Housing abandoned plots, this is needed SE!!! Thank you!

In a game world where there are enough plots for every player and every FC that gets created, I would agree not to take away housing plots form inactive players. But we arent playing in a game that supports this. Taking pots from inactive players is not the best solution but it needs to be done regardless. Very happy they are doing this! I may actually be able to get a house some day!

When they implement their decay system (or w/e they will call it) they really really really need to implement a restriction on how many houses a player can own per account to 1 personal and 1 FC (should they be an FC leader).

There are some FC's on my server that have multiple FC houses by using alts. I actually remember one particular FC on Gilgamesh getting flamed extensively on Reddit for purchasing upwards of 5 properties when housing was first introduced.

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Originally Posted by MsCroc

It's funny because that's exactly the time frame SE originally proposed for house reclaim. I agree that sixth months would be a reasonable time for reclaim, although I would prefer for there to be no reclaim at all. However, I understand at this point that they just have to go down this route due to how crappy the housing servers are.

But they did originally suggest 2 months. And at this point I'm not optimistic about their housing changes not screwing over people, since that has been pretty much consistent ever since housing was introduced.

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Actually the original time was one month (possibly 35 days, the same as FC leadership), and you had to actually step through the door of said house, not just hang out in/use the garden, to prevent the house from being lost. The items from a lost house would be available to be picked up for another two months, apart from those that would be destroyed if picked up. People cried out against that implementation and it was scrapped.

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Originally Posted by Xerius

Because they bought it with the promise that it would not be taken away from them.

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I don't recall any such promise.

In fact, SE has promised just the opposite; it's made quite clear that your account and everything in it do not belong to you, and may be taken away from you at any time for any reason or no reason at all, with no explanation given. It's all in the terms of service. They don't specifically mention housing, but housing is part of your account, so...

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Originally Posted by Wings

Actually the original time was one month (possibly 35 days, the same as FC leadership), and you had to actually step through the door of said house, not just hang out in/use the garden, to prevent the house from being lost. The items from a lost house would be available to be picked up for another two months, apart from those that would be destroyed if picked up. People cried out against that implementation and it was scrapped.

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It's not surprising that folks would react badly to such a draconion policy. I don't think anyone in this thread, even among the most diehard supporters of property decay, feel that that was a fair solution. The problem was, SE didn't compromise - they simply dropped the idea entirely. They need to tailor the plan to some realistic expectations. Not everyone is going to spend a lot of time in their home. For many, a house is a place where you can showcase your accomplishments - it's a place you want OTHER people to have a chance to enter. Not much point in going in yourself - you KNOW what your accomplishments are, and don't need to see them yourself on a day-to-day basis! While that's not the only use for a home, I'll bet it's a common one.

I think 6 months of inactivity is about the right amount of time. Not sure how they can do it, but they should at least try sending an email a few weeks/days to the person who has not logged in telling them they'll lose their house if they don't log in

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Originally Posted by Xerius

Because they bought it with the promise that it would not be taken away from them.

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BS. No such promise is given.

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Originally Posted by Xerius

Because they bought it with the promise that it would not be taken away from them.

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Not really, I recall SE originally planned on making it so that you must enter your house at one every ~35 days; effectively forcing you to be perpetually subscribed or else you'll lose the house. This, understandably, angered players and SE got rid of that plan until they can think of a better solution and will "monitor" the situation.

They never promised that it won't be taken away due to inactivity. They're now considering a way to reclaim abandoned housing.

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Originally Posted by Alexander_Dragonfang

Taking away stuff from players because they are not active anymore is terrible, and doesn`t even fit as a solution, as the words of yoshida himself say, he thinks that is a solution, and is horrible.
All i read there is "Why would we work on our coding or servers if we have this lazy alternative that doesn`t even fix the problem but its ok for a few".

I hope they recosider just like at the first time they did thought of this.

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They should implement a system that allows you to basically put the whole house in storage (a moogle did it). It would remember the whole plot layout, and then free the plot. If nobody's touched the house at all for, I dunno, 3-4 months, then the house gets boxed up, stored and the plot is freed for use.

