Personal housing time limit?

[Arixtotle]

Especially since theres no variety in content, the game pretty much forces you to take 2-3 month long breaks :/

Except there is a huge variety in content it's just not combat content.

But anyway, my thought with a 6 month time is that the majority of people who leave for six months are not coming back. Just make it so if they do come back eventually they get compensated with about the same amount of gil as they spent on the house and get all their housing stuff back of course.

[HakaseNyan]

Don't FC owners lose their ownership status over 1 month, and then it gets passed down to another member? As for personal housing, and timers, since you can sub for a maximum of 180 days at a time, 6 months of inactivity sounds rather reasonable. As it stands you pay for a house and keep it forever. There's no rent, taxes, or upkeep. We have it a little too good, you know? Though, "personal housing" was implement rather poorly too

[LineageRazor]

Except there is a huge variety in content it's just not combat content.

Agreed. Anyone that makes the ludicrous claim that there's "no variety in content" either:
A. Has decided to discount a ridiculously large part of the game as not being content (crafting, gathering, pvp, sidequests, etc etc etc), or
B. Has so much free time on their hands that they DO count it, have done it, and still aren't satsified.

The former is like going to a buffet, and claiming there isn't enough to eat because all you like to eat is french fries, and the latter, well, it's outright unreasonable to expect SE to account for such a small population of players (no work, no job, just play FFXIV all day and all night).

[SakuraMidori]

No it's not. If you quit you shouldn't get to keep your house. That just takes a space up that another PAYING player could use.

Not really i mean if SE just add more space things be a bit better and we all know SE needs to add space at some point yea? anyway i agree that if a house has no ppl using it for at least 60 days then sure maybe boot it. But at least give that player who quit haf there gil back or something

[Catwho]

Yeah, I think taking a house back after six months is reasonable. Heck, at this point a year.

As long as adequate warning is given, anyway, so that someone who bought a house last year with the intention of coming back after they graduated school or something has the opportunity fork over another six months of sub time and keep it.

[Risvertasashi]

Don't FC owners lose their ownership status over 1 month, and then it gets passed down to another member?

I believe the exact period is 35 days, but yes.

--

An easy solution would just be to tie it to the owning account's sub. If you're going to be away for an extended time, just keep the sub active and you keep your housing server space reserved. If it's not worth $13/mo to them, they can unsub and (after a month or so just to prevent losing it to billing issues), the space can be freed up for other, active players.

[IzumiLuna]

Housing situation in game really sucks , but i glad that SE didnt add time limits for housing . Sometimes i have to work 2~3 months w/o PC and access to game , and it will be too bad if once i back from work and my house gone ;(

Pretty much why I asked.

[Titor]

Time limits should exist but be 6 months. If you don't pay for 6 months then you lose your house. It would be the best system.

Everyone acts like a super long time is the justifiable cure-all, when in reality it is not going to solve the problem in the long run when mostly active players have houses. You may see ~1-2 go up for sale every 6 months or so, but in the end that is just another ~1-2 people that can get a house. Removing housing is not a good solution if you really think about it. 6 months is a long time, that is hopefully half the way to an expansion. If they cannot upgrade their servers to facilitate their growing playerbase and the amount of housing remains the same, it will in fact get HARDER to get a house than simply asking for more housing wards, hopefully making them prioritize increasing housing servers.

[Amiaze]

Perhaps they should make personal housing function like additional retainers in-game. If your subscription isn't renewed, you lose it. I'm not sure how they would implement this since houses are purchased in-game, but the issue I can see with taking it away from people who don't log in is having people log in once a month, do nothing, and then log out just to keep their house. This also doesn't take multiple characters into consideration. Should the person log in with every character that owns a house, or just log in period?

Returning all of the Gil spent on a sold house also will likely not work. That opens the possibility of players simply logging in and immediately repurchasing their lot/purchasing another lot and sitting on it. It would be fair to return it, yes, but what of people who try to cheat the system?


Edit:

Housing situation in game really sucks , but i glad that SE didnt add time limits for housing . Sometimes i have to work 2~3 months w/o PC and access to game , and it will be too bad if once i back from work and my house gone ;(

This is why I think it should be subscription-based rather than log-in based. It would stink to pay for a game that you cannot play at the time, but at least it would offer some solution to a lack of housing while also offering a way for players with houses to keep theirs. I'm curious to see how Ishgardian housing wards sell if/when we get them.

[Titor]

This is why I think it should be subscription-based rather than log-in based.

If you really want people to pay a subscription during a time that they will not be able to play the game, just so they can keep their hard-earned house, you are literally asking them to pay real-world rent for a virtual house.

These houses are not cheap, especially mansions. I do not want to have to pay a sub if I am going to be away from the computer for a month or two out of my control, but I also do not want to lose my 80m gil mansion and the months and months of staring at the mb and crafting to get there.

As I have stated earlier in this thread, and in many posts in the past, removing housing from inactive players will not be the solution in the long term, only more housing plots or an alternative private housing system can.