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

Neira

Then we will disagree on the matter and leave it at that. Just because in my 18 years of MMORPG playing i made sure someone could log into the game for me once a month does not mean it took any high priority in my life. As I said before IRL comes first. However, if you could get someone to log in for you and keep your in game business going and keep your homes from decaying why wouldn't you? Its just common sense. I happened to have around 10-15 different people who could do this for me through the years. That does not mean it took any high priority because it was very low on my list. My points are just as valid as hers. People who have a PS4 and the ps4 version can easily do what I did back in the day in regards to the PC. Friends who have the PS4 could in fact log in for you which takes a minute or 2 to refresh your home and then log out. Not to mention that it would be once a MONTH using my 30 day decay system. Once a month to log in for 2 minutes is not asking a lot.

I will disagree with you and say that most people have someone who can do that for them if the timer was that short. You can agree with it or not but from my experience, everyone in my life at this moment has someone that could do this if necessary.

I happen to like this housing system almost as much as Ultima Online. Does it need to be revamped and more plots made? Absolutely of course. Do we need each home instanced? NO I have always hated instanced housing. Ultima Online and SWG did housing the best. The subdivisions we have now is good enough, we just need more of them.

Lastly, I will say that if I just stop paying my bills I lose all access to things. Such as I would lose my house. I would lose my car insurance. I would lose access to all of Netflix and all of their content. Why should non-payers keep gaming resources if they are not paying? They shouldn't and I will never agree that they should. If this were my game, I would implement a 30 day decay timer and if it decayed you would lose EVERYTHING and not be reimbursed anything. That is how Ultima Online worked and continues to work being 14 years old now and still running on a sub model. Call me mean or totally non-compassionate of others but life is not all hunky dory. I see a model in other games that works and I see no reason why a similar model wouldn't work here.

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Originally Posted by Madjames

I see a model in other games that works and I see no reason why a similar model wouldn't work here.

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Originally Posted by Madjames

Do we need each home instanced? NO I have always hated instanced housing.

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Aren't these two statements mutually exclusive? Also, call me mean or totally callous, but life is not all hunky dory. Sometimes we get stuck with things we hate. I'd rather see an instanced housing system that allows everyone to get a home than a flawed housing system that they didn't want to invest the time into designing properly from the start.

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Originally Posted by Madjames

Does it need to be revamped and more plots made? Absolutely of course.

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We can at least agree on this. They need a lot more wards if they want to try to make this housing system work. I'm not a proponent of instanced housing at all, I just want them to focus more on fixing their flawed system, and this plan won't do that. If they fix their housing by going instanced, fine. If they fix their housing by adding more wards, great. If they use an alternative method to stop people from trying to buy houses for resell or to remove dead homes from desired plots, okay. If they refuse to invest the money to fix their housing and instead ask us for more of ours, then I'll complain about it and stop giving them mine.

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Originally Posted by Neira

Aren't these two statements mutually exclusive?

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Not really, because instanced housing isn't the only way to fix it. I'm not familiar with Ultima Online, Madjames's example, but LOTRO has a housing system very similar to FFXIV in its basic structure of a few locations that have multiple wards and 30 houses in each ward. It works there and not here, because where FFXIV has 24 wards per server, LOTRO can support up to 1,000 wards per server. (Until reaching that max, it adds them dynamically whenever current wards fill up).

SE has two options for making housing work and be available to everyone. Either upgrade their servers to be able to support 1000 or so wards per server, just as Turbine did for LOTRO seven or eight years ago, or else redesign their housing to a format that doesn't require as much server space. The later solution would probably mean a change to individually instanced housing. Of those two options, one needs a major hardware upgrade and the other needs a major software re-write, so neither would be a cheap easy fix, but either is possible. It sounds like Madjames is more particular as to which of the solutions he wants to see than you or I are.

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Originally Posted by Neira

We can at least agree on this. They need a lot more wards if they want to try to make this housing system work. I'm not a proponent of instanced housing at all, I just want them to focus more on fixing their flawed system, and this plan won't do that. If they fix their housing by going instanced, fine. If they fix their housing by adding more wards, great. If they use an alternative method to stop people from trying to buy houses for resell or to remove dead homes from desired plots, okay. If they refuse to invest the money to fix their housing and instead ask us for more of ours, then I'll complain about it and stop giving them mine.

