Thinking this game is a bad investment

[Aarik]

Now we move onto expenses. Rent/upkeep/utilities first. I'll base this off of where I work; a very, VERY large grocery store (as in it's larger than a Walmart Superstore; we can fit several football fields inside. I also happen to know our monthly rent, which is (rounded up) 400k a month. Utilities cost about 200k a month (we actually have maxed out what the power grid can feed us, btw), so 600k a month for utilities for a MASSIVE facility maxing out it's power usage. But let's more than quadruple that, let's make rent/utilities 3 million a month for your argument.Now, we move to wages. The FF team for 14 is 200 people, last I heard. Let's assume that on average, they make 120,000 a year. That's stupidly high, but meh. That's 10k a month for 200 people, thus 2 mil a month for wages. So total costs; 3 mil rent/util/upkeep, 2 mil wages. That's 5 million in cost versus 10 million in profit a month. That's also stupidly skewed to support your assumption.

[h0tNstilettos]

Millions you say? And every month? Maybe in a year's time or even half a year, but in a SINGLE MONTH?

Math is not your forte friend. 2 months ago FFXIV had over 3 million active, and not sure if it's still there or not. But let's cut it at 3 million active. At 3 million active, even if the game cost $1 a sub, they would still be making millions, but we know subs cost anywhere from $13 to $15, and then add the cost of $2 for each extra retainer. And on top of that you have to add the cost of CS items. SE is making around $45,000,000 to $50,000,000 a month on this game, give or take, and that's not including CS items since those are not monthly costs. Of course you have to take away costs that SE has to pay for various things, but you would still be left with well over $30,000,000.

[inimicus]

Math is not your forte friend. 2 months ago FFXIV had over 3 million active, and not sure if it's still there or not. But let's cut it at 3 million active. At 3 million active, even if the game cost $1 a sub, they would still be making millions, but we know subs cost anywhere from $13 to $15, and then add the cost of $2 for each extra retainer. And on top of that you have to add the cost of CS items. SE is making around $45,000,000 to $50,000,000 a month on this game, give or take, and that's not including CS items since those are not monthly costs. Of course you have to take away costs that SE has to pay for various things, but you would still be left with well over $30,000,000.

*Sigh* More unfounded numbers.

Two things:
1. Comparing server capacity between two MMOs without official numbers is probably fruitless. We don't know what hardware they run on, and we don't know what they do. We have no idea how much money they each cost.
Of course, if they ever both said those specifications, then we'd be able to do something, but I don't believe that is the case here.
2. Subnumbers aren't a thing. We know nothing about subnumbers apart from very (mostly optimistic) estimates by people. What they announce was registered, once-paying or still-paying, accounts.
That is, as far as I know. Please correct me if we know otherwise.

Personally, I'd be suprised if FFXIV had more than ~300k subscribers at this time, roughly extrapolated from Alex NM clear numbers at the Eorzea Census 2015:
I'd wager that there are about ~200k. That's just me guessing though, so I won't make up my mind about these topics and their profit with that.

We know jackshit about how much money they make off FF14, last I checked. Neither their income, nor their actual profits.

[Hypa]

I am not happy about being a sub slave to keep my house. If they would have said something like this at the start of housing I would have never bought the house to begin with. But now I am fully invested and if anything happens out of my control I lose my house and that's a load of bull. SE makes millions off this game every month, they can afford to make new housing.

But it's ok for people to own a house and either quit the game or take extended breaks while there are active people who could enjoy the feature? I understand your plight, but please understand theirs too.

[AskaRay]

This is just my opinion but...
I DO have a house, just by the way

but if it gets to the point when I log out for the last time for more than two months, then I'm probably going to stay logged out for at least half a year to a year, and at that point I'd really rather someone else be using my plot of land. Sure I love my in-game house and the probably millions of gil that's gone towards making it great but really after coming back for that long of a break the LEAST OF MY WORRIES is my house. It's more like "damn I missed all those events :T" or "ugh I'm a million ilvls behind everyone I know"...

[Sho86]

This is just my opinion but...
I DO have a house, just by the way ----snip

I have houses as well, across different servers. I do not like the idea of losing said house, regardless of their reason. A perfect example for me was about a year ago my income did a sudden 180 and I had to get off the game for a few months to get things back in order in life; had this happened after this patch, I would've lost my houses because of it. I doubt I would've come back after that much investment (time watching the wards for houses to open, investing into plot/house, investing/crafting items for house.) It's used as a 'cheap' tele-point for the city location so I can favorite another location instead; its also used for quick access to the MB and my retainers, not to mention for its visual appeal for an accomplishment within the game. Many of the 'destroyed upon removal' add up to quite a bit of gil, and in some cases exceeding the amount paid for the house, which would be entirely lost.

Edit: also on a different note, being a 'community' instance isn't exactly an excuse either. LotR did this as well and at worst you had back rent that piled up, to a capped amount, to unlock your house. They didn't prune housing till years later from what I recall, to get rid of people that were gone for said years, myself being one of the people getting an email about it and at that point I did not care since I already left.

[Elim]

This is just my opinion but...
I DO have a house, just by the way

but if it gets to the point when I log out for the last time for more than two months, then I'm probably going to stay logged out for at least half a year to a year, and at that point I'd really rather someone else be using my plot of land. Sure I love my in-game house and the probably millions of gil that's gone towards making it great but really after coming back for that long of a break the LEAST OF MY WORRIES is my house. It's more like "damn I missed all those events :T" or "ugh I'm a million ilvls behind everyone I know"...

+1 to you and I'm a house owner too.

[Alex_Lenderson]

How is having a house an ultimate achievement? I mean... really?

[kamikrazy]

How is having a house an ultimate achievement? I mean... really?

Because its the largest, most time consuming, most customizable, content locked, most expensive thing you can acquire in the game? A lot of people see housing as the most difficult and time consuming achievement one can acquire because for a lot of people, especially those who don't care about competitive raiding at the cutting edge of difficulties (which is most of the population of any mmo) it is the ultimate achievement. Everything you did was leading up to it. Every bit of money for the crazy expensive item that every player drools over.

It's the Anaconda in Elite Dangerous. It's the Gold Challenge Mode gear in Warcraft. It's the apex achievement for alot of people. There is nothing more expensive and prestigious than owning a house in this game. For a lot of people who lose their houses, they will likely feel that with their greatest achievement stripped of them, they will feel there is no point in coming back. For me, having to commit to play this game forever in order to achieve that apex, there's no point in going forward.

[Elim]

there's no point in going forward.

Sounds like you already made up your mind.

If you like housing so much I suggest sims or animal crossing. I'm sure there are other games out there with good housing features but I can't think of any other atm.