An Open Letter to Yoshida-san: Please Slice One Zero Off the Housing Prices

[Centershock]

@Centershock

*snip*

Oh I totally agree, I also believe this was a mishap on SE's part. A part of me wants to believe that they did this (the outrageous pricing on plot deeds, not even the houses themselves) to lure out all the RMT accounts and gil spammers. Coincidentally, I was logged in for a few hours and NOT ONCE did I get a /tell from anyone trying to sell me gil and how they'd throw in extra as a part of their Christmas special.

Please note that I'm not trying to excuse their business decisions regarding FC housing. Honestly, the hype they brought on with FC housing got a lot of people with the perception that they'll be able to get it. I at least assumed there would be effort needed in order to get it, but a 20 million gil effort is just too exorbitant for a casual player like myself. I don't have the extra hours to put it like a lot of people can.

[MortalWare]

SE: "Housing is coming!"
Players: "Awesome!"
SE: "But you'll never get to experience it!"
Players: "Uh.. "

P.S: WILDSTAR has accessible housing and actually has an entire character class based solely on developing your house. Oh.. and their houses are on floating islands. GG.

Please make housing fun, not frustration.

[ArkhamNative]

An FC from Gilgamesh bought a medium lot/house. Looks awesome and on a hill. It looks pretty damn big on the inside.
Not sure if I can post a reddit link here, so I wont.

Nice! And dogs are allowed!
The screens are an imgur link, so here.
I think you could get 3 small house interiors just on one of those floors. Are adding floors an option for even small houses?

[Edellis]

You're on the cheapest server, of course your FC is excited. You can actually afford housing.

As far as I see, people cant decide if they're mad at the housing costs, or the "hidden motive" of SE to make it purposefully inaccessible because their servers will explode. Which i'm having a hard time believing, when they easily could have done a much better job by just limiting the amount of houses you can buy.

Server equipment doesn't come cheap and easy, and I don't think that, if the plots are all bought up in 3 months, SE will have added any extra servers to the ones already in use now. Me being on a cheap server, of course I don't think the costs are inaccessible for an active FC to afford. But that means they're accessible, and will eventually be in use when the patch isn't out for only 2 days time.

So, I'm not buying the whole "we want to save server stress" idea. It just doesn't make any sense to me. You can't buy more houses or set more decor than the instances servers allow you to create. It's already capped. So i'm just going to blame this issue on the costs and leave it at that. You guys are trying way too hard to make this a deeper issue. Yoshi's explanation makes sense, even if it's flawed.

[Roflcoptorz]

As far as I see, Yoshi's explanation makes sense, even if it's flawed.

It makes sense? That's one of the funnier things I've read lately. The community is pissed because it doesn't make sense. At all. So we're left with really 2 opinions.
1. The dev staff is being honest. This means they really couldnt come up with a better answer. I choose to believe that the entire staff are not morons. The community came up with 5+ better ways to solve the problem in less than 1 day. If this was the best solution the dev team could field, they all deserve to be fired for incompetence.
2. What SE states is the problem, isn't the underlying issue. Again, if you generally accept that the dev team isn't full of morons, this is really the only choice.

[Beeraga]

I keep seeing people suggesting that the future workshop feature where you build airships and whatever else would be limited to large houses, but I don't recall seeing anything official about that. Anyone have a source?

[TrystWildkey]

As far as I see, people cant decide if they're mad at the housing costs, or the "hidden motive" of SE to make it purposefully inaccessible because their servers will explode.

I'm upset about the costs. Whatever the reasoning is, housing, a highly advertised and anticipated content, has been put out of my reach indefinitely due to the prices.

I'd be less upset if every server had the same astronomical costs (still disappointed, but less vocal). It's hard to keep a rational head when people on cheaper servers just keep saying that the whole thing is fine. Of course it's fine for them. It's not fine for me. Yeah, he's said that they will eventually re-evaluate the prices, but that doesn't help.

(cue the people who use the argument of me wanting content without work) <- pre-emptively silencing these people, I've saved every gil I could since open beta. I'd count that as working towards something, wouldn't you? And if housing (small plot mind you) was remotely available to me within a few weeks, or even a month and a half at most, again, I wouldn't be as upset.

The point is, they've advertised over and over the FC housing content. They gave a ballpark estimate (which, in hindsight they shouldn't have done) and made it seem like a good amount of FC's would be able to access housing. And now, they've walled this content off from all but the very, very few people that have enough gil to buy it. And those type of players are probably LESS likely to even want housing to begin with.

I'm unable to access content. The reasons for this are NOT because I'm not skilled enough, or haven't worked hard enough. The reason I'm unable to access housing is due to the actions of other players. (whether that be gil sellsers, gil buyers, legacy who exploited Atomos, legacy who exploited the initial marketplace after launch, merc groups that sold runs, etc.)

Yeah, I'm upset. And it is justified.

[odie]

Any FCs that will be buying a house have to increase their Rank to 6, which seems like it could take nearly a week at the current reported rates.

It doesn't take that long. One FC on Lamia already owns a very enormous house in Mist and our FC got about 80 percent of the way to Rank 6 in a single day. Money is still very much the issue though.

[swamppride]

how many lots does one player need? wouldn't limiting the number of plots per individual player be easier?

[3motion]

I'm unable to access content. The reasons for this are NOT because I'm not skilled enough, or haven't worked hard enough. The reason I'm unable to access housing is due to the actions of other players. (whether that be gil sellsers, gil buyers, legacy who exploited Atomos, legacy who exploited the initial marketplace after launch, merc groups that sold runs, etc.)

Yeah, I'm upset. And it is justified.

Isn't the reason you cannot afford the housing because you aren't skilled at making money and not working hard enough either for it?
I wouldn't say your reason is justified, already know quite a few people who have over 10m alone.
And they did work hard making that gil