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

[Sovereign]

<snip>

Way to long to quote the whole thing, but very well said.

It's a simple fact that this housing system excludes the overwhelming majority of players from even participating in the content. That's not an opinion or a hypothetical situation. It's an absolute fact.

The correct way to implement this system would be to have a very low barrier of entry and a very high barrier to mastery. In other words, every Free Company can get a small plot of land right away, but if you want the big ones or the shiny house or the giant trophy or whatever, then you have to work for those. Otherwise, FC housing is simply non-content for a lot of people. I will never, ever be able to afford an FC house unless Square Enix reduces the prices by 90% or more (which would then, rightfully, upset many players who already bought a house).

[Cubester]

Again, SE has HARD DATA and you have... your imagination I guess(?) when it comes to numbers of players and how much gil they have.

Hard data that seems to be flawed. I say this because according to SE, our FC should have about 4 million lying around which I'm not aware of? I think not...
Also, a player's individual amount of money does not equal the FC's amount of money. Or do you honestly expect people to tell their FC members to fork over all of their hard earned gil?

[Zantetsuken]

And yet they've stated that their HARD DATA that THEY HAVE BECAUSE IT'S THEIR GAME AND THEY HAVE ACCESS TO IT shows that people still have absurd amounts of gil.

Any possibility that this could be the same sort of 'HARD DATA' they used to initially balance WAR vs PLD?

Looking at a single metric or omitting other critical factors can lead to very inaccurate conclusions -- it wouldn't be the first time the dev team has made such an error.


However, I suspect that this pricing structure is actually intended as a deterrent... to mask the fact that the housing servers are weak, incomplete, and not ready for full release.

[WhiteDragon]

Smaller FCs will never be able to purchase even the smallest building. Ever.

Not true at all. FC size does not determine your ability to grind, craft, or abuse the market and make millions each day.

Really? I kind of thought Twintania was a big deal. I guess everyone has that down. >.> Not like, less than 1% of the population.

Twintania is one boss in the entire game that has more people downing it each week as gear averages get better and better making it easier and easier for a lot of people.

a reason to keep playing when it's effectively forever out of your grasp?

It's only out of your grasp if you aren't willing to work to it. Again I go back to what I said before in that a lot of people enjoy working hard in games to have something not a lot of others have. You're asking for a hand out as someone who does not have anyone who can play the market in a FC with a bunch that just don't play.

[WhiteDragon]

it would still take us about 4 months to buy the smallest plot of land.

If you're doing nothing else and barely putting effort in, I guess so.

I guess we should have focused on grinding ourselves into burnout instead of focusing on RP and helping people with titan runs (my guild has actually hosted free runs to help people get their relics).

I can give all my money to a hobo, that doesn't mean I deserve a mansion. That's not how life works.

And anyone who disagrees with you is just a whiner, lazy, or stupid.

I get why you're angry, but I think you're wrong because you're not looking at a big picture, you're looking at a short term thing. You don't want to believe that you might have to work to something or if you did that it might not be something you get for a very long time. You want it handed to you.

[Sabi]

SE just create some vendors whose purpose is taking gil out of the economy by selling a couple somewhat expensive fluff items like mounts, minions, vanity gear/weapons or even some furniture.

[EthanParcival]

Well, I mean, who can blame SE. FFXIV might be a game for players but for them it is first and foremost a business venture!

They can give me all the "hard data" they want, about how many FC's have how much gil, and they can tell me all they want about how this strategy is all about "thinking about whats best for the player base".

In the end one fact remains, its a strategy from a company that is trying to keep players paying subscriptions as long as possible.

They have the bait in the water, they know we all want to play with the houses, and we'll have to play (at least) 3 months to get it. That translates to 90 days worth of subscription dollars (YMMV depending on your FC).

And its ok, because it is their business, they just "secured" subscription revenues for the next 3 months.

For non-hardcore gamers like myself it is indeed a bit of a disapointment at best, but short of taking our business elsewhere there's really not much we can do. So be it.

[kazin]

Housing prices are fine. The high-end houses are insanely expensive, yes, and there are FCs that can and will buy them with legitimate gil. It is not that hard to raise a collective 20M on a legacy server like Excalibur (my only point of reference.)

If you cut all the house prices to 1/10th like this letter is asking you'd see a lot of people forming solo-FCs just to buy themselves a house. {No Thanks.}

I think the larger problem with "high" house prices is that it's arguably somewhat rare to find a group of players that you're comfortable donating 50%, 70%, etc. of your disposable income to. Not necessarily a trust issue, per-se, but more of a "how long am I really going to be in this FC for?" Smaller groups with invested members will likely have 0 issues raising 20M+ because they know they're in it for the long haul *and* they have nothing else to spend gil on.

[Talynia]

Welcome to a long term goal, that's what they are, and there's plenty of people who enjoy them.


Some people don't enjoy hand outs. Some people enjoy working for their stuff, some people enjoy saying "I have this thing that nobody else has!" and you know what? That doesn't exist in this game right now. Housing is a way for people who want a reason to keep playing after they clear the story or beat a dungeon to play. Right now I log in once a week to clear BC and then I stop playing. Now I'll log in daily to do quest and look around for how I can make money at the market and contribute to my guild's long term goal of making money for a house.

You sir, have made me laugh a lot the last few pages. How dare people want access to content that is supposed to be casual on day one! How dare people want access to content they have been saving gil for from 1 -18 months depending on when they started playing FFXIV. Those people are just being silly. Let alone the fact that the rest of the game is catering towards people being able to play at their own pace.

For someone who keeps shouting about SE has the data so they know best you should think about what has been experienced so far when it comes to SE interpreting their data. They had the info on pre-orders and stuff as well which resulted in the smoothest launch in mmo history.

Oh... wait.

Why are we just now hearing about land limitations when one of the main points things they said is if there wasn't enough land to accommodate FC's more would be generated on the servers. Also... wait for it.... they have all of the data on how many FC's there are so should have already planned accordingly! I'm on Exodus, the house my FC wants isn't too out of reach but the lack of planning for the legacy servers is stupid. The fact that the non-legacy players on the legacy servers were basically an after thought is stupid.

Lastly!

I don't think getting the plot should be the long term goal. Making the house as awesome as possible with decorations, furniture, and the future features now those are good goals and a good way to get people to spend gil. If they really wanted to get rid of large sums of gil they should have released player housing first because there are plenty of people who will spend money customizing their own place. Especially in a game that has little to no customization right now.

[Nikita]

I have a solid piece of advice for everyone playing this game.

Always expect the worse.

Always.

Expect to be disappointed every patch and that way on extremely rare occasions you can have a pleasant surprise! "Oh look they did something right!"