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

[Malicewolf]

I agree different means could definitely have been done to better alleviate the housing issues. I happen to have 3 accounts, but I have zero intention of getting a personal house for any of them. I don't even actually care to have a personal house (but perhaps that's because my FC and I are a smaller, very close knit group). But it's precisely because I know I wouldn't have the time, nor want to put in the effort to maintain a personal house that I don't bother getting one. Maybe down the road, if I REALLY want my own garden space. Not saying it's bad that people want multiple places to decorate, but I personally like the fact that it forces you to either use all of them, or lose them. Too many people have it just for the sake of having it, but want nothing to do with it anymore. Then there's those who simply quit. If you have 8 houses and you log in and maintain them all within a month and a half's time period, then I have zero issues with you having those 8 houses. You are USING them. But if you have 8 alts and really want to have a difference color on your chocobo that badly, I'm pretty sure your FC would be willing to help you out a bit (least I hope so... otherwise, perhaps you should find a new FC...)

[Niwashi]

Each house eats up a ton of space. You can't simply just make more wards unless you have the resources for it. SE could easily dumb down housing (remove building design, limit locations for furniture, limit rotations, etc.) like what Turbine did with LotRO and allow thousands of wards, but it would stifle creativity and the feeling of ownership.

Turbine went with hooks where you could place furnishings because of the client side graphics engine they were using to display those items. (Also because they were a lot pickier about avoiding clipping than SE is, so wanted to make sure you couldn't put things too close to each other. I'm not entirely sure why they were so picky about that when they have clipping issues elsewhere, though.)

As for the extra space free placement takes as compared to such a system, there's probably a couple bytes for each of the X,Y,Z coordinates and another byte for the orientation. That's seven bytes per item for positioning compared to one byte for which hook it's placed on in LOTRO. An extra six bytes per item, multiplied by the maximum 100, 150, or 200 items per estate, multiplied by the 20 small 7 medium and 3 large estates per ward, comes out to a free placement system costing (at most with every house filled to capacity) a little under 22 kilobytes extra per ward as compared to a hook system. That's certainly not what's stopping them from adding a thousand or so wards like LOTRO has.

And yes, there's some other customization that FFXIV's housing offers which LOTRO's doesn't, but LOTRO's housing offers item storage which FFXIV's doesn't, so if anything I'd bet on LOTRO's being the one to have a greater amount of data per estate than FFXIV.

[Niwashi]

I think 45 days is rather too short for personal houses, but whatever they went with was going to be an issue for some people. The bigger issue is that you can't get a replacement when you come back (and can't even get your furnishings and refund if your absence lasts 80 days or more). Once the house has been reclaimed and the plot made available, there's no longer any reason to limit the amount of time you have to return. The whole reason why characters are saved permanently is because it's actually extremely common for players to come back after many months or sometimes years away from a game. They could take houses away from inactive players once they ensure that they can be replaced if the player decides to come back again.

Plot reclamation itself, or even the extremely short timeframe for it, isn't the real problem. It's the half-assed job of it that fails to protect the investment people made in the game.

[Niwashi]

I have mixed feelings about alts owning houses - it is SE's fault for having such god awful relationships between characters on your own account. No shared bank space, can't mail alts, etc. Unless the share house feature is extended to your alts, I don't see it being fair to implement a one house per server/account rule.

SE can either allow alts to have their own houses or allow alts to share a house with each other. I'd actually prefer the later, and think we should have a lot more interchange between our characters. But what would be totally wrong is adding a 1 house per account rule before fixing the nearly impenetrable wall between our alts. The question isn't why are alts allowed to each get their own house, it's why are alts required to each get their own house in order to have housing access.

There's talk of some sort of house sharing coming up but I haven't seen any finalized plans for it yet. Most speculation seems to be that it's going to be based on allowing certain Friends to share your house, though, and since you cannot Friend your own alts, they're likely to be locked out of it. If that's wrong, and sharing with our alts becomes a thing, well then maybe that 1 house per account rule could become viable.

[Geologo]

I'm sorry but I have to disagree, I say its a fine compromise, 45 days is more than enough time.

Buying a house in game with gil is like paying a downpayment on a Real Life house, you still gotta pay your monthly mortage for it.
In the game you just have to log in once every 45 days, which of course means you gotta pay your $15 dlls subscription.

And just like in real life if you miss enough payments in a mortage and you get your house foreclosed, same in the game, miss on your subscription and you lose the commodity.

However in real life you get 0% of your investment back after a foreclosure, so at least in game you get 80% of your investment back!

To me thats not shady, thats how the world works.

I think you are missing that real life and a game are different things,
"Pay money to mantain your status" is something that make me mad,
they said that you can enlist few members for act like the owner(put and move forniture etc...)

If atleast their visit would act like your visit I'll be ok with it, but this way will just force to renew forcefully your subcription to mantain something that is just not an item.

[Maddonious]

I think 45 days is rather too short for personal houses, but whatever they went with was going to be an issue for some people. The bigger issue is that you can't get a replacement when you come back (and can't even get your furnishings and refund if your absence lasts 80 days or more). Once the house has been reclaimed and the plot made available, there's no longer any reason to limit the amount of time you have to return. The whole reason why characters are saved permanently is because it's actually extremely common for players to come back after many months or sometimes years away from a game. They could take houses away from inactive players once they ensure that they can be replaced if the player decides to come back again.