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The problem with the proposed forfeiture of abandoned houses lies in the fact that they haven't fixed the real shortage issue. Going back to the LOTRO example, we can eventually lose our house in that game if we don't keep it up, but that doesn't matter because if we come back to the game later, we can just get another house and still have everything that we had in our old one. We just take a few minutes to set it up again the way we want and we're good to go. That relies, however, on the assurance that there will always be another house of the type we want available. SE is planning foreclosure rules as though they're going to be a fix (or at least a partial one) for the shortage, when in fact they won't work until the shortage has already been fixed by making enough houses available for everyone who's playing.

(Incidentally, once the shortage issues are fixed, I do think they'll then need a foreclosure system to clear out abandoned ones from players who have permanently left the game, at least if they stick with the shared ward pattern. It's just that doing it now without enough houses available is premature. It won't work correctly with how the game stands now, because people who lose their houses can't be guaranteed the chance to get a replacement when they return.)

This is a temporary solution to a permanent problem, we need a permanent solution

Opening more and more wards is what the current system is doomed to do, more players? More wards. More succes? More wards. This isn't going to work.

They need to go everything or nothing. There's plenty of solutions they could design to make their current vision work, yet they have instead opted to indefinitely postpone any of those solutions. If they want to go the easy route, it'd likely take much less work in the short and long runs to just create instanced housing.

I think there's a high level of indecisiveness about the concept of player housing in SE, and it really shows through. They haven't decided exactly what they want to do with it, and haven't made any finishing decisions. Well, perhaps they have, but it's just a very bad decision that is going to constantly pose a problem for them because they didn't think it through.

I fully support the idea about inactive housing reclamation: I have a neighbour that I've never met ever since I bought my house, and that was like a year ago.

Unfortunately, I see a big problem here as well. Giving forty-five days to a Free Company prior demolishing a house is a decent period of time and I agree with it. However, forty- five days for private housing is too short. What if the owner is sick, on vacation or whatever....or simply wants to take a break from the game for two months? There are many "what ifs" that may happen that can prevent a single person to log into the game withing a month and a half. This way SE is actually forcing private owners to pay subscription all the time.

Extending private housing reclamation to 90 days (3 months) for private owners would be a correct thing.

I just hope every person who was in favor of a 90 day timer realizes that their support of a horrendous decision is, in part, to thank for this. Enjoy the 45 day timer, enjoy the obvious cash grab, and enjoy watching one of the most successful subscription-based MMOs invest less money into their game than free-to-play competition. Also, one more thing...

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Originally Posted by Neira

I emphatically hope it's tied to access of housing functions or something similar, so anyone can reset it, and not just the original owner. Anything less on their part would prove rather effectively that their primary focus is on the money and not helping out the community, which already seems likely given how little this solution will help the community overall.

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3361866

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Originally Posted by Neira

I am also very skeptical of a system being implemented that punishes players for not paying their subscription, and it's even worse given that they once claimed they wouldn't resort to such a system. If it's implemented in a way that room mates can also refresh the repossession timer, giving some credit to the intended design of the system, then it will be harder to argue against. But if they put the system in place and make it so only the active home owner can refresh the timer, and I can see it now, "Due to the system design we can not configure the servers to recognize anyone other than the owner. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause," then I hope that every subscriber voices their outrage at such a shady practice.

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http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3298825

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Originally Posted by SquareEnix

Estates Subject to Demolishing
Private housing that has not been accessed by the owner within forty-five days.

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Name me a F2P MMORPG, that releases new content every 3-4 month? If you can't, everything you said is just BS.

@Abandoned plots
The timeframe is way to huge. 30 days would be enough. As for Privat Housing: The Wards has always been designed for FCs and not private use. Deal with it.

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Originally Posted by Cheraa

Name me a F2P MMORPG, that releases new content every 3-4 month? If you can't, everything you said is just BS.

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Depends how you define "new content". SWTOR might fit your criteria, and it's 1/1 of the F2P MMORGPs I've played.

I know it said owner (personal house) must log in to reset the timer but i still wonder if the "set permission for 5 people" thing will count towards this timer... kinda the same way a FC member can trigger an FCs timer.

