Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[Catwho]

I wish people would realize that when you have large housing wards that take a few minutes to run through, from far side to far side, that have can have as few as 30 people in them from all over the world(potentially) with different hours and walks of life... not seeing people does not make the ward "dead". You could have all thirty people online at the same time in the ward and still see no one.

Also, something I've said many times, and will capitalize for emphasis, THIS ISSUE WILL NOT REMOVE ANY HOUSING THAT PEOPLE BOUGHT FOR RESELL. Just in case people have missed that fact or try to bring it up. Just because a plot is actually unused doesn't mean much if a person just bought the house to flip it for a profit. They can still do that, now they just need to log into their alternate characters. They may have to put a house on it to bypass that one rule about property without a home, but what's 500k investment on top of the 5m purchase when you could flip it for 10m+?

Also, to the person who said 1.8% wasn't an accurate number because it didn't include FCs... uh, yeah. That actually works in SE's favor. If we include FCs, the number will go lower, not higher. So yes, it's not taking FCs into account, but if we took FCs into account it would probably be around 1% of the total subscribers that own a personal home. Take the benefit of the doubt on this one.

The resale situation doesn't apply to any of the abandoned FC houses in my housing ward. I researched them for my panel at AWA when I discussed this topic. They're all dead FCs. All of them. One with a single member. She might log in to keep the house, or let it get reclaimed and take the money.

Personal houses? Perhaps. But I'm in a main ward and the majority of the abandoned houses are FC houses. (Heck, one is a lot without a house on it at all.)

[FriendlyUncle]

The resale situation doesn't apply to any of the abandoned FC houses in my housing ward. I researched them for my panel at AWA when I discussed this topic. They're all dead FCs. All of them. One with a single member. She might log in to keep the house, or let it get reclaimed and take the money.

Personal houses? Perhaps. But I'm in a main ward and the majority of the abandoned houses are FC houses. (Heck, one is a lot without a house on it at all.)

This is still a bad fix compared to instancing. FFXI had instanced housing in its own way, Mog Houses. Not nearly as large of scale but instanced with customization so everyone could have one. WoW recently added instanced based housing with the war garrisons or whatever they are called. This if anything will keep players who had homes from coming back to the game if they decide to take a break because they will know a house the worked hard for/decorating will be reduced to 80% gil and the loss of rare furnishings.

With player retention the way it is, changes like this are making it easier and easier for players who were on the fence about leaving to just leave. And anyone who says just to leave and play something else, that isn't the answer SE should be looking for. They should want to encourage old players to come back into the game and get that sweet, sweet sub money again as well as creating content that keeps people subbed year long instead of subbing every 3rd month based on the patch cycle to see the new stuff. My fiance and I are caught up in the EU data center migration and at this point if the latency is too bad during peak hours, we will most likely end up quitting and giving the gil from the house to existing FC members. The thought of having to transfer to another data center and lose the money and items we invested, along with the gil transfer cap we just cannot get motivated to go back through all that again.

It's poorly implemented and I think is causing many people to question developer competence seeing them opt for such systems over additional instanced housing. Solracht's solution to housing was probably the best I have seen, physical wards for active communities, inactive moved to instanced for retention. P.S. I stalk your posts on BG. And Cat I was at your panel.

[Syrehn]

This is still a bad fix compared to instancing. FFXI had instanced housing in its own way, Mog Houses. Not nearly as large of scale but instanced with customization so everyone could have one. WoW recently added instanced based housing with the war garrisons or whatever they are called. This if anything will keep players who had homes from coming back to the game if they decide to take a break because they will know a house the worked hard for/decorating will be reduced to 80% gil and the loss of rare furnishings.

I shared a link in my previous post to a thread where I talked about instanced housing but I'll just say it here. As it stands currently instanced housing isn't a be-all end-all solution and isn't necessarily a "fix".

Finally, I’ve seen a few posts on the forums saying housing would be better if it was instanced like inn rooms are, so I want to point out that instances aren't saved. Nothing in an inn room needs to be saved; player housing, on the other hand, necessitates personal save data for things like furniture placement and character location. So, it would really amount to adding more land anyway.

I'd be willing to bet the biggest obstacle that SE is facing with housing is tied to SAN Storage; it's expensive. As seen in the above quote even in an instanced housing model all that data needs to be saved (object placement, character location, etc.). This means that SE would still need to purchase/set-up additional hardware/storage anyway; the same way they do with wards.

Again, just to reaffirm, the above means that more land for more players regardless of ward or instance = more hardware/storage = more cost. All that data has to get processed and saved somewhere.

[FriendlyUncle]

I shared a link in my previous post to a thread where I talked about instanced housing but I'll just say it here. As it stands currently instanced housing isn't a be-all end-all solution and isn't necessarily a "fix".



I'd be willing to bet the biggest obstacle that SE is facing with housing is tied to SAN Storage; it's expensive. As seen in the above quote even in an instanced housing model all that data needs to be saved (object placement, character location, etc.). This means that SE would still need to purchase/set-up additional hardware/storage anyway; the same way they do with wards.

Again, just to reaffirm, the above means that more land for more players regardless of ward or instance = more hardware/storage = more cost. All that data has to get processed and saved somewhere.

