Demoralizing Demand for Housing

[Suisei'to]

The big difference is the back loaded difficulty (Raid) vs front loaded difficulty (housing).

Ultimately, this is the nature of the beast. It could change in the future but for now it's going to take a lot of man hours to hammer out what's needed for housing.

[LiadansWhisper]

The big difference is the back loaded difficulty (Raid) vs front loaded difficulty (housing).

Ultimately, this is the nature of the beast. It could change in the future but for now it's going to take a lot of man hours to hammer out what's needed for housing.

 

It doesn't have to be the "nature of the beast."  That's kind of the point people are making.  And it shouldn't be the "nature of the beast."

 

And no, it's not the same as a raid.  I pay for this content, and I may never get to even see it.  Not ever.  Because it's so far out of reach that it might as well not exist.

[Rinh Hallani]

The big difference is the back loaded difficulty (Raid) vs front loaded difficulty (housing).

Ultimately, this is the nature of the beast. It could change in the future but for now it's going to take a lot of man hours to hammer out what's needed for housing.

 

Yeah, which is why I think they've gone about it completely the wrong way. Much more satisfying to reach small milestones as you go on rather than seeing one seemingly insurmountable goal. Welp, all I can do is continue to voice my opposition in the appropriate channels and hope they change their minds about this.

[Darien Cadell]

What about when it's 300 mil for the lot and 300 mil for the airship and 300 mil for the retainer?

 

Ha!

 

I'm not too too worried about it, because it's logical for them to start this way and then slash the prices dramatically and appropriately as the system gets going and they see a more practical version of how things will actually work.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if it was something like 'Well, launch was way more popular than we expected. Let's assume housing is going to be popular far, far beyond our means to distribute it effectively.' And thus, ridiculous pricing.

 

The other thing is there are going to be people who can afford these prices, and I'm going on the assumption that there are actually quite a lot of them, but that none of them are going to be vocal about it at all, so will appear to be in the minority even if they're not.

 

My first thought wasn't "This is impossible," but "This is going to take a lot of work," which is probably also what was intended.

 

What isn't logical is them not releasing these prices far in advance of 'a couple days before patch' and them not expecting a significant backlash. While I don't actually think having ridiculous prices on these things is problematic, especially with the exceeding likelihood that they'll adjust it to reasonable levels as reality makes itself apparent, there are far, far, far better and less upsetting ways to introduce something like this slowly so that it's not bumrushed by the entirety of the way-more-people-than-we-expected population. The way they have done it, while I'm not personally demoralized, should have been obvious that it would instill significant frustration in the player base.

[LiadansWhisper]

My first thought wasn't "This is impossible," but "This is going to take a lot of work," which is probably also what was intended.

 

Then you haven't actually looked at the markets recently.  >.>

 

Shard markets are gone.  Crystal markets are basically gone, too.  The Cluster market is okay, but nothing of what it once was.  Tomestones are under 18k, and I saw a HQ Vanya chest on the AH for 129k.  I even saw a set of HQ Vanya breeches on the AH for less money than it takes to buy the materials to make it.

 

SE has let the bots go on for so long that our once thriving economy has basically tanked.  Taking all of this money out of circulation (which is what they're doing - because even if people don't have the money for housing now, most are going to avoid spending as much as possible to try to save up every last gil in hopes of saving up enough for a house) is not going to help.  For that matter, SE was saying that Furniture would be the saving grace of the economy - that many people would want to buy the furniture to furnish their house.  Well, how exactly is that going to work when only 1% of people can actually afford a house?

 

So beyond mindless grinding of dungeons and somehow managing to come out with no repair bills, I really don't see how it's possible to save up this amount of gil in any decent amount of time.  I did the math and by our current rate of savings, it would take my FC five years to save up for the smallest plot of land.  Five years.  Two and a half if we managed to catch a plot when it hit 50% before anyone else got it.

 

How is that even reasonable?  I mean, seriously?

[Suisei'to]

The big difference is the back loaded difficulty (Raid) vs front loaded difficulty (housing).

Ultimately, this is the nature of the beast. It could change in the future but for now it's going to take a lot of man hours to hammer out what's needed for housing.

 

It doesn't have to be the "nature of the beast."  That's kind of the point people are making.  And it shouldn't be the "nature of the beast."

 

And no, it's not the same as a raid.  I pay for this content, and I may never get to even see it.  Not ever.  Because it's so far out of reach that it might as well not exist.