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Originally Posted by Pterois

I know it said owner (personal house) must log in to reset the timer but i still wonder if the "set permission for 5 people" thing will count towards this timer... kinda the same way a FC member can trigger an FCs timer.

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Yet they intentionally mentioned member for the FC, and intentionally mentioned owner for the personal house.

I own a personal house, and take part in a small "friends" only FC. We're all OK with this change. We've discussed various times throughout this and other threads about how/why recycling unused housing makes sense. We've also discussed why instanced housing isn't actually a fix; I posted regarding Server/Storage etc.

To everyone saying "this isn't the solution!!!", SE never marketed this change as the solution to the housing issue. They pushed that it was going to be their first step. It will be interesting to see where they go with it from here.

Now, that being said, I personally would have liked to have seen feature be 60 - 90 days inactivity instead of 45; 45 feels like an odd number to draw.

I'm glad to see that SE offered a 80% gil refund on housing, at least this way someone who's house gets demolished isn't out the entire fee. What I would like to see with this feature being implemented is the removal of permanent housing items. It would be nice if ALL items on the property went to Resident Caretaker if/when it gets demolished. It would also be nice to see the amount of time increased for how long the Resident Caretaker holds on to the demolished housing items.

I don't like this 45 day limit. I can't always afford my sub and I had actually come back from a 5 month hiatus and if this was in effect sooner I'd have lost my house. I think the time limit should be much longer. you'd have to sub at least every other month or your house will be gone. I can't always afford it. All I get a month is a tiny amount of disability and half of that goes to paying for my cell phone.

45 days might make sense for a large FC with lots of players, any of whom can keep it active. It's a horrible timeframe to use for private housing. They need to either triple/quadruple the timeframe for private houses, or else allow simply keeping your subscription active to keep your personal house active. At least the sub can be maintained from anywhere. They could even get away with combining it so that you could lose a house either by dropping your sub for 45 days or not going to your housing plot for 6 months.

Also, for either personal or FC housing, items held by the Resident Caretaker need to be kept there permanently, until either the character or FC is deleted/disbanded. Requiring that we have to get another house within 35 days of losing one is a total fail in a system that doesn't keep housing regularly available. (Actually, it would be a fail even if replacement houses were available. So long as we aren't taking up a plot in the interim, we should be able to leave the game for a year and when we come back have our stuff still available with minimal setup to redo it in a new plot.)

Their current plan effectively says that if you ever leave the game, even briefly, you're never allowed to come back, unless you want to just start over from scratch. That kind of attitude can ruin an MMO.

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Originally Posted by Cheraa

As for Privat Housing: The Wards has always been designed for FCs and not private use. Deal with it.

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We'll deal with that when SE moves private housing to a different system, as they were supposed to do in the first place. Currently, however, private housing is there in the same wards as FC housing, so the plot reclamation system has to allow for the fact that private housing with only one player to keep it up is in those wards. SE's plan fails on that.



For a couple more minor points (once the game-killing duration issues are addressed):

If we have to go to our house regularly, make it a free teleport to get there. (The game world enlarged significantly when HW came out, so we're kind of due for another free porting option anyway.) Currently, if I want to reach my house, the pattern is:
1) Teleport to Limsa Lominsa Aetherite (because that's my Free Teleport location).
2) Aethernet to the Aftcastle
3) run to the lift in the Adventurer's Guild
4) take the lift to the airship terminal
5) take an airship to the Gold Saucer
6) take an airship to Ul'dah
7) take the lift to the Ruby Road Exchange
8) run to the Aetherite Plaza
9) Aethernet to Goblet Ward 8
10) Aethernet to the Southeast Aethernet shard
11) run the last block and a half to my house

Occasionally, I'll spend a few gil to replace steps 7-11 with a teleport to my house, but I have to get as far as Ul'dah before I'll do that or it's just too expensive. So when getting there is a matter of either 11 steps (8 of which have loading screens) or 7 steps and a gil cost, is it any wonder I don't go there as often as I'd like? Make it inherently a free port, or at the very least let us select it as our free destination or Return Home location, and we could just go there directly.

