Peronal Housing costs potentially specified

[Maril]

 

I say potentially because people on reddit are still debating the translation. But, the guesstimate so far sounds that it may cost between 850k and 2 million to start with. 

What do you guys think about this? Too much? Too little? 

 

I am especially curious to see if they would restrict how many houses one can have per server, cause if they don't restrict it I'm most definitely going to have housing on my 3 most used characters. But if they're going to do personal housing in the same fashion as FC housing, you could have entire streets occupied by one player. 

I know they're planning on adding rooms to FC housing, but I'm not sure they mean that as an instead of personal housing, cause that would mean that you need to be in a FC with a house which most certainly not everyone is. 

 

As for the price point, it may be a little high for new players, but I think it's a decent level. Especially if they're going to allow it to drop over time as well.

[Clover]

I've been saving up from the very beginning for a house, so those prices sound okay to me. So long as it's not more than that, I should be able to get a house for Clover *bounces*.

[Naunet]

Too much, IMO. I come from an MMO where the basic intro house for personal housing is free, and the effort and journey comes from either decorating that, or saving up to get a bigger one and decorating that.

 

But nope. Apparently SE is anti-fun when it comes to fluff content. ; And horrendously alt-unfriendly. I'd even say alt-hostile.

[synaesthetic]

I don't understand why you have to be level 50 and reach a GC rank to buy a house. Are all the normal people in Eorzea homeless? Why can only demigod badasses buy a friggin' house?

 

Also yeah it's really expensive... those price ranges should have been the ranges for free company housing, with the largest FC houses topping out around two or three million.

 

I'm basically of the opinion that everyone ought to simply get a basic starter house automatically, right from the start, right at level one. If you want bigger and better houses, then you'll have to pay. Or raid. Or do quests. Or engage in the content in another way.

 

I'm fortunate in that I don't really care as much about housing as I used to, so this doesn't bother me so much, but it's still pretty silly. I just really don't get why Square keeps operating out of the How to Build an MMORPG, 2006 Edition.

[Kailia]

Prices seem pretty fair to me. I am guessing the price tags will be something like:

 

850k - Small

1.2m - Medium

2m - Large

 

Housing shouldn't be given away, especially since there wont be any weekly upkeep costs. Your character is buying land here, and land that falls under grand company jurisdiction, so it makes sense to me, that your character has to first earn the right to own land before they can.

 

Want free housing? Maybe your FC Leader will make you a room in the FC house. I know my own character's story isn't leading her to owning her own land right now, she's going to live in a room in the company cottage. Overall, seems reasonable to me. 2 million gil for a large house, well large are basically giant mansions, so yeah one would imagine such an owner would be a gillionair.

[Ignacius]

I don't understand why you have to be level 50 and reach a GC rank to buy a house. Are all the normal people in Eorzea homeless? Why can only demigod badasses buy a friggin' house?

 

Also yeah it's really expensive... those price ranges should have been the ranges for free company housing, with the largest FC houses topping out around two or three million.

 

I'm basically of the opinion that everyone ought to simply get a basic starter house automatically, right from the start, right at level one. If you want bigger and better houses, then you'll have to pay. Or raid. Or do quests. Or engage in the content in another way.

 

I'm fortunate in that I don't really care as much about housing as I used to, so this doesn't bother me so much, but it's still pretty silly. I just really don't get why Square keeps operating out of the How to Build an MMORPG, 2006 Edition.

Probably too much.  From what I understand, personal housing isn't going to be the open-world housing we already have (which I kind of liked), but more like a tenement space like it was in FFXI.  It's also horrendously expensive for something you can't even use on your alts.

 

As to the post above, the weird thing is, Final Fantasy XI had free, personal housing for each character in 2004.  Which means they essentially decided not to go that way this time through.  That seems strange to me, functionally, since Square is supposed to make more money allocating us 7 more slots for alts per server.  Not only that, but they've made sure it's almost impossible to start an alt (due to server restrictions), it's ridiculously difficult to operate one (almost nothing is shared between characters, including friends' lists if I understand it correctly), and it honestly isn't necessary to have one (since all characters can be any class they want).