If your house has been put into storage, then you may put it on any new free plot at greatly reduced cost (Like 2-3% of cost). This would restore the entire house on the new plot. Only works on same sized plots (S/M/L).

This way players get to keep the majority of their investment (most of the land cost, all of the furnishings). They lose the actual location, but this also prevents wards from turning into ghost towns. Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

Bonus, same system could be used to allow players to relocate their house to a new plot (for a fee of course)

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

many furnishings - particularly the "trophy" furnishings created from rare ingredients from difficult accomplishments - can't even be retrieved without destroying them.

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I think if SE is going to implement a feature to reclaim abandoned houses, they first need to change this rule (or at the very least make these reclamations an exception to it, though really it's pretty stupid to have such a rule in the first place). I think most people could accept a housing system in which if you're unsubscribed for 30 days or don't log in for 6 months you lose the house, but get a house voucher and ALL your furnishings kept in escrow for you until you return (including these currently irretrievable ones).

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

I'm guessing, though, that SE's solution won't be this elegant. They will take the easy way out; a timer of some kind, I'm guessing six months. If you're unsubscribed for six months, your house goes "poof". Furnishings lost. No gil reimbursement. Just gone. If you're going to be away from the game for a long time and want to keep your house, you will be required to continue paying for your subscription. It's as simple as that.

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SE's original plan (which got shot down due to a lot of complaining) wasn't even based on whether you had a paid subscription. You would have had to actually enter the house every 30 days or less in order to keep it. Even agreeing that some sort of house plot reclamation is necessary, that version was just way too aggressive.

I've never seen an MMO where every player can't get housing. Heck in Aion, everyone gets a free studio apartment.

Reclaiming houses from unsubbed players is not entirely unexpected, though I would suggest giving the player in question a chance to return. After however long they decide they can be inactive before taking the house give the player say two days of free game time. If they resub after those 2 days they keep the house, if not they lose it. If you just straight up take the house you miss out on a chance to get a returning player.

The reality is simple, even if they take back the houses from inactive players most you still will not get one. If we say 5% of the pop has a house how does that translate into this thread? One out of every twenty people commenting right now MIGHT get a house. The fact of the matter is the system is broken and this won't fix it. You could relinquish 100% of the properties and the same situation still exists. They shouldn't have ANY personal housing in this game at all and if they do it should be 100% instanced. Personal housing is what made the issue worse and FC's should definitely have priority (groups of people) over property than single individuals or couples. Further more you should be allowed to have possess more than one property at any given time.

There is zero evidence that reclaiming houses will fix any issue and furthermore, the mathematical evidence outright shows that it isn't possible to fill 100% of the housing demand. There simply is not enough houses to go around and no matter how you squeeze one end of the balloon it still will only posses the same amount of air.

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Originally Posted by Dante_V

There is zero evidence that reclaiming houses will fix any issue and furthermore, the mathematical evidence outright shows that it isn't possible to fill 100% of the housing demand. There simply is not enough houses to go around and no matter how you squeeze one end of the balloon it still will only posses the same amount of air.

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Pretty sure no one said that this solution will fill 100% of the demand but there is no denying if half of some wards are inactive/banned/un-subbed that it will help get SOME active players/fc's properties. If those players go inactive the decay cycle will continue; it's a recycle system to keep wards from dying out.

What's worse is that this is the new normal. Systems that developers put ZERO thought into, broken and overly complex "solutions" that still don't address the root problem, and half the playerbase cheering SE on because they just love to see someone lose something. It's so... just petty. There's way too much bullying behavior on the internet these days. There are solutions that don't involve anyone losing something (visit the housing forums and pretty much any thread for a boatload of examples). Those are the solutions that the playerbase should be interested in.

The fact that XI got this right from the beginning, and after years XIV's team can't even patch together a working system that everyone can use is just laughable. It's ridiculous. It's wholly unprofessional.

