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

[Naunet]

I'm on break right now, but I still found five minutes tonight to check my Gold Saucer lottery ticket before I started to catch up on my DVR.

Breaks do not always mean remaining subscribed. Why stay subscribed if you don't intend to log in for a certain period of time? That's a waste of money.

[Dyvid]

Breaks do not always mean remaining subscribed. Why stay subscribed if you don't intend to log in for a certain period of time? That's a waste of money.

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.

[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.

[Ayerinn]

Breaks do not always mean remaining subscribed. Why stay subscribed if you don't intend to log in for a certain period of time? That's a waste of money.

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?

[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.

[Naunet]

Something else that really bothers me about the decay timer...

I feel like SE has taken hostage our ability to vote with our wallets on any other decision. Unsubscribing in a P2P MMO is one of the most powerful messages one can send - aside from posts on the forums - when something is displeasing a consumer. But now players won't be able to do so or risk losing a potentially completely unrelated investment. :/

[Nymeria2x]

snip
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First off sharing a house does squat since they made it strictly up to the owner to stop it from being demolished. Secondly, and this is the big kicker that is pissing most people off, just paying the sub won't stop demolition. When I was deployed on a ship I couldn't exactly bring my gaming desktop with me for 6 months and I was single so I didn't have anyone to pop in and log in for me, not to mention the fact I have an authenticator so that wouldn't be an option anyways. Remember SE doesn't sell physical authenticators and I'm not leaving my phone in an empty apartment for 6+ months. If we could just pay our subs and not have to worry about a time limit that wouldn't be as bad, still a money grab from hell that no other MMO has ever done to their player base, but would still be manageable. The first houses will be freeing up around christmas and guess what there will still be a vast housing shortage across all servers because they only made enough houses for about 1-2% of the player population. A little over 1k houses per server is like putting a drop in an empty pond and expecting it be full. This is a quick grab at money and placating to everyone screaming. Its not going to fix the problem at all but everyone who called for this is so proud of themselves and think they did so well until this goes sideways and people start getting screwed. For a game that advertises housing for its players not only have they failed miserably at delivering but now they're taking houses away unless you pay them and have time to get on. Imagine if this wasn't housing. Imagine if instead it was gear or levels. You'd be pretty pissed if you weren't able to log in and after 45days you started loosing hard earned levels or gear. Well housing is pretty dang hardwork to save up for and maintain. I spend time crafting and gardening just so that I can have my own little spot. If I can't make it to my computer after just a month and half and I lose all my hardwork because of something purely out of my control then I'm not going to pay for a sub to a game that screwed me and I'm gonna warn everyone else I know who plays. Honestly you'd be shocked how many service member play MMOs. There's a lot of us and none are going to put up with getting screwed over for doing their job.

[KaitlanKela]

Okay, so I'm kinda new. I don't have a personal house nor do I have any desire to buy one in any foreseeable future. I'm not really invested in this one way or another. So, my opinion is very much 'your mileage may vary'.

That said, the key issue is that housing is a limited resource. Whether or not is should be or has to be is a different issue, but this is the hand we've been dealt by SE. Given this, it needs to be treated fundamentally differently from character data, gil, and inventory items, because these are 'unlimited' resources as there will always we ways to earn them ad infinitum. If you quit playing, retaining your character, gil and inventory takes nothing away from any other player. Retaining your house, on the other hand, does take something away from the community.

I don't think time away from the game is a good measure of activity due to various real life issues that come up, so on that point I agree. I think subscription is, and I think that's been mentioned. If you own a personal house that you've spent a lot of time on, is it worth it to you to pay $12.99 a month to keep it stored, even if you're away from the game for whatever reason. If so, you have access to the game's limited resource because you're paying into the game. If not, then you're consuming it, keeping other people who are paying into the community from having it. Also, an inactive subscription cannot be blamed on hardware issues or deployment, because these things do not inhibit your ability to pay, only to play. This system also has the added bonus of being able to liquidate your house for all the gil it's worth and store the items in your inventory in advance, so you don't really 'lose' anything and should you come back you can purchase a new house through the system same as everyone else.

In this system, the player gets to decide. Is my house and its contents worth the monthly subscription fee for my time away? If so, I pay the sub until I come back and make it happen. If I'd rather have the real money, that's reasonable too, and I cut my in-game losses (or mitigate them as best as I can). But the important thing is that it becomes the player's choice, not SE's. Any people still complaining afterwards are basically wanting to have their cake and eat it too, which is unfeasible economically due to the scarcity of the item.