 

You'd think they'd want people to pay those couple extra dollars a month.  I'm about to reduce back to the economy package simply because it's too hard to make an alt and not necessarily beneficial to keep one.

 

I'm not as big on the concept of player housing and, if I'm going to be honest, I'm actually not happy with ANYONE's housing options for characters.  I'm an architectural designer by trade.  The idea of us all having to get our own personal spaces in the suburbs that none of the NPCs seem to be able to own is very eerie to me.  Why can't I, as a character, have a rundown studio space above a bar?  Or live in a high-rise penthouse once I have a ton of money?  Or make a hovel in a sewer?  Why do games, where this kind of thing just requires a little extra programming (I could generate five apartment-style layouts for the game in a month in Max, and I'm not even a game designer).

 

More than that, what's the point of having player housing?  To store stuff?  To get people together in your private room?  There's not enough real benefit to having one to justify the cost.  I'm seriously thinking about the RP implications of Ignacius getting a house.  Why would he?  He's a traveling mercenary sellsword and a hitman, he probably lives out of hotels.  And the hotel rooms are free!

 

I guess I just think housing in games these days is both too much of a hassle and, at the same time, not really used to its full potential.  There's too much convenience in modern MMOs to make your own personal space really worthwhile.  I think developers these days need to try harder to make those spaces useful and desirable, especially if they're going to make us pay to have/upgrade them.

[ArmachiA]

^ IT's going to be both. A personal apartment in 2.3 and then your own house shortly after.

 

There was an article the other day that said this:

 

As for personal housing, you’ll need a level 50 character and get up to a certain rank in the Grand Company. This will be introduced sometime after the Free Company’s personal rooms are made available in Patch 2.3, and the size will be a little larger than the ones at the inns. The prices will be around 850,000 gil, which Yoshida says might be a bit too much, so it could be lower.

Read more at http://www.siliconera.com/2014/05/01/final-fantasy-xiv-realm-reborns-marriage-system/#7JP7MTH5PttrsQw0.99

 

850k, if they all aren't one size, is probably for the small house. I have enough for the medium house on Armi, though if I wanted to push it I could get her the large. That's of course they don't decide housing is going to be all small houses only. Loki is more of an apartment girl so my plan for her is to live off the FC house. I'm not sure if the apartment is the same price? It's not clear if they are charging for the FC apartment at all.

 

Anyway, it doesn't really bother me, the price. Shockingly, there aren't THAT many money sinks in this game and unless you're burning through all the crafts like a boss you're just not spending your money (I have one craft to 50, and I mostly just sit on the money I make if I'm not donating to the Guild Bank) so it does not surprise me at all that housing is going to be the big money sink for people. Other games that have Free Housing probably have other money sinks at the end of the game to compensate. This one really doesn't.

 

It's also a little easier to make money now-a-days with the gil rewards FOR EVERYTHING, so I'm actually glad they gave us this much notice so people can save up if they want one.

[Rinh Hallani]

Too much, IMO. I come from an MMO where the basic intro house for personal housing is free, and the effort and journey comes from either decorating that, or saving up to get a bigger one and decorating that.

 

But nope. Apparently SE is anti-fun when it comes to fluff content. ; And horrendously alt-unfriendly. I'd even say alt-hostile.

 

I wonder how this is going to affect people who donated all/most of their gil for FC housing? I donated a significant chunk of mine and now I'm just under the 850k price being thrown around, but is that even going to be enough? The link says, "You're not buying a house with only 850k gil." I'm not farming gil for months on end like I did to help with FC housing, so forget that.

 

I also agree about it being alt-hostile. I was going to have a stable of alts like I did in WoW but after grinding through everything with just one alt, no way am I doing that again. Shame because I enjoy making different characters with different personalities for RP.

[Zhavi]

I . . . um . . . .

 

Looks like you're staying homeless, Zhi.

 

(maybe eventually once I start rping more regularly she can just crash at a different place every night. Everyone needs one of those people in their lives, right?! The ones who just show up at your door with a piteous look, all of their belongings, and a 'can I stay with you?')

