Peronal Housing costs potentially specified

[Kailia]

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.

 

Not every game is going to do things your way or ways you like. To me, there are multiple journeys. All start like so:

 

- Oh there's a goal I'd like to meet!

- What are the requirements to get to this goal?

- *begins working to meet requirements*

- Yay met the requirements! Now I am halfway there!

- *Gets land and house*

- Awesome! Almost done!

- *Decorates till satisfied*

- Yay! Goal met! I am a happy camper!

 

The journey doesn't start at decorating. The journey starts the moment you decide you want a house, and you begin the journey to achieve that goal. I think SE has done fluff content superbly.

 

There should be no shortcuts in games. These rules aren't harsh either. Anyone can get to level 50 easily. And you can easily rank up in grand companies with some effort. And gil wise, dailies, roulette, and selling on the market board, has netted me 200k in 1 weeks time. We've got 3 months before 2.3, that's more than enough time to get up 850k or more, for a plot of land.

 

Not to sound rude, or flamey, but every time they announce a fluff content, you always bash the way SE does it, and point to rift as your shining beacon that SE has to ripoff to satisfy you. FFXIV will never be rift. And I prefer it never to be a rift clone. XIV stands out on its own, has its own rules and feel. And if XIV is causing you so much grief, then you should ask yourself, why do you play a game you obviously hate?

[allgivenover]

I made over a million gil in April just leveling my retainers, doing maps occasionally, and selling drops from daily roulette. It's gotten even easier to make money now that my retainers are level 50 and I'm sending them on the highest level exploration venture - they bring back several allaghan silver coins and sometimes an item worth 100k or more.

 

If I wasn't so busy with graduation coming up I'd be able to actually do some crafting and make real cash, but seriously 850k is not that hard to come up with at all and I'm not convinced of the translation confirming anything as the meaning of his words was rather ambiguous. 

 

I've been in games where housing was very easy to obtain and as a result no one really cared about it, the players value it much more when it's harder to get, and I agree with that approach. When you finally obtain an FC house you really value it - I spend all of my idle time in game there.

 

I don't understand the huge comparison to other games, if Rift/Whatever is so great why arn't you playing that instead?

[FreelanceWizard]

Please don't make me turn my Admin Gaze of Stone on this thread. We can disagree and debate without calling names.

[LandStander]

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.

 

 In all honesty Naunet, this game is not designed for alts in mind. I mean they literally let you become every single class on one character unlike any other game I have come across before. It defeats the purpose for ever making an alt unless you are an RPer. 

 

I personally think 850k sounds good, but I remember reading something where he Yoshi-P feels like even this might be too high (probably thinking of that FC housing fiasco). Also its not a house, but just a room that will probably be about the same size as the original small FC house (before they added a basement) because that is about how large the Mog House was in FFXI.

[synaesthetic]

Classy.

 

You whiteknights do realize that most of us who complain a lot do so because we're unwilling to accept a second-rate experience. If you just take everything a company--which exists purely to generate profit by the way--does or says as the best thing since sliced bread, they're going to keep giving you less and less until they find a point where you won't tolerate less anymore.

 

Then they'll hover right above that tolerance threshold.

 

Square's goal with FFXIV, like any MMO developer, is to spend the least amount of money possible while making the most amount of money possible. That means they spend a considerable amount of effort trying to determine the bare minimum of content and fluff that the players will still pay for.

 

Ya'll are making this real fuckin' easy on them.

 

Be a discerning consumer. Be picky as hell. Don't ever be satisfied. Be as hard to please as possible.

 

Whiteknights kill games.

[Elisea Renyven]

One thing I can point out. People seem to think they have to fly solo. You put what you get into an FC and game. If you want something, you work as a team to get it. In the old days of UO, DAOC, etc you had to learn to work as a team, survive as a team. It's because of those days I'm sad many missed out on. If you want to strive for greatness, you got to work together. There are some who'd rather not help or do things as a team, that's great. But to me an MMO is a team sport, a team game, you have your social aspects, RP, and PVE. To acquire goals, you gotta do it as a team. I think Square really drives it home that team is important. You can fly solo but its not as fun.

