Time on House removal/reclaming is way to short! (private houseing)

[Nymeria2x]

"Forty-five days of inactivity the estate will be automatically demolished. Players will have thirty-five days to redeem items from the resident caretaker before they are made irredeemable. Items belonging to a free company estate can only be retrieved by members with the authorization to purchase or relinquish land. Items belonging to a private estate can only be retrieved by the owner."

This plain and simply was and is a stupid idea. People do not log in for a variety of reasons and SE has no idea why someone may not be able to log in atm. The only time this measure would be appropriate is if a player was banned or the character was deleted. It could be as simple as they're burnt out or it could be something as complicated as a severe injury or illness causing them to be hospitalized. People take breaks from the game for school, out of boredom until the next patch, because of finances (money's a little tight, do I want groceries or to spend $15 on a game?), game systems breakdown and you have to save up for a new one, families have crisis, people get sick and hurt, certain jobs such as the military require months away at a time. Basically life happens and the last thing anyone wants is to be punished for dealing with Real life instead of being glued to the damn game every day. Besides this solves nothing, absolutely nothing. There are only enough houses per server for 1-2% of the population of players and that's not including the fact that players have to compete with FCs for houses. There will still be 98% of the server population running around homeless and with no way to use any housing item they may get, such as the seasonal rewards they offer. Why bother putting those in if only 1-2% of the population can use them? Why would people bother to participate if they can't even use the rewards? It makes zero sense and is going to end up as a PR nightmare for SE. They'll push this through, its going to blow up at them with players still demanding housing since they problem hasn't been fixed at all and then they'll have to back peddle and rework the whole housing system if they want to have any hope of actually fixing it instead of driving off players. Congratulations people who pushed this through, you didn't do the math and think about what was actually going to happen.

[Eyjabria]

It makes zero sense and is going to end up as a PR nightmare for SE. They'll push this through, its going to blow up at them with players still demanding housing since they problem hasn't been fixed at all and then they'll have to back peddle and rework the whole housing system if they want to have any hope of actually fixing it instead of driving off players. Congratulations people who pushed this through, you didn't do the math and think about what was actually going to happen.

Amen.

Lately I've had very little motivation to play. Why would I bother spending my free time with FFXIV if such major achievement as our FC house could be taken away just because we didn't / couldn't pay subscription for a while. The upcoming system is very unrespectful towards paying customers who have invested a lot of time, effort and money to obtain housing. Dissatisfactory customer service and disrespect towards players' investments is not a good business move.

By the way.. will the timer take server downtimes and other technical difficulties on Square Enix's part into account? I predict players losing their houses when they are unable to log in during the decay timer countdown due to problems on SE's end.

[Malicewolf]

Amen.

Lately I've had very little motivation to play. Why would I bother spending my free time with FFXIV if such major achievement as our FC house could be taken away just because we didn't / couldn't pay subscription for a while. The upcoming system is very unrespectful towards paying customers who have invested a lot of time, effort and money to obtain housing. Dissatisfactory customer service and disrespect towards players' investments is not a good business move.

Wow... Your actually worried about your FC not being able to muster a single player to log on and enter your house in 45 days? And if you aren't paying for a sub anymore, guess what? You are not a paying customer. Everyone else has been complaining only about personal housing...

[Phoenometroid]

Amen.

Lately I've had very little motivation to play. Why would I bother spending my free time with FFXIV if such major achievement as our FC house could be taken away just because we didn't / couldn't pay subscription for a while. The upcoming system is very unrespectful towards paying customers who have invested a lot of time, effort and money to obtain housing. Dissatisfactory customer service and disrespect towards players' investments is not a good business move.

For an FC all you need is one guild member to walk/leave the house to remain in tack, unlike the solo Personal House shared with 6 ppl has to be entered by the owner. I think you should be fine, if your FC is that small then I suggest recruiting more actively for active members or spread the word for your members to use the place while the owner is unsubbed. I don't mean to be cruel but that's pretty good compared to the sole home owners out there.

People take breaks. Typical MMO hiatus lengths are 1-3 months long, from my observation. That doesn't mean they've quit the game and will never return. They're just taking a break. They deserve to keep all the progress they've had, not come back to find their house pulled and stripped and not even getting back all of their decor.

Chiming in with agreement with the OP. The decay timer is a terrible idea on its own, but 45 days is an awful timer. It needs to be longer.

I might not go as far as to say it needs to be longer but I do believe an active subscriber should be safeguarded from this timer until after their sub has lapsed. If subbing was a way for players to remain active to keep their homes but take breaks between non-substantial patches or game updates I would even say it should be reduced to 30 days if not increased to 60days but I don't think it should be any longer than that.

I'm on a 6 month plan but to counter, why should people not playing and not paying keep their house while people who are actively playing and paying not have access. Housing is a limited resource and SE has set priority to those who play and have an active subscription. May not be fair to people who quit for a couple months at a time, but fair to those who actively play and want a house. Beside's, we've had this debate before and SE has decide.

I don't believe that the lack of plots for everyone is the fault of the players, however I do believe it was a mistake for SE to take on this task of going for no "instanced housing" and not have some kind of plot decay system implemented with it to boot.If they COULD play they WOULD, not SHOULD. People do take breaks, and it's no one's place to tell another person how to spend their money nor should a service be removed from a "paying" customer. We all pay a service fee to enjoy this game and housing is a featured part of that service.

[Eyjabria]

I think you should be fine, if your FC is that small then I suggest recruiting more actively for active members or spread the word for your members to use the place while the owner is unsubbed. I don't mean to be cruel but that's pretty good compared to the sole home owners out there.

Well, our FC consist of two people living in the same household, so it's very close to personal housing. And we prefer to keep our FC that way.

This whole reclaim ordeal has left a really bitter taste and we don't understand how players can support this kind of business tactic. It just opens the way to more similar shady practices when SE notices anything goes and players will still keep throwing money at them. Maybe the next step is character deletion on busy servers when subscriptions haven't been paid. All those inactive characters are preventing new players from making characters on some servers afterall...

[Naunet]

If you rent a movie, do you feel like you have to actively watch it several times a day, every day until you return it to not be a waste of money?

An mmo =/= a movie. Poor internet analogies never work.

I might not go as far as to say it needs to be longer but I do believe an active subscriber should be safeguarded from this timer until after their sub has lapsed. If subbing was a way for players to remain active to keep their homes but take breaks between non-substantial patches or game updates I would even say it should be reduced to 30 days if not increased to 60days but I don't think it should be any longer than that.

I agree that I had thought they'd tie it to being subscribed, not physically entering the house. That is surprising.

[Leoncault]

I feel like this is punishing small FCs that have less than 10 members/owners of houses. "Go find more members you say", well not everyone wants to. They can be private friend groups/a collective group of people who don't want more people. People play how they want. As for sharing only the owner can walk in an reset the timer, not anyone else sharing the house. I feel FC maybe should be 50 days, single ownership should be increased to 60-70 days, and a way to keep your house via the email (paying 1-2 dollars).

I would love to play ffxiv more and was working towards a house. But now, everything I was working towards is now useless because I don't know if I can play ffxiv a lot due to school and money. This game is a hobby I enjoy playing.

The problem is that they are punishing people for not logging in/subscribing - which is a giant problem. Not every can subscribe every certain amount of days and forcing them to is not a way to keep customer loyalty. I'd be ok paying a dollar or two a month to keep my house or reset the decay timer, I understand server costs and would gladly pay that amount of money to make sure my housing was not taken away from me. Anything more than a two dollars would be pushing it.