Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[Nalien]

They are forcing you to buy your house with your $15/mo subscription. That's really messed up.

They're not forcing me to pay my subscription to keep my land at all. If I want to unsubscribe, it is because the game is failing in some way, and virtual property is not going to force me to stay. I don't think it will compel any rational person to keep playing... I've spent... Upwards of 100M on Housing by now? That 100M is not worth $15/month. It is not what's keeping me playing Final Fantasy XIV, and potentially losing it is not going to compel me to keep playing if the rest of the game turns to Blizzard scented crap.

[Elvin]

They're not forcing me to pay my subscription to keep my land at all. If I want to unsubscribe, it is because the game is failing in some way, and virtual property is not going to force me to stay. I don't think it will compel any rational person to keep playing... I've spent... Upwards of 100M on Housing by now? That 100M is not worth $15/month. It is not what's keeping me playing Final Fantasy XIV, and potentially losing it is not going to compel me to keep playing if the rest of the game turns to Blizzard scented crap.

What if you usually play about 3-4 months each time they add raid content and them take a rest till they add more?

[Nalien]

What if you usually play about 3-4 months each time they add raid content and them take a rest till they add more?

If I was solely interesting in this game for raid content, perhaps that would be a problem. If that was the case though... I'd already have quit the game, seeing as how pathetic raid content is in this game...

We get content patches fairly regularly. If you actually play more than just Duty Roulette and Raids, there is a fair bit of content in this game. With 3.1 they're even adding, IMO, vastly better content with a much better shelf life than any existing content.

If, for whatever reason, patches become less frequent and the content less interesting, I'll stop playing because of that. I wont look at my house and go "Oh no, I need to keep paying $15/month to keep that!", if that is Squares game plan, I'll laugh at how pathetic a plan that is... I'll gladly leave my plots for someone else, who presumably still enjoys the game, to have. If Housing was the bait that kept my subscription fee hooked, I'd have to be a fucking moron. I can play the original Sims for basically free and I'm fairly sure that's a better Housing system...

People are welcome to keep complaining about how this changes nothing, and they're right. I'm fairly certain Yoshida has always sold this as the first step though... We're getting more Housing Wards eventually, heck we're meant to be getting ones in Ishgard... Not to mention a proper sales system to facilitate moving house to Ishgard... The notion that they'll just stop at this is utterly foolish, if they do I'll be right next to you all complaining, but for now I don't see anything suggesting that they'll cancel the Ishgard Wards... All this is doing is freeing up abandoned plots, which like it or not was needed with the current system... Does it change anything? Not if you look at people as numbers, but if you look at people as, well people, more get to enjoy Housing now. Hopefully more Free Companies can get a plot, which through Private Rooms means even more people can enjoy the content... Is this the most amazing Housing adjustment ever? No, not by a long shot, but it's hardly terrible either... People who are calling it a bandaid fix are absolutely right, but what's wrong with that? They've said more Wards are coming, would you rather have nothing in the meantime instead? I'm sure people who've been eyeing plots owned by people who have basically quit aren't complaining. I'm not sure where the people who are complaining actually stand in all this, like I've said though, I own plots and I'm fine with this...

[kamikrazy]

That 100M is not worth $15/month.

According to certain people that 100,000,000 investment is worth more than one-thousand two hundred american dollars.

The fact is that that's money you earned, that's progress you made. This would be no different than having your classes you aren't using de-leveled if you didn't use them within 45 days. The only reason is a limited commodity is because they've chosen to make it so. This is just an underhanded way of them trying to use their mistake to keep a certain number of people pressured to stay here indefinitely or else they'll have their work taken from them. It does nothing to serve the players that are locked out of the 1.8% because it isn't doing anything to make houses more available. It's just making them even more competitive than before.