Dead from Plot hunting and I ask YOU a Question

[lolicon09]

The only thing they need to do is give apartments a section to place outdoor furnishing (and increase the price of course). Unlike plots, you'll never lose your apartment no matter the amount of time passed without visiting It, and they are way cheaper than a small plot (currently)

[Yshtola]

I was gonna parrot the popular "just have a housing raffle" idea, but HOLY COW YSHTOLA!
THATS SOME GOOD INFO!
Thanks so much for making such a helpful and informative post. I'd shower likes on you if I could.

Though, if there were a more effective gill dump, wouldn't that increase RMT because people wouldn't have the gil to buy houses?
Wouldn't this just lead to a bigger bot problem?

Also, how did you get all this great information?

The "real" players are the driving force behind RMT. "Real" players always sell gil to resellers or other players. It's impossible to get rid of RMT, but you can drain the pool. More here: https://library.gwu.edu/sites/defaul...%20MMORPGs.pdf

Stats are compiled by myself:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing
https://mewfc.com

Does it make sense to consider the primary purpose of housing to be a gil sink/anti-RMT tool? Even if we say that there are three, four, or five times as many players as there are available plots, that also doesn't mean every player is looking for a house either. Instead of drastically increasing the cost-to-entry, doesn't it just make more sense to increase the number of wards, and add new housing locations? When Ishgard is made available, for example, it will presumably come with the same number of wards as all current districts. Beyond that, the only other ways I can see to increase availability would be to either breakup congested servers or force people who own multiple houses to give them up somehow. A gil increase only prevents new players from entering the system, it doesn't do anything to actually make new space.

There's already a mechanic to compensate for poor players, it's called the devaluation timer. I would suggest to read my post.

[Varilyon]

I started on Ragnarok in 2012 and played on one of those legacy worlds. Neither I or another german player had such amounts of money.

November 2012 was the last savestate for ARR and I accumulated about 6 Mio Gil by Farming the one and only FATE Atomos and playing the game. The effort to acquiring money was the same as today. Furthermore SE took away 90% of our money in ARR for deflation purposes. So I only started with 600k (not much in comparison of housing- and marketboard-prices)

In 2.3 where housing was implemented, only the richest could buy small houses. Therefor the reduction of the prices were liked by the playerbase (at least what I can tell).

The "real" players are the driving force behind RMT. "Real" players always sell gil to resellers or other players. It's impossible to get rid of RMT, but you can drain the pool. More here: https://library.gwu.edu/sites/defaul...%20MMORPGs.pdf

First of all, thank you for all your time in investing such amount of time to gather all these information.

Your idea was to increase prices as a gilsink and to lower the amount of housing-buyers.
I agree that we need a gilsink.
In my personal calculations I don't use dark matter as a sign for Inflation. I like to use the prices for RMT as a factor, because our real World currencies are way more stable and there is always an demand for ingame currency.

But I don't share the second part: increasing prices to lower the amount of housing-buyers. True is that plots will be left to buy if they are too expensive. And someday they will be bought by the most wealthy players.

Did you read your linked article? I did and he wanted to show us, that using RMT isnt cheating but instead a way of thinking outside the box by comparing worktime investment in real life and in grinding (boring stuff). Using RMT is a way to decrease the time wasting in boring content and instead skipping right into the fun part of the game.

If we use this explanation of ppl using RMT we can safely assume that owning and using a house is kind of the fun part and collecting all those money the boring part. Increasing prices would only increase the boring part and make it way more incentive to buy Gil via RMT.

We don't want to increase problems, we want a better game. Thats why other ideas would be better.

Personally (and as an owner of a privat house) would wish, that playerhousing should be in an own instance for each home. Owning a house would only increase the space in the database because not every instance must be loaded at all times. With this Update ppl could buy more than one house to decrease their money.

There was another cool Idea:
You could buy a simple plot and upgrade it like in Animal Crossing. So everyone could get at least a small patch and wealthy players can upgrade it into a mansion or castle. The Elder Scrolls Online showed us what some engines can do with instanced housing.

PS: Sorry for late editing. You still cannot edit on Smartphone...

[Enla]

The only thing they need to do is give apartments a section to place outdoor furnishing (and increase the price of course). Unlike plots, you'll never lose your apartment no matter the amount of time passed without visiting It, and they are way cheaper than a small plot (currently)

Also give them 'upgrades' to sink gil into. I'd happily grind out millions to expand my apartment and 'earn' the right to extra space + a garden area. I also wouldn't mind if they sold us apartment 'layouts' that included an indoor garden area, kinda like a smaller version of what LOTRO offers.

