Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[Neira]

Find me the casual players who are upset over losing their non-existent houses then. This entire argument feels like it's made of straw... You have people like me, who own plots and are fine with this because we accept that is is necessary, arguing against people who have seemingly no vested interest in the topic... They either own no land, aren't the kind to take frequent breaks, or were already thinking about quitting anyway... I've yet to see a single person who is solely invested in this game because of housing, and is dreading the life time subscription they'll now have to pay because of this...

You can probably throw me in that category. I subscribe roughly half of the year currently and I have a small home that cost me 5m with about 40m in furnishings, 15m+ of it will be destroyed. I don't do a lot of end game, it doesn't interest me much in this game. I log on, play with/talk to my waifu, as well as friends, garden some, and run around doing random tasks. I am now dreading the life time subscription I will have to pay because of this change. I've been off and on since ARR launch, I've had a home since subdivisions were added, and I don't always have the money to play even if I want to. Do I fit your criteria for someone that this actually effects?

Also, some of the analogies I'm seeing are ridiculous. A reserved spot at your restaurant for frequent and infrequent customers? Why not go with a much more obvious comparison of active diners that night. Someone comes in, orders a meal, and stays at their table to read a book after they finish; this is your inactive player. Someone else comes in while that person is reading and is waiting for a seat; this is your active player. Do you boot the guest sitting there reading, who has already finished their meal but was still a paying customer? That's up for every owner/manager to decide, but my opinion is a very emphatic "no". Whether a customer is brand new, hasn't been around for years, or comes every day without fail, they all deserve the same treatment and the same first come, first serve behavior. If you want to chat more with the regulars, have at it, but don't expect customers to take kindly to being treated as less important because they don't visit you as often or as recently.

Another analogy that's bothering me is the paying rent/mortgage one. They're both completely inaccurate since we as players have purchased both the property and the home that we built on it outright, without any taxes or insurance required to this point. The only plausible comparison here is equating it to newly instated property taxes, as we obviously haven't been paying any the rest of this time, which would indeed cause a significant uproar. Additionally, it's like having a property tax that must be paid with in gold instead of the USD or other national currency, as it's a different currency we're using to pay the tax than that which we purchased the land and home with(purchase in gil and subscription with cash). If you think that someone who purchased land and home outright with no fees would tolerate a required payment in a new currency laid upon them with less than righteous indignation, I'm quite sure there are historical examples proving that such a scenario is not accepted readily. Even further, since it's not the physical payment that is required, but the use of the land as well as payment, the idea that the ruling body in this example requires the person on the deed to pay and utilize the property is too ridiculous to even consider in reality. Of course, realistic analogies also go out the window when my mailbox will magically self-destruct if I try to move it.

Additionally, as for the repeated mentioning of finite resources, I would like to again reiterate why that is the case. Is it your fellow player base, active or inactive, utilizing their home or not, that are deciding to keep the majority of people out of homes? This isn't some Occupy Eorzea movement, you aren't the 98% trying to overcome the shackles of the 2% of land owners. We're all equals in this system, some came along sooner than others and some prioritized getting a house while others didn't. There isn't some magic entitlement or birthright to this system. Square Enix provided limited homes for FCs to save money, Square Enix scrapped the concept of unique personal housing in favor of an obviously flawed idea of combining personal and FC homes to save money, and Square Enix is now introducing a system that adds nothing but enforces subscriptions. It's about money, plain and simple, and some of you are turning on each other so quickly when we should all be standing against SE on this one and demanding that they properly invest in their incredibly successful MMO.

Finally, even though I have a personal stake in this issue, I'm rather unbiased with my stances in general. I oppose the retainer rental system despite not needing the extra space, I oppose the removal of in-game vendor seasonal purchases to be added to the cash shop despite owning every previous item put on the Mog Station so far, and I oppose this game's housing system that tries to advertise as content despite being completely unavailable and only ever being accessible by a select few. SE is trying to run a business, yes, but they're doing a horrible job at providing quality products and services at a reasonable price to paying customers. And instead of complaining about that fly in your soup, that scratch on your new car, that console that broke within a year, or that internet that keeps cutting out, I see many people showing misguided appreciation for what would be considered unacceptable in many other industries. It's our money that's paying to keep these servers going and is making SE millions, we shouldn't have to fight each other just to enjoy what we're paying for, or even participate in it at all.

[Yshnal]

What some people seem to be forgetting is that, even if you're still paying your sub, if for whatever reason you can't log-in during a month and half ONCE in maybe 10 years, you lose your house. I don't find that okay, and as some posters have said it would be as if they randomly decided that your character (alts included) gets wiped if you don't log-in in a month, even if you're still paying the sub, or if they take away your house because you don't want to raid, for example. It's ridiculous to think that someone can be okay with them taking anything away from you while you're still paying, no matter what the ToS say. Yes, they can do whatever pleases them, but it doesn't make it right.

[Avidria]

Hmm.

It seems like what they could've done to avoid some of the complaints I'm seeing would be to base the timer on subscription activity for private houses and to make it so ALL furniture (why do we even have one-time use only furniture to begin with??) gets saved at the reclamation npc guy. Perhaps raising the timer to 60 days as well.

But until we get more housing, or instanced housing for everyone,this was definitely needed. My fc has a small house in the goblet, and we're surrounded by houses of all sizes that house...well, nobody. There are owners and fc's (that are down to 1-10 inactive people) that haven't been playing for months. We have more than one plot that was bought ages ago but the buyer never even built a house there. That's dozens of plots that no one is using and that no one can buy, even if they're swimming in gil. People who want houses can't have them because there aren't any available - and they aren't even being used by the people that own them.

