Please, make auto-demolition 90-120 days. It's time.

I get the whole keeping the houses for those who are actually active but... why is there still a time limit to retrieve the furniture and the gil from the auto-demolished houses? Whose spot am I even taking if I lose ownership of the plot???

I would care a lot, lot less about auto-demolition if I can get my money and furniture back when I return, whether it's less than 75 days after last login or more than 2 years. And, while I'm not programming savvy, I don't see how would just letting the NPC hold the items and the gil indefinitely be a complicated task compared to creating private housing or doing a whole do-over to the system. Then again, we're talking about a company whose glamour system and plates are riddled with limitations.

I'd rather they just remove it entirely and, instead, fix their stupid "spaghetti code" so that everyone can have a house.

It's not right that we are basically being extorted into continuing to give them money just so we don't lose our houses that we had to spend ages getting.

Same with the lack of in-game storage necessitating paying them for extra retainers. They need to stop intentionally creating problems and then selling us the solutions.

I'm all for the removal of the demolition timer, but if they keep it, I feel it should be aligned on the patch scheldule. So 3.5 to 4 month (add one month of sub, go to 4.5 to 5 month, which is the current patch scheldule).

If you pretend that people should go play other game, and come when there is new content, it would make sense. People that continue to come for every patch can keep their houses, those who don't loose theirs.

But we all know that when they say "Go play other games", the fine print say "while still paying your sub".

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Originally Posted by missTori

At least if it last 90 days for each patch you can keep your house. They aren't giving us enough content to sub monthly. I sub every other month or not afraid to lose my house since there's a THING now which lets me save my house layout as a file.

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That may work for you but having mansions means you have to stay subbed since mansions are the hardest to get as personal plots. Thankfully I have two mains essentially, so I have double the things to do but that doesn't apply to the majority of the players though.

The way to actually solve the limited housing issue isn't to increase the length of the autodemo timer. It's to EITHER move to instanced housing, or to impose property tax (compounding for each property owned by the account). Extending the timer for people who don't even want to play the game is remarkably selfish.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

The way to actually solve the limited housing issue isn't to increase the length of the autodemo timer. It's to EITHER move to instanced housing, or to impose property tax (compounding for each property owned by the account). Extending the timer for people who don't even want to play the game is remarkably selfish.

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Property tax idea is interesting, but would have to be steep given the excess of gil in the game. For FC houses it would need to be massive due to submarines.

How many total houses are there in the game? Would limiting multi-ownership solve the current problem?

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Property tax idea is interesting, but would have to be steep given the excess of gil in the game. For FC houses it would need to be massive due to submarines.

How many total houses are there in the game? Would limiting multi-ownership solve the current problem?

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Personally I'd do two things for that. 1: remove the jewellery from submarine ventures and 2: exponential tax based on total properties owned. Monthly property tax begins at 10% of max purchase price (which means a mansion owner is paying 5 mil a month to keep their mansion), but owning more than 1 house/1 FC house (per account) increases it to 100% for all properties, then 1000% at 3 or more houses. Someone could own 2 houses if they make a decent amount of gil, and I think that's a realistic and acceptable goal for someone to have if they play the game a lot. However at 3 houses a player would at the very least be paying 90 million gil a month to keep those properties.

This may seem harsh or it might not seem harsh enough. After all wouldn't limiting housing to 1 per account be better? I think that if someone really loves decorating and wants to own more than 1 house, they should be afforded the opportunity, and realistically few people are going to bother with owning 3 or more. What will also happen is that people who don't particularly care about houses will realize they don't want to spend monthly gil on something they never use. There are a lot of people who hold on to a house they never use because there's no in-game commitment past the initial purchase. This also shrinks the supply of available homes. There's also a pleasing psychological effect. Currently, a person who owns 3 medium houses is paying the same money for their subscription as someone just starting the game. Implement the increasing tax and at least you know the person is shelling out 480 million gil a month to keep their places.

