Two reasons why an eviction system is INEVITABLE.

[Madjames]

Why? Why is it so important to NOT instance housing so everyone can have a house? I don't understand this insistence on keeping these 'neighborhoods'. Most of you are complaining that they are empty anyway. If you want to see strangers running about, just go to a city.

Proper instanced housing that isn't already tied to existing housing is something we need. This whole thing is just... just silly.

Go to Ultima Online and then come back and you will know my reasoning as to why i think housing should not be instanced.

They can totally make the housing better if they added in player vendors to sell items FOR YOU on them instead of using the AH.

Again, I will never stand by nor want my house to be instanced so only me and a certain number of friends can join.

[Erim-Nelhah]

They can totally make the housing better if they added in player vendors to sell items FOR YOU on them instead of using the AH.

If your FC leader allows it or you own the house, you can already do this by placing a retainer in your yard.

That said, there's one big difference between FFXIV housing and UO housing: In FFXIV, there are a total of 1,440 housing plots per server, with the possible addition of 480 more in a future patch. In UO, each housing-enabled facet (roughly the equivalent of the city-state boundaries in FFXIV i.e. Thanalan) of a shard (server) has about that much space, maybe more, and last time I checked, UO has 2 facets per server which serve as viable housing locations, with a 3rd facet available if you don't mind the risks involved with living there.

As for how to fix the housing shortage, the addition of 480 more plots (Coerthas housing) will help, but the real fix would be to either have instanced housing or dynamically-allocated housing wards (when all existing wards are about 80-90% full, add one - if wards start falling below 50% perhaps merging them would then be in order).

Just adding more wards would help, but some servers need more wards than others.

--Erim

[Yeldir]

The problem with dynamically adding more wards is that the current server structure for this is super inefficient; we can deduce from SE's protestations by that "the hardware can't take more wards" that the housing wards are handled in much the same way as fully fledged zones, such as Middle La Noscea. Couple this with the fact that plots of the same size are not necessarily identical in their actual dimensions and layout, and suddenly merging becomes problematic, too. How will the server know who to merge, and when? And dynamically adding more wards isn't going to reduce the need for more hardware to host them.

[Nalyna]

As a new player, it is quite disheartening to do the housing quests so early in the game only to realize these housing constraints. It almost feels like shady advertising as a feature. I've played many MMOs and never run into this. The only thing similar was a MUD that allowed you to pay for housing by paying real money. But they never filled up enough that people didn't have the option.

I see both sides. It's not fair to lose your house because you take a break from the game. It seems however that the game chose this implementation for a sense of community. But what happens when every year the neighborhood is that much more empty? People do actually give up on games. Those houses would be empty FOREVER. People die. Those would be empty FOREVER. It just seems like a contradiction to the very goal they were hoping for. The only way they can keep that goal (Sense of community) and not switched to something like instanced housing seems to be to enact an eviction feature. One that is as fair as possible.

My favorite housing is Rift and EQ2. I think they did those very nice.

Just my very, very humble opinion and thoughts as a newbie.

[Khadawaru]

What's wrong with implementing taxes? Inactive players unable to pay their taxes would lose their homes. Players could have the option to "bank" up to 3 months of taxes so that they can stop playing for a month or two without concern.

[Kaiser-Ace]

What's wrong with implementing taxes? Inactive players unable to pay their taxes would lose their homes. Players could have the option to "bank" up to 3 months of taxes so that they can stop playing for a month or two without concern.

Then RMTers gain footing after losing most of their power for the first time since 2.0 opened.

[Odeda]

What's wrong with implementing taxes? Inactive players unable to pay their taxes would lose their homes. Players could have the option to "bank" up to 3 months of taxes so that they can stop playing for a month or two without concern.

I really don't like any form of the rent/lease/tax idea. How would you define a fair price price anyway? As it's been brought up many times in housing discussions, there are some who really struggle making gil and it would only add to the burden to the FCs/players like that and make the housing barrier even bigger than it is now. I think it shouldn't matter if saving for a plot took you 9 months of less than a week, it would be no problem for the latter but would only add stress and tension for the first. And most importantly: there are plenty of other ways to measure activeness, such as timers.

[Domira]

The problem with dynamically adding more wards is that the current server structure for this is super inefficient; we can deduce from SE's protestations by that "the hardware can't take more wards" that the housing wards are handled in much the same way as fully fledged zones, such as Middle La Noscea. Couple this with the fact that plots of the same size are not necessarily identical in their actual dimensions and layout, and suddenly merging becomes problematic, too. How will the server know who to merge, and when? And dynamically adding more wards isn't going to reduce the need for more hardware to host them.

I think SE needs to upgrade their server infrastructure.

[Yeldir]

I think SE needs to upgrade their server infrastructure.

To do what, exactly? At risk of repeating myself: They're going to spend all that money to host the abandoned lots of non-paying, non-customers? In the private sector, that kind of move is called a "get the hell out of my office."

Or do you mean to abolish the entire system, and transplant everything into private instances, solving the problem of availability by destroying forever the idea that these homes are in neighborhoods with people to meet?

[Kiri_Hadaka]

My idea isn't perfect, but at least it gives people who really want to keep their houses a chance to do so while those who don't really care will get evicted.

Say someone didn't log on for five months, and they had a private house. SE would send them an alert email saying that they would be charged $15 the upcoming month if they chose to keep the house, and another $15 every month after that if they kept it. Unless they log in, they will continue to be charged or have to give up the house. It sounds like a lot, but that would be the cost of paying to log in once to keep it anyway.

I could see how some people would just pay to log in a few times a year to keep their house, but I don't think most inactive players would do that just to keep it. I could see some people logging back in once that was implemented to clear out their stuff, but most people who gave up the game wouldn't see it was worth it. Plus, most of the abandoned houses I've seen are empty.