Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[CGMidlander]

And so? They are houses. They give free (for the most part?) houses to players, which is what people want. Are you really that picky?

I'm not advocating or condemning either type of implementation . I simply stated that instanced housing and instanced communities are not the same.

[BreathlessTao]

They could always improve this system but instead they chose the worst possible decision, a decision that was initially revoked because people didn't want it. But I suppose people forgot it, so they tried again without telling anyone.

A feature that should have been implemented initially, together with the system itself, considering how severely limited the supply is. They changed their minds because they chickened out because of a few too loud voices on here - that was the worst decision they could make after deciding on going ahead with this system. And implementing it now did not happen without telling anyone, at the very least they talked about it in the latest live letter. The fact that a transcript or summary of that is not posted in a prime place, such as Lodestone main, is a fault, that's sure.

But this system itself is simply unsustainable, especially at this scale, which is something they should have foreseen (they must have at least one knowledgeable expert on the team?) and not go ahead with this system at all. Which they did, so considering housing (especially personal) as a whole, they botched it right at the beginning when they opted for this model, yes.

[Youkulm]

Your argument makes no sense. We do not having community housing instances either. We have physical server resources constantly devoted to running the housing Wards and subwards. At not time during server uptime are these ever removed from memory. Then on top of that, we have individual instances for housing interiors. So what exactly is the problem in this system? That it worked for other games?

I don't believe they were making an argument. Just stating a fact.

Like this:

We have a broken housing system. They will never rehaul it. They will just improve upon it.

THIS is one of those improvements. I'm sure more will come and just as many people won't like those either... just like any updates to the game.

They could always improve this system but instead they chose the worst possible decision, a decision that was initially revoked because people didn't want it. But I suppose people forgot it, so they tried again without telling anyone. Like those anti-piracy acts.

They announced this weeks and weeks ago that they were working on a reclaim system.

They did not hide it from anyone, just not everyone reads gaming news or the forums.

People in fact have been demanding it for months on the housing forums.. because of inactive players like you...

Sorry but if you're not playing or subbing you don't have a right to exclusive & limited content unavailable to other players just because you want/need a break.. doesn't matter the reason or excuse for being gone. May seem harsh but as it stands this is an improvement to the limited housing issue.

[XLauncher]

With no release outside of Asia, and only on one platform (no, Vita doesn't count). Apples and oranges.

The game has 3 million registered accounts, the last I checked on the figure. Not all of them are active, obviously, but each account is automatically given its own rooms that are saved for perpetuity. It may be officially limited to one market, but for the purposes of this comparison, that is irrelevant. What's important is the numbers, and the numbers say that an F2P game can provide instanced housing to literally millions of accounts. From a resources perspective, it should be trivial for a game that's double dipping with a sub fee and a cash shop to accomplish the same feat.

[Voltyblast]

It was expanded. They took what was there, and added more. Anyone who thought the base game would change, when they never gave that impression, was delusional.

Yeah, we call them patches: they give us more of the same, more content, more "stuff" and more story, and the main difference is that they're free.

I'm not expecting the base game to change, but to expand into various directions: possible skill improvements, new traits, skill customization, possibility of multi role for each job just to name a few.
But so far the game plays exactly like 2 years ago: still the same weekly caps, I still use the same rotations on the same jobs I played 2 years ago (minor differences here, but my monk and warrior still use the same base attacks with no real difference), I still see the same single boss raids from 2.X (why can't they make a raid like CT raids? Those are what I call a raid, in terms of exploring and size).

You're right on this: they definitely added more of the same exact thing and if that's your idea of expansion by all means, don't let me stop you. It's definitely not mine.

[Kerii]

The amount of misinformation on this forum is seriously beyond me.