The other issue is with furnishings that are destroyed upon removal. It should really never have been a thing in the first place, but at the very least housing reclamation should be an exception to it. Keep ALL our furnishings with the caretaker, and keep them there permanently until we can retrieve them.

IMHO I'm fine with the decay timer of 45 days... Coz in the end its a fairly simple equation...

SE wants you to pay a monthly subscription fee to keep your house, not because the subscription will keep your house under your name, but because you have to log into the game, if you don't pay the subscription and don't log into the game you lose your house. Fortunately you get 80% of your investment back, the furniture gets put on a residential caretaker for a while and the house gets put back in the market for some other player...

Thus far that works just like the real world, buy a house, keep paying the mortage. Miss mortage payments, lose the house.

I'm fine with that. If I don't play coz of RL issues let my property be useful for someone else who might get a kick from it.

For those who do not agree at this point you have 2 choices... 1. play by their rules, pay up and log in and keep the house... Or 2. not play by their rules, not pay and not log in and lose the house.

SE won't invest more money in additional hardware to keep paying customers and non paying customers happy (even if it means loosing potential returning customers), because its not a good business choice, plain and simple... From a company perspective you keep the players "paying" and "playing" and keep your profit margin on black numbers. Extra servers that cost money and less players paying a subscription is not a sound business choice.

You do the math.

Don't dig SE decay system? Complaining here might work, or may not. Honestly we've all asked for extra wards for the last year and a half and gotten nothing after 2.x. And now we got a decay timer system.

That's pretty much proof that complaining about it might not yield the expected results.

However, should enough players put their money where their mouth is then that would be a whole other story... If enough people unsubscribe because they explicitly "don't like the decay timer, and want more wards added so everyone (active or not) gets to keep their house" then SE could listen.

There's 1440 houses per server, if 20% of the house owners would decide to ditch the game "coz the housing decay timer pissed them off" thats 288 people per server (out of 10,000). 288 may not be much, but 288 times all the servers in the game might amount to something to get SE's attention, coz in the end it hits the profit margin.

Not inciting insurrection, just saying this game is running on top of a company a business model, and as such money is the way people get what they want.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

45 days might make sense for a large FC with lots of players, any of whom can keep it active. It's a horrible timeframe to use for private housing. They need to either triple/quadruple the timeframe for private houses, or else allow simply keeping your subscription active to keep your personal house active. At least the sub can be maintained from anywhere. They could even get away with combining it so that you could lose a house either by dropping your sub for 45 days or not going to your housing plot for 6 months.

Also, for either personal or FC housing, items held by the Resident Caretaker need to be kept there permanently, until either the character or FC is deleted/disbanded. Requiring that we have to get another house within 45 days of losing one is a total fail in a system that doesn't keep housing regularly available. (Actually, it would be a fail even if replacement houses were available. So long as we aren't taking up a plot in the interim, we should be able to leave the game for a year and when we come back have our stuff still available with minimal setup to redo it in a new plot.)

Their current plan effectively says that if you ever leave the game, even briefly, you're never allowed to come back, unless you want to just start over from scratch. That kind of attitude can ruin an MMO.



We'll deal with that when SE moves private housing to a different system, as they were supposed to do in the first place. Currently, however, private housing is there in the same wards as FC housing, so the plot reclamation system has to allow for the fact that private housing with only one player to keep it up is in those wards. SE's plan fails on that.



For a couple more minor points (once the game-killing duration issues are addressed):

If we have to go to our house regularly, make it a free teleport to get there. (The game world enlarged significantly when HW came out, so we're kind of due for another free porting option anyway.) Currently, if I want to reach my house, the pattern is:
1) Teleport to Limsa Lominsa Aetherite (because that's my Free Teleport location).
2) Aethernet to the Aftcastle
3) run to the lift in the Adventurer's Guild
4) take the lift to the airship terminal
5) take an airship to the Gold Saucer
6) take an airship to Ul'dah
7) take the lift to the Ruby Road Exchange
8) run to the Aetherite Plaza
9) Aethernet to Goblet Ward 8
10) Aethernet to the Southeast Aethernet shard
11) run the last block and a half to my house

Occasionally, I'll spend a few gil to replace steps 7-11 with a teleport to my house, but I have to get as far as Ul'dah before I'll do that or it's just too expensive. So when getting there is a matter of either 11 steps (8 of which have loading screens) or 7 steps and a gil cost, is it any wonder I don't go there as often as I'd like? Make it inherently a free port, or at the very least let us select it as our free destination or Return Home location, and we could just go there directly.

