Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[kamikrazy]

I will look into your solutions in the forums.

Look no further than the post you quoted. All three of them are listed right there.

Solution 1: Dynamic ward system that guarantees that everyone will get a house, EVEN if they are evicted for inactivity (LOTRO)
Solution 2: Everyone gets a private house instance, FCs get a guaranteed instanced FC house, could even pay to upgrade this type (Wildstar)
Solution 3: Everyone gets a private room in a capital city of their choosing that is accessible from the Inn (It's already in the game, they'd literally just need to move the door to the Inn)

Three working solutions, that wasn't hard at all.

EDIT: Have to put this here because I reached the daily post limit. If someone could be so kind as to step in to keep putting down the false celebration and get people to realize that this is very bad news for us and especially for the game's overall health, that would be great.

What are you talking about? They clearly said that this system was the first step to make more plot available. They'll either add more plots to the existing cities or they'll open Ishgard.

Besides, your 1.8% thing is completly wrong since it doesn't take FC into account. I'm a FC leader and we do have a house... but according to you, we don't? Even if you are talking about individual houses you're wrong since FC and individual players share the same plots.

So not only you clearly don't know what you're talking about in the first place, but you also support wrong arguments and calculations just for the sake of arguing on something you hate for some reason. Stop it or bring actual objective facts.

1.8% is certainly a rough approximation to be sure, but it is an approximation all the same. It is nowhere near 100%, which is the only number that should be acceptable as a fully functioning solution. If housing content is not available to every player, then the solution is not good enough.

And I've stated accurate observations constantly. Nothing here is my opinion. I've never stated how I felt about anything. Are you saying that my thinking that 100% of players should have access to housing is an opinion? Then I'll gladly call that my opinion. It sounds like a pretty good opinion to me.

[StouterTaru]

Solution 1: Dynamic ward system that guarantees that everyone will get a house, EVEN if they are evicted for inactivity (LOTRO)
Solution 2: Everyone gets a private house instance, FCs get a guaranteed instanced FC house, could even pay to upgrade this type (Wildstar)
Solution 3: Everyone gets a private room in a capital city of their choosing that is accessible from the Inn (It's already in the game, they'd literally just need to move the door to the Inn)

1 - Everyone having a house in a dynamic system would require thousands of times the current server capacity, unless you greatly change what a house is, ex snap to grid furniture and 90 degree rotations. It would require a substantial downgrade to what housing is.
2/3 - Removing open world housing "punishes" active players instead of "punishing" inactive players. We paid for our Barbie dream house with the promise of being able to play with it outside, not locked away in the closet.

Just because you think those ideas would be better, doesn't mean they are even close to perfect.

[Neira]

1 - Everyone having a house in a dynamic system would require thousands of times the current server capacity, unless you greatly change what a house is, ex snap to grid furniture and 90 degree rotations. It would require a substantial downgrade to what housing is.

Actually, fifty-four times the amount of current server capacity if we're going by the figure of 5m subscribers and discounting FC houses. However, even five times the server capacity(five times what we have now) would put a decent dent into the housing issue for quite a while. Not quite sure where you're getting "thousands", but if we had even one thousand times the wards we currently do, that would be 92,160,000 houses, which is pretty much overkill. Ten times our current wards would put us at 921,160, which would potentially cover every player who even wants and can afford a house.

[StouterTaru]

Not quite sure where you're getting "thousands", but if we had even one thousand times the wards we currently do, that would be 92,160,000 houses, which is pretty much overkill. Ten times our current wards would put us at 921,160, which would potentially cover every player who even wants and can afford a house.

The use of thousands was hyperbole.

Rewording his suggestion of dynamic housing to include "capable of providing a house for every character and FC that wants and can afford it" without implementing a reclaim system still has issues.
-Ten times more would go very quick on some servers, and require an upgrade to server capacity larger than the HW expansion
-Depending on what he meant by "dynamic housing," it could be a downgrade of the current housing system, which "unfairly punishes" current housing owners
-Without a removal system, housing will continue to grow at an unsustainable rate

[SweetP]

Have to put this here because I reached the daily post limit. If someone could be so kind as to step in to keep putting down the false celebration and get people to realize that this is very bad news for us and especially for the game's overall health, that would be great.

CELEBRATION!!!!!

[Neira]

EDIT: Have to put this here because I reached the daily post limit. If someone could be so kind as to step in to keep putting down the false celebration and get people to realize that this is very bad news for us and especially for the game's overall health, that would be great.

I've been debating this for I think literal months at this point, sorry. I'll post when and how I can, and I'm still amazed(not really, to be honest) at how naive some people seem to be in thinking that this will change anything other than SE's income, but don't expect the majority to grasp what you're talking about. My only hope at this point is that is backfires in SE's face, when people who are burned out and tired want to quit playing and paying but feel tied to the game, or in a half a year or so when people are still complaining about not having a house because this didn't add any extra housing.

