PSA/ALERT: Houses are getting demolished when they shouldn't. SE needs to see this!

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Originally Posted by Cylla

Not to be picky but do you have a screen shot of it or a link to where it was said? Just makes things more valid seeing it said by a GM in a screen shot or on a GM post.

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Agreed. That isn't much to go on since that is something anyone could made up. I wouldn't be surprised if that what GMs are instructed to respond at this time.

The timer alert could use an update to show last entry/exit date and which property is flagged. The way the timer alert is created leaves it to be subjected to being questionable. At least with a time stamp it can't really be disputed very easily.

If these things are happening then SE need to stop the timer right now..its a shame how this has been reported for a couple of days now and its still running which could mean that more and more people will lose their house..

SE if something in your system does not work maybe its time to stop it forever. I was not subbed for around a month and I remembered when my sub stopped. So I knew that I need to be back at a certain day to still have my FC and private house..yet after I read about the bug I went back sooner and had the timer with 10 days. (Interestingly I went into both houses on my last day and yet one said 11 days the other one 10..) I had no single email from them and I normally get any information from their company..so that also seems to be buggy.

At the same time I had a discussion with someone and they said that there had been a bug a year ago where the timer did not stop counting down even though people were in their houses and moved things around..if all of those are happening again and again then stop with that timer..

In the end if I lose my house thanks to that then I will stop playing this game...I would not support someone anymore that first let this still happen thanks to not stopping the timer and also would not really have a solution for those that lost it.

(Also lets not forget that you can buy house items for real money...if you are on a high played server then this might mean that you cant use that items anymore thus also lose real money..GG)

Yoshi-P should get someone to model the Infinity Gauntlet (Square Enix are making an Avengers project so they have the licencing rights) on his character and go into half the servers. Give a community timer of like 30 minutes, then click his fingers and wipe half the plots in the game.

I can't believe this happens. And not even giving people extra conpensation becaused you guys screwed up is the worst thing you could do.
You guys aren't an indie developer, this is unacceptable. Even if it happened once that's one times too many. It's like the whole EA fiasco where EA deletes someone's account by accident.

This is extremely concerning that blunders like this have happened multiple times without any form of conpensation.

I’m extremely worried about losing my house. I went to my house on Sunday but I’m on vacation until Friday and have no access to the game

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Originally Posted by Cylla

Not to be picky but do you have a screen shot of it or a link to where it was said? Just makes things more valid seeing it said by a GM in a screen shot or on a GM post.

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That is what a GM said, they have a strict privacy policy on the forums so I am not going to do that.

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Originally Posted by Alleo

If these things are happening then SE need to stop the timer right now..its a shame how this has been reported for a couple of days now and its still running which could mean that more and more people will lose their house..

SE if something in your system does not work maybe its time to stop it forever. I was not subbed for around a month and I remembered when my sub stopped. So I knew that I need to be back at a certain day to still have my FC and private house..yet after I read about the bug I went back sooner and had the timer with 10 days. (Interestingly I went into both houses on my last day and yet one said 11 days the other one 10..) I had no single email from them and I normally get any information from their company..so that also seems to be buggy.

At the same time I had a discussion with someone and they said that there had been a bug a year ago where the timer did not stop counting down even though people were in their houses and moved things around..if all of those are happening again and again then stop with that timer..

In the end if I lose my house thanks to that then I will stop playing this game...I would not support someone anymore that first let this still happen thanks to not stopping the timer and also would not really have a solution for those that lost it.

(Also lets not forget that you can buy house items for real money...if you are on a high played server then this might mean that you cant use that items anymore thus also lose real money..GG)

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Yup, that would be the breaking point for me. If I ever lose my house and they do not give it back because of a bug on their part, I will do my best to get what I can refunded and never buy a SE product again. I do not understand why they are not taking this seriously

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Originally Posted by Hamada

That is what a GM said, they have a strict privacy policy on the forums so I am not going to do that.

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Even if you block out their names? I mean people been posting conversations with GM for years here.

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Originally Posted by Hamada

That is what a GM said, they have a strict privacy policy on the forums so I am not going to do that.

