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

[sydh]

There are several things SE needs or could do to fix up the housing system. Not just having a abandoned housing system that works on a long timer. It's going to take a bit more than that to get the loud ones to pipe down.

SE just needs to give everyone customizeable Inn room. I would bet the majority of those complaining would be content if they could have something to customize and call their own. Let players get it early on with maybe something tied to the story as you progress. Similar to how retainers were given to us. Those Inn rooms could have a smaller item allotment of like 25 or so since it is a free item. Then let the next step up be the personal rooms for being apart of a FC. Then after that a personal house or a FC building.

Then for the actually ward housing plots. Those are things that need to stay limited. Having a big and awesome house should be a privilege to show off and not a right. Each server already has 1440 houses between the 3 ARR city-states. Then if some sort of Ishgard housing area if not something around the Sharlayan area since dragons and being assholes. (Oh hey look our new hou- *System Notice: Your house has been burned down by a Dragon attack*...) Anyways, with 4 housing areas that would bring us up to 1920 plots. That's already a pretty sizeable number before you add the potential 4th area.

But the real issue is the items tied to the housing plots. One being the Chocobo stables for many players that I've seen complain about housing. They want to dye their Chocobo or stable them and feed our favorite yellow fluff balls food. Why not let some of the open world stables accommodate this? For instance there is a big stable in Bentbranch in Central Shroud. There is even a series of quest you go through around those early levels. Why not after completing those quest have them open up their stables to be used to the same way the current housing stables are?

Then for gardening...Well I got nothing since it's sorta dead right now. Archeage style open world planting and harvesting was fun but I don't see it fitting with this game. Perhaps maybe their idea of public gardening plots?

All in all it's going to take a few changes to several portions of the current system to better help accommodate its popularity.

[Dererk]

I'm already in a fc with a house its a big house wer active everyday. I saw a big house owned by a 1 person fc it wasn't active. This system is needed. And there's no point in owning private homes.

[MageBlack]

-Snip to conserve space-

IF we can access all the features that are locked behind housing through an inn room or other outside ways, then I might be ok. But it still doesn't solve the problem new FC's will have trying to find a plot for their company so they can participate in the Airship Content unless that too will be accessible outside of the housing system. I do remember talk about accessing chocobo stable functions through the Chocobo Stables (the ones in Bentbranch i think?) then it would just leave gardening. Maybe with a 4 square garden pot you can put in your inn, but at that point, just instance personal housing? Why was it ever thought that FC and Personal homes needed to be in a shared, limited, environment...

TL;DR

If they can instance an Inn room so EVERY PLAYER CAN HAVE THEIR OWN, then they can instance personal housing plots that we can build, upgrade, and customize.

There have been lots of good discussion in this thread about pretty much everything brought up here. Feel free to brows through for some really good suggestions.

[Makeda]

Seems to be that if a sub is no longer being paid, the plot should no longer be ownable by that person. To give space for 'gaps of circumstance', make it occur after either 30 or 60 days of not being subscribed.

That... or make housing instanced to a degree where there is one plot out there for every character made on a server... auto given to people... much as Wildstar does it. Then you don't need to worry about this.

A third option... make it cost $1/month on your sub fee to have a housing plot. A tiny insignificant number - but one that will set a gap between those willing and those not - and will get people who leave the game to give up their plots ASAP.

[Sessurea]

Hmm I guess I wouldn't have a problem losing my house after 1 year of inactivity. After echo was put into fcob I quit instantly and didn't come back until there was something to do --->expansion. It was a break of months....there was litterally nothing that I wanted to do in the game, yet I was not quit.

So yh, a year is ok imo.

[Purrfectstorm]

You seem to be assuming that it's the same people crying both ways. They aren't. The community isn't a hive mind, some people feel one way, others feel another.

I'm glad someone said this. I think it's good to keep perspective that players are all different from one another. I think failing to consider different perspectives is why this issue is a debate.

It seems clear to me that a lot of players want housing and can't get it. These players are justifiably upset that house plots are taken up by players who aren't really using them (they're not playing). On the other hand, player who have housing would like to be able to take breaks from the game and know they can come back to the character, items, and house that they've heavily invested in.

I actually do think it's possible to appease both sets of players somewhat. SE could have a system where players who are unsubbed for X amount of time relinquish their land and I think that as long as the amount of time allowed for reasonable breaks people would be okay with it. I'm thinking that it should be at least 3 months, maybe even 6, and definitely not over a year.

I'm on the fence about restricting it to un-subbed players only. The reason being because SE never implemented a limit on how many houses an account could own. So if a scumbag player has 4 alts that are inactive for extended periods of time and they are all house squatting but play their main character (active sub) I don't believe those houses should be held in limbo from other players.

I think it definitely needs to be restricted to unsubbed players only. Things can happen that prevent a person from playing but if they're paying their sub they clearly still intend to play in the future. The sub money is the first priority for a company like SE and it doesn't make sense to alienate someone who will continue to pay.

The second point I want to make about your post is that it's hard to make a distinction between the "scumbag" player you describe and someone who just enjoys having alts and occasionally playing the game with them. It's really hard to devote time to alts but alts provide a change of pace now and then; I don't think players should be penalized for having them. Besides, how would you make a system not based on subs? If you based it on activity, that player just logs on with his/her alts once per day/week/month/whatever.

Your point does touch on an interesting issue that deserves to be addressed though: why would someone want to own multiple houses? I personally think it's about the gardening. Gardening was (is?) a very low-effort way of making quite a lot of gil. Maybe that's something SE should address to cut down on the "scumbag" players. They could:

1) Allow players to garden within an inn or FC room.
2) Reduce the demand on crops obtained only from gardening.
3) Increase the supply of crops obtained only from gardening.

Then players won't buy a house just to make gil, they'll buy a house because the vanity aspect appeals to them. I haven't been inside of or placed a single furnishing within my personal house; I bought my house almost entirely to have access to the self-sufficiency and the profits of gardening.

[hennalang]

Remember when small houses were only one floor? And when people bought them up and decorated them (somewhat)? Yeah, on Balmung all those said houses in the first few wards are STILL sitting with vacant basements. Something really DOES have to be done. I don't think it should only be a month though. I mean, you could be hospitalized or something and unable to play. But from the 3 month mark? Maybe... the 6 month mark? Definitely. A year and beyond? Come on... let's free up some server space for paying customers.

[Syrehn]

The second point I want to make about your post is that it's hard to make a distinction between the "scumbag" player you describe and someone who just enjoys having alts and occasionally playing the game with them. It's really hard to devote time to alts but alts provide a change of pace now and then; I don't think players should be penalized for having them. Besides, how would you make a system not based on subs? If you based it on activity, that player just logs on with his/her alts once per day/week/month/whatever.

Your point does touch on an interesting issue that deserves to be addressed though: why would someone want to own multiple houses? I personally think it's about the gardening. Gardening was (is?) a very low-effort way of making quite a lot of gil.

Scumbag might have been a bit strong... >.> <.<

Gardening was a very hot commodity when housing first launched and greatly contributed to alt FC's picking up multiple housing plots (which was sort of scummy to other homeless FC's imo); it's likely still a factor though not as big as it once was. Greed and epeen status is another reason.

I don't personally think anyone's alt character or FC should be holding additional housing space and a viable solution would be to implement something like 1 personal house per account per server.

I'd also like to see a restriction for future plots that keep M/L houses for FC purchase only; individuals really don't need that much space all to themselves.

[CrystalRainbow]

Inactive, Should be not paying.


If I log on or not, but have a monthy sub I am an active account.

[Train88]

Didn't realize there was a thread already. It's good to know they are working on it.