[synaesthetic]

What does group content have to do with personal housing? That's solo content. They're two completely separate entities.

[Elisea Renyven]

What does group content have to do with personal housing? That's solo content. They're two completely separate entities.

 

I'm not going to start an argument over it, ma'am. Groups can help each other raise money for personal housing. Or you can make 2 million in no time solo. There are options, like this game has tons of options. While its not perfect, its better than most mmos out there.

 

Anyway, going to bow out of this thread as its turning too negative and don't like seeing arguments.

[synaesthetic]

That makes no sense at all, though. If you have one person raising money you have a goal of 850,000. If you have two, then you have a goal of twice that... which means that the grinding time the two of you have to spend is... exactly the same.

 

Unless the other person doesn't have any interest in having a house and is totally okay with giving you all their gil... unlikely to say the least.

[allgivenover]

Classy.

 

You whiteknights do realize that most of us who complain a lot do so because we're unwilling to accept a second-rate experience. If you just take everything a company--which exists purely to generate profit by the way--does or says as the best thing since sliced bread, they're going to keep giving you less and less until they find a point where you won't tolerate less anymore.

 

Then they'll hover right above that tolerance threshold.

 

Square's goal with FFXIV, like any MMO developer, is to spend the least amount of money possible while making the most amount of money possible. That means they spend a considerable amount of effort trying to determine the bare minimum of content and fluff that the players will still pay for.

 

Ya'll are making this real fuckin' easy on them.

 

Be a discerning consumer. Be picky as hell. Don't ever be satisfied. Be as hard to please as possible.

 

Whiteknights kill games.

 

You're absolutely right, that's why you should direct your complaint posts here where your opinion might have an effect on the product you enjoy(?).

 

I like A Realm Reborn, it isn't a perfect game, but I like it. I come here to read about RP (and story posts), if I wanted to read about how terrible each addition to the game allegedly is I'd go to the official forums where such whining about not having everything handed to the players simply because they pay a monthly sub can be found in abundance. All of your griping here does nothing to change the game and only serves to annoy myself and others.

[Zhavi]

Classy.

 

You whiteknights do realize that most of us who complain a lot do so because we're unwilling to accept a second-rate experience. If you just take everything a company--which exists purely to generate profit by the way--does or says as the best thing since sliced bread, they're going to keep giving you less and less until they find a point where you won't tolerate less anymore.

 

Then they'll hover right above that tolerance threshold.

 

Square's goal with FFXIV, like any MMO developer, is to spend the least amount of money possible while making the most amount of money possible. That means they spend a considerable amount of effort trying to determine the bare minimum of content and fluff that the players will still pay for.

 

Ya'll are making this real fuckin' easy on them.

 

Be a discerning consumer. Be picky as hell. Don't ever be satisfied. Be as hard to please as possible.

 

Whiteknights kill games.

 

While I have points I agree and disagree with on both sides of the fence here, this reminded me of something -- namely, beta for FFXIV 1.0. At the end of the beta I can remember people begging square to not let it go live as it was. There were tons of posts with well thought out complaints, listing alternatives, listing workarounds, giving examples as to why certain things wouldn't work well once it went live. The whole time there were people who told them that it wasn't bad, to not discuss what they didn't like, that they weren't being constructive. It was because of Square's responses (and, in some cases, total lack of response) to those posts that I held off from preordering the game. I wanted to see if they would change things once it went live. I held out hope that, you know, it was beta and things would change.

 

Aaaaand it didn't. Reviews and commentary from friends proved to me that the core things that had made the game not as fun as I wanted (looking back I don't remember a whole lot. . .but I do remember the menu being really unnecessarily convoluted). So I didn't buy the game. I stayed way the hell away from it.