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If that were the case, then you still just broke a rule by posting what a GM said even in text no matter if you did star out their name.
But what Luna said, you can block out their name on the screen shot and post it.

I don't believe a GM/Dev team looking into this at all. No word on the lodestone, nothing said on reddit by the one GM who was looking into the matter on one of the threads, and not a word here on OF.

Kind of makes me question the validity of the issue. One would think if it’s legit the first thing SE would have done upon confirming the bug’s existence would be to shut off the auto demo function until they could fix it

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Originally Posted by Cylla

If that were the case, then you still just broke a rule by posting what a GM said even in text no matter if you did star out their name.
But what Luna said, you can block out their name on the screen shot and post it.

I don't believe a GM/Dev team looking into this at all. No word on the lodestone, nothing said on reddit by the one GM who was looking into the matter on one of the threads, and not a word here on OF.

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I do not want to, with what I seen here on what GM's moderate drove me paranoid.

For people worried about this, my girlfriend had an idea and here is me doing it for my house

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...018_175849.png

Since you see me in my house, you can see the time and date I was in, so if this ever happens to me in the next 45 days here is absolute proof i was in here. we have a goal to do this every month for our houses

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Originally Posted by Warghoul570

Kind of makes me question the validity of the issue. One would think if it’s legit the first thing SE would have done upon confirming the bug’s existence would be to shut off the auto demo function until they could fix it

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I questioned it at first also, but when more and more people started reporting it, didn't seem like a troll. I'm not so worked up about it anymore either. I logged out last night but I did take a screen shot with proof that I was in my house with the windows date/time overlay on my game screen just in case. All I can say is, this happened right after maintenance was done and it possible SE screwed up something. It could be because of the JP auto timer being frozen to. Or this could just be a massive trolling just to stir up the community. Lack of proof, lack of poof of what GM's are saying, etc isn't helping to believe there an actual problem. SE isn't well known for being on top of things but here it is already 11:36 am, a day since this thread was opened and reddit threads. If they haven't found a bug yet, then there isn't one or the dev team really slow at finding these problems.

At this point all I can say to home owners is be on top of your game. Check your house(s) everyday and interact with it. Have a screen shot for proof (not that seems to do any good in the end but hey). There not much more can do.

Problem for me is I can’t do anything when my ps4 is two states away

I'm still firmly skeptical of this whole thing. I've yet to see any solid evidence; a screenshot of a GM admitting it was on their end or a mod post stating they are aware of the issue, etc.

Frankly, the scattered reports of people claiming this happened to them amount to little more than "Yeah, me too!" and I'm afraid that just doesn't carry much weight with me. Mostly because over the years I've seen a lot of people claim "I lost my house for no reason!" when, come to find out, they just didn't understand the complicated inner workings of the housing system. It almost always boils down to some combination of them not keeping correct track of the days, them thinking that teleporting to the yard was sufficient to reset the timer, or them not receiving the demo notice email/it going to the spam folder (an actual, well documented bug that I wish SE would devote some resources to correcting.)

I feel that, if this really was all started by some troll(s), he/she/they are taking advantage of the confusion of these unfortunate players who, instead of posting that they lost their house and don't understand why, they are seeing reports of this supposed bug and are latching on to it, feeding into the general state of panic.

While I could be wrong, something I freely admit with the limited information we have so far received, I'm going to remain skeptical until either we get an official response or the reports are too widespread to be mere coincidence/confusion. Until then, I plan to keep an eye on the issue, but have no intention of losing sleep over it.

This is... very worrying. I really hope they look into this and fix it.

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Originally Posted by Rymm

I'm still firmly skeptical of this whole thing. I've yet to see any solid evidence; a screenshot of a GM admitting it was on their end or a mod post stating they are aware of the issue, etc.

