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

[Fatestorm]

I was mad about this since the day the patch notes were posted, but the rest of my free company has started to get annoyed at this too. (On Legacy Balmung server.) We are between that rock and a hard place--on the one hand, we are wanting to do the content NOW like we thought we were going to be able to; on the other hand, we don't want to blow all of our accumulated gil to get something NOW because we know that SE is just trying to punish us and everyone on our server for earning gil in 1.0.

Hold out for more reasonable prices, or settle. I suppose it's the question every free company has to face. But one thing is for sure. It's leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouths, and we're starting to bicker and be bitter about it. In reality, the blame for all this devolves squarely on S-E and their terrible implementation of this content.

Reduce the prices. One price per plot across all servers. Eorzeans against housing discrimination.

[silentwindfr]

@Edellis, is not the housing the trouble, is the fact that the playerbase is divided too often by the decision of SE.
when you pay a subscription fee in a mmorpg, you want to have the same game than the other person next to you. the same fair chance to get acces to the same feature.

there, if the person next to you have decide to begin on a new player server at the release of ARR, this person get advantage and you person that play on legacy server get bashed. people think i'm going to far by saying discrimination, but it's one.... an increadible one... for the first time in a mmorpg with sub fee, person that pay don't get the same game... nor the same feature.

for me, and i guess i'm not the only one, it's pretty important to make it know that we don't accept this. you don't have two sort of playerbase, the one on new sever and the one on legacy server... we are only one playerbase... time to stop to kick one while being nice with the other one.

one game, one playerbase...
it's time to stop it... all the people saying that legacy have too much gils or stuff... i will say, we are 4 month since the release, you have people on new server with tons of gils and with all them class to 50 like on legacy server. the best example, Twintania of BC was killed on new server like legacy one. what the hell is the difference between one or the other? gils?....

if that soo much a trouble... do a wipe of the gils... place a hard cap that player can't get over and wipe all the gil over it... indeed it will not please the rich... but if it allows us to have the same game than the new player is maybe a small price to pay for it.

[Edellis]

if that soo much a trouble... do a wipe of the gils... place a hard cap that player can't get over and wipe all the gil over it... indeed it will not please the rich... but if it allows us to have the same game than the new player is maybe a small price to pay for it.

I can almost 100% guarantee you with every fiber of my being that if Square decided to do that, they'd have just as crazy a sh*tstorm of complainers as they do now, probably worse. "Removing our hard earned work", "going back on promises", "stealing", nearly every bad accusation under the dictionary would become ammo for complaints.

And this is why i'm not mad at Square for trying, even if they may have screwed up. Because in these sorts of situations, it's literally impossible to please everybody and get out without someone taking it deeply personal.

This wouldn't be an issue if Square just forced everyone to restart the same as every newcomer to ARR, but that didn't happen. And, again, if they did, you'd have probably the same group of people taking it personally.

[KHShadowrunner]

I'm afraid you need a refresher in statistics, and in the meaning of the word "fact." a simple dictionary will help you for the latter.

As for statistics, the forums are an entirely valid statistical pool. Professional polls are often made with smaller pools of respondents.

To put it down simply, since you seem to need it, you're wrong.

The forums are not an entirely valid statistical pool. To go along with what the common trend that 'the non-vocals are also quitting', I have 5 RL friends, and none of them post on the forums. I'm willing to bet half of them don't even know the forums exist. To put it simply:

No player here, nor outside, probably know who the majority and who the minority are. But I know of a certain company who probably does....

[KHShadowrunner]

I can almost 100% guarantee you with every fiber of my being that if Square decided to do that, they'd have just as crazy a sh*tstorm of complainers as they do now, probably worse. "Removing our hard earned work", "going back on promises", "stealing", nearly every bad accusation under the dictionary would become ammo for complaints.

Ironically, there's quite a few people out there whom have had the pleasure of having this happen. I do recall quite a few of those quotes being used. It's already happened, and the issue is still that bad. I'm with you though, or should I say, I'm with SE. If they want to make it content that's out of my personal reach, then so be it. Who am I to say they don't know how much gil is out there.

[Ildur]

Squee didn't want to purge the lolworthy ammounts of money some Legacy players had back in the day (and won't do it now, either) for fear they will go "Wahh! My money! Screw it, I'm not coming back if I'm not rich!". I bet in their minds those people are called "loyal customers" or something. So instead they are hoping these highly rich players will waste their money at the first extremely expensive venture. But that's not what is going to happen. Rich people don't make their money to throw it away on the first extremely expensive things you offer them. However, I'm sure these prices will only manage to purge only a few of these gil piles. Just not as many as Squee expects.

I also suspect Squee's expecting people to grind content and stay at least for the three months that will take the land prices to drop to their minimum. That's 3 months of "ensured" subscriptions where they don't have to worry about people leaving the game.

[ArkhamNative]

So instead they are hoping these highly rich players will waste their money at the first extremely expensive venture. But that's not what is going to happen. Rich people don't make their money to throw it away on the first extremely expensive things you offer them.

And that's apparently what's happening. The only house on Balmung (Legacy), was bought with "new money", gil that had been made by current in-game activities (6 weeks of grinding philo items, 36 per week per member), not vast stores of v1 money being spent away in huge chunks.

And as I mentioned earlier, money from market sales comes out of other players' potential housing savings, so making lots of money that way only works if a few are selling to the many. In other words, "every" FC or player could not make lots of money this way.

[GilbertLapine]

So.. when they gonna drop the price?

I mean.. really drop the price, not the 90 day 50% garbage.

[Cubester]

So.. when they gonna drop the price?

I mean.. really drop the price, not the 90 day 50% garbage.

Who knows? Chances are they will just ignore this and choose not to change prices at all.

[HEC]

FC that have just been created this month are buying large houses.. totally legit? Maybe, but more likely they are just purchasing Gil.

Or it could be simply that multiply small and somehow whealthy FCs disbanded and their former members united in one larger FC to be able to afford the FC house ...

However - the MOST DISTURBING part of all this situation is that since that insulting "FU" reply from Yoshi more than week ago here we've not heard a SINGLE word from him, devs or community reps about this. Are they just hiding and trying to ride the storm out?? This is NOT the way to treat your paying customers SE!!

We don't care about your "re-evaluation" of the "possible" price decrease in mid January (e.g. MONTH after release of the housing / patch so to give you more time to stich up some more crappy servers) - we want the fix NOW or it will be bye bye for many of us - we'll vote with our wallets, simple as that. Stop hiding and face the problem now!

And in case you don't know HOW to fix it:

0. (Again) - DO IT NOW! (Not in a month or after lot of players has already left tired of waiting and your atitude...)
1. Set the SAME prices to all worlds
2. Set the start prices to 1/10th of the curent cheaper tier
3. Limit (lets say for 2 months) amount of Houses / plots for each FC to ONE, this could be increased once the servers are expanded to allow FC to have houses in multiply City states or for multiply purposes
4. Increase the price drop from pathetic 0.14% each six hours to at least 1%
5. List ALL the curresnt specs (dimensions, floor plans) for each size of the house together with current and future bonuses and features (like underground workshop etc.). HOW can you even DARE to sell something for hundreds of millions without even specifying what it is exactly??
6. If possible - set the demo houses.
7. COMMUNICATE! Silence will do you no good - just upset community.

SIMPLE! All you need to do is to LISTEN to your community and not be a jerk.