Latest comment from Yoshida regarding Housing + Inventory space issue

[MageBlack]

I dont care about the price, What I'm concerned about is will there even be ANY plots avaliable once I can actually save the money. With how fast plots sell out, even at the prices they are at, I dont even want to bother trying to save cause I doubt there will be anything left.

[BreathlessTao]

Raine - ask him if he sees the bigger picture. If he's aware that this personal housing debacle is only like the snowball that started the avalanche that had been waiting to happen. Because he seems way too adamant that pricing is everyone's primary issue here, with availability being secondary. While that is true, when comes strictly to personal housing, it is entirely not the whole case here.

The issue here, on one hand, is how the whole thing was handled: if they've known, since 2.1 (9 months!) that this is how it was gonna be - why didn't they say so? If they were working on something else that was scrapped in the last minute - why don't they tell us what that was and what happened to it? Communication between devs and players has been such a cornerstone of FFXIV (lack of it in 1.0 and emphasis of it in ARR), so, really, whatever happened to that? Extensively, why do us, non-Japanese players, have to feel like we're just ignored, time and time again?

Also the issue this managed to fester, on the other hand, is the serious concern we now have: the game is just one year old, and we've already heard server/infrastructure limitations as the main reason way too often for so many things getting limited or outright not implemented at all. Is this how it's gonna be, is this what's down the road for ARR? Because if it is, then we might as well start thinking about designing the coffin and the gravestone of the game.

On another, but somewhat related note, you could ask him if he enjoys gating content. Because for 2+ million players, with a casual nature of the game being emphasised so much (everyone's able to play the way they want, in a tempo they want), we sure as hell are being cornered and put into grindmills over and over and over again.

Hard restrictions:

• gardening - have a high enough ranked FC with deep enough coffers to afford the necessary facilities
• chocobo training - have a high enough ranked FC with deep enough coffers to afford the necessary facilities
• colouring your chocobo - have a high enough ranked FC with deep enough coffers to afford the necessary facilities
• glamour - prisms: lv50 DoH classes
• glamour - gear: lv50 DoH/DoL classes
• extreme primals: good luck doing any of them beyond Garuda (and even that is a gamble) with PUGs
• Coil: good luck doing any of it beyond T3 (and even those are a gamble) with PUGs

Gil sinks:

• housing - no comment, personal or FC doesn't even make any difference
• glamour - gear: full HQ AF for your DoL/DoH classes and better have it all overmelded, else don't even think of creating/finding most stuff
• glamour - prisms: the price of those is just insane considering what they do (but probably thanks to the nonsensical requirement to craft them)
• Novus and basically anything that requires materia - if you take the "easier" route

Time sinks:

• FATEs: whatever it is for, having to camp often hours just to complete one FATE is anything but fun
• glamour - gear: don't want to / can't pay for a certain piece, good luck desynthing items until you finally get it
• relic weapons: anything from atma onwards is a mindless grindfest
• Novus and anything that requires materia - if you take the "cheaper" route

RNG:

• crafting HQ (or even NQ in some cases) items beyond lv50
• gathering HQ (or even NQ in some cases) items beyond lv50
• atma
• all the loot rolls (absolutely no way to influence "luck" even in the slightest amount)
• chocobo colouring (just ridiculous, as if it wasn't gated enough already)
• Novus and anything that requires materia - if you take the "cheaper" route

...obviously these lists aren't complete (only the ones I personally know/care about), and are, individually, not long either. But if you consider all of them together, a generic casual player will have a hard time deciding which one to spend their limited time on to work for (and that's considering they aren't locked out of content by any of the hard restrictions). And I don't think it takes a genius to see that, perhaps, not everyone wants to spend their every online minute just throwing themselves at one of these contents. I also agree that some of these are perfectly fine as they are (a rookie lv50 shouldn't be able to complete T9 blindfolded); but most of them are just arbitrary gates to content that should be fun, content that should be enjoyed by everybody. And these lists keep growing, it's already alienating people, forcing them into quitting. Which is something they should be concerned about right now, in my opinion, if they don't want an early funeral to ARR.

So, yeah, if I was you, I'd try to highlight these things to him. Obviously too much at once and most probably needs some thinking and even then would be too long to reply to. But he should start thinking about it. And when he's done thinking about it, he could perhaps give us answers in a nice long Letter from the Producer.

[Colt47]

snipped for space, but seriously go back and read this post.

Thanks BreathlessTao for articulating the situation better than I ever could. I've been stating multiple times along with Fendred and a few others that they need multiple difficulties for end game content like coil to drop some of the hard restrictions on just seeing story content, as well as getting rewarded for some of the quests that clutter up the questing log. I can think of plenty of examples on how to fix the problems that are plaguing end game at the moment and I have a hard time believing their software developers haven't thought of these things, too.

1. Instead of nerfing end game dungeons each push, just upgrade the loot tables to the latest ones and have the older gear sold as vanity or eliminated, adding some sense of value to the older gear. Also scale the power of gear down for dungeons so that it fits the level of the dungeon. Right now AV is the only place that scales down, so the end game dungeons are actually easier than the last dungeon before HITTING end game dungeons.

2. Make two difficulties for 8 man dungeons like Binding Coil, so players can experience the story of these places without putting undue grind into it. That way people could do the light version for the story and then tackle the harder versions of each coil turn without worrying about a specific order. For that matter, remove lockouts for the harder version and just let people DF it like Ramuh back before 2.38.