Frankly, the scattered reports of people claiming this happened to them amount to little more than "Yeah, me too!" and I'm afraid that just doesn't carry much weight with me. Mostly because over the years I've seen a lot of people claim "I lost my house for no reason!" when, come to find out, they just didn't understand the complicated inner workings of the housing system. It almost always boils down to some combination of them not keeping correct track of the days, them thinking that teleporting to the yard was sufficient to reset the timer, or them not receiving the demo notice email/it going to the spam folder (an actual, well documented bug that I wish SE would devote some resources to correcting.)

I feel that, if this really was all started by some troll(s), he/she/they are taking advantage of the confusion of these unfortunate players who, instead of posting that they lost their house and don't understand why, they are seeing reports of this supposed bug and are latching on to it, feeding into the general state of panic.

While I could be wrong, something I freely admit with the limited information we have so far received, I'm going to remain skeptical until either we get an official response or the reports are too widespread to be mere coincidence/confusion. Until then, I plan to keep an eye on the issue, but have no intention of losing sleep over it.

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Made a tweet, not expecting a response https://twitter.com/RinKiroro/status...94995803500544

But I'm with you, I'm also very skeptic due to the lack of proof or GM conversations. It just a rumor now and "YEAH ME TOO!"

There's been people win trading in ranked PvP across multiple seasons without any official acknowledgement of the issue. It's fine to be skeptical, though let's not pretend as if there isn't a track record of major issues going without a timely response.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

There's been people win trading in ranked PvP across multiple seasons without any official acknowledgement of the issue. It's fine to be skeptical, though let's not pretend as if there isn't a track record of major issues going without a timely response.

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*Cough* Ungarmax *Cough*

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

*Cough* Ungarmax *Cough*

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Don't just cough about Ungarmax. Bang pots and pans together about it - we don't need this issue ( potential or not ) going on for 3 months or more before there's an actual investigation into it.

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Originally Posted by Warghoul570

Kind of makes me question the validity of the issue. One would think if it’s legit the first thing SE would have done upon confirming the bug’s existence would be to shut off the auto demo function until they could fix it

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There have been examples in the german forum too so if this is not legit than this is quite the big joke. Also someone told me that the bug with the email (not receiving it even if the timer is nearly done) was dismissed by SE but is still there even today. (I was a "victim" of it too)

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Originally Posted by Rymm

I'm still firmly skeptical of this whole thing. I've yet to see any solid evidence; a screenshot of a GM admitting it was on their end or a mod post stating they are aware of the issue, etc.

Frankly, the scattered reports of people claiming this happened to them amount to little more than "Yeah, me too!" and I'm afraid that just doesn't carry much weight with me. Mostly because over the years I've seen a lot of people claim "I lost my house for no reason!" when, come to find out, they just didn't understand the complicated inner workings of the housing system. It almost always boils down to some combination of them not keeping correct track of the days, them thinking that teleporting to the yard was sufficient to reset the timer, or them not receiving the demo notice email/it going to the spam folder (an actual, well documented bug that I wish SE would devote some resources to correcting.)

I feel that, if this really was all started by some troll(s), he/she/they are taking advantage of the confusion of these unfortunate players who, instead of posting that they lost their house and don't understand why, they are seeing reports of this supposed bug and are latching on to it, feeding into the general state of panic.

While I could be wrong, something I freely admit with the limited information we have so far received, I'm going to remain skeptical until either we get an official response or the reports are too widespread to be mere coincidence/confusion. Until then, I plan to keep an eye on the issue, but have no intention of losing sleep over it.

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This is still my stance as well.

Far too many people either don't understand the housing system, or are really bad at keeping track of time.

Most of the more credible reports have either not stated how recently they used their house, or that they last used it "3 weeks ago." Knowing how bad people are about keeping track of time, I don't think it's that much of a stretch to wonder if 3 weeks was actually far longer.


THAT SAID!

I would love it if, even if this is just people who were late to not letting their house demolish, they would actually leave feedback that the timer is far too short. 45 days is, honestly, absurd.

Maybe SE will compensate those that lose their housing with cardboard boxes in Ishgard

Not sure why anyone would think someone would be faking or trolling about losing a home. In this Reddit thread SE_Kahuna is asking for people to post on the official forums AND can even DM them any proof/ticket numbers etc etc. https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ason/?sort=new So please. If this has happened to you. Do that as well to see if your case can get forwarded to the right people.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

This is still my stance as well.

