Balmung is Homeless on Christmas' Eve. Is this really what you wanted, Yoshida-san?

[Abriael]

Hello Yoshida-san, and Merry Christmas.

For many of us, unfortunately, especially on legacy servers, it isn't that merry. We hoped to celebrate it in the new houses you publicized basically as the main feature of patch 2.1, but almost none of our free companies can afford one to celebrate in.

At the moment of this writing a whole TWO houses have been purchased on the whole Balmung server, and from what I've been told every single legacy server in group 4 and 5 is in a similar situation, over a week after the feature has been introduced.

I have to ask you, is this really what you wanted? Did you really want the housing zones to be a empty and gloomy ghost towns for a long while?

They look lovely, but at the moment they're basically wasted server space, which you're paying for, and which we're paying for as well with our monthly fees.

And there's a further problem, that I'll touch on in passing. Do you know what happens when you make one of the most anticipated (if not the most anticipated) features of a relevant patch extremely costly?

You paralyze the economy.

Not only on Balmung and other legacy servers almost no one can afford a house, but it became a LOT more difficult for crafters and gatherers (or anyone that has anything to sell really) to make gil.

Why?

It's easy: because when people are trying to save as much money as possible for their house, they don't buy stuff. They procrastinate putting materia in their armor, they ignore crafted gear, they use the cheapest possible food or don't use food at all.

To put it down simply, people don't buy. And the economy is nearly paralyzed.

I hope the dire situation of housing purchases will make you understand that the current pricing scheme is, for lack of gentler words, an utter failure. And you know, if you ever read my posts, that I'm not one to use hyperbole. I really dislike using such a strong term, especially since the rest of the patch is so good, but I feel there's no softer way to describe the situation.

Again, I must implore you not to wait further to drop the pricing on all legacy servers at least to the level of grouping 3, if not further. We have waited enough: a year or more since the feature has been announced and then continuously hyped. Please give us a better chance to enjoy it during the busy time of the holidays. This is when people have a lot of time to play, and this is when they should be given as much access as possible to the features, even in the name of account retention.

I apologize for the urgent tone, but I still hold hope that, while the Christmas of those that wanted a house on a legacy server has been rather somber, you'll see that the current prices are not reasonable or fair, and you'll drop them radically and in time for us to celebrate at least the new year in a new house, enjoying the fantastic feature you worked so hard for. All we're asking is to have a chance to marvel at all that work and praise you and your team for it.

Thank you, and Merry Christmas!

[Alhanelem]

TL;DR, they're already planning to reduce legacy server prices, but they'll be doing it gradually not all at once. As long as it doesn't stay absurd forever I"m not too bothered. Not in any hurry to buy.

economy isn't really paralyzed, most people on legacy servers just said to hell with it and started buying/selling normally. As the prices come down people may reconsider their options.

[Abriael]

TL;DR, they're already planning to reduce legacy server prices, but they'll be doing it gradually not all at once. As long as it doesn't stay absurd forever I"m not too bothered. Not in any hurry to buy.

Doing it gradually is not a solution, nor is beneficial in the light of account retention. Not to mention that it doesn't help in any way as a gil sink as well, because many people just say "to hell with it" and don't partecipate in the gold sink at all.

Basically, there's no reasonable reason not to drop the prices ASAP, and there's every possible reason to do it as soon as possible in coding terms.

economy isn't really paralyzed, most people on legacy servers just said to hell with it and started buying/selling normally

It's a whole lot slower than it was on December the 13th.

[Alhanelem]

People are also forgetting that the current housing is guild halls. They've been expensive in pretty much every MMO with a comparable feature; Personal housing will not cost as much.

[LittleArrow]

People are also forgetting that the current housing is guild halls. They've been expensive in pretty much every MMO with a comparable feature; Personal housing will not cost as much.

