Housing Scarcity is manufactured

[thevanguard]

Reason SE gives us: Servers too expensive

Real reason:

SE wants to maintain an "optimal" level of housing supply vs demand so that there is always a rather "high" price for housing. That "high price" translates to players' willingness to get housing via methods like spam clicking a placard for 24 hours (now defunct) or buying it third party for hundreds of millions of gil.

It is exactly because housing is scarce that auto-demolition means anything. If, say, half of the medium plot are empty on your server and you can save your housing layout and items easily, would you care about demolition? Most people would say no.

If housing was actually very easy to get, people would just use a third party plugin to save their housing layout and unsub for five months care-free because they can just buy another house easily when they play again.

Housing is scarce because they make money by keeping it scarce. Keeping it scarce means demolition actually is a huge cost to the players since it's no longer guaranteed they'll get to play with houses again, so they're now incentivized to pay $13 to keep it.

SE plays a carefully tight balance here. Too scarce, and only the very few houseowners will continue subbing to prevent demolition. Too abundant, and people don't care about keeping their houses.

[Stormpeaks]

Reason SE gives us: Servers too expensive

Real reason:

SE wants to maintain an "optimal" level of housing supply vs demand so that there is always a rather "high" price for housing. That "high price" translates to players' willingness to get housing via methods like spam clicking a placard for 24 hours (now defunct) or buying it third party for hundreds of millions of gil.

It is exactly because housing is scarce that auto-demolition means anything. If, say, half of the medium plot are empty on your server and you can save your housing layout and items easily, would you care about demolition? Most people would say no.

If housing was actually very easy to get, people would just use a third party plugin to save their housing layout and unsub for five months care-free because they can just buy another house easily when they play again.

Housing is scarce because they make money by keeping it scarce. Keeping it scarce means demolition actually is a huge cost to the players since it's no longer guaranteed they'll get to play with houses again, so they're now incentivized to pay $13 to keep it.

SE wants to maintain an "optimal" level of housing supply vs demand so that there is always a rather "high" price for housing. That "high price" translates to players' willingness to get housing via methods like spam clicking a placard for 24 hours (now defunct) or buying it third party for hundreds of millions of gil.

Partially true, however as people wanted the lottery system, instead of fighting agaisnt 10 bots, they prefered to fight agaisnt 800 "real" players for a house, basically people got what they wanted, also buying it third party is basically because people are desperate.

It is exactly because housing is scarce that auto-demolition means anything. If, say, half of the medium plot are empty on your server and you can save your housing layout and items easily, would you care about demolition? Most people would say no.

True, and it also forces people to keep their subscription up because otherwise they'll lose the house and have to wait multiple months if not years to get a medium or large again, if they ever manage to get one.

If housing was actually very easy to get, people would just use a third party plugin to save their housing layout and unsub for five months care-free because they can just buy another house easily when they play again.

True, but it would lose it's "flavor" though and no one would care anymore or barely anyone would.

Housing is scarce because they make money by keeping it scarce. Keeping it scarce means demolition actually is a huge cost to the players since it's no longer guaranteed they'll get to play with houses again, so they're now incentivized to pay $13 to keep it.

This cant be said enough, they could fix the scarcity in a single day if they wanted to, they dont want to.

[MsMisato]

Yea the scarity is SE generated thing and it will remain that way because its a guarantee in a massive amount of money per month i think like roughly 8.5 million USD a month if you count accounts with mulitple plots and if you go by a monthly recurring sub. so yea.

[Reimmi]

The demolition thing is probly the most scummy thing i can think of with ff14, i hate that they tell us to take breaks but if you have a house, you better not if you want to keep it

[Shinkuno]

The demolition thing is probly the most scummy thing i can think of with ff14, i hate that they tell us to take breaks but if you have a house, you better not if you want to keep it

Notice how they only talk about taking breaks or playing other games but not about unsubbing?

[Oizen]

The demolition thing is probly the most scummy thing i can think of with ff14, i hate that they tell us to take breaks but if you have a house, you better not if you want to keep it

what? the 6billion dollar corporation would lie to us for good PR then do the opposite of what they said for profit?

[Reap00]

The demolition thing is probly the most scummy thing i can think of with ff14, i hate that they tell us to take breaks but if you have a house, you better not if you want to keep it

There is nothing scummy about it. If you are playing the game you have nothing to worry about. If you are not other people that ARE playing the game will be able to access all of the functions available. Is this tough for you to grasp? I sure hope not.

[Stormpeaks]

There is nothing scummy about it. If you are playing the game you have nothing to worry about. If you are not other people that ARE playing the game will be able to access all of the functions available. Is this tough for you to grasp? I sure hope not.

Actually it is very scummy because they could fix housing if they wanted to, they refuse to because it racks in cash from subscriptions that people are forced to keep because of their houses. That is scummy.

[Minarisweet]

The demolition thing is probly the most scummy thing i can think of with ff14, i hate that they tell us to take breaks but if you have a house, you better not if you want to keep it

Im used to scummy practices and usually dont even care about them to stay sane but people defending such an obvious scummy design like this annoys me so much. What's the point of defending every single thing a billion dollar company does???

[thevanguard]

Im used to scummy practices and usually dont even care about them to stay sane but people defending such an obvious scummy design like this annoys me so much. What's the point of defending every single thing a billion dollar company does???

They unironically feel personally slighted when someone criticizes SE.

The other thing with most forums is that there is an expected base level of people liking the thing that the forums are intended to discuss.

In a well moderated forum there's going to be a point at which a moderator says "you've done nothing here but attack the game". And then the person would have the choice of being more civil or leaving.

There's no control over negativity.

Many such cases.