I've given up entirely on housing. It's not worth the stress. While I'd love to have some form of it, I realize that my casual nature (I can't spam the servers the second they come up just to snatch a plot) precludes me from ever using player housing in this game.

I, for one, would be happy with an aggressive policy that requires entrance to the house every 90 days or so to keep it active.

As it is, and as it will be, housing is a very limited resource in this MMO. They will inevitably cause more harm than good if they allow it to stagnate any further and exclude newer players.

Constantly revolving newer players is what keeps a themepark MMO alive, when you restrict newer players from accessing all content, you will see diminishing returns every patch and expansion cycle.

I dont agree with their plans.

But se usually does thinngs backwards and in such small scale when it benefits players that Im not toally suprised.

No matter how many are freed up it wont even be close to covering the amount of homes still needed/server.
Its nothing more then a bandaid and one of those cheap dollar store, bargain bin bandaids to boot. (the ones that never work well)

The entire housing needs rework, many many have given pages of good ideas for instanced housing to make certain ALL players can participate at the same time...but as usual it falls on deaf ears.

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Originally Posted by m3eansean

Constantly revolving newer players is what keeps a themepark MMO alive, when you restrict newer players from accessing all content, you will see diminishing returns every patch and expansion cycle.

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This won't solve that problem. Mathematically, there aren't enough houses to go around, period. There never were. Players aren't restricted from the content solely because of abandoned houses, though that is certainly a part of it. They are restricted from the content because it is a terrible design to begin with and never had ANY hope of serving the entire playerbase.

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Originally Posted by Syrehn

Pretty sure no one said that this solution will fill 100% of the demand but there is no denying if half of some wards are inactive/banned/un-subbed that it will help get SOME active players/fc's properties. If those players go inactive the decay cycle will continue; it's a recycle system to keep wards from dying out.

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Originally Posted by LunaHoshino

Sorry, but if you're not playing, you're not playing, and you shouldn't be able to hog a limited resource that could be used by other active players. Otherwise you could end up with literally dozens of abandoned houses just sitting around because the players who owned them quit the game, which would mean that either the devs would have to keep adding more and more housing plots to keep up with the demand by new players who would also like to have houses or say "tough luck" to those new players because the available housing has been taken up by people who aren't even playing anymore.

No, I think it's perfectly fair for houses to be reclaimed if the owner has unsubbed or hasn't logged in for a certain amount of time (probably at least three months).

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I totally agree and have a little story to share that upsets me pretty much since I found out:
I left a guild with a couple of other players to start our own bc of some drama. The leader quit playing, the co-leader was also fed up of the drama and also left the fc to join a friend (I told him to sell the house before leaving and enjoy the gil but he just wanted to have peace and leave). His alt got the lead, then an other friend, who later left with his gf for a guild he was before. Not a single active player left in the fc, everyone gets to be the leader for 30 days untill the sytem degrades them and it rotates on and on.
It's insane and deeply upsetting no one ever sold that plot and it's insane the system allows ghost guilds to exist when me and my firends are saving gil since then for an own house. No house for active players but one for inactive?

It certainly won't fix the whole problem but I do think it IS a part of the solution

Folks are correct that degrading properties will not solve the housing shortage problem, as there will still be far too few plots to go around. This is true. It will help, certainly, but there's still going to be not nearly enough plots to give a house to everyone who can afford one.

Regardless, even if we had so many plots that everyone COULD get a house, I would STILL argue that a degredation system would be worth having. I don't want to see districts becoming ghost towns because the house owners there quit the game and left their immortal homes behind. I don't want to wind up in a situation where every house around mine is abandoned. If my neighbor leaves the game, I want to see his house vanish and the plot picked up by a newcomer.

If SE adds a hundred new districts, or a thousand, and districts 1-7 over time become a graveyard of empty homes due to the natural cycle of folks coming and going from the game, I'd say that's a tragic thing. SE designed the housing system to be open and explorable rather than instanced precisely because they wanted players to have the opportunity to stroll along the residential streets admiring the homes their fellow players have built up. They wanted thriving neighborhoods where players could meet their neighbors and perhaps form new friendships. Whether these goals were met is debatable, but I'd certianly consider it to be a letdown to find that your neighbor hasn't logged in for six years, and you'll never have a living neighbor again...