 

There is a line between constructive and non-constructive posting, but pretty much . . .what's wrong with pointing out ways of doing things that you don't like? As long as it doesn't devolve into just saying 'this sucks, square sucks, the whole game sucks,' what's wrong with wanting to share your disappointment with something? I mean, yeah, when you're enthusiastic about something it's kind of a let down to see someone who is upset about it, but is unhappiness with something any less a legitimate feeling to have then happiness?

 

I mean, if it's just a dislike of the way someone phrases something, then just say that. But nicely. Even unhappy people respond to politeness (case in point: everyone says there's major griefing in LoL, but 9 times out of 10 in my games it was diffuseable with humor or by just making the person feel like their opinion mattered).

 

In any case, whether or not I'll be able to pay for housing isn't too make or break for me. In actuality, seeing if people will let me have Zhi infect their characters' homes with fleas or lice is becoming rather a pleasing prospect. Muahahahaha.

[Naunet]

Not sure I should post again at risk of offending others' sensibilities (...).

 

The price actually doesn't bother me so much as the level 50 requirement. Gil I can get and transfer to RP alts when necessary. Levels... not so much. At least on rp alts I don't really feel the loss of glamour too much because I just use them for rp, so I can just swap out gear sets instead of costuming (even though I'm super annoyed at the gear type and ilvl restrictions *grumble*). But being completely blocked from what would be a fun, rp-related investment... is seriously disappointing. I want to be able to enjoy the game's fluff content as much as I enjoy running dungeons with my friends... I don't think that's too much to ask.

 

Mod note: Excised the text in "(...)" as it references posts removed from the thread.

[Zhavi]

Not sure I should post again at risk of offending others' sensibilities (though I really would appreciate it if a mod would edit those earlier posts, because they honestly really hurt my feelings...).

 

The price actually doesn't bother me so much as the level 50 requirement. Gil I can get and transfer to RP alts when necessary. Levels... not so much. At least on rp alts I don't really feel the loss of glamour too much because I just use them for rp, so I can just swap out gear sets instead of costuming (even though I'm super annoyed at the gear type and ilvl restrictions *grumble*). But being completely blocked from what would be a fun, rp-related investment... is seriously disappointing. I want to be able to enjoy the game's fluff content as much as I enjoy running dungeons with my friends... I don't think that's too much to ask.

 

I wonder if the reason they have that on there is to add specific end-game value to the game? I suppose they might look at it from a 'if new players are using this from level 10 onwards, they might be tired of it by the time they hit 50, and therefore will stop playing faster' perspective. Especially if they're still running the game with the preference that people not play alts, even if that means they're not getting a couple extra dollars per month.

[Twinflame]

Not sure I should post again at risk of offending others' sensibilities (though I really would appreciate it if a mod would edit those earlier posts, because they honestly really hurt my feelings...).

 

The price actually doesn't bother me so much as the level 50 requirement. Gil I can get and transfer to RP alts when necessary. Levels... not so much. At least on rp alts I don't really feel the loss of glamour too much because I just use them for rp, so I can just swap out gear sets instead of costuming (even though I'm super annoyed at the gear type and ilvl restrictions *grumble*). But being completely blocked from what would be a fun, rp-related investment... is seriously disappointing. I want to be able to enjoy the game's fluff content as much as I enjoy running dungeons with my friends... I don't think that's too much to ask.

 

I wonder if the reason they have that on there is to add specific end-game value to the game?  I suppose they might look at it from a 'if new players are using this from level 10 onwards, they might be tired of it by the time they hit 50, and therefore will stop playing faster' perspective.  Especially if they're still running the game with the preference that people not play alts, even if that means they're not getting a couple extra dollars per month.

