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

[Edellis]

You're on the cheapest server, of course your FC is excited. You can actually afford housing.

As far as I see, people cant decide if they're mad at the housing costs, or the "hidden motive" of SE to make it purposefully inaccessible because their servers will explode. Which i'm having a hard time believing, when they easily could have done a much better job by just limiting the amount of houses you can buy.

Server equipment doesn't come cheap and easy, and I don't think that, if the plots are all bought up in 3 months, SE will have added any extra servers to the ones already in use now. Me being on a cheap server, of course I don't think the costs are inaccessible for an active FC to afford. But that means they're accessible, and will eventually be in use when the patch isn't out for only 2 days time.

So, I'm not buying the whole "we want to save server stress" idea. It just doesn't make any sense to me. You can't buy more houses or set more decor than the instances servers allow you to create. It's already capped. So i'm just going to blame this issue on the costs and leave it at that. You guys are trying way too hard to make this a deeper issue. Yoshi's explanation makes sense, even if it's flawed.

[Roflcoptorz]

As far as I see, Yoshi's explanation makes sense, even if it's flawed.

It makes sense? That's one of the funnier things I've read lately. The community is pissed because it doesn't make sense. At all. So we're left with really 2 opinions.
1. The dev staff is being honest. This means they really couldnt come up with a better answer. I choose to believe that the entire staff are not morons. The community came up with 5+ better ways to solve the problem in less than 1 day. If this was the best solution the dev team could field, they all deserve to be fired for incompetence.
2. What SE states is the problem, isn't the underlying issue. Again, if you generally accept that the dev team isn't full of morons, this is really the only choice.

[TrystWildkey]

As far as I see, people cant decide if they're mad at the housing costs, or the "hidden motive" of SE to make it purposefully inaccessible because their servers will explode.

I'm upset about the costs. Whatever the reasoning is, housing, a highly advertised and anticipated content, has been put out of my reach indefinitely due to the prices.

I'd be less upset if every server had the same astronomical costs (still disappointed, but less vocal). It's hard to keep a rational head when people on cheaper servers just keep saying that the whole thing is fine. Of course it's fine for them. It's not fine for me. Yeah, he's said that they will eventually re-evaluate the prices, but that doesn't help.

(cue the people who use the argument of me wanting content without work) <- pre-emptively silencing these people, I've saved every gil I could since open beta. I'd count that as working towards something, wouldn't you? And if housing (small plot mind you) was remotely available to me within a few weeks, or even a month and a half at most, again, I wouldn't be as upset.

The point is, they've advertised over and over the FC housing content. They gave a ballpark estimate (which, in hindsight they shouldn't have done) and made it seem like a good amount of FC's would be able to access housing. And now, they've walled this content off from all but the very, very few people that have enough gil to buy it. And those type of players are probably LESS likely to even want housing to begin with.

I'm unable to access content. The reasons for this are NOT because I'm not skilled enough, or haven't worked hard enough. The reason I'm unable to access housing is due to the actions of other players. (whether that be gil sellsers, gil buyers, legacy who exploited Atomos, legacy who exploited the initial marketplace after launch, merc groups that sold runs, etc.)

Yeah, I'm upset. And it is justified.

[3motion]

I'm unable to access content. The reasons for this are NOT because I'm not skilled enough, or haven't worked hard enough. The reason I'm unable to access housing is due to the actions of other players. (whether that be gil sellsers, gil buyers, legacy who exploited Atomos, legacy who exploited the initial marketplace after launch, merc groups that sold runs, etc.)

Yeah, I'm upset. And it is justified.

Isn't the reason you cannot afford the housing because you aren't skilled at making money and not working hard enough either for it?
I wouldn't say your reason is justified, already know quite a few people who have over 10m alone.
And they did work hard making that gil

[Iymala]

I wouldn't say your reason is justified, already know quite a few people who have over 10m alone.
And they did work hard making that gil

I am sure they did, but they also, at least on Cactuar, charged astronomical prices for a long time for what they were making. Prices.... that a new 50 should not be able to legitimately afford based on the amount of gil entering the world via questing. They obtained illegal gil in almost every case from players who bought gil from RMT. Since within that first month before repair prices were fixed and mobs dropped more than 1 to 2 gil there was only so much gil entering the economy.

So yes house prices are screwed hugely from illicit activity from RMT regardless if they are holding tons of gil atm (which they are) but how much gil they put into the economy since launch from people buying it and spending it.

[TrystWildkey]

Isn't the reason you cannot afford the housing because you aren't skilled at making money and not working hard enough either for it?
I wouldn't say your reason is justified, already know quite a few people who have over 10m alone.
And they did work hard making that gil

Oh, you're right! My sincere apologies. Instead of playing an MMORPG to level my battle class, progress through the storyline, do quests, level my crafting classes and otherwise engage in the game mechanics, I should have been playing the market.

How silly of me! I thought we were playing an rpg, not an economics game. I've been playing wrong this whole time!!

Edit: Also, you're on Cerberus, the second cheapest set of servers. Have you seen the prices for Durandal yet? Or did you just skip over those?

[3motion]

....

Hey I've seen the prices and yes, I AM on Cerberus, the 2nd cheapest set of servers and yet my guild still is still missing several millions for a medium plot. So what? We're still working on it unlike you complaining about the prices.

The market is also part of the game, whetever you want to get into it is up to you. It just happens to be profitable everytime they release new stuff.

The thing is, people like you (probably) prioritize own progression way more than anything else.
Progressing seems much more worthwhile than donating gil to buy a house which isnt even yours, right?

Edit : Oh and I dont see a reason for the prices to be adjustet to your legacy server prices. I dont think I have to explain why.

[MortalWare]

Isn't the reason you cannot afford the housing because you aren't skilled at making money and not working hard enough either for it?
I wouldn't say your reason is justified, already know quite a few people who have over 10m alone.
And they did work hard making that gil

Too bad this is supposed to be a game and not WORK. Nice try.

[3motion]

A game doesn't mean everything gets handed out to you. Nice try

[Sunarie]

A game doesn't mean everything gets handed out to you. Nice try

Show me where anyone is asking that? People are saying that they put in three months (some have been saving for longer than that, this "feature" hasn't exactly been a secret since the 1.0 days) of savings to give them more than enough for a small plot based on a price estimate given by Yoshi himself. Not a single person is saying give it for me for nothing. None. I also don't see anyone saying that the medium to large houses shouldn't be considerably more expensive than the entry level stuff, nor do I see anyone having any arguments about how long it takes to get/make furniture. The whole "get everything handed to you" argument is a strawman, and nothing more.

FFXIV's housing so far is subpar compared to the housing available in literally any other MMO simply because it's so costly that it can't really even be counted as a feature for some people, and only 80% are even going to get access to it in three months. That definitely makes it not a feature for the majority of the gaming community for this patch (it makes it a "feature" for the next patch, which is suppose to be three months away), even though it was heavily advertised as such.