So, yeah, whether or not it solves, or even significantly helps, the housing shortage, abandoned homes SHOULD be relinquished. It's just a matter of deciding how long to wait before considering a home abandoned.

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Originally Posted by Madjames

and your friend should lose his house, sorry

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I agree he should lose it! I'm Houseless!

There are several things SE needs or could do to fix up the housing system. Not just having a abandoned housing system that works on a long timer. It's going to take a bit more than that to get the loud ones to pipe down.

SE just needs to give everyone customizeable Inn room. I would bet the majority of those complaining would be content if they could have something to customize and call their own. Let players get it early on with maybe something tied to the story as you progress. Similar to how retainers were given to us. Those Inn rooms could have a smaller item allotment of like 25 or so since it is a free item. Then let the next step up be the personal rooms for being apart of a FC. Then after that a personal house or a FC building.

Then for the actually ward housing plots. Those are things that need to stay limited. Having a big and awesome house should be a privilege to show off and not a right. Each server already has 1440 houses between the 3 ARR city-states. Then if some sort of Ishgard housing area if not something around the Sharlayan area since dragons and being assholes. (Oh hey look our new hou- *System Notice: Your house has been burned down by a Dragon attack*...) Anyways, with 4 housing areas that would bring us up to 1920 plots. That's already a pretty sizeable number before you add the potential 4th area.

But the real issue is the items tied to the housing plots. One being the Chocobo stables for many players that I've seen complain about housing. They want to dye their Chocobo or stable them and feed our favorite yellow fluff balls food. Why not let some of the open world stables accommodate this? For instance there is a big stable in Bentbranch in Central Shroud. There is even a series of quest you go through around those early levels. Why not after completing those quest have them open up their stables to be used to the same way the current housing stables are?

Then for gardening...Well I got nothing since it's sorta dead right now. Archeage style open world planting and harvesting was fun but I don't see it fitting with this game. Perhaps maybe their idea of public gardening plots?

All in all it's going to take a few changes to several portions of the current system to better help accommodate its popularity.

I'm already in a fc with a house its a big house wer active everyday. I saw a big house owned by a 1 person fc it wasn't active. This system is needed. And there's no point in owning private homes.

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Originally Posted by sydh

-Snip to conserve space-

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IF we can access all the features that are locked behind housing through an inn room or other outside ways, then I might be ok. But it still doesn't solve the problem new FC's will have trying to find a plot for their company so they can participate in the Airship Content unless that too will be accessible outside of the housing system. I do remember talk about accessing chocobo stable functions through the Chocobo Stables (the ones in Bentbranch i think?) then it would just leave gardening. Maybe with a 4 square garden pot you can put in your inn, but at that point, just instance personal housing? Why was it ever thought that FC and Personal homes needed to be in a shared, limited, environment...

TL;DR

If they can instance an Inn room so EVERY PLAYER CAN HAVE THEIR OWN, then they can instance personal housing plots that we can build, upgrade, and customize.

There have been lots of good discussion in this thread about pretty much everything brought up here. Feel free to brows through for some really good suggestions.

Seems to be that if a sub is no longer being paid, the plot should no longer be ownable by that person. To give space for 'gaps of circumstance', make it occur after either 30 or 60 days of not being subscribed.

That... or make housing instanced to a degree where there is one plot out there for every character made on a server... auto given to people... much as Wildstar does it. Then you don't need to worry about this.

A third option... make it cost $1/month on your sub fee to have a housing plot. A tiny insignificant number - but one that will set a gap between those willing and those not - and will get people who leave the game to give up their plots ASAP.

Hmm I guess I wouldn't have a problem losing my house after 1 year of inactivity. After echo was put into fcob I quit instantly and didn't come back until there was something to do --->expansion. It was a break of months....there was litterally nothing that I wanted to do in the game, yet I was not quit.