[Felis]

Gil sinks:

• glamour - prisms: the price of those is just insane considering what they do (but probably thanks to the nonsensical requirement to craft them)

If you think that 200 gil is insane, you have a financial problem.

[BreathlessTao]

If you think that 200 gil is insane, you have a financial problem.

Well if they go for 200 on your server, good for you. On Shiva they mostly start at around 2800, and that's just the cheapest, usual price is more like 4-5k apiece, some even more.

[Edli]

Well if they go for 200 on your server, good for you. On Shiva they mostly start at around 2800, and that's just the cheapest, usual price is more like 4-5k apiece, some even more.

That's not a gil sink, that's just gil going from one player to the other. For prisms the gil sink is 200 a piece when you buy the clear prism from the NPC.

Gil sink is gil disappearing from the playerbase not gil that changes hands.

[myahele]

At this point, I just want more inventory space. I have multiple jobs and crafting leveled up. Would wanna do more, but my armory is nearing its limits

[Souljacker]

Why do people keep asking YoshiP the WRONG questions? Ask him what his solution is for the AVAILABILITY of housing (and why it's EXACTLY THE SAME as FC housing, thereby DEVALUING that "achievement"). I can accept he wants it to be an "achievement" (though it's the most rock stupid thing I have ever heard come out of his mouth") - but I HAVE the gil for the house I want.

There just aren't any, and I can guarantee you that on Balmung, come patch 2.4, by the time I am done with work and log on there STILL won't be any.

Ask the right questions, please. Stop talking about Gil. This is why he thinks that is the big issue when it's not.

[KaiKatzchen]

So I first started off by saying 'There was a chaotic response to housing earlier this week; what do you think about that?'.

His response -

'Hmm.. yes it certainly was. But, I have been telling people about the changes of information to personal housing through forums and letters. Though there was the initial information which was indeed vague'

Huh? I never remember hearing him say anything about housing after the initial 'it won't be connected to FC etc and that it would be about 850k." that he was saying was vague. Did I miss something, because if I did, a lot of other people did as well, because everyone seems confused/upset over this... even the JP players.

And how can it be a vague/mistranslated if they they are complaining about the same thing? If someone has a link, other than the pre-typed apology and patch notes that came out with 2.38, where he clarifies like he said he did, I would love to see it.

Me - 'I also looked forward to Personal Housing, but did not end up buying a house DUE TO IT BEING A LIL TO EXP' <-(I did slightly emphasize this, though in reality I do have enough).

'We have come to the decision which is 2.38 in housing, by thoroughly checking the market and gil retained by players. We know how much each player has. Though it is expensive, I think housing should be an achievement where players work hard to earn the gil, it should take some effort to buy a house. Players who laze around should make some effort to make gil.
If we make it anymore cheaper, it would cause problems to the game and market with RMT etc'

First off I'm slightly offended by this. Is that honestly how he views some players in this game, as lazy people who do nothing? It's not necessarily that people are lazy, and he shouldn't have used that term to begin with. We based the gil that we saved and worked for OFF WHAT HE SAID WHICH I HAVE NOT SEEN ANYTHING TO PROVE HE CLARIFIED THIS UNTIL THE PATCH!

This game is not our job, we don't do this for a living. We have family, and careers, school etc... and not everyone has time to sit around and just make gil. Granted I have enough to buy a small, but I don't know if I want one if it's this messy and unorganized.

Many have said, that I have talked too, that we already play a premium per month for this game. Why should housing cost anything? A lot of MMO's give you basic lodging for free with your character that you can modify and decorate. That small should cost nothing and that if you want to upgrade, get more land, a bigger house etc THAT should be the charge and gil sink.

NoT only to we buy the plot, we buy the license to BUILD the house and then have to spend gil to make or buy furnishings! Where are people being lazy?!

Lets also not forget the gil sink/time for all of the materia for the Novus, which SE made HARDER because they changed the way you spirit bond to make it more difficult, because people were making gil that way. Tell us not to be lazy players, but then you gimp every way we find to make gil and tell us to work harder?

The reason I don't agree with how this has been implemented is because:

• You will have single players fighting with FC's over plots which is unfair to both sides of the coin.
• You have people buying multi-properties and then selling them at 2-3 times the price to try and make a quick buck.
• And there were NOT enough plots for the demand that they should have known would be there right off the bat. People have had months to save up, they should have known better

.

At the start it should have been 1 house per server, and they should have given people time to buy them and then added the idea to buy multi-plots at 2.4 when more zones/plots were added.

To be honest, I agree with him. Half the people I see complaining about housing request alternate gardening; to mass produce and sell onions for cheap gil I assume.

With me it had nothing to do with that. It has to do with the fact that they say things, then change their minds or say it was a vague misinterpretation. Or promise things, and then give no time line or idea of when to expect them. Two things I was really looking forward to in this game, one: i have no idea when it's coming out and then other is a mess at the moment.

Also I don't garden really, I have people in my FC that are much more interested in it than me. My friend and I want to get married in the game (hope they don't mess that up too) and we just wanted a house that we could decorate together and use together. Now we are questioning if we even want to get involved with all this mess.

'We are working on a solution for that, but it is not as easy. So please bear with it for a little longer'

Yeah, that's becoming a punch line for many people... "Yeah XYZ will come at come point, please look forward to it!"

[Kardayel]

Players who laze around should make some effort to make gil.

I said to a friends months ago that FFXIV looked more and more like a work simulator: make something repetitive and boring to gain a currency...

I just realised... It's the first time the Work Simulator goal of this game is made "official"...