Lost House - Question

[ZephyrMenodora]

Some may view 45 days as generous but it really is not a long time at all. It's a bit unheard of to me for an MMO to take things from you after that short a time frame and other games I have played just have your house sit there indefinitely (EQ2, Aion if you have a free house.). Even when games had taken things from people, it was under strict circumstances like characters who have not logged in for a year and were also under level 6.

I wasn't following FFXIV news and system updates that closely because to be honest, I had more important and more stressful things going on than FFXIV patch notes when I couldn't subscribe. But to be honest people shouldn't even need a "good" reason to take a break - it should be their right to do so and know they will come back with their belongings (and character names) intact. The reward for SquareEnix is their return to the game when they start to miss it.

This is the first time in 17 years of MMOs that I lost something in a game for being away for a few months. When I received the email around Christmas, I figured I could at least get my house items back and some of the Gil when I had money to spend on games again. When I learned that was gone too, I was very tempted to petition to refund my subscription and Heavensward purchase.

I understand that the housing system in this game is not well thought out and they want to keep housing as a perk for the most active players only. Well, most presently active - I'm sure that there were newer people who spent less money on the game than I have who also wanted houses. I can accept losing my house but they should mail back your Gil and house items. I see no reason why items and Gil couldn't sit in your mailbox until you can return. I can't honestly believe that SquareEnix can't afford the bandwidth for this when players can already craft limitless number of items to remain in the persistent world.

I'll never forget this experience and it will forever be a black mark on this game for me. I'll never forget that they took pretty much 90% of all the Gil I ever made while simultaneously sending me marketing emails to give them real-life money again.

As for the community - I don't blame people, for wanting a house. I want a house again. I blame SE for coming up with the system it did that created community in-fighting for unnecessarily scarce housing.

[Gyson]

Some may view 45 days as generous but it really is not a long time at all. It's a bit unheard of to me for an MMO to take things from you after that short a time frame and other games I have played just have your house sit there indefinitely (EQ2, Aion if you have a free house.). Even when games had taken things from people, it was under strict circumstances like characters who have not logged in for a year and were also under level 6.

SE used to delete FFXI characters if the owner went 90 days without paying a subscription. Think about that.. the amount of effort that goes into developing a character can be pretty significant. I know.. I lost several that way.

I wasn't following FFXIV news and system updates that closely because to be honest, I had more important and more stressful things going on than FFXIV patch notes when I couldn't subscribe. But to be honest people shouldn't even need a "good" reason to take a break - it should be their right to do so and know they will come back with their belongings (and character names) intact. The reward for SquareEnix is their return to the game when they start to miss it.

While it makes sense from a retention standpoint to keep non-subscriber character data intact, in reality developers are under no obligation to do so once you stop subscribing to their service. And if you are paying an active subscription, you just need to make sure you log in once every 45 days to keep your virtual home (as that's a required part of the housing mechanics now).

..but I don't see how anyone can help but feel bad when someone who just lost their home and items in-game is thanking us when it's our fault in the first place.

If you're implying the community should feel guilty about this, I'll be totally honest: I don't. Not even a little, and that's because the developers are grown ups who can make their own decision. If they choose to respond to a complaint from the community.. that's on them. Heaven knows they cherry pick which complaints to respond to.. they've given us everything from flying turtles mounts (who complained about turtles not being able to fly?), yet not a day goes by where players aren't complaining about inventory space issues - funny how that goes nowhere, but thank goodness for those apparently highly-requested flying turtles SE insists the players wanted..!

Point is, SE's mind was made up on this and what the community wants or doesn't want impacts very little. Housing reclamation was less about doing players a favor and more about increasing the amount of subscription fees going into SE's pocket. On "reclamation day" the properties which opened up on my server vanished within 60 seconds. Most people who want a home still don't have one.

I'll never forget this experience and it will forever be a black mark on this game for me. I'll never forget that they took pretty much 90% of all the Gil I ever made while simultaneously sending me marketing emails to give them real-life money again.

I can certainly understand the frustration there. But at least they did send you multiple notifications via email regarding your housing, despite the fact that you were no longer paying them any money.

It can be worse - for example, long ago I used to play Funcom's "Anarchy Online", and besides my main character and high level alts, I had a lot of low level characters that I used as storage mules for excess equipment/items. I took a lengthy break from the game but continued to pay my subscription fee the entire time - I never let it lapse. When I returned I found all my low level characters had been deleted as part of a name-reclamation inactivity purge (congrats to whomever was looking to free up much desired names like "ArmorAndWeaponStorage"). These were characters filled with items I invested a lot of time in acquiring - data I was paying money to Funcom every month to keep safe.. all gone.

