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

[Miburo]

Good post. Thanks for making this, OP.

It is really ridiculous that for months they've been showing so much housing stuff in all those live letters. Yoshi-p is always holding up all the neato furniture and whatnot, even stuff that won't be in the game for months like leviathan fountains and junk. And then bam, barely anyone will get to experience any of it. Crafters don't benefit from the new furniture recipes because there will be little to no demand for any of it. The most your average player could hope for is maybe joining a medium sized FC and having everyone scrape up enough to buy a small porta potty tool-shed to cram their 50 members in after prices drop in 3 months.

They wasted so much time and resources, both making all this crap and promoting it in nearly every live letter since the game launched, on something that barely anyone will get to enjoy unless they change things. Really makes me question whether it's worth devoting more time and money towards this game if there are the types of decisions we have to look forward to...

[Anstarra]

I throw in my hat, and support, with this thread. Everyone needs to speak up and voice their displeasure, to show it's not just a few whiners complaining, but the whole playerbase! This isn't some ridiculous grindfest cheap FTP MMO, this is a triple-A piece of work, we pay our monthly, we love the game, we deserve not to get screwed!

[Abriael]

2.0: Everyone just sleeps in the streets, in inn rooms, or while standing on their feet for weeks on end. Everyone is happy, nobody cares.

2.1: People can't afford gigantic mansions, and suddenly they're homeless, face down in the snow in Coerthas, unable to sleep without being attacked by wild animals.

Large difference between not having a feature, and having it and not being able to participate in it at all.

By the way "People can't afford gigantic mansions" is a strawman argument of the worst kind, as it's not that people can't afford "gigantic mansions." People can't afford a small one-room house.

If you want to disprove an argument, you may want to try to refute it in its original form, and not in an exaggerated form that has nothing to do with it.

[Nikita]

2.0: Everyone just sleeps in the streets, in inn rooms, or while standing on their feet for weeks on end. Everyone is happy, nobody cares.

2.1: People can't afford gigantic mansions, and suddenly they're homeless, face down in the snow in Coerthas, unable to sleep without being attacked by wild animals.

I think it's that the vast majority can't afford any of the housing that was advertised since before 2.0 was released that has everyone riled up.

Or not, I could be wrong.

[Kluya15]

Getting a house was a huge goal for my FC. A lot of my members are fairly new / non legacy, and they chipped in what they could here and there. We were very excited for the housing concept, but honestly. The prices are outrageous. We saved up around 4.5 million, and we are no where close, even remotely, to any kind of plot of land. I'm sorry but what am I supposed to tell my members -- "oh, just another 12-18 months and we'll have our small plot of land with a small house!".

10 million, maybe 20 for a large, but I'm looking at some of these servers. 650 million? Who has that kind of gil? Even for the worst possible residence, it's 20 million! We'll still enjoy all the new content, but these prices crushed morale today

[Thagyr]

Think they misplaced a 'gil sink' for a 'gil black-hole.

[KenzieLynch]

Personally I don't see a problem.

Even if you are a small to medium FC of 40 people, you only need to put in 100K each (unless my math fails me horribly which wouldn't be surprising). If you can't afford that you shouldn't be looking at FC housing in the first place.

[Maxion]

When we were talking about raising gil for the FC housing we thought "Oh, it'd be like 10-15, maybe even 20 mil for a big house. How do we do the donations?" Well SE, way to say NO to us getting a house on Sargatanas with these outrageous prices. Every MMO I have played with housing has *never* made it a punishment to own a house. Sure there were upkeeps but it was easily manageable and didn't cost an arm and a leg like this bombshell of a price. Do they want us to actually experience the housing or just go "Oooh pretty!" and move on? As someone said earlier in the replies, this definitely looks like 1.0 prices where people could make millions in a few hours...so far I've only seen people make a couple hundred thousand in the same time frame. Sacrifice life everyone! We gotta get the gil for the FC house!

[Maquiame]

I'm sorry but I cannot support such expensive housing fees. I will also cosign with the OP and support his post. Forgive me but you guys act as if your economy is strong enough to support such prices it does not. Get the crafting to a Star Wars Galaxies level of functionality and interdependency and perhaps maybe you could justify these prices.

I will agree with those that also say that these house prices are on the level of what one would expect a FTP game to have. Its quite discouraging to see something like this, especially for the western market where we are not as interested in grinding our lives away.

If these costs were for housing that served the same purposes as the upcoming WoW fortresses or Wildstar warplots I could get the price as the functionality of the housing would justify the cost, but atm the costs are not justified. You are also not taking into account both of these games as your competition. While I know in Japan neither of those games are factors I can tell you now you will lose people to both WoW and Wildstar because of a move like this. I am begging you please take the factors of the playerbase of the western market into consideration.

Forgive me Yoshi - san but I remember you saying that you like roleplayers. Its the Roleplayers who would be selling your housing in the western markets and with a move like this you are outright telling them that you do not support them. Even in the anime Log Horizon it took only 5 million gil for Shiroe to buy the guild building. I wonder what his reaction would be here at such prices.

You want to justify it by saying that this is FC housing and the costs should be more? Well then I am justifiably saying no because even if the FC I was in -had- the money we would not spend all of our money on this and have our bank accounts be dry of money. This smells like a Nexon move and if that's the case then just outright put these houses into a cash shop and make us pay for them with real cash because I'd surely prefer that to what you are doing now. Hell I'd outright buy my FC a large house by putting down 200 dollars for it, but this. No way sir no way, your world is not that big and not that interesting. You also basically killed the concept of rp neighborhoods with a move like this and even worse for those on legacy servers who have the added negative of not being able to transfer to a new server like mine where for a large house it costs 100m.

Forgive me if I don't want to do or see the same content ten times for something that only gives me a stat buff at this point and makes it so rp guilds like mine can't even be in the same neighborhoods.

How bout we just keep it real at this point and put these into a cash shop, it hurts less that way at this point.

[Scamperoo]

Perfectly articulated OP, I agree wholeheartedly.