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

[Ifervan]

Well the wards are gorgeous... all 5 wards with 30 plots in Uldah on Gilgamesh = 150 plots of land....EMPTY!

I assume 450 plots per world empty!

450 FC Houses are their even 450 large guilds of 50+ active members on each server who can afford these?

You did great work on this one SE, not one guild will be dumb enough to put down this much money for a cosmetic feature.

So new furnishings are dead as well, they do look super cool so can't wait until they are viable in 3-6 months.

Yay housing!

[mistyt2638]

I think they also forgot how many people transferred to a Legacy Realm to play with their family and friends and started off with no gil. So these prices on the Legacy Realms are just beyond CRAZY!! They need to look and compare how many people transferred from other realms to the legacy realms and fix the prices!!!

[Raagnar]

Please understand that while we will be adding servers and expanding housing areas as soon as we can, it is simply physically impossible for us to accomplish this easily, in a matter of one or two weeks.

This is the only sentence in the entire post that matters, the rest is excuses and bad decisions.

If the initial price of land was easily within the means of wealthy players, one can envision all available plots of land being snatched up immediately, leaving other players—even those possessing the necessary gil—unable to purchase land for an extended period of time.

The solution creates the same problem. The players that cant afford it are still waiting an extended period of time.

With this pricing scheme, we sought a balance in which roughly 80% of all existing free companies will be able to purchase at least a small-sized plot in three months’ time.

80% owning small? So if land is finite then some wouldn't even be able to get the small and the mediums/large would remain mostly empty?

we believe that this is in the best long-term interests of the game.

Is this because its going to take much longer then 3-6 months for new housing instances? Did your team assume it would take less time to earn this amount of gil then it would for you to add more instances?

Although this takes place over the course of three months, land prices in legacy Worlds will eventually fall to match those of World Group 3.

Well... If I had enough to buy large land I wouldn't be buying it after reading this.

it has presented an opportunity for us to consider the lifting of restrictions on transfers between between legacy and non-legacy Worlds.

Yay?

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.

I hope this is the same system as FC housing. If its a glorified Inn room I could care less what it costs. People are interested in the designs and customization you showed with FC housing.

The only real answer to this is limited server space. So we deal with it.

[Mailstrum]

simple fix make it so FC's can only buy 1 plot of land.... max then lower the prices. this way you can buy up a whole lot of land.

[Seig345]

Don't forget, if your property goes unused for a certain amount of time (they never say exactly how much time must pass), you lose EVERYTHING that you paid for.
Given that people are going to have to work like they do in Chinese Gold Farm Sweatshops to earn the kind of gil needed to buy a plot of land...if time passes and no one visits the guildhall for some reason, you just lose it all....that isn't right on so many levels.

Why pay that much gil for FC (as in, not personal) housing if there's even the slightest chance that absolutely no one in your FC is going to set foot in it for a week or more? If I was an FC leader and we committed to spend THAT much gil on something, we'd damn well better use it at least once a week...

Edit: Heck, if the FC I'm in now committed to spending that much gil (some of which I'd obviously have contributed) on something like that, we'd better be using it for something other than occasionally setting a trophy up in there or I'd be furious...

[Bartel]

How difficult is it to make carbon copies of your FC? If I was a billionaire I would create 10 FC's right now under your logic.

And the simple solution becomes, one FC per server for each account. On top of that,make the plots unsellable for 6 months. It's really not hard to figure out a solution. Instead, they give this bullshit reason to cover for the real reason of them not having the server capacity... you'd think they'd learn from launch, but apparently not.

[StephieLynn]

I think everyone is seriously over reacting about the houses.. its a house.. yes it will give some cool perks.. but its BY FAR not a make or break content feature.. everyone will still be able to play the actual content of the game.. after a few months the nostalgia will wear off and prices will drop...

[Fumamyena]

You people are all nuts...I am getting the feeling fewer and fewer people are actually understanding the concept between this phase of the housing implementation and the personal housing coming later. This is NOT about the little FC's, this is NOT about individual housing. This house is geared towards larger FC's with very active player bases. I see everyone talking about how "I cannot afford a house...", this isn't about "I", its about the FC as a whole. Personally I chose to participate in a small FC with very few people (All active though) in lieu of a large FC. The small lot of us do very well for ourselves and should be able to afford a small plot sometime in the near future.

[Dragon_Lord]

Sorry Naoki, but this could all be adverted if you had gone full FC instance housing. Everyone starts with the same size plot; none of this small, medium, or large. But you can increase the plot size in the instance. This would have given everyone room to upgrade as they grow and there is none of the fighting to get a large plot. As the FC grows, and gets more funds, they can upgrade their instance housing. This method has worked great for other MMOs. Housing, FC or individuals, is the most sought out Quality of Life amenity in any MMO game, so it stands to reason that to force people to grind to try and get the medium or large expensive plots, is ridiculous.

If you had a test server you could have gotten a ton of feedback before going live, and would not have these issues. Hint Hint.

[whiskeybravo]

Hmm. Make it so FCs can only buy one plot, isn't that already the case anyway ?
Problem solved.
Why the lies again ?

That's what I was just thinking.. Wouldn't it be easier to limit 1 deed per FC then all this crazy pricing scheme?

As a side note, maybe it will help drain some gil out of the Legacy worlds to eventually allow them to transfer worlds more freely.