC housing in a first place but I can forget about that now - it would take me about 10 years at least to be able to afford it. Reading the patch notes yesterday make me almost cry - how silly really. All they'll do by this is just fuel more the RMTs :(

Also - reading the calculation of the "auctions" for the plots in the patch notes and decrease of the price every six hours by 14% makes no sense whatsoever - the figures there are totally wrong. I simply hope nobody will buy the plots / houses at those crazy prices and have the SE re-evaluate things. Every single player I've talked about this was expecting the prices to be about 10 times lower at least but this is simply way too much - what the hell they've based their "economy evaluation" on? Top 2 - 5% percent of the playes (half of them being "rich" due to the RMT)?? Those are not realistic prices at all. What a shame.

BTW - I have my own (very) small FC and as mentioned above - I mainly do crafting (although I've leveled up the WHM all the way to 50 prior starting crafting plus few other clases a bit as well) and if by any change there is more players like me on my server try to give me a shout in game (I'm on every day) if you'd be interrested joining the mainly "crafting" FC. The main idea (for now) is to get large plot / house to be able to have the workshop but I'm quite pessimistic about that with the current pricing. Let's see how that will develop over comming days. Also the clarification on the prices decreases in the plot auctions are obviously needed as the info in the patch notes post is inconsistent at the moment.

I would rather 'have fun' with housing in addition to the other new content. We've waited for a long time already, and gathered more gil than ever should've been necessary. Enough is enough. Hotfix the prices.

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Originally Posted by Sovereign

Cool. So now we have confirmation that Yoshi-P really is out of touch with the playerbase. =/

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Not only out of touch but knowingly sabotaging the housing system itself by putting prices at an insane price and expecting players just to wait it out.

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings everyone,

First off, we'd like to thank you for all of your feedback thus far, and as usual, we're working to get it all collected and delivered to the dev. team. That said, last night our counterparts in Japan hosted a live patch notes reading for those that might not want to read the full wall of text. Yoshida joined in to offer commentary on specific aspects, and we'd like to share what was said regarding the pricing for the Free Company housing.

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Pathetic response. #fail

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings everyone,

First off, we'd like to thank you for all of your feedback thus far, and as usual, we're working to get it all collected and delivered to the dev. team. That said, last night our counterparts in Japan hosted a live patch notes reading for those that might not want to read the full wall of text. Yoshida joined in to offer commentary on specific aspects, and we'd like to share what was said regarding the pricing for the Free Company housing.

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Thank you for the update, but this in no way addresses our concerns. As another person stated, replacing "no land available to buy" with "plenty of land to buy but you can't have it for at least three months because you rolled on the wrong server" doesn't help anything. If anything, it's worse, because you're dangling a carrot on a stick that we can never actually reach. This was a huge part of why I was excited about this patch. I'm not happy about a lot of things in the patch, but housing was a huge part of why I remained excited about 2.1. Now that's been yanked away, and you're telling me that everyone in my guild needs to farm guild roulette all day every day for three months and we might have enough to get a house? Really?

No, thank you. We've come to terms with the fact that barring a miracle, we simply aren't going to ever have a house. And that really bites because it was a big part of why I bought this game in the first place. I feel like you guys lied to us. I put up with that a lot in WoW, but there's a reason why I'm not playing WoW right now, but am playing this game. You might want to consider that.

I have a solution, scrap the whole fc housing and just give us mog houses again. At least those were free.

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Originally Posted by Sovereign

Cool. So now we have confirmation that Yoshi-P really is out of touch with the playerbase. =/

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I dunno I'm about sick of these, "If you don't like it. Oh well." - "Please look forward to more BS." Responses.
Getting my friggin' nerves. I wanted 2.1 to play house, sue me. It's what I wanted to do.
Seriously, a lot of Dev responses post nothing but doom and gloom for us to go "Aww...." about.

