Housing abandoned plots, this is needed SE!!! Thank you!

[Nutz]

I think I can see what SE wanted to happen with the housing system, at least in its infancy when it was for free companies only. I think they wanted the housing wards to be central hubs like Mor Dhona or Idyllshire where lots of players would congregate and all the big FCs had mansions and the smaller FCs had small houses and what not. This is clearly not what has or ever will happen. People hang out around their FC house to interact with other FC memebers for a specific purpose (meld requests, trades, use the MB if it's in close proximity to the house, or tend the garden/ chocobos). That's it.

Many wards have little to no traffic. I suppose I craft near my house often (because of the NPC, MB, and emptiness of it all) but generally wards are lifeless. People are spending the vast majority of their time playing in instances and other places. As such, there is absolutely no reason to continue with non-instanced housing. The ecosystem that they were going for did not bloom and it never will. People will not use the housing wards as social hangouts for many reasons.

What they really need to do is convert to instanced housing. This will seriously please everyone who has been trying to get a house, slightly annoy the few people with prime real estate in ward 1, and have no effect of the majority of home owners including the many inactives. The one caveat: housing prices can not drop significantly even though there is now essentially limitless supply unless current home owners are compensated in some manner. Let's face it, if housing were instanced then there'd be no reason to charge much for it, but people would be quite miffed for their 5 million gil investment to be converted into a 100k gil transaction. The manner of the compensation would be up for debate, but I feel like there'd have to be something.

[Astral145]

^ Agree I own a tiny house and got bord with it after a few months... There is no reason to even have them. Nobody hangs out in the wards and why should they? There is nothing special about it. I would rather have an instanced housing where I can invite friends to hang out in. I would also like to see a much larger plot area so I can build things like a real market place that will allow me to buy all the mats I need even up to lvl 60 mats. They can even use this as a hub for people to warp to and so they too can buy from yout market. They could even implement a crafting system that will allow you to build path ways, trees, houses and markets like a tiny town.

I don't know if any of you ever played WHite Knight Chronicles 1 and 2 but they had something similar called a GEO town. All players were allowed to build small towns that had markets for a lot of common mats and items, repair shop, upgrade shop and even harvest nodes (ore. wood, gems...ect...). There were 10 levels and each level upgraded your town that allowed you to have more plot space and add more stuff. Once level 10 you could farm for mats which allowed you to trade for high quality stuff that added more value to your town. By doing so allowed the market to sell more valuable and higher level items and mats at fixed rate and you made zero gil off of it.

YOu could upload your town to a hub called Geonet where your friends would stop by and shop at your market (you did not receive gil for this), harvest nodes (after a quest) and post quests (que up for dungeons...ect) or simply hang out and chat. You could even visit towns not on your friends list and then save them to a list of go to towns that specialized in certain harvest nodes and market items/mats.

It was a really cool and fare system and made it worth leveling up your own little town for anyone to use.

[Dererk]

snip.

Oh how dare they. A company that wants to make money I know it's awfull right. And how dare they don't want to add more wards due to something silly like it will cost them more money to do that. I know it's awfull isn't it.

(for those who don't know this was sarcasm.)

Their not making money off inactive accounts. Which means its wasted on inactaves no matter the reasons they became such. I think they stated that removing inactive player housing is the first step their taking to fix housing. Stop crying either pay or lose. Its SE's right to do this.

[Neira]

Oh how dare they. A company that wants to make money I know it's awfull right. And how dare they don't want to add more wards due to something silly like it will cost them more money to do that. I know it's awfull isn't it.

(for those who don't know this was sarcasm.)

Their not making money off inactive accounts. Which means its wasted on inactaves no matter the reasons they became such. I think they stated that removing inactive player housing is the first step their taking to fix housing. Stop crying either pay or lose. Its SE's right to do this.

I get tired of hearing this aggressive argument that summarizes half of the concept of free enterprise, which I'm entirely in support of. The other half that is constantly left off is that any business in an economy such as ours(USA and most of the world), is regulated not by government, but by the consumers. Part of the responsibility(truly, it is a burden that we -should- carry) of the consumers is to make rationalized and considerate choices with how we spend our money, to keep businesses in-check and control the market. SE is nothing more than a business, and their success and failure is based entirely on our decisions. Of course their goal is to make money, to imply anything otherwise is absurd(and I did not), but it's also absurd for people to support any poor business decisions they make that negatively impact the customers.

