Re-enable Housing Demolition!

[Verendal]

Might I suggest a third option between 'enable demolition to bring out a tiny trickle of houses opening' and 'add in a static number of houses to a rapidly increasing playerbase that is far outstripping any single increase in supply?

Give Ishgard an instanced plot, and you can have that house OR a ward house, but not both at the same time. Bam, want a house get a house, plots in wards will free up as many want Ishgard housing, there will always be at least one plot to anyone who wants a house, gets the furniture market moving, gives people a reason to make use of the insanely easy crafter leveling, nobody loses out on anything. A single plot to the WoL could even make sense 'Thank you for your help with everything' sort of thing.

[Catstab]

I would say change the to current pricing if your buying it as an FC and Orginal pricing for private housing.

Except the original pricing (40m smalls, 500m larges) was when housing was FC only. Current pricing (90%) off was brought about specifically because when they opened housing to personals, people said "but I cant afford 500m, now that they're personal, cheaper, please!"

[Luna-M]

Except the original pricing (40m smalls, 500m larges) was when housing was FC only. Current pricing (90%) off was brought about specifically because when they opened housing to personals, people said "but I cant afford 500m, now that they're personal, cheaper, please!"

So? 4M is way to low for a small nowadays. I would much rather see a proper gilsink and make people farm 40m+ (which dont't take long)

[Sairys]

Except the original pricing (40m smalls, 500m larges) was when housing was FC only. Current pricing (90%) off was brought about specifically because when they opened housing to personals, people said "but I cant afford 500m, now that they're personal, cheaper, please!"

To be fair, that pricing (most expensive was actually 625m for 1st class large) was because it was based on the high amount of gil around on specific legacy servers afaik and not because it was for FCs? For added context, the smaller servers at the same time had a range from 4m for 5th class small to 62.5m for 1st class large. Also, poking around there's comments linked to the PLL shortly after the FC launch and forum stuff that says people were complaining about the prices well before personals were a thing.

Either way, differentiating pricing would be... pretty negative, you'd expect everyone to get grandfathered in (particularly given people kept their extra homes after the purchase limitations) so it only hits people buying personals moving forward and if you were going to raise the pricing it seems like it makes more sense to hit both because FCs can just crowd fund from their members so they're still like to have an easier time and you don't encourage people to create single person FCs just for the discount.

[Melorie]

Either way, differentiating pricing would be... pretty negative, you'd expect everyone to get grandfathered in (particularly given people kept their extra homes after the purchase limitations) so it only hits people buying personals moving forward and if you were going to raise the pricing it seems like it makes more sense to hit both because FCs can just crowd fund from their members so they're still like to have an easier time and you don't encourage people to create single person FCs just for the discount.

Yeah, if you're going to make the houses more expensive, do it for FC houses in order to avoid people making solo-FCs+having their own plot.
And 40m is far from easy to farm for most of the playerbase imo, specially the casual playerbase that is what this game consists of.

[Coletergeist]

So? 4M is way to low for a small nowadays. I would much rather see a proper gilsink and make people farm 40m+ (which dont't take long)

I agree with this; this would also make you feel a bit more accomplished with the purchase (personal opinion) and there'd be less competition (I think?) for obtaining housing since they wouldn't be so easily affordable as well. This game tosses gil at you it's almost hard to not get that much if you're smart with your gil.
Houses should be an investment. But of course there will probably be folks that disagree with this.

[TwistedTea]

Yeah, if you're going to make the houses more expensive, do it for FC houses in order to avoid people making solo-FCs+having their own plot.
And 40m is far from easy to farm for most of the playerbase imo, specially the casual playerbase that is what this game consists of.

Should raise the placard prices for both FC housing and personals. Housing started off as FC only and SE had said they would separate personal housing from FC housing but didn't deliver.

The most expensive large is Mist 5/35 is 50m. An absolute joke as a gil sink.

[Sairys]

I agree with this; this would also make you feel a bit more accomplished with the purchase (personal opinion) and there'd be less competition (I think?) for obtaining housing since they wouldn't be so easily affordable as well. This game tosses gil at you it's almost hard to not get that much if you're smart with your gil.
Houses should be an investment. But of course there will probably be folks that disagree with this.

Yeah, disagree because just with the last few comments you can see three different views on how difficult it would be to acquire that gil.
Also, if the goal is to basically price people out then you're still going to get all the complaints about people not being able to get a house. Just instead of it only being that there aren't enough available, you'll also have people here complaining that it's too expensive in the first place, it wouldn't make people want housing less it'll just give them another reason to be angry about the inaccessibility of an advertised feature of the game.

If you wanted a mechanism that increased gil price it seems like it'd make more sense to implement auctions so people could put in the maximum amount of gil they're willing to pay and then the game sells to the highest bidder at the end of a certain time frame. This way where there's a plot available and low competition the price is low, where the competition is higher you need more gil.


I also don't really see personal housing as an investment in general. Gardening is sure but otherwise purchasing personal housing is unlocking the ability to utilise the housing decoration systems in the game to a greater degree than available in FC rooms/apartments with stepped upgrades in plot sizes.

[Coletergeist]

it'd make more sense to implement auctions so people could put in the maximum amount of gil they're willing to pay and then the game sells to the highest bidder at the end of a certain time frame.

I don't think you see a flaw in your own response here; this wouldn't fix a thing - the auction idea that is. If folks could bid whatever price they wanted for a house, folks would be bidding at exceedingly high prices. Auction idea = no bueno.
Wouldn't fix a thing for the situation at all, and folks would constantly be in the dark over what the price of that house would potentially be, then. Could be as low as 500k to something as high as 500+ mil, because people do be swimming in gil I assure you.
Poor players would never really stand a chance, particularly on high populated worlds.

[Penthea]

Yea...raising the prices isn't going to fix the problem.

Players are unhappy with the housing system. How is making housing even more out of reach going to make them happier?

Yea sure less demand blah blah blah, but less demand does not equate to less unhappy players.

If SE want an even bigger disaster than the Shirogane launch to get the playerbase incredibly angry with them, significantly raising house prices would be a fantastic way to do it. It would be such a slap in the face to fix the difficulty in accessing content by making it even more difficult to access. That would essentially be SE saying "well if you can't afford it then you can't be unhappy about not having it".

And no I am not disagreeing because I have no house. I have had my house for years. I am disagreeing because it's a terrible idea.