Of the mmo's I've played with some form of housing in them, this is probably the worst system I've seen.

[Neira]

This already happens retroactively with vertical progression, and has happened with 2.0 gear going into 3.0 even for purposes of glamour.

Fine. This actually sounds reasonable. A reasonable housing solution would therefore be to add a new housing system that is scalable to the entire player base that will make the old housing less desirable.

This almost made me want to clap. Bravo Waeksyn.

[Iromi]

I'm neither against nor for this, I don't really care..it doesn't bother me, but I can understand why it bothers some at the same time!

Anyway, I'll just leave this here:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/113554
1:14:22
Q: Will there be any maintenance fees or other costs for housing, besides the cost of the land and house?
A: In older MMOs, such as Ultima Online, there was a house maintenance fee you had to pay weekly, but in FFXIV: ARR we decided against this system. Similarly, these older MMOs also had a system where your house would break down if you didn’t log in after a while in order to have you continue your subscription, but this is a thing of the past and we won't have any system like that.

One thing I do not like, is when they say one thing and do something else. First it was personal housing being separate price from FC, then it was SMN egi, now this apparently, what is next It is hard for me to follow them and take them seriously because what they say changes so much. Not saying they are horrible people, again, they are only human, I just can't really take stuff they say seriously anymore...at all.

[Riardon]

Paying the sub or not it doesn't matter. You still have a house you rarely/never use while others wait. I also find it really hard to believe you have no time to log in for few secs/mins ONCE in a month while you are still paying. In other games that I played housing requires a monthly rent with in-game currency to keep. This makes sense if you want to keep the house. Here housing is free. You don't keep an AFKer in your party just because he pays his sub do you? Same applies for housing. If it's one login in a month then you should stop whining. We can't just keep abandoned houses their owner never ever plays just because he is paying his sub.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I'm neither against nor for this, I don't really care..it doesn't bother me, but I can understand why it bothers some at the same time!

Anyway, I'll just leave this here:



One thing I do not like, is when they say one thing and do something else. First it was personal housing being separate price from FC, then it was SMN egi, now this apparently, what is next It is hard for me to follow them and take them seriously because what they say changes so much. Not saying they are horrible people, again, they are only human, I just can't really take stuff they say seriously anymore...at all.

You aren't understand what he is saying. He's not saying there won't be a relinquish system. Hes saying the house won't need a maintenance fee AND it won't visibly break down( start to look unused, broken, cracked walls, that kind of stuff)

[SinisterJointss]

I'm neither against nor for this, I don't really care..it doesn't bother me, but I can understand why it bothers some at the same time!

Anyway, I'll just leave this here:



One thing I do not like, is when they say one thing and do something else. First it was personal housing being separate price from FC, then it was SMN egi, now this apparently, what is next It is hard for me to follow them and take them seriously because what they say changes so much. Not saying they are horrible people, again, they are only human, I just can't really take stuff they say seriously anymore...at all.

You can leave it there all you want. It says nothing about land relinquishing. That specifically refers to housing Maintenance (repair costs for housing)

[Neira]

Except he never said there would be no land relinquishing system. He said there wouldn't be a maintenance system. Stop twisting what he said to fit your argument.

I can't believe how many times I've read stuff along these lines.

1:14:22
Q: Will there be any maintenance fees or other costs for housing, besides the cost of the land and house?
A: In older MMOs, such as Ultima Online, there was a house maintenance fee you had to pay weekly, but in FFXIV: ARR we decided against this system. Similarly, these older MMOs also had a system where your house would break down if you didn’t log in after a while in order to have you continue your subscription, but this is a thing of the past and we won't have any system like that.

Breakdown for you, and everyone else.
1) Question: Will there be (A) maintenance fess or (B) other costs for housing?
2) Answer: (A) Older MMOs have house maintenance fees but we decided against it.
(B) Older MMOs have systems in order to continue your subscription.
3) Comprehension notes, the use of the word "or" in the Question and "Similarly" in the Answer point to the obvious two-part nature of both.

This really isn't complicated, it isn't reading between the lines, and it isn't twisting anything. It's basic English, and basic comprehension. I'm trying to break it down to make it clear, but there is really no possibility for ambiguity in this one.

[Yshnal]

Paying the sub or not it doesn't matter. You still have a house you rarely/never use while others wait. I also find it really hard to believe you have no time to log in for few secs/mins ONCE in a month while you are still paying. In other games that I played housing requires a monthly rent with in-game currency to keep. This makes sense if you want to keep the house. Here housing is free. You don't keep an AFKer in your party just because he pays his sub do you? Same applies for housing. If it's one login in a month then you should stop whining. We can't just keep abandoned houses their owner never ever plays just because he is paying his sub.

"You have a character in a locked server and you didn't use it for a month and half. It doesn't matter if it was just something that you've done once because of real life issues that prevented you from logging-in, even if you wanted to, we'll wipe your character from the server so that an active player can create a character on said server". I'm all for it.

BTW, housing is not free. It can cost an exorbitant amount of money, especially if you bought it back in the day. Money that these players saved with their time and effort, and/or didn't use in other things. Now you're telling them that it's okay to lose all that if they commit the crime of not being able to log-in during a month and half, even if they're still paying SE, and even lose some expensive furniture in the process, so that maybe someone that didn't want to make an additional effort to grind/save that gil, or worse, someone with an alt, can buy their house. Seems legit...

I love how we players are upon each other's throats, while the ones actually at fault of this flawed system get away with it. It's lovely, really.

P.S.: Just to make it clear, I know that there's many players that did the effort to save gil for their house, yet they couldn't buy one due to the limited suply. What I'm pointing out is how the whole system is extremely poorly planned.