Latest comment from Yoshida regarding Housing + Inventory space issue

[reality_check]

A better question is why is something that was considered an "achievement" for a FC working together now "expected" of individual players? None of this makes any sense.

There is no "expectation" for an individual player to buy a house. You can beat every single encounter in the game without having a house, easily. In fact, having a house does not affect your ability to perform duties in any shape whatsoever.

[Dark-Saviour]

There is no "expectation" for an individual player to buy a house. You can beat every single encounter in the game without having a house, easily. In fact, having a house does not affect your ability to perform duties in any shape whatsoever.

There's no need to do any of those things either, nor is it necessary that everyone be able to.
There's just an arbitrary line people draw up about what is considered important or integral and what is not.

[Souljacker]

There is no "expectation" for an individual player to buy a house. You can beat every single encounter in the game without having a house, easily. In fact, having a house does not affect your ability to perform duties in any shape whatsoever.

You misunderstood what I meant. I fully believe SE didn't expect anyone to be interested in housing at all. What I meant with my comment was the content was priced with the thought in mind that several people were working together as a group (fc) to attain the achievement. Now, for some arbitrary reason (some terrible math), SE has an expectation that this is now an achievement within the reach of the average player.

But they didn't change FC version of the pricing accordingly. So which is it? 80m (And I am citing this number because these are all that is left on Balmung) split between several people? Or 80m is commonplace on the average, Non-crafting, PvE player? I don't think the numbers *truly* support his logic. Either that, or he's stuck in pre-abyssea FFXI where 60 people would work years on one guy's relic and he thought that was good design.

[Apricoth]

You misunderstood what I meant. I fully believe SE didn't expect anyone to be interested in housing at all. What I meant with my comment was the content was priced with the thought in mind that several people were working together as a group (fc) to attain the achievement. Now, for some arbitrary reason (some terrible math), SE has an expectation that this is now an achievement within the reach of the average player.

I think you are correct. That is what it definitely feels like to me.

[xXRaineXx]

Now, for some arbitrary reason (some terrible math), SE has an expectation that this is now an achievement within the reach of the average player.

Average player - What makes an average player? A player who doesn't focus on end-game content? Plays a couple hours a week? Plays seldom?

In my opinion, making money in XIV is one of the easiest out there. I myself made around 3.5m in a month, now a lil over 4m and I consider myself a 'casual player'. Considering I work 12 hours a day and I can get maybe 2-4 hours a day depending on what time I get back home and if I have the energy to play. Just so you know I have only 2 DoW's at 50 and I only have one 110 gear on Bard, otherwise the rest of my gear is all 90's. I also don't have maxed out crafts and I barely touched DoL's. No house, no gardens, no maps.
With that, I was still able to make gil using methods that are available to everyone as long you have a L50 DoW. I will not reveal how, since it is a trade secret <3

But you may say that I am not a 'casual player' (what makes the hardcore players then? ultimate neet lords who play 24/7?).

So say 'casual' players are those who play a couple hours a week on and off and still doesn't have a L50 DoW.

At the current time with the servers being the way they are, it is impossible for them to release more wards unless they hire a whole new dedicated team for the servers.

Now if the housing was really cheap for the average player, how cheap would it be? 300k? 500k? 800k? These are the same people who claim it's hard even to make 100k or even reach a mil, then you have to consider how much are they actually playing the game?
If in the current situation where they couldn't deliver more plots, made housing really cheap, then yes of course 'casual' players might have swarmed in on them. If a casual player managed to win a house, how much will that house be used? These players have a hard time just to get to 50, then next after buying land you need to build the house then get furniture. Since it is unlikely that these players have any decent level crafts, they would probably have to buy the furniture and everything else.
But then again, they play 'casually'. How much time will they have to farm 'more' gil which they already have a hard time doing to build their house and continue with DoW/DoH/DoL? Probably these houses will be sitting their empty for a long, LONG time. Where a much more able player would benefit from it.

If there were more plots, then maybe this scenario would be different. But at the current time, plots are limited. The dev team knew they could not deliver on the plots so they probably thought of all the possible outcomes. More plots will be released with 2.4, probably more with 3.0.

IF these same casual players cannot make a couple mil in the next year or so till 3.0, would you think it would be a good idea to let them buy limited plots? They probably will stop playing in that time, leaving a empty house which no one can buy. Make people pay rent for their house? How much? 5k? 20k? 50k?

I made 3.5m in a month, imagine what I can do with the next 11 months.

The team probably considered all these factors, not 'some terrible math'; but some common sense to make better of the situation at hand so it doesn't hit rock bottom.

[KaiKatzchen]

In my opinion, making money in XIV is one of the easiest out there. .