[Seryl199]

I've been debating this for I think literal months at this point, sorry. I'll post when and how I can, and I'm still amazed(not really, to be honest) at how naive some people seem to be in thinking that this will change anything other than SE's income, but don't expect the majority to grasp what you're talking about. My only hope at this point is that is backfires in SE's face, when people who are burned out and tired want to quit playing and paying but feel tied to the game, or in a half a year or so when people are still complaining about not having a house because this didn't add any extra housing.

They aren't being naive, they're being receptive of an implementation that directly affects them, good for them. Some of the people that have been clamoring for housing will get their chance at it. They'll be competing against droves of other players to get a house the moment it's demolished, and those who have set their alarm clocks for 45 days after the server reset of 3.1 (I don't doubt this will happen, if you think getting a house after this will be easy, you haven't prepared enough aside from amassing gil) will finally get their house. The housing problem persists, but they've joined the few. It's no more than a step forward, but at the very least, abandoned plots will be refreshed. As long as housing fails to encompass 100% of the player base, it hasn't been properly implemented.

[Neira]

They aren't being naive, they're being receptive of an implementation that directly affects them, good for them. Some of the people that have been clamoring for housing will get their chance at it. They'll be competing against droves of other players to get a house the moment it's demolished, and those who have set their alarm clocks for 45 days after the server reset of 3.1 (I don't doubt this will happen, if you think getting a house after this will be easy, you haven't prepared enough aside from amassing gil) will finally get their house. The housing problem persists, but they've joined the few. It's no more than a step forward, but at the very least, abandoned plots will be refreshed. As long as housing fails to encompass 100% of the player base, it hasn't been properly implemented.

Except there is still the very real possibility that not one single home out of 92,160 will go up for sale at 45 days after 3.1 launches. I think the majority of people talking about "abandoned" houses are making assumptions without any basis for proof. Since not a single person here can sit in-game and spam "player search" for 24hrs a day, for 45 days, the assumption that some of these plots will be demolished seems premature.

Even as the proponents for this system tell people that all they need to do is log in for X amount of time(five minutes or less so far) just to walk in their front door to refresh their home decay timer, they're pretending that these "abandoned" houses will become available soon. Are they actually thinking about what they are saying? Forty-five days multiplied by twenty-four hours is one thousand eighty hours, which is in turn sixty-four thousand eight hundred minutes. To assume that a house is abandoned because you didn't physically see someone log in for five out of sixty-four thousand eight hundred minutes(5/64800, 0.007% of that 45 day period) is indeed naive.

I still don't expect this to make that big of an impact, if any impact at all. I'd also expect that people who have the shiny and expensive items(that can't be retrieved) in their homes, but know they're planning to take a break, would rather sell their home to someone for an inflated price to recuperate some of their investment than lose the majority of it to this decay timer

I may be wrong, this may be a huge boon, and we will see half of the ward open up magically. I just highly doubt it, and I think given the number of people here who seem to be new enough to MMOs to not realize how broken our housing system is, are equally new enough to not understand that most long-time MMO players have numerous games they cycle through, often times without ever unsubscribing. The moment many of these people get an email saying their house will be lost, they will log in a few minutes, refresh the timer, and not touch the game again for 35 days when another email hits

And in the end, the housing system will still be broken, people here will still want homes, and SE will continue to rake in the most money for the least effort.

[Ashkendor]

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

Nah. I've thought this feature was needed for awhile and I own two houses (FC and personal).

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

I'm assuming you're talking about this portion of the post and not the alarmist nonsense about hungry wolves:

There are 92,160 houses on all servers, which is nearly synonymous with saying there are now 92,160 subscribers who will always be subscribers to this game. Even if one of them decides to quit, another will take their place and stay just to keep their house. They just ensured they will always maintain a healthy income, nothing more.

That doesn't "beat" my argument at all though because that's the entire point to what I said. I personally stick around for the game itself. I do enjoy housing, but that isn't what keeps my subscription active. If at some point I decide I'm unsubscribing, it will be because either I have quit the game voluntarily or I have run into real life money problems that prevent me from subscribing to the game. Either way, I will lose my house and someone that is still actively subscribing will have the opportunity to have the plot for themselves. Whether that be through me giving it to a friend that's still playing the game or through it getting reclaimed through the system, the key there is that the plot will become available to an active player if I myself become inactive for one reason or another.

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.

All you're really saying here is that since they haven't announced their plan in full, you don't believe that it actually exists. That just means you apparently don't think something exists until it's right in front of you. I mean, believe what you want about being able to take SE's announcements at face value, but that doesn't really win any arguments. Until they say that housing plans they've already said they are working on (including wards in Ishgard, additional wards in the existing housing areas, etc) are scrapped, there's no reason to believe that they are nonexistent.