Personal Housing Thread 2.0

[Kage]

So let's try this again so the thread dedicated to RP doesn't become utterly and completely derailed.

 

For those wondering about the quote on the pricing, Yoshi-P made it back in 2.1, mid December (so for me about 3 weeks after I started playing) here.

[Kage]

From what I can tell, these things are the major issues with Personal Housing as it came out in 2.38.

 

SHARED with FC housing.

- The prices are the same. Individuals compete with FCs for houses.

 

Limited Plots

- This is a -huge- issue. They mentioned recently that the infrastructure for the wards is something they constantly but put back some times so they have only added a small amount. Do they mean to make it a sort of "achievement" to be able to get a house to make them incredibly special so that not every person can get one?

 

Honestly, this implementation is frustrating but I'm not surprised. Fantasia is still only sold the way it is because their programming and coding is godawful. I'm not surprised that housing is such a mess.

 

I always wondered how they'd implement personal housing with the comparisons they'd made with FCs and now it's... what it is. It feels like this is their permanent solution since they plan to add so many additional wards in 2.4. As an FC leader, if I were to be truly upset by the situation I'd be upset that the houses individuals can buy are essentially the same as the ones an FC would get minus the personal rooms. And also ok with the fact that they have to use the same amount of gil to get what is almost the same thing.

 

At this point, I'm still in love with the small plot my FC has. The only problem is the shared space but I think what we have already is homey.

[Berrod Armstrong]

The more I look at the situation, the more I realize that it isn't really bad at all; they're doing what they can. I agree with a post Warren made earlier about implementation deadlines; in addition to being paid to babysit us video game players, they have deadlines and obligations to meet with regards to their business and product. Cool.

 

I've also been tracing back to the things that have been said regarding personal housing. My only gripe is that not much was said to begin with -- but what HAD been said was at a time when the information and conditions matched his statement. Things changed, and I understand that -- though I believe that they could have given an updated projection later on. 

 

In the end, as players we sort of jumped off a cliff, taking what paltry information was available and going off a torrent of assumptions (as nerds are wont to do) about stuff that just wasn't there yet. I'm not saying that Square Enix was squeaky clean in the matter, but damn, we built a wobbly tower of guesses (a Tower of Babble, my roommate calls it) and it came crashing down. 

 

I was kind of iffy about Personal Houses and FC houses being in the same wards, but in the end I'm...happy with it. When I finally get around to getting a house on Berrod (and I will, I will work toward it!), I'll be glad to not only have individual neighbors, but Free Company neighbors as well. If they all turn out to be roleplayers, it'll just mean a more organic roleplaying experience for me. If they're not roleplayers -- well, I got people I can bug for running dungeons, trading, crafting and gathering OOC! It's...not bad. At least, not to me.

 

The people who seem to be the most disappointed are the people with high expectations -- or at least, solid expectations. No expectations, no disappointment -- I live by that rule, and man it helps lol. 

 

On the bright side, this implementation means that now we know what the housing system is like, we know how to prepare for when more wards come out (we can decide if we want to band together as our respective free companies and get a house for everyone or try to grab an individual lot), and we know how much we have to save to get what we want. Limited space is an issue, of course -- and that's one of the only two downsides I can see (the second being people's gardening woes -- I hope they look into giving FC room gardening to help folks along with that). 

 

As it is, I'm really happy with my small FC house and the room within it. It's great to see my FC mates use it and enjoy it; most of them were going to stick with that anyway. Again, I'm hoping for Private Chamber gardening so that they can all get the plants they need. Maybe someday everyone who is interested can buy their own houses, and come to the Agent HQ for group RP. 

 

For now though? I'm cool with Berrod's little bachelor pad in the back. The game goes on, and I'm still having a blast.

 

Congratulations to all those who got their houses! Now go post your decorating in the screenshot thread so I can be nosy.

[Kage]

With almost a year on when made the comments about what Personal Housing was going to be like in terms of pricing, I imagine that they realized they don't have the resources (infrastructure, programming, etc) to come up with something that could even meet players' expectations.

 

They had 9 months of expectations to build up after all.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

While the way they handled housing is...expensive to say the least. I can't rationalize spending that much gil just for myself. Maybe due to how relaxed the home is in the FC that I'm in, or because we're using it more for RP and not for any type of serious content. (Although we clearly need more levelled alts to make some additional rooms).

