Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[Nalien]

They really should just work on adding Private Rooms behind the Inns... I'd imagine the servers can actually handle it, though having SE actually chip in on the subject would certainly be ideal...

I mean, according to the patch notes (for 2.3), a single Estate can have up to 512 Private Rooms. There is potential for 1,440 plots per server. Now, perhaps the reason they mixed Private Housing in with Free Company Housing was to ensure that a number of plots cannot produce Private Rooms, giving them some wiggle room, but I do have to imagine that each server has potential for 737,280 Private Rooms. That's... A lot...

Again, actually having the developers chip in would be ideal here, but looking at the numbers available... That is simply the amount of Private Rooms that there is potential for, that is not a number that is likely ever to be reached... At best the game boasts what, having hit 5 million subscribers? Never mind the fact that they're not necessarily active subscribers, 5 million split across 64 servers is a measly 78,125 players per server on average... Even factoring in having multiple characters per account... Everyone would need to be rocking 9 characters, all of which they want to spend 300,000 Gil on having their own little room for, to be hitting the amount of Private Rooms there is potential for...

So, if there is potential for 737,280 Private Rooms per server, what is stopping the implementation of Private Rooms behind Inns? It shouldn't be too problematic to simply have the same option at the Inn that we have in Free Company Estates, to purchase a Private Room for 300,000 Gil, and then tie the Inn Private Room to the Free Company Private Room when applicable... Forget the wasted resources going into maintaining server space for non-customers, there is no chance in hell the potential for over 700,000 Private Rooms per server is being met, what reason is there not to implement that? Again, SE really needs to chime in here, because the only sensible explanation, and I suspect this to be the case, is that there isn't that potential for that many Private Rooms, despite their being potential for, per server, 1,440 Free Company Estates all with potential for 512 Private Rooms. I suspect that is exactly why Private Housing were thrown in with Free Company Housing, since a Private House does not allow for the Estate to produce up to 512 Private Rooms.

That's just a theory though, and despite owning property and being fine with this coming change, I'll remain fairly annoyed at the current state of Private Rooms based on these numbers, at least until SE drops by to actually explain the situation adequately. If anything that's what I'd be annoyed with here, the lack of communication from the developers about this stuff... I'd quite like to know how many Private Rooms they think they can handle, because slipping them in behind Inns is by far the best long term solution to Housing in this game. No it doesn't give everyone a Chocobo Stable (which I still recall as being something they're working on giving to everyone outside Housing), or Garden Plot, or Workshop, but it gives everyone their own little place to customize (which would be amazing for the fairly stagnant furniture market), and it gives everyone a use for those seasonal furnishings that are constantly being accumulated... The ideal is to turn Housing Wards not into a case of haves verses have-nots, but to just turn Housing Wards into a centralized location for the content it offers; I have my Private Room, Garden, Stable, etc., all in one place through Housing, where as someone without Housing still has all those things, just not in one spot. That's the best outcome I can imagine. Whether it's actually possible or not, we can only speculate, at least until SE decides to actually explain the situation...

[Raist]

^An expansion on this approach...


IDK about the rest of you, but I'd be more than happy to have something akin to XI's rental room policy. Could stick some furniture in the room in my home nation on a simple, cheesy grid system with only 90 degree facing options, and things like chests and cabinetry could give you a spot of extra storage according to their size. You couldn't access the furniture and extra storage from other nations...you had to go to your home nation for that.

It would open up so much potential to nip multiple problems at once. For me personally, it would virtually give about all I need that isn't automatically provided by affiliation to a good FC with a nice house setup.

[Blissa]

I hate to tell you this but SquareEnix is a business first and foremost. If you can't pay they aren't going to cater to you regardless of the reason behind it. .

Your just like the rest your gunning for people to lose their home. When in fact there are only 1440 houses per server with over 5k people per server. You have better odds of going outside and getting struck by lighting then getting a house. Once the 45 days are up your going to be back here crying that you still don't have a house.

This is not a fix to housing, Se needs to open their wallet and make sure that every player/FC on the server can own a home. Instead they are putting players against each other and holding the people who do have a house hostage to a subscription!

[Toguro]

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.

2. I didn't say that.
3 I don't own a house so I don't know. Someone in a different thread said people can have multiple homes.
4. I didn't say that. I said it was her in-game dream. Not why she is playing.
5. This clearly wasn't a serious scenario but the point is that people can still be upset
6. But only the leader can buy the house?

