Why Removing Houses from inactive is NOT a solution.

[Titor]

A lot of non-housing owners seem to want to have SE take houses away from people who currently own them but are inactive.

This is not a good solution, at all. Housing resources will still be extremely limited, and after the initial removing of inactives, which might clear up 20 or so plots on each server. After those plots sell up, then what? You are back to the same problem of all of the wards being full.

People who own houses are generally not going inactive without reason, and especially not those who are pushing for the relinquishing of the houses. If this system is implemented, you /will/ see more people logging in to keep their houses, with the occasional unjust punishment of a few people who had to go on leave for medical, personal, military, business, or other such reasons.

You may, every year or so, remove a house from someone who is truly forever inactive, who has left the game and is never going to come back, but is that really worth punishing potentially hundreds of homeowners who have to go inactive for a period of time that is not under their control?

The problem here is not people who are inactive, and the solution of removing houses from inactive players is not a good solution for all parties, even in a Utopian solution.

What we should be pushing for is, instead of trying to take away from current homeowners, urging SE to put more priority into the housing system, by upgrading servers, opening new wards, or even creating additional housing systems to allow those without houses access to chocobo stables, gardening, and for FC's - soon to be airship crafting.

**Edit** The following implementation is set to be added. Hurray! Alternatively, a short term way to open up housing to be more easily shared with friends. A nerfed version of a FC for personal use, even. With the ability to grant permissions to teleport there, use the facilities, or even remodel or decorate, this would essentially open up more people using personal houses with the limited resources that the servers currently have.

In conclusion, removing houses for inactive members would only open up a house or two every few months (if the removal period is akin to 4-6 months inactive), they would also be relinquished sporadically and without warning. This would leave such a solution to be beneficial for only a very, very small number of lucky individuals. It is not a good, nor fair, solution. We should be urging SE to invest in more servers for wards (even dynamic wards that automatically add as needed!) or allow a permissions system for current personal housing to a friends list, and not just to eternal bond members.

[StouterTaru]

There are 1,440 plots per server, and you think only 20 would be cleared up initially? Depending on the inactivity duration details, I expect that number to be closer to 100-500 per server.

The MB near my FC house is the closest MB for 6 houses, the only people I ever see there are from my FC and a neighbor FC.

The MB near my main's house is the closest MB for 5 houses, I only ever see one other person there, and occasionally her bf who doesn't have a house in the area.

The MB near my alt's house is the closest MB for 9 houses, I only ever see people from 1 FC there.

I think they should have the grass start growing a little every week that a house isn't accessed by the owner, just so everyone can see how dead many of the districts are.

[Dante_V]

I have a house in the first ward of lavender beds on my server. 100% of my neighbors are currently inactive (or do not use their house what so ever. I don't know where the 20 number is coming from but it's wayyyyyyy off in this case.

And it's hardly a utopian idea. IRL when you go "inactive" and don't pay your taxes and mortgage for months guess what happens to your house?

[Cutie_McSnuggles]

OP is right. And trying to judge how active a house is based on how often you see them is questionable, unless you're camping outside their house 24/7.

If a system is ever implement to take away housing from inactive characters you'll be surprised how many people come out of the woodwork to protect their investment.

OP is also right that it's a short sighted solution. There is still too little housing for the amount of people that are interested. What we need to be pushing for is more availability, not taking it away from people.

Edit:
What I'd really like to see is a hybrid system. If they can't give us enough wards to meet demand, then let people who want to, have instanced houses.

[GenJoe]

A lot of non-housing owners seem to want to have SE take houses away from people who currently own them but are inactive.

That's where you're wrong, lot of the people who're advocating upkeep/relinquishment already own houses.. I myself have an FC mansion and have the means to buy a personal house if I wanted to. (Yes, Jenova still has a few plots left, I'm just not in a hurry)

The reason these people are advocating ownership to rotate is because we're sick of seeing all the dead houses in our neighborhoods, I can tell you that in my own FC ward, there are at least 5 inactive houses that see no use and my ward is a new one that just recently filled up about 2 weeks ago.

I regularly visit my old FC's house and in that ward, in the direct vicinity of a market board, there are 4 houses that I know for sure are completely dead, 1 of them being just a plot that somebody never even built a house on. and that's just within the vicinity of MB, in other parts of the same ward, there are even more houses that see no use.



Here are the facts:

1440 houses is not nearly enough to meet demand. Mind you, this number of 1440, was already expanded on TWICE iirc. Once by the addition of subdivision, then additional wards. We may see a few more wards added around 3.1 or 3.2, SE has expressed it won't likely be happening in 3.0. That's another 3 or 6 months out from now, how many wards do you think they can realistically add? 8 per city? doubling the number? That's being optimistic but let's say that they do.

Do you think 2880 houses will be enough to meet demand? No, especially on a server like Balmung, you should know this already.
So when do we get more wards? another year down the road from that point on? so that would be near the end of 2016 or after 2017, Realistically speaking, at the rate we're going with this housing issue, in 2 years, we may be looking at ~4000 houses per server.

In two years, and even 4000 isn't enough to meet demand for a server of 30000 players.



