Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[Derio]

Yes no more of people taking 2 month breaks for a patch I guess. They will lose their house. Glad this is finally being implemented.

[Fyce]

Also, to the person who said 1.8% wasn't an accurate number because it didn't include FCs... uh, yeah. That actually works in SE's favor. If we include FCs, the number will go lower, not higher. So yes, it's not taking FCs into account, but if we took FCs into account it would probably be around 1% of the total subscribers that own a personal home. Take the benefit of the doubt on this one.

My FC provides a house to 37 players. So, a single house plot is giving the benefits of housing to 37 people.

Why would you exclude that fact and only take individual housing into account? You are basically saying that only individual houses counts as "housing". It doesn't make any sense.


Besides, these (inaccurate) numbers can very much be used as "so it only impacts a very small part of the community. Meh. Not a big deal."

[MistakeNot]

They could have added instanced housing plots.

They could have added apartments in the city states.

They could have done what LOTRO did and create an expanded system of plots that would actually function in a way where everyone will get one.

LOTRO did have severe problems with the more populated servers running out of free houses until they introduced a similar model where people could lose their house if they did not pay the upkeep.
After introducing that (and waiting the required number of days) a lot of houses became available again.

[Krylo]

The 1.8% number people keep tossing about assumes a few things that are patently untrue.

1: 100% of the player base can even afford housing. What's the percent that can? 10%? 50%? If 1.8% of the playerbase can get homes but only 10% can afford it, for instance, that means we'd 'only' need 5x the current housing to meet needs. If, on the other hand, 50% can afford it, you'd need 25x. And, of course, if only 2% can, well that's only 1.1x the housing needed.

2: 100% of the player base WANTS personal housing. Personal housing isn't that big of a deal. It's a status symbol that does very little for you--many of the people annoyed at the dearth of housing want FC housing so they can participate in airship building/ventures. For most of the player base a personal room is plenty. So what if 1.8% of the player base can have homes, 10% can afford it, and of those 10%, 90% only want FC housing? That means only 1% of the player base would need personal housing. It has a huge effect on demand.

3: That all the housing bought is personal. Feeding into the point above, if the average FC size is, say 20, if even half the 1.8% (.9% of housing) was purchased as FC housing, that effectively provides housing to 18% of the player base, not 1.8%. If the average FC size is 50, that's 45% of the player base. Etc. etc.

4: That nothing else will be done. More housing wards have been announced, as needed. However, removing inactive housing is necessary in order to make this a plausible solution to ever meeting demands. Further, doing this allows them to know how many wards they actually need. How many people are getting just FC housing, how many are getting personal, what percent of the player base actually ends up with access to personal rooms and airships, how much of the player base does each house actually, on average, house, and what percent of the people this doesn't serve could afford a house otherwise, and how often do houses get demolished (i.e. what's the churn rate)? Knowing all of these things will allow Square to know how many more wards they need to add to the game to create healthy housing churn, and an actual market that allows everyone to have a chance at housing while allowing it to maintain its status as something not EVERYONE can own.

It's an important first step to fixing things, and there's no way--short of completely tearing down the current system and rebuilding it from the ground up as something much less robust and social--to fix without doing this.

I'm not sure why there's even any issue with it, unless you have a house and regularly unsubscribe for months on end. In which case, congratulations, you're part of the problem.

[LineageRazor]

This was a much-needed change, and I'm glad SE is finally doing it. It won't completely solve the housing problem, but it's something that was long overdue, nonetheless!

There are people who quit the game, after all, and having their house lie abandoned when others could make use of it is a terrible waste. I'm a little leery at the whole "must access" thing, though for reasons others have stated, such as military personel on deployment who might be happy to maintain their sub but simply have no way to access their hosue until they return home. I hope that SE provides some method for these individuals to keep their house.

Even so, I'm glad to know that my ward will never become a ghost town full of barren homes. Even if my neighbors jump ship, eventually someone new will move in next door!

[Wings]

I wouldn't imagine a pile of pixels to be on your list of worries if you've got real life sh×t like those going on.

I spent time in the hospital, and looking forward to playing again was one of the things that helped me through.

And how is a broken console/pc more of a worry than being able to play (and maintain your house)? They are quite intricately tied.



I do support a system that vacates the plots of players who have left, however I do not approve of the requirement of needing to go into the house. I also think the timer is too short, but having it tied to subscription rather than going into the house would make it more acceptable. I guess all I can hope for with the timer is that it eventually gets extended after the system has been in place for a while.

[Sir_Hermes]

I really don't understand why everyone is so butt hurt. If you enter your house on the last day of a sub, you can unsubscribe for 44 F'ing days, then, if you don't-- you get 80% of your Gil back... Oh no... -.- this should've put this in place day 1 of housing if they were going to go with this archaic form of housing anyways

[Seryl199]

I'd been loyally subbed since 2.0 beta, and only just recently unsubbed for a month, but would have been considered "inactive" for 2 months. I took this break as a palette cleanser, a chance to enjoy other games and really give myself the luxury of sinking time into something other than FFXIV. I've since come back refreshed, but only after a period of inactivity that would have forfeited my house. Had I taken this break around the new reclamation rules, I'd have had to log in on the last day of my sub just to walk into my house, then resubscribe in no later than 44 days to ensure I kept my house. The point of taking a break is to refresh yourself, not to feel the clock ticking down on your virtual estate's demolition.

I'm glad that people have the chance to get housing from others that have legitimately become inactive. I've vouched for reclamation in the past, as a homeowner, but having experienced just how short 45 days is, I don't think it's an appropriate amount of time to consider for demolition.

[AeraLure]

45 days is too short because it basically enforces you to maintain the monthly subscription. 90 days would have been much more reasonable because you can safely take a month or two off from subscription and still get a lot of use out of your house. The distance between patches and expansions is far too long to enforce a monthly subscription imho.

[MeoTwister5]

Maybe now I'll actually see some of my neighbors about...