The only things that are twisted here are the words by the original posters themselves. Some horrible stuff has been said indeed.
Getting into the slippery slope arena here...
By this logic, anyone who has unsubbed or been inactive for 45 days can rightfully have their character deleted to reclaim resources for new character creation on a locked server.
Technically, we are not entitled to any virtual asset in this game. Read the terms of your agreement if you believe differently.
This is not a proper solution for the housing shortage. This is more like Eminent Domain run amuck because they can't/won't use the resources necessary to implement a better design to properly accommodate the demand for housing plots.
Except the whole thing about 'cancer patients shouldn't care about their house' was completely taken out of proportion by the OP. The point was that if a player is ill to a certain extent, there are ways to log in and save the house. If a player is beyond that, and in a state where they can't even ask anyone to log in for them, their house would be the least of their concern. This is coming from a person who is sick themselves and has been in similar situations.
I agree with you. It's a ridiculous way to 'fix' the housing shortage. But my entire point is that people shouldn't be bringing illness and other aspects into this just because they don't agree with the 45 day time frame. If people are going to bring those aspects into argument they will get argument back.
The problem came from trying to debate the issue in the scope of an entitlement. That implies an inherent right to the virtual asset....which does not exist for this service.
Once you start to argue using entitlement as an argument, there can be no winner when everyone feels they have an exclusive right. Doesn't matter if it is truly a right or just feels like it should be. You've devolved the debate purely into the emotional arena, and logic flies out the window.
Common sense should prevail....somewhere...but everyone's judgement becomes clouded by the emotional aspects and things just spiral out of control from that point.
I just don't feel players should be using it as argument to want the time frame extended. Apologies if I'm very defensive and argumentative over this, but if players simply want a longer time frame, they don't have to bring arguments like this into it when it's already being taken widely out of proportion.
Edit: @Kyros, I think the housing system needs to be redesigned altogether. I admit I've taken this a little too on the emotional side, but people needed realise that were not saying 'people that are sick deserve to have their houses demolished' but that it's not difficult to stop it from happening.
Either way, whatever people's opinions on the whole subject, people can't argue that the housing system isn't great right now. It's not going to solve anything in the long term and it does need a proper fix.
Again, apologies if anyone has misread anything I've said, however my intention was not to claim people deserve their houses demolished if they are unable to log in, but the fact it can easily be stopped unless players are completely unable to play in the first place.
Kind of thinking all the FCs who are qualified to own a lot but cannot will be very hopeful that they can finally get a place. But they damned well better be standing on the placard of their prospective purchase the moment we can log back in after 3.1 patch, otherwise all the 'personal house' hopefuls will once again steal all the lots.
On Sargatanas alone there are well over 200 qualified homeless FCs and well over 60% of the current 1440 are owned by PERSONAL owners. SE should never have opened the wards to personal housing because so many FCs are losing out on all the benefits involved in ownership.
Per your reasoning then players who play have no more entitlement than players that are still subscribed but are not currently playing.
It's kind of a ridiculous argument to minimize the importance of outside factors while greatly exaggerating the importance of in-game ones.
I didn't even bring cancer patients here to begin with, but the people saying stuff like "Oh if you have cancer treatment then its ok to lose your house" need a reality check, and probably take a serious Psycopathy test (Because it takes some serious lack of empathy to say that).
Besides, I didn't say any of those. I simply don't like having THE biggest investment on a timer, simply because SE can't be arsed to do their job properly. Nothing in this game works like that, and it's quite frankly a ridiculous timer. It feels like this:
http://i.imgur.com/UpdYkVI.jpg
If we're going to go about "Limted Resources", why not Server space like someone mentioned? Have your character removed from a congested server to make space. Heck, for a more real example: Names. Most companies will swipe off unused names after a certain amount of time, but this time usually goes for >years<. Tera used a year, and League goes from 6 months to 2 and a Half years depending on how much you played.
This is why this time frame is ridiculous. Losing your house and getting about 30% worth of items back in 2 months (Or none, if you take 3), when compared to things like losing your name (Which is basically a free deal) really put things into perspective.
MY greed?! What the hell? How is it MY greed?! I don't want a personal house, never did, never will.
You guys are the ones who are greedy and want to just ditch the game while taking up resources others could utilize better.
And you wouldn't be able to log in for 2 minutes from a friend, or from an Internet cafe? Don't make me laugh.
