Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[Dree-Elle]

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

Rest assured, you're not.

[Jynx]

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

It probably seems that way because even people who don't care about the system or may normally defend it understand it's a terrible bandaid that will do litteraly nothing to help the situation. Housing decay is fine but alone it's not going to decrease the population of available houses for players in the long run. One or maybe two waves of house tear downs and we will be back to square one, no space for the people who want it and have the means to attain it besides the availability of plots.

They are wasting their time on this "Solution" when they need to put their heads down and come up with a real solution so that housing is available to every single player in the game as long as they have the means to purchase it. As it stands that would be impossible so they need to rework the system for personal housing from the ground up.

[Waeksyn]

They are wasting their time on this "Solution" when they need to put their heads down and come up with a real solution so that housing is available to every single player in the game as long as they have the means to purchase it. As it stands that would be impossible so they need to rework the system for personal housing from the ground up.

This. Unfortunately, SE has shown a particular stubbornness in not admitting mistakes and throwing band aids at a system that is fundamentally and irrevocably broken. A good example of this was the market ward system in 1.0.

[T2teddy]

SE knows how many active subscribers they have, and how many FCs there are, so they should have just added enough lots to cover those numbers.

But I still say they need to FREEZE purchasing of any personal lots, until all the eligible FCs have one.

[Krylo]

They are wasting their time on this "Solution" when they need to put their heads down and come up with a real solution so that housing is available to every single player in the game as long as they have the means to purchase it. As it stands that would be impossible so they need to rework the system for personal housing from the ground up.

This is a necessary component of any solution that maintains housing wards.

The options for keeping housing wards are basically four:

1: Leave it like it is, no one can purchase new houses except on the rare occasion someone comes back, at which point they may--for 10-100x the original maximum price. That is to say, leave it unattainable for most everyone.

2: Create more wards. This is a terrible band aid solution on its own, because SE simply doesn't have the server infrastructure to support infinitely increasing wards, which is necessary without reclamation. MMOs have customer churn--how many 1.0 players are still playing now? How about 2.0 players? 2.3 players? People quit, new people join. Over time, healthy populations gain players faster than they lose them--but all MMOs permanently lose players at a relatively constant rate. As players who have houses leave permanently or semi-permanently and new active players come in, SE needs to make new housing. The old players will never lose theirs so as new players come, SE has to make yet more new housing, etc. etc. forever. Even when FFXIV goes into decline and can no longer maintain sub increases, or even equilibrium, SE would still need to keep making new housing as even dying MMOs have new players. Doing this alone would force SE to, likely, turn off the game for days, if not weeks, while completely redesigning their data systems to support it, as well as constantly spending money adding new servers which would mean lay offs on the development team and the game basically turning into 'The Sims: Final Fantasy' where almost all of the budget is dedicated to keeping up with the demands of housing.

3: Reclamation. This is also a terrible band-aid solution on its own, but better than creating more wards. The problem here is that while the game continues to gain more subs over time, the current housing wards will not be enough (if they even are now--which I'd say probably depends on server, on mine? probably not). However, if subs drop or reach an equilibrium, reclamation will create a steady churn of housing that is roughly analogous to the subscriber churn, allowing everyone to have a house once FFXIV reaches a decaying state--which saves SE a lot of money it can try to use to stop any decay. It will also, potentially, create churn between patches and at other times.

4: Combination of 2 and 3. If you create enough houses for the current subscriber base to be have a fair chance of gaining access to housing while increasing ward numbers and sizes as more people sub AND create a reclamation system, you create a system where you only need to create new wards when the game is increasing its sub numbers--and even then only when those numbers maintain for awhile--instead of doing so infinitely, allowing more money to go to things OTHER than server infrastructure.

Number 4 is the only solution that ACTUALLY works, and putting a reclamation system in first is necessary to begin to gauge how many more wards/homes/whatever are actually needed when they get added.

Which we know are going to be added. We've already been promised wards in Ishgard, at the very least.

[Yeldir]

...

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

But comparing them to carrion eating birds is A-OK?

You've got some weird priorities, buddy. (Also hi Crimsonwolf, this is kind of directed at you too, as you're calling me out for the urchin comment but ignoring the even more outlandish carrion birds bit.)

...

4: Combination of 2 and 3. If you create enough houses for the current subscriber base to be have a fair chance of gaining access to housing while increasing ward numbers and sizes as more people sub AND create a reclamation system, you create a system where you only need to create new wards when the game is increasing its sub numbers--and even then only when those numbers maintain for awhile--instead of doing so infinitely, allowing more money to go to things OTHER than server infrastructure.

Number 4 is the only solution that ACTUALLY works, and putting a reclamation system in first is necessary to begin to gauge how many more wards/homes/whatever are actually needed when they get added.

Which we know are going to be added. We've already been promised wards in Ishgard, at the very least.

This last bit is so damned important. Has no one been paying attention to SE's declaration that this is phase 1? They can't just add more lots forever without cleaning up first - they'd create an endless series of resource draining, budget strangling ghost towns. The real problem is that they took this long to get around to it. They shouldn't have listened to the complaints to begin with, and now they know it.

[Ashkendor]

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.

Nah, I'm all for it too and I actually own two houses (FC and private).

[Yeldir]

It's reassuring to be incorrect, sometimes!

[FoxyAreku]

Awesome. As someone who has a house, I think this should have been in the game from the start.

[Dererk]

Awesome. As someone who has a house, I think this should have been in the game from the start.

Agreed it should have been added at the start then the people here wouldn't be so vocal in their objection of it. Problem is SE listened to such people the first time now that their finally doing it people are again complaining and crying saying don't do this.

Ofcorse its a band aid people because this is their first step to actually fix the problem.

Its happening and 53 pages of this thread isn't going to change it.