With regards to the possible upcoming housing relinquishments. . . . .

[Valkyrie-Amber]

At the moment if no one at least walks in their own house every 14 days at least once relinquish it why should the rest of us suffer over people not enjoying their houses?

Or better yet fix this whole issue entirely by offering instanced houses?

[Apocrypher]

In the end, they're most likely going to be "reclaiming" the plots owned by those that have either a) been involved with RMT or b) have let their account lapse for between 90 & 180 days (180 being probable due to that being the longest period of game time a person can pay for in advance).

And while there's been a lot of argument for/against this, it's ultimately useless to continue squabbling about instanced housing - chances are, in order for the SE devs to actually implement the change-over, they'd more than likely be forced to first wipe the pre-existing system from the game entirely, including but not limited to housing owners/purchases, furniture placed & other things like FC airship data. Just saying "change to instance housing will solve the issue" doesn't mean it will, and there is no guarantee the devs would be able to likewise 100% guarantee a loss-less transition from what we have now.

[Pterois]

it's pretty simple to implement a item that is a voucher for 1 small/medium/large house but they need to get the 450k again and would have to hunt for one again.

[Naunet]

good stuff

All of this, exactly. I can understand why reclaiming houses may seem appealing, but it's going to cause more upset than it's worth. And it won't make a real dent in the housing system as it is.

[Ayerinn]

All of this, exactly. I can understand why reclaiming houses may seem appealing, but it's going to cause more upset than it's worth. And it won't make a real dent in the housing system as it is.

well they clearly don't want to add any more wards than they have to so this is a solution for them to meet the goal of minimizing the number of wards. I don't see the issue - if you are not paying your rent (subscription) then why should you get to keep limited property? Something this limited has to be tied to active subscriptions - 90 days (inactive) would be the minimum that would be fair, 180 days would be preferred. I would much rather they add a bunch of new wards so that everyone who wants a home (and can afford it) can have one then implement a reclaim system, but you don't want a bunch of dead neighborhoods either.

[Letbluevannback]

I feel that house owners should be demanded to pay the subscription every month. Just as how you'd get evicted out of your house if you don't pay the landowner every month. I would change my mind if everyone had access to a house, but we don't, you need a good reason (such as: I'm still paying SE for it) to keep a housing plot away from someone else while you don't even use it.

[Valaska]

They haven't kept you waiting. You procrastinated and decided you wanted a house once they were all taken up.

People who bought the game later in its life? People who transferred to full servers? Or simple the fact that alt accounts were used to purchase up to 10 houses in one ward on Lamia all owned by the same FC and throw away one off accounts! Also the Bot accounts which warped to the houses and swiped them faster than humanly possible in order to sell the houses for real money? I think you're pretty blind to the multitude of crap that actually happened!

[Blitzace]

tbh, don't make it a monthly check, I feel sorry for the people who lets say, have job where they just can't play all the time(Like i've had people in my FC who had military stuff and just couldn't play for a few months)
And lets say someone takes a break for a month, Really? I would like to see how people feel that cough up roughly 70-80-90M for a house and then just get screwed over by that.

Imho, they need to fix the amount of houses though, More houses, limit them 1 per account etc.

[Syrehn]

tbh, don't make it a monthly check, I feel sorry for the people who lets say, have job where they just can't play all the time(Like i've had people in my FC who had military stuff and just couldn't play for a few months)
And lets say someone takes a break for a month, Really? I would like to see how people feel that cough up roughly 70-80-90M for a house and then just get screwed over by that.

Imho, they need to fix the amount of houses though, More houses, limit them 1 per account etc.

I don't think it's likely that it will be a "30 days or you're out" rule; although I could be wrong. We don't know all the particulars for how they're going to implement the decay timer (if it is indeed even a decay timer) on housing. The first time SE tried to do this the community got very riled up because the rules were a bit too strict. I think you had to set foot in the property at least once in less than 30 days. This wasn't a great rule set and hopefully they'll come out with something a bit more realistic; anywhere in the vicinity of 6 months would work. If a player can't log into the game in more than half a year I'm sorry but they shouldn't retain their house.

Many players that agree with the stance of a decay timer own property of various sizes and recognize the necessity of it. Wards are a constantly loaded resource which means they add to server strain. From a business perspective it doesn't make any sense for SE to keep adding more wards while, in the meantime, half of the houses per ward sit vacant. They're essentially paying server fees for players who aren't paying them (subscription fee). This also leads to dead wards.

While I agree that SE needs to look into server upgrades, the steps they are going to implement with their current housing system make total sense. SE has no idea if/when those inactive players will even come back, and as such, no inactive player should be able to indefinitely hold an active resource from active players.

I 100% agree with your stance on 1 per account. However, I'd add that it should be 1 house per account per server that can be shared with alt characters. I know there are several large FC's on Gilgamesh that own half of the wards in Lavender Beds for no reason other than that they had the money to buy them when housing first came out (pretty sure they got flamed on reddit over it). There's another FC in my ward that keeps the house next to them (alt FC) for nothing other than decorating purposes.

I'm sure there are many many alt homes just clogging up all the different wards. Alt houses/alt FC houses shouldn't be a thing and I sincerely wish that in their decay timer process they would backdate and strip all those homes; owning more than one is selfish to other players. The amount of houses that alone would free up would probably surprise people.

EDIT: Before anyone jumps in quoting me saying we need instanced housing... that subject is like beating a dead horse. It is incredibly unlikely that SE will switch away from their current housing model at this stage in the housing game. SE has made it very clear that they're going to continue forward with the current housing system so they're planning to implement steps to help with that model.

[SQBoard]

EDIT: Before anyone jumps in quoting me saying we need instanced housing... that subject is like beating a dead horse. It is incredibly unlikely that SE will switch away from their current housing model at this stage in the housing game. SE has made it very clear that they're going to continue forward with the current housing system so they're planning to implement steps to help with that model.

It is likely a dead horse, but that horse is what SE really needs to fix the housing issue.

If housing is individually instanced like Wildstar's housing, that will take care of the problem of inactive houses taking up server resources. As well as the problem of 1 account owning several houses.

When a house is deemed inactive, they can just make it so the server stops instancing it and free up server bandwidth. However, if it's individualized, they don't need to DELETE the house, just don't load it.

So when the person comes back, all their hardwork is reloaded for them instead of being lost forever. And since the house is saved, they can make the inactivity period to be as low as 7 days and have no customer repurcussions...just reload it on the server when the person comes back.

Also, individual instancing allows for more upgrade options. Instead of a "one and done" approach to buying a house, you can start small and keep saving to upgrade to a larger one the same way Wildstar does it.

SE needs to admit that their original concept for their housing design failed and do a housing 2.0 instead of slapping a problem on top of another problem. Black Desert's housing is even preferable to this game and that game is F2P.

A proper housing system can be done that is scalable to player demand. And if they really are so proud of the FF franchise enough to revamp an entire mmo that failed, they should carry over that sense to every part of their revamped game.