Additional Subscription Fees For Housing

[LunaP]

Sometimes they're nice, but if you're paying extra for a plot, you're likely going to want to be more choosy and wards were designed for first come first serve. They're not going to want to open up 300 wards because there is more desire for mediums/larges and a smaller desire for smalls (district dependent on that too). Where would their incentive to make any further non-extra subscription based wards go if that came to pass? As long as the normal wards are full, they keep making bank. Heck, they could shut off auto-demo timer permanently at that point and watch the money pour in. On top of all that, people's normal subscription fees would be going towards allowing some people to have houses without paying extra, while others are required to pay an additional monthly fee?

Don't worry I didn't say anything about sizing and all, we both know SE isn't capable of going that far, even though they could easily design a diff style area for it.
Noone would be required to pay though? It's just a convenience factor for those complaining or the funds for it if they want it right meow vs waiting years for a chance ( on larger servers anyways)

The only incentive for more is when forums explode enough, however I don't really see a reason why they'd stop making additional wards in the event of having premium subscription wards, since the game is subscription based, you just take your chances with attempting to find a house vs pay a premium for ensuring you CAN get a house.

Having options is always nice. Having 1 course of action sucks though which is hoping SE will read, given that most of the feedback is from the J Forums since we only have translators in the US side and a small group so sorting through all the threads must definitely make it harder for them to collect accurate feedback.

[Dustytome]

The only incentive for more is when forums explode enough, however I don't really see a reason why they'd stop making additional wards in the event of having premium subscription wards, since the game is subscription based, you just take your chances with attempting to find a house vs pay a premium for ensuring you CAN get a house.

I believe the dev team themselves have wonderful intentions for a lot of the game, but marketing and corporate I do not trust at all. Why would corporate assign a larger budget for housing when they find out they can make even more money from not adding more regular wards? I get the desire for the option, I just think it's an option that isn't fair for a large part of the player base and would be abused by those that control the cash flow for the company.

[LunaP]

I believe the dev team themselves have wonderful intentions for a lot of the game, but marketing and corporate I do not trust at all. Why would corporate assign a larger budget for housing when they find out they can make even more money from not adding more regular wards? I get the desire for the option, I just think it's an option that isn't fair for a large part of the player base and would be abused by those that control the cash flow for the company.

There's always going to be those that abuse, problem lies in how they implement things, such as how they changed it so people could only get 1 hours per account. I feel it'd be less abused unless people don't mind spending a ton per month for a ward, and granted some people I'm sure can. Given SE's statement "We're not going to do f2p" one can hope that this would be adhered to however as you've stated marketing could always go that route.

We also don't know the actual work involved for expanding housing, whether is just adding more virtual instances, or physically requires another server to expand further. Given how it seems that housing and instances appear to be on the same server, it'd probably be a great idea to separate that to allow for further expansion w/o expending additional resources on that as a 1 time vs over and over.

I can see a good chunk seeing it as unfair, though the reasoning wouldn't be as strong I feel other than just unable to afford the house, which some may see as being looked down upon or p2w ( which is somehow already being used against those that have houses which I"m unsure as to how, which unless you have like 10 houses doing airship runs and multiple diadem runs for minions wouldn't suffice to much of an edge, and given the amount of initial capital required to get to that point means they're already taking advantage of another area that others could as well.)
Paid housing could also be something unlocked after a specific amount of time invested in the game as well, i.e not just off the bat, your account needs to mature, say 1-2 years to be eligible, this would also offset others taking advantage w/ newer accounts ( given that the server is about to open)


As far as the dev team goes, I'm sure they do but at the same time they more than likely have a set wage/constraints to work on projects given to them vs work on their own stuff as was put out sometime ago. ( I need to go find the article/live letter on it ) It's a situation we've been dealing w/ since ARR. There's nothing to argue that they couldn't do both either, given the clear public scrutiny they'd get/backlash if they went 100% on a paid subscription only tier as well.

Not to say it'd happen anyways, but by far this is probably the most logical to date suggestion for housing vs just screwing people further.

Easier way they could have handled this after 4.1 happenned would have been either of these 2:

A proper consensus/survey of population PER server not just per datacenter in which they'd expand wards based on population vs as a whole, so that higher populated ( legacy and other ) servers would have more wards than those that did not. Since the main argument on the forums from others is that " my server has plenty of houses, so urs must too, whats the issue?"

Taking the above, skip to #2 below, else for the alternative read 1)/2)

1) Any FC's created within the time frame of the announcement (with just 4-8 people) (i.e the 2 week time frame prior to 4.2 rolling out housing) would be put on the back queue for being allowed a house w/ other personal buyers, as this was to address FC's specifically that had BEEN waiting.
2) After said FC's purchased land when personal housing opened, they could have added additional wards for personal purchasing to finish it off, this way both sides were contended to and those left over would have to wait for plots relinquished to get theirs.

I do like where this is going though, I"m curious your input on ways to mitigate/circumvent such things IF such a system were to be attempted, since we have no idea what they're doing behind the scenes till they let us know.

[Solarra]

Not many things would make me seriously consider unsubbing, but an extra charge for housing would be one.
I pay a subscription to play this game and housing is an advertised feature, not way would I consider paying an extra for it.

[SharpT]

Hi,
I would also support subscription fee for housing. or just pay less subscription fee for account what don't have house (or make it free if you don't have house). why i must pay now for content which is not accessible. If paying is option all in game p2w (or progress) options can be removed. if i need stuff i can use mb or gathering prof.
content options for players who pay same amount must be equal.

[Zigabar]

The fee is simply an incentive for them to implement it. While I don't know the financial situation for the company(s), the possibility to make additional revenue, especially from a user base that is more than willing to provide it -- is not something they will refuse to consider.

Do people honestly think SE is some starter company with no funds to budget? If they insist on keeping the current system, our Dev team needs to step up and ask for a larger budget, if that's the issue. We should not be advocating increased cost on our end since we would never know if it would be budgeted back to this game.

Instanced housing is a lot more cost efficient than what they have now. A F2P game with less traction and monthly income can prove that well enough. There's no reason for us to pay more for instanced or for their misplaced desire to keep the current situation.

[Keridwyn]

No. Absolutely not.

Look folks it's already pretty outrageous that a subscription MMO makes us rent extra retainers. Even F2P MMOs just flat out sell you the inventory upgrade, they don't charge you monthly for it.

Now you're willing to PAY them more because housing is BROKEN? When they haven't even proven that they can do housing right? Unacceptable. We need to keep the pressure on them to fix it, not enable them to continue on with what's obviously inadequate.

[Faeon]

No. Absolutely not.

Look folks it's already pretty outrageous that a subscription MMO makes us rent extra retainers. Even F2P MMOs just flat out sell you the inventory upgrade, they don't charge you monthly for it.

Now you're willing to PAY them more because housing is BROKEN? When they haven't even proven that they can do housing right? Unacceptable. We need to keep the pressure on them to fix it, not enable them to continue on with what's obviously inadequate.

Fix it, what a joke never going to happen. we are what now 3rd expansion.

[Zigabar]

Fix it, what a joke never going to happen. we are what now 3rd expansion.

Maybe, but offering up more of our money (and at a monthly rate, wth) to solve their issue is definitely not the solution. That's a real joke.