Far too many people either don't understand the housing system, or are really bad at keeping track of time.

Most of the more credible reports have either not stated how recently they used their house, or that they last used it "3 weeks ago." Knowing how bad people are about keeping track of time, I don't think it's that much of a stretch to wonder if 3 weeks was actually far longer.


THAT SAID!

I would love it if, even if this is just people who were late to not letting their house demolish, they would actually leave feedback that the timer is far too short. 45 days is, honestly, absurd.

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Pretty much my stance as well. My ALT's house and had purposely let a month's sub lapse, entering the house on the last day of activity just to see if I'd get the e-mail (I wanted to make sure it'd not end up in spam). I've kept at least 1 house since Shiva 'til now, entering into the house itself every week for the last 3-4 years. Friends have done similar. If this bug is real, it's exceedingly rare, or so it seems; been in tons of housing/community linkshells over the course of time. No one has said a thing that didn't boil down to you didn't check your e-mail/has to be owner/actually go inside.

I wouldn't say 45 days is too short, however. It's a month and a half to enter your house once. If you're having that hard of a time remembering to enter, I doubt making that timer longer will help. Over the course of the game, we've gotten annoying pop-ups added into the game (recommendations, playguide and now achievements). Make them useful and add a pop-up demolish notification in game for houses with time left. None of this e-mail-that-could-end-up-not-being-sent-or-sent-to-spam. Not a notification hidden on the estates tab under timer that only appears when it's under 10 days.

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Originally Posted by RayneLittlewinkle

Not sure why anyone would think someone would be faking or trolling about losing a home. In this Reddit thread SE_Kahuna is asking for people to post on the official forums AND can even DM them any proof/ticket numbers etc etc. https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ason/?sort=new So please. If this has happened to you. Do that as well to see if your case can get forwarded to the right people.

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Well I for one wouldn't stoop as low as using reddit to submit a bug report.
But I'm also pretty on the fence about this. I haven't really seen hard evidence that it's actually happening.
Why would someone troll about this? Well look at the panic it's caused. I will ween people ingame ditch instances to go babysit their house. It's madness!

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Well I for one wouldn't stoop as low as using reddit to submit a bug report.
But I'm also pretty on the fence about this. I haven't really seen hard evidence that it's actually happening.
Why would someone troll about this? Well look at the panic it's caused. I will ween people ingame ditch instances to go babysit their house. It's madness!

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While I don't have picture proof of this, a friend of mine said his static's MT on Gilg lost the house he got a week ago. Even said he noticed something werid about tenant permissions because they were reset before the incident.

I don't have actual in game evidence, so about as much help as the rest, but if he got it a week ago then clearly it hasn't been 45 days.

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Originally Posted by MomomiMomi

I would love it if, even if this is just people who were late to not letting their house demolish, they would actually leave feedback that the timer is far too short. 45 days is, honestly, absurd.

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^^^this. Not to get too off topic but it is very difficult to take a break from the game when you barely have over a month of time before you have to worry about losing your stuff. While I firmly believe the demo timer is still required in the current housing setup, it is quite punishing.

What further makes it questionable is the fact takes it’s been claimed SE knows about it yet we haven’t seen an official statement. Plus all they would really need to do to stop this is to shut off the timer

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Originally Posted by Louvain

^^^this. Not to get too off topic but it is very difficult to take a break from the game when you barely have over a month of time before you have to worry about losing your stuff. While I firmly believe the demo timer is still required in the current housing setup, it is quite punishing.

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The auto-demo timer really should be a 30+30+30 thing, eg increasing steps of warnings, so that both the player and players who go to that estate know it's heading into an auto-demolish state.

Where the first 30 days, there's no notifications, during the second 30 days, an email is sent out about inactivity, the retainers/helpers will be despawned, and players who enter the house during the second 30 days will see cobwebs and dust, and the guestbook will state "Looks like the owner hasn't been around for a month", and if it's a FC house, other FC members will see it in their timers.

