Terminology, Feelings, and Yes... Housing

I became much better at communication and handling conflict when I learned to try to actually understand the interests of the other party. Imagine this conversation:

A: Can you please not use words and/or tell jokes like that because it bothers me.

B: Oh, you're just being too sensitive.

A: You jerk, you don't care about my feelings!

The thing is sensitivity is a highly subjective thing. It reminds me of a quote from George Carlin: "Why is it that everyone who drives slower than you is an idiot and everyone who drives faster than you is a maniac?!" Or something like that.

Why do we assume that the Goldilocks zone, the way things OUGHT to be is precisely how we ourselves like them?

My sensitivity level is just perfect. If you don't laugh at my joke, you have no sense of humor, if you get offended at my joke, you're too sensitive. If you drive slower you're an idiot, if you drive faster, you're a maniac.

If you hate something I like then you're just a QQ whiner, if you like something I hate, then you're a white knight. Casual, hardcore - these things are badges of honor to some and insults to others. A hardcore player calls someone else a casual and means that they are a scrub, they suck. Of course they suck, they don't play with the dedicated 24/7 passion of the elite. Right? But a casual player says "Well I don't live in my mom's basement. I have a life. I have a job, a relationship, other hobbies."

Why must we vilify others who have a different perspective than we do? Who have had different life experiences and are sensitive to different things? Who drive faster or slower than we do? Who enjoy different things about the same game or who invest differing amounts of time in it?

Why when someone disagrees with us do we never take a moment to understand where they're coming from?

Which brings me to housing.

I am probably what you would call a white knight. I love this game. I have defended nearly every decision SE has made and even when we couldn't log on or we were lagging in Titan, even though the gear was linear, the stats uninteresting, and customization virtually non-existent, I would offer words of encouragement. "It'll get better," I'd say. After all, this is still a great game. I love it. I play it all the time.

I haven't stopped believing that. But I do agree with the players whose reaction to housing was like WTF?!

I was envisioning a pricing structure like 1m, 2m, 3m, or even 1m, 3m, 5m. Nothing even CLOSE to these numbers. They seem absolutely insane to me. But then, I am not privy to all the information SE has. Maybe tons of players have a lot more gil than my FC does.

But to say that we haven't been working is insulting. We've been trying very hard. It's not that we want stuff handed to us, but it'd be nice if it was somewhere within the realm of even distant possibility. It would still be disappointing, as this patch has been delayed by a month already and housing was a big selling point. Housing is, in effect, content, content that most players will not have access to right off, maybe for months more.

We could maybe get a small house, but there are no options to upgrade. That, too, seems crazy. I'd hate to invest 8m in a house and acquiring furniture knowing we'll lose all that when we want to upgrade to a big house. So the alternative is to wait and see if we can ever afford a big house. In the meantime, everyone in the FC suffers because they're part of a small, "casual", democratic group of friends rather than a giant FC where their individuality gets lost in the collective and they never have any say in FC or housing decisions.

Grinding and effort are fine. It would've been great if we could start with a small house and add on to it or start with a bare, dilapidated house and decorate it and fill it up with furniture. But instead we can't even participate in the content at all because it is prohibitively expensive.

Now, instead of assuming I'm a doomsayer (because I don't like ONE thing about FFXIV or this patch), instead of calling me a casual and saying I just want things handed to me, or that I'm whining or any of those common responses, can you please examine the underlying interests:

I want to have fun. I want to experience all content. I want my FC to be happy. I don't mind working towards bells and whistles but why can't I play the housing mini-game that's one of the big selling points of this patch?

I used to run D&D games and I remember one piece of advice I heard: "Never make your players look for the fun." Isn't that what housing is doing? Must I grind out jewelry on Goldsmith, or run dungeons hundreds of times to sell mats, or spiritbind materia for 6 months to have access to a casual game feature? Must I experience all these unfun things to get to the fun ones?

I understand if people disagree with me but why must we call the people who drive slower than us idiots (casuals) and the people who drive faster than us maniacs (the hardcores)? Doesn't it make sense that if people are paying to play a game they should get enjoyment out of it regardless of the pace they choose to play?