That used to be the definition of raiding. In fact it still is as far as Turn 4 and Turn 5 are concerned, the same with the difficulty spike going into Extreme Mode Primals.

 

 

Shard markets are gone.  Crystal markets are basically gone, too.  The Cluster market is okay, but nothing of what it once was.  Tomestones are under 18k, and I saw a HQ Vanya chest on the AH for 129k.  I even saw a set of HQ Vanya breeches on the AH for less money than it takes to buy the materials to make it.

 

There are many, many ways to make large amount of Gil in today's market. The old standards don't apply anymore because they demand decreases while the supply increases. Crafted endgame gear is less important because more and more people already have endgame gear.

 

On the flipside, you have the new explosion that the cooking market is going to see. Now that food effects aren't removed upon death, there is a constant demand to meet. Furniture is not going to suddenly arrive and save the economy now, it's going to be a standard. Demand isn't going to be there, so don't look at it.

 

On the flip side alt leveling is going to get more attention with Duty Roulette and the leveling of an alt no longer hurts your progress on you main class. Equipment is still going to be a big deal but gathering/fishing will remain the big money makers, as they have been for the last month or so.

 

At the same time there is going to be a lot of Gil coming into the economy thanks to the new systems. Hundreds of gil coming in from Duty Roulette alone, all duty monsters dropping gil, end game dungeon monsters dropping even MORE gil, treasure chests dropping 5k gil a pop and things start to add up. The average amount of gil made during a standard single 1-50 is going up considerably. This is going to reflect in inflation in the market.

 

Housing is going to have an effect on the market, yes, but at the same time the price point has been set to deflate some of the interest. There are just as many FCs that are going to just ignore the feature and now have thousands to millions of Gil they are more willing to spend on progression or PvP.

 

There is always millions of Gil ready to be made at any moment on the market. It just takes the patience to read into the market changes.

[doctorgalactic]

Looking at some of these numbers it's pretty staggering what it could potentially do to the economy.  I'll take a look at Gilgamesh, where we reside, for now.  The Tier 1 best plot of land you can buy costs 125M gil at the onset.  Let's say that 10 Companies purchase said properties.  That's 1.25 BILLION gil gone from the economy.  These are the kinds of numbers we see when they scrub out RMT.  10 Tier 5 plots for the large house would knock out 1 Billion gil.  

 

Now from what I've gathered, there is a VERY small percentage of guilds out there that can actually afford these prices AND accommodate the number of players in their company.  I don't think it's necessarily likely that 10 of the Large properties would be bought out at once, but it's plausible.  That's a lot of buying power leaving the marketplace very quickly, and we're not talking about losing RMT gil AND the players/bots that generate it.  This is actual hard-earned player money.  Who then will be able to afford the prices that everyone wants people to pay after that cash simply disappears?  In addition to the tanking economy, if folks aren't already jumping ship on the idea of housing, they're going to cling to their gil like their lives depend on it.

 

I'm well aware of the implementation of new measures of gil generation, but nothing near the amount that SE appears to be wanting to pull out.  From the Director's mouth, he's expecting us to grind 7 days a week for 3 months until we can afford a house.  At that time, the properties are supposed to have dropped to 50% their original asking price, but that only if they haven't been purchased already.  What gives?  I don't see who benefits from ANY of this.  I personally think they're terrified their servers will collapse, and they're shrouding an IT issue with the glamour of end-game content.  I don't mind working hard towards a goal, but offering housing up to only the best of the best seems like a betrayal to me.  What reward dod the dedicated players from 1.0 get for saving their gil for housing?  First a 1/10 reduction of all their currency (and yes, they did also reduce the price of everything in the game as well), then they just looked at who had the most cash immediately and tilted the curve for everyone else.  What of the players who joined Hyperion to be with friends from 1.0?  40M for the cheapest plot of land possible?  

 

Ultimately, the news goes against what we were led to believe previously, rumors went rampant, and we got our hopes up.  It looks to me like they never intended on making housing available day one, but we weren't told "Please look forward to looking forward to it."

[LiadansWhisper]

The big difference is the back loaded difficulty (Raid) vs front loaded difficulty (housing).

Ultimately, this is the nature of the beast. It could change in the future but for now it's going to take a lot of man hours to hammer out what's needed for housing.

 

It doesn't have to be the "nature of the beast."  That's kind of the point people are making.  And it shouldn't be the "nature of the beast."