Of course, I also think it'd be a lot nicer if everyone just got their own instanced place but if they're keen on sticking with neighborhoods then tying ownership to an active sub, no matter how many properties you own, will encourage grabbing as many as possible.

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Originally Posted by hydralus

The way to actually solve the limited housing issue isn't to increase the length of the autodemo timer. It's to EITHER move to instanced housing, or to impose property tax (compounding for each property owned by the account). Extending the timer for people who don't even want to play the game is remarkably selfish.

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It's not that I and others don't WANT to play the game. We DO want to play it. A lot of us are heavily invested in this game and have been for years. We don't want to quit. We want the game to improve and for the devs to stop giving us crap stories and content. And they're never gonna improve anything while a huge swath of the player base is effectively being extorted into paying their monthly sub so they don't lose their house. The ONLY thing that corporations hear is money, and as long as money is still flowing in, they have no incentive to do anything to improve the game.

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Originally Posted by IndraSyngiwyb

It's not that I and others don't WANT to play the game. We DO want to play it. A lot of us are heavily invested in this game and have been for years. We don't want to quit. We want the game to improve and for the devs to stop giving us crap stories and content. And they're never gonna improve anything while a huge swath of the player base is effectively being extorted into paying their monthly sub so they don't lose their house. The ONLY thing that corporations hear is money, and as long as money is still flowing in, they have no incentive to do anything to improve the game.

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Well, asking a company to hurt their own bottom line is definitely something you can do (while at the same time doing nothing but hurting the limited housing the game has), but I don't think it'll catch on. I'd also say that buying a house knowing it'll go away if you stop paying your sub, and acting like the company is extorting you because of it, is pretty wild.

As for the rest of the statement, the story content of the game has always been pretty weak. 45 minutes of story every 3-4 months is hardly a reason to stay subbed and it's been like that since ARR. That leaves the rest of the content. Again, it's been about the same as it has in prior years. So I guess what I'm getting at is what exactly is different now? What were you doing from 6.1 to 6.2?

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Originally Posted by hydralus

Well, asking a company to hurt their own bottom line is definitely something you can do (while at the same time doing nothing but hurting the limited housing the game has), but I don't think it'll catch on. I'd also say that buying a house knowing it'll go away if you stop paying your sub, and acting like the company is extorting you because of it, is pretty wild.

As for the rest of the statement, the story content of the game has always been pretty weak. 45 minutes of story every 3-4 months is hardly a reason to stay subbed and it's been like that since ARR. That leaves the rest of the content. Again, it's been about the same as it has in prior years. So I guess what I'm getting at is what exactly is different now? What were you doing from 6.1 to 6.2?

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Yes, when I bought the house, I knew it would get demolished if I unsubbed and logged out for too long. But when I (and many others I wager) bought the house, I still trusted the dev team to keep making a good game. Even if there were some low points, I still believed they could make a good story and interesting content.

Now, they have delivered the exact opposite. Dawntrail's story was terrible. The role quests were crap. The dungeons and raids have been utterly uninteresting and unappealing. And the graphical "update" actually made every NPC and my WoLs look about a zillion times worse. If ONE of these things were true but everything else was fine, we wouldn't be having this conversation because I'd have *something* to hold onto as a reason to keep paying my sub.

But right now, the only reason I have to keep paying is the house. That's not right. Especially with Yoshi-P doing his, "Go play other games" schtick. How are we meant to do that if they actively punish us for doing it by taking away the housing they've intentionally made scarce?

You asked what the difference was? During the previous expansions, the story, the side content, etc. All of it was simply written better. Did it have its issues? Yeah. But even at its lowest points (i.e. The Gyr Abania half of StB and most of the EW patches), it was still LEAGUES better than the Disney-esque, corporate slop we were given in Dawntrail.

And when you have such a colossal drop in quality, you should expect people's trust to be shaken and for them to maybe want to back off for a little bit until you do something to prove you can actually do better.

But when you refuse to change a system that effectively prevents your most loyal customers from expressing their discontent in the ONLY way that actually leads to real change (i.e. cutting into the bottom line), you only further erode that trust.