From: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...808-18-2015%29

1:43:01
Q: I really love the scenery in the new areas. Do you have plans to introduce a housing ward in Ishgard?
A: We’ll first implement a feature to automatically relinquish unused houses in order to increase the availability of land. In parallel, we’re also working on quality of life improvements for the extended wards. Once these are complete, we’re move onto optimizing the servers so we can increase the amount of furnishings that can be placed in houses. Without taking care of these first, players won’t be able to transfer their houses without relinquishing their existing house first, and this also creates a situation where it leaves an unused house. We'll be progressing with this one step at a time, and will be gradually applying changes from Patch 3.1 onwards. The Dragonsong War hasn't ended yet, so it’ll take some time before we can add a housing ward in Ishgard.

There you have it. They're doing one thing at a time, and trying to fix more problems than they're creating.

[Fyce]

And so? They are houses. They give free (for the most part?) houses to players, which is what people want. Are you really that picky?

It's not being picky. You want glorified Inn rooms while we currently have entire neighborhood of 30 houses. Absolutly not the same thing.

I already answered les than two pages before your first post on the matter. Since you don't seem to follow the thread with a lot of attention, I'll quote myself:

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.

[Elim]

The timer is reasonable now. Before they proposed 30 days, which meant house owners couldn't even unsub for one month. Now everyone has some breathing room. As a personal house owner I'm happy with the system.

It's too bad the system isn't retroactive though. I know two houses that have been abandoned since personal housing launched. And my FC still wants to upgrade to a large house. Oh well. I hope they add new wards. Because this system wont be noticed for awhile.

[Youkulm]

The timer is reasonable now. Before they proposed 30 days, which meant house owners couldn't even unsub for one month. Now everyone has some breathing room. As a personal house owner I'm happy with the system.

It's too bad the system isn't retroactive though. I know two houses that have been abandoned since personal housing launched. And my FC still wants to upgrade to a large house. Oh well. I hope they add new wards. Because this system wont be noticed for awhile.

they do intend to add more wards around the time they add ishgard housing which won't be for a while.

Answer to your question was actually above your post haha. See below

The amount of misinformation on this forum is seriously beyond me.

From: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...808-18-2015%29

1:43:01
Q: I really love the scenery in the new areas. Do you have plans to introduce a housing ward in Ishgard?
A: We’ll first implement a feature to automatically relinquish unused houses in order to increase the availability of land. In parallel, we’re also working on quality of life improvements for the extended wards. Once these are complete, we’re move onto optimizing the servers so we can increase the amount of furnishings that can be placed in houses. Without taking care of these first, players won’t be able to transfer their houses without relinquishing their existing house first, and this also creates a situation where it leaves an unused house. We'll be progressing with this one step at a time, and will be gradually applying changes from Patch 3.1 onwards. The Dragonsong War hasn't ended yet, so it’ll take some time before we can add a housing ward in Ishgard.

There you have it. They're doing one thing at a time, and trying to fix more problems than they're creating.

[Welsper59]

Yeah, we call them patches: they give us more of the same, more content, more "stuff" and more story, and the main difference is that they're free.

I'm not expecting the base game to change, but to expand into various directions: possible skill improvements, new traits, skill customization, possibility of multi role for each job just to name a few.
But so far the game plays exactly like 2 years ago: still the same weekly caps, I still use the same rotations on the same jobs I played 2 years ago (minor differences here, but my monk and warrior still use the same base attacks with no real difference), I still see the same single boss raids from 2.X (why can't they make a raid like CT raids? Those are what I call a raid, in terms of exploring and size).

You're right on this: they definitely added more of the same exact thing and if that's your idea of expansion by all means, don't let me stop you. It's definitely not mine.

Wait, I'm a little confused on what you consider an expansion. All expansions I have experience with was literally more of the same. All old school RTS expansions, like Brood Wars and FT? More of the same with new units and maps. Nothing noteworthy changed with existing elements of the game, just how you might incorporate the new units. Expansions for FFXI and WoW? More of the same initially. Completely new styles of content were rare and when finally released, were generally introduced sometime AFTER the expansion launched. Raids are almost always done in the same style. We're not exactly far into Heavensward to make the same type of comparisons... in fact, we're not even into the first major content patch yet. I'm curious about why you would conclude something else to be the norm right from the beginning, because I definitely have to disagree with you there.