Well I will say this first... back when he was discussing housing he did make this statement:

Our fundamental stance toward housing prices was that we wanted to ensure that plots would be evenly distributed, avoiding a situation in which the wealthiest players could easily buy up all available plots of land.

Now last time I checked, fundamental meant the following:

adjective
1. forming a necessary base or core; of central importance.
noun
1. a central or primary rule or principle on which something is based.

So how did his fundamental stances that 'not only the wealthiest players should be able to get plots' when he first spoke of housing; turn to:

Players who laze around should make some effort to make gil.

Now that said... take away the gil issue, because many people have not said it'a about the gil, and it's not about gil to me either. What do we have? I have said before I don't care about gardening, it's not really my strong suit. I have people in my FC that are more interested in it than me. That me any my 'wife' saved up gil and just want a small house in the game (as long as they don't mess that up as well) to decorate together, hang out in etc... but that is beside the point. As I said, take away the factor of gil that a player needs to buy houses from SE.

While I have said many times over that I am annoyed that that he said one thing, then says it's mistranslated, and then makes the price something else entirely. I am more so upset that he says things will happen and gives us all this grand ideas, and they fall to dust and become nothing. He pumps us up, and then poof... and people get mad. Anyone can see this happens, and is to be expected by now. How many patches has he said XYZ will happen, and then you see raging on the forums after because 'but you said it was going to be like this, or you said that XYZ would happen, so why is it ABC now?!'

If you go by that logic, we could say a lot of thing he says are 'mistranslations'.

While I cannot give a specific date on when personal housing will be implemented, I can say that prices will be completely separate from free company housing, and, naturally, far more affordable.

So I am assuming that we wish to say this was mistranslated as well?

The issue is this, the gil part aside, we were told personal housing would be separate from FC housing. I even remember at some point he was talking up how they were going to make new instances just for personal housing. So mistranslated? Or just out the window? Will obviously out the window because it is intermixed with free housing. someone else said at some point, and sorry I've been reading so many threads I can't remember where I say this, but the basic point was:

We have not gotten anything new from this patch... nothing. All they have done is made the housing area that already exists for FC, personal as well now, and added two new wards. Then let us buy houses we could have already bought by making a FC, having some people sign it, then buying a house.

Has this been done? Of course, people were complaining about it on the forums at one point as well, 'why are single players buying up housing that are made for FC's'. Someone making a fake FC and getting people (friend's probably) to sign it, then going to buy a FC on their own and paid basically what we are paying now. So the new instance for personal housing was incorrect. The housing being cheaper than FC housing was basically incorrect. The fact that we were going to get anything new in this patch was, well pretty much incorrect.

• Communication is part of the issue, if plans were changed he should have just said so bluntly, not continued to be vague about everything.
• How they implemented the housing it is the issue.
• His saying that we are just lazy if we don't want to make gil is an issue. You shouldn't insult the people who pay for a product. Especially when he was the one who said he wanted this to be a fun game where people could play the way they want, all things would be accessible to every player and that no one should be judged on their play-style.

To me there is a very big difference between: I am playing this game the way I want to play it, and making gil along the way and people who lazy around need to get working on making gil.

Especially if he's already made up his mind that housing should not be for everyone, and there will never be enough houses for every player. He wanted everything accessable to everyone in this game, that's why he keeps recycling events, so new players can get gear we already got. Well what about the person who starts a year from now? Will they be able to get a house or will they all be gone? Is there even a point to the player who started yesterday to work towards such a goal?

Who knows, but you do have this mess:

• They have FC and Single Player's now fighting a free for all battle over land
• They have people buying up small lots and then selling them for a profit because they had the gil off the bat and now want others to pay them 3 times as much because they can.
• They knew that people were excited and expecting this as much as he was pimping it out, He told us it was coming, told us to save up... and then only put out enough small houses (which are the most affordable for people) to cover like 0.03% of the population that plays across all servers.
• And to them there is no issue to this, other than stop being lazy and make more gil.

So it is not necessarily about gil to everyone, or getting a house etc... it's about a company promoting a product to paying customers, telling us it will be one way, and then not even living up to any part of their word... other than the fact that they added two wards of FC/Personal intermixed housing per city-state. That is nothing new and it is badly implemented over all for something that was supposed to be new to the players

• They should have known the demand was there, they were the ones who made it by telling us to save save save it's coming!
• They should have known, (especially since they love to say they can track our gil and knows everything we have) that they were not putting out enough houses for the people who could rightfully buy one at implementation.
• They should have know that allowing people right off the bat to buy multiple houses would make players with a lot of gil buy houses and then try and sell them for a profit when everything was sold out.

None of this should be a surprise to them, and obviously it wasn't because Yoshi-P has an apology letter pre-written to pop up right after the patch notes were released.