So yh, a year is ok imo.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

You seem to be assuming that it's the same people crying both ways. They aren't. The community isn't a hive mind, some people feel one way, others feel another.

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I'm glad someone said this. I think it's good to keep perspective that players are all different from one another. I think failing to consider different perspectives is why this issue is a debate.

It seems clear to me that a lot of players want housing and can't get it. These players are justifiably upset that house plots are taken up by players who aren't really using them (they're not playing). On the other hand, player who have housing would like to be able to take breaks from the game and know they can come back to the character, items, and house that they've heavily invested in.

I actually do think it's possible to appease both sets of players somewhat. SE could have a system where players who are unsubbed for X amount of time relinquish their land and I think that as long as the amount of time allowed for reasonable breaks people would be okay with it. I'm thinking that it should be at least 3 months, maybe even 6, and definitely not over a year.

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Originally Posted by Syrehn

I'm on the fence about restricting it to un-subbed players only. The reason being because SE never implemented a limit on how many houses an account could own. So if a scumbag player has 4 alts that are inactive for extended periods of time and they are all house squatting but play their main character (active sub) I don't believe those houses should be held in limbo from other players.

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I think it definitely needs to be restricted to unsubbed players only. Things can happen that prevent a person from playing but if they're paying their sub they clearly still intend to play in the future. The sub money is the first priority for a company like SE and it doesn't make sense to alienate someone who will continue to pay.

The second point I want to make about your post is that it's hard to make a distinction between the "scumbag" player you describe and someone who just enjoys having alts and occasionally playing the game with them. It's really hard to devote time to alts but alts provide a change of pace now and then; I don't think players should be penalized for having them. Besides, how would you make a system not based on subs? If you based it on activity, that player just logs on with his/her alts once per day/week/month/whatever.

Your point does touch on an interesting issue that deserves to be addressed though: why would someone want to own multiple houses? I personally think it's about the gardening. Gardening was (is?) a very low-effort way of making quite a lot of gil. Maybe that's something SE should address to cut down on the "scumbag" players. They could:

1) Allow players to garden within an inn or FC room.
2) Reduce the demand on crops obtained only from gardening.
3) Increase the supply of crops obtained only from gardening.

Then players won't buy a house just to make gil, they'll buy a house because the vanity aspect appeals to them. I haven't been inside of or placed a single furnishing within my personal house; I bought my house almost entirely to have access to the self-sufficiency and the profits of gardening.

Remember when small houses were only one floor? And when people bought them up and decorated them (somewhat)? Yeah, on Balmung all those said houses in the first few wards are STILL sitting with vacant basements. Something really DOES have to be done. I don't think it should only be a month though. I mean, you could be hospitalized or something and unable to play. But from the 3 month mark? Maybe... the 6 month mark? Definitely. A year and beyond? Come on... let's free up some server space for paying customers.

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Originally Posted by Purrfectstorm

The second point I want to make about your post is that it's hard to make a distinction between the "scumbag" player you describe and someone who just enjoys having alts and occasionally playing the game with them. It's really hard to devote time to alts but alts provide a change of pace now and then; I don't think players should be penalized for having them. Besides, how would you make a system not based on subs? If you based it on activity, that player just logs on with his/her alts once per day/week/month/whatever.

Your point does touch on an interesting issue that deserves to be addressed though: why would someone want to own multiple houses? I personally think it's about the gardening. Gardening was (is?) a very low-effort way of making quite a lot of gil.

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Scumbag might have been a bit strong... >.> <.<

Gardening was a very hot commodity when housing first launched and greatly contributed to alt FC's picking up multiple housing plots (which was sort of scummy to other homeless FC's imo); it's likely still a factor though not as big as it once was. Greed and epeen status is another reason.

I don't personally think anyone's alt character or FC should be holding additional housing space and a viable solution would be to implement something like 1 personal house per account per server.

I'd also like to see a restriction for future plots that keep M/L houses for FC purchase only; individuals really don't need that much space all to themselves.

Inactive, Should be not paying.


If I log on or not, but have a monthy sub I am an active account.