 

And no, it's not the same as a raid.  I pay for this content, and I may never get to even see it.  Not ever.  Because it's so far out of reach that it might as well not exist.

That used to be the definition of raiding. In fact it still is as far as Turn 4 and Turn 5 are concerned, the same with the difficulty spike going into Extreme Mode Primals.

 

 

Shard markets are gone.  Crystal markets are basically gone, too.  The Cluster market is okay, but nothing of what it once was.  Tomestones are under 18k, and I saw a HQ Vanya chest on the AH for 129k.  I even saw a set of HQ Vanya breeches on the AH for less money than it takes to buy the materials to make it.

 

There are many, many ways to make large amount of Gil in today's market. The old standards don't apply anymore because they demand decreases while the supply increases. Crafted endgame gear is less important because more and more people already have endgame gear.

 

On the flipside, you have the new explosion that the cooking market is going to see. Now that food effects aren't removed upon death, there is a constant demand to meet. Furniture is not going to suddenly arrive and save the economy now, it's going to be a standard. Demand isn't going to be there, so don't look at it.

 

On the flip side alt leveling is going to get more attention with Duty Roulette and the leveling of an alt no longer hurts your progress on you main class. Equipment is still going to be a big deal but gathering/fishing will remain the big money makers, as they have been for the last month or so.

 

At the same time there is going to be a lot of Gil coming into the economy thanks to the new systems. Hundreds of gil coming in from Duty Roulette alone, all duty monsters dropping gil, end game dungeon monsters dropping even MORE gil, treasure chests dropping 5k gil a pop and things start to add up. The average amount of gil made during a standard single 1-50 is going up considerably. This is going to reflect in inflation in the market.

 

Housing is going to have an effect on the market, yes, but at the same time the price point has been set to deflate some of the interest. There are just as many FCs that are going to just ignore the feature and now have thousands to millions of Gil they are more willing to spend on progression or PvP.

 

There is always millions of Gil ready to be made at any moment on the market. It just takes the patience to read into the market changes.

 

We're just going to have to agree to disagree.  But I guess if the market is so awesome for you, you must already have the money to buy your house (or be within range) so you have no issue with it.  

 

Also, just for the record: PvE content has never been out of range of me.  Not in any game I've played in.

[Fates Skein]

Honestly, though I am excited about some of the other changes being made due to 2.1, the housing bait-and-switch that happened truly, truly broke my heart.

 

I've got a little FC. 9-10 active players.  All adults, most with full time jobs/schooling and families.  After months of working very hard, farming dungeons and botany/mining/crafting and things like materials, we saved just under 2 million gil.  MONTHS of work went into this- often to the exclusion of progression and roleplay.

 

2 million.

 

All of us pooling together.

 

2. million.

 

Screw people that say 'you should have gamed the markets more!' or who are questioning our dedication to the FC or to the game in general.  I didn't buy an auction house game.  I didn't buy a 'farm for 8+ hours a day' game.  I bought a roleplaying game, one which promised housing as one of it's features.  Instead, I am being told by some people that, for some reason, I to be excluded from that promised feature because I'm....not good enough?

 

Fuck that.

 

I am waiting for the prices to fall- because I believe they will.  And while I wait, I will continue to contribute to our FC bank, because I want the members of the group I lead to be able to have access to something that was promised from the start of the game.  I will also vociferously and vehemently oppose the idea that smaller FCs, non-hardcore (whatever the hell -that- means) FCs, or 'less dedicated' *snort* FCs do not deserve to see promised content.

[faceman7381]

Honestly, though I am excited about some of the other changes being made due to 2.1, the housing bait-and-switch that happened truly, truly broke my heart.

 

I've got a little FC. 9-10 active players.  All adults, most with full time jobs/schooling and families.  After months of working very hard, farming dungeons and botany/mining/crafting and things like materials, we saved just under 2 million gil.  MONTHS of work went into this- often to the exclusion of progression and roleplay.

 

2 million.

 

All of us pooling together.

 

2. million.

 

Screw people that say 'you should have gamed the markets more!' or who are questioning our dedication to the FC or to the game in general.  I didn't buy an auction house game.  I didn't buy a 'farm for 8+ hours a day' game.  I bought a roleplaying game, one which promised housing as one of it's features.  Instead, I am being told by some people that, for some reason, I to be excluded from that promised feature because I'm....not good enough?

 

Fuck that.