Just cut the prices a bit and there will be a lot of happy campers.
Quit saying "no no no no." TO SO MANY THINGS adghkl;
http://nbchardballtalk.files.wordpre...face.jpg?w=246

I really don't understand all the QQ regarding housing, specifically why people even care. I keep reading posts about how people were really really really looking forward to housing as if it was the only thing they were interested in. Are you kidding me? Having a house serves no purpose whatsoever. It's a completely vain nicety that has no impact on how I play FFXIV. What do people even expect to do in these houses...? Walk around and maybe do some /sitting and /dozing on the beds? Wow, that sounds like fun. Or maybe I can craft inside the house because the environment in which I craft is so important!

If the only thing you were looking forward to in 2.1 was housing, then I highly suggest you play a different game--something like Second Life.

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Originally Posted by WhiteDragon

Heaven forbid you have a goal you can't instantly get, that would be stupid. "I think bosses should have one HP and my relic gear should be handed to me. Why should I have to farm tomes? Why is there still a limit? That's so stupid, content should all just be handed to me at the press of a button."


You guys are goofy. Grow up. You don't know more about the game then the people who made it. They have actual data showing how much gil people still have. They didn't just go "Oh man one guy as a ton of gil so we're going to raise prices for every server!" Your gil income is getting increased for just questing, I know plenty of people who make well over a mil a day by just messing with the markets who aren't even that good at it (As good ones will tell you they make tens of millions).

It's supposed to be a big long term goal, not "Oh well I bought this house it's neat, time to never visit it again until next patch!" like you guys want it to be.

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I'm sorry that you apparently can't be arsed to actually read the posts and are instead forced to trot out the most common straw man argument instead of actually reading for comprehension.

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Originally Posted by Billzey

I really don't understand all the QQ regarding housing, specifically why people even care. I keep reading posts about how people were really really really looking forward to housing as if it was the only thing they were interested in. Are you kidding me? Having a house serves no purpose whatsoever. It's a completely vain nicety that has no impact on how I play FFXIV. What do people even expect to do in these houses...? Walk around and maybe do some /sitting and /dozing on the beds? Wow, that sounds like fun. Or maybe I can craft inside the house because the environment in which I craft is so important!

If the only thing you were looking forward to in 2.1 was housing, then I highly suggest you play a different game--something like Second Life.

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I'm a role player. My FC is a role playing guild. Our house was going to be our in-world base of operations. It's kind of a big deal.

But to be honest, it doesn't matter if you understand it or not. You don't have to understand it.

Patch 2.1 delayed for 20 days... now housing will be delayed for 90 days (so players can save up for the FC house???).

Unhappy players = unhappy customers.

Please consider the suggestion here at http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Housing-system

Slice the prices now, and implement a tax system in the next few weeks as a compromise.

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Originally Posted by WhiteDragon

Heaven forbid you have a goal you can't instantly get, that would be stupid. "I think bosses should have one HP and my relic gear should be handed to me. Why should I have to farm tomes? Why is there still a limit? That's so stupid, content should all just be handed to me at the press of a button."

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WhiteDragon, more like WhiteKnight, am I right? You just keep on defending their bad decision. I'm sure you'll be looked upon favorably as you continue to prove how awesome and cool and awesome you are!

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Originally Posted by Billzey

Having a house serves no purpose whatsoever. It's a completely vain nicety that has no impact on how I play FFXIV. What do people even expect to do in these houses...? Walk around and maybe do some /sitting and /dozing on the beds? Wow, that sounds like fun. Or maybe I can craft inside the house because the environment in which I craft is so important!

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If it serves no purpose, then why does it cost so much?

Welcome to the issue~

The worst part is about new players who have rolled on Legacy servers, you've made us feel trapped and now we can't even go to a normal server, even if we wanted to, this is fair? Their should be a flat price and you should just investigate RMT yourselves more IMO, if you had trial accounts which couldn't spam, and made it so you can't shout and tell with people who aren't friends till a certain level all probs would be fine... IDK about this sometimes. Their are solutions but your community aren't being payed to come up with them, we pay you money for the content you are keeping from us...

