New Housing Patch Makes Sense - Serious Discussion Only

[Aoxaviar]

I agree with those who say FAIL to the Dev Team about how this has went down, I also can step back from the game enough to also completely agree with everyone who is accepting this.

PROBLEM 1: The Dev Team and Yoshi-P really didn't give us anything definitive to go on for what player housing was going be for the player.

CAUSE OF PROBLEM 1: The community (generally) let our imaginations run wild with the hopes and dreams of what could be based on what we saw with the 2.1 release of FC housing.

I am guilty of this too - I was waiting for this so I could work up and buy a mansion size piece of property to hopefully put a lot of trees on and have hammocks and a cabana (merchant stall size) house which I would have figured would cost around 1 million gil since Yoshi-P did tell us that 850K wouldn't cover a small house. However I was also completely expecting the player housing to be separate from FC housing like most of the community.

PROBLEM 2: Yoshi-P told us that it would be cheaper and setup differently.

CAUSE OF PROBLEM 2: This further made the community (generally) really let ourselves go with what the player housing would be which resulted in my first post “Truly EPIC” on another thread.

ADDITIONAL MOVING FORWARD:

The Dev Team and Yoshi-P need to offer up options and not just additional wards:

1. Provide a Cabana style option on every lot with a price adjustment for players (like myself) who want a large lot with a shack for a house.

2. As a member of an FC who has a small house (relatively low player base and we don’t have the strength in players to ever get the coin put together for getting something larger in the next year or two.) make it so the players can also have a house on the beach (Mist) with no lot land if that is there preference.

3. Create an apartment type of structure on the back (cliffs) of the ward (where beach is the front with regards to Mist) that works like an apartment that is the size of a medium house with balcony that would allow for gardening and stabling your chocobo without having to buy it.

4. Since it seems that this Idea hasn’t been brought up, what are the thoughts of expanding the lot allowance in the existing wards? They all do have paths off of them that at least allow for the expansion of the existing wards to have more housing provided.

[Fellisin]

30 plots per ward, 16 wards, 3 cities = 1440 plots

whew, good thing none of the servers have more than 1500 subscribers...

Oh wait, reported 2 mill active subscribers, 64 servers = 31250 average subscribers per server

even after doubling what we currently have, we'd still need about 22 times more housing space, on average, the higher population servers would need even more space.

Edit: and that isnt even including plots already taken up by FCs

Not all 2 mil active subs are going want or even care about owning personal housing. So adding enough wards to match all subs would be a massive waste of resources. Unfortunately they've not handle the initial demand which is there very well, even after the 2 additional wards this patch and then the 2.4 patch doubling.

Lets hope they mention some more wards will be introduced in later patches or increase of 2.4 patch number.

[Velox]

have personal housing the same prices as FC housing is absolutely the silliest idea yet. So yes it is about pricing.
So for me for the smallest plot available would cost over 3 mil, that is soooo not worth the money.
I will remain satisfied with my personal room i guess

That price is only the current value, and will drop dramatically over time (just as the FC housing prices did). In fact, the end result will be personal houses costing less than FC houses.

[Teryaani]

That price is only the current value, and will drop dramatically over time (just as the FC housing prices did). In fact, the end result will be personal houses costing less than FC houses.

It's the same resource regardless of who buys it. Personal Housing Cost = Free Company Housing Cost.

[Jican]

Doesn't change the fact that we were lied to about personal housing. No way around it, period.

[Jesden]

That price is only the current value, and will drop dramatically over time (just as the FC housing prices did). In fact, the end result will be personal houses costing less than FC houses.

apart from on those servers where all of the lots are snapped up within the first hour of a patch going live....

[Velox]

It's the same resource regardless of who buys it. Personal Housing Cost = Free Company Housing Cost.

