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

[Ksenia]

-snip-

Don't let the bait get you. I'm quite certain you understand the economics as they are in the game quite well.
It's these half wit's that try and use $60K University Degrees to draw parallel's to real world economics that should be laughed at.

[Icefall]

What is your plan to address this problem when the wealthiest players decide not to buy housing immediately and wait three months (spending that time accruing more wealth) until prices have been reduced? Will there be a system in place to stop them from being able to "buy out" an entire instance three months from now when prices are lower? If the problem of instances being bought out is not addressed now; then when will you address it? Putting a bigger price tag on the content will not "fix" the issue.

Just another proving point that this wasn't about preventing a buy out by the Uncle Moneybags and Uncle Scrooges of the servers. There is nothing in place to prevent land ownership abuse other than cost. This was all just about buying time for SE to trickle users in to stress test their instance infrastructure before properly releasing it in full. This was a way to delay content without having to say it was delayed, but it really was the worst way to go about it since SE chose to dance around the issue instead of being honest and upfront about it.

[Toxsik]

I don't wanna hear excuses yoship just fix the BS.

[Arkista]

Might be late to the party.. Been playing the game.

Fundamental Pricing Stance

Our fundamental stance toward housing prices was that we wanted to ensure that plots would be evenly distributed, avoiding a situation in which the wealthiest players could easily buy up all available plots of land. Please understand that while we will be adding servers and expanding housing areas as soon as we can, it is simply physically impossible for us to accomplish this easily, in a matter of one or two weeks.

If they are so worried about all the rich people buying up land why didn't they make it so only FC leaders can buy a plot of land and only one?

"In each legacy World, there are more than ten players in possession of over one hundred million gil. Even in non-legacy Worlds, there are a significant number of players with several million gil".

So because more than 10 people on a legacy server has more than 100mil we all have to get stiffed. Way to go 1%.

[OldGeezer]

Yoshi gave the estimate. Players saved based on that estimate. It is downright silly to say it's the player's fault to go off the director of the game's estimate when deciding how to save for housing. My entire point was that you were incorrect in saying that people not saving enough wasn't SE's fault because it is their fault entirely. Not only did they give an estimate that was only about 1/3rd of total cost for the majority of servers,...

It was an estimate but the cold reality is that other people saved more than you. Your 2.5 million won't be enough because initial supply is low. You won't be able to buy a doghouse in the first round. So to give you a shot SE developed a diminishing lottery so all the plots aren't gobbled up right away, but it requires people to wait and people here are very impatient.

My advice to you is to buy 5 individual houses together and throw block parties instead.

[Rex]

But....
You knew this was coming.

You knew this was coming from the start.
Actually... You knew this was coming pre-2.Ø...

I just...
Why?
Why has it not been decided that the data centers should be upgraded to handle the game and all of its features in full?
Why does this continue to be such a limiting factor, and how long is this going to keep cropping up?

I wasn't likely to get FC housing anyway due to the rank requirement and the fact that, even at 'reasonable' prices, it'd be probably beyond a 1-person FC, but the thing that's been eating at me through all of this and what has made me so negative is specifically the concern expressed above; we keep running into issues because not enough investment is being made into the hardware...

The subscription numbers exceeded Square's expectations. They continue to upgrade hardware as we go trying to minimize downtime whenever possible. Like with patch 2.1. There were hardware upgrades.

[Helyon]

All I know if my FC had been saving since day one so we could work on the housing when released. We enjoy crafting and housing most but at this point are small FC will be likely moving on to a game that may care a little more about the needs of the players. I was fully expecting the Large House to be maybe 20-30 mil and that would have been perfect. We thought our 2 mil that took us since release to build would of have been more then enough for a small plot at least!

[Dhex]

Just another proving point that this wasn't about preventing a buy out.

I merely asked because it seems like Yoshida is either trying to divert attention from the fact that they could not implement this content properly, or he is being honest with this presentation of what they wanted to do and what they would like to do but has failed to observe the blatant fallacy in the argument for this pricing. In short the explanation he's presenting falls short in addressing the issue driving the decision making.

Which makes me wary of trusting his insights with us (the community) on content his team is developing.

[Utildai]

This makes ZERO sense from a ''keep players in game'' mind set... Why in the WORLD would you out price 80% of the player base in a new feature you added into the game. Then blame it on server capacity and the ''rich''? That is the worst excuse I have seen for an MMO screw up in YEARS. Why wouldn't you just limit it to one house per account, accessible by all characters on the account? This and other ''features'' you added to the game are why I will no longer be supporting Square or FFXIV... I'm sorry, this could have been a home run for most of the player base, but instead you opted for a bunt and struck out.

[Sorel]

Lando: We've got to be able to get some kind of a reading on that shield, up or down. Well, how could they be jamming us if they don't know... if we're coming. Break off the attack! The shield is still up.

Ackbar: It's a trap!

So, my fellow conspiracy theorists ... why would Yoshida-san deploy a seemingly limited (yet operational) feature such as housing, that can only be utilized by those player (or groups of players) with ludicrously large piles of gil available to them, in which more than one can be acquired in order to potentially corner the housing market ... yet provides ZERO in-game tactical or economic advantages??

I submit these facts to you:

• Yoshida-san's team knows precisely who has how much gil (thanks to that survey).
• Yoshida-san's team knows how much gil a given server can produce in a day/week/month based on the population on that server.
• The patch notes clearly states (multiple times) that if they detect RMT activity regarding housing, ALL the gil used to purchase those lots (I am deliberately using plural) will be eliminated from the server.
• Housing provides no immediately tangible benefits.

So if I wanted to destroy ... let's say the entire Rebel Fleet in one fell swoop. I would present a very valuable Death Star that seems to be quite vulnerable to typical rebel guerrilla tactics, let them go about their tactics, and when they think they're about to succeed in their strategy, spring the trap. Replace "Rebel Fleet" with "RMT" and you see what I am getting at.

Housing right now is RMT bait. It is setup in such a way that ONLY the extremely rich (which Yoshida-san know who they are thanks to the survey) and RMT can participate in at launch. It's almost deliberately designed to exclude normal players for at least a couple months. Why would you want to exclude your normal rank and file players from something that is good?? Unless it is not good. Unless it's a trap, and you don't want any chance of them being caught in it at launch.

Yoshida-san had to know (again the survey) that he didn't have enough server capacity right now to accommodate every Free Company wanting housing. He could have just delayed it 3 months to the next patch, when housing benefits are also supposed to added. But he didn't. Why?? Because Yoshida-san is a general, and not only is he fighting for good things in the game, he is fighting against bad things ... like RMT. Why not use this seeming setback as an opportunity to remove BILLIONS of RMT gil from the the servers?

If an RMT FC buys up 10 top tier lots on a server and even 1 gil from it is proved to be RMT, the deed is seized and all 3+ billion gil paid for those deeds is removed from the server.

Anyway, that's what I would do. If that is the plan (and it works) it will be most impressive, indeed.