SE:

If you don't have the capability to build more server structure for housing instances, I can understand, given that you guys have been playing catch-up for months at this point.

However, that is no excuse to place the existing housing spaces at such a high rate that no one can feasibly enjoy them, especially on a Legacy server. If it comes to the point where you simply do not have space left over on the houses and players are forced to wait until servers are upgraded or spaces become free, so be it. The player base would rather enjoy what you can provide than be forced to arbitrairly grind for what is effectively considered by the vast majority of the base to be casual content.

Lower the rates.

Everything about this is a huge slap in our faces. Servers will not hold more than a few houses? Oh ok, guess it's fine to set the prices at ridiculous amounts to make sure less than 1% of the player base will get a house in the foreseeable future.

Build. More. Servers. All of us pay a subscription.

No one is asking for free houses on patch day. But who about accomplishable goals? Something that doesn't take til 2067 to complete.

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Originally Posted by cainejw

WhiteDragon, more like WhiteKnight, am I right? You just keep on defending their bad decision. I'm sure you'll be looked upon favorably as you continue to prove how awesome and cool and awesome you are!

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I picked a random name because all of my names were taken do to me coming into this late in a multi lingual game. But interesting argument that offers no counter.

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Originally Posted by LiadansWhisper

I'm sorry that you're illiterate.

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I'm sorry that you're playing a game with goals. Heaven forbid someone gets that the DEVELOPERS have more data then FIGURES YOU MAKE UP IN YOUR HEAD.

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Originally Posted by Billzey

I really don't understand all....

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yea you obviously don't understand... >_>
And who are YOU to tell someone what they should have fun with in a game they PAY for?
How does the world look up on your high horse there buddy? ^_^b

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Originally Posted by WhiteDragon

Heaven forbid you have a goal you can't instantly get, that would be stupid.
It's supposed to be a big long term goal, not "Oh well I bought this house it's neat, time to never visit it again until next patch!" like you guys want it to be.

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Sorry mate, housing has already been a longterm goal for many of us since 1.0. Is waiting 18 months already not acceptable?
The devs stole our gil at version 2.0 launch, gave us false impressions as to the price of housing, made housing cheaper on some worlds than others, only providing a set amout of real estate probably because they are too cheap to provide enough instance servers.
We have every right to be pissed off, just because you feel different doesn't make our feelings any less important.

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Originally Posted by Naoki Yoshida

In patch 2.1 you'll be able to generate a bit more gil. Battle classes can earn an average of 15,000-18,000 gil per day, and with role bonuses in the Duty Roulette this can exceed 20,000 gil. Doing this several days a week you can save up quite a bit of gil, and if all FC members do the same, it will become a considerable amount. We estimate that by doing this for around three months you should be able to purchase land.

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I'm sure that since Legacy land costs 5-10 times as much money as land on the cheapest worlds, that Legacy players can expect dailies to reward 5-10 times as much gil, right? I mean, that would only be fair if we're to accept this logic.

I saved the realm twice with more possible saving in the future, where the hell is my "My family would not be alive if not for you, thanks for saving our asses twice" discount?!

Instead we get a "My family are alive cause of you but I'm going to have to charge you 3-6 times the fee of the average fresh adventurer who saved us once" tax. :(

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Originally Posted by Camate

Greetings everyone,

First off, we'd like to thank you for all of your feedback thus far, and as usual, we're working to get it all collected and delivered to the dev. team. That said, last night our counterparts in Japan hosted a live patch notes reading for those that might not want to read the full wall of text. Yoshida joined in to offer commentary on specific aspects, and we'd like to share what was said regarding the pricing for the Free Company housing.

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I am absolutely floored by this response. I can hardly believe this is what they had to say about the prices. Crazy :O

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Originally Posted by WhiteDragon

I picked a random name because all of my names were taken do to me coming into this late in a multi lingual game. But interesting argument that offers no counter.

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You assume I'm bothering to counter someone who thinks they have to prove their self-worth through video games.

