PSA/ALERT: Houses are getting demolished when they shouldn't. SE needs to see this!

[MomomiMomi]

I'm still firmly skeptical of this whole thing. I've yet to see any solid evidence; a screenshot of a GM admitting it was on their end or a mod post stating they are aware of the issue, etc.

Frankly, the scattered reports of people claiming this happened to them amount to little more than "Yeah, me too!" and I'm afraid that just doesn't carry much weight with me. Mostly because over the years I've seen a lot of people claim "I lost my house for no reason!" when, come to find out, they just didn't understand the complicated inner workings of the housing system. It almost always boils down to some combination of them not keeping correct track of the days, them thinking that teleporting to the yard was sufficient to reset the timer, or them not receiving the demo notice email/it going to the spam folder (an actual, well documented bug that I wish SE would devote some resources to correcting.)

I feel that, if this really was all started by some troll(s), he/she/they are taking advantage of the confusion of these unfortunate players who, instead of posting that they lost their house and don't understand why, they are seeing reports of this supposed bug and are latching on to it, feeding into the general state of panic.

While I could be wrong, something I freely admit with the limited information we have so far received, I'm going to remain skeptical until either we get an official response or the reports are too widespread to be mere coincidence/confusion. Until then, I plan to keep an eye on the issue, but have no intention of losing sleep over it.

This is still my stance as well.

Far too many people either don't understand the housing system, or are really bad at keeping track of time.

Most of the more credible reports have either not stated how recently they used their house, or that they last used it "3 weeks ago." Knowing how bad people are about keeping track of time, I don't think it's that much of a stretch to wonder if 3 weeks was actually far longer.


THAT SAID!

I would love it if, even if this is just people who were late to not letting their house demolish, they would actually leave feedback that the timer is far too short. 45 days is, honestly, absurd.

[Rangar]

Maybe SE will compensate those that lose their housing with cardboard boxes in Ishgard

[RayneLittlewinkle]

Not sure why anyone would think someone would be faking or trolling about losing a home. In this Reddit thread SE_Kahuna is asking for people to post on the official forums AND can even DM them any proof/ticket numbers etc etc. https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ason/?sort=new So please. If this has happened to you. Do that as well to see if your case can get forwarded to the right people.

[JunseiKei]

This is still my stance as well.

Far too many people either don't understand the housing system, or are really bad at keeping track of time.

Most of the more credible reports have either not stated how recently they used their house, or that they last used it "3 weeks ago." Knowing how bad people are about keeping track of time, I don't think it's that much of a stretch to wonder if 3 weeks was actually far longer.


THAT SAID!

I would love it if, even if this is just people who were late to not letting their house demolish, they would actually leave feedback that the timer is far too short. 45 days is, honestly, absurd.

Pretty much my stance as well. My ALT's house and had purposely let a month's sub lapse, entering the house on the last day of activity just to see if I'd get the e-mail (I wanted to make sure it'd not end up in spam). I've kept at least 1 house since Shiva 'til now, entering into the house itself every week for the last 3-4 years. Friends have done similar. If this bug is real, it's exceedingly rare, or so it seems; been in tons of housing/community linkshells over the course of time. No one has said a thing that didn't boil down to you didn't check your e-mail/has to be owner/actually go inside.

I wouldn't say 45 days is too short, however. It's a month and a half to enter your house once. If you're having that hard of a time remembering to enter, I doubt making that timer longer will help. Over the course of the game, we've gotten annoying pop-ups added into the game (recommendations, playguide and now achievements). Make them useful and add a pop-up demolish notification in game for houses with time left. None of this e-mail-that-could-end-up-not-being-sent-or-sent-to-spam. Not a notification hidden on the estates tab under timer that only appears when it's under 10 days.

[Canadane]

Not sure why anyone would think someone would be faking or trolling about losing a home. In this Reddit thread SE_Kahuna is asking for people to post on the official forums AND can even DM them any proof/ticket numbers etc etc. https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...ason/?sort=new So please. If this has happened to you. Do that as well to see if your case can get forwarded to the right people.

Well I for one wouldn't stoop as low as using reddit to submit a bug report.
But I'm also pretty on the fence about this. I haven't really seen hard evidence that it's actually happening.
Why would someone troll about this? Well look at the panic it's caused. I will ween people ingame ditch instances to go babysit their house. It's madness!

[Jijifli]

Well I for one wouldn't stoop as low as using reddit to submit a bug report.
But I'm also pretty on the fence about this. I haven't really seen hard evidence that it's actually happening.
Why would someone troll about this? Well look at the panic it's caused. I will ween people ingame ditch instances to go babysit their house. It's madness!

While I don't have picture proof of this, a friend of mine said his static's MT on Gilg lost the house he got a week ago. Even said he noticed something werid about tenant permissions because they were reset before the incident.

I don't have actual in game evidence, so about as much help as the rest, but if he got it a week ago then clearly it hasn't been 45 days.

[Louvain]

I would love it if, even if this is just people who were late to not letting their house demolish, they would actually leave feedback that the timer is far too short. 45 days is, honestly, absurd.

^^^this. Not to get too off topic but it is very difficult to take a break from the game when you barely have over a month of time before you have to worry about losing your stuff. While I firmly believe the demo timer is still required in the current housing setup, it is quite punishing.

[Warghoul570]

What further makes it questionable is the fact takes it’s been claimed SE knows about it yet we haven’t seen an official statement. Plus all they would really need to do to stop this is to shut off the timer

[KisaiTenshi]

^^^this. Not to get too off topic but it is very difficult to take a break from the game when you barely have over a month of time before you have to worry about losing your stuff. While I firmly believe the demo timer is still required in the current housing setup, it is quite punishing.

The auto-demo timer really should be a 30+30+30 thing, eg increasing steps of warnings, so that both the player and players who go to that estate know it's heading into an auto-demolish state.

Where the first 30 days, there's no notifications, during the second 30 days, an email is sent out about inactivity, the retainers/helpers will be despawned, and players who enter the house during the second 30 days will see cobwebs and dust, and the guestbook will state "Looks like the owner hasn't been around for a month", and if it's a FC house, other FC members will see it in their timers.

On the final 30 days, one more email is sent to the owner, the exterior of the house will switch to "haunted", the interior walls and flooring will switch to a grey haze of "haunted house mode" where walking through it will leave footprints in the dust, the orchestration roll will skip or playback through a warp filter, stairs will creak, and rats spawn during the day, and ghosts of the owner/retainers appear during the night (and the lights will be at the lowest setting at night.) No EXP or money for killing them, they're just there for haunted ambiance.

If the owner comes back, they have to "clean up" the house to return it to pre-autodemolish timer state, otherwise the timer will only reset back to be beginning of the 30 day block if entered. This would be accomplished by summoning any retainer at the estate and selecting "clean up estate" which costs nothing as long as a retainer exists.

[SonKevin]

I don't understand why people think 45 days is too short. 45 days is fine. If you're not using your house in 45 days then you don't really need that house. Pretty cut and dry. When the land is finite, you shouldn't be able to keep your house forever if you're not using it.