2.38 Patch Notes

[Deuce]

Personal housing prices, because there isn't anything else to spend Gil on in this game anyways.

[Seravi Edalborez]

A lot of minions respond to emotes now.

Wolf pup, Coeurl kitten, and Morbol Seedling(?!) can be /pet (roll over, lick self, and yawn? respectively). Probably others but haven't tried all.
Nutkin and Windup Succubus can be /beckon'd and sit on your shoulder (tall assholes) and head (master race).
Most animal and mob minions will nibble at you hand with /handover.

[Raldo]

Not sure how many of those are brand new; I know /handover worked on most non-inanimate minions (even the Demon Brick, lol) in the patch that added that emote.

Now I totally have to buy a succubus though.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Yeah, unsure if these /pet responses existed before.

Smallshell looks so happy when pet'd.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Yoshi responds to the housing uproar.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...49#post2442149

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.

■Regarding what I said■
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.
■How we decided on the prices for personal housing■
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.
■The reason why Free Company houses and personal houses are in the same areas■
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.
■In conclusion■
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.

[Narol]

I just want a chance to be able to buy personal housing without it being sold out within literally 10 minutes of the servers going up (or at least all of the smalls and a bunch of mediums). From what I understand, that's not the case on all servers, but it sure is on some of them.

[Gokulo]

Overall it's pretty ironic, seeing as two complaints about personal housing are:
- it's too expensive,
- it's already sold out

Shit's like iPhone 6.

[Ksandra]

I forgot to mention, my biggest complaint and will continue to be my biggest complaint until they fix it is:

When the fuck are they going to fix my pet target so it sometimes doesn't start in buttfuck egypt on the corner of my screen when I select it?

Logging out and in fixes it but usually I don't know until after a fight starts and that just pisses me off.

[Cutriss]

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.

This is a flimsy excuse at best. I really could not foresee anyone realistically making that request that wouldn't just go and make their own FC anyway.

(excluding the OF, as they make plenty of dumb requests on a daily basis)

[Spider-Dan]

Overall it's pretty ironic, seeing as two complaints about personal housing are:
- it's too expensive,
- it's already sold out

If it's already sold out within a few hours of release, it clearly wasn't expensive enough.

Maybe Yoshi has decided to subscribe to the "oh, this is what you want?" school of game balance. People wanted cheaper housing? Enjoy.

[Tyrath]

Just because it's sold out doesn't mean it wasn't expensive enough. They didn't release enough land so there was only enough for the richest of peoples.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Not even necessarily richest, more like no-life-est considering you had to wake up at the asscrack of the morning (PST at least) to swoop in.

[Tyrath]

Either way. Because of how little supply there was, it's ridiculous to say the price was right because it sold out.

[Sho]

Overall it's pretty ironic, seeing as two complaints about personal housing are:
- it's too expensive,
- it's already sold out

Shit's like iPhone 6.

Not everyone in this world is poor. not in game, not in reality.

[Korialstrasz]

TIL: 4m gil mean you're rich.

[Lucavi]

TIL: 4m gil mean you're rich.

Im looking more at the 70 mil ones. 70m gil mean you're rich, yes. Are only the small plots sold out, or are all plots sold out.

If the goal was to put out some quick content that didnt drain the resources and time of the staff, and to drain the economy of some gil, and every plot has sold out in a single day, then I'd say its a victory for those who designed the content.

[Narol]

Either way. Because of how little supply there was, it's ridiculous to say the price was right because it sold out.

Economically speaking, you can draw one of two conclusions from it being sold out in 10 minutes: The price was too low, or the supply was too low.

Saying the price was too low doesn't really work because pricing it out of what most players could (or want to) pay means you're denying a ton of people content that shouldn't be for the proverbial 1%. Better to focus on the inadequate supply as being the problem rather than the price of it. This is why I get annoyed when half of everyone focuses so much on the price of land, because that's not the critical issue here. Hell, Yoshi fixated on it, proving once again he completely misses the point of things.

[solracht]

I feel like the entire housing system is a trainwreck and completely unsustainable. I don't see how the supply of wards will ever be able to match the demand from players, which means a lot of players won't get a chance to partake in the system (and will be unlikely to get the plots they want even if they do). However what worries me the most is that their "answer" to this problem is destroying inactive houses. Losing your plot due to inactivity means losing gil (whatever the plot costed, which could be months worth of effort), the location, and the rare furniture. I really can't wait for people to start losing their plots a couple months from now. The fun hasn't even started yet.

I wouldn't say I'm a housing enthusiast but holy shit, I don't think they could've fucked this up any more than they have. Was there any point in making a pointless side-activity so limiting and punishing?

[Neon_Sea]

I think their answer will be glorified Inn rooms, problem solved.

[Eldelphia]

I think their answer will be glorified Inn rooms, problem solved.

Honestly, put the stables at Bentbranch and give people the opportunity to grow stuff in 4-6 pots in their room and that would have been so much better....