Why on Earth is there a timer for retrieving items after being demolished?

I know I should have kept track of my housing timer but between losing my job and my GPU slowly dying which with the insane prices may make me unable to play indefinitely at any moment even little things like going to my ingame house has been hard to keep together.

I can get over losing the house but losing all of the event items I've picked up over the expansions really feels like a kick to the teeth after that. I didn't even know there would be a timer on that cause it just seems like such an odd thing to put a timer on.

Because infinite-capacity computer storage hasn't been invented yet?

My understanding is also that the item storage from the NPC in question is bound to the plot of land, not the person (otherwise it would get complicated for FCs, I reckon). Since its possible that your house gets demolished, someone else buys it, but doesnt take care of it straight away, so the house gets demolished again you could probably run into problems with the reclamation of housing items if the previous owner didnt clear out the storage before... so... they put a timer on that.

While this might not help you in your current situation, this is really a good place to remind people of apartments again: They wont go away, they're here to stay. If you're worried about event items being lost: Buy an apartment and store them there! (Or, if you want to actually use them in your house, store some duplicates - my apartment is filled with nothing but event items)
Since all seasonal events only require a level 15 character whos completed the mainquest far enough to travel to the three initial citystates, it might be an idea to create an alt solely for the purpose of holding onto seasonal event items - might not be possible, depending on your sub and/or your server and/or your alt-addicition, but its an option aswell.

It is a a Data Center thing, if they are going to add additional storage for players, who can not be bothered about their items, that has been removed from a demolition, then why waste that database resource?

It is a public service you get, that you do not lose everything, take it or leave it.

I don't know why this is a thing, but I have always felt it was wrong. I can't think of any other game (still running) that deletes player assets even when a subscription is still being paid. If that's a 'public service', imo it's a pretty lousy one.

I don't think it's asking too much for furnishing items to be saved along with your gear, minions, food, out-of-date event tokens, fireworks etc. If there's room to save all that, there should be room to save your furniture. I'd hazard a guess that the way they set up the timer and refund of purchase price has meant your furnishings are tied up with that. I would definitely like to see it changed though.
In the meantime, best to store any seasonal items on your retainer or in your apartment when they aren't in use.

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Originally Posted by Solarra

I don't know why this is a thing, but I have always felt it was wrong. I can't think of any other game (still running) that deletes player assets even when a subscription is still being paid. If that's a 'public service', imo it's a pretty lousy one.

I don't think it's asking too much for furnishing items to be saved along with your gear, minions, food, out-of-date event tokens, fireworks etc. If there's room to save all that, there should be room to save your furniture. I'd hazard a guess that the way they set up the timer and refund of purchase price has meant your furnishings are tied up with that. I would definitely like to see it changed though.
In the meantime, best to store any seasonal items on your retainer or in your apartment when they aren't in use.

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The maximum amount of furniture that the NPC should need to hold onto would be 880 items - that would from a mansion with full indoor and outdoor storage, aswell as all itemsslots taken (400 items placed inside + 400 items inside storage + 40 items placed outside + 40 items outside storage). Even a small one would create up to 440 items.
Thats a bit more than 6 retainers can hold (or 3 for a small). Seeing how much trouble it is to give us more inventory space, I do see this being a problem - storing all the furniture of a small house is about the amount of "non specific inventory" you get ( 2 retainer + your own inventory should reach about that amount). Creating that storage for a person who might not even come back to use it ever again seems kinda wasteful to me...
The thing really is: There is no extra room to store that many extra things. If you're holding on to out-of-date event tokens, you're giving up some of your precious and limited inventory space for that!

And, as I explained, that furniture is not tied to your character, its tied to the plot of land - thats why anyone in an FC (if they have certain permissions) can reclaim the items from a demolished FC-house. And to make sure that there arent any mix ups when another house on that plot of land gets demolished, the "demolition inventory" has to be cleared out.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Because infinite-capacity computer storage hasn't been invented yet?

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Maybe that's the reason why we don't have instanced housing yet?

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

Maybe that's the reason why we don't have instanced housing yet?

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Instanced housing doesn't require that. See just about every other MMO that has housing - it's all instanced.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Instanced housing doesn't require that. See just about every other MMO that has housing - it's all instanced.

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And how does it work then? Instanced data is clouded somewhere else?

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Originally Posted by Antoine_Lenheim

And how does it work then? Instanced data is clouded somewhere else?

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I'm not a programmer to know the specific technical details. The simple explanation given to players is that instances are load on demand (when a player is ready to enter). The data for the instance is retrieved, it's created and the player goes in. The player leaves and the instance is removed (assuming no other players are still in it) so there is room for the instance server to create a different instance for a different player.

There's nothing new about this. MMOs have been using instance technology for various portions of their content for decades.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

I'm not a programmer to know the specific technical details. The simple explanation given to players is that instances are load on demand (when a player is ready to enter). The data for the instance is retrieved, it's created and the player goes in. The player leaves and the instance is removed (assuming no other players are still in it) so there is room for the instance server to create a different instance for a different player.

There's nothing new about this. MMOs have been using instance technology for various portions of their content for decades.

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That’s more of a matter with data processing than data storage though. Instancing saves on processing power but it does not help with storage. (Think of it of it as cpu+RAM versus hard drive space. Multiple CPU cores + sufficient RAM let you run multiple applications simultaneously, but you need hard drive space to store the actual applications regardless of whether they are running.)

In this game, item storage seems to be very expensive; or at least SE is treating it that way. They’d have you use retainers (essentially half a playable toon) for additional storage than some bank system, and they charge a monthly fee for additional ones. The system might have been setup for lore purposes, but if that were the case, they could have made it a warehouse that retainers have access to, rather than each retainer having access only to his/her inventory.

Having items from auto-demolished house being tied to old plot, instead of previous owner(whether it be an FC or player toon) also seems an awkward decision. But maybe that’s their way to avoid dealing with auto-demolition of multiple houses belonging to the same owner.

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Originally Posted by Seleni

That’s more of a matter with data processing than data storage though. Instancing saves on processing power but it does not help with storage. (Think of it of it as cpu+RAM versus hard drive space. Multiple CPU cores + sufficient RAM let you run multiple applications simultaneously, but you need hard drive space to store the actual applications regardless of whether they are running.)

In this game, item storage seems to be very expensive; or at least SE is treating it that way. They’d have you use retainers (essentially half a playable toon) for additional storage than some bank system, and they charge a monthly fee for additional ones. The system might have been setup for lore purposes, but if that were the case, they could have made it a warehouse that retainers have access to, rather than each retainer having access only to his/her inventory.

Having items from auto-demolished house being tied to old plot, instead of previous owner(whether it be an FC or player toon) also seems an awkward decision. But maybe that’s their way to avoid dealing with auto-demolition of multiple houses belonging to the same owner.

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I suspect it's part of the architecture that was inherited from 1.0 that hasn't been changed yet... or something they tried internally and things went boom. There's been a lot of things we've had to live with that shaped FFXIV because of how 1.0 was designed along with getting everything to work on a PS3.

That said, some of it definitely needs a second look.

It is a temporare use of the Database, that allow this feature, just like spam mail it will deleted after x amount of time, co keep the database clear, too much yank in the database... from eg. 1000's of players inactive or 100.000's of players, will hurt the server stability, especially in a field where it has not been invested into havind additional resources.

That is the long explanation told short, they wont know if you are coming back, so unless you have legit stored it on retainers and such, then it vanished into thin air to preserve resources.

I don't know what the time is for an ex subscribed player will be in the database, or if there is any limit on that though, to go a bit further with things.

Sorry for your losses :(