The other issue is with furnishings that are destroyed upon removal. It should really never have been a thing in the first place, but at the very least housing reclamation should be an exception to it. Keep ALL our furnishings with the caretaker, and keep them there permanently until we can retrieve them.

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Go into ANY level 51+ dungeon. Kill 10 mobs. =gil to tele home from anywhere.

or....

Spend Allied seals/Centrino Seals on Aytherite tickets to get home.

SE already allows you to tele directly to your home for a reduced rate.
You could also consider making Ul'dah either your free tele/return point.

But seriously, your gil cannot be that tight.


As to the topic at hand, I own a house, and I am 100% aokay with this plan. Actually, now that I know, worse case scenario, I lose 80% of the gil invested (I am assuming the 80% is based on the home's lowest price value), I feel more protected...not less. If at anytime, I want my house gil back, I simply just don't use it for the 90 days =bingo, I get most of my investment back. Not too shabby. Furthermore, if there's open plots, I could re-invest that gil in another plot of my choosing.

And no, it likely won't solve the housing problem for every server, but this was only intended to be a starting point. SE has more fixes inc.

PS: SE explained why they merged PC and FC housing together (not saying I agree, or disagree, just saying the did explain). I will say this, while I don't know for sure that having the same zones shared between both was a great idea, People had already formed (and still do 'buy' and form) solo FC's just so they could have a house/have FC housing features for themselves as a solo player. So...you already had 1 owner homes in many wards.

Also, a little math:

There are 16 Wards of homes in each housing district (main+subdivsion)
There are 3 Housing Districts
=48 Total Wards

There are 30 plots per ward so 30x48=1440 homes per world are currently possible.

Now, lets say in each ward, 1/3 of the homes are 'unattended' so 10 homes in each ward. =roughly 475 homes on each world that would automatically open up.

When SE added the subdivisions, that was an addition of 24 wards or 720 potential homes on each world just in that one patch. So basically, another way of looking at it is, if even only 1/3 of the homes are reclaimed, that would be like adding 66% of the subdivisions back into the game...and in many worlds/zones, the 'dead' population is larger than 1/3 in that ward.

Also, when SE implemented the subdivisions, I still lived on a high-pop world, and even though many homes did sell quick, and you might have had to fight for your 'dream' plot, it took several weeks for every home to sell...and i think even then, some of the larger properties were still vacant. So, unless you live on a high pop server with player driven reasons for wanting homes (Roleplay), it is likely, this 'fix' will actually assist more people into home ownership than people believe.

Housing teleports are already cheaper than general aetherytes. And if you really don't want to spend <200 gil (maybe <300 in an extreme case...)... just log out near the house during your several-month vacation and you can get back quick enough. If you can never afford (in time or gil) to be at your house anyway... I question both how you afforded it and why you bought it in the first place.

I realize I might be beating a dead horse here, but here goes...

First let me start off by saying I agree with what a lot of you are saying; there are too many houses sitting there with owners who have quit with no intent on returning and they should absolutely relinquish their land. I do take issue with how SE is going about this though in regards to personal housing.

Say you are in the military and are sent out on deployment for 6 months. You have every intention of coming back to the game but are not able to access it. With the current access based system you would loose everything, all that hard work gone (plot, gil, furniture). IMO this is a completely unfair penalty to circumstances beyond your control.

What if instead it was based off an active subscription? Then you could set it up so that your subscription renews, you keep your stuff, SE gets their subscription money (let's face it, this is what they are after) and houses which are truly abandoned go back to market.

That being said, the current solution really doesn't solve anything with our congested housing system regardless of how they would implement it. In fact I would even challenge to say it could make things worse.

Right now SE has no safeguards against land barons/gil sellers/buyers; and with the Heavensward economy they're in an even better position to snatch up available plots then they were when housing first released. Now this is merely speculation but I'm willing to bet that 45 days after 3.1 launches they will be camping the housing districts. So, while you might be lucky enough to get one of the freed plots the bulk of them will go to these unsavory types and then we are back where we started.