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Originally Posted by WhiteDragon

I'm sorry that you're playing a game with goals. Heaven forbid someone gets that the DEVELOPERS have more data then FIGURES YOU MAKE UP IN YOUR HEAD.

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I'm going to repeat this one more time. I really want you to pay attention and actually read what I'm saying.

If a goal is unobtainable, is it really a goal?

No no, stop talking. Sit there and read that a few more times. I know you can do it - I believe in you!

Okay. Good. Very proud of you. Now I want to you to think further. Is something that will take you a minimum of two and a half years to have a hope of obtaining truly a realistic goal?

*holds up a finger* No no, I know what you're saying - in real life, you're absolutely right. But this is a game. C'mon, take a deep breath and repeat after me - this is a game.

They are asking each person in my guild to spend the equivalent of $450 to get a the smallest, worst house. Is that really, truly a realistic goal?

I am not asking to get housing on day one. I haven't really seen anyone ask for that. I am asking that the goal be realistic and not require me to grind all day every day for months (or years) to achieve it.

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Originally Posted by Tremara

Btw I think people are overreacting about the prices. I could understand if people would be mad if personal housing would cost so much but fc housing? It's a prestige object - on thing you try to gain with your fc not alone.

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- Plays on a server where the cheapest FC housing is three times less than it is on Legacy servers
- Is fine with that

This is so not surprising. o_O

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Originally Posted by WhiteDragon

Heaven forbid you have a goal you can't instantly get, that would be stupid.

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Yeah, just completely ignore the fact that people have been WORKING towards this for 3 months, or so. Nope, we just found out about it today, and want everything right now, and for free.

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Originally Posted by Ozz

Sorry mate, housing has already been a longterm goal for many of us since 1.0. Is waiting 18 months already not acceptable?
The devs stole our gil at version 2.0 launch, gave us false impressions as to the price of housing, made housing cheaper on some worlds than others, only providing a set amout of real estate probably because they are too cheap to provide enough instance servers. .

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And yet they've stated that their HARD DATA that THEY HAVE BECAUSE IT'S THEIR GAME AND THEY HAVE ACCESS TO IT shows that people still have absurd amounts of gil.

And you have no idea how many housing areas there will be. I think it's ridiculous that you're saying they're just being cheap and stuff considering how many servers this game already uses and how much money they could easily save using a basic instance system or peer to peer system like Nexon does with half of their games.

@cainjw: White Knight and Fanboy should be banned from the forums. Just because someone has another opinion than you doesn't mean you can try to insult him with this words.

Btw I think people are overreacting about the prices. I could understand if people would be mad if personal housing would cost so much but fc housing? It's a prestige object - on thing you try to gain with your fc not alone.

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Originally Posted by Camate

*Snip*

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Talk about a PR disaster...

I do URGE everyone here NOT to purchase a single plot for FC housing as a protest to this oblivious atempt to keep players subs for at least another 3 months - luckilly my sub is just about to expire and those four 60 days time cards I've purchased will be not used not until this gets fixed. This made me litelarly SICK when I was reading the patch notes - I'm certainly not only one here who was looking to the FC housing as the most excpected addition to the game and is now so much dissapointed by the Yoshi's / EA's attitude towards their players and customers. Vote with your wallets - say NO and cancel your subs where possible. Let the (real) money talk!

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Originally Posted by AlexNiculaie

Yeah, just completely ignore the fact that people have been WORKING towards this for 3 months, or so. Nope, we just found out about it today, and want everything right now, and for free.

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Working three months to obtain what? Five gil to a house? My guild is on a legacy server filled with a bunch of fresh people who have saved up a hundred mil for our house and we realize we have to work more for a big one, we're not pissed off, we're happy we have a reason to play more.

The only real reason anyone has to be upset is that they didn't state the prices earlier.

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Originally Posted by cainejw

You assume I'm bothering to counter someone who thinks they have to prove their self-worth through video games.

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And yet here you are posting and attacking me because I disagree with you, and I'm the one who has to prove myself apparently :V..