 

From my perspective it's probably more that they don't want everyone to have a house. Remember that Yoshi was concerned that if he lowered the price on FC Housing, all the FCs might actually buy houses? Like, the content might actually get used? I think he's worried about server space and being able to run enough instances of the housing neighborhoods in order for everyone to have their own houses. Much less everyone have houses on their alts.

 

I think that this problem, just like so many others the game has, goes back to not investing in servers of sufficient number, power and size.

[Naunet]

I wonder if the reason they have that on there is to add specific end-game value to the game?  I suppose they might look at it from a 'if new players are using this from level 10 onwards, they might be tired of it by the time they hit 50, and therefore will stop playing faster' perspective.  Especially if they're still running the game with the preference that people not play alts, even if that means they're not getting a couple extra dollars per month.

 

You can prevent people from getting "tired of it" by baking the experience into the entire game. Put in various housing items and upgrades for people to work for as they level (e.g. from various GC ranks, from completing certain side quests or particularly momentous story turns, as themed drops from dungeons, rewards for achievements) and in endgame (e.g.... everything I listed prior, plus stuff from all the endgame content we already have). That way it is a constantly evolving experience, and there are constantly new stretch goals to work towards. Suddenly the feature becomes fun and engaging and long-lived rather than, "Well I'll grind to 50 and grind X amount of gold and then I'm pretty much done."

 

As for the alt thing, I remain baffled as to why they would prefer people pay them less money every month.

 

I think that this problem, just like so many others the game has, goes back to not investing in servers of sufficient number, power and size.

 

This is likely the crux of it, yes.

 

Mod note: Deleted the last paragraph because it references excised posts.

[Zhavi]

From my perspective it's probably more that they don't want everyone to have a house. Remember that Yoshi was concerned that if he lowered the price on FC Housing, all the FCs might actually buy houses? Like, the content might actually get used? I think he's worried about server space and being able to run enough instances of the housing neighborhoods in order for everyone to have their own houses. Much less everyone have houses on their alts.

 

I think that this problem, just like so many others the game has, goes back to not investing in servers of sufficient number, power and size.

 

Oh, eesh, I didn't actually know that. I errr. . .don't really pay much attention to what the developers say, overall. I just picked up the game a few months ago, too. Still! That's an interesting point and makes a lot of sense. If only I could be a fly on the wall. . .

 

 

You can prevent people from getting "tired of it" by baking the experience into the entire game. Put in various housing items and upgrades for people to work for as they level (e.g. from various GC ranks, from completing certain side quests or particularly momentous story turns, as themed drops from dungeons, rewards for achievements) and in endgame (e.g.... everything I listed prior, plus stuff from all the endgame content we already have). That way it is a constantly evolving experience, and there are constantly new stretch goals to work towards. Suddenly the feature becomes fun and engaging and long-lived rather than, "Well I'll grind to 50 and grind X amount of gold and then I'm pretty much done."

 

Even assuming this is a problem after Twinflame's post (his really does make a lot of sense to me, but then again I really know almost nothing about development), it maybe could be a matter of the content team being inefficient or slow to the point that they don't have enough of that extra stuff ready for the initial launch? In the games I've played it does seem like initially (for things added on after the release of the game) there will be a high barrier to entry that gradually gets reduced over time as the game ages and other stuff is added.

 

It's kinda like the whole thing with Doublefine. You know, they asked for x amount of money, got more than they needed, decided to upgrade the game. Several months later they run out of money, eventually leading to them needing to split the game in two to help ensure that they could even finish the thing. Watching the pieces of the documentary (which I still need to finish) was certainly very interesting from that perspective, with all of their teams, where they spent their time (and how much time certain stages took) and costs and whatnot.

 

As for the alts -- yeah, I couldn't tell you. I have absolutely no insight into what their internal goals are and where they're looking to make longterm profits. I just like to think that there must be a reason, because in times like these I would just prefer to be an ignorant optimist -- picking my battles of despairing of what looks like stupidity from an outside perspective, as it were.

