Housing: What the ENG forums are trying to do won't work

You guys are trying to flood the forums with topics being negative about housing to try and get Square's attention right?

That won't work. Square doesn't even READ the English forums at all. They only actually look at the Japanese forums and they aren't complaining about housing over there. That's because in the Japanese servers the player base is much more balanced and housing isn't a huge issue over there because of it.

You guys need to remember that this is still a Japanese MMO that was made entirely with Japanese players in mind. Most Japanese companies legitamitly don't really care about their consumers outside of Japan (cause they make the vast majority of their profits in Japan).

Tbf, after the balancing incentives, it sounds like most (maybe all) of the worlds in NA data centers have no housing remaining. So the "more balanced" thing maybe doesn't hold so much weight.

But, probably more importantly, I'm going to guess that NA players probably just feel more entitled in general, compared to JP.

pretty sure they're complaining too.
even the smallest servers that you get incentives to move to sold out every plot in ~10 minutes

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Originally Posted by sorawild34

You guys need to remember that this is still a Japanese MMO that was made entirely with Japanese players in mind. Most Japanese companies legitamitly don't really care about their consumers outside of Japan (cause they make the vast majority of their profits in Japan).

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This is a dubious assertion. Might've been true for FFXI. But there's a reason why NA and EU get equal representation when it comes to fan fests. We may have less servers, but each of those servers is packed with players. Remember that it costs a helluva lot of money to fund these events for fan fests. They are not cheap affairs (so SE must believe they are very worthwhile).

Japanese players tend to have higher retention (they stick with the game longer) whereas NA players abandon the game and do other things and then return. But at the end of the day, the NA population remains higher, or at least equal to, the active Japanese player base.

Check out ffxivcensus.com, or someone else's metric for determining the active playerbase for XIV. NA always comes out on top in all estimations. NA is the bigger market and its undeniable. Which is why SE flies Yoshida out to LA for every fan fest, e3, or what have you. It's because we're actually their biggest market. XIV is closer to the WoW model that we invented, after all.

I work in Silicon Valley and in software. If I were SE, and I saw that our biggest customer base (NA) had the weakest retention rate of all regions, I'd be working hard to figure out any way necessary to keep more players subbed each month. The fact that NA is so weak in retention is basically just money wasted for SE.

There was a post earlier today stating that complaint threads were being removed on the JP side. Not sure if they were just being moved, or possibly condensed, but it would appear the also have complaints over there.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Tbf, after the balancing incentives, it sounds like most (maybe all) of the worlds in NA data centers have no housing remaining. So the "more balanced" thing maybe doesn't hold so much weight.

But, probably more importantly, I'm going to guess that NA players probably just feel more entitled in general, compared to JP.

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I think it is more along the line that NA players are more vocal and outspoken than their jp counterpart who might not be as vocal or frank, probably its culture related.

I am curious what Japanese players ARE saying, though. I took a look using basic google translate, but I'm not seeing too many recent posts...do they have another site, or should I NOT be looking in their general discussion? I also want to see if the OP is making assumptions or if they can back up their claims. I have a word for what they're doing if this is baseless, but I want to see it for myself first.

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Originally Posted by KaivaC

I am curious what Japanese players ARE saying, though. I took a look using basic google translate, but I'm not seeing too many recent posts...do they have another site, or should I NOT be looking in their general discussion? I also want to see if the OP is making assumptions or if they can back up their claims. I have a word for what they're doing if this is baseless, but I want to see it for myself first.

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To answer shortly, they are upset about how the amount was very small for 720 plots.

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Originally Posted by sorawild34

You guys are trying to flood the forums with topics being negative about housing to try and get Square's attention right?

That won't work. Square doesn't even READ the English forums at all. They only actually look at the Japanese forums and they aren't complaining about housing over there. That's because in the Japanese servers the player base is much more balanced and housing isn't a huge issue over there because of it.