I know, but people always tend to jump onto the highest price bandwagon instead of thinking 4th dimensionally at said content 6 months from now, or even a year from now. Although I can imagine by now the existing lots have been scooped up due to the already deflated value (I am at work so haven't been able to log on since the patch), new wards will have the same reductions-over-time applied to them in the future. SE already stated a large abundance of housing will be included in 2.4 as well. The reason personal cost = FC cost is simply due to inflation. If personal housing was released months ago along-side FC housing (as separate content), the values would have looked very different for each. Since FC housing was implemented, the average player has accumulated enough him/herself to afford a small property. Thus, the value of personal space post-2.3 has reached the post-2.1 value of FC houses and are now overlapped (due to FC housing values not being increased as a separate entity, which is why they chose this implementation route to begin with). Technically, they're taking the easy way out this way. I know most will argue that it's lazy programming, but as a programmer sometimes it just isn't worth re-inventing the wheel when your time and resources can be spent elsewhere.

I'm not saying pricing is perfect, it does need a small tweak here and there given the disparity of wealth between players, but from where I'm standing it's far from being the huge mess people are making it out to be.

[Maero]

That price is only the current value, and will drop dramatically over time (just as the FC housing prices did). In fact, the end result will be personal houses costing less than FC houses.

Well maybe so overtime but does not back up why the sudden change when liveletter months ago clearly was said that cost would be less then FC housing.
I will not quit playing the game over this but If they want it to make more sense and allow more people to have personal housing perhaps? then bump up fc housing prices a bit. Just makes zero sense for it to be the same price when clearly FC's have more cash then individuals in most cases.

[Themis]

Well maybe so overtime but does not back up why the sudden change when liveletter months ago clearly was said that cost would be less then FC housing.
I will not quit playing the game over this but still very silly to have prices so darn high

I'm going to reiterate this information, because it seems that people are capable of ignoring things when it suits their complaints. This was something I was looking into when the complaining began (it kept me occupied during work hours).

That quote (which has been thrown around by everyone) was written in December when 2.1 was written. Now, unless you want to suggest that Yoshida also has a crystal ball and wrote that post knowing what the game situation would be like come October Patch 2.38, it's pretty obvious that he meant house prices for personal housing would be cheaper in 2.38 than it was in 2.1 (which he also recently confirmed).

And that's is actually true. Read the patch notes for 2.1. You'll find that (for my server, Excalibur) the smallest, crappiest house was 20 million gil. In 2.38, that same house is 4 million. That's a 1/5th of the price. I call this "far more affordable".

The price of the highest tier of houses was 312,500,000 gil. In 2.38, this same house is 87,500,000 gil, or less than 1/3 of the price. This I also call "far more affordable".

Yoshida has never actually misled anyone with this particular thing. It was pretty clear (to me) that the post was in reference to 2.1 prices considering it was written/said during 2.1, and not in the last month or so. If it was more recently, like PAX recently, I'd have absolutely sided with the masses that the prices are higher than it was said. But this isn't actually the case, is it. What we see are far lower prices than what was originally (back in December) announced.

[Apricoth]

Yoshida has never actually misled anyone with this particular thing. It was pretty clear (to me) that the post was in reference to 2.1 prices considering it was written/said during 2.1, and not in the last month or so. If it was more recently, like PAX recently, I'd have absolutely sided with the masses that the prices are higher than it was said. But this isn't actually the case, is it. What we see are far lower prices than what was originally (back in December) announced.

So basically, it's a loop hole and the Devs summersaulted right through it splendidly. There is no point in holding them accountable for said quote because of when it was declared... I see what you are saying there but then Yoshi~san and Team should have realized this and made it clear that they were basing the pricing on what FC housing plots began with way back when prior to the patch and when it was asked what the pricing range would be. Heck - they had ample time to set the record straight when player questions were asking for specifics... And that question was not too long ago.

I am pretty much over the pricing issue - I want a small house and that is it. However, my gravest concern in all this is if I plunk down 4+mil on a small house now, based on the model set forth by Yoshi~san and team, is that when they do (if) release actual areas for player housing that is unique I am going to be crap out of luck and kicking myself for wasting my in-game money (and wasting time to obtain said monies). What I want to know is, are there any provisions for players that purchase FC-plots-turned-personal-housing now to have the ability to "upgrade" or exchange their property to the new areas of player housing without penalty or expected to pay full price? I am betting the answer is a resounding NO. If the answer is no.... The 12 help me... lol