Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[Ardent_Dawn]

I'd like to address the concerns of the person who mentioned military members, being a former one myself.

That's a legit concern and I hope SE factored that in.However, did they not also mention early on that they were adding a system to grant rights /privileges to up to 5 other friends as far as accessing your house and features of housing? This would work as someone who plans to be away can elect a caretaker of their estate if you will (just as you'd want someone to check up on/maintain your home while deployed).

Yes, this means putting your trust in a fellow player to help you, but as this is an MMO, we already do this in more important ways as is.

My husband is in the Army and he was incredulous when I told him about the changes. So many of our friends have been deployed and though I don't find it unreasonable that they'd lose their plots, the fact that the data storage is so poor on this game that they can't keep your gil/items at the Caretaker for you for more than a month is horrible. I am tired of the excuse being "well, this isn't like other MMOs", because I've been playing MMORPGs since 2000 and this is the first game in which I've encountered such restrictions. LotRO is very similar and it doesn't have this problem.


Like you mentioned, I hope that the buddy/roommate system comes out soon to help alleviate some concerns until hopefully we get a better response on what exactly can be done to safeguard player items in the event of military deployment or other unavoidable situations in which people cannot return to the game to retrieve items that will be permanently destroyed.

[LeoEmpire]

I could offer an alternative that might not be too difficult to pull off and allow all players to enjoy the content.

- Add a Condominium building to the housing wards that allow anyone to purchase Private Chambers (these are instanced so it wouldn't be as difficult as adding more wards). These could even have a common area workshop for players who don't want to use one of the workshops in FC houses

- Add an indoor planter furniture item to let players without houses participate in Gardening

- If you really feel the need to provide housing in its current form to the most players: only allow FCs to purchase houses in new wards

- And if you absolutely must punish inactive players, then only apply this new rule to future housing purchases, so at least they would know what they're getting into before making the investment

[Waaltar]

Either Neighborhood housing or the one-price for everything sub model has to go because SE can't afford to do it as-is. They can keep one or the other, not both.

Currently, every subscriber is subsidizing the housing system for the limited number of players who get access to housing. The housing system has taken up many dev hours in terms of content development and it costs too much to run to let every subscriber have access to it.

So clearly, 'one price gets you everything' has been failing for a long time now already. To many, it's a much cherished part of how SE does business, so of course it has been a difficult conversation so far.

By accidentally making a housing system they couldn't afford to run, SE will be forced to do some major decision making, to reconsider their business philosophy and strategy. One subscriber price can not deliver players the deep content that the evolving market is demanding.

I'm glad they are beginning to work it out.

[Crimsonwolf3400]

However, did they not also mention early on that they were adding a system to grant rights /privileges to up to 5 other friends as far as accessing your house and features of housing?

Military members were the first I thought about.
The thing you wrote makes sense and I hope it will work like that.

Like you mentioned, I hope that the buddy/roommate system comes out soon to help alleviate some concerns until hopefully we get a better response on what exactly can be done to safeguard player items in the event of military deployment or other unavoidable situations in which people cannot return to the game to retrieve items that will be permanently destroyed.

Estates Subject to Demolishing
Free company housing that has not been accessed by at least one member within forty-five days.
Private housing that has not been accessed by the owner within forty-five days.

They specified quite clearly on both accounts, and obviously didn't copy/paste some generic phrasing into there. Unless they try to make a change down the line, it seems quite clear that anyone who is sharing your house won't count.

[Jayjohn]

I think you all should just quit the game so I can buy all the houses and be a true land baron.

Which reminds me, better log to all my houses and pretend they are worth something

[BrokenFox]

Don Yoshida says hello

[Kalsam]

The one thing I don't like the most is that people who've gone inactive and lose their plots are getting gil back.
The majority who'll be losing these plots are those who bought multiples to try and gouge more out of people by reselling. They don't deserve to get anything back.

For the minority, who have legitimately taken a break from the game for work, money, etc., they can just incorporate the sharing option, and give us a 'co-owner' option to set someone else/others that could check in for them. (Ie: the Friends/Family sharing) And have an option to do this from either Lodestone or the Moogle station for those currently overseas, where they may not be able to log in to do so on the game.

[T2teddy]

What I'm about to say has only to do with my home world, Sargatanas. The info took a long time to find and I do not have time to do all the worlds.
First of all, we know there are only 1440 housing plots on a world.
Currently about 60% of the 1440 purchased lots are PERSONAL houses!

On Sargatanas there were 1362 Free Companies as of August 8th. Doubtless there are a few more now.
Of these over 250 have the qualifications necessary for purchasing property but have not been able to yet due to no empty lots. Many of them were created after HW launched and their members have worked hard to get to rank 6-8.

It matters not WHEN these homeless FCs were created. THEY should be the ones who are given the first option to buy a lot once there are some freed up by this ploy of SE's!

IMHO Square needs to lock down the lots which come open and offer them to homeless FCs before opening them to players wanting personal housing.

Info came from Lodestone and http://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/wsurvey...rld=Sargatanas
By the way there are at least 5710 currently active players on Sarg [they have the Middy mount]

[Waaltar]

The current system will tend to eliminate personal housing over time. Personal housing: one player has to log in during the warning period. Company housing: any company member can log in during the warning period. More members in a FC mean more of a chance that it will be saved by somebody during the warning period. Thus over time, the number of housing plots with personal housing will decline relative to company housing.

So to conserve resources and make sure subscribers get equal access to content they should probably just eliminate personal neighborhood housing. If they want to keep the neighborhood housing as-is and without a premium service charge, it should only be for free companies.

[SinisterJointss]

The personal house reclamation should be 65 - 75 days. This is kind of a kick in the face especially when they are doing 5 months between content updates. They've essentially alienated anyone who cannot be constantly subscribed from the entire housing experience in a half hearted effort to fix something that is still completely broken. The bottom line is that 99% of the people in this thread without a house, still won't have one after reclamation due to the insane demand.

Oh you wanted a house?
Well so do another 3,000 people on your server. Look one just opened up!
Your chance of getting it is about the same or less than winning the jumbo cactpot. Good luck!

I find this post amusing simply because the bolded text

There is a very noticeable line between "cannot constantly subscribe" and "wont constantly subscribe"

In your case its "wont constantly subscribe" which I say, you don't need a house.