In the end, there is just no way to justify SE's decision-making on this.
I'm going to deconstruct some arguments in SE's defense to try to make my point, partially because I'm bored and also because I'm still quite miffed about this. Extremely poor decision-making and outright lying to the playerbase are really, really not good signs for a game's development.
If someone would like to play devil's advocate, feel free to reconstruct them.
If you can read Japanese, Yoshi-P did make a response post here.
1). "Players are paying for the exact same thing as FCs and the same features as FCs, and therefore should pay as much as FCs."
Yes, this is technically true. However, what players were expecting was a completely separate housing system that was differentiated from the Free Company housing system in a number of ways. Since there is no way to feasibly include 2.38 million plots in the game world, personal housing would have to be instanced.
They would, obviously, reduce the size and the utility of the personal houses in order for FC houses to keep their utility; say for example, the crafting station furniture can only be placed in an FC house. I am sure something like that would have been acceptable.
It is not unreasonable for players to pay the exact same amount for FC housing as FCs. The inherent problem is that the personal housing system should absolutely NOT be a completely rehashed, totally unaltered FC house system.
2). From Yoshi-P's response post: "Personal housing and FC housing is together because since the game is not new, the number of new FCs is not increasing." Yoshi-P predicts that the number of houses owned by FCs will go down over time occasionally over time, and therefore combining the housing will be a more efficient use of plots to allow individuals to buy them.
This is, frankly, ridiculous. Whatever data he is using to make his prediction is completely botched unless he is talking about very low-population servers. Entire FCs even before this have been struggling in the land-race. Raising the gil is not an issue: availability is. Availability has always been the issue with FC housing. This just sounds like an excuse.
3). From Yoshi-P's response post: "Part of the reason for the price is that it's shared with FC housing. Gil comes out of thin air from quests and roulettes and many other ways, and housing is supposed to be the game's biggest gil sink. Prices will naturally go down over time if no one pays the initial price. RMT is also a reason to avoid cheap housing."
Anyone arguing over price is missing the point. Anyone defending Square Enix's prices on personal housing is completely missing the point.
Say it with me, folks. The problem is not the price. The problem has NEVER been about the price. The problem is and will always be about AVAILABILITY.
As for Yoshi-P's concern about RMT, he demonstrates a rather poignant failure to understand what drives an RMT market.Â
The high prices, combined with extremely low stock, encourages RMT heavily. Since the housing plots have extremely low availability, the people who desperately want to participate in this farce of a personal housing system will inevitably use RMT to raise the needed funds in time to purchase a house before the plot becomes sold out to someone else. The RMTs will see undoubtedly see some kind of spike from this.
Legitimate players begin to consider RMT as an appropriate avenue when the content seems unfeasible to obtain or out of their reach. Novus weapons cost at least a few million gil, minimum, though this varies according to server. When you make your content extremely prohibitive such that only a tiny part of your playerbase can access it, you encourage RMT because most people do not want to be left out. Some players will simply give up; others will simply use their disposable income in RMT to get what they want.
Novus weapons are a poor example because availability is not an issue; it's merely a time investment. Personal housing, however, is extremely limited. It doesn't matter how much you play the game because it is completely possible that the content will be cut out from you due to factors beyond your control.
High prices would have been acceptable if there was a guarantee of a light at the end of the tunnel. I can sit on my ass and work on crafting to raise 80 million gil for a large house, as long as there was a large plot waiting for me there.
But the limited availability means that if you do not have the gil now, you're probably just out of luck. People stop being invested because there's no feasible way to reach this content for the average person who simply plays the game.
4). The last part of Yoshi-P's post states his intention in saying that personal housing would be less than FC housing was to get people to stop worrying since the prices on personal housing had not been released.
The only reason I included this was to say that it was a very odd way to say "Yeah we lied but it was for a good reason", which in itself is an incredibly weak justification for the lack of transparency on the issue.
In short, the entire feature reeks of terrible execution that was rushed out to meet a time crunch with no thought or effort put into its deployment. That said, nobody would be up in arms over this if Square Enix had simply been honest from the start. It would have gotten poor reactions, yes, but nobody would be setting fires over it the way they are now.
If Square Enix just said "We don't have the server space for personal housing", that would have been mostly accepted. If it was an issue of data infrastructure, then that's fine. The rational people of your playerbase would have been okay with that, even if it was a lie.