 

 

Regardless of the housing prices, though, this is just another feature of the game that is designed for specialization. I don't think SE intends for all players to have an FC house, a personal house, a personal room, a perfect garden in all of them and also be a master crafter and clear all the endgame content. In their words, it's a theme park MMO. And who manages to go on every single ride or attraction at a theme park in one visit?

[Kage]

I think you hit it.

 

I don't think they ever planned to implement a system where every single individual/character would have a house.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

This may be of interest to people. There's an unofficial translation of Yoshi-P's comments on player housing. Please excuse the thread title. I am no affiliated with that player, but it is eye-catching. Alternatively, if you'd like to somehow yell at me anyways, I ask that you do it over PMs, so this thread can remain civil. 

 

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/192851-To-all-of-you-whiny-babies-who-said-that-Yoshida-ruined-housing.-A-reply-from-Yoshida

[Dogberry]

I don't think you can pin the blame of disappointment on the playerbase so easily.

 

Yes, we were fed very little information. What information we were fed was bad. The only quote we were given on prices was "More than 850k". OK, sure, the prices are more than 850K. Given the fact that even FC housing began at prices well above 850K, it's not a stretch to think that 850K was more than just an arbitrary number. They had to be pulling that number from somewhere, right? Otherwise why even bother quoting that specific number? If the number's no good, why even bring it up? I'm seriously curious why it's our fault for being mad that SE over this.

 

I'm just getting started on taking the economy side of this game seriously, and this is making me wonder why I should even bother. I just need to take some time off and seriously consider my future with this game. Not just because of this housing thing, but because I thought SE had turned over a new leaf, especially when Yoshi-P is involved, and that they'd be a lot more open and honest with us. I guess they were wrong.

 

Anyone up for some Payday 2?

[Berrod Armstrong]

This may be of interest to people. There's an unofficial translation of Yoshi-P's comments on player housing. Please excuse the thread title. I am no affiliated with that player, but it is eye-catching. Alternatively, if you'd like to somehow yell at me anyways, I ask that you do it over PMs, so this thread can remain civil. 

 

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/192851-To-all-of-you-whiny-babies-who-said-that-Yoshida-ruined-housing.-A-reply-from-Yoshida

It's fine, Franz! We know you're just trying to keep us informed. Thanks for the link!

[Kage]

I was -just- about to post that. With the disclaimer about the title too.

 

@Dogberry: People mention the 850k number because in an interview at some point a person had said to paraphrase, "I've donated a lot of money to my FC. I only have 850k. Is that enough?"

 

Yoshi-P said no.

[Dogberry]

I really don't think just "no" is a satisfactory answer. He had the chance to say "Player house pricing will be commensurate with Free Company housing", and chose not to.

[Kage]

I agree with you. I think they knew they were going to piss off people because 9 months ago things were quite different in terms of the gil economy and such so they decided to just go with it.

 

They really should have said at 2.3, "In regards to personal housing, what we said after 2.1 applied then. Things have changed and we cannot give you what was stated then."

[Dogberry]

If they were more open with us about it, I wouldn't be as mad as I am. I thought transparency was SE's new thing now, with Yoshi-P at the helm, going out of his way to keep us updated. Up until now I've been extremely impressed with just how transparent and community focused they've been, and with this I feel like they've gone back on that entirely.

[C'kayah Polaali]

Ultimately for me the issue is the limited wards. Once again (and this was partially my fault) we weren't able to get a FC house. The smalls in all the wards were sold out in minutes.

 

I know this is only a game, and it's all pretend funtime, but those of us in FCs (especially small FCs) that have the gil and rank for a house but weren't able to get one have put very real work into this game and gotten the shaft again.

 

This really feels as if I did a big long questline for a month, completed everything in it, and then the last screen said "Sorry, we're all out of quest rewards. We may have more in a month."

 

The SE defenders keep pointing to the limited server resources, but that's a fallacious argument. 3/4ths of the servers are so underpopulated that they have nearly deserted wards, while the other 1/4 are so overpopulated that their wards are full (like Balmung's), yet they insist on keeping the same number of wards per server. They could cut the number of wards on the underpopulated servers by half without affecting housing their, and that would give them an additional 12 wards for the full servers. But they don't. It's clear that they don't because they somehow think that the way things are working today is fine.

[Kage]

According to one statement by Yoshi-p they're currently working on hopefully doubling the number of wards in 2.4

 

Since 2.1, they've reduced the amount of time it takes for the housing prices to depreciate.

