Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[Whocareswhatmynameis]

P.S. The players praising SE for this horrid fix should be ashamed! Instead you guys should be telling SE to add the housing the have been promising since 2.0!

And how many ghost wards do you intend for them to make? I'm not entirely sure about other MMOs and their housing system. I can say that FFXI had instanced personal house. Truthfully the only argument that can really be made is personal housing should have been instanced. But the didn't do that, they made neighborhoods for the community to share. So the plots that are available should be for the community that actively plays.

The only people upset are the supercasuals that want to dissapear for 6months+ and come back like nothing ever happened. This is an MMO the game is a virtual world that still lives and stuff happens in even when your not playing.

Should SE implement instanced personal housing and leave the wards for only active Free Companies, so people can keep their homes when they stop playing? Most likely, but until that happens the wards need to be filled with active players not people that quit a year and a half ago.

[Blissa]

Should SE implement instanced personal housing and leave the wards for only active Free Companies, so people can keep their homes when they stop playing? Most likely, but until that happens the wards need to be filled with active players not people that quit a year and a half ago.

I am not talking about people who quit for a year and a half, I agree those houses should be reclaimed. What I am talking about is 45 days is way to short. Have you ever heard the saying, life can give you lemons? Stuff comes up and some times its out of your control. What if you lost your job tomorrow and couldn't afford the sub for a few months? Are you going to be happy to lose everything that you worked for? 45 days is crap it should be at least 6 months. If a person hasn't came back by 6 months then they are most likely not coming back.

[Jynx]

As much as I'm glad they are finaly doing something about the housing situation this is just a bandaid and a bad one at that. Other than the first clean wave of totally unsubed characters getting their houses wiped I doubt this will effect the wards much at all.

How long will SE dance around the fact that they drew themselves into a corner when they flipped the switch to give company housing plots to individual players? The plot system was never designed with personal housing in mind but a lazy decision from on high forced the sharing of the estates. The longer they prance around the fact that they need to FIX the housing system instead of duct tape the bursting seams shut means it will be harder to ever implement a proper system.

[Niwashi]

And how many ghost wards do you intend for them to make? I'm not entirely sure about other MMOs and their housing system. I can say that FFXI had instanced personal house. Truthfully the only argument that can really be made is personal housing should have been instanced. But the didn't do that, they made neighborhoods for the community to share. So the plots that are available should be for the community that actively plays.

As to how many wards they should make, it should be enough for all active players to have a house. Once they fix that primary problem, then a reclamation system would be fine for clearing out the inactive ones.

I played LOTRO avidly for over 6 years, but have barely touched it since FFXIV:ARR came out. At this point, if I log back into LOTRO, my house there will be gone and it's perfectly fine. What makes it fine is the fact that I can just pick up all my items from the escrow broker (Resident Caretaker equivalent) and get another house. I don't lose anything except the specific location.

There are two differences there that are vitally necessary in order for housing reclamation to work. One is that items have to be kept available permanently after a house has been reclaimed. (I could potentially see SE changing their 35 day Caretaker limit to fix this bit.) The other is there has to be a guarantee that houses will remain always available to all who want them, so you know you can always get a replacement house whenever you decide to come back.

That second part SE is nowhere near to fixing. We don't need another half dozen wards added at a time. We need a thousand or so of them. If SE wants to stick with this system of shared wards, then take the number of active players who log in in a typical month, divide it by the number of houses in a ward, and upgrade their system to handle that many wards. Then, once they've done that, they could add reclamation of inactive houses and it would actually work.

[Toguro]

The system is flawed.
Why? This system really does nothing but open houses so people can take them all again in the first 3 hours of eviction. Here's some scenarios:

1. Everyone now knows that 45 days after 3.1, all of the houses will be unlocked. It will be a countdown. Once the 45th day hits, you probably won't even be able to get in the game yourself because EVERYONE will be on it. Houses will be gone in hours.

2. Because the rules only say "Enter the house and you keep it", what is preventing a person from buying a house for selfish reasons, buying it and building it instantly and then never going back into the house until the 44th day to keep it. For what? It doesn't matter it's their house and right. So they are taking up a house for literally no reason. So what's the difference from before? They are active players but are purposely hogging the house.

