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

[Talynia]

Snip

It's easy to say people aren't looking at the whole picture when you're not on one of the servers where the small house starts at 20mil. Fact is SE did not plan their servers for housing and now are using that, the rich few, and RMT as the main reasons for making the prices so high.

Spouting that people want things handed to them on a silver platter tells me you didn't read what people are really complaining about.

[CYoung187]

Rich FC: "Hey everyone in The Goblet come check out the house we just built! Hello? Everyone?"

What is the draw to even buy a house? It isn't building a community if there is nobody else there. Housing districts will continue to be ghost towns until prices change. Sorry but having to spend 40 hours a week for months and months playing a video just to save gil isn't a challenge, it's a job. It's a waste of time and not why anyone plays this game.

In a month there might be 4 or 5 houses per server, in which only the top 2 or 3 players in each FC get to customize. So what 15 people will get to enjoy housing in each server. Sounds exciting. Totally worth killing the economy.

[MortalWare]

Seem RMT Gil Sellers are starting to profit already from this decision. FC that have just been created this month are buying large houses.. totally legit? Maybe, but more likely they are just purchasing Gil.

Is anyone even checking on the FC that are buying plots?

[TrystWildkey]

Discrimination ? Sorry to be so harsh , but that is a load of rubbish.

New player on a Legacy server ? That is not SE's fault, if they adjust so a new player can afford the housing easily then all the older players will have NOTHING to work to as far as the housing system is concerned, and considering there are far more none legacy server available its unfair to the older players just to accommodate the new players.
There are players that relish a challenge, and do not expect everything handed out on a plate with little to no effort.
The cost of a house what seems a lot to a none legacy server is pittance to those on a legacy server.
New players should NOT join a legacy server unless they have friends on that server, and in that case its reasonable to assume the friends are in a FC that can afford or have means to work to the price of that server.

First, you are on Phoenix, the second cheapest server set. PLEASE take a look at the prices on Balmung or Durandal and tell me those are fair.

I'm on a legacy server, I am a legacy player. My FC has saved about 1 million gil. So tell me again that all legacy players see 40 million for the tiniest, worst house as a pittance.

Also, why on earth would it be a new players fault for choosing a legacy world? What other game can you name that has had a completely different pricing scheme for a feature based on the world you choose at the beginning? No, it is NOT reasonable to think that everyone who is a legacy character has the means to purchase these houses. Do you know how many houses have been purchased on Durandal so far? ONE. ONE SMALL HOUSE. That's it.

Again, I'm getting really, really tired of hearing from players on the cheap servers who think the pricing is fine, and think that I need to work for this feature.

[LiadansWhisper]

I'm also worried they are building themselves an alibi.
I mean, it's obvious that when a feature just released is playable by the 0% of the players on day one (because FC rank) and less than 1% of them after one week, something doesn't add up.
You think that announcing the prices 3 days away from patch it's random? They knew abount the incoming ragewave.
"Hey, patch is out now, too late to fix that beforehand, sorry!"

But what really troubles me, though, is...
When a month will pass, and let's say 10-11 FC in each servers will have a house, will they be able to lower the prices? Consistently?
Or they will say something like "We can't refund money already spent to players which spent them already, so to not be unjust we won't touch them"?

I think the right way for the players to handle the matter, is to stop paying monthly bill to SE till they don't cut A LOT the prices.
When they will lose 10% of player database due to delusion after one month, maybe they will listen.

If they don't cut the prices, I will quit. That will be it for me. Probably won't matter much to SE, but I'll go back to WoW and get my player housing for free in the new expansion. I technically already have a house on my farm, I just can't really share it with anyone.

[MortalWare]

You would think Legacy players would be REWARDED for supporting the game all through 1.0 right? But nope, we get shafted with higher pricing instead.

[PSxpert2011]

Time to get my holiday cardboard box ready in Coerthas!

There's a station here in AZ, 197KUPD and they promote "Homeless for the Holidays" to bring awareness of all the unapreciated military VETs and other homeless.

I'd get my class-specific Tent ready,lol!

[Naunet]

if they adjust so a new player can afford the housing easily then all the older players will have NOTHING to work to as far as the housing system is concerned

This should tell you more about the state of the housing system overall than anything. If obtaining the plot and house is really the be-all, end-all of housing, that is a failure of a housing system. The decorations and upgrades and addition of various modules should be where the "work" goes - not in just initiating the content.

