2.38 Patch Notes are up!!Follow

You do what ever it takes to keep your customers happy or you loose them

Whatever it takes, except blindly throw money at the problem. Because then you wind up losing the profit that you were hoping to make off of happy customers. You could even wind up in the hole if people wind up leaving the game in spite of adding more server capacity for personal housing.

Hello, everyone. Producer and Director Yoshida here.

Thank you for all the large amount of feedback regarding the prices of land for personal housing which was implemented in Patch 2.38.

As the current personal housing prices are higher than what players expected, I would like to discuss the statement I made previously regarding the plan to make the personal housing prices cheaper than Free Company housing.

â– Regarding what I saidâ– 
The statement I said was from a post made last December.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1685344
At that time, we were correcting the economic disparity between legacy players and new players with regards to Free Company land prices in Patch 2.1. As we were hoping to implement World Transfers as quickly as possible, we set Free Company plot prices on the high side. Due to this, we received a lot of feedback mentioning that even though there were plans for personal housing, there would be no way that players would be able to pay that high of a cost. In my reply, I wrote: “I can say that prices will be completely separate from Free Company housing, and, naturally, far more affordable.”

What this meant was the following:
The prices will be completely separate from Free Company land prices (At the time of Patch 2.1)
We’ll be making the prices much cheaper than what they are currently (At the time of Patch 2.1)

However, reading this again, I realize that this statement is extremely unclear. Also, because I wrote this quickly to try to quell the uneasiness at the time, I ended up causing even more problems for everyone. I sincerely apologize for this.
â– How we decided on the prices for personal housingâ– 
After Patch 2.1 we’d been monitoring the land purchase conditions on all Worlds and largely reducing the prices in stages. Additionally, the original time frame for reaching the lowest land price was three months, which we shortened to one month. Due to this, the prices of land drop several tens of thousands of gil every six hours. After one month the price would be half of what it was originally.

Additionally, in order to stimulate the in-game economy after Patch 2.1, we increased the methods in which you can obtain gil and the average amount of gil all players possess increased severalfold. We are constantly checking the amount of gil everyone possesses, and based on this we made the decision that the starting prices of personal housing should be the land prices at the time that Patch 2.3 was implemented.

Focus will always be on the prices at release, but after one month these prices will be halved. The average amount of gil in possession is much greater than you all imagine, and we are concerned that if we were to lower the cost of land for personal housing any further it would exacerbate problems like RMT and the purchase of land by secondary characters.

As we have also received requests to make it so you can garden and raise chocobos from personal houses, we strived to develop personal housing with the same core features as Free Company houses to address this feedback.

When setting the prices, it’s not as though we didn’t even consider whether we should separate the prices for Free Company land and personal housing land; however, looking at the current economic conditions and also considering future expansion we decided to make the prices the same. I apologize and hope for your understanding.
â– The reason why Free Company houses and personal houses are in the same areasâ– 
The biggest reason is to ensure the effective utilization of land. FFXIV is entering a stable period and the amount of newly created Free Companies is gently declining, therefore the demand for new Free Company houses will also decline. Additionally, with expansions to the land sale feature, after the demand for land has been fulfilled there will gradually be land openings in the wards.

On the other hand, when it comes to personal housing, with the constant increase in the amount of gil everyone possesses, as time passes the demand for personal housing will increase and a large amount of open land will be necessary.

If we were to separate Free Company housing and personal housing into different areas, in the event that Free Company land opens up I believe we would then receive requests asking to make it possible to build personal houses on those plots. So in order to balance the two we made it possible to purchase land in the same housing areas and feel this will allow for land to be utilized efficiently.
â– In conclusionâ– 
In regards to the housing system, there are a lot of elements that are intertwined with each other. For example, the hefty amount of gil required to purchase, or whether you play within a Free Company or by yourself, and also due to the fact that the implementation cost and the allocation of demands becomes more complex, there are times when the decisions made by the development team are not always in perfect alignment with the thoughts of the players.

However, similar to what we did after Patch 2.1, we will be doing our best to answer everyone’s feedback and demands, but we would like to ask for some time. Thank you very much.

Not like he needs any positive energy from us, but cut the man some slack.