My absence and return - thoughts on demolished houses

[Naunet]

Best advice: Say nothing and take your business elsewhere. Instead of having multiple boots to just one throat. Saves an argument with half the forums.

If one says nothing, then a company never finds out what is causing people to leave. Feedback about WHY you're leaving is critical in improving a product.

[Dark-Saviour]

Okay... so you were aware of it already but still said screw it. But came back to tell S-E that you didn't care but you actually do. Is this like...Schrodinger's House or something?

They saw a system designed to force them to sub being implemented, said, "If I can't take breaks without losing all my crap then I'm done with this game." and came back to tell SE that losing everything majorly destroys any incentive to ever sub again.

I can't say you'll get a lot of sympathy here from many of us. There's two major housing issues as it is right now.

The only two major issues are SE's design and SE's architecture. Nothing community-wise needs to be done if those problems are addressed properly.

Before anyone says similar to me, I know the systems S-E put into the housing is absolute garbage and flawed, but it's the fact he KNEW he had a chance to save it and did nothing about it. Then says he's "taking his business elsewhere"

When your means of 'saving' it is paying a sub during a period you will either not be playing or simply can't afford to pay it, I won't fault a person for not playing along.

[Geryth]

Okay... so you were aware of it already but still said screw it. But came back to tell S-E that you didn't care but you actually do. Is this like...Schrodinger's House or something?

I can't say you'll get a lot of sympathy here from many of us. There's two major housing issues as it is right now and someone who had the chance to come back and save it, but didn't, and is now complaining about it gets no sympathy from me at least. We're dealing with S-E's backwards housing issue that is broken and allows people to use their alts to buy multiple houses and we're also dealing with a real shortage because of said S-E issues and just greedy house hoarders in general.

People like myself who are actively subbed and who have FCs that are looking for houses tend to be a bit more on the totem pole than someone who takes a free 7 day trial only to come back and QQ about it. I agree the 45 day demolish system is a flawed system built on another flawed system, but you should probably take a few steps back and realize how ridiculous you sound with that very quote.

1.0 player here who went a long while without housing digs. Your "occasional" subscription means nothing to S-E, much less your reasoning for letting it go in the first place when you knew you could of done something about it. That is, if you actually gave a damn in the first place.

I was aware of how the system worked, and let my house get demolished, because I won't financially support their terrible housing model. When I did I say I didn't care? Of course I care. I loved this game. I loved my house. I've spent hours on this thread reading and writing replies. I absolutely care. But I want to spend my money on design decisions that are in the best interest of players. Their design decision was either a woefully awful technical hurdle they weren't willing to jump over, or they literally held houses hostage to subscriptions to try to retain players. Just bad. So bad that I wouldn't give them my money, despite how much I really wanted to. And still want to, really. But the punch of deleting my stuff makes that decision a hard one to make.

I knew coming in I'm in the minority on these forums. In general this community is way too forgiving of the developers. I have no qualms challenging people. But I know I'm a voice now for thousands of inactive subs who are never coming back, who are unable to participate in this thread.

[Geryth]

I can't believe how many people didn't read the entirety of the OP before writing a kneejerk reaction. 90% of the comments and complaints in this thread were addressed in the very first post, for anyone that cared to read it.

At least some people understand. I've tried to correct people too many times already, I'm just done responding to people who didn't bother to read or understand the original post, much less the 9 pages in between.

[Keridwyn]

I appreciate what they tried to do with housing, to foster communities. Honestly, I think that they should have kept wards just for FCs and just put in the auto demo feature on FCs from the beginning. For personal housing I would have preferred they go instanced. Can you imagine the types of houses we could have then? The types of locations? I'd trade the community feel for being able to live in a remodeled floating Allagan habitat. A bubble of air and shards of land tethered hundreds of feet in the air and surrounded by whatever weather I chose.

Or what about living underwater in the Ruby Sea?

Dwelling in a cute chalet in Coerthas?

A beautiful Oasis surrounded by the corrupted aetherspires of the Burning Wall?

A private little realm all our own to customize as we wish would have been wonderful but it's a path that cannot be chosen now unfortunately.

[Naunet]

Can you imagine the types of houses we could have then? The types of locations? I'd trade the community feel for being able to live in a remodeled floating Allagan habitat.

Gosh yes. They could do it a la Rift's dimensions, where you can unlock different locations to build on. That and instanced housing allows for dramatically increased decor limits (think literally thousands) and more complex placement (all three axes, rotation, resizing).

Plus, the Community feature WildStar has been testing on the PTR proves you can have your cake and eat it too.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

I appreciate what they tried to do with housing, to foster communities. Honestly, I think that they should have kept wards just for FCs and just put in the auto demo feature on FCs from the beginning. For personal housing I would have preferred they go instanced.

The system is that flawed that it wouldn't have made any difference making wards FC only. Players would just pay a couple of ppl to make an FC and then kick them out. Which is what happens already.

[Moonlite]

But consider this. Your plot got vacant and somebody else likely picked it up. Someone that stayed actively subbed that might of left if they didn't have access to housing. If you had already left before the patch, they lost you somewhere else, therefor your sub is not guaranteed either way. That decision was likely to secure their active subs.

Aren't you missing the main point poor design, equaled them not returning? If demolish was to retain subs again poor design is costing the company. Anyway we look at from your post and even most consensus on the forums. Poor design and refusal to admit to the mistake has led to lost subs, player misery and/or resentment like the op.

The only two major issues are SE's design and SE's architecture. Nothing community-wise needs to be done if those problems are addressed properly.

I love someone who gets the issue. The question is why SE hasn't taken a chance to reset it. 4.x will be doubling down on the issue. They will never have enough hardware with the current design.

A private little realm all our own to customize as we wish would have been wonderful but it's a path that cannot be chosen now unfortunately.

The chance to have unique weather set just to your area just like you would orchestration. The things instanced player areas can provide currently outweighs community. I would love to see the average of players per housing area at any given time. I am betting it is not enough to foster a community.

[Galgarion]

House deletion is a cash grab. This is a very profitable game, but its owners are determined to maximize income received vs. income spent. It's such an obvious cash grab that it bewilders me that people defend it so vociferously. I quit playing Rift seriously three years ago and have gone long months without logging in, but whenever I feel like stopping by, my dimension is still there just as I left it. Same for Wildstar. Same for Old Republic. If these free to play games have got this licked, then what's Squeenix's excuse? Oh, well, see, they just want to you to keep subscribing. Just your standard bit of Asian MMO hostage taking, nothing to see here. Read this prediction: You will see Square sell an option in their cash shop for permanent housing to stay permanent. It's gonna be pricey, and it's gonna happen.

[Rokke]

While I do appreciate them for trying to build little neighborhoods, unless you roleplay, need to dye your choco, or cheaply port to a mb/retainer bell, theres no real reason to be in the housing wards. Even here on Balmung, I don’t really see to many people actually out and about.

I had hoped that with the new expansion they would consider starting to roll out some instanced housing, but instead they went and doubled down on the existing crap system. Another limited neighborhood? Neat. Can’t wait to see what the Kugane houses will go for secondhand lol

As for the timer - I don't mind the timer's existence (we really need it on this server), though I wish it were a full 2 months at least.