[Magellan]

Just another thing SE bungled with ARR. Thank goodness Wildstar's housing systeem is so much more dynamic.

[Maril]

I . . . um . . . .

 

Looks like you're staying homeless, Zhi.

 

(maybe eventually once I start rping more regularly she can just crash at a different place every night.  Everyone needs one of those people in their lives, right?!  The ones who just show up at your door with a piteous look, all of their belongings, and a 'can I stay with you?')

 

My main, Sastra, will likely have her house simply pose as innrooms. But even more so for my alts - if one assumes that we can have one house per character - I'd actually be interested in sharing a house with someone else.And I'm sure there are more people in my situation who'd be happy to have a roomie. Mayhaps, when the time comes, a couple of threads can open where people look for roomies for their houses and that. I could see that as a good way to solve the fact that some cant afford it (or are low level alts) whilst still having a place they could retreat to or point at and say "I live there!". And I'd imagine it could even breed some new roleplay as you meet new people. Now, it wouldn't work if there wasn't good communication between the two but, it could probably work out. 

 

It'd all depend on how people gain access to other people's houses and that though. I sort of hope they make a whitelist system. They probably wont but it's a nice dream to have.

[Naunet]

Further clarification of the translation from the forums reveals that what was actually stated was more:

 

"I've only got about 850k left after donating gil to my FC. Will that be enough?"

"No, I don't think so."

 

So, considering Yoshi seems to think that the average player has 1.5-2 million gil on hand (as per another interview moment), I think we can predict personal housing starting in the 1 million range.

 

Even more absurd!

 

@Kailia: The land can't possibly be under Grand Company "jurisdiction", because the Grand Companies are not governmental bodies; they're simply military units. And even if they were, it shouldn't matter because this is fluff content and it should be accessible to everyone from the start.

 

I'm actually starting to think like Ignacius in that I'm considering reducing my subscription amount to the one-character price, even though I actually do have four other alts. I can't do jack shit with them if I don't feel like leveling them to 50 though, so what's the point in even having them? Apparently SE doesn't want my money. It's just a shame my 6 month sub renewed back in April, so now I'm stuck with this for 5 more months...

[Therese Villefort]

I deleted my alts a long time ago and did go back to economic package. As others said, i cant be bothered to do all the same stuff again on another char...

 

On the Grand Companys, i think i heard ingame somewhere the housing areas (mist/goblet/lavender beds) were comissioned by the grand companys especially for adventurers. But take that with a grain of salt, its just a faint memory, i can be wrong.

 

 

Shared house owning probably wont be implemented, since i guess the houses will get the public access option like company houses. House owners can just set it to public and whoever is supposed to live there IC too, can just acess it when they want.

 

thats what i guess will happen, because its the lazy solution for SE

[Flickering Ember]

I don't think it's too much for me personally. I think I can save up that much money before it comes out. There are more ways to make money now which is nice although all the money-making in this game seems to be reliant on you playing the market board. There's not much of a better way to make good money so maybe the prices are unreasonable for most players.

[Elisea Renyven]

Honestly... I'm going to be flamed and hated for this statement but... if you know how to make gil. It's significantly easy to raise. I'll give an example, I coordinated with my FC what I needed done. In -one- month we raised over 53m with just 15 players. I made some mistakes and discovered even better ways midway in the month otherwise I could have seen us raising 100m. Granted, I spent ALOT of time in game doing stuff to set up for this agenda. It was worth it. I can tell you there is all sorts of ways to make gil. Also if your worried about gil on alts. Have a friend you trust, transfer gil or use a dummy FC like a bank. There is alternatives. If some folks need pointers on how to make gil, I'd be more than happy to help. I'm a bit shocked on legacy a large is going to be 2m, that's going to be difficult for any new FC trying to buy a large down the road. Unless personal is going to be designed in a different system. Either way, feel free to pm me if your curious, I'm more than happy to help out for those concerned on gil.