On the final 30 days, one more email is sent to the owner, the exterior of the house will switch to "haunted", the interior walls and flooring will switch to a grey haze of "haunted house mode" where walking through it will leave footprints in the dust, the orchestration roll will skip or playback through a warp filter, stairs will creak, and rats spawn during the day, and ghosts of the owner/retainers appear during the night (and the lights will be at the lowest setting at night.) No EXP or money for killing them, they're just there for haunted ambiance.

If the owner comes back, they have to "clean up" the house to return it to pre-autodemolish timer state, otherwise the timer will only reset back to be beginning of the 30 day block if entered. This would be accomplished by summoning any retainer at the estate and selecting "clean up estate" which costs nothing as long as a retainer exists.

I don't understand why people think 45 days is too short. 45 days is fine. If you're not using your house in 45 days then you don't really need that house. Pretty cut and dry. When the land is finite, you shouldn't be able to keep your house forever if you're not using it.

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Originally Posted by SonKevin

I don't understand why people think 45 days is too short. 45 days is fine. If you're not using your house in 45 days then you don't really need that house. Pretty cut and dry. When the land is finite, you shouldn't be able to keep your house forever if you're not using it.

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Let not start this argument. imo, it shouldn't even be here at all but because of SE own failure to do something right, we are being punished left and right. If what happening is true, this is just another reason why the auto demo timer shouldn't be applied at all and yet another reason why SE should overhaul the housing system and do it right the second time around, but... we all know that not going to happen so on wards with the punishment for their failure!

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Originally Posted by Cylla

Let not start this argument. imo, it shouldn't even be here at all but because of SE own failure to do something right, we are being punished left and right. If what happening is true, this is just another reason why the auto demo timer shouldn't be applied at all and yet another reason why SE should overhaul the housing system and do it right the second time around, but... we all know that not going to happen so on wards with the punishment for their failure!

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No one is being punished left and right. If what is happening is true then that's unfortunate and those players need to be fully compensated. This does not mean we should get rid of the demolition timer or move housing into private instances. 45 days is more than enough time and people should stop jumping on people's misfortune to push their own agenda other players would largely disagree with.

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Originally Posted by SonKevin

No one is being punished left and right. If what is happening is true then that's unfortunate and those players need to be fully compensated. This does not mean we should get rid of the demolition timer or move housing into private instances. 45 days is more than enough time and people should stop jumping on people's misfortune to push their own agenda other players would largely disagree with.

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Here the thing, if what going on is true and what people are reporting back with true, it is a punishment. These people lost their house due to SE error and it being sweep under the rug and told they can't get their houses back.

And no, the demo timer shouldn't have ever been a thing to start with. I'm not going to sit here and beat the dead horse, I've said so many times it not even funny anymore. I've been against the timer from the get go, I ain't jumping on anyone misfortune so don't go assuming such things about me when you don't know what I'm standing up for or against :/ really uncool.

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Originally Posted by Cylla

Here the thing, if what going on is true and what people are reporting back with true, it is a punishment. These people lost their house due to SE error and it being sweep under the rug and told they can't get their houses back.

And no, the demo timer shouldn't have ever been a thing to start with. I'm not going to sit here and beat the dead horse, I've said so many times it not even funny anymore. I've been against the timer from the get go, I ain't jumping on anyone misfortune so don't go assuming such things about me when you don't know what I'm standing up for or against :/ really uncool.

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Assuming such things? No one needs to assume when your posts are in this thread, lol. It's pretty clear what you're doing. You're using unconfirmed rumors as basis to peddle your held beliefs upon others who may or may not disagree with you. The only thing that should be said from this incident is if there is a bug causing houses to be deleted and what SE is doing to fix and compensate the players of this supposed issue. What you're asking for is to get rid of the auto demolition timer which would only cause more problems then it would solve outside of scrapping the entire housing system and changing it to an instanced based housing system.

What happened to "let's not start this argument?" :confused:

Not even going to argue with someone who pure out clueless and just assuming things about someone they know something about. If they took a few seconds to skim all the posts I've made in these forums over the years about housing before replying, they'd feel pretty stupid about themselves right now. But it cool, that what ignore is for :) So yes, no more derailing on my half.