Also let's not forget that this game is only a year old, and according to them they have 2.5 million accounts on the game, and SE is already stating that they have technical limitations in regards to the game? How is that, in any way, a good sign? They have had a year of watching the population grow, even saying at the start of 2.0 that they were amazed at how many people had joined and started to pay, to see this issue coming and start planning for it. Yet now, technical limitations?

2.5 million accounts... now lets say HALF of those active. so you end up with 1.25 million people paying for this game. And I'll even be generous and say... lets say everyone is paying the lower price of 9.99, no one is paying the 14.99 per month for extra characters.

1.25 million x $9.99 a month = 12,487,500.00 a month from subscriptions.

Now lets be fair again and say the first 3 months they earned 1/3 of that... then 4-7 they earned half of that and then 8-12 they earns all of that.

Months 1-3 = 12,487,500.00
Months 4-7 = 24,975,000.00
Months 8-12 = 62,437,500.00

For a Total of 99,900,000.00 (roughly) that players have paid in the last year for this game. Of course this doesn't count the money people pay per month for extra retainers, (2$ a month) and the money people have paid for fantasias (10$ a piece). But even with all of that, they have technical limitations and limited server resources? You would think with all the money the player base is paying, they could at least put some of that towards the servers and keeping them up to date so we aren't having this issue.

Over all, as I said taking out the gil issue, this is a mess.

[xXRaineXx]

To counter everything you just said with a simple statement.

Technically speaking, Yoshida never actually made those 'English' statements. Yoshida only makes statements in Japanese and I have personally confirmed he is inadequate when it comes to the English Language and incapable of proper English speech.

The word fundamental as you described it technically does not exist in the Japanese language, there are always issues with 'professional' translations where certain meanings are often misdelivered. Specially with Japanese words, which is often pointed out to be '微妙' (bimyou). This word does not have a direct English translation, but in the gist of it means 'to be confusing, unsure, strangely odd' or anything along those lines.

As an example try translate this Japanese sentence.
-あの本は微妙に変なかんじです。

Now that said... take away the gil issue, because many people have not said it'a about the gil

That's not what I see. I see people complaining about 3 things in a equal manner; COST/WARDS/GARDENING.

You say many people say they do not mind the gil, but I see many people who DO mind the gil. You only see things the way you see it because it doesn't affect you. You can't take away the gil issue. Because it IS part of the issue. There were many posts about how players could not make gil and could not fathom how the devs expected them to buy a house.

99,900,000.00

Even if they indeed made this amount;

1. Monthly paycheck for each employee would be around $3000-$10000 depending on the crucial position. The team for XIV is handled by SE's 3rd Division which is comprised of approx 70 employees (give or take).
2. Server maintenance (god knows how expensive this is).
3. Purchase of new resources such as new server hardware, installing and debugging may require additional hires.
4. Good portion in return to SE.HQ;
5. 400,000,000 approx spent down the drain during the development of 1.0, which SE is still not over with.
6. Current development of 3.0.
7. 2.4
8. Live letters/events etc
9. Yoshida who always look tired.
EDIT
10. Not to mention keeping the servers running 24/7 will have your electricity bills off the roof.
11. Then you have the development gear like PC's, consoles, sound gear and whatnot which needs to be updated with new gear so that they can be tested for compatibility.
12. This list can go 4eva.

You seem to miss the vital wider prospect in your comments.

'Oh many people said they don't mind gil, take that out of consideration' - Does not mean it ain't a issue.

That is simple I+G+N+O+R+A+N+C+E - 9+7+14+15+18+1+14+3+5 = 86%

[KaiKatzchen]

To counter everything you just said with a simple statement.

Technically speaking, Yoshida never actually made those 'English' statements. Yoshida only makes statements in Japanese and I have personally confirmed he is inadequate when it comes to the English Language and incapable of proper English speech.

The one quote was on the FFXIV ARR website posted on the news area back in November. So if it was mistranslated, then maybe they need to get people to work for SE who can translate what he's saying better. This was not some random quote from a article, or something that a person on the forums translated. It was an official English post made by SE.

Even if they indeed made this amount;

Your List...

Yes and that is what the money is going towards, and even you say on your list new servers, hardware, installing and debugging, etc... so why are we having technical limitations 1 year into the game? All your list shows me is that you agree that they should be putting money into upgrading, maintaining the game and people who work on this game, and if that is the case why do we have technical limitations this early on? Which was exactly my point.

But SE has the money to spend on opening up a cafe for people to go eat at.

'Oh many people said they don't mind gil, take that out of consideration' - Does not mean it ain't a issue.

That is simple I+G+N+O+R+A+N+C+E - 9+7+14+15+18+1+14+3+5 = 86%

And if ignorance is being able to see all of the issues that are arising from this, lack of space, lack of clarification, technical limitations 1 year into the game etc... and the fact that he had a pre-written apology letter because he knew people would be upset, and not focusing on just one issue and continually bring it up, I'd rather be ignorant than blind.