[Zhavi]

Honestly... I'm going to be flamed and hated for this statement but... if you know how to make gil. It's significantly easy to raise. I'll give an example, I coordinated with my FC what I needed done. In -one- month we raised over 53m with just 15 players. I made some mistakes and discovered even better ways midway in the month otherwise I could have seen us raising 100m. Granted, I spent ALOT of time in game doing stuff to set up for this agenda. It was worth it. I can tell you there is all sorts of ways to make gil. Also if your worried about gil on alts. Have a friend you trust, transfer gil or use a dummy FC like a bank. There is alternatives. If some folks need pointers on how to make gil, I'd be more than happy to help. I'm a bit shocked on legacy a large is going to be 2m, that's going to be difficult for any new FC trying to buy a large down the road. Unless personal is going to be designed in a different system. Either way, feel free to pm me if your curious, I'm more than happy to help out for those concerned on gil.

 

Nahh, no hate. I think the issue is just time investment, and where you're willing to spend your time. I've made decent amounts of money in various games over the years, but compared to people I know who always are rich compared to the average player, I've never been as willing to put in that time or get as skilled (though, I think most of the time it's just attention to detail and being aware of where the market will go). Especially with FFXIV, it's more that if I'm in game either I want to be casually leveling or rping at this point in time. I'm just not dedicated enough! But I always did admire people who put in the effort and are able to sustain the little daily necessities to make lots of money.

 

And ehh, I play a poor character anyways, so unless they offer crappy looking housing it's probably better that she remains without a permanent home.

 

(Though Sastra -- your offer of innrooms would probably be perfect for Zhi, so long as they're not too nice. I mean, she's like as not to get places infested with fleas or lice. Heh heh heh)

[Elisea Renyven]

Honestly... I'm going to be flamed and hated for this statement but... if you know how to make gil. It's significantly easy to raise. I'll give an example, I coordinated with my FC what I needed done. In -one- month we raised over 53m with just 15 players. I made some mistakes and discovered even better ways midway in the month otherwise I could have seen us raising 100m. Granted, I spent ALOT of time in game doing stuff to set up for this agenda. It was worth it. I can tell you there is all sorts of ways to make gil. Also if your worried about gil on alts. Have a friend you trust, transfer gil or use a dummy FC like a bank. There is alternatives. If some folks need pointers on how to make gil, I'd be more than happy to help. I'm a bit shocked on legacy a large is going to be 2m, that's going to be difficult for any new FC trying to buy a large down the road. Unless personal is going to be designed in a different system. Either way, feel free to pm me if your curious, I'm more than happy to help out for those concerned on gil.

 

Nahh, no hate. I think the issue is just time investment, and where you're willing to spend your time. I've made decent amounts of money in various games over the years, but compared to people I know who always are rich compared to the average player, I've never been as willing to put in that time or get as skilled (though, I think most of the time it's just attention to detail and being aware of where the market will go). Especially with FFXIV, it's more that if I'm in game either I want to be casually leveling or rping at this point in time. I'm just not dedicated enough! But I always did admire people who put in the effort and are able to sustain the little daily necessities to make lots of money.

 

And ehh, I play a poor character anyways, so unless they offer crappy looking housing it's probably better that she remains without a permanent home.

 

(Though Sastra -- your offer of innrooms would probably be perfect for Zhi, so long as they're not too nice. I mean, she's like as not to get places infested with fleas or lice. Heh heh heh)

 

That's actually a big part of it, seeing how market prices fluctuate. You don't want to flood the market on one resource. I usually do a few things and this may help others. Gathering is king of gil making for most part. I look at specific items used frequently in crafting, and then I sell those on the market board. There's other tactics, but that's something a person can do for maybe an hour, get some resources sell it.. make 20-30k, if not more. Depending on the gathering level etc.

[Zhavi]

 

 

That's actually a big part of it, seeing how market prices fluctuate. You don't want to flood the market on one resource. I usually do a few things and this may help others. Gathering is king of gil making for most part. I look at specific items used frequently in crafting, and then I sell those on the market board. There's other tactics, but that's something a person can do for maybe an hour, get some resources sell it.. make 20-30k, if not more. Depending on the gathering level etc.

