NA Housing Demolish Timer

Has the timer been turned back on, on the NA Servers yet? I had heard it had but been waiting nearly 3 months now for a house to demolish so I can get the funds spent back on it and its not gone yet.

Nope, they'll make an announcement when it does get turned back on.

They gave the JP servers about 2 weeks notice on Lodestone before turning their auto-demo back on at the start of the year. I expect they'll do the same for NA. It will probably either happen with the release of 4.56 (in which case it should be announced next week) or with the data center reorganization at the end of April.

Short of someone voluntarily relinquishing their plot, don't expect to see any available houses until the free transfer period begins. It will take time for houses to demo once the timers are enabled again.

FYI they've announced that it will be reactivated for the NA worlds with patch 4.57.

Honestly, 6 months was way too long. I can understand the natural disaster angle sure, but half a year just doesn't make sense to me.

most likely it just slipped their minds until they saw that people were complaining on the forums again about it being on for so long.

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Originally Posted by BigBossCL

Honestly, 6 months was way too long. I can understand the natural disaster angle sure, but half a year just doesn't make sense to me.

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It's normally 5-6 months after a natural disaster before the timers are turned back on. It's not that long of a time for those affected. I'm sorry if it seems too long to you.

- Someone who has friends still trying to get life straight over 1.5 years after Harvey hit here in Texas

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Originally Posted by MizArai

It's normally 5-6 months after a natural disaster before the timers are turned back on. It's not that long of a time for those affected. I'm sorry if it seems too long to you.

- Someone who has friends still trying to get life straight over 1.5 years after Harvey hit here in Texas

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While the gesture is nice, victims of natural disasters probably have a lot more on their minds than a fake video game house. 6 months is way too long because at this point its negatively effecting the rest of the population that were unharmed by the disaster. Call me cold if you like, but its been waaaayy too long.

I'm glad the timer is coming back on soon, but also like, I get why they turn it off. My part of the country is dealing with some pretty awful flooding ( 4 people have died already ), and while I don't expect them to turn off the timer for this, it very much gives a point of reference for why they turn it off for large disasters.

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Originally Posted by AriesMouse

I'm glad the timer is coming back on soon, but also like, I get why they turn it off. My part of the country is dealing with some pretty awful flooding ( 4 people have died already ), and while I don't expect them to turn off the timer for this, it very much gives a point of reference for why they turn it off for large disasters.

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I think a lot of the issue is that North America is a laaaarge area, and many times there are natural disasters concurrently or one after another. A large blizzard and endemic power outtages and flooding in the east. A hurricane hits florida and we suspend it for 6 months, then wildfires go crazy in california and it could be another 6 months.

I understand the intent of it sure. But it makes much more sense on a smaller country (land-area wise) like Japan than it does for North America.

If anything i just think its shows the current housing system just isnt sustainable, especially if the game keeps growing.

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Originally Posted by BigBossCL

I think a lot of the issue is that North America is a laaaarge area, and many times there are natural disasters concurrently or one after another. A large blizzard and endemic power outtages and flooding in the east. A hurricane hits florida and we suspend it for 6 months, then wildfires go crazy in california and it could be another 6 months.

I understand the intent of it sure. But it makes much more sense on a smaller country (land-area wise) like Japan than it does for North America.

If anything i just think its shows the current housing system just isnt sustainable, especially if the game keeps growing.

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Yeah, see this last time, there was bad flooding in the east from a hurricane, then a hurricane that basically wiped a city off the map in Florida (and then proceeded to rain on the flooded east coast) and while that was going on there were wild fires along the entire west coast. It's not like this was some isolated thing where only this one small area had a problem. Lots of large heavily populated areas had problems. SE is amazing for giving people 5-6 months to get their life back together where people could then come back to a game they love and not have lost everything in the virtual world as well as the real one.