[Eldevern]

Personally (and as an owner of a privat house) would wish, that playerhousing should be in an own instance for each home. Owning a house would only increase the space in the database because not every instance must be loaded at all times. With this Update ppl could buy more than one house to decrease their money.

There was another cool Idea:
You could buy a simple plot and upgrade it like in Animal Crossing. So everyone could get at least a small patch and wealthy players can upgrade it into a mansion or castle. The Elder Scrolls Online showed us what some engines can do with instanced housing.

+1

You can add Wildstar housing.

[Seraphor]

Ways to fix housing (that are not mutually exclusive)

1. Raise plot prices (which Yshtola earlier beautifully explained)

2. Expand Apartments to include (more expensive) larger options. A 'Medium Apartment' that's the same size as a small house, and a 'Large Apartment' that's the same size as a medium house. (Adding more apartment slots is far less work than adding new housing wards)

3. Add instanced gardens or gardens linked to apartments (lolicon09 and Enla mentioned)

4. Add FC Apartments, complete with Company Workshops.


Imagine if all of these were implemented.
Using Yshtola's proposed plot price increase by inflation, plus modular upgradable apartments, 500k for a regular 1 room apartment, 750k for a medium and 1m for a large. +250k for use of a garden (could even have different sized gardens, +350k and +500k respectively) and company workshop coming for free if the apartment is owned by an FC.

[Veloran]

That doesn't really address most of my points. If base housing prices are heavily increased, how does the devaluation timer help poorer players? If anything it helps the richer players by ensuring the price range of the plot remains well above affordable for many while still easily being purchasable by people who have many millions to spare. I mean forgive me if I'm majorly misunderstanding your profile tag, but you own like 48 plots, right? So you have more than enough gil to buy houses left and right. Meanwhile just to buy a small as a newer player I had to borrow like 2M on top of what I already had. So if these higher prices had been in effect at that time, a player like me couldn't have gotten a house at all, while a player like you easily could have gotten their 49th house. So I don't really see how this actually opens up the market, especially when the alternative of just adding more plots overall already exists.

[Roda]

+1

You can add Wildstar housing.

God this is my dream *o*

[ItMe]

They have more houses than you can imagine. It's their business to know these things.

Wow, you're right.
If they have loads of houses, it kind of calls their whole idea into question.
Thet they have bought loads of houses shows how much buying power players can get. Thus in order to for their Gil sink idea to be effective, house prices would need to be prohibitively high.

I know that they aren't alone in this. There are many other individuals who basically own every house in multiple wards.
Instead of making more houses available, wouldn't it be better to simply limit the number of houses someone could own? (Counting houses account wide so someone couldn't just own a load of houses across their alts)

[Yshtola]

I started on Ragnarok in 2012 and played on one of those legacy worlds. Neither I or another german player had such amounts of money.

November 2012 was the last savestate for ARR and I accumulated about 6 Mio Gil by Farming the one and only FATE Atomos and playing the game. The effort to acquiring money was the same as today. Furthermore SE took away 90% of our money in ARR for deflation purposes. So I only started with 600k (not much in comparison of housing- and marketboard-prices)

I would heavily disagree with your statement regarding today's difficulty with making money. The amount of cash people carry around nowadays is nothing like what it used to be during ARR.

In 2.3 where housing was implemented, only the richest could buy small houses. Therefor the reduction of the prices were liked by the playerbase (at least what I can tell).

First of all, thank you for all your time in investing such amount of time to gather all these information.

Your idea was to increase prices as a gilsink and to lower the amount of housing-buyers.
I agree that we need a gilsink.
In my personal calculations I don't use dark matter as a sign for Inflation. I like to use the prices for RMT as a factor, because our real World currencies are way more stable and there is always an demand for ingame currency.

Can't speak for Ragnarok, but even very casual FCs could afford a small house on Gilgamesh. Hell, I recall me and a few friends ended up buying a Mist 1 in a matter of 2-3 weeks just ahead of patch 2.3. As I've written, some people might have appreciated the reduction, but it's far from rewarding when SE is diminishing the efforts of hundreds of FCs by slashing the prices.

My suggestion wouldn't lower the amount of buyers. What it aims at is progressively prevent the 40 players on certain servers from being able to purchase a house the moment it becomes available. I can see why you would use fiat, but it doesn't line up with what I am presenting. Are fiat currencies more "stable" than gil? I guess it depends on what your currency is, but it doesn't matter. If you know the right people, you can buy a million for a dollar. If you don't, you're gonna be looking a spending anything between 2 and 6. There used to be a time where a million could only be purchased above 15$ after midnight on Balmung. Long gone are these days, but using fiat as a way to gauge inflation in FFXIV just doesn't really work.