And even if they did give more wiggle room, you guys would STILL complain, the only reason 90 is being suggested is because 45 was give, if 90 was give, you would be crying you want 180, I know your kind very well.
Ok, I have not read the whole cancer patient discussion and I am not planning to. Here are my 2 cents on this:
SE is a company, they can only consider so much. Make the time frame 90 days? Who says you will be able to log in within that time? So the time frame will ALWAYS be too short for someone. They had to draw a line and I think 45 days is very reasonable. There are enough games that will delete your character if you do not log for 30 days. In this case, all you lose is a virtual house that you have the possibility to get 80% of it's value and most furny back.
I'm sorry but that is how it is, they can't possibly please everyone. If you take a break/quit the game for 45 days, your value for the company drops in comparison to a person that is currently paying their sub. Even if you keep paying, you are not adding any vlue to the game as you are not playing.
As for entitlement, I am pretty sure it states somewhere in the ToS that all characters and all items in game belong to SE. Therefore, your house is actually theirs. Just deal with it and plan ahead if you want to make sure to block a housing slot that could be used properly by someone else.
That being said, I don't care if my house is visible to others, give us instanced housing so none of this is necessary.
Thank you!
Really? 3 months is way to long to have an inactive house just cause you didn't want to log on, that's 1/4 of a year. 45 makes more sense, a player who wants to play will be logged at least 9-10 months of the year so if they don't play a month, they have 15 days to go before they lose house.
What about people who just have to take a break due real life reasons, sickness, work, family, money? I have been here for years since 1.0 and i am a dedicadet player. Even now im not active but i am still paying anyway waiting for 3.1 to happen while playing some other games cuz sometimes you really want to play something else. And if you are a long time player you need some break of the game for a longer time than 45 days. Eventhough you get the notifications and all its actually forsing people to resub/log in to save their stuff they have been working hard for and some people just might not be able to do that. I mean it feels more like a slotution in a f2p game, not actually in one you have been subbing for years. I get the point that they want to provide plots for people who still dont own a house i was sad myself as there were no free plots for mine. But the way they are handling it is really bad. Taking something away from one party to give it to another is never a god idea
I think another real problem is people can have 2 houses.
I saw some guy have a Free company house in ward 2
Though owned a personal house in ward 4
Seen others also do that, house hogs they don't even need it but using it for extra space.
By that argument I have "two" houses. My free company has a mansion. I have a personal cottage. At least one other person in the FC also has a personal house; others are considering it now that the real estate market is going to open up around Christmas.
The FC mansion is our social hub. My private house is where I hang out when I want to be alone but still do game stuff.
Interesting...the people that were fortunate enough to be in game and obtain content that was introduced with limited availability are the greedy ones and not the ones that want to just take it from them simply because they want it are not being greedy? OK, how about selfish? Inconsiderate? Unreasonable? Or maybe just plain rude?
Think about it. People missed out on special events like Lightning or Shantoto. Do they have some gods given right to just take someone else's special items because that player has put it in storage and is no longer actively using it...simply because this other player wants it and feels entitled to it? No...they need to wait until SE makes them available again to the public.
And yes...that example does apply. Virtual assets obtained in game as a limited resource. If you missed your window of opportunity, you need to wait for those assets to be made available again. It should not empower anyone with the right to steal from other players.
And just how would one do that if they have no working platform to run the game on? In case you missed it, I mentioned scenarios where the platform was down or otherwise in accessible--so there was no way to log in at an internet cafe. This was a scenario where the game was made physically inaccessible through no fault of the player. What if here was something like a flood or another Tsunami event?Quote:
And you wouldn't be able to log in for 2 minutes from a friend, or from an Internet cafe? Don't make me laugh.
The point of that post and cited examples were in response to the statement that there were no real life events that would prevent someone from accessing their housing for 45 days. Clearly this is not he case.
As for someone else logging in on the account...there are issues with that as well. And not just IP lockout and OTP tokens either. How about if the account is suspended? As noted in that post...there is a reasonable excuse for doing so. Even in he other cases, for many it simply may not make sense to pay for a service they don't have to if hey know they can't access it for months on end.