I do know one thing for certain. Had I known SE would do this from the beginning I would have never bothered with personal housing. This whole thing has left a rather vile taste in my mouth.

As a leader of an FC that is homeless, I think personal housing should have either never existed (FC houses have private quarters for cheaper), or been completely separate from FC housing (meaning they do not compete for plots with one another).
I actually was disappointed to hear houses wouldn't be immediately available with the launch of 3.1 and that I'd have to wait 45 days, or more.

But we all knew a decay system was coming for housing being freed. Honestly if they made it longer than 45 days, they'd probably also have to free up housing immediately with the launch of 3.1. 45 days is a month and a half as we all know. Should it be 60? I do not see a difference between private and FC housing in timeframe. If an FC master unsubscribes without changing the FC master for a long period of time, I personally think that FC should be in question for losing their house as well. I DO think people should get some sort of refund (maybe half or 2/3 of the price paid), but ultimately as others have said, what matters is the people who are playing and PAYING the game, not people who effectively may as well not have ever downloaded the game in the first place because they are not paying. Like I said, maybe it should be 2 months, who knows. But no one wants to lose their house - obviously! The problem is housing is limited and inactive people are in no way more entitled to plots than people actually playing and paying SE. That is just the cold hard fact, whether you are a fan of it or not. :/

edit: also I have no idea why anyone would complain about the expense for housing teleport after having had the funds to buy a house.
edit2: Nevermind the gil refund thing, just saw that is in fact a thing and even higher than I anticipated. Now it feels like a lot of people crying over self-entitlement.

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Originally Posted by Piamette_Buttlass

edit2: Nevermind the gil refund thing, just saw that is in fact a thing and even higher than I anticipated. Now it feels like a lot of people crying over self-entitlement.

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The loss of furnishings that can not be removed is often of higher value than the house itself.

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Originally Posted by Piamette_Buttlass

edit2: Nevermind the gil refund thing, just saw that is in fact a thing and even higher than I anticipated. Now it feels like a lot of people crying over self-entitlement.

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Well, if it's a matter of just barely missing the inactivity timer by a few days and showing up right after your house is reclaimed, then you can get an 80 percent refund of the plot cost and at least a lot of your furnishings back (though not the expensive ones). But that's only available for 35 days. If we're talking about someone who took a break from the game for a while and comes back after a three month absence, they get nothing.

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Originally Posted by Piamette_Buttlass

Now it feels like a lot of people crying over self-entitlement.

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Not to play devil's advocate here but how is your post any less self-entitled? How are you anymore deserving of a house than someone who worked their butt off to buy a house and got there first but may have to take a break due to various reasons that could very well be beyond their control? And please don't say because you are a paying customer because you can have your house demolished and even lose everything with an active sub. There are circumstances that can and will happen in life that can cut you off from the game (military, health, pc died, etc.)

The fact is SE messed up and instead of implementing a real fix they decided to implement an unfair system that isn't really going to fix anything. The housing market is still going to be just as congested as it is now, people will still fight over plots and land barons will continue to exploit the system. The only thing this accomplishes is pitting one group of entitled players against another just as entitled group.

Just to clarify though, I do actually support a reclamation system for houses that are well and truly abandoned; it's just that the current proposed system is flawed and can penalize paying customers. My suggestion earlier was to remove the access requirement and make the system solely based on an active subscription. Also, I do believe that there should be some kind of refund system for destructible furniture(some of it is too expensive to just vanish) and that the reclaim period on items should be indefinite, because as it is now you stand to lose everything in about 2.5 months should your access be cut off.

I will agree wholeheartedly on your first point though. Personal housing should have never been implemented under this broken system. Unfortunately it was and we're just going to have to deal with the consequences.

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Originally Posted by Syrehn

To everyone saying "this isn't the solution!!!", SE never marketed this change as the solution to the housing issue. They pushed that it was going to be their first step. It will be interesting to see where they go with it from here.

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Their next "step" is to add more wards. As though that will make any significant dent in housing availability.

They have no real solution planned.

I, for one, am very happy about the system they're implementing. My only gripe is the unfortunate timing: because patch hits 10th Nov that means inactive houses will be released on 25th December, so after months of waiting I will be miles away from any XIV capable device celebrating Christmas with family and I can't be the only one.

