Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[Catwho]

Yeah, I'm a x2 homeowner (FC house and personal house) and I'm also openly and aggressively defending housing reclamation. I think 45 days is a bit short for personal houses, but the very idea of housing reclamation? Yeah. We needed it. Dead FCs are cluttering up the neighborhoods and have to go.

45 days is perfect for an inactive FC, especially combined with the email notices.

[Meirii]

my ward is full of empty houses. Only a few people ever there

[Raist]

My concern is less about what they are doing and more about how they are doing it. It's just a bit too much of a strong-arm tactic for the personal housing. Such a short time against how often you open the front door just doesn't sit well with me.

I live in an area where houses go "unused" in this sense (not the owner),for months on end. They may not even be occupied by renters for consecutive months. That doesn't give someone the right to arbitrarily seize it. Now, if they are behind on payments, taxes, it is dilapidated to the point of being condemned, etc. then you have a different debate.

So my real life experience just causes me to buck against the aggressiveness of the policy. If it were focused more like a couple months of unpaid subs it wouldn't bother me as much. But simply because someone hasn't opened the front door in 45 days doesn't automatically mean you haven't used your property. Just as an example, choco stables don't require you to actually step inside.

Many may understand and even support the need...they just take issue with the tactics.

Just as an example, they could have made the first round be any one with inactive accounts for a set amount of time. 6 months, 3 months...or even 45 days of not paying your subscription would likely have been much more widely accepted as a starting point.

[Colorful]

So my real life experience just causes me to buck against the aggressiveness of the policy. If it were focused more like a couple months of unpaid subs it wouldn't bother me as much. But simply because someone hasn't opened the front door in 45 days doesn't automatically mean you haven't used your property. Just as an example, choco stables don't require you to actually step inside.

If they're using the chocobo stables right in front of their house, is it really too much to ask that the they enter it once every 45 days? I don't believe so, and if their only desire is the chocobo housing, then FC housing is perfect for that and there's no real need to occupy a house. But I do agree with you, it should have been based on subscription and not on entering the house, but the majority of complaints have been about being "forced to subscribe" so I don't think it would have been any more accepted.

[Raist]

But the complaint has been largely about property not being used...not that no one enters the house. There aren't mechanics like XI gardening that compelled you to check on plants often enough to keep them from dying, so people just aren't in the habit of going into their house unless they have a specific need/desire too. I port to the FC a lot to save on Limsa taxes at the market board right around the corner...and use the bell right there. I have no particular need to actually go inside on those runs, but I am still technically using the house (used the teleport option it provides).

So there is a bit of a disconnect between using the asset/service provided by housing versus opening the front door. Often times there is no reason to go inside...but that doesn't mean you haven't used it.

[Pomelo]

I'm hoping this free's up my neighbourhood so my actually active friends can live in the houses and we can have sleepovers and other social stuff *wierdo*

[OfTheWhitewind]

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!

I don't own a house for the very reason that I don't entirely agree with the "paying customers get housing priority" thing. :P I don't think it's unreasonable either though but I personally don't want any part in that mad scramble until SE fixes it which I am sure they will eventually. But sure, go ahead and keep assuming that I guess. I'll watch from the stands.

[Yeldir]

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.

500 pages wouldn't stop it. SE has finally realized that these forums aren't a useful metric for gauging what their player base actually wants. So have I, really. The people I actually play this game with, the hundreds of them I've gotten to know to some extent - they're nothing like what takes place on this forum.

[Seryl199]

But I do agree with you, it should have been based on subscription and not on entering the house, but the majority of complaints have been about being "forced to subscribe" so I don't think it would have been any more accepted.

It seems more of culture shock than anything. If people really felt forced to subscribe, they wouldn't really be enjoying the game, so they shouldn't care so much about their estate anyways. However, it is one of the first measures in FFXIV that is actually punitive for unsubscribing. Glamour gears are always relevant, and gear becomes irrelevant at a rapid enough pace that it's easy enough for a returning player to catch up, facilitating a dynamic that makes it easy for players to drop the game and jump back into it at a later time.

The reclamation effort, however, adds a definitive measure of permanence to unsubscribing, where your house is demolished, you are (generously) refunded 80% of your gil and given (less generously) 35 days to reclaim some potentially very valuable furniture, and some items can be lost in the process. It adds actual consequence to unsubscribing, something that this game is rather unfamiliar with. It discourages and entirely excludes all but the most frequent subscribers from owning property. The limited availability and permanence of housing make it available only to a limited number of permanent residents, making people feel "forced to subscribe" because housing has become some of the most limited and simultaneously punitive content in the game.

[Tyrn]

you are (generously) refunded 80% of your gil and given (less generously) 35 days to reclaim some potentially very valuable furniture, and some items can be lost in the process.

The actual valuable furniture can't be recovered and you're likely to lose more gil in destroyed furniture than the house cost you to begin with, I'd be less upset with the very short time limit if we got all our furniture back.