Maybe, maybe not. You may know some kinds of people, but not all kinds of people. 90 days would simply be more reasonable. In real life there are required time frames for these kinds of things. Things like a 30 day notice prior to seizure of property. Things like foreclosure that require you to miss consecutive monthly payments before proceedings can start, and then there is a timeline for that process to complete. For people familiar with such things, 90 days may feel appropriate. But then others may still feel uncomfortable with it.Quote:
And even if they did give more wiggle room, you guys would STILL complain, the only reason 90 is being suggested is because 45 was give, if 90 was give, you would be crying you want 180, I know your kind very well.
All of these words could just as well be used to describe people who hog limited resources despite not using them.
No, that example does not apply. It's once again apples and oranges. The reason the limited items are not currently accessible is NOT because of others hogging them despite not using them.Quote:
Think about it. People missed out on special events like Lightning or Shantoto. Do they have some gods given right to just take someone else's special items because that player has put it in storage and is no longer actively using it...simply because this other player wants it and feels entitled to it? No...they need to wait until SE makes them available again to the public.
And yes...that example does apply. Virtual assets obtained in game as a limited resource. If you missed your window of opportunity, you need to wait for those assets to be made available again. It should not empower anyone with the right to steal from other players.
The reason housing is currently accessible IS because of others hogging them despite not using them.
In such cases you have WAY more important issues on your hand than losing a house in a video game.Quote:
And just how would one do that if they have no working platform to run the game on? In case you missed it, I mentioned scenarios where the platform was down or otherwise in accessible--so there was no way to log in at an internet cafe. This was a scenario where the game was made physically inaccessible through no fault of the player. What if here was something like a flood or another Tsunami event?
That's why I said that if there actually are such issues, losing a house in Final Fantasy would be the least of your concerns.Quote:
The point of that post and cited examples were in response to the statement that there were no real life events that would prevent someone from accessing their housing for 45 days. Clearly this is not he case.
I know your kind, you are insatiable.Quote:
Maybe, maybe not. You may know some kinds of people, but not all kinds of people. 90 days would simply be more reasonable. In real life there are required time frames for these kinds of things. Things like a 30 day notice prior to seizure of property. Things like foreclosure that require you to miss consecutive monthly payments before proceedings can start, and then there is a timeline for that process to complete. For people familiar with such things, 90 days may feel appropriate. But then others may still feel uncomfortable with it.
SE had to choose an arbitrary number, they decided to choose 45 days, it's more than the basic subscription period, so you can easily take a month free.
And nothing would change if the number would be 90, you would still cry that you want more, maybe not you in person, but there would be others.
They acquired them legitimately and can use them or not as they see fit. The ownus is on SE to make more of the resources available again. So the special event items does in fact apply. The PROPER way to address the issue is to add more plots, NOT arbitrarily seizing them.
Think if it this way. Say you were away from your home for an extended time. No matter the reason...caring for a family member, job contract overseas, missionary work. An eviction notice is maimed to you. One is nailed yo your door. You come home and your house is mowed down, all items inside destroyed, your lawn furniture and ornaments are put into storage so you can retrieve them, and they hand you the key to the storage room and a check for 80% the value of just he purchase price if the home when it was bought 30 hears ago. Not what it was actually with now, and no compensation for lost assets.
Does that sound fair to you?
Never mind the legal snafus...it is just plain wrong. The property was paid for...it was yours. No lien to satisfy, no legal justification for seizure and destruction. The excuse is someone else wanted it and last time we checked we saw no evidence you used it in the last 45 days. What if it was a vacation home, rented periodically to others when he owner didn't use it? Even in the event of seizure due to back taxes, that has to happen for multiple consecutive years, and even after it is auctioned off there is a grace period that must be met.
There are no exceptions with this policy to cover reasonable scenarios. It is in essence like eminent domain on steroids.
Honestly, I don't care that much if it's 45 days or 60, or 90. I'm just glad they implemented something to eliminate those who simply aren't playing anymore and have a house (as it prevents others from having it). The fact that housing is exclusive to an extent is something that I actually like. Yes, it sucks when you are searching and searching and can't find a spot. One of my FC mates found an open lot open up and by the time our FC leader got there and bought it, he said there was 7 other people standing there trying to get it too (we got it though, yay!). But it really made us appreciate how much work it took to get the house we now own.