One feature I would like to be added is to make countdown timer for the last 15 days visible on the placard, since the timer menu shows up for the owner only and post 3.1 countdown there's really no way of knowing when each plot will be released.

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Originally Posted by Naunet

Their next "step" is to add more wards. As though that will make any significant dent in housing availability.

They have no real solution planned.

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You and I seem to keep doing the same song and dance throughout these threads. I get it, you're a zealous advocate of instanced housing and believe that is the only solution. It worked in all the other F2P games you've been in and by that logic you believe it should just work like that here.

I'm not going to get into a huge debate with you about it but just because SE's solution and yours don't align doesn't mean they have nothing planned. Despite your belief that "they have no solution" they are taking steps to try to make the current model better, even if some players don't like it.

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Originally Posted by Syrehn

I'm not going to get into a huge debate with you about it but just because SE's solution and yours don't align doesn't mean they have nothing planned. Despite your belief that "they have no solution" they are taking steps to try to make the current model better, even if some players don't like it.

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What possible solution besides instanced housing could SE possibly uncover to supply an entire server with housing? I get that they're trying to do things to mitigate the problem, but people seem to be taking that as they're going to fix it. They think they'll magically be able to own a house if SE adds some more wards, when the ratio of available plots to the number of people on a server is so large that it would barely be noticed except for a glimpse of false hope when they race to try and purchase a plot.

I champion instanced housing because I honestly do not see how else SE could possibly hope to supply a server with housing, instead of just 2%.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Syrehn

You and I seem to keep doing the same song and dance throughout these threads. I get it, you're a zealous advocate of instanced housing and believe that is the only solution. It worked in all the other F2P games you've been in and by that logic you believe it should just work like that here.

I'm not going to get into a huge debate with you about it but just because SE's solution and yours don't align doesn't mean they have nothing planned. Despite your belief that "they have no solution" they are taking steps to try to make the current model better, even if some players don't like it.

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Well, I for one am not particular as to whether they fix it with instanced housing or with enough wards for everyone, but since they've told us the problem is that their systems can't handle enough wards for everyone, instanced is probably the more feasible of the two possible fixes.

They've told us outright, though, that they aren't planning to do either one. After they've told us they have no intention of solving the issue (just as they haven't in the last two years), I'm not sure why you're so adamant in saying they will.

Sure, they're making some changes in housing, including this reclamation rule, the ability to move from one house to another, and some new wards in Ishgard, but none of the changes even address the real problem.

For those thinking that 45 days was chosen arbitrarily, think about what it means for this first cycle of reclaimed houses. They would be freed about on December 25th, so Christmas for a lot of folks. It means that those wishing to keep their houses will have to renew their subscriptions in that time period. It's another incentive, besides the holiday events happening in-game, to get players to do this and it will be a boost to their subscription numbers going into the new year. That's how I take it anyway.

The benefit to this is that you can skip a month+ for a break if you can't afford it, or are just burned out, but don't have to resub on the nose on that 29th day to avoid losing your house. It could also mean waiting for a paycheck to come in, or bills to have been paid off first, if you're tight on money for something like this. There's multiple ways to interpret the decision of timing.

- just a joke -


YoshiP: Please approve the budget for expanding housing.

Management: No, just save the cost and recycle their houses.

YoshiP: But...it is what happened in the old games, and I said this game will not have this.

Management: Have you read the forum? There is a BIG THREAD everyone saying THANK YOU to me!


- yes, u made this joke -

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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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Ahh... This act of necromancy is so nice. I had this thread on my bookmarks waiting for this day.

Thank you SE!!!

Hahahahah.... Wait, im latin american... JAJAJAJAJAJAJA

Congrats to OP obtained 3 houses with the best plot on your server.

SE really deserved your big thank you^^;

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3499352

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nicobo

Congrats to OP obtained 3 houses with the best plot on your server.

SE really deserved your big thank you^^;

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3499352

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ugh, name and shame on a new level ;p

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Originally Posted by Naunet

Their next "step" is to add more wards. As though that will make any significant dent in housing availability.

They have no real solution planned.

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We seem to be getting, by some time around 3.3 IIRC, a fairly substantial boost...