Arguments need to be left at the door - though civil debate is fine.

What I think we'd all actually like right now, though, is... you know, a legitimate response from SE in some capacity on here. Even just a "we've heard of this and are investigating/pushing it to those who can figure it out" would suffice. People are worried and the longer this goes unspoken of, the worse it will get.

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Originally Posted by SonKevin

I don't understand why people think 45 days is too short. 45 days is fine. If you're not using your house in 45 days then you don't really need that house. Pretty cut and dry. When the land is finite, you shouldn't be able to keep your house forever if you're not using it.

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It is too short, compare it to how this game does patch cycles and keeps repeating the same content over and over again. When a producer admits having the game not meant to be continuously played and keeps releasing catch up patches, id say it needs to be 3 months, and that is purely based how they manage the game with their cycles.

45 days might be fine, if the game was not managed in this way. Anyways I agree, 45 days is too short, you can have it longer and still fill full the purpose of having people that quit a year + not run a ghost town (though idk the point since the wards are full of house hoarders and ghost town feel anyway)

I feel you need to be reminded of:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ry-(10-30-2013

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1:14:22
Q: Will there be any maintenance fees or other costs for housing, besides the cost of the land and house?

A: In older MMOs, such as Ultima Online, there was a house maintenance fee you had to pay weekly, but in FFXIV: ARR we decided against this system. Similarly, these older MMOs also had a system where your house would break down if you didn’t log in after a while in order to have you continue your subscription, but this is a thing of the past and we won't have any system like that.

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Originally Posted by SonKevin

Assuming such things? No one needs to assume when your posts are in this thread, lol. It's pretty clear what you're doing. You're using unconfirmed rumors as basis to peddle your held beliefs upon others who may or may not disagree with you. The only thing that should be said from this incident is if there is a bug causing houses to be deleted and what SE is doing to fix and compensate the players of this supposed issue. What you're asking for is to get rid of the auto demolition timer which would only cause more problems then it would solve outside of scrapping the entire housing system and changing it to an instanced based housing system.

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What you are doing is provoking fights and causing drama, stop it.

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Originally Posted by Cylla

Let not start this argument.

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Everyone proceeds to start this argument.

This is all I will say on the demolition timer length. I also agree 45 days is too short. Sometimes I'm busy or want to play another game or several other games even between major patches so I don't have time to play XIV or use my house during that time, but I KNOW I will be more active on XIV when the next major patch hits and then WILL be doing so.

So I have to stay subbed mainly JUST to keep my house up (doing other things like beast tribes or other small things to at least make my sub more worthwhile) because why should I lose it just because I'm taking a pause in my activity between major patches? Hamada has the right of it, because the 45 day timer means if you take a break during the patch lull you'll lose your plot. It should be doubled to 90 days. It is the middle option for a subscription period, and it is the perfect amount of time between major patches without it being too long. That is when you consider that you will be playing through the content of the new patch, and within 90 days of you finishing that you will have the next wave of content to resub for, and so it goes on.

I have been subbed to the game almost constantly since 2.4, with my longest break only being 3 months and it was after I finished what the base SB expansion had to offer because I didn't have a plot to keep up at the time since I had moved to a new server. I'm an active player because I am here on this game for every major patch. It would be nice if I could unsub during content lulls to save some money without the worry of losing my plot. If you think I should lose it just because I'm not putting up with a content lull that really isn't fair, when I'm active I'm using the plot every day. Every. Day. And I know many players are the same.

But I suppose that is one reason for SE to keep the timer at 45 days, because people will sub to keep their plots up during their breaks. But let's be honest - any player who wants to keep their plot, like me, is going to do what is necessary to keep it after the work they put into getting it and decorating it.

Having the timer as short as 45 days simply makes it more inconvenient and overly punishing. 90 days is the sweet spot, I don't think it's even debatable when you consider the points I have just made. But I'd rather the thread stay on topic, just wanted to voice my opinion since it was brought up.