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

[Hanmerreborn]

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?

Using your same analogy.

If you rent a movie, do you just let it sit there and never watch it until you return it?

Because that's what having a subscription and not entering your house is.

[Ayerinn]

Using your same analogy.

If you rent a movie, do you just let it sit there and never watch it until you return it?

Because that's what having a subscription and not entering your house is.

Sometimes that actually happens with movies I actually spend 90% of the time in my yard - in fact, I have to purposely remember to enter my alts house now as I only use it for the garden...

[Titor]

Using your same analogy.

If you rent a movie, do you just let it sit there and never watch it until you return it?

Because that's what having a subscription and not entering your house is.

Except upon buying the house it was never mentioned that a sub was necessary. There was never 'rent' either via gil or $$$ to keep the house, and it was never noted upon purchase.

That aside, it would be like buying a really popular movie instead of renting one, it is sold out everywhere but you own it. You watched it once, but might watch it again sometime in the future. Should the movie police kick down your door and take the movie from you on the grounds that "Someone will enjoy and watch this movie more than you".

[KaLenna]

I can only agree with the OP and others who feel that this is a SE money-spinner even though they are already making a shed-load from subs in any case.

To others who feel this is legit let me ask you this: Would you buy a game that deleted your save file after 45 days? Because that's what this does. We risk losing months of game progress if we decide not to play for a while. Even if you have completed all quests and have lv60 across the board, you are made to cough-up, even if there is nothing new for you to do.

While there may be inactive players in housing THEY are not denying you content. Only game developers can deny you content. Personally I think SE should fork out for some extra storage to accommodate everyone and stop trying to artificially increase demand by limiting the supply.

[Callback]

The system is fine in terms of timing, but they need a furniture reclaim feature.

Add a tab of "reclaimed furniture" to the furnishings menu. Let players respawn furniture from lost houses this way. Now there's nothing to complain about. If you lose your plot, you can get a new one later and redecorate with all your same stuff.

[Niwashi]

The system is fine in terms of timing, but they need a furniture reclaim feature.

Add a tab of "reclaimed furniture" to the furnishings menu. Let players respawn furniture from lost houses this way. Now there's nothing to complain about. If you lose your plot, you can get a new one later and redecorate with all your same stuff.

The thing is that they already have the foundation for that. They just implemented it horribly. If your house is foreclosed on (or you're dropped from an FC while you have a personal room), then at least some of your items get stored with the resident caretaker, where you have another month to pick them up before they're permanently deleted. SE would only have needed two changes to make this a reasonable system:

(1) They need to preserve all items, getting rid of this ridiculous rule about some items becoming irretrievable.
And (2) they need to make that caretaker storage permanent, just like our characters themselves.

With those two changes, then even if your house was lost to this reclamation process, when you get back you could try and get another house to replace it. Lack of availability would still be an issue, so it might take a while, but a player who managed to get another plot could be back to where they left off, without having to start over from scratch.

Once the plot has been reclaimed for use by other players, caretaker storage isn't a limited asset that needs another time limit. That's no different than if they decided to start deleting people's inventory or retainer storage whenever they didn't play for a while. It would guarantee that anyone who leaves for a bit stays gone permanently, as they wouldn't have much to come back to.

[Tagus]

You know... it's a subscription based game, and 45 days is a pretty long time. I hate to say it, and it's totally understandable that nobody would ever want to have something taken away from them, but if you really actually cared that much about your video game house, you'd probably play the game at least 1 time in 6 weeks. God knows I play every day trying to make enough money to buy one. If you don't feel compelled to long in, maybe you won the game!

And honestly, if it's because you can't afford a sub fee for that long, you've probably got bigger problems in life than losing your ffxiv house. That probably sounds insensitive, and I'm sorry. I don't really mean for it to sound cruel. But think about it. It's probably a little bit true?

This crap is just a game, man. If you come back and you have the means to make the money to buy a house, you're doing fine.

[Nicobo]

Except upon buying the house it was never mentioned that a sub was necessary....

This is so true! When I purchased the house, I was told by YoishiP (quoted below) that this game would not have a system where your house would break down if you didn’t log in after a while in order to have you continue your subscription.
And eventually they implemented a system where your house would break down even you have continued your subscrption ^^;

//quote
Q: Will there be any maintenance fees or other costs for housing, besides the cost of the land and house?

A: In older MMOs, such as Ultima Online, there was a house maintenance fee you had to pay weekly, but in FFXIV: ARR we decided against this system. Similarly, these older MMOs also had a system where your house would break down if you didn’t log in after a while in order to have you continue your subscription, but this is a thing of the past and we won't have any system like that.
//endquote

[BroodingFicus]

I think if housing was readily available to everyone, all the time without fail, repossession would not be so large an issue. Thing is (at least for the legacy and larger servers) having the 'means' to buy a house means absolutely nothing. There are no lots and so far nothing I have heard suggest there will ever be enough to meet demands. So even if Square gave you all your gil and returned all furniture, you still wouldn't be able to buy a new one. Personally I feel it should have gone like this:

1. The amount of days should have been in even subscription amounts. Ex 30, 60, 90. Minimum of 60. Personally I would have liked to see it /based/ on being subscribed to begin with if they insist on taking it back (for the record I think the whole system is out of order but *shrug*). Something along the lines of: After 60 days without a paid subscription, your house will be repossessed.
2. Those you share your house with should count in stopping the clock. If only to help people who can pay subs but are out due to medical reasons or military deployment etc since they chose to not make it subscription based in the first place.
3. Repossession should /definitely/ give you back everything. Funds. Furniture. It should also keep it stored indefinitely.

As Nicoba said, part of the saltiness in this whole mess is because Square came out, got on a box and said 'WELCOME TO THE FUTURE! There shall be no such outdated systems here!' and then implemented one to fix a mistake. A mistake they actually made worse on several occasions. Including the actual 'implementation' of personal housing itself. I love the game and obviously there are limitations to what the server can handle but punishing the players, even if they are willing to pay you for the privilege of keeping their house, seems out of sorts to me both as a matter of trust and from a business stand point.

[Ayerinn]

*SNIP* for space
I love the game and obviously there are limitations to what the server can handle but punishing the players, even if they are willing to pay you for the privilege of keeping their house, seems out of sorts to me both as a matter of trust and from a business stand point.

After reading comments / thinking about this for weeks - I'm in agreement now with some people that the entire point of the reclaim system is to:

1) "Hey look - we are doing something about the housing issues!"
2) Abuse the lack of housing as a means of subscriber boosts / retention

Unfortunately, especially with the timing /scope of the free login period, I believe 2 is more important to SE then making the reclaim system make any sense or to be fair.