But I don't share the second part: increasing prices to lower the amount of housing-buyers. True is that plots will be left to buy if they are too expensive. And someday they will be bought by the most wealthy players.

It is fallacious to think "rich players" are interested in owning multiple houses. The very few individuals or FCs that are interested in managing multiple plots are a non-factor in the current environment because of the sheer amount of plots compared to the ARR era. Besides, the very reason behind housing is to take gil away from rich players while less fortunate players can just wait a bit. After all, the devaluation timer is still present, it's just inefficient on North American servers.

Did you read your linked article? I did and he wanted to show us, that using RMT isnt cheating but instead a way of thinking outside the box by comparing worktime investment in real life and in grinding (boring stuff). Using RMT is a way to decrease the time wasting in boring content and instead skipping right into the fun part of the game.

If we use this explanation of ppl using RMT we can safely assume that owning and using a house is kind of the fun part and collecting all those money the boring part. Increasing prices would only increase the boring part and make it way more incentive to buy Gil via RMT.

I did and I think the same way to a certain extent. If whatever I'm doing ingame doesn't reward me with X amount of gil per hour, then I'm looking for something that is more efficient. As written in that paper, make things too easy (as they are now) and RMT thrives. Make things too difficult (2.1 price chart) and RMT thrives.

We don't want to increase problems, we want a better game. Thats why other ideas would be better.

Personally (and as an owner of a privat house) would wish, that playerhousing should be in an own instance for each home. Owning a house would only increase the space in the database because not every instance must be loaded at all times. With this Update ppl could buy more than one house to decrease their money.

What problem would arise? What other ideas are as simple as altering the sticker prices?

Every time someone suggests something, they never talk about the investment SE would have to make. In this case, they have already stated that a full blown instanced housing system (actual houses, since apartment are a form of housing) is not something they want to pursue.

There was another cool Idea:
You could buy a simple plot and upgrade it like in Animal Crossing. So everyone could get at least a small patch and wealthy players can upgrade it into a mansion or castle. The Elder Scrolls Online showed us what some engines can do with instanced housing.

PS: Sorry for late editing. You still cannot edit on Smartphone...

Again, that would require a full blown instanced housing system and that's just not happening considering the producer has said he's not interested and how they have doubled down on the ward based system since 2013...

That doesn't really address most of my points. If base housing prices are heavily increased, how does the devaluation timer help poorer players? If anything it helps the richer players by ensuring the price range of the plot remains well above affordable for many while still easily being purchasable by people who have many millions to spare. I mean forgive me if I'm majorly misunderstanding your profile tag, but you own like 48 plots, right? So you have more than enough gil to buy houses left and right. Meanwhile just to buy a small as a newer player I had to borrow like 2M on top of what I already had. So if these higher prices had been in effect at that time, a player like me couldn't have gotten a house at all, while a player like you easily could have gotten their 49th house. So I don't really see how this actually opens up the market, especially when the alternative of just adding more plots overall already exists.

Heavily increased? Are you mad?

The goal isn't to help poor players since they can already purchase apartments and FC rooms at a fraction of what a house cost. I don't know how you came up with that conclusion since what was brought forward is exclusively to prevent 40 people from trying to purchase a plot the moment it goes up for sale. You know, as it was originally intended...

My FC doesn't really care about expanding beyond what we have and the amount of FCs or players like myself barely represent 1% of the available plots across all servers. You can complain about the 1% all you want, but you should take a few step away from the tree you're starring at and look at the thousands of plots that are empty or the thousands of players who rely on emails to be reminded that their house is about to be demolished because clearly they really use it.

Wow, you're right.
If they have loads of houses, it kind of calls their whole idea into question.
Thet they have bought loads of houses shows how much buying power players can get. Thus in order to for their Gil sink idea to be effective, house prices would need to be prohibitively high.

I know that they aren't alone in this. There are many other individuals who basically own every house in multiple wards.
Instead of making more houses available, wouldn't it be better to simply limit the number of houses someone could own? (Counting houses account wide so someone couldn't just own a load of houses across their alts)

We are not the norm. If it were for me, I'd go straight back to that 2.1 price chart, but I can see how unpopular that would be due to how entitled players are nowadays. Personal housing is the bulk of the problem with housing and there are already restrictions in place to prevent multiple personal house ownership. You can take away the FC houses owned by the "same" FCs tomorrow and you'll be back to square one by the end of the week.