Didn't realize there was a thread already. It's good to know they are working on it.

I agree with, at minimum, a customizable Inn room. Basically to, as said earlier, open up some of the content to people without houses.

There's really no reason to not do this.

As someone that has an L personal house, I say go for it. If I quit, I quit. It's my decision and any consequences that come of it are part of that decision. If I come back after quitting, then oh well? If anything, I'd like to have the ability to forfeit/relinquish ownership to a friend or something. That'd be nice. Essentially a will before the "big sleep" of cancelling your account/character(s). Rules would obviously still apply if said friend quit or doesn't log in for a long period as well.

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Originally Posted by MageBlack

not sure if it was already said but they also need to limit the amount of plots a person can own to ONE. Same for FC's

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A FC can only own one. An individual character can only own one. Any "extras" were purchased by the extremely rich who had millions of gil on their alts, who have for the most part sold those plots on their alts for many many more millions in profit.

My FC owns a mansion, but I and one other person in our FC own a cottage. We throw parties at them so they do get used by the FC (we call them "vacation homes.")

I was thinking about what i read and the question of where to draw the line for inactivity.

I think it would be best to give maybe 3 month of inactivity before freeing the plot.

Also the way in it is freed, i would like to recommend that after a fixed delay, a land is open to be "bumped". Meaning someone with 2m can walk up to a lot flagged as inactive and bump the owner for ownership. This would allow a rotation and people could get lucky and come back to their estate.

How do you define inactive in the case of a free company?

EDIT: The reason i got a medium plot is there was no more small plots left. I intend to remain active for a while and i would not like to be thrown out of my house so med/large plots can be reserved for fcs.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Regardless, even if we had so many plots that everyone COULD get a house, I would STILL argue that a degredation system would be worth having. I don't want to see districts becoming ghost towns because the house owners there quit the game and left their immortal homes behind. I don't want to wind up in a situation where every house around mine is abandoned. If my neighbor leaves the game, I want to see his house vanish and the plot picked up by a newcomer.

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There's a plot down the road from my FC house that has been an empty lot for months now. Someone bought it and never did anything with it, and they haven't logged in at all since before HW dropped. It's just been sitting there as an empty lot galling all of us because... well, it's an empty lot. We would like to have some actual neighbors instead of nothing.

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Originally Posted by Train88

IEDIT: The reason i got a medium plot is there was no more small plots left. I intend to remain active for a while and i would not like to be thrown out of my house so med/large plots can be reserved for fcs.

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I wouldn't suggest throwing the current owners of M/L personal houses out of their plots. Just make future M/L available to FC's only; anyone who got in prior to that change would be the lucky few (unless they got inactivity bumped out).

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Originally Posted by Aeliott

snip[/i].

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Things bought by players should never be taken away, irregardless of how long inactive. So yes, I do think your example of a player gone for a year is fair. What they need to do is not make housing a limited resource to begin with.

On my server Zalera a single FC owns 8 FC houses all are owned by one person using his alts. So, with his personals he has a total of 9-10. This has also caused mob rule as the FC is just buying everyone out boasting 1.6k members on the smallest server he will not allow his members to help many other fcs at all and will have his masses harass people til they quit the game if he doesn't like the person so now he can control the entire server via their "mob rule" and they have been. What is going to be done about this because it is ruining an entire server. This has been ongoing and anyone on the server knows about it and is very upset.

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Originally Posted by AtomsK23

On my server Zalera a single FC owns 8 FC houses all are owned by one person using his alts. So, with his personals he has a total of 9-10. This has also caused mob rule as the FC is just buying everyone out boasting 1.6k members on the smallest server he will not allow his members to help many other fcs at all and will have his masses harass people til they quit the game if he doesn't like the person so now he can control the entire server via their "mob rule" and they have been. What is going to be done about this because it is ruining an entire server. This has been ongoing and anyone on the server knows about it and is very upset.

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What a total scumbag class.

I have had good friends banished by them and forced to quit by the endless assaults by so many people, also they will shut you down on the MB to ensure you quit.