This is the same costs as adding new wards, albeit even more resource consuming due to a wards permanent fixture in the world where instanced it does not need to be actively loaded into memory unless in use. And looking at how often housing is actively in use, an instanced solution would be more efficient. A single ward holds how many houses with their external fixtures in a permanent state? Plus all the sub wards. Multiplied by 3 for each of the city states. So yes, they have to lay down some costs for SAN or VSA solutions, or the scrap some of the existing sub wards and use those resources house instanced copies of houses only called when a player enters it, much like how interiors of houses are handled now just for the whole package.

Creation of additional wards is more expensive hardware wise, and more resource intensive on said hardware the single instances, once the player is leaves the instance makes a save of any changes to storage and closes freeing it's resources. As it stands now we currently have 25+ houses of varying sizes and configurations consistently loaded, and then additional instancing for interiors which seems horribly inefficient. Does it look nice, sure? But why not cut the number of wards down, so people who don't care for the look and just want a house can get one. Shift the resources from those retired wards to instancing new player houses, and these 'additional wards' they say they may be adding could be additional hardware for the instances which again could host many more houses with the same hardware.

[Fyce]

This is the same costs as adding new wards, albeit even more resource consuming due to a wards permanent fixture in the world where instanced it does not need to be actively loaded into memory unless in use. And looking at how often housing is actively in use, an instanced solution would be more efficient.
[...]

But that would be a completly different design. You wouldn't have a neighborhood and all the "life" coming with it. It wouldn't be some kind of hub area but just a private thing only you will see and use.
I like my ward, the neighbors habits and wandering in the place to see what new stuff the neighbors added to their plot. Or even if a new FC arrived.

Yes, the actual system is very demanding in terms of technical ressources, but it add so much more flavor and value than a poor instantiated design you're suggesting.
You'd prefer a bland housing system but for everyone, rather than a flavorful but restricted one. I get where you're coming from, but not everyone think that way. Some people like that unique aspect to the current housing, even if it has quite a lot of issues.

[FriendlyUncle]

That's fine, if you read my post I said nothing about removing wards all together. Much like Sol said, you can choose to purchase your plot in a ward, but if none are available or you have been inactive you are moved from the Ward into an instance.

If you would read the entire post you would have noted that no where in my post did I say remove ALL wards. Just cut them back until the get additional hardware in place. The additional of instance housing only adds the option for people who cannot purchase a plot due to them all being used can purchase a house in at least SOME capacity with the option to migrate their instanced home over to a ward when a plot becomes available. And vice versa for people who are in a ward, but do not care for it. So what exactly about that system lacks flavor or is bland? Nothing changes with that system aside from allowing people to get housing while not having to screw over players who have to take an extended leave of absence.

TL;DR Wards still in game but ADDITIONAL instance housing to be used based on preference/when ward plots are unavailable/house has reached inactivity timer.

[Syrehn]

That's fine, if you read my post I said nothing about removing wards all together. Much like Sol said, you can choose to purchase your plot in a ward, but if none are available or you have been inactive you are moved from the Ward into an instance.

If you would read the entire post you would have noted that no where in my post did I say remove ALL wards. Just cut them back until the get additional hardware in place. The additional of instance housing only adds the option for people who cannot purchase a plot due to them all being used can purchase a house in at least SOME capacity with the option to migrate their instanced home over to a ward when a plot becomes available. And vice versa for people who are in a ward, but do not care for it. So what exactly about that system lacks flavor or is bland? Nothing changes with that system aside from allowing people to get housing while not having to screw over players who have to take an extended leave of absence.

TL;DR Wards still in game but ADDITIONAL instance housing to be used based on preference/when ward plots are unavailable/house has reached inactivity timer.

The issue with this is then SE has to maintain 2 separate housing structures, wards & instances, which they may not have the manpower/time to do.

The reasons that we have the system that we currently do likely fall along the lines of:

1) Hardware/Storage costs - storage probably being the key (this is the same regardless of wards/instances).
2) They already had the FC housing structure in place so it's more efficient (time/money) to piggyback off it.
3) If they split FC & Personal houses into separate wards, if/when the FC housing demand dies down and individual personal housing demand increases there would be empty plots forever sitting in FC dedicated wards. This isn't an effective usage of server resources. Edit: Found the quote regarding FC/Personal houses being mixed:

Basically, the reason both personal and Free Company housing plots aren't segregated is that because it’s been a year since our official launch, the rate at which Free Companies are established will gradually decrease. If the land for personal and Free Company housing was separate, we’d have to keep supplementing both in spite of declining demand for Free Company plots. Plus, when a Free Company is dissolved, its property is relinquished. On the other hand, individual players will continue to earn gil, so the demand for personal housing plots will only increase from now on. Separating the two would result in a situation where a player can’t purchase land in crowded personal housing areas or buy an empty plot in the Free Company areas.

4) They wanted Community centred hubs.

[Neira]

The resale situation doesn't apply to any of the abandoned FC houses in my housing ward. I researched them for my panel at AWA when I discussed this topic. They're all dead FCs. All of them. One with a single member. She might log in to keep the house, or let it get reclaimed and take the money.

Personal houses? Perhaps. But I'm in a main ward and the majority of the abandoned houses are FC houses. (Heck, one is a lot without a house on it at all.)

I think you emphasized the wrong part of your post. Change the emphasis around a little, and you're clearly in agreement with me.