Dead from Plot hunting and I ask YOU a Question

[xxvaynxx]

I was 8mil short of a large at that point(should have taken the full 20mil my FC leader told me I could take, rather than the 10 I did...). Wasn't sure if I would have time to find a FC chest then go back at that point, so I just grabbed my current medium.

Yikes D: that SUCKS! At least you got the medium. Those are nice and good to decorate.
If I'm honest, larges are really hard to make look good unless you make at least one or two barebone rooms or cut off the basement.
I can't talk as I have a personal that's a large but I personally think medium is good enough, having a large is basically bragging rights you won the housing wars.

[MsQi]

Because it’s main purpose is a time sink.

[Yshtola]

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.

The combination of the original prices and the 90 days devaluation process were excessive at the time. Coming up with ~20m for a small nowadays is really not as difficult as it used to be. There's no metrics regarding houses being unused (mostly personal houses), but it is rampant and normalized among players. I'd have to go through everything again, but I recall coming up with a ~10% estimate of the total amount of plots being reclaimed every 45 days on Gilgamesh. Quite literally the tip of iceberg.

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.

The original prices didn't fail per se, it just took a ridiculous amount of time before they reached miminal value while players were not quite as wealthy as they are today. The devaluation process has been greatly shortened to alleviate that problem, but the truth is that they neutered it entirely by dropping the prices to the floor. There is no under-supply when you compare the amount of plots and other housing options that are available compared to ARR. I'm not gonna go explain yet again why we are in the situation we're in. I'll just point out that patch 2.38 was the worst patch this game has ever seen and that personal housing should have remained outside of FC territory as it was originally announced.

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?

1: Stop shoving words in my mouth. I gave you the reasons why some players end up with that many houses. Players in this ballpark are driven by something and buying houses for the sake of stacking houses is not something common. Don't believe me, go ask the couple in Mateus, Alice on Spriggan, TWINS on Gilgamesh, FXXIV on Aegis, etc.

2: It's pretty funny how you can't imagine my FC launches 200 airships because that's actually what we do. 3 times a week actually. Granted airships are not very profitable right now, we stick to deploying submarines.

[Vyrerus]

Retainer Twenty owns 50 houses and 400 exploratory vehicles? *blinks hard and visions blurs* That doesn't seem shady at all.

[xxvaynxx]

Retainer Twenty owns 50 houses and 400 exploratory vehicles? *blinks hard and visions blurs* That doesn't seem shady at all.

Tbh.
I'm actually surprised he's actually contributing something to the thread and not being a meme because they usual are in housing threads.
I still think they're a massive D**k for having their sig showing all the houses they have though, knowing full well how much people want one.
No better than the people that go on PF saying they got a house right after the new housing plots have been added.

So its quite ironic him of all people posted that detailed post on housing woes.

[RareItems]

Add more wards, instanced housing or put a waiting list where you can deposit your gil to an NPC and that NPC will buy the house for you when it's your turn and send you a message in the mail when you finally bought a house.

[Yshtola]

Yes, how ironic for someone, who has owned hundreds of houses, to know so much about housing.

[Vyrerus]

Yes, how ironic for someone, who has owned hundreds of houses, to know so much about housing.

Yo, Olive Oil, sorry your friends left pre-Stormblood. That sucks

If you ever got the time, or your friends depart for elsehwere make an alt on Excalibur. I got a friend who's ambitious, maybe you could teach him a thing or two.

[Veloran]

What I am presenting is a way to prevent those 40 players from trying to purchase the same plot as soon as it is available.

And once again, all this is would do, at best, is partially stifle a symptom, while actually worsening the underlying cause. People stalk plots so much, particularly on certain servers, exactly because there is a shortage of plots to go around. Increasing prices simply puts more buying power in the hands of people with more gil, meaning those with less gil have an even more reduced chance at getting a plot. On many servers practically every district has every plot already taken, meaning a gil increase will just leave the market even more lopsided and inaccessible. This fantasyland you're talking about where suddenly plots open up and timers are able to count down because the property is now even MORE valuable is never going to happen, in fact it's precisely the opposite. Not to mention, as a method of combating RMT? This would literally drive RMT through the roof, because nobody who doesn't already have the cash to throw away is going to grind up 20, 15, or even 10M gil just for a small, instead they'd just buy the gil instead.

I also think you drastically overestimate just how much gil most players have, as well as the overlap between the gil-making community and the lifestyle/RP community. The sorts of people who want to spend their time decorating a house to look like a coffeehouse or sauna and the sorts of people who love to play the marketboard all day probably do not share a large intersection on a Venn diagram. Hell, if the devs just created house-independent gardening, many people would drop their houses outright.

Is it clear now or are you truly incapable of comprehending that the reason why players, like you, feel so entitled to being able to purchase a small house is due to the ridiculously low prices? 20m is nothing in this day and age and a, theoretical, fully devalued plot at 10m would still be very easy to obtain for any player who's even remotely determined to get one.

Sorry, but someone who owns almost fifty houses and a fleet of airships and submersibles complaining about how "entitled" someone is for wanting to be able to purchase even just one small is nothing but laughable.

[Yshtola]

And once again, all this is would do, at best, is partially stifle a symptom, while actually worsening the underlying cause. People stalk plots so much, particularly on certain servers, exactly because there is a shortage of plots to go around. Increasing prices simply puts more buying power in the hands of people with more gil, meaning those with less gil have an even more reduced chance at getting a plot. On many servers practically every district has every plot already taken, meaning a gil increase will just leave the market even more lopsided and inaccessible. This fantasyland you're talking about where suddenly plots open up and timers are able to count down because the property is now even MORE valuable is never going to happen, in fact it's precisely the opposite. Not to mention, as a method of combating RMT? This would literally drive RMT through the roof, because nobody who doesn't already have the cash to throw away is going to grind up 20, 15, or even 10M gil just for a small, instead they'd just buy the gil instead.

Here's a very simple tip, save your gil. That's what people used to do. Fantasyland? That's how things worked around here and even the most casual FCs could obtain a house. You clearly missed the part about how RMT thrives when things are so easy to obtain, just as it does when things are on the opposite end. There's a sweet spot and small houses for 3 to 3.5m is definitely not in that sweet spot in the current situation where you have eastern cherry trees being sold for 8m.

You want to pull out the old rmt boogeyman card, at least try to make it look like you know what you are talking about. Pegasus mounts, leve kits, gear, minions, emotes, etc. There are so many items that are being traded in the 8 digits, but I don't see you talking about how those items are driving RMT through the roof. Checkmate.

I also think you drastically overestimate just how much gil most players have, as well as the overlap between the gil-making community and the lifestyle/RP community. The sorts of people who want to spend their time decorating a house to look like a coffeehouse or sauna and the sorts of people who love to play the marketboard all day probably do not share a large intersection on a Venn diagram. Hell, if the devs just created house-independent gardening, many people would drop their houses outright.

That's great and all, but that's all anecdotal. I would have asked you to prove what you're saying, but we both know you can't do that. Maybe one day you'll get to take a glance at the underbelly. Until then, you can keep believing the two classes of players you just described don't mingle with each other.

Sorry, but someone who owns almost fifty houses and a fleet of airships and submersibles complaining about how "entitled" someone is for wanting to be able to purchase even just one small is nothing but laughable.

What am I complaining about exactly? I'm pointing out that you're the very reason why you can't even own a house. You want 200 submarines for yourself or your FC? You better have a couple of gil capped retainers. That's the difference between you and me. I'm willing to put in the effort in order to obtain something while you're here whining and complaining about how difficult it is to obtain 20m. Catch up.