The problem with the majority of SE defenders or, *insert fanatical video game defender here*, is that they're not holding SE accountable for their actions or even willing to critically analyze the decisions being made. They accept what they do, they throw more money at them, and the end result is a dying industry where half-hearted development is rewarded based on little more than a name or aesthetic appeal. You're not doing businesses any favors by holding to that paper-thin defense of claiming that their actions are justified in the name of profit. It may have helped Wal-Mart and McDonald's become "successful" by a corporate standard, but it's pretty common knowledge that both businesses are immoral and they've achieved such notoriety with that mindset that their names can hardly be mentioned anymore without someone thinking negatively about them. Want more proof? Electronic Arts, Capcom, Blizzard. Did any negative emotions just arise?

If you want to attack me again with sarcastic belligerence, no one is stopping you, but your stance is flawed, your aggression is unnecessary, and your inference was inaccurate. I urge you again to read the part of my post where I talk about "investment", as it's a very common business practice, and completely explains why the idea of them spending money to improve the system is a millennia old theory and it's helped numerous businesses succeed and maintain their integrity. Conversely, you can continue to feel that what SE is doing is justified and give them as much money as you wish, just keep in mind that you're funding their flaws and development, and they will only do as little as they think is necessary as long as people support them.

[Syrehn]

Snip...

It's not that we don't hold SE accountable, or that we are SE defenders, it's that some of us recognize the cost and manpower that goes into server infrastructure. This includes but is not limited to Hardware Purchase/Rental, Bandwidth, SAN (a.k.a Storage Area Network) - Side Note: I actually think this might be the biggest issue that SE is facing as it's expensive, Maintenance Fees, Power Supply Fees (someone has to pay the electricity bill), whatever other fees the data centres charge etc. The more wards they add the higher these costs and if they continue to allow half dead wards full of un-subbed players, while at the same time adding new ones, they lose money with no recoup. Reading through the threads and comments I doubt many players even think of all these things when they talk about housing.

Even with an instanced housing model they still have to make sure all the data gets saved (object placement etc.); this doesn't happen with current instances. This means that regardless, SE will need to purchase/setup additional hardware/san anyway; which likely still costs as much as setting up new wards. This is made very obvious by this quote:

Finally, I’ve seen a few posts on the forums saying housing would be better if it was instanced like inn rooms are, so I want to point out that instances aren't saved. Nothing in an inn room needs to be saved; player housing, on the other hand, necessitates personal save data for things like furniture placement and character location. So, it would really amount to adding more land anyway.

Again, just to reaffirm, more land for more players regardless of ward or instance = more hardware/san = more cost. All that data has to get processed and saved somewhere.

I'd be willing to bet that if we had instanced housing and half of those player instances were empty (un-subbed for x amount of time) SE would still end up doing a housing purge at some point to allow for storing active player housing data before continuing to purchase more.

Currently by taking time to add new wards they are being financially cautious and monitoring how much of their funds they can allocate to the housing structure at any given time. The decay timer is one of their steps to ensure maximum usage of the current wards before they spend more on new ones. From a business standpoint this is a smart investment as it will probably save them some money.

I'm 99.9% sure that SE is not going to switch to instanced housing at this point, no matter how many people thing it's the be all end all solution. Additionally, even if they did the whole community might not support the vocal minority, as to do this they would likely have to tear down the entire housing system and then allocate development resources/time from other aspects of the game (raids/dungeons/etc.).

[Neira]

Reading through the threads and comments I doubt many players even think of all these things when they talk about housing.

I don't forget any of these. I call them what they are, "business expenses", and they are the cost of trying to maintain a profitable business and keep customers. This isn't anything new, majority of businesses have to continue to invest additional money into their business to keep making a profit. If a business can keep making a profit without any additional investment over a course of years, then it's the customers who are supporting that business that I begin to question. Maintenance costs and employee pay are operating costs, and that includes general updates. Expansions are an investment but the return is traceable and more instantaneous, not to mention the expected results are more predictable. Also, don't misunderstand me, if this game was not doing as well as it has been, I would understand their fear of putting more into it, but that is not the case.

I'd be willing to bet that if we had instanced housing and half of those player instances were empty (un-subbed for x amount of time) SE would still end up doing a housing purge at some point to allow for storing active player housing data before continuing to purchase more.

I know it's only a hypothetical, but I sincerely hope that would not occur. If they felt the need to remove instanced houses from inactive players to save themselves money, then they would be taking a step that even dying MMOs don't do to ensure their profits. In fact, that you can even make such a statement so readily and, seemingly, accept that they would do such a thing makes me feel that you have lost any sort of objectivity you may have once had. I honestly would laugh the entire time it took me to post a bitter message, write a politely insulting email, and delete my SE accounts if they had instanced housing and still wanted to delete homes. This isn't the only MMO around, and even if I am not a fan of the genre much, just a select few titles, it's still blatantly obvious that most dead or dying games can keep up an effective instanced housing feature with a tenth or less of the subscribers; without requiring subscriptions to boot.

