Dead from Plot hunting and I ask YOU a Question

[TwistedTea]

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....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.

There's a limit to how many houses a single service account can own on a server: 1 personal house and 8 FC houses.

In order to own more, a player would have to get more accounts and pay the subscriptions.

~70% of the houses on NA servers are owned as personals.

Secondly, the majority of gil rich players are not motivated enough or have the time to grind out the gil and other requirements to owning that many houses.

Right now we have a situation where any new player fresh from MSQ with 3-5m can buy a small house.

Meaning the pool of competitors for a small plot is vast. If house prices were higher, there would be less people camping. The people who can't afford a house can wait for the devaluation timer to reduce the price and grind out gil in the meantime.

Adding new wards does not solve the problem,it merely kicks the can down the road; there are not enough houses for every individual player in NA servers especially if player populations keep increasing.

Upgradeable apartments for gil with balconies for gardening/delinking the FC workshop from ward housing would go a long way in reducing the demand for ward housing.

[Veloran]

But increasing the price doesn't just delete the 40 people waiting to buy a plot the moment it goes up for sale, it just narrows the pool of people who can afford to be waiting. That is to say, all 40 of those people still want a house, but then you'll just have the 20 who can afford to endlessly click doing so. The demand hasn't actually changed at all, in fact it's only bottlenecking the supply. And where are these "thousands of empty plots"? Part of the issue is that on some servers plots go up for sale so rarely that competition is massive, and the devaluation timer never even has a chance to kick in because the plot is bought instantly the moment it's actually buyable. And I don't see how adding more wards is just "kicking the can down the road" - Yes player populations are always increasing, but that most often results in adding more servers, while others are hardcapped for the creation of new characters, meaning adding more wards on congested servers isn't just a pointless effort.

[Yshtola]

But increasing the price doesn't just delete the 40 people waiting to buy a plot the moment it goes up for sale, it just narrows the pool of people who can afford to be waiting.

Exactly. You're the one implying I was.

That is to say, all 40 of those people still want a house, but then you'll just have the 20 who can afford to endlessly click doing so.

Make it more expensive then. You missed the part where I talked about player entitlement?

The demand hasn't actually changed at all, in fact it's only bottlenecking the supply.

The demand for housing was just as strong in 2.1. The supply wasn't "bottlenecked". You either paid what was on the placard or you waited the 90 days for full devaluation. Now devaluation has been shortened, yet you would complain. Once again, did you miss the part about player entitlement?

And where are these "thousands of empty plots"?

Funny how you like to cherry pick what you're replying to. If you want to ignore how players own houses for no practical reason and rely on reminders to actually enter them, that's your choice... I guess. Ignorance is bliss?

Anyhow, there is still thousands of plots on every single Data Center, minus the North American ones for the sole reason that auto-demolition has been stopped for the past 4 months. If you want to get into the NA situation, we can do that, but you seem unprepared.

Part of the issue is that on some servers plots go up for sale so rarely that competition is massive, and the devaluation timer never even has a chance to kick in because the plot is bought instantly the moment it's actually buyable.

Thanks for answering yourself. I'm glad we could come up with the common conclusion that devaluation isn't even capable of doing it's job due to the low prices.

And I don't see how adding more wards is just "kicking the can down the road" - Yes player populations are always increasing, but that most often results in adding more servers, while others are hardcapped for the creation of new characters, meaning adding more wards on congested servers isn't just a pointless effort.

If you can't see how ridiculously affordable house prices don't correlate to kicking the can down the road, logic is futile.

[Burmecia]

First of all, don't sit next to plots all day. It's simply a waste of time and makes you even more frustrated when you get unlucky and someone else clicks it.
Second, check for free plots from time to time, stay for like 10 minutes and then leave.
With the current system it's all random. Or you get lucky or not. If not, try another time.
Spend time on things that you enjoy more, than mindlessly clicking on a placards.
Don't stress yourself, it's unhealthy.

What makes me depressed that I cannot +like this post enough.

[MsQi]

...

What is the suggestion?

[Yshtola]

What is the suggestion?

Read.......

[MsQi]

The best solution would be an instanced plot system alongside the current ward system. It would give most people everything they want out of housing while leaving the few to squabble over limited plots in the wards.

Upgradeable apartments for gil with balconies for gardening/delinking the FC workshop from ward housing would go a long way in reducing the demand for ward housing.

That would satisfy a lot of people, though some would still like to have a house they can look at even if it's not in a neighborhood. I've said before it would be nice to have multiple apartments, no more than one per district, or allow apartment owners to have alts as tenants.

Either solution would probably remove enough players from the market so that those that want a ward house could have it without much fuss.

[ItMe]

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.

If rich players aren't interested in owning multiple houses why do some choose to own entire wards?
Heck, why do you own so many houses?

[Yshtola]

If rich players aren't interested in owning multiple houses why do some choose to own entire wards?
Heck, why do you own so many houses?

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?

[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.