Q: Will there be any maintenance fees or other costs for housing?

[Hamada]

besides the cost of the land and house?

How come housing isn't fixed yet and why is the situation still different then this quote?

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-%2810-30-2013

1:14:22
Q: Will there be any maintenance fees or other costs for housing, besides the cost of the land and house?
A: In older MMOs, such as Ultima Online, there was a house maintenance fee you had to pay weekly, but in FFXIV: ARR we decided against this system. Similarly, these older MMOs also had a system where your house would break down if you didn’t log in after a while in order to have you continue your subscription, but this is a thing of the past and we won't have any system like that.

[Moonfish]

Come to Midgardsormr. It has a great community, dedicated hunters and plenty of housing available.

Otherwise, deal with the cons of being on an overpopulated server.

[Okamimaru]

I'm not sure what you want... regular fees for housing? No more housing demolition?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

That was from 2013, before housing was even implemented. Clearly things ended up having to change. I like how people keep bringing an old quote like these things are set in stone. This is one reason they don't give us early info anymore. People latch on and cry foul if the tiniest thing changes.

[SendohJin]

people evolve when presented with new facts. it's a good thing.

[Thamorian]

That was from 2013, before housing was even implemented. Clearly things ended up having to change. I like how people keep bringing an old quote like these things are set in stone. This is one reason they don't give us early info anymore. People latch on and cry foul if the tiniest thing changes.

Definitely, you've hit the nail on the head. People just don't understand the time between pre-planning and production that stuff changes for various reasons.

[LineageRazor]

besides the cost of the land and house?

How come housing isn't fixed yet and why is the situation still different then this quote?

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-%2810-30-2013

Because they tried it, and realized what a terrible, terrible idea it was to have houses that never expire? People leave the game, and never come back. That's a fact. Preserving their houses is a waste of resources, and leads to housing areas that are empty mausoleums. I'm personally glad to know that the plots around my house will have actual, active players behind them.

Yoshi P also claimed that player housing would be separate from FC housing, and much more affordable. That was another promise that fell through, likely because the resource and development needs were much more than he expected.

Yoshi P had big ideas back in the day, but he was also a lot less experienced back then. His mouth frequently wrote checks that his dev team couldn't cash.

[Usho]

Yoshi P had big ideas back in the day, but he was also a lot less experienced back then. His mouth frequently wrote checks that his dev team couldn't cash.

5 years later...small ideas, but more experience. I wish we had ARR launch Yoshi-P than 2018 Yoshi-P. A Director with big ideas means a lot of good for a game. Nowadays, the design of things now feels more lazy and less thought out. Sad.


/2 cents

[Vhailor]

Because they tried it, and realized what a terrible, terrible idea it was to have houses that never expire? People leave the game, and never come back. That's a fact. Preserving their houses is a waste of resources, and leads to housing areas that are empty mausoleums. I'm personally glad to know that the plots around my house will have actual, active players behind them.

Yoshi P also claimed that player housing would be separate from FC housing, and much more affordable. That was another promise that fell through, likely because the resource and development needs were much more than he expected.

Yoshi P had big ideas back in the day, but he was also a lot less experienced back then. His mouth frequently wrote checks that his dev team couldn't cash.

In fairness, the dev team was fully capable of cashing this particular check: they simply chose to build a system that XIV's back-end was not capable of fully supporting (which was a really stupid choice, one we're still paying for today).

What they should have likely done was have fully instanced personal Housing rather than neighborhoods. Recreate the equivalent of Mog Houses from XIV, only expanded to include a plot of land and such. Down the road, they could have implemented neighborhood functionality, with a sort of 'lottery system' players could enroll in to have their house placed within a community for some period of time. This could have spurred decoration contests and a 'Seasonal' sort of feel akin to the Feast, while also requiring significantly less effort on the back-end and enabling them to discard the demolition system. And it would have permitted more flexibility in regards to land usage (for instance, players could have been free to place smaller houses on larger plots, so as to allow for more garden space), and allowed for more outdoor items (a limit of 40 on a Mansion is ridiculous).

But, instead, they built a system without any thought paid at all to the inherent limitations of FFXIV. Great success!

Edit / Aside: This isn't simply hindsight speaking. During the requirements analysis and design phase of any sort of content, attention should be paid to what can and cannot be effectively executed from a technical standpoint. I mean, look at all the work that's been done on Housing, and the system is still what you'd call 'adequate' rather than great. Back when it was first released, it was awful, so limited that well over half the player base couldn't even participate. SE should have seen this coming. The fact that they made a decision to go ahead with an approach that their resources literally couldn't support indicates a very flawed, borderline-incompetent planning workflow.

[polyphonica]

Yoshi P also claimed that player housing would be separate from FC housing, and much more affordable. That was another promise that fell through, likely because the resource and development needs were much more than he expected.

FWIW, this is probably referring to what eventually became apartments in the game, actually. (That was probably what they were thinking at the time.) But besides/in addition to that, they decided to allow players to buy plots of land as well. This happened after they decreased the prices for all land and increased gold intake considerably, so actually they were more affordable by then in terms of "buying power."

In the end, though, the point is the same: these sort of forward-looking statements have an element of speculation, and sometimes they will solve the problem in a different way than they originally think for whatever reason. The fact that people tend to interpret forward-looking statements as promises, and then hold them to the letter if anything deviates in any way, is indeed probably one of the justifications for saying less until things are set in stone.