Quote Originally Posted by Alien_Gamer View Post
There are several issues with this kind of thinking though...
1: The cost would be very low, and again, something that could be covered through literally anything marked under the currency tab, so literally if all someone wants to do is RP and Golden Saucer, they could easily manage to keep their house. As stated several times, it should be realistically, a negligible amount, something that shouldn't take more than two hours of play time to get the currency of your choice for (give or take depending on the currency).I said flippers were one concern, but honestly, this is mostly towards people that own houses, but do not at all use them. The people that need to be emailed and reminded to even step foot in their house at all just to keep it. If they actually have to put in some, even small, amount of effort to keep that house, would they still even have it? Or would the cost to keep it eventually become too much, since chances are, if you're getting auto-demo warnings, you're not likely playing all that much to begin with. Also keep in mind, for those having a hard time getting the gil to cover it, friends could easily help with the payment/that is why a donation box could be put in, for the people that are feeling exceptionally generous with their gil/other unused currencies.

2: It makes it easier to keep in terms of long term planning. If you save up and pay upkeep ahead of time, it pays off. A friend could give you a boost as a holiday gift or something too. It making it hard to keep a house over all, is part of the appeal, as again, it makes it so people more or less just keeping houses as unused trophies might not want to hold onto their house as badly once it starts to become a hassle to fund every month, especially if they are an inactive player.

3: Auto-Demo exists, but it's not that great of a system, since once someone gets the email warning, they just log in, run inside the house, and the timer starts over. If anything, they shouldn't even get an email about it. Maybe an in game letter, on the character that owns the house, that is it.

4: You are very right here, but honestly, so long as housing is such a finite resource, it should be one that takes some effort to keep, even if the effort is just 1 hour of time a month to get some sort of currency of your choice to pay the upkeep. idealistically, I don't think that is too much to ask. Can you honestly say that it is perfectly cool for someone to just sit on a house as a status symbol/trophy, literally just having it so say "F-you, got mine"? So many people complain about people owning more than one house across their characters, but never once bat an eye at the people that own houses and do literally nothing with them aside from say "I got a house and someone else didn't". It's just one of many, many problems that need addressed, if they are never going to address the real issue, which is that housing should not be a status symbol, and it shouldn't be such a finite resource.