Dead from Plot hunting and I ask YOU a Question

[Yshtola]

What is the suggestion?

Read.......

[Gemina]

If anyone here can explain the reasoning behind lowering the value of a Gil sink when literally every new item that gets added to the game costs more than the previous one, please rise up from your seat, walk down the aisle, climb up the stage and pick up the microphone so everyone can hear your words of wisdom (not).

That's pretty easy, actually. SE lacks foresight. They don't have a crystal ball that let them know back in 2013 just how much the player population would grow. However, when it comes to new items, they are not, nor have to look into the future; they merely just need to go off of the data from the previous expansion. You also need to factor that those new items depreciate over the course of time as well. They have a novelty value, just like housing. It's not so much that the cost of plots have depreciated over time so much as they were price gouged up the wazoo when they first came in.

There is no question that housing in terms of inflation and population growth was handled poorly. A lot of ideas they had implemented back in ARR are residual elements from both 1.0 and FFXI, and it took them some time to figure out that today's players don't want to put up with that crap. Those kind of antiquated grinds were more accepted in the Jurassic period of mmos after consoles were introduced to them. However, ARR continues and will likely always be present in some cumbersome way so long as FFXIV exists due to spaghetti coding.

This is all great data compiled together to show what housing has done over the years; but how about the players? What are the players who actually own a plot up to? Are they taking advantage? I don't have any intricate charts to showcase data of the course of the last 7 years, but I do know that I have members in my FC who do nothing with their personal houses. One of them is going on 240 days since their last log in and has been informed through discord that demolition is currently suspended; another doesn't use her personal house at all, and spends all of her time at the FC plot; another has a plot with a dirty stable, wilted plants in the garden, and an uncapped bony bird who we can't feed because he has not granted any permissions to anyone.

Point of this is alleviate some of the fault placed on the devs, because our 'great' community isn't always so selfless and helpful. In fact, they can and will cut your throat the moment you become a competitor for something they want. Like a house. And a lot of the housing woes would be relieved to the point to give the devs some breathing room to address the issue properly if there were less dicks among our community.

As a plot owner, some things are indeed easier for me to say. I purchased my small plot without any trouble back in 3.0 for around 3mil, which is what they are currently going for. I upgraded to a medium when SB brought with it the Kugane district. Again, without any trouble and for the same price they are going for now. With that said, I know I lack an understanding when it comes to housing. To me, I see the interior as entirely aesthetic whom a lot of players don't even take advantage of based on the homes I've visited.

The exterior has the only actual utility a house provides. Players literally have access to all this without a plot with the exception of gardening. So if I was a dev, I would sooner release instanced gardening before I would instanced housing. Far less work, and it completely eliminates that angle to anyone's approach wanting to chastise the devs and their decision making when it comes to housing.

At the end of the day; it is what it is. The decision to obsess over a house to the point that you will actually camp a plot and click for hours on end is not a healthy one, it's not necessitated, and I even have to question the motive behind compiling all this data, which had to been crazy time consuming just to post, let alone gather it all. I fault the devs only for not taking into account that players will be human when to comes to resources that are limited in the game.

[GeminiReed]

So not only has Square Enix shot themselves in the foot by allowing personal houses to compete against a system that was perfectly suited for Free Companies, they thought it was a good idea to lower the values across the board… twice. If anyone here can explain the reasoning behind lowering the value of a Gil sink when literally every new item that gets added to the game costs more than the previous one, please rise up from your seat, walk down the aisle, climb up the stage and pick up the microphone so everyone can hear your words of wisdom (not).

I have some small experience with multiplayer game design but I'd hardly call myself an expert or even an economist.

Currency sinks only work when players use them. The involuntary ones like repair costs, marketboard taxes, and transport fees need to be cheap enough that it doesn't discourage use or encourage underground economies like GW's ecto trade. Unavoidable ones like repair costs can negatively impact retention and often hit the currency poor players while having a negligible effect on the problem reserves.

Voluntary sinks need to be attractive enough in the first place but also have a sufficient supply to service the demand. The original prices failed the first test because few FC's or people could afford them despite the devaluation timers. Today it fails regardless of price due to a grossly negligent undersupply. This is further exacerbated by the frequent demolition timer freezes which renders that feature pointless.

As designed FFXIV's housing was never and will never be a functional gil sink. All it did was create a retention problem and at least one black market.

[ItMe]

Because few are interested in deploying, maintaining, fueling, doing inventory management related to exploratory voyages and selling materials obtained by a fleet of 200 submarines. Your average FC is barely interested in this kind of content because of the commitment and your typical FC leader wouldn't wish to keep up with more than 4 airships/submarines anyway. Same could be said about gardening and ward designing.

The housing prices are already a joke and the FCs/players who are interested in this sort of content, on that scale, represent less than 1% of the total plots. It would be foolish to think that increasing prices is suddenly gonna increase the percentage of "rich players" owning multiple properties. What's easier, buying an entire ward for ~650m or for upwards of the gil cap? What would suddenly compel the players with this kind of money to start purchasing multiple plots?

A.) Just because someone has a house doesn't mean they need to maintain and operate a submarine or any of the other things a house can bring.
I don't see how "you'd have 200 gardens to maintain" is a deterrent if someone just wants a house.
After all, I don't imagine you launch airships from all of your houses.

B.) why do you own so many houses?

[SingleMaltFan]

You want housing-related gil sinks? Here's a couple ideas:

1) Let FC members buy more than one personal chamber. Each FC house can accommodate over 500, and most FCs aren't that large. FC leaders could set limits on number of chambers allowed by rank. Have costs escalate the more you buy. Maybe keep the first one 300,000, then 600,000 for the next, then 1,000,000 and go from there.

2) Turn on personal chamber functionality for private estates, so private estate owners could expand their space without having to necessarily buy a larger house. Same escalating cost structure. Fat cats could build 100 room palaces in small plots.

These ideas would have the added benefit of stimulating the furniture market, and the associated MB taxes would pull even more gil out of the economy.

[ItMe]

SingleMaltFan I love those ideas~

[Avatre]

2) Turn on personal chamber functionality for private estates, so private estate owners could expand their space without having to necessarily buy a larger house. Same escalating cost structure. Fat cats could build 100 room palaces in small plots.

This I would 100% want, even if they made the cost a flat 500k per room, for as many as can be created. I would definitely take advantage of that feature, and I'm not even considered rich(probably considered upper lower with my 14.5mil I have)...and likely wouldn't be seen in many dungeons/alliance raids due to gathering and crafting all the things. Would be able to do so much more with my medium than I currently do. So many themed rooms, ability to make a kitchen/bath/greenhouse/studios....and the list can keep growing.

[Reinha]

This random timer did stop players from buying up houses just to make a profit, but people botting on a placard is not equal opportunity nor is it healthy to camp there for the honest players.

A raffle would cause a lot of people to never get a house and have zero ways to contribute their time and effort to having a better chance at getting one. That's not fair either. Why should some lazy player get a house over someone who is more determined and willing to put in the work? No, I'm not a fan of that.

It really is a damn joke that small houses only cost 3-4 million when so many people are out there looking for one. Higher prices are the only solution which would work for everyone. If you want a house, make more money and that's it. Anyone playing the game can make gil. It's fair.

[Veloran]

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.