When I complained about it and asked for that data to be restored, I was denied and told that an announcement/warning had been present on the game's launcher for a month. I tried to explain that people don't tend to fire up the launchers for games they're taking a break from, but Funcom's support just didn't see the logic in that. They never even felt the need to send out a warning via email before deleting the characters, although they had no problems with frequently spamming my mailbox with advertisements to try other Funcom products. They got my money and they still screwed me.

And that's why I don't touch Funcom's games anymore. Now, you might feel the same way here, but at least SE made efforts to notify you - and you weren't even paying them to keep you in the loop. So, yeah, as black a mark this might seem for you, that mark has room to be a whole lot blacker.

[Neira]

SE used to delete FFXI characters if the owner went 90 days without paying a subscription.

You say used to. As in they stopped doing it? I'm pretty sure they did, since I spent years away without losing my character before. So, a MMO released in 2003(13 years ago), stopped deleting characters who were inactive... when? A decade ago? Longer? Why is that used as an argument as if it's still a valid practice for modern day MMOs? It's about the same as people saying how great our housing is compared to Ultima Online; the extra irony about that one is in my signature.

[Gyson]

You say used to. As in they stopped doing it? I'm pretty sure they did, since I spent years away without losing my character before. So, a MMO released in 2003(13 years ago), stopped deleting characters who were inactive... when? A decade ago? Longer? Why is that used as an argument as if it's still a valid practice for modern day MMOs? It's about the same as people saying how great our housing is compared to Ultima Online; the extra irony about that one is in my signature.

I think SE stopped regularly deleting inactive FFXI accounts roughly 8 years ago (although past that date they still made no guarantees your data would be kept intact beyond 90 days).

Even to this day many MMOs will delete data (namely names - consider how crazy players can be about retaining those) of inactive users to free them up for active players. Blizzard just finished a purge in WoW towards the end of 2015. So, yes, it's still a very valid practice.

I get what you are saying, it could certainly be a lot worse. However, that doesn't make this right or fair.

I don't think "right" or "fair" are the proper terms to use here. That would be like me saying that I don't think it's right or fair that (insert undesirable FFXIV mechanic here) exists. If they didn't call it housing reclamation, they could have simply had a very reasonable system where characters were required to pay property taxes on their land every 45 RL days (that's about every 2 1/2 years in Eorzea time) - that would still require you to log in every 45 days to keep your house. We could call it it "inconvenient" or "annoying", but it's no less "right" or "fair" than anything from DPS-checks to dungeon penalty lock-out timers.

There are plenty of things in FFXIV that are not "right" or "fair" - like not being able to send mail or share a house with your alternate characters, or the fact that a major feature like housing is not available to every subscriber that wants one. I don't count the 45 day activity requirements as part of that, though. Just my opinion.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I think SE stopped regularly deleting inactive FFXI accounts roughly 8 years ago (although past that date they still made no guarantees your data would be kept intact beyond 90 days).

Even to this day many MMOs will delete data (namely names - consider how crazy players can be about retaining those) of inactive users to free them up for active players. Blizzard just finished a purge in WoW towards the end of 2015. So, yes, it's still a very valid practice.

I don't think "right" or "fair" are the proper terms to use here. That would be like me saying that I don't think it's right or fair that (insert undesirable FFXIV mechanic here) exists. If they didn't call it housing reclamation, they could have simply had a very reasonable system where characters were required to pay property taxes on their land every 45 RL days (that's about every 2 1/2 years in Eorzea time) - that would still require you to log in every 45 days to keep your house. We could call it it "inconvenient" or "annoying", but it's no less "right" or "fair" than anything from DPS-checks to dungeon penalty lock-out timers.

There are plenty of things in FFXIV that are not "right" or "fair" - like not being able to send mail or share a house with your alternate characters, or the fact that a major feature like housing is not available to every subscriber that wants one. I don't count the 45 day activity requirements as part of that, though. Just my opinion.

I don't think using WOW as an example is really that strong, so let's provide more information about this example why don't we. I don't play WOW, but Googled World of Warcraft Name Purge and saw a post from Blizzard, in 2015, warning people who had not logged in since 2010. That is not a typo. That is not "a couple months earlier in 2015." It's literally after nearly 5 years of inactivity.