Just wanted to jump in here and say I haven't ever seen a Guild House this expensive. Before you begin to list the plethora of 'expensive' guild houses, think about the economy. After an entire week I netted a profit after 2.1 of a total 20k..... Previous weekly profit? 50-100k. 2.1 shot down several farmable markets (fleece, crystals, even materia due to the story rewards).

Whether or not it introduced new markets is also debatable considering most of the new features were targeted towards crafters / gatherers.

In any case, even at its lowest, it's still too high. My off the wall theory as to why they're so unobtainable? SE just doesn't have the man power to keep up with the FC's on each server, which I think is understandable. However, they shouldn't have even released this content until they were sure they could provide a decent amount of houses in relation to the number of FC's on each server.

Many of my friends are already looking to other MMOs. Not a good sign at all.

[Tupsi]

People are also forgetting that the current housing is guild halls. They've been expensive in pretty much every MMO with a comparable feature; Personal housing will not cost as much.

Hmm...they've been expensive but affordable - Other MMOs also didn't kill some of your currency just because you happen to play a prior version of it. Not to mention they're also affordable out of the gate because the other MMOs weren't afraid to allow players to make gil and have an actual economy rather than people undercutting items into oblivion.

[OSUBuckeye4]

The thing that I don't see mentioned very often is the fact that housing is... well... completely useless at this point in time.

The only thing you can do with your house is put decorative furniture inside of it, which does nothing but sit there.

This is the most confusing aspect of housing to me, and it's something that I don't see mentioned very often.



If SE wanted to get people interested in breaking their bank/emptying their wallets for housing (which makes sense, to rebalance the economy), they should have provided some kind of an incentive for people who chose to break said bank.

Even if it's something as trivial as reduced prices for teleports with the addition of a personal airship port. Or, the ability to buy a repair vendor who would take care of repairs for 50% less than normal NPC vendors.

Right now, the only benefit to owning a house, is that you can tell people you own a house.

There were two paths SE could have reasonably taken:

1) Make housing ridiculously expensive (as it is), but give rewards.
2) Make housing rather pointless (no rewards), but make it affordable to everyone

They picked neither and really made a mess out of this.

[GilbertLapine]

It's a whole lot slower than it was on December the 13th.

I'll second this. There was a brief bump due to the pvp release and treasure hunting, but now the chinchilla/glacial market is saturated and rapidly crashing, the price of electrum ingots and pvp accessories has plummeted as people discovered the white wolves' gear was total garbage and have stopped buying to save cash, and the price of ores and shards has started to exceed the value of the outputs they create.

[Nero]

economy isn't really paralyzed, most people on legacy servers just said to hell with it and started buying/selling normally. As the prices come down people may reconsider their options...

Maybe on your server, but things seem pretty normal on Hyperion.

You must be on a different Hyperion Server than me.

- Food does not sell like it did before
- Crafting Mats do not sell like they did before
- Crafted Gear does not sell like it did before
- Materia does not sell like it did before | Price dropped drastically
- Philo Mats do no sell like they did before | Price dropped drastically

and so on, etc...

So please enlighten me how buying/selling is currently "normal", it is by far not. I usually made between 700k - 900k Profit a Week, and the last week i did with the very same Items 120k.. ( i am not a "try hard", but i am aiming for a steady income ). I am not worried about my Income, i actually found a couple Items i can sell, to get the same Profit again, but saying that everything is "normal" is simply not the truth. Abriael is pretty much right and that goes esp. for Legacy Servers.

I have no clue how you make your Gil, but obviously not on the Markets.

[Alhanelem]

Doing it gradually is not a solution, nor is beneficial in the light of account retention.

I don't think the housing costs have had any effect on account retention whatsoever. You'd have to be reeeeeeally easily upset to quit over a mostly-non-gameplay-impacting feature.

It's a whole lot slower than it was on December the 13th.

Maybe on your server, but things seem pretty normal on Hyperion. any economy issues mostly relate to the devaluing of certain rather expensive goods but they were too expensive as it was IMO.