[FreelanceWizard]

Okay. The personal attacks stop, right now.

 

I have removed from this thread (not deleted, mind you, but put elsewhere; my policy is not to delete things -- like it or not, that's what it is) the off-topic posts. I believe I've preserved most of the context of the thread; note that I largely don't edit individual posts unless there's a legal matter, so if your entire post got excised and you've lost context, I apologize.

 

Consider this the final warning for this thread. I will begin suspending posting privileges for those who continue to make personal attacks here. Like someone's opinions or not, like someone's overall stance on the game or not, but it is not necessary or acceptable to rip into people personally about that.

 

As a side note, the mods are not on this site 24/7/365. We do not have a paid community team and mod staff monitoring every single thread every single minute. Please remember that we are volunteers and it takes some time for us to see a problem, determine the response, and react accordingly. It's not helpful to put snide commentary in the comment field about the quality of moderation when you report posts, and doing that itself can be grounds for a warning, suspension, or ban.

[ArmachiA]

Classy.

 

You whiteknights do realize that most of us who complain a lot do so because we're unwilling to accept a second-rate experience. If you just take everything a company--which exists purely to generate profit by the way--does or says as the best thing since sliced bread, they're going to keep giving you less and less until they find a point where you won't tolerate less anymore.

 

Ya'll are making this real fuckin' easy on them.

 

Whiteknights kill games.

 

There's no need for this, No one is white knighting. Hostility doesn't breed healthy discussion.

[Kailia]

 

Classy.

 

You whiteknights do realize that most of us who complain a lot do so because we're unwilling to accept a second-rate experience. If you just take everything a company--which exists purely to generate profit by the way--does or says as the best thing since sliced bread, they're going to keep giving you less and less until they find a point where you won't tolerate less anymore.

 

Ya'll are making this real fuckin' easy on them.

 

Whiteknights kill games.

 

There's no need for this, No one is white knighting. Hostility doesn't breed healthy discussion.

 

I'm actually inclined to agree. I've been keeping my tone pretty respectful. I agree with SE adding obstacles to overcome to get a rather cool reward at the end. But being called a whiteknight for it, came off as rude.

[Maril]

What I do for my FC, and have been doing ever since we started saving up for a FC house, is to - along with other fc members who're interested in the moneymaking aspect of the game - to collect information about what things are good to grind right now, down to the point where I'd time how much I got from a certain type of mob-farm and figure out what it sold for afterwards. It's helped a lot of my members a lot to know exactly when and where they should go for something, to make a relatively quick profit out of the "I've 30 minutes and nothing to do" situations. I'd encourage other FC leaders with time to spare to do the same, because even though it wont get people to instantly have all of the gil ever, if you get them used to doing a little every day it'll land them in a better position for when the darn thing actually launches. 

 

I do not consider making money in XIV to be difficult, but rather it's gated by how much time you put into it. Which sort of is the case for anything in an mmorpg, the more you do something the better you get at it/the more you get out of it. Crafting for profit is my downtime in between RP, aside from a dungeon and a set of dailies per day and after having spent a lot of time leveling up all but two crafts I'm now finally at a point where I can nestle on a pile of a million gil. One of the biggest ways you can see that I'm that kind of player (or whatever you call it) is by asking me how many atmas I've collected.. (One. I have one atma. It is my atma. There may be many like it, but this one is mine). I could have poured my heart and soul into getting my ilevel 100 weapon and probably have that by now-ish but.. Anyways. This is turning into a ramble. I'm not saying that everyone should give up stuff to go farm or craft but more.. illustrate the whole thing about time. 

 

Anyways. If there's anything I can really say about making gil is to do your challenge log. It's the best way ever to coincidentally get 35k a week guaranteed. After that, do dailies and maintain ventures (you get 6 ventures per day from dailies) and hope to god they wont come back with fish and a broken off window. 