But this? Ya done messed up, Squeenix.
I'm going to deconstruct some arguments in SE's defense to try to make my point, partially because I'm bored and also because I'm still quite miffed about this. Extremely poor decision-making and outright lying to the playerbase are really, really not good signs for a game's development.
If someone would like to play devil's advocate, feel free to reconstruct them.
If you can read Japanese, Yoshi-P did make a response post here.
1). "Players are paying for the exact same thing as FCs and the same features as FCs, and therefore should pay as much as FCs."
Yes, this is technically true. However, what players were expecting was a completely separate housing system that was differentiated from the Free Company housing system in a number of ways. Since there is no way to feasibly include 2.38 million plots in the game world, personal housing would have to be instanced.
They would, obviously, reduce the size and the utility of the personal houses in order for FC houses to keep their utility; say for example, the crafting station furniture can only be placed in an FC house. I am sure something like that would have been acceptable.
It is not unreasonable for players to pay the exact same amount for FC housing as FCs. The inherent problem is that the personal housing system should absolutely NOT be a completely rehashed, totally unaltered FC house system.
2). From Yoshi-P's response post: "Personal housing and FC housing is together because since the game is not new, the number of new FCs is not increasing." Yoshi-P predicts that the number of houses owned by FCs will go down over time occasionally over time, and therefore combining the housing will be a more efficient use of plots to allow individuals to buy them.
This is, frankly, ridiculous. Whatever data he is using to make his prediction is completely botched unless he is talking about very low-population servers. Entire FCs even before this have been struggling in the land-race. Raising the gil is not an issue: availability is. Availability has always been the issue with FC housing. This just sounds like an excuse.
3). From Yoshi-P's response post: "Part of the reason for the price is that it's shared with FC housing. Gil comes out of thin air from quests and roulettes and many other ways, and housing is supposed to be the game's biggest gil sink. Prices will naturally go down over time if no one pays the initial price. RMT is also a reason to avoid cheap housing."
Anyone arguing over price is missing the point. Anyone defending Square Enix's prices on personal housing is completely missing the point.
Say it with me, folks. The problem is not the price. The problem has NEVER been about the price. The problem is and will always be about AVAILABILITY.
As for Yoshi-P's concern about RMT, he demonstrates a rather poignant failure to understand what drives an RMT market.Â
The high prices, combined with extremely low stock, encourages RMT heavily. Since the housing plots have extremely low availability, the people who desperately want to participate in this farce of a personal housing system will inevitably use RMT to raise the needed funds in time to purchase a house before the plot becomes sold out to someone else. The RMTs will see undoubtedly see some kind of spike from this.
Legitimate players begin to consider RMT as an appropriate avenue when the content seems unfeasible to obtain or out of their reach. Novus weapons cost at least a few million gil, minimum, though this varies according to server. When you make your content extremely prohibitive such that only a tiny part of your playerbase can access it, you encourage RMT because most people do not want to be left out. Some players will simply give up; others will simply use their disposable income in RMT to get what they want.
Novus weapons are a poor example because availability is not an issue; it's merely a time investment. Personal housing, however, is extremely limited. It doesn't matter how much you play the game because it is completely possible that the content will be cut out from you due to factors beyond your control.
High prices would have been acceptable if there was a guarantee of a light at the end of the tunnel. I can sit on my ass and work on crafting to raise 80 million gil for a large house, as long as there was a large plot waiting for me there.
But the limited availability means that if you do not have the gil now, you're probably just out of luck. People stop being invested because there's no feasible way to reach this content for the average person who simply plays the game.
4). The last part of Yoshi-P's post states his intention in saying that personal housing would be less than FC housing was to get people to stop worrying since the prices on personal housing had not been released.
The only reason I included this was to say that it was a very odd way to say "Yeah we lied but it was for a good reason", which in itself is an incredibly weak justification for the lack of transparency on the issue.
In short, the entire feature reeks of terrible execution that was rushed out to meet a time crunch with no thought or effort put into its deployment. That said, nobody would be up in arms over this if Square Enix had simply been honest from the start. It would have gotten poor reactions, yes, but nobody would be setting fires over it the way they are now.
If Square Enix just said "We don't have the server space for personal housing", that would have been mostly accepted. If it was an issue of data infrastructure, then that's fine. The rational people of your playerbase would have been okay with that, even if it was a lie.
But this? Ya done messed up, Squeenix.