As people have pointed out in other threads, our current housing crisis is compounded by the free transfers that will be happening in April and people buying up houses to get an extra 3 million gil when they transfer. Auto demo being turned back on will help things, but so will just having the data center shuffle done so people aren't buying up property just to make extra gil from transferring.

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Originally Posted by MizArai

It's normally 5-6 months after a natural disaster before the timers are turned back on. It's not that long of a time for those affected. I'm sorry if it seems too long to you.

- Someone who has friends still trying to get life straight over 1.5 years after Harvey hit here in Texas

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Or just have dynamic wards. Once there are under a set number of plots available in all other wards combined then the system auto adds a new ward.

Remove auto-demo altogether and only demo if your account has been canceled for 6+ months.

To prevent a lot of wards from building up, make plot prices in low wards decay before higher wards.

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Originally Posted by Krojack

Or just have dynamic wards. Once there are under a set number of plots available in all other wards combined then the system auto adds a new ward.

Remove auto-demo altogether and only demo if your account has been canceled for 6+ months.

To prevent a lot of wards from building up, make plot prices in low wards decay before higher wards.

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This is a good idea, but I thought I saw/read somewhere that half the reason they can't/won't do this, is because ward expanding is all tied together, for every server. It's why they don't just plop more wards down on heavy pop servers. If one server gets new wards, they all are, which leads to some servers having completely empty wards not getting used. It's a rather poor excuse, but it seems to be part of why they don't just do something like that. =\

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Originally Posted by Krojack

Or just have dynamic wards. Once there are under a set number of plots available in all other wards combined then the system auto adds a new ward.

Remove auto-demo altogether and only demo if your account has been canceled for 6+ months.

To prevent a lot of wards from building up, make plot prices in low wards decay before higher wards.

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I think this is a fantastic idea!

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Originally Posted by AriesMouse

This is a good idea, but I thought I saw/read somewhere that half the reason they can't/won't do this, is because ward expanding is all tied together, for every server. It's why they don't just plop more wards down on heavy pop servers. If one server gets new wards, they all are, which leads to some servers having completely empty wards not getting used. It's a rather poor excuse, but it seems to be part of why they don't just do something like that. =\

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If the low population wards decay faster, then people will fill them in faster, due to the better pricing - one would think. Many wards rarely have people outside anyway, so what would the difference be if they're actually empty until they eventually fill?

Square Enix, Yoshi-P, please look into Krojack's idea. (I would make it so that auto demolition would be 3 months after cancellation instead of 6, though.)

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Originally Posted by Talacocheta

If the low population wards decay faster, then people will fill them in faster, due to the better pricing - one would think. Many wards rarely have people outside anyway, so what would the difference be if they're actually empty until they eventually fill?

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It requires them to have resources already allocated to the possibility of more wards for each world. If they're already allocated the resources and wards already have to be running, it's the same as just adding a large chunk of more wards.

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Originally Posted by Talacocheta

If the low population wards decay faster, then people will fill them in faster, due to the better pricing - one would think. Many wards rarely have people outside anyway, so what would the difference be if they're actually empty until they eventually fill?

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How empty the wards are isn't really the issue. The issue is the wards are always "on" just like every open world zone is always on.

They aren't like a dungeon instance that is only loaded when a group needs to enter that dungeon, or even like apartments/FC rooms/house interiors that also are only loaded and taking up server resources when someone enters. Every ward is actively taking up server resources every minute the server is up regardless of whether there is anyone in the ward.

More wards is more demand for server resources and that becomes an expense that is wasteful if no one is using those wards. Do you really want to see SE increase the cost of your subscription to cover the increase costs for wards that aren't being used.

If SE was able to dynamically expand wards on a per world basis as needed, then it would make sense to do that. For whatever reason, they can't (or at least can't with the current programming).

It's why expanding instanced housing options would be a much better solution. Then housing is load on entry only, taking up fewer server resources than wards that are constantly on and far easier to expand as needed.