Please SE, I love this game, don't make us have to "find the fun." And to the FFXIV community, please be compassionate and understanding. It's not reasonable to ask players to do this. Rather than dividing ourselves with labels, let's instead look at our core interests which are fundamentally the same: to have fun. There IS a way for FFXIV to appeal to all types of players, our interests needn't be at odds.

Casual content geared towards hardcore players is just really bad implementation. I won't call someone a white knight if they defend it, even though to me it seems indefensible, but please don't think I want things handed to me on a silver platter just because I can't find any explanation that makes sense for this.

I am in huge agreement with your post here.

Though, for me, I have to stop coming onto the General Discussion portion of the forums because people are crying "nerf" over arbitrary alterations, and claiming it's the end of the world because Summoners can't use Thunder anymore and Bards cut evasion by 10% instead of damage.

And I do understand where the Housing prices are coming from. It's highly mathematical and playing off of the idea of Supply and Demand in such a way that they can keep housing data small until they can secure some extra server space for that, then drop the price to reasonable levels. Purely a theory at this point (not trying to be apologist, just trying to rationalize why they might be doing it instead of blindly claiming that the entirety of SE are somehow doing this maliciously with no realistic motive). It doesn't mean I agree with their decision, but I at least feel like I can tell why they made it.

I'm over the initial shock of housing prices now. Once the gil sellers, titan mercs, and crafting/materia extortionists get rewarded with their giant mansion (a HUGE gil sink, and sorry if any of those terms seem insensitive to you, in all honesty), prices are almost guaranteed to come down. If you look at the patch notes from a broad perspective, you'll notice that they ARE informed of what is on topic in the forums and have listened to much of the feedback provided by us as players. The notes reflect many changes we've been asking for (as well as some to try and balance others).

My outlook for the future is that housing prices will take a drop about the time of the next patch. This is approximately the time the PS4 hits in Japan along with the beta for FFXIV. Forgive me for pulling out the "PS3 limitations" card, but I really believe that if even HALF the FCs on any given server were able to purchase a plot of land, it would create a lot of strain on the servers, and 10 year old console hardware. With everyone buying and customizing all this casual content at the same time, it may turn laggier than a HM Titan run.

I think this is a necessary evil to tease us with new, casual-type content, but it's also the most efficient at removing "dirty money" from the servers as well. It needs to be hyped for the server firsts to spend their gil in high amounts, but it also leaves a bad taste in the majority of players' mouths. But don't think that the prices won't come down soon, or that they don't listen to forum feedback; don't think that for a second. There are amends that must be made as being built on top of an existing game (1.0), but be assured that in a few months - perhaps after the next patch - this whole scandal will have blown over, and we'll all be much happier in the long run.

I'm not a "white knight" for the company. I just stopped and thought about the situation logically for a minute instead of letting my emotional response get the best of me. You're right that SE has data on each FC, as well as how much gil is in circulation across the server as a whole. These prices may seem outrageous to people like you and me, but just have a little faith that this is for the players benefit in the long term of things. It's a calculated move by Yoshi-P, but whether players decide to abandon the game like the first wipe of a dungeon run, or hang in until the end .......... Just try and play it out.

I really enjoyed this OP

I remember one very important piece of advice that I received from one of my lecturers

"The height of intelligence lies in our ability to put ourselves in somebody elses shoes, its a skill that few possess and even less master"

It's amazing when I think about every person that I would consider as intelligent, possessed an innate ability to see things from another persons perspective.

The issue is it's a hard skill to obtain that few will actually bother to master or work on as we have become so insular and isolated in our modern world, where people will defend their individual points of view with no contemplation about how the other side sees it.

and its pervasive as once you have this mindset it's almost impossible to break free from it.

For me it's understanding that nothing is intentionally done to undermine this game or the community, there are numerous complicated issues that arise when you combine server resources, gil supply, RMT ,FC size, inflation, server economy etc.

But for me it would great if the devs understand that this is not the right content to restrict the majority of the playerbase from. Every FC that has reached a certain level should have access to at least the smallest plot of land for a reasonable amount of effort . Leave the larger plots to be fought over by the bigger FC.