Critical problem with housing design, please rethink and release in future update

One problem I see being tossed around a little bit but not really brought into light is that because the FC homes are so expensive (not saying too expensive overall) that people who pitch in toward their purchase own no stake in them. This creates at least the following problems:

-There is no mentioned plan in place that prevents an FC leader from kicking people from an FC after property is purchased. Someone could chip in 10m then get tossed out with no repercussions or reimbursement. This is a powder key of a design flaw to be left on the table.

-The only significant hurdle involved with FC housing are the initial costs. Other games such as EQ2 have lower property costs but maintenance dues consummate to the size of property. Something like this should be strongly considered instead of the current system.

-House prices are not seemingly proportionate to their actual sizes. The physical size of the houses seems to represent something you would band a few adventurers together to buy at least on the small end, but something costing 100s of millions of Gil should basically be palatial in size, especially for an FC hall. Even the small house shouldn't be the size of a studio apartment (without even a bathroom or kitchen...sheesh!).

Tl;dr: House costs should be cheaper but require maintenance dues according to their size to prevent players from exploiting one another and should be physically larger if they are going to sport the price tags they have.

Oh, and yes house size isn't affected by people not having a stake in the purchase. Pork barrel posting ahoy. But seriously the homes are really small compared to the pricing!

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Originally Posted by Neridine

One problem I see being tossed around a little bit but not really brought into light is that because the FC homes are so expensive (not saying too expensive or otherwise, it's not my argument) that people who pitch in toward their purchase own no stake in them. This creates at least the following problems:

-There is no mentioned plan in place that prevents an FC leader from kicking people from an FC. Someone could chip in 10m then get tossed out with no repercussions or reimbursement. This is a powder key of a design flaw to be left on the table.
**Harassment is a bannable offense, and kicking someone after they donate money is harassment. The offender doing the kicking would literally have very strong case against them, as well as bad reputation among FCs, inside and out.

-The only significant hurdle involved with FC housing are the initial costs. Other games such as EQ2 have lower property costs but maintenance dues consummate to the size of property. Something like this should be strongly considered instead of the current system.
**What if you can't keep up the maintenance costs, such as running out of gil or stop playing, perhaps taking a couple months off from playing the game in some peoples' case? Everything you had worked toward initially with making the gil get relinquished? This forces people to put more prices on everything, right down to "tank lfm 500 gil entrance fee"

-House prices are not seemingly proportionate to their actual sizes. The physical size of the houses seems to represent something you would band a few adventurers together to buy at least on the small end, but something costing 100s of millions of Gil should basically be palatial in size, especially for an FC hall. Even the small house shouldn't be the size of a studio apartment (without even a bathroom or kitchen...sheesh!).
**I agree with this, but this is only the start. Once the big buyers come in and are rewarded with their mansions in game(i.e. spend all those hundreds of millions of gil in this initial gil sink), I'm almost positive the housing prices will drop to accommodate more casual audience. I estimate it'll be around the time the PS4 hits in Japan (along with the beta for FFXIV on PS4), though I really hate to resort to the "PS3 limitation" argument

Tl;dr: House costs should be cheaper but require maintenance dues according to their size to prevent players from exploiting one another and should be physically larger if they are going to sport the price tags they have.

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I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just tend to play devil's advocate sometimes. As for the size of the small housing, they have to make something manageable within the confines of the system requirements. They also have personal housing to add later, which seems like a better deal than FC (never enough space for everyone! XD) But you need to think about how many people are online at one time, too, not just how many people are in the FC and expecting everyone to be at the same place at the same time (short FC meetings notwithstanding)

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Originally Posted by ruinedmirage

**Harassment is a bannable offense, and kicking someone after they donate money is harassment.

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No one is ever entitled to another singular moment of FC membership. Ever. That would be incredibly exploitable, we do not "own" each others' presence, acceptance or friendship. No.

That's part of the problem the OP is talking about. No, there is no protection from being kicked after everyone pitches in and no, there should never be. That's why FC houses should NOT be this much a staggering monetary commitment, at all.

It's a human issue, a very real one, not a logistical issue. You are never entitled to membership in a circle of friends, which, ideally, an FC is at its core.

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Originally Posted by ruinedmirage

I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just tend to play devil's advocate sometimes. As for the size of the small housing, they have to make something manageable within the confines of the system requirements. They also have personal housing to add later, which seems like a better deal than FC (never enough space for everyone! XD) But you need to think about how many people are online at one time, too, not just how many people are in the FC and expecting everyone to be at the same place at the same time (short FC meetings notwithstanding)

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Make an NPC that you can pay dues to up to 6 months out. If your fee is unpaid you get 2 weeks to pay up or lose the property. Simple solution enough for the dues part.

I'm very much in agreement on the low cost to entry and then an upkeep cost of some kind.

In most well designed systems both here in FFXIV and other MMOs everyone can get basic access to features and then it takes some degree of effort to get access to the more advanced stuff within said feature. Housing should be no different. Everyone should be able to get access to a small house with relative ease; the expensive stuff should be reserved for the medium and large houses.

Locking 90% of the playerbase out of a feature entirely is simply bad design.