 

Mhm, and that's probably why I never could sustain stuff like that for very long -- it always feels like an obligation to me, and feeling like I'm obligated to do something in a video game every day or every few days eventually kills off all desire to even log in. Even not related to making money -- the dailies for Mists of Pandaria eventually aggravated me to the point that I burnt out on raiding. Granted, there was other stuff going on irl for me that contributed to the burnout, but I hated those dailies. Comparatively, I love farming and doing background administrative tasks, but I would do that because I liked helping my guild. I was never asked or felt obligated to prepare stuff for raids.

[cuideag]

^ IT's going to be both. A personal apartment in 2.3 and then your own house shortly after.

 

There was an article the other day that said this:

 

As for personal housing, you’ll need a level 50 character and get up to a certain rank in the Grand Company. This will be introduced sometime after the Free Company’s personal rooms are made available in Patch 2.3, and the size will be a little larger than the ones at the inns. The prices will be around 850,000 gil, which Yoshida says might be a bit too much, so it could be lower.

Read more at http://www.siliconera.com/2014/05/01/final-fantasy-xiv-realm-reborns-marriage-system/#7JP7MTH5PttrsQw0.99

 

850k, if they all aren't one size, is probably for the small house. I have enough for the medium house on Armi, though if I wanted to push it I could get her the large. That's of course they don't decide housing is going to be all small houses only. Loki is more of an apartment girl so my plan for her is to live off the FC house. I'm not sure if the apartment is the same price? It's not clear if they are charging for the FC apartment at all.

 

Anyway, it doesn't really bother me, the price. Shockingly, there aren't THAT many money sinks in this game and unless you're burning through all the crafts like a boss you're just not spending your money (I have one craft to 50, and I mostly just sit on the money I make if I'm not donating to the Guild Bank) so it does not surprise me at all that housing is going to be the big money sink for people. Other games that have Free Housing probably have other money sinks at the end of the game to compensate. This one really doesn't.

 

It's also a little easier to make money now-a-days with the gil rewards FOR EVERYTHING, so I'm actually glad they gave us this much notice so people can save up if they want one.

 

^ ^ ^ This, basically. I'm not bothered by it. Makes sense to me to put time in and actually play the game to take advantage of some of the perks. But I suppose I'm the type of player who doesn't like seeing MMOs turn too casual friendly. Chances are I won't be buying one for my alt but ICly she isn't the type to settle down, anyway. Jajara will hopefully get herself a cozy little place in Ul'dah once she stops spending all her gil on stupid hats and things.

[Kailia]

@Kailia: The land can't possibly be under Grand Company "jurisdiction", because the Grand Companies are not governmental bodies; they're simply military units. And even if they were, it shouldn't matter because this is fluff content and it should be accessible to everyone from the start.

 

No actually the housing areas do fall under Grand Company Jurisdiction. Outside the Goblet, the npc is a member of the Immortal Flames. He sends you into the housing area to meet another flame npc. The company set aside the land for adventurers, in the hopes of getting adventurers to settle down in their land and become citizens to fight for their cause.

 

Why do you think Free Companies HAVE to be rank 6 or higher to even purchase land for their house? And personal housing, you HAVE to be a certain rank to even get a house as well. The above goblet example, echoes to the serpents and maelstrom. A level 1 is an unknown to these Grand Companies. So they aren't going to just hand out land that they control, to some unknown entity. So naturally, you need to prove yourself. So you need to be level 50. Easy to achieve. Next you have to be a certain rank in your chosen grand company. These are all perfectly reasonable requirements.

 

And nothing is ever free in Eorzea. So if you want to buy land, better have the gil to do it with. Two of my friends have 900k saved up already. Me, I'm going to as I said, take a personal room in the FC cottage for my character. IC, she's a kid who has very little gil, so doesn't make sense for her to even have land of her own. Maybe later down the road. But even if she ICly had the gil, her story is keeping her around mist, where as, I'd prefer her to have a house in lavender beds. So since her story isn't taking her to living in the shroud, and the FC cottage is in mist, makes sense for her to stay there.

[Naunet]

Like I said, I don't care if the game presents housing as owned by the GCs, or owned by the Primals, or as freakin' communes. It doesn't matter. It's a game feature. It's fluff content.  It has no business being restricted to level 50 characters behind a GC rank wall and costing crap tons of money.

