Request: Expand apartments to be upgradeable in size and amenities

[Sindele]

Yeah, but there are other ways to make gil, clearly. Given the number of houseless players that are just doing fine with making gil.

Instead of having exclusive access to the Exteriors, or Sub loot for vendors, it will return to crafting and selling gear, Primal weapons, glam items, shard or crystal farming, or other methods.

Still plenty of ways to make the gil. There are also mounts and minions that can be farmed to sell to make gil.

You misunderstand the problem - it's not the products of voyages that will be devalued, because done correctly, the items in question cannot be devalued short of an act of god (ie: nerf). It's the inflationary threat of hundreds of people filling out their alt slots with solo workshops and using them to turn over hundreds of thousands of gil/day/ea. Like I've said, the current profusion of workshop shells and grey-area FC stacking is dangerous enough - removing scarcity and simultaneously making it perfectly legal to roll them 7 deep per account is tantamount to putting a 6 month countdown on the gil economy blowing up.

Though it would be funny to watch the calamitous explosion of submarine material costs followed by voidrake overtaking gil as the primary trade currency, so who's to say if it is really bad.

[MoonmoonMoonmoon]

You misunderstand the problem - it's not the products of voyages that will be devalued, because done correctly, the items in question cannot be devalued short of an act of god (ie: nerf). It's the inflationary threat of hundreds of people filling out their alt slots with solo workshops and using them to turn over hundreds of thousands of gil/day/ea. Like I've said, the current profusion of workshop shells and grey-area FC stacking is dangerous enough - removing scarcity and simultaneously making it perfectly legal to roll them 7 deep per account is tantamount to putting a 6 month countdown on the gil economy blowing up.

Though it would be funny to watch the calamitous explosion of submarine material costs followed by voidrake overtaking gil as the primary trade currency, so who's to say if it is really bad.

• products of voyages won't be devalued
• removing scarcity will devalue them

I think you need to learn about supply and demand, friend. If there is an overabundance of supply, then the price will go down, if the demand increases to match the supply, then the price will stabilize. The economy blows up every time a new item is released. Either way it's a non-issue because I haven't mentioned nor entertained the mention of adding workshops to apartments, which is what this thread is about. I think FC workshops are interesting and maybe could be applied to private housing, but I don't think they're a good fit for apartments for the following reasons:

1. Apartment owners have very little use for the products that come from workshops aside from rare cases.

That's it. One reason is all you need. Speculating about the market is useless in FFXIV because the market is already so volatile as it is, not to mention with cross-world market access, if I don't like the prices on my server I can just go somewhere else where it's cheaper, ezpz.

So, with that said, let's get back to topic: Expand apartments to be upgradeable in size and amenities.

[GeminiReed]

It's the inflationary threat of hundreds of people filling out their alt slots with solo workshops and using them to turn over hundreds of thousands of gil/day/ea.

What inflation? What has gotten more expensive that's not explained by lack of supply due to the content that sources it fell out of favor? (gil for 3rd party purposes doesn't count).

[MoonmoonMoonmoon]

What inflation? What has gotten more expensive that's not explained by lack of supply due to the content that sources it fell out of favor? (gil for 3rd party purposes doesn't count).

Let's not dive into this topic any more. They obviously don't fully understand the concept of "supply and demand" just yet so you're not going to get an answer that makes sense.

[Sindele]

I don't mean this to be disrespectful, but you clearly don't understand what I'm referring to. There is no "supply and demand" with items you sell to vendors. That gil-per-day quote is not subject to the whims of the market at all, it is the statistical product of a certain subset of submersible builds.

You're certainly correct that we're getting off-topic, though. I'll give a TL;DR answer to the question instead of my usual multi-paragraph explanations: the point is that the inflation it could produce is constrained by scarcity and reinvestment into more houses - there's just not that many people able to run workshops at scale because housing availability and acquisition is a huge pain in the ass for anyone without lots of starting capital and multiple accounts. It is, however, a very significant driver of why the third-party market price for FC houses at any size has exploded to upwards of 25x+ placard prices for smalls. Uncoupling workshops from scarcity will mean more people running these builds at scale, and you will see the effects come back into the market in force.

[Jojoya]

THIS. Exterior housing is way too unreasonably expensive.

Exterior housing skins are like Thavnairian Onions. There's a lot more work involved than players assume.

Have you tried looking up the materials lists for them on a site like Garland Tools or Teamcraft? The lists are long. Some materials require hundreds when added up.