Now, the biggest issue I think everyone is running into here is the fact that the "reasons" that more than 45 days might be needed are NOT good reasons. We have ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE here that you deem to be "needing more than 45 days" saying she does not infact need it. The irony is the people who DON'T have an illness are the one's fighting the person who DOES that she needs more time to keep her house *facepalm*. None of us are saying there aren't circumstances which come up. That's life. In the middle of a dungeon run that took 1 hour queue time for me to find a party, my roommate accidentally turned off our internet and I had to spend another hour waiting to fight the damn hydra. I'm not blaming SE for not having a saved instance waiting for me to reenter the battle. Sh!t happens. You deal with it. Parameter's have to be set somewhere. There is no "perfect" line. I simply think the 45 day line is plenty.
As for the military deployment. 3/4 of my family is in or has been in the military. Many have been IN WARZONES. My family has sponsored midshipmen for over 10 years and those men and women have practically become part of our family as well. I have LOST some of those said people. Please do not say I do not understand. I may not personally be the one in the military, but I do know what they go through. There are very few assignments in which military men and women cannot access the internet. Majority of deployment assignments are not to the frontlines. Of all the mids we sponsored, 4 are in Florida, 2 are in Japan, 2 are in Oklahoma, 1 is in Hawaii, 1 is in North Carolina. None of them have no access to internet right now. 6 of them were in Iraq during the war. While there, I highly doubt any of them were worried about logging into an account, but we had skype calls with them occasionally (and to the point, they could easily ask someone to log in for them if it was that important to them). Yes, not all military deployments are the same. I DO understand this. But once again, circumstances happen. It's not SE's fault, nor is it the person's. But parameter's have to be made. I don't know too many military deployments in which the difference between 45 days and 90 will really make the big difference (but once again, circumstances).
The last argument of unemployment. Ok. That's fine. I truly do feel for those people. Hard times hit you and you needed to cancel your sub for an unknown amount of time because you couldn't afford it. That truly does suck. But, that's also life. I've been in that situation before and was unemployed for nearly 8 months. If I happened to of gotten a personal house in SE back then and lost it because of my unemployment then ok. I would of been angry and upset, but I also understand. SE is a business too you know.
But a majority of those complaining are NOT even under these categories. Most are simply those who "wish to take a break" giving out an argument because they don't want to lose their personal house they haven't visited for the last year and a half. To those people, I have no sympathy, hard work or not. Use it or lose it. To those unfortunate few out there who do fall into the category of unfortunate circumstances, I give my sincerest apologies for whatever hardship in life has come your way and wish you the best.
But, But, what happens if my country goes to nuclear war with Russia. And I have to live in a vault for 5 years or so until the fallout goes away? That means I don't get to keep my house when I come back above ground?!?!? This is so unfair!!!! I live in America and the threat of another Cold War is very real.
They really need to revisit the policy is all. There are better ways to go about than an arbitrary countdiwn being the only determining factor.
They issued deeds with the impression/understanding they would be permanent. These deeds could be grandfathered to remain permanent until the user gets rid of it somehow (transfer, deletion, etc. on their terms), and all new purchases could get a different agreement that has the new reclamation policy applied. Then they could add new wards or even new zones. Remember how they mirrored zones at HW launch? They've demonstrated how quickly they can copy/pasta a zone...they may need to apply it a bit differently to make a new housing district of sorts (zone in and choose different prefect or something perhaps even?). The point is it is well within their ability to increase housing...for whatever reason they are choosing not to do it.
Another thing that could be done is to add a layer of verification to the notice. It could be an email receipt or an acceptanc button on a popup when they log in. Once verified, it would trigger a countdown. After x number of days from verification he property is reclaimed. That is kind if how these things happen in the real world, so that would likely be accepted far more readily than we send emials and stick a notice on an in-game menu and after 45 days we take it. Just because a message is sent like that,there is no guarantee it was received. I have about a year worth of PSN notices in a hotmail account that I never read. I don't check that account unless I am looking for something that I know is going there. Thunderbird downloads them as an additional account...but I almost never look in he folder.
Just saying....right ways and wrong ways. There is a far better way to manage this situation.
1. If you already quit the game, why in the world would you bother to click the "acceptance/verification" email to give up your house? Usually when someone quits playing something, they stop caring for the notifications and simply don't bother reading. This would leave the houses that we MOST want out standing. The one's that truly have no purpose being there anymore and the reason everyone has pushed for this update in the first place to happen.
2. Although making new wards is possible, they still take up space that MUST be paid for. That's a lot of data. Every item you place in your house must be saved individually on the server. Now multiply that by 50 in a single warded area. Now go ahead and think about how many wards we have. Now, let's add on top of that the fact that we have multiple locations in which these wards are located. Then think about how many server's are running. I'm not saying they "can't" add more. But this is probably a huge amount of space being used up already. The money to support it must come from somewhere and personally, I'd rather it go to more content.