Upkeep nor automatic relinquishment will never be the silver bullet, nobody's suggesting that it is, but with the current situation, it's one of the only few things that can make houses rotate ownership.
There are many things that need to be done.

Let's just say, supply is fixed. All we can do to alleviate the problem is to shift the demand.

1. House sharing: If SE implements house sharing, like they announced ages ago, this would drastically cut down the demand for housing, especially if they allow friends to also share houses instead of just eternal bonded.

2. Upkeep/Relinquishment: This is needed to check for the people who have houses, but just let it sit without using it. If houses were unlimited, sure I don't care if somebody makes an empty dirt lot out of it, but it isn't.. So if you buy a house, you better make some good use of it.

3. House trading: Currently, there are many homeowners who bought a house, but aren't doing much with it, these people aren't inactive, they just don't have much interest in the housing itself other than the initial curiosity.. Now, do these people just relinquish a house at a loss? No, These people need a way out, let people trade houses and they can make their money back. I was one of those people with my personal house, I left it as a shell of a house for about 3 months until I decided to give it to a friend of mine, she takes way better care of it than I do, it's all furnished now too.

4. More wards: Nobody that's advocating any of the above are against adding more wards, that is on SE's part, but we've seen the rate at which they deliver, if you already have a house, you may not care that it'll take 2 years for them to finally add a decent amount of new wards, but I do. When I'm starting to see more and more dead houses around me, that takes away a lot from the idea of owning a home in the Lavender Beds, there are very few neighbors.. As HW hits and there are contents gated behind having houses, this will become even more important..


Hopefully with HW, it'll show like a launch deck on the yard, so we can tell which houses have an airship and which do not.. I'm betting that it'll be like 3, 4 houses on each ward that'll have this, and rest will be dead.. More people need to realize how dead the housing wards are in this game, it is absolutely absurd that veteran players can keep a house without having put any new work into it for the past year and more into it just because they played before other people? Why do people think they're more entitled to a feature in the game than others? If you like the housing, and you use it regularly, you'll find a way to keep it.. If you don't, you'll just lose it simple as that. Unfair you say? Well, with something as limited as housing is in this game, I think we're past the point of what's fair.

Fair is a mathematical impossibility at this point, no?

If you had 1500 servings of food for a group of 20000 people, there's no fair way to distribute it, but it also wouldn't make sense to serve the same 1500 people everyday and let the 18500 starve. If you ask me, that's way more unfair.

[StouterTaru]

If a system is ever implement to take away housing from inactive characters you'll be surprised how many people come out of the woodwork to protect their investment.

That right there is enough to make it worth doing, so the housing districts can see some activity.

[Madjames]

Your wrong OP. Ultima Onine did this same thing and it continued and still continues to open housing plots for subscribers as to make SURE that there is always housing available to SUBSCRIBERS. I have been playing MMORPGS since september 1997. For the past 18 years STRAIGHT I have had a subscription going, and not ONE MONTH was missed by me paying. I paid when I was on vacation for 3 weeks, when I was on business trips, when I am at work, when I am sleeping, ANYTHING. I was 10 when I started and if you or anyone else can not afford the $15 a month as an ADULT when a 10 year old kid can, has, and continues to pay for his sub and for the past 10 years has been paying $30 a month for him and HIS WIFE's account, then you have a huge problem in your life and probably shouldn't be playing the game in the first place.

Call me harsh or unfair but that is life, deal with it.

[Dualblade]

I would say that anyone who hasn't had a house built on a plot in 30 days should have it relinquished (whether they should get the their gil back being anothing matter, assuming they would get it back.), mostly because if you have enough money to buy the plot, you SHOULD already have enough to build on it too, yet seen quite a few plots that go without houses for months.

[Krylo]

Snip

While it kinda bothers me that I can't buy a house, it bothers me infinitely more than a lot of the plots owned aren't actually being used by anyone/anything. It'd sit a lot more easily with me if I knew every house actually belonged to an active subscriber and wasn't just sitting there on a shut down account or bought by somebody's alt they don't play anymore, or whatever.

[Alberel]

For the record I'm saying this as the owner of a private house on Phoenix where there are no longer any available plots in any wards.

OP I know of multiple FCs that bought houses immediately after housing was released, only for the FC to disband since. Those houses are now sitting unused belonging to a random unsubscribed player that ended up leader of the FC after everyone else left. I know of dozens of cases like this on Phoenix alone and that's not even starting to think of the private house owners that have since quit.

There are hundreds of houses that are sitting in the hands of players or FC leaders that have no intention of ever playing again and you say nothing should be done about it?

We desperately need a solution to free up these plots that will otherwise sit abandoned for the rest of the game's lifespan. I'm sorry if you or others are terrified of losing a house due to some circumstance in your lives leaving you unsure if you will be able to maintain ownership of one but if that is the case then the simple truth is that there are others more deserving of a house. It might sound harsh but when space is so severely limited we simply cannot allow for inactive players to retain ownership of a house because it is ridiculously unfair on those that are active but unable to buy one. It really is that simple.