 

I am waiting for the prices to fall- because I believe they will.  And while I wait, I will continue to contribute to our FC bank, because I want the members of the group I lead to be able to have access to something that was promised from the start of the game.  I will also vociferously and vehemently oppose the idea that smaller FCs, non-hardcore (whatever the hell -that- means) FCs, or 'less dedicated' *snort* FCs do not deserve to see promised content.

 

Go get 'em C'!

[Darien Cadell]

Then you haven't actually looked at the markets recently.  >.>

 

Oh, I have. I was crafting and selling things at a nice pace, and then the moment the housing prices were announced, everything stopped selling. Gathered stuff, food, crafted things, all of it, suddenly completely immobile. I went from keeping stuff constantly moving on my retainers to being lucky to sell a single thing over 24 hours.

 

The reason I'm not worried is I'm 100 percent sure it'll change and I do not at all and never have cared about being an early adopter, which is what these prices seem to be reflecting. This is Apple charging $500 for something that'll be $50 in a few weeks, and this is for the people who are willing to pay for it.

 

My FC has exactly the same situation with the 2 million gil mentioned above. My feelings might be skewed because in our little FC of 9-10 active players, half of our 2 million was made by me alone, so 20 doesn't seem too bonkers, and 200 seems like an asston of work, not a death sentence on our ever getting a house.

 

I shouldn't say things like that, because I want to see SE adjust the prices as much as anyone else. I'm just not letting it get to me the way it's getting to some of the people around me. I'm just not worried. It'll work itself out. People will start buying things again once the whole 'holy hell this is insane' panic subsides. Just probably not by the end of the week.

[Erik Mynhier]

These prices are crazy. Guess I'll just switch gears and wait for my personal home.

[Olofantur]

Screw people that say 'you should have gamed the markets more!' or who are questioning our dedication to the FC or to the game in general.  I didn't buy an auction house game.  I didn't buy a 'farm for 8+ hours a day' game.  I bought a roleplaying game, one which promised housing as one of it's features.  Instead, I am being told by some people that, for some reason, I to be excluded from that promised feature because I'm....not good enough?

 

Fuck that.

 

Pssst, hey, come join us~

 

On the other hand, I HAVE been gaming the market, and have been farming, and while i've alone made 9mil since mid-october (With more on the side for myself.) that is purely personal endeavor, cashing in favors ect.

 

And you know what? its destroyed my casual connections, I haven't had the time to RP, to level fun stuff, to simply stop and enjoy the game, ask T'nara or Konner how early or late they've seen me running about the world. I understand that some people love "gaming" the game. Thaliak knows I love doing the math from parsing data to perfect my BLM rotation, parsing higher and higher numbers. But this isn't a prerequisite to joining coil and neither should that dedication be a prereq to having a house.

 

Or to put it more simply, I agree. I cannot fathom why (Though, my suspicion as to a quick way to remove RMT buyers.) they have decided to place the price so high, without any prior notification. Had I know, an inking, a number of digits, even that the lowest house would be more than 5 million, I would have saved my effort..

 

But now i'm just whining :< I wish you all the best of luck in your search for Gil, and if I manage to work out my next ploy to get some I will make a point of sharing it (because it doesn't rely on the market.)

 

Back to the drawing board :cactuar:

[LandStander]

These prices are crazy. Guess I'll just switch gears and wait for my personal home.

*cough* there will not be personal homes anymore from what I understand. They will allow people to buy their own personal room in their FC house (probably just a common instance area in the FC house that leads to that persons room. I guess it will be sort of like the way the inn's are set up)...At least that is the last thing I read about personal houses.

[Olofantur]

These prices are crazy. Guess I'll just switch gears and wait for my personal home.

*cough* there will not be personal homes anymore from what I understand. They will allow people to buy their own personal room in their FC house (probably just a common instance area in the FC house that leads to that persons room. I guess it will be sort of like the way the inn's are set up)...At least that is the last thing I read about personal houses.

 

 

1:48:22

Q: Will you be able to have individual rooms in your free company house?

A: We are planning to have this after patch 2.2, but we'd like to decide whether we implement individual rooms or individual housing based on server capacity after we implement housing. However, we are planning for both. We'd like you all to be able to build a cool personal space for yourselves.

