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

[Mithron]

To fix this problem, we'd need to abolish usury banking which means the lalafells would have to be... stopped. But this community is too soft for that conversation, thus the problem will continue until hard times breed hard men.

But yes my house is the only reason I'm still subbed after the disaster that is EW

[VelKallor]

Housing is scarce

Scarce?

A quick personal visit to Lamia reveals no less than SEVENTY FIVE empty plots in the Goblet alone. A mix of large, medium and small.

If housing was actually very easy to get.

It is. Its just not in one of the "fashionable districts".

[ForgivenAvarice]

This is an MMO, everything that has any sort of perceived value or prestige attached to it, is scarce in some way.
So if everyone could just get it without any friction, it would be worthless. No one would care about your shiny weapon or title, if it's bought from the store or just some event-reward.

Same with housing, if every plot is a mansion or a LB41, and there is infinte amounts of them, no one would give a shit about those either. So i personally like that they are limited.

As for SE doing all this for the extra subs? I'm sure they aren't mad about some people just subbing to keep their house, but i doubt that's the reason for the scarcity.
If they really were designing housing with monetization in mind, why aren't there any premium-services associated with it, or even just straight up plots sold on the Mogstation?
They sell stuff like extra-retainers, the app and the extra-saddlebag, so they clearly aren't above that.

[Stormpeaks]

This is an MMO, everything that has any sort of perceived value or prestige attached to it, is scarce in some way.
So if everyone could just get it without any friction, it would be worthless. No one would care about your shiny weapon or title, if it's bought from the store or just some event-reward.

Same with housing, if every plot is a mansion or a LB41, and there is infinte amounts of them, no one would give a shit about those either. So i personally like that they are limited.

As for SE doing all this for the extra subs? I'm sure they aren't mad about some people just subbing to keep their house, but i doubt that's the reason for the scarcity.
If they really were designing housing with monetization in mind, why aren't there any premium-services associated with it, or even just straight up plots sold on the Mogstation?
They sell stuff like extra-retainers, the app and the extra-saddlebag, so they clearly aren't above that.

Same with housing, if every plot is a mansion or a LB41, and there is infinte amounts of them, no one would give a shit about those either. So i personally like that they are limited.

This is a big thing, people dont understand that, if you give everyone a shiro 60 or an LB41, that plot becomes absolutely worthless, it'll be worth as much as an apartment, there will be 0 prestige to it or anything, no one will care

[Kaurhz]

Uhh, IMO...

Housing having some form of prestige behind it is good, though I do think the demolition period shouldn't be as short as it is now. - It comes across as too predatory.

[VelKallor]

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

If its so scarce, why are there empty plots? If there was so much demand, those plots would be taken. I already listed empty plots on Kujata that have been there for months...so..explain?

"No one can get a house because they are scarce"..all OP has to do it go to the aethernet system to see that there are plots available now.