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They dont even read the english forums you say?
I suppose replying to posts is not the same as reading them. :rolleyes:
I went back as far as a couple of weeks.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...with-ShopTo%21

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ount-please%21

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ation-rolls%21

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...lamour-Cosplay

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...equirement-340

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...nd-fat-chocobo

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...olition-for-NA

Oh, I know...but when I took a look, I couldn't find any posts. The only recent one I'd seen in a couple weeks was discussion about the Ivalice raid. A couple comments above me said that they might have been getting moved, so that could be why I haven't seen anything...but that doesn't explain the general lack of recent posts in General Discussion there.

Still...I'm calling the OP's post white-knighting. It's almost like OP is telling us that we don't have a right to complain about something we are paying for.

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Originally Posted by sorawild34

That won't work. Square doesn't even READ the English forums at all. They only actually look at the Japanese forums and they aren't complaining about housing over there. That's because in the Japanese servers the player base is much more balanced and housing isn't a huge issue over there because of it.

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That's not true at all. In their housing forum, from the bits I read, they discuss about what other way could be used for better experience in selling house.
And one of the ideas was lottery system.
So, they do feel the same about the whole "Login! Run! Buy!" thing.

Just a bit more civil without needing to flood the forum with hundreds of threads of housing salt.

I can't be bothered translating all the posts, but one did stood out among the sea of "suggested improvements":

A firm demand for answers from the developers regarding the future of housing.

どれだけ声をあげても運営に届いていないとしか思えないのが不満です。これてはフォーラムの存在する意味もありません。早急に何かしらのコメントが欲しいところです。

"I can't help but think that no matter how much we raise our voices, it's not going to be heard by management. There's no point in having forums. It's high time they commented about this (problem)."

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Originally Posted by sorawild34

You guys are trying to flood the forums with topics being negative about housing to try and get Square's attention right?

That won't work. Square doesn't even READ the English forums at all. They only actually look at the Japanese forums and they aren't complaining about housing over there. That's because in the Japanese servers the player base is much more balanced and housing isn't a huge issue over there because of it.

You guys need to remember that this is still a Japanese MMO that was made entirely with Japanese players in mind. Most Japanese companies legitamitly don't really care about their consumers outside of Japan (cause they make the vast majority of their profits in Japan).

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If they don't read the English forums, then how do they know to fix the bugs that I've reported? Just a lucky coincidence?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sorawild34

You guys are trying to flood the forums with topics being negative about housing to try and get Square's attention right?

That won't work. Square doesn't even READ the English forums at all. They only actually look at the Japanese forums and they aren't complaining about housing over there. That's because in the Japanese servers the player base is much more balanced and housing isn't a huge issue over there because of it.

You guys need to remember that this is still a Japanese MMO that was made entirely with Japanese players in mind. Most Japanese companies legitamitly don't really care about their consumers outside of Japan (cause they make the vast majority of their profits in Japan).

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I wonder if there isn't more to it. Japanese culture reinforces utility over grandeur. Most people live in one-room studios with a small side area for cooking/hygeine.

I wonder why people think "being negative" about something that is legitimately causing stress and disappointment to themselves and their friends is "something that won't work"? Do you think the devs are being willfully ignorant? This isn't even the first time housing has caused this much annoyance.

Most FCs use housing to advertise, as it provides improved services in a convienient location, and ways to contribute to the fc's growth beyond a "glorfied chat channel".

Roleplay fcs and housing owners in particular have a place where they can make scenes and places to play out different scenes to their liking, and some people are just head over heels in designing them for every occasion. All this, yet it suffers from a failure in design crippling its availability. They heard it then, yet the response from their defenders was "just give them a chance! It's just the first iteration! Stop being so negative!"

Later came and went. This has been going on for years.

Just what does non instanced housing truly get us? A pool and neighbors? With teleporting and duty finder they say they are, meeting the neighbors is vanishingly small.