After sleeping on it... it's still ridiculous.

[Omedon]

http://omedon.tumblr.com/post/701070...sleeping-on-it

The following is a blog copy-paste from the above link.



I have to be honest here, if you expect nothing but advocacy and praise for Square Enix after a lifetime of loyalty from yours truly, you might not want to read this post, because it’s not going to be very validating on that front. I didn’t get to do any gaming yesterday. I did one turn-in of a crafting leve and logged out in bleak, grey absence of gaming morale. I spent all day on the forums trying to get some solace from the united outrage over the housing prices.

There is so much wrong with the “high shelf” approach SE have chosen for housing, I don’t even know where to begin.

*Access itself* on a high shelf is terrible design.

Access is so important. For personal housing, access needs to be the default (not the “privilege”) because players, your local superheroes, shouldn’t be homeless. For GUILD/FC housing, access needs to be the default because it’s a shared experience, that we are capable of kicking each other out of, especially with the whole “if one person RMTs, everyone loses the house,” above and beyond “gkicks happen.” Make the furniture expensive, make housing-based perk unlocks a big FC point investment, but telling a FC they are not good enough to even own a house unless they a) grind the INSANE money and b) trust each other with the time and money of said grind, to this degree, is ass backwards, and 100% wrong in today’s market. I can almost understand the “long term goal” appeal… if it wasn’t something we could easily screw each other out of, and the internet is a den of scum and villainy. Not everyone is in an FC as great as mine!

Fool me once…

I mentioned personal housing, and now I know what you might be thinking: “This isn’t about personal housing, people need to stop lumping this with personal housing,” but here’s the thing… Square Enix has now made a statement to players like me that need to be able to express ourselves to enjoy a game at all, and that statement is “you’ll have to work for it! You need to be invested, we need your $13-15/month, and this is how we get it, by holding what other games grant as a base access level over your head behind a long term grind!” I will not only be at a crossroads in six months when they potentially do this again with personal housing, I am at a crossroads NOW as to whether or not to stay on board and trust them for six months that they will NOT do this again. If I continue to play (and pay) under the assumption that this won’t happen again in six months, and it then does indeed happen, it’s “fool me twice, shame on me!” Every nerve in my Final-Fantasy-trained sense of resource management tells me that I need to make this strategic decision NOW.

It’s a trap!

I’ve already beaten the Admiral Ackbar meme into the ground on the forums, but seriously, this is SO being done to counter RMT, and even perhaps to catch it in the act! You can’t tell me that every purchase over seven digits made in the first month won’t be investigated into the ground! Warring with RMT is the eternal, noble struggle of every MMO that doesn’t counter it by selling their own currency (and even, in many cases, of those MMOs that do), but doing something so blatantly inconveniencing of innocent players as a part of said war is just ridiculous.

Think about the culture!

There’s a really good forum-posted open letter you should read (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Housing-Prices) from a gentleman on the Balmung server, who puts this much better than I will, but the long and the short of my take on it is this: The MMORPG market has established that owning a home, just “a home,” in most games that offer them, is just something that happens, because it’s developed to be experienced, it’s not on a high shelf, and reasonable access is the default. So along comes FFXIV with its FC housing exception to that idea, and everyone immediately thinks they must own it. You don’t have to agree with it, but the existing MMORPG market is a thing, and that’s how we’ve been trained, and that’s how we will see it, and that’s what will be projected within FC communities, and so… it must happen, by any means necessary, or we are clearly doing something wrong. The degree of greedy, mercenary ugliness that will spawn in the race to make this happen will be utterly community damaging. FCs that don’t take the sensible approach (which, thankfully, mine did) and just laugh at the very idea of getting the house beyond their means (Which SHOULD NOT be beyond their means if it’s the entry level house!) will rattle deep and looming collection plates at their members, which will motivate the selling of primal runs, the inflated expectation of not just activity, but money-generating activity, the exorbitant expectations for crafting components on the marketboard, (which no one will pay) not to mention… FC officers holding in their hands more gil than perhaps they’ve ever seen on behalf of their members… and money is power, and power corrupts, and people get hacked… and getting hacked can get you banned (true story, happened to a friend of a friend of mine), and there’s personal housing in six months, and THAT might be expensive, so there’s that to hoard for, but the FC needs your gil, etc, etc… I don’t want to be part of the world where this is all not only happening, (because, let’s face it, that happens anyway) but to an amplified degree of “we should have this, we’re not homeless scrubs” expectation based on a genre standard that goes beyond FFXIV.

So what has my time been worth, then?