Guess you are unfamiliar with.email receipts. Granted there are ways to circumvent them, but most don't bother changing the configuration.
Cost of storage? Either you are overestimating hard drive costs or overestimating the size of the data per item...or perhaps both. For certain you are ignoring how quickly they threw up multiple instances of zones at HW launch. Not a zone of mostly static content mind you...highly active zones complete with mobs, players, fates, hunts, missions/quests...complete down to he dynamic weather effects and all.
They have the hardware. They have the template. They have the ability. They are choosing not to implement.
The problem is less an issue of idle properties,,but more that SE is not providing new properties.
Wait. Take that back. It in fact is that they aren't adding new properties.
Nothing to do with greed, nor 90 days.
It is about principles. Ethics. Right and wrong.
If anything, you are demonstrating greed by wanting to arbitrarily seize property. No extenuating circumstance is acceptable. No fair trade practices. No just cause required. No chance of an equitable agreement to be made. Not even a confirmation of a notice of intent required.
You want it...and you want someone to take for you. Conscience and morals be damned.
They need to loosen up restrictions on alts - we should be able to mail between our alts AND when shared housing is implemented, share a house with them. Until that happens, people are going to make FC's for bank sharing (and probably buy an FC house if they can) as well as buy personal houses for their alts. Owning more than one personal house per character would be stupid...but one personal house per unique character is pretty much forced upon the player base until better alt sharing features are implemented.
It's not just storage space, which is something that people who don't work on large IT systems don't understand. It's server CPU overhead. It's memory.
I'm working on a fairly complex web application at my office, but we only deal with around 400-500 users at a time, not four million. Our test server? We have to reboot that daily because of RAM creep every time we make a tiny change. The production servers get rebooted weekly for the same reason due to database churn. XIV's servers do not reboot; they have built the code with enough robustness to self-trim RAM and keep everything manageable while people are playing. Adding another housing ward adds much more overhead than you'd realize.
I'm still hoping to see Ishgard housing in the future - ideally they will find a solution to the CPU and RAM overhead costs by then.
It's really just a matter of what they have to work with
-their resources are limited to the point of only being capable of very limited housing areas(they can't even extend the armory chest to make room for new jobs it's so limited)
-there are tons of people constantly complaining about no houses available and also a surprising amount of super rich individuals that have multiple homes
-they are going to favor and support those that maintain a constant subscription over those that only come on for a month or so after a major patch
-they are not going to form policies around fringe cases of "what if i get stranded in a snowed in cabin on a remote mountain for 2 months?!"
It is what it is and i even remember them mentioning you'll be able to lose a house to inactivity back when they were first implemented and no one could afford them at all.
They even send you warnings when time is getting short. If you play normally it's a non-issue
Email receipts... really... Anywho, the argument I was trying to make was that your suggestion negates the initial reason behind this occurring. Those that DO NOT LOG ON ANYMORE AND QUIT are the one's we REALLY want off of properties. But you want to send those people emails and get their "acceptance" before taking it away? Or, we end up having people who never bother checking the darn emails and instead, no acceptance, therefore, no demolished houses from those people. It's simply backwards from what this update is meant to accomplish.
And as for storage. I like her answer
Thank you for that ^^
My apologies for not using all the right technical terms however. Storage is all I said, but the point I was trying to get at was, everything adds up. Think of it this way. Sure, an enemy hitting you at 10 dmg per hit ain't bad. But add in 30 hitting you at once and you got 300 dmg per coming at a time. Things add up. We got what? Couple million players?
As I said, I don't doubt they "could" do it. But SE is a business too and everything still has to be calculated.
So, bottom line is that there's a lot of people who are ok with tearing down other people's homes because they want one of their own and they consider "those are wasted resources that would be better used on themselves".
Such a nice, friendly community! :D
No, the bottom line is that there is no space left and people want to own housing. It's a bit hard to care about the property of somebody who doesn't care about the property.
If you want to keep your home, you just need to check in every 44 days or so, that's hardly a lot of work on your end. And if you don't have a subscription because content dried up? Well now. ;)
Or you log in for 2 min every 44 days and the actual point of this update actually takes effect and those who quit but own houses open up their lots.