[Kinseykinz]

You're not seeing the forest for the trees. If you enjoyed the game before the housing development came about, then you can enjoy it afterward if it's not all you thought it was going to be. I fully support the housing being so expensive, if only because it's a challenge. What happened to the good old NES and SNES days when a challenging game was the most fun--where if you lost all of your character's lives, you didn't continue, you went back to square one and started over? It took true skill, and it took dedication in the sense that, if you lost, you didn't get frustrated and put the game down for good.

The problem nowadays is that gamers (and people as a whole) want everything handed to them on a silver platter, and if something is a challenge, it's not praised or heralded as a worthy treat. It's scorned, complained about, and ultimately, to keep making money, game producers have to give in to popular demand and hand it to the player.

Easy to say when you happen to be on a server that has WAY cheaper prices, and therefore easier to obtain lots. We've been saving since 1.0 and SE purposefully, looked at how much we as legacy players had already saved and said, screw you all, you want it...this is what it'll cost. Meaning it was impossible for us to actually save for it...because they would have just raised the price point more.

Stop acting like people are whining when they first week content was released they couldn't clear it. We've been saving gil for 2 years for this.

Lastly, your point might have SOME credit if homes weren't being sold on the New Worlds...but that isn't what's happening. Every day, on new worlds, FC's ARE buying homes and getting to enjoy that content and feature. On legacy worlds though: Nada...except for maybe one FC who wanted world first/to show off wealth and/or didn't read where as long as we wait 3 months, our prices (on legacy worlds) will be the same as most New Worlds.

ANd when SE announced after 3 months, Legacy worlds could have World 3 prices....well, they should have just adjusted our prices then...because it IS unfair that even though SE admitted 'okay, so maybe that was a little uncalled for'...they have done NOTHING about it.

[Coris]

SE says that there is a lot of gil on the Legacy Servers but to be honest I do not know anyone who has that much money. I would've had more if the three friends I played with and I didn't throw everything they had together to buy our Tank's pre-relic back at the end of 1.0. We believed he would be fine in 2.0 and could catch up his quest progress. Well, this didn't happen and he had to start from the beginning so all the Gil was wasted.
So, after the cutting of the Gil, I started 2.0 with around 300k in my bag and I am still sitting on this amount (planning on putting everything else in the chest now) because everything I earned since August went straight into our FC chest. We managed to save up 2mil by then and thought it would be a nice start. Now seeing these prices kind of hit us hard, because it took us some time to even gain these 2mil and gaining something between 75-93mil feels impossible to achieve in a decent time. (<- We aim at least for a mid-sized house because small is... small.)

I for myself clearly do not have a problem to save gil in general but doing this for months?! While other servers can have their houses in around half of the time? It feels so unfair.
Of course I read the newest post by Yoshi-P but what he wrote still means (to me) that others will have theirs earlier than we do and since we are already waiting for it since 1.0... The feeling of unfairness just wouldn't leave. Plus by looking at our new players it just gets stronger. I clearly do not want to ask them everyday to donate all of their earned gil.

Going to repeat myself a little here...
On the german forums, other players from different non-legacy servers call us, who dislike these high prices, whiners. They say we should work for it and that this content is something you shouldn't be able to buy on day one. One even said that housing clearly isn't for casuals. Well, this content was advertised for months and we old players knew about it for even a longer time. Yes, we had more time to save gil, but still we got it cut down and the situation on our markets is now worse in comparison to theirs what gave them an advantage while saving up. In my opinion players on 2.0 servers have it easier to save up gil and maybe even have more than players on Legacy servers. The new content (Daily Quests) may give us gil but for what I understood from Yoshi-P's post, we have to put EVERYTHING we earn from that into our FC chest.

All in all: My FC and I were really looking forward to this but I am/we are not fine with these prices and don't want to rip-off all our members just by achieving/doing content that was meant to be something casual/fun to do for the whole FC.


P.S.: I heard that only those with large houses can build a ship? Well... We are a Pirate FC and always dreamed of having one but as it is now it seems that this won't happen.

I am sure I repeated myself (and others maybe) but I just agree with the majority here!

I apologize for any grammatical error etc x.x