To make the process even worse, it's not a matter of pressing a button once you have all the materials collected. Housing skin fabrication tends to have 7-8 phases and 3-4 of those phases will have multiple stages. Each stage has its specific materials. You have to submit those materials not just separate but in 3 stacks each.

Let's say stage one takes 45 lumber, 90 ingots, 60 rivets and 21 cloth.

The steps you take would be:
Submit 15 lumber
Submit 15 lumber
Submit 15 lumber
Submit 30 ingots
Submit 30 ingots
Submit 30 ingots
Submit 20 rivets
Submit 20 rivets
Submit 20 rivets
Submit 7 cloth
Submit 7 cloth
Submit 7 cloth

Press to continue to next stage.

Now you have to keep repeating that for all the stages of all the phases until the skin is completed. It's pretty time consuming even after the time required to gather all the materials.

That is why they are expensive. Few players are willing to go to that much effort even if they have access to a fabrication station with the correct schematic unlocked.

[Jojoya]

What inflation? What has gotten more expensive that's not explained by lack of supply due to the content that sources it fell out of favor? (gil for 3rd party purposes doesn't count).

Salvaged accessories. The concern is not the minions or housing items or the other items on the voyage loot tables. Those are random and don't always drop.

The concern is salvaged accessories that can be farmed in large quantities with the right builds. They do not devalue because they are good only for one thing - selling to a vendor to get gil. The impact is limited right now because workshop access is limited.

Now imagine what would happen to markets if instead of about 2000 FCs per world were getting an average of 300-400k gil from salvaged accessories a day, 21,000 players were each getting an average of 300-400k gil a day. We're talking freshly minted gil new to the economy coming from a NPC vendor, not gil trading hands between players so one loses what another gains.

This is a gain only system for all involved.

Inflation would skyrocket.

Let's not dive into this topic any more. They obviously don't fully understand the concept of "supply and demand" just yet so you're not going to get an answer that makes sense.

And you don't understand this isn't an issue of supply and demand that Sindele is referring to.

There's more to workshops than just the occasional minion drop.

This absolutely is on topic when the topic is about adding workshop access to personal apartments.

[MoonmoonMoonmoon]

This absolutely is on topic when the topic is about adding workshop access to personal apartments.

And it's not really something I feel adds value to the thread since personal houses don't have workshop access either and that's not what this thread is about at all. The thread is about bringing up apartments to a similar level of personal houses to give them greater appeal. This would ease the burden on the regular housing. Plus outside of voyages, apartment owners would have little use for a workshop and FCs cannot own apartments. Workshops are a moot point.

[Mimilu]

I made a post like this 2 years ago. Here was my idea for it:

It gets mentioned in almost every housing thread and I think it's a big enough topic to get its own thread. Improvements and Upgrades for Apartments!

What do I mean by Improvements and Upgrades?
Being able to expand the size and/or item limit in Apartments, maybe even adding a loft/second story.
It could be done in phases and be a gil-sink.

As an example:
We start out with the vanilla apartments we have now.
Phase one could be expanding the item and storehouse limits to 200 (the same as a small house). Cost 500k.
Phase two could be either expanding the ground floor to the size of a medium house's basement OR adding a loft/second story (while also increasing the limits to 300). Cost 2.5 mil.
Phase three could be doing the other upgrade you didn't do previously. Cost 15 mil.
Phase four could be the final one and let us upgrade to large house's basement size (and increasing the limits to 400). Cost 30 mil.
I tried to make the upgrade cost close to purchasing an actual house of that size when you add all the cost together.
Maybe as a restriction, people who start to upgrade their apartments can't own homes and vice-versa (owning a vanilla apartment will be fine, like their grandfathered in).
(You could even ditch the third and fourth phases and I still think it could work)

Why do this?
To help with the limited stock of houses and how annoying it is to buy a previously owned plot. The pay off would be that you won't have an outdoor area and that you will need to pay for upgrades.

[GeminiReed]

The concern is salvaged accessories that can be farmed in large quantities with the right builds. They do not devalue because they are good only for one thing - selling to a vendor to get gil.

... getting an average of 300-400k gil a day. We're talking freshly minted gil new to the economy coming from a NPC vendor.

Yikes. That explains why botters are trying to take over entire FC wards. I expect that'll get nerfed sooner or later.

Now imagine what would happen to markets if ... 21,000 players were each getting an average of 300-400k gil a day.

That's a worst case estimate. How many people took advantage of coffee biscuits? Out of the 21,600 possible apartments how many owners would be willing and able to go through the significantly more involved process? IMO 10% would be a generous estimate.

I don't disagree that the potential gil creation is a problem but that's on Square to balance.