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

[ArkhamNative]

SE could fix this though...by adjusting our prices to meet Group A worlds NOW!
...
Do we get the 'max price for World A Groups or their 'current Market value in March' price?

As much as I disagree with how SE priced the Legacy worlds, or their overall housing strategy (no upgrades?!), if they did drop legacy to Group A "Now" they would get flooded with purchases. Most (perhaps 99%) of v1 player savings did not justify the 2.5x and 5x pricing differences, but they could fairly easily add up with ARR earnings to afford an appropriately-sized plot at Group A pricing.

As for max price vs current price: SE wants to do things gradually. Even if they set pricing to max at their given intervals (see here), it would be a faster price reduction than if they didn't. For example, on January 1 the time-reduced price of a 20M small house would be 18.3M. If they set it to max of the new price, that would be 18M. If they kept the 15 day-old price reduction, the price would be 16.5M. It's not a huge difference, so SE could choose either. Of course if an FC bought it at 18M and it changed an hour or so later to 16.5M, they might squeal about it. There are pluses and minuses to either approach.

[Kinseykinz]

snip

Then they should have used other means, aside from false inflation, to make it so that housing wouldn't be purchased in 1-2 weeks on legacy worlds.

1. Could have required a level 10 FC instead of 6.
2. Could have had to be quested etc by FC mates
3. Could be behind a Grand Company questline
...None of these are financial roadblocks, but would have still required teamwork and dedication to get through...especially quickly. They would have encouraged people to log in and work as a FC towards a goal


OR if they also wanted, really wanted it to 'get rid of legacy gil' then they could have given every server/world the same price for each lot...but made it so people had to bid on the land to buy it.
1. If someone bids, price is raised a specific amount (maybe 100K on small lots, but 1mil on large estates). If someone else is ALSO interested in that plot, they can bid...as long as people keep bidding before the bidding window closes (maybe 18 hr window), the price keeps going up. Once no bids have been made in the allotted bid window, plot goes to highest bid.
2. If NO ONE bids, price decreases on each plot by .14%. As soon as someone bids on it, the bidding window opens up and price can start to rise on it again.

This too would have kept legacy worlds from buying too many too fast...because the bid wars would take time/days to finish up. It ALSO would have gotten rid of more money because people would be willing to pay premiums to 'get the good one' or 'be first' ....and would have started bidding because the starting bid prices seem reasonable and affordable.

As to 'we didn't want the rich to buy up all the land'. Make deeds Rare/EX. Done. If someone doesn't want their plot, it is sold back to the game, and unlocks for someone else to purchase from game.

But no...they did THIS.

[ViktorMestrovic]

They pulled down their virtual pants and virtually took a shit on all of their most loyal customers during their painfully obvious time of need back in 1.0 to 1.2. Yes we get a legacy chocobo.. which means nothing, because everyone on a legacy server pretty much has one... yes we keep our level... but gil pretty well gone already and STILL have to do all of the main story quests and REDO all of the AF quests we already busted our backs getting done under much more difficult circumstances in 1.0 to 1.2. However, we the only true supporters of SE's previously failed product are now treated worse than the scrubs who show up for unveiling day and who will leave again when they get bored. The die hard fans who keep ships like this running *cough* ffxi *coughs more* are the last people SE should be actively alienating under poorly thought out, false pretenses.