[C'kayah Polaali]

I totally agree with Naunet here. I can understand the point of view of folks who say "It's not so bad", and "there are already so few money sinks in game", but at the same time it just feels like needless stinginess to me.

 

I've played a lot of MMOs. In some of those I've grown quite wealthy. In Final Fantasy, on the other hand, I've mainly just RPed. I have a level 50 character, and I do some endgame content, but I mainly play the game to RP. I think my bank topped out at about 100k, but I donated most of that to my FC as a symbolic gesture towards getting a bigger FC house. There's simply no way I'm going to be able to afford personal housing without radically changing the way I choose to play, and it's simply not worth it to me to do so. Which is a little sad, because personal housing is really a piece of fluff content which is right up the alley of a roleplayer.

 

It is interesting to compare housing in FFXIV to housing in other games. Someone already pointed out FFXI. In Lord of the Rings Online, you can buy a small house with the money you get from questing up until level 50 (the level cap at the time housing was introduced), even assuming you spent a bunch on gear along the way. If you spent a very little amount of time farming, you could afford a deluxe house. EverQuest 2 gave you a free inn room, and larger houses were easily affordable by characters far lower than max level. Star Trek Online doesn't have housing, but you can enter your ship, invite others and roleplay without spending a dime. So what is it about SE where they feel that the only way to buy housing is to farm gil? Nothing against farming gil, but it's not why I pay to play this game.

[Kailia]

Like I said, I don't care if the game presents housing as owned by the GCs, or owned by the Primals, or as freakin' communes. It doesn't matter. It's a game feature. It's fluff content.  It has no business being restricted to level 50 characters behind a GC rank wall and costing crap tons of money.

 

That then, is where we differ on opinions. To me, games are about the journey. Set a goal, journey and work to reach the goal. World of Warcraft made one major mistake. They cut the journey out and made it so casual friendly there's 0 challenge, and now thanks to their recent decisions, people can skip from level 1 and go straight to level cap of 90, by tossing them $60.

 

Yes, housing is a game feature. Yes it is fluff content. But if one wants to have fluff content and access features such as this, then it needs to be earned. Even games like lord of the rings online, made you work for a house. You couldn't get a house till level 15, and even then, you needed gold to even get one. Gold was, the last time I played it, pretty difficult to get.

 

Overall, I feel SE is doing housing right. In this game, we are adventurer's and hinted from the story, we are from distant lands, complete strangers in Eorzea, even if our characters IC, are from Eorzea. So we have to earn our lands, our houses, our glamours, everything. It's all part of an adventurer's life.

[Naunet]

To add to your list, Rift provides starter dimensions to everyone who completes the unlocking quest (which you can access at like level 5 or somesuch), which are small but just as functional as any other dimension, and you can earn "better" ones by completing content or earning plat. WildStar provides everyone with their own land plot at level 10, and though it does cost some money to fill up the various plugs, a small house is extremely cheap and more than affordable for a level 10. ArcheAge housing is available as soon as you have enough gold to purchase a deed, which can be quite early in the game as some are fairly cheap. I'm sure there are other examples out there, as well.

 

@K'ailia: I said nothing about being unwilling to put effort into a feature, but the "journey" does not need to be entirely frontloaded. The journey is best experienced when you are actually experiencing the content - i.e. when you're decorating/upgrading/etc your home. Don't make me jump through hoops just to be able to START the journey. SE has done fluff content horribly, horribly wrong almost without exception.

[Magellan]

. Don't make me jump through hoops just to be able to START the journey. SE has done fluff content horribly, horribly wrong almost without exception.

 

This. In all of its content, SE has appeased exclusively to the grinders. There is a rather large casual market out there folks, with active real lives, who don't want to spend the limited amount of time they have in game doing nothing but farming gold for perks other games give out cheaply or free. Fifteen bucks a month should give us access to the game's content regardless of how many hours we are able to put in on a given day.

 

It should be fun to decorate a house, not a thankless chore that feels like a job just to get the house in the first place. Because this is a game, not real life. I shouldn't feel like I have to take out a mortgage in a virtual world.