This is a huge sticking point for me. I’ve saved, I’ve hoarded, I’ve played regularly, I’ve been smart with my gil, and at the first sign of an official monetary measuring stick, I am utterly humbled, dwarfed and insulted by the numbers attached to housing. Do I think I should be able to afford an FC home on my own? Hell no. Do I think “my money times a few others” should at least be able to get in on the feature at launch? Absolutely, because it’s designed to be experienced, and personal expression is not a goal, it’s a vehicle! (http://omedon.tumblr.com/post/627981...-is-not-a-goal) Now admittedly there are apparently multiple new “gil fountains” being introduced alongside this crazy moneysink, but still, the question remains, what has my saving up to now been worth? Apparently, next to this feature that we have been trained by MMORPGs to think is “just something you get,” not very much, and that’s insulting. That doesn’t encourage me to work toward this goal, that tells me that all of my savings are but a drop in the bucket next to how much I SHOULD have, and that’s insulting. This is not about entitlement, this is about the game being about fun and escapism: fun as in “My character lives somewhere pretty and customized, from which I set out to pursue fun, adventurous goals,” and escapism as in “for reals, I live in a place that’s not so pretty, from which I set out to go to work.” What SE is generating is a situation where we log in and go to work, because housing, FC or otherwise, is just something “we have,” and to have it in their world, that requires a grind, which is work, and not fun. In a game charging monthly, time needs to be powerful and valuable, because it’s what we buy. I’ve spent time, smart time, making a reasonable amount of money, as have many around me, and we’ll still be homeless. That makes my/their time spent utterly powerless. So what am I paying for?

I will not be surprised if I write more about this in a future entry, but that’s enough for this one. This covers some of the major points, to me, and honestly, other points are still being raised on the forums. The truth of the matter, for me, is that I am very interested in personal housing, but this statement about FC housing tells me that I might be spinning my wheels to stick around hoping to own a home, because housing, ACCESS to housing, a creative expression feature, is apparently fair game in the “long term grind” arena… and I can think of very few stances more diametrically opposed to my beliefs when it comes to game design and time investment.

Have I ragequit? No, but I’m glad I downgraded to “entry” subscription, because I could hit that switch at any time now, and the most it will cost me is thirteen bucks and change.

[WHS]

very well put, even if it is another housing thread I am glad you made it.

[Orihara_Izaya]

Agreed, I woke up and i'm still upset about their supposed "class balance", housing and others... I just don't understand what was going through their heads in this patch. I might just have to sleep on it for a week before I can accept it. I told my FC the new last night and 95% were just as upset and they haven't even read all the patch notes yet.

[DSN]

[url]
So what has my time been worth, then?

Apparently this varies based on which box you clicked 6 months ago before this was on the horizon.

[Little_Ifrit]

I'm ok with it as I'm on a relatively cheap server and I'm not a'll that bothered about housing. But I do feel for you guys who has your heart's set on this. I don't fully understand the outrage but maybe I'm not in a really tight FC like you guys.

I logged on for a few hours today and so many people are shouting trying to sell ifrits horn and the likes. Have a lot of people just abandoned the idea of housing altogether?

[Earthgaia]

Agreed, I woke up and i'm still upset about their supposed "class balance", housing and others... I just don't understand what was going through their heads in this patch. I might just have to sleep on it for a week before I can accept it. I told my FC the new last night and 95% were just as upset and they haven't even read all the patch notes yet.

So let me get this straight, you're fc is upset and they have not read the patch notes which actually say there are cheap housing options?

[Sovereign]

So let me get this straight, you're fc is upset and they have not read the patch notes which actually say there are cheap housing options?

You... think 20 million gil for the worst plot of land is a 'cheap housing option'?

[Johnist]

/sigh... another damned thread that boils down to a "Give it to me right now at a mega cheap rate that everyone can afford"...

The prices are fine. It gives you something to plan for... in 90 days (Ides of March / March 15th) housing could be up to half off (on select lots that haven't been bought) and around the time of 2.2 (and maybe the PS4 beta on live servers). Yes, a Mansion is a long-term project for most FCs that are "small" by SE's theory on what the size should be. This is also why they are having that recruitment contest, yes?

[Seirra_Lanzce]

You... think 20 million gil for the worst plot of land is a 'cheap housing option'?

20 million gils is achieveable for small FC of atleast 50 and above.

FC are meant to be big. Unless if ur thinking FC of 4-5 ppl.. then... u ought to wait for personal housing then.

[Nanaya]

You... think 20 million gil for the worst plot of land is a 'cheap housing option'?

Well, since that other person is on Faerie, it seems for the low low price of 6,400,000 gil, they can attain the filthiest, horribly located house on that servers market. Rejoice, I guess. Maybe Yoshi will put in a mortgage option so myriad people can foreclose on their overexpensive houses, so art can finally truly imitate life.