 

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/113554-Letter-from-the-Producer-LIVE-Part-IX-Q-A-Summary-%2810-30-2013%29?p=1500050&viewfull=1#post1500050

 

was the last thing I read, though if you have newer info I would love to have it, the letter is rather old

[LandStander]

Nope! That is what I was talking about. I thought it was just rooms. Tyvm for clarifying this so at least there is a possibility for their own house. Well looking at these prices I highly doubt they will have to worry about server space because no one will be using any of the space dedicated to player housing

[Olofantur]

Nope! That is what I was talking about. I thought it was just rooms. Tyvm for clarifying this so at least there is a possibility for their own house. Well looking at these prices I highly doubt they will have to worry about server space because no one will be using any of the space dedicated to player housing

 

/weep :cry:

 

I was really hoping there was something newer... dammit.

[Naunet]

I highly doubt they will have to worry about server space because no one will be using any of the space dedicated to player housing

 

It's funny. They're worried about their precious, 70 year old toasters running out of housing lots and leading to people being unable to get a house.

 

So their solution is to price lots so high that people are unable to get a house.

 

Squeenix logic at its finest. It's a good thing I have my Rift dimension to take my housing attentions, and it's a thousand times better designed system than this crap. >_<

[Gideon Aryeh]

So.....who's playing Wildstar?!

[Rinh Hallani]

JsMjISM-_vg

 

This is apparently the size of the smallest house. There are taverns and other buildings in the open world that are the same size, or even bigger, and they don't cost a penny.

 

 

It's funny. They're worried about their precious, 70 year old toasters running out of housing lots and leading to people being unable to get a house.

 

So their solution is to price lots so high that people are unable to get a house.

 

If that's true, I'm even more annoyed. We had so many issues at launch with servers groaning under the stress and I gritted my teeth through it. If they've still not got the server infrastructure to cope with the amount of players they want subbed and playing, they don't deserve to have that amount of subs.

 

God help me if they don't budge on the prices and ditch personal housing for a room off your FC house...

[Fulcrum]

If that's true, I'm even more annoyed. We had so many issues at launch with servers groaning under the stress and I gritted my teeth through it. If they've still not got the server infrastructure to cope with the amount of players they want subbed and playing, they don't deserve to have that amount of subs.

 

God help me if they don't budge on the prices and ditch personal housing for a room off your FC house...

I actually think that's another part of why they've divided the instance servers off again into even smaller groups. My guess is that the housing is instanced off based on those groups as well; they'll probably divide them further if there continues to be an issue, but I think we'll only see one more divide before they say it's too small of groupings.

[S'maia Rahz]

What really boggles my mind about this housing thing is that they should have any server capacity concerns at all. I mean... look at (for example) Everquest 2, which was one of the first games to really adopt extensive instanced housing. Currently in that game a player can own up to 10 homes simultaneously per character, plus guild housing. Each home can hold hundreds of items, with little restriction on placement (there's no gridmaps or anything like that, it's very freeform). Everquest 2 is... nine years old? Ten? There have been a few minor instances of server issues over the years regarding housing, but overall it's been very very minimal. Why is FFXIV having so much trouble with the same type of concept? I am not a programmer, so maybe there's some very technical reason behind this that I don't understand.

[LiadansWhisper]

Well, their forums are currently choking on the amount of traffic (at 3am, no less!), so I mean...it just feels like their entire system is held together with duct tape and chewing gum.  :dodgy:

[Fulcrum]

Well, Yoshida said early on that they didn't expect the amount of people they've gotten playing the game to be playing, and they may still be having issues with the executives at Squeenix at large in getting funds for rapid server expansion. It's not cheap to buy entire servers, and even if FFXIV is doing well numbers wise, they may still have to fight for each and every instance server they get; they may still not be "back in the black" as far as their executives are concerned. Whether or not Squeenix is willing to re-allocate funds from other projects is unclear as well, even though in the long run, it would be wise of them to do so.

 

 

EverQuest II did not have that issue (because they faced that demon when EverQuest I ended up being so wildly successful, so they planned their metrics around the idea that EQ2 could potentially have as crazy of a success), and the executives at SOE threw a lot of money behind the game initially and were willing to throw more money at server expansions as needed, though as the game aged, they've had to fight for certain funding, I'm sure.

 

 

It's hypothetical, but largely, the expansion if servers technically isn't up to the development team, as much as they'd like it to be. That's all still got to be cleared by executives who are outside the process, and management tends to not be as nice as anyone would like them to be. -.-

[Tla]

So, here we have the answer 

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/127656-An-Open-Letter-to-Yoshida-san-Please-Slice-One-Zero-Off-the-Housing-Prices?p=1685344#post1685344

 

Seems we can hope now, no?