[Toguro]

These forums and FF14 housing in a nutshell:

Yup And how do vultures live? They watch and watch and when the prize is in sight, they all go in and try to get it. And only a select few get the meal. The others are pushed out and left hungry

[Yeldir]

Yup And how do vultures live? They watch and watch and when the prize is in sight, they all go in and try to get it. And only a select few get the meal. The others are pushed out and left hungry

I hope you're not referring to the poor urchins left hungry on the streets, staring in through frosted windows at all the cakes and pies rotting away, that they cannot have because the fat sods who got there before them might want to have a pastry again someday, maybe - I mean, I hope you're not referring to them as vultures. That'd be pretty gauche - and let me tell you, I'm an expert on the rude and the crude.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person with a house that openly and aggressively defends the idea of housing reclamation. I know that can't be true - I just wish people in my situation were as loud mouthed as the "got mine, you can't have yours!!" crowd.

[StouterTaru]

2. I didn't say that.
3 I don't own a house so I don't know. Someone in a different thread said people can have multiple homes.
4. I didn't say that. I said it was her in-game dream. Not why she is playing.
5. This clearly wasn't a serious scenario but the point is that people can still be upset
6. But only the leader can buy the house?

2 - You said "what is preventing a person from buying a house for selfish reasons," I said all reasons to buy a personal house are selfish
3 - People can have multiple homes through multiple characters and single person FCs. It isn't as simple as sending gil to an alt character, though.
4 - "$240 that gave her time to get it is wasted because its gone." If housing isn't the sole purpose of her playing, then the $240 isn't wasted just because she lost her house.
6 - The FC leader can set access levels for members, and one option is for purchase/relinquish of property.

[Niwashi]

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person with a house that openly and aggressively defends the idea of housing reclamation.

Well, I've got a house and have gone as far as saying a housing reclamation system that was implemented well could be both a good and necessary thing. Of course, that's not exactly defending it since it's coupled with the observation that SE's plan is horribly implemented, the biggest problem with it in fact being that it won't work until they address the underlying problem of a housing system designed to be available to only a tiny portion of their players.

SE needs to fix the real problem. Once there's enough houses available for all the active players, then reclaiming plots from inactive players to ensure those active players can get one would be a great thing. It would also, at that point, ensure that anyone whose house is reclaimed could just replace it when they get back. (Of course, that also assumes they can get all their stuff from the house when they get back, which SE's current plan would destroy instead.)

They need to fix the underlying problem first and then add reclamation of inactive houses. They got it backwards (and then decided to throw away all the furnishings as well, so there's multiple problems here).

[Toguro]

snip

Of course it's different in comparison to real life. The point of that is that unlocking new houses will only allow the "vultures" that were kicked to the side to have a chance to get something.. or else get kicked to the side. The only way to fix it is so no one gets kicked to the side so "vultures" won't exist.

But if we put it in real life terms, if well-to-do people lost their stuff to the poor and hungry people, then the well-to-do people become the poor and hungry people.

Thus more vultures. Just a switch of who's the vulture.

But RL people who are deprived or hungry or suffering cannot be compared to people who don't have a house in this game...

[Crimsonwolf3400]

I hope you're not referring to the poor urchins left hungry on the streets, staring in through frosted windows at all the cakes and pies rotting away, that they cannot have because the fat sods who got there before them might want to have a pastry again someday, maybe - I mean, I hope you're not referring to them as vultures. That'd be pretty gauche - and let me tell you, I'm an expert on the rude and the crude.

The examples of it being the housed rich and the homeless poor should really stop, especially in defense of this decision. The example only applies if there are actually homes available that people can not afford due to their price, and when that was the case, the personal housing prices were the same as FC housing prices despite assurances that they would be more affordable. Half of the home owners I know have less money than those without a home who are waiting. The more appropriate example would be that we're all at the soup kitchen, and some of us are eating while the others are being told there isn't anymore food left. It's not our fault that there isn't enough food to go around, and if we could share it(and will soon be able to), we would.

My small was purchased within hours of a FC upgrading to a medium, months after the smalls sold out, and I beat two other players to it. My subscription hasn't lapsed since launch, I play every day, and I do not agree with this implementation