Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[kamikrazy]

It is better than nothing at the moment. It is too late to restrict 1 house per account and the Ishguard housing is not ready for housing yet for 3.1.

Actually, no, this is worse than nothing. This is indicative that they have no plan or intention of fixing housing availability. If they had a plan they wouldn't have spent the manpower to implement this because it, in the long run, would have been irrelevant.

This system proves by its very existence that they have no plan or intention of fixing housing availability. If they had a plan, they wouldn't waste their time and money implementing this. They'd have just announced their plan to placate customers. This is very bad.

[Eidolon]

does this mean we'll also get new houses to go with our shiny new system? Preferably a new subdivision added to each ward?

[kamikrazy]

f

Argument 1: I stay subscribed because I enjoy the game, not because I own virtual real estate.

Argument 2: You're making an enormous (and erroneous) assumption that more housing wards will never be added to the game and no other steps will be taken to alleviate the housing issues. As far as I know, that's not the case. They've already talked about adding wards in Ishgard, albeit not in the near future because the place is still basically a war zone.

Argument 1 Was already beaten here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3378983

Argument 2 Was beaten in post 81, but here's a recap: If they had a plan to solve availability, they wouldn't need this measure at all. The very existence of this measure indicates that they have no plan or intention of solving availability.

[Nalien]

There plan has always been to add more Wards as necessary. Is that a perfect plan? Not really, but this, I think, is an important step in that plan. Why add more Wards, when you potentially have an entire Wards worth of plots owned by people who haven't played the game since 2.2? Maintaining plots for players who aren't even playing anymore is nothing more than a waste of resources.

That is what this is made to address. We know for a fact that we are getting more Wards in the long run, with that in mind I really don't see the problem... They've got themselves in a sticky situation for sure, but this is hardly the end of the world... This is simply a means to prevent wasting plots on people who are not playing the game... The alternative is to effectively screw over all home owners currently to completely rebuild the system to something better... The only other alternative is to work on implementing Housing features for basically everyone, but I imagine that takes more time than just plugging in an extra Ward (although an Ishgard Ward certainly takes a lot of time to develop as well).

Ideally I think they should, and some of this is actually planned, add Housing content in non-Housing areas. Chocobo Stables, for example, I think they've stated they're working on outside Housing. Stands to reason Gardening could follow suit, not to mention the Airship Workshop... They could also just give everyone a Private Room through Inns. Then Housing becomes less about haves and have-nots, and more about having a central location for that stuff. That would be the ideal scenario with their current set up, but like I said that takes time, and in the mean time they can cut down on wasted resources by booting out the countless players who've since quit, but still take up Housing space...

[Reaperking386]

We asked for this feature btw...

[SugarPeanut]

Why implement this if they were going to add more wards "as needed" any time soon. Cuz that need has yet to be met for awhile now.

[Evumeimei]

Because that means you have to resub every single month even if you want to take a break from the game.

And that is exactly my problem with this. I'm part of a very small FC of people (all of whom I know in real life). These days only me and another member are online, and sometimes I just need to take a break from the game. But I always come back. So it's just annoying that you're now going to have to pay a sub fee every month even when you want to take a break just to check up on your house...

[Reaperking386]

Actually, no, this is worse than nothing. This is indicative that they have no plan or intention of fixing housing availability. If they had a plan they wouldn't have spent the manpower to implement this because it, in the long run, would have been irrelevant.

This system proves by its very existence that they have no plan or intention of fixing housing availability. If they had a plan, they wouldn't waste their time and money implementing this. They'd have just announced their plan to placate customers. This is very bad.

Do you have a better plan?

We are the ones who asked for this btw. Every forums literally asked about afk housing and giving an eviction notice to free up housing. Hell, At least square is nice enough to send you 2 emails of eviction and refund 80%.

[Vinestra]

We asked for this feature btw...

No. Certain people asked for this feature, namely people without homes, who just wanted to have them.

[kamikrazy]

snip

Until the problem is fixed, it isn't fixed. Just saying "we'll do this someday" isn't getting it done. If by "adding more wards as necessary" they mean a dynamic system like what LOTRO has, then that is a solution.

But so far this "adding more wards as necessary" hasn't even come close to that solution. How long has it been the way it is now? A very long time. Making the jump from 1.8% to 2.5% is not a solution. A system needs to be implemented that is large scale to fix this problem. It needs to be a dynamic wards system like LOTRO, an instanced housing plots system like Wildstar, or even just an instanced private room system (something that ALREADY FREAKING EXISTS AND THEYD JUST HAVE TO MOVE THE FREAKING DOOR TO A PUBLIC AREA).

Adding more wards the way they have been doing (and failing at miserably I might add) is not a working solution. It just flies in the face of the problem.

Do you have a better plan?

We are the ones who asked for this btw. Every forums literally asked about afk housing and giving an eviction notice to free up housing. Hell, At least square is nice enough to send you 2 emails of eviction and refund 80%.

Yes, I've stated three different objectively superior solutions several times in this thread. Once in this post. One in another thread. I've posted them all over. I came up with these solutions in 3 whole seconds. There's no possible way that SE could have spent any length of time and not thought of any one of these solutions (all of which have been done in other games before and proven to work). It's clear that in light of this especially, there has to be a driving purpose to intentionally withholding housing content from players.

And SE benefits from doing this. They benefit because they don't have to spend the money to fix it. They benefit because almost 100k players will be guaranteed to always be subscribed until the bitter end.