 

I agree about the differences between the populated and less populated servers.

 

They really should look at each individual server and change it so that in each server they could house 70-80% of FCs/individuals. I don't think they ever plan for the occasion where every FC or every individual can obtain a house.

[Warren Castille]

I think part of the "issue" is that we, as players, want to know things. Yoshi got asked if 850 would be enough, he said "it will be more than 850" and that got turned into "Housing costs to be around 850" in a lot of people's heads. He likely didn't want to comment on pricing (which is why he didn't say it's going to cost X million at the time, he just shot down 850k) but we wanted an answer.

 

I'll again cite that Player Room and Personal Housing were not intended with FC housing. Players asked for it while the development cycle was already underway.

 

If I had my druthers, I would have just activated a Gate in every city with the option to buy a personal room for X.X million gil and left it at that: Folks get their mog houses from XI that everyone clamored for and the housing wards remain the communal setting they were always intended to be. Seems silly that we're going to have wards that only home 30 people when right now we've got wards with 10 times that on account of being group homes.

 

Regardless, I suspect this isn't the end of this particular chapter. People won't be happy until every player's got a house, a chocobo farm and a field of plants with a yard, "people" here referencing the loud people complaining regardless of what's offered.

 

Hindsight edit: I sound like such a downer. My bad. Also Doggie let's play Payday.

[Kage]

They should also add gardening to personal rooms imo.

 

Make it so you can have more outside furnishings / garden plots in each respective size.

[ArmachiA]

You're wrong about Personal Housing. It was originally supposed to be personal housing and they changed it to FC housing. They said it was because of the server infrastructure.

 

He said it would be cheaper than FC housing, he said it would be different than FC housing. The quote all over the official forums right now is damning. Calling out SE for a lie is justified. This could have been solved months ago if they just would have told us this was going to happen on a day that WASN'T PATCH DAY. This could have been handled a lot better. They deserve what they get.

 

(I actually did get my personal house, but that isn't the point. At all.)

[Aldotsk]

Even though what devs said was a false hope for everyone, is it really killing enough for players to quit the game over personal housing?

 

I'd rather not hope that people are quitting this game over housing. Because FF14 is not made for housing really. It's for cosmetic expansion imo.

 

There will be more wards and plots coming up, just gotta be patient is all. They just started implementing on this. 

 

NOTE:

People told Yoshida to resign when he over-priced the FC houses when it first came out. This issue will be resolved.

[ArmachiA]

^ You underestimate the need for your own thing in games. Personal housing in all games is becoming standard.

 

The Japanese are livid over this.

[Kage]

"Personal" housing then.

 

I'm not going to say how many people are upset because for all I know it could be the vocal minority or it could very well be the majority. All the playerbases are unhappy to say the least. Japanese. European. North American. Every one. Even the one they say they cater to.

 

If it's not the price, it's the shared space that causes limited availability even worse.

 

SE development team, Yoshi-p, whoever. They made a bad call.

[Aldotsk]

^ You underestimate the need for your own thing in games. Personal housing in all games is becoming standard.

 

The Japanese are livid over this.

 

I think you still missed my point. Even if everyone is angry, would it be enough to quit the game forever because of housing issues?

[Dogberry]

It's not the personal housing that's killing it for me. It's that with this I'm concerned that SE is backsliding into the bad old days. They've been really good about being open with us about the game. What happened here? I think it's reasonable to be concerned about that.

[Kage]

Even if everyone is angry, would it be enough to quit the game forever because of housing issues?

For some it is not the housing (though some came back just for it) it's the misdirections and miscommunications.

 

Yes they probably thought at 2.1 things would be different. When the time came for them that they did not need to meet the standards which they set, they should have said "For those who thought at 2.1 we would still keep to what was said then, things have changed and we won't be."

 

It's the same as when we all thought echo for Coil1 was going to go to whatever percent it was going to be 2 weeks after the usual. They went about 2-4 weeks after it was supposed to be implemented and said "After close observation blah blah we've decided that the current echo is fine blah"

[ArmachiA]

^ You underestimate the need for your own thing in games. Personal housing in all games is becoming standard.

 

The Japanese are livid over this.

 

I think you still missed my point. Even if everyone is angry, would it be enough to quit the game forever because of housing issues?

 

Yes, absolutely. I've seen games fail in months because their player base was lied to.