And if you love doing the same thing over and over, consider becoming a shard-pusher.. Wind and lightning on Balmung especially. I just bought 1k lightning ones for what I'd call half and arm and then some, because I'm too lazy to go out and get my own shards.

 

I hope that the housing is going to be worth the effort people put into it, with enough freedom to get creative. And I hope they release more items as well, I'd love to have a tent in my garden with like a fireplace in front of it, and host "camp outs". That is if they come with gardens.

[synaesthetic]

Your opinion on the level and gil requirement for housing isn't the issue here, K'ailia. That's simply your opinion, and you're entitled to it! I don't agree with it, personally, because I feel that fluff content should not be arbitrarily restricted since the most common consumers of fluff content are casual players who may not be able to level to 50 before they get too bored to keep paying their subscription fee.

 

There's a large segment of MMO players who I call, for lack of a better word, casual players. This is not the "filthy casual" nonsense you see being spewed by elitist raiders, but actual casual players of the game.

 

They exist. There are many of them in my FC alone. Some of them who started when the game released are just now hitting the level cap on one job. There's a member in my FC who has been playing since Beta 4, was one of the first members of Unity, and he doesn't even have a single combat class at level 50--because he would rather craft and gather.

 

Not to mention pure crafters who don't give a damn about the rest of the game and just want to make things and gather things. These people are now locked out of personal housing unless they choose to play the game in a way they don't like to play it. Square runs the risk of losing these people as subscribers.

 

Fluff content is the "endgame" for casual players, just like Extreme Primals and Coil are the endgame for PvE players and Frontlines/Wolves' Den is endgame for PvP players. These players play in a different way than the other two groups. Lots of them don't even enjoy playing traditional PvE or PvP. And Square wants to force them to do so in order to actually access the content they want.

 

Regarding the "whiteknight" issue, I am only referring to players who believe that everything Square-Enix does is perfect and flawless and will relentlessly make ad hominem attacks against those who do not agree. Whiteknights literally kill games, because they push everyone else out and create a really sticky echo chamber of knob-slobbing. They prevent legitimate and useful criticism from being heard. The official XIV forums are already almost entirely dominated by whiteknights and Square seems more interested in banning the voices of reason and protecting those players who seem to enjoy nothing more than giving Squee the most sensuous and luscious virtual blowjob in the history of fanboyism.

 

This is a problem. Echo chambers are useless because they do not create discussion, debate or allow for the exchange of new ideas. You either fall in line with the popular opinion or you are shouted down, chased out. I was permanently banned from the official forums for daring to question the great Square-Enix and their majesty--likely because a pile of whiteknights decided to report my post (which was politely and eloquently worded, certainly not a violation of the community guidelines!) just so they could remove a voice of dissent tainting their precious echo chamber.

 

I'm a writer. When I ask for feedback from someone, I don't want to hear the positives. I already know my writing's good. I want to hear the negatives. I want to hear what's wrong with it. I want to know how to make it better. Square, on the other hand, doesn't want to make it better--they just want to make it profitable. If whiteknights drown out the voice of those who would keep SE on its toes, how can we expect this game to do achieve anything beyond mediocrity?

 

My opinion is that Square is making some really questionable business decisions here, especially considering the financial trouble the company is in. FFXIV saved Square-Enix from a premature death, but if they really wanted to crank up the profits, they'd stop arbitrarily restricting everything for no obvious reasons. Also they should get better servers because it's painfully obvious to anyone with any knowledge of how MMOs work that all these arbitrary housing restrictions are put in place to drastically limit the number of instance leases open at any given time. This means that they still aren't running the game on sufficient hardware. I'm sorry, but selling something you don't actually have is dishonest. When Comcast oversold bandwidth, people practically rioted in the streets, but when SE oversells server resources to the point they have to severely limit the play experience... nobody seems to care?

[FreelanceWizard]

And here I thought we could stay on topic, even after I sliced up the thread. :cry:

 

This thread is closed.