If one says nothing, then a company never finds out what is causing people to leave. Feedback about WHY you're leaving is critical in improving a product.
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They saw a system designed to force them to sub being implemented, said, "If I can't take breaks without losing all my crap then I'm done with this game." and came back to tell SE that losing everything majorly destroys any incentive to ever sub again.
The only two major issues are SE's design and SE's architecture. Nothing community-wise needs to be done if those problems are addressed properly.
When your means of 'saving' it is paying a sub during a period you will either not be playing or simply can't afford to pay it, I won't fault a person for not playing along.
I was aware of how the system worked, and let my house get demolished, because I won't financially support their terrible housing model. When I did I say I didn't care? Of course I care. I loved this game. I loved my house. I've spent hours on this thread reading and writing replies. I absolutely care. But I want to spend my money on design decisions that are in the best interest of players. Their design decision was either a woefully awful technical hurdle they weren't willing to jump over, or they literally held houses hostage to subscriptions to try to retain players. Just bad. So bad that I wouldn't give them my money, despite how much I really wanted to. And still want to, really. But the punch of deleting my stuff makes that decision a hard one to make.
I knew coming in I'm in the minority on these forums. In general this community is way too forgiving of the developers. I have no qualms challenging people. But I know I'm a voice now for thousands of inactive subs who are never coming back, who are unable to participate in this thread.
I appreciate what they tried to do with housing, to foster communities. Honestly, I think that they should have kept wards just for FCs and just put in the auto demo feature on FCs from the beginning. For personal housing I would have preferred they go instanced. Can you imagine the types of houses we could have then? The types of locations? I'd trade the community feel for being able to live in a remodeled floating Allagan habitat. A bubble of air and shards of land tethered hundreds of feet in the air and surrounded by whatever weather I chose.
Or what about living underwater in the Ruby Sea?
Dwelling in a cute chalet in Coerthas?
A beautiful Oasis surrounded by the corrupted aetherspires of the Burning Wall?
A private little realm all our own to customize as we wish would have been wonderful but it's a path that cannot be chosen now unfortunately.
Gosh yes. They could do it a la Rift's dimensions, where you can unlock different locations to build on. That and instanced housing allows for dramatically increased decor limits (think literally thousands) and more complex placement (all three axes, rotation, resizing).
Plus, the Community feature WildStar has been testing on the PTR proves you can have your cake and eat it too.
Aren't you missing the main point poor design, equaled them not returning? If demolish was to retain subs again poor design is costing the company. Anyway we look at from your post and even most consensus on the forums. Poor design and refusal to admit to the mistake has led to lost subs, player misery and/or resentment like the op.
I love someone who gets the issue. The question is why SE hasn't taken a chance to reset it. 4.x will be doubling down on the issue. They will never have enough hardware with the current design.
The chance to have unique weather set just to your area just like you would orchestration. The things instanced player areas can provide currently outweighs community. I would love to see the average of players per housing area at any given time. I am betting it is not enough to foster a community.
House deletion is a cash grab. This is a very profitable game, but its owners are determined to maximize income received vs. income spent. It's such an obvious cash grab that it bewilders me that people defend it so vociferously. I quit playing Rift seriously three years ago and have gone long months without logging in, but whenever I feel like stopping by, my dimension is still there just as I left it. Same for Wildstar. Same for Old Republic. If these free to play games have got this licked, then what's Squeenix's excuse? Oh, well, see, they just want to you to keep subscribing. Just your standard bit of Asian MMO hostage taking, nothing to see here. Read this prediction: You will see Square sell an option in their cash shop for permanent housing to stay permanent. It's gonna be pricey, and it's gonna happen.
While I do appreciate them for trying to build little neighborhoods, unless you roleplay, need to dye your choco, or cheaply port to a mb/retainer bell, theres no real reason to be in the housing wards. Even here on Balmung, I don’t really see to many people actually out and about.
I had hoped that with the new expansion they would consider starting to roll out some instanced housing, but instead they went and doubled down on the existing crap system. Another limited neighborhood? Neat. Can’t wait to see what the Kugane houses will go for secondhand lol
As for the timer - I don't mind the timer's existence (we really need it on this server), though I wish it were a full 2 months at least.