Plot reclamation itself, or even the extremely short timeframe for it, isn't the real problem. It's the half-assed job of it that fails to protect the investment people made in the game.

This is what i'm trying to point out in this thread. A few people have common sense to see the larger picture instead of just the immediate satisfaction of them getting their houses and ignoring the time, effort, money put into them. Half of the people posting plan to use the house for gardening but what about the people who love to decorate and work on their house with pride? After 45 days I could lose all my items that are destroyed if I move them which the 80% does not cover! Those items are more expensive then the land depending on the plot you buy and its horrible to think some people will lose all that after just 1 payment period! That's insane!

[Maddonious]

I'm sorry but I have to disagree, I say its a fine compromise, 45 days is more than enough time.

Buying a house in game with gil is like paying a downpayment on a Real Life house, you still gotta pay your monthly mortage for it.
In the game you just have to log in once every 45 days, which of course means you gotta pay your $15 dlls subscription.

And just like in real life if you miss enough payments in a mortage and you get your house foreclosed, same in the game, miss on your subscription and you lose the commodity.

However in real life you get 0% of your investment back after a foreclosure, so at least in game you get 80% of your investment back!

To me thats not shady, thats how the world works.

I can't tell if serious, delusional, or a troll.....

If I had to pay my *ahem* mortgage I would be fine with that if it was only with in game gil, lotro does this (but without destroying the house, just locking it). However the issue is you always have to keep a permanent sub, no decent breaks in between, which is what I have a problem with. All that time planning the layout, buying rare furniture to put up (that can't be moved again or its destroyed), getting the perfect house for the best scenery. Its just absurd.

Also this is a game, not real life. No other MMO does this with housing so it is obviously shady as hell with how they want to handle it.

[Skybourne]

Too bad. You should have been an early supporter and had the money ready to go when the housing was originally available.

This is screwing over dedicated, long term players for newbies.

Just because people like you have been a subscriber since the beginning doesn't automatically give you more of a right to home ownership, if you can't stay active then too bad, and don't even try preaching work or financial issues, if you were really worried about it I'm sure you could find someone close to purchase the lot from you and while there are items that couldn't be replaced easily that is a small price to pay, though I would sort of think so long as an account is active then there shouldn't be a timer so I will give support for that part. Though a real solutuon would be limiting one house per account for starters, just because anyone would want to take a break from the game shouldn't excuse you from holding a limited resource indefinitely.

[Nashred]

As long as people are paying for their subscription SE should not take anything away from people who earned it.

About the only people that are for this are people who dont have a house.
Those who dont have a house should be angry though just not at the people who have them. They should be angry at SE for having a horrible system for housing and having a hard time adding more.
I can see removing houses from people who dont play anymore but for people who do it is garbage. There is no reason for it..


It does not say quit or inactive players it says " accessed " that means actually going in the house too me.

That is bull. People payed for their housing and SE should not be able to take it away just because they messed up on housing and can not add much more housing.

I know some people who dont use their house but bought one in-case SE actually has a use for it sometimes. Again it is not their fault SE has not done anything with housing yet to make it useful.
I also know people who garden and who rarely enter their house.
Matter of fact My girlfriend and I are near our house all the time but rarely enter it. We craft in the yard. Tesee uses her garden and choco stable but we rarely go in anymore because there is little reason too. We have it decorated and there is no space for anything else till SE lets us.


By not entering your house no way violates the terms of agreement.

SE should not touch something someone bought in the game and worked hard for. It should be up to the person how they want to use their house. By not entering your house no way violates the terms of agreement.

I am ok with those who have desubbed for a time and no longer play.

[Malicewolf]

As long as people are paying for their subscription SE should not take anything away from people who earned it.

About the only people that are for this are people who dont have a house.
Those who dont have a house should be angry though just not at the people who have them. They should be angry at SE for having a horrible system for housing and having a hard time adding more. I can see for people who dont play but for people who do it is garbage. There is no reason for it..


it does not say quit or inactive players it says " accessed " that means actually going in the house too me.

That is bull. People payed for their housing and SE should not be able to take it away just because they messed up on housing and can not add much more housing.

I know some people who dont use their house but bought one in-case SE actually has a use for it sometimes. Agian it is not their fault SE has not done anything with housing yet to make it useful.
I also know people who garden and who rarely enter their house.
Matter of fact My girlfriend and I are near our house all the time but rarely enter it. We craft in the yard. Tesee uses her garden and choco stable but we rarely go in anymore because there is little reason too. We have it decorated and there is no space for anything else till SE lets us.


By not entering your house no way violates the terms of agreement.
SE should not touch something someone bought in the game and worked hard for. It should be up to the person how they want to use their house. By not entering your house no way violates the terms of agreement.

I apologize for your inconvenience. It must be really hard to walk 10 ft from your garden to your door and click enter. Then you have to turn around and click exit while you're there. Ugh. SE are monsters.