Also you don't want to use words like "right" or "fair" while simultaneously putting words into others' mouths like "obligation." It's not about "obligation" or requirement, it's about doing right by your customer base so they remain customers. And while it's great that they sent me an email warning me about the imminent removal of my house, let's not do cartwheels with applause here - the message was actually quite clear - "you better pay a subscription, and pay a subscription every other month, or we'll be taking something from you."

This is far different than WOW's "hey you haven't logged in for 5 years...we are going to assume you moved on and release your old names."

[Gyson]

I don't think using WOW as an example is really that strong, so let's provide more information about this example why don't we. I don't play WOW, but Googled World of Warcraft Name Purge and saw a post from Blizzard, in 2015, warning people who had not logged in since 2010. That is not a typo. That is not "a couple months earlier in 2015." It's literally after nearly 5 years of inactivity.

Also you don't want to use words like "right" or "fair" while simultaneously putting words into others' mouths like "obligation." It's not about "obligation" or requirement, it's about doing right by your customer base so they remain customers. And while it's great that they sent me an email warning me about the imminent removal of my house, let's not do cartwheels with applause here - the message was actually quite clear - "you better pay a subscription, and pay a subscription every other month, or we'll be taking something from you."

This is far different than WOW's "hey you haven't logged in for 5 years...we are going to assume you moved on and release your old names."

Is it? The very first thing I said in this thread was "The timer is always going to be too short for someone - someone will always show up just after their property is reclaimed.", and that applies here. 45 days, 5 years.. to the player who decided to return to the game the result is the same - something of theirs is gone, something they felt should have remained safe despite not paying the company a dime in the interim to keep it so, and they're going to be upset and less excited about the prospect of returning to said game.

I also already said "While it makes sense from a retention standpoint to keep non-subscriber character data intact, in reality developers are under no obligation to do so once you stop subscribing to their service.", meaning I get where you're coming from about keeping a product appealing to potential returning customers. However, your statement was "..But to be honest people shouldn't even need a "good" reason to take a break - it should be their right to do so and know they will come back with their belongings (and character names) intact..", and I disagree with that. It's certainly your right to take a break, and you can hope your data will be kept intact while you're gone, but developers are not obligated to do so once you decide to stop paying them. If it was a system that required paying property taxes in-game every 45 days instead, would you be looking at it any differently? Either way you'd still be required to log in every 45 days.

For the record, "Landmark" (aka "Everquest Next Landmark") required upkeep every month or your plot would be deleted - and getting a desirable plot in that game could be pretty hard. And that's a game that started within the past two years. It didn't start with that feature, but it was added after they realized a) space was limited and b) having inactive neighbors made the game less fun for active players.

Look, I'm with you on the 35 day time limit on retaining your goods at the Resident Caretaker. It stinks that it's not much, much longer than that. Then again, this is the company that can't spare any more storage space for the inventories of paying subscribers, so I'm not sure what we can honestly expect here. But let's be realistic about this - rough period of time or not, it would have taken you three minutes of your time to log in and save your property during the "Free Login" event. You didn't/couldn't because a) you weren't aware of the event (let's call that Square's bad, as they should probably be sending out emails about those) and b) your connection relies on (for whatever reason) WTFast - a technical issue that exists on your end, one I hope you have since resolved rather than just relying on paying for third-party software as a fix, and one that would have prevented you from logging in even if Square had mailed you an advertisement regarding the "Free Login" event. So, there's plenty of blame to go around here if you're being honest about it.

[MomomiMomi]

Then again, this is the company that can't won't spare any more storage space for the inventories of paying subscribers, so I'm not sure what we can honestly expect here.

Fixed that for you.

For the record, "Landmark" (aka "Everquest Next Landmark") required upkeep every month or your plot would be deleted - and getting a desirable plot in that game could be pretty hard. And that's a game that started within the past two years. It didn't start with that feature, but it was added after they realized a) space was limited and b) having inactive neighbors made the game less fun for active players.

Required; past tense. From what I just read about that game, you only need to log in to keep it, and it gives you up to 90 days. This is far more reasonable than 45.

[Solarra]

SE used to delete FFXI characters if the owner went 90 days without paying a subscription...
...at least SE made efforts to notify you - and you weren't even paying them to keep you in the loop. So, yeah, as black a mark this might seem for you, that mark has room to be a whole lot blacker.

I get what you are saying, it could certainly be a lot worse. However, that doesn't make this right or fair.

It's great to see other players coming forward to offer help but it is also pretty sad they have to.