I'm 99.9% sure that SE is not going to switch to instanced housing at this point, no matter how many people thing it's the be all end all solution. Additionally, even if they did the whole community might not support the vocal minority, as to do this they would likely have to tear down the entire housing system and then allocate development resources/time from other aspects of the game (raids/dungeons/etc.).

I agree, but I still think they need to examine better solutions.

I also want to remind you and anyone else that FFXIV has over five million subscribers. Which, while I know it's a shallow number they throw out to indicate initial sales, is still an immediate $100,000,000.00+(at $20). Hard to give an accurate number since the cost of the original game has decreased. I won't include HW since we have no way to determine how many of those people own it, but let's be honest, it's probably over half and the game sold for twice the price I'm using in the previous example. Even if we say their active subscriber count is only 500k, they are making $6,500,000.00(at $13) a month. Add onto it the extra retainers, the cash shop, the merchandise, and collector's edition, then account for HW and how many people bought ARR at retail price, and it's easy to conclude that they've made over 300m on this game.

Also, sorry if the post sounds off(grammar, spelling, etc), not as much time to read it over, have to head out.

[Valaska]

Snip.

I'm just gonna interject here because this part is more real world important than the rest of this discussion. You are an absolute RUBE if you think for a SECOND that you as a consumer have anything to do with the regulation of the united state's or any citizen other than people at the top of an economy. Literally every supply and demand situation is heavily manipulated and controlled by corporations and government, like oil for instance and how ANY disaster ANYWHERE in the world "affects" the price despite it being isolated completely from local economies.

There is no shortage to gas for instance (I actually work in the oilfield so I KNOW) and we have so much of it piling and new leases being drilled everyday that I can say with certainty that supply and demand is manipulated.

[Valaska]

I don't forget any of these. I call them what they are, "business expenses",

No it is obvious you have no idea about how any of this works. Data transfer is EXTREMELY expensive in the firstplace when you don't run your own server which SE does NOT, it rents servers from a server batch. It would need to rent even more, or purchase its own farm in North America which would cost, and let me put this in perspective for you, MILLIONS of dollars. SE is probably paying near to a quarter of a million just in rental fee's for the amount of data transferring, every time you rent a new batch you have;

Deposit
Set Up Fee
Transfer Fee (for data)

And THEN you actually start paying for bandwidth packages. After all that you finally get to use them.

[Neira]

I'm just gonna interject here because this part is more real world important than the rest of this discussion. You are an absolute RUBE if you think for a SECOND that you as a consumer have anything to do with the regulation of the united state's or any citizen other than people at the top of an economy. Literally every supply and demand situation is heavily manipulated and controlled by corporations and government, like oil for instance and how ANY disaster ANYWHERE in the world "affects" the price despite it being isolated completely from local economies.

There is no shortage to gas for instance (I actually work in the oilfield so I KNOW) and we have so much of it piling and new leases being drilled everyday that I can say with certainty that supply and demand is manipulated.

I will actually concede that many goods are manipulated in the real world, and that corporate success and the cost of products is often just based on illusion or speculation. However, there is a vast difference between the oil industry and the video game industry, and given your other comments, I'm quite sure you know that as well as I do. Still, my implication was that the entire economy is driven by consumers and that is, you're right, inaccurate. It still is an influencing factor in all industries though, and the primary factor in consumer services and manufactured goods.

No it is obvious you have no idea about how any of this works. Data transfer is EXTREMELY expensive in the firstplace when you don't run your own server which SE does NOT, it rents servers from a server batch. It would need to rent even more, or purchase its own farm in North America which would cost, and let me put this in perspective for you, MILLIONS of dollars. SE is probably paying near to a quarter of a million just in rental fee's for the amount of data transferring, every time you rent a new batch you have;

Deposit
Set Up Fee
Transfer Fee (for data)

And THEN you actually start paying for bandwidth packages. After all that you finally get to use them.

I understand you're wanting to put some perspective on it, but the numbers you're throwing out aren't that daunting. We're talking about a game that easily pulls in millions a month just in subscription fees alone, run by a billion dollar corporation.

[Valaska]

I understand you're wanting to put some perspective on it, but the numbers you're throwing out aren't that daunting. We're talking about a game that easily pulls in millions a month just in subscription fees alone, run by a billion dollar corporation.

I don't think I need to point out that Square Enix had an operating loss of 400 million USD last year Q1 and is only just now beginning to turn a profit... It's getting stronger, but you don't come from a red situation with up and down earnings reports to spending big money for things that could have very little profitability. This is a volatile time for them, though they are at a 57% increase, that swing could end horrendously and move them straight back into the red like they were for years with game after horrible game... IE FF10 etc and on-wards.

They've had a Deus Ex here and there but yeah, this is a company on the razors edge and millions are a massive worry for investors.