Also you misquote me, (in reference to gil being a non-issue) I did mention the gil issue at the start, I just wasn't going to focus on it because other's have. I mentioned the gil issue at the start, and then said after that:

"Now that said... take away the gil issue, because many people have not said it's about the gil, and it's not about gil to me either. What do we have?"

Meaning, I'm not so much worried about the gil issues and others have stated this as well. Which is why, as you overlooked and never posted, I made the argument of new players who have just started playing and will start playing in the next year. Will there be houses for them to buy when they are able to get the gil?

Everyone is bringing up the gil issue, there is no need for me to argue it more because everything has been said (though I did mention it at times to show how it's causing other issues such as people buying them, and then selling them for 3 times the amount), but there is more to this mess than gil. If you look past that and take away the gil issue what other issues do arise from this implementation, which I listed the other issues besides the gil issue. I never said gil is a non-issue 100% and every single person who plays this game is 100% fine an dandy with it.

My main point was this: You look at everything all together, not just one thing, and this was badly implemented on all sides of the coin. As you said, yourself:

You only see things the way you see it because it doesn't affect you.

My post was about showing all the issues with this implementation, not just the gil issue, because what you might see as an issue, another might not. Its more than the lack of wards, the gardening and the gil. Its about many things. No instances just for private housing, FC and Personal being mixed together and people having to fight over plots etc... to say that the point I was trying to make is wrong because 'the gil issue doesn't affect me' is like saying that all the other reasons are a non-issue because you don't feel they affect you.

I didn't need to argue the gil issue to death, people have already argued it to death. I did not ignore the issue, I said that I was going to bypass it because there were some who said it was a non-issue. And if it was honestly a non-issue to them, then what were the issues with this implementation? What did others have to be upset with as well. Argue about the gil, its fine, but when that is the only issue that is brought up and SE says 'fine fine' and lowers the price.

But if you still have FC's and single players fighting over lots, and still don't have enough housing for people to buy, and still have lack of wards due to technical limitations what did it get you? Nothing, because they were non-issues and its all about the gil and gardening I suppose.

That was my point, you have to address ALL sides of the coin, not the popular complains and bypass everything else.

[TheRogueX]

Also let's not forget that this game is only a year old, and according to them they have 2.5 million accounts on the game, and SE is already stating that they have technical limitations in regards to the game? How is that, in any way, a good sign? They have had a year of watching the population grow, even saying at the start of 2.0 that they were amazed at how many people had joined and started to pay, to see this issue coming and start planning for it. Yet now, technical limitations? 2.5 million accounts... now lets say HALF of those active. so you end up with 1.25 million people paying for this game. And I'll even be generous and say... lets say everyone is paying the lower price of 9.99, no one is paying the 14.99 per month for extra characters.

1.25 million x $9.99 a month = 12,487,500.00 a month from subscriptions.

Now lets be fair again and say the first 3 months they earned 1/3 of that... then 4-7 they earned half of that and then 8-12 they earns all of that.

Months 1-3 = 12,487,500.00
Months 4-7 = 24,975,000.00
Months 8-12 = 62,437,500.00

For a Total of 99,900,000.00 (roughly) that players have paid in the last year for this game. Of course this doesn't count the money people pay per month for extra retainers, (2$ a month) and the money people have paid for fantasias (10$ a piece). But even with all of that, they have technical limitations and limited server resources? You would think with all the money the player base is paying, they could at least put some of that towards the servers and keeping them up to date so we aren't having this issue.

Over all, as I said taking out the gil issue, this is a mess.

You forgot the income they generated from the sale of the software. Let's just assume that everyone paid only $15 for it; that's another $37,500,000, and that is guaranteed because you *must* purchase the game to play it (at least, up until the free-trial recently). It's likely higher though because most people likely paid waaay more than the $15 sale price that was on Steam for a couple weeks.

[Roris]

2.5 million accounts... now lets say HALF of those active. so you end up with 1.25 million people paying for this game. And I'll even be generous and say... lets say everyone is paying the lower price of 9.99, no one is paying the 14.99 per month for extra characters.

I really wish they outright stated how many active subscribers they have, none of this "adventurers" thing that's just another word for accounts, pretty sure most P2P MMOs actually report on their solid subscriber numbers since accounts don't really matter that much for subscription based MMOs. Honestly I'd say their subscriber numbers could be lower than 1 million, closer to around 700k or maybe less, but we'll never really know for sure until they state them. It would still be good money, but they were operating at a large loss for years, most likely they're allocating a good part of their profits into the expansion, which seems like the next big "but wait until X", then dropping PS3 support will be the next big excuse, etc.