New Wards. Even if that's just one, that's an additional 180 plots. Far more than this provided.
An Ishgardian Ward. What's that? Like an additional 480 plots, plus 60 for every new Ward added above?
"Mansions", which sound suspiciously like the "Slap Private Rooms in Inns" suggestion I've been repeating ad nauseum. 512 rooms per mansion, though no real details beyond that so far...

To top it all off, we're also getting an increase to the furniture cap and they're working on plant pots to allow anyone to garden... I'd say steps 2 and up are looking pretty great TBH, though people are seemingly too broke up over abandoned plots not being the silver bullet to give a crap... No idea why anyone thought this would actually solve anything, but I'm certainly getting a laugh out of the people buying plots to resell, because there is no real reason for anyone to buy off them, given what SE has planned for Housing...

By all means though, everyone, keep bitching about housing. Not being sarcastic there, actually keep complaining, complain at the right thing though... Complain that none of this stuff is coming until 3.3 onwards... Something like Mansions and plant pots should have been in 2.3 for crying out loud... Abandoned plots was a step to reduce waste and it's been hit and miss, sure plenty are abusing the current state, but plenty of people also finally got a plot to use (server mileage may vary), that's a good thing. Stop getting upset at SE for people on your server being sh*theads and instead get upset over SE for taking so bloody long to implement something as basic as "Mansions".

Disclaimer; Absolutely none of this affects me, I've had my plots for a months. I still find it utterly absurd how something like "Mansions" wasn't implemented before Housing, though.

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

ugh, name and shame on a new level ;p

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Directly from my post

((((These are the best plots in the game. Im sorry you dont like it and I dont either. I however have no choice as I have to turn right around and buy 4 homes behind our FC house in Lavenderbeds for the same price I am being paid for these plots. Call it greedy but its the only option we have to be in the same ward behind our FC house (Plot 11, ward 5 lavenderbeds)))))

If this person had actually learned to read, I got them so I can either sell or trade with players that are living behind my FC House. If they never sell, then I get to keep the three best plots in the game for me, my wfe, and my friend. My wife has the middle (Plot 50) and I bought my best friend the one next to hers (plot 51) and I get plot 49.

There is no shame here. I would easily buy/trade these plots to someone else or others if they owned plots (7-8-9-10) in the Lavenderbeds ward 5. That is where we want to live which is right behind my FC house (Plot11). None of them came up for sale yesterday so We bought those in the mist instead as they are the three best next to each other and secluded from everyone else.

Lastly, there are still plots in every ward in every area on Siren for sale. I may be trying to sell mine for the sole purpose of moving, but because there is still a good number of plots, people still have those options (Although they are all in less desirable locations then my own).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nalien

"Mansions", which sound suspiciously like the "Slap Private Rooms in Inns" suggestion...

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Where is this other meaning of "mansion" coming from? "Mansions" are the name of the large estates we already have in game. Estates are classified by size as "Cottages", "Houses", or "Mansions" (even though we more commonly just refer to them as Small, Medium, and Large houses).

EDIT:
Ok, found it. They're going to have to call it something else, since "mansion" is already taken for another purpose, but yeah, the "mansion type housing" referred to in that live letter likely is private rooms somewhere, though the 512 residences part is confusing (and indicates it's still not the available to everyone pattern of XI's Mog Houses).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

Where is this other meaning of "mansion" coming from? "Mansions" are the name of the large estates we already have in game. Estates are classified by size as "Cottages", "Houses", or "Mansions" (even though we more commonly just refer to them as Small, Medium, and Large houses).

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It was mentioned somewhere, possibly the last letter from the producer. Mansions in Japan are essentially tiny apartments in a large building.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nicobo

Congrats to OP obtained 3 houses with the best plot on your server.

SE really deserved your big thank you^^;

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3499352

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Thank you for that, I had this thread on my favorites for the day reclamation hit, just forgot about it until now. It fills me with joy to see one of the biggest proponents of the system doing something so shady and underhanded, and then trying to excuse his behavior as if his immorality is justified. You really have no idea how happy you made me, especially when I recall my discussions with him. Congratulations to the lucky few who've profited on the losses of others and denial to many others, and may karma find you some day.