3. A super-hyper-mega-Godbert level crafter wants to troll because he's just "one of those dudes" ya know? Gives millions of gil to an alt. Goes on that alt and buys 5 houses or whatever the limit is. He has 5 houses now. All he needs to do is go in them on day 44. They're his "by his right". Sooner or later will the people saying "Lost your house? Deal with it." that lost their houses to this guy "Deal with it?" Or bring up a valid argument that the system is flawed.

4. A non-crafter/gatherer only player loves the game. She's been subscribed for 480 days. That's 16 subs. Equal to $240. During the 16 subs, the player has finally amassed enough money to get a house. She's so happy she FINALLY got one. It was her dream. Then oh no her PC breaks. It takes 2 months to get a new one. Boom Her dream gone. $240 that gave her time to get it is wasted because its gone. All homes are likely to be bought so she's outta luck. Can she be mad at herself? No. Can she be mad at the person who bought her house? No. Can she be mad at the Devs? Yes.

5. A week from after the houses are released, they are all bought up. Everyone knows that they will lose their home they just bought if they are away. So you'd be crazy to think they'd quickly give it up. They will hold on to their dream home. For months. I've read previously that most people could have other things to worry about than FFXIV if they are unable to play for a serious situation. This isn't right. People have different ways to value things. A guy can fall out of a plane and miraculously survive and be in the hospital for 2 months and come back and honestly be ready to kill somebody because his house is gone. Especially if FFXIV happened to be his favorite thing to do.


BTW, I have no house.

This doesn't solve anything. All it will do is cause future competition, complaints, and turmoil when any of those scenarios will happen. And those people will be right here on the forums.

The ONLY solution(If they don't do instanced housing) is more wards. Alot more. Not just one more district. They're gonna need a buttload of districts to fix it.

6. After people buy up all of the houses in the first 2-5 days. Everyone realizes that this is basically just releasing housing for the first time(again in a way). People rushed to buy houses and took them all. This will be no different. And all you people who want homes better be on the very minute all of the houses are demolished or you will be out of luck. I absolutely guarantee #2 and 3 will happen. #4 will happen as well. This game has a good community but all it'll take is some people with problems to go ruin it for multiple people. Oh and I've read that this will help FC's? How so? They will have the same problems as everyone else as the FC house itself needs to be bought. A single guy can go buy tons of "FC" houses before they actually get there.

[XiXiQ]

I suspect few plots will be voluntarilly relinquished anymore, why would you do that when you can just wait it out and get your refund?

[StouterTaru]

snip

1 - Christmas morning will likely be 45 day mark (or New Year's day if they push 3.1 back to Nov 17)
2 - Everyone that wants a house wants it for "selfish reasons"
3 - Limit is 1 personal house per character (requires a hundred hours of gameplay or so to be high enough rank/level) and 1 FC house per FC (requires rank 8 FC)
4 - Nobody plays for the sole purpose of having a house
5 - Best argument ever, imagine the news headline: "Man survives fall from airplane only to find his FFXIV house is gone"
6 - Yes, housing will remain exclusive. FCs will have a better chance of getting/keeping houses than individuals because they have more people.

It does solve some issues

1. Empty housing districts
2. Legacy costs of people that no longer play or pay for the game
3. More housing available

[Lexia]

I am paying for the right to own my house while I am giving SE my money.

You are not paying for the right to have a house, if that was the case everyone that pays a sub would have a house.

[Catwho]

What is sad is this game makes MILLIONS every month, what are they doing with the money?

If you think SE is letting the XIV team keep even a tenth of those profits, you have no idea how a large conglomerate business works.

All profits from XIV are remitted back to SE, and SE then apportions them back a chunk of them in the form of a yearly budget. The XIV team was lucky that they're not officially paying off 1.0 (they wrote that investment off) - if that was the case, the game would still be in the red.

As it is, they're profitable to the company, but SE does not and will never let them keep 100% of the money from monthly subscriptions.

[FriendlyUncle]

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:

I also answered your post, your ready comprehension seems to be lacking. Adding instanced housing DOES NOT mean the removal of existing housing wards. Can I somehow make that even easier for you to understand or you just going to ignore this rebuttal too?