Pushed to quit after 1,860 days subbed

[R-Pete-G]

The followup I should clarify, for people making assumptions about why I'm posting or what I'm trying to say, is that having the house demolished sucked. I don't think it's well communicated in the slightest, I still contest that the emails were insufficient (as they didn't arrive for whatever reason). But I could have chalked that up to a lesson learned, given feedback about the game system that I didn't like, and gotten on with it. I do think Square Enix are massively dropping the ball here in considering their players, but I'm not "shifting the blame", "failing to take accountability", etc.

What pushed me to pack it all in was the possessions I lost, permanently. For whatever reason, my house was demolished and that's that. In my original post I did say that I didn't expect for one second to get it back. But those furnishings that I'd collected over the years, those are the real sting. That the automatic demolition is poorly communicated is one thing, but that the reclamation of your furnishings is so unforgiving is another thing entirely.

When you stop subscribing to the game, your retainers retain (pun intended) all of your items until you come back. They're stored for you until you're ready to return and become active in the game once more. The window on reclaiming your furnishings in this instance seems either very arbitrary, or it's Square Enix clawing back some of the inventory space stored against characters that they've admitted they struggle with. And for someone who was still paying their subscription, that feels like a really bad practice.

And as Enkrateia already referred to factors that might introduce a reasonable doubt that I did not receive those emails, and I really did have no idea my house was up for demolition, what then? Would a GM see that there had obviously been some mistake, a misunderstanding for whatever the reason, and help restore those items? The clearly precious collection of years of work?

Sigma-Astra, you made a comparison to WoW when you mentioned patch notes etc. As you've already brought a "competitor" into the conversation, I'll chime in with another comparison. As a long time WoW player myself, this is the sort of thing that Blizzard (and many other MMO GM teams) would assist with to support a player continuing to enjoy the game. This makes the contrast with FFXIV even more stark, and my value as a player felt even less by comparison.




(Please be nice to one another!)

[Xiomara]

When you stop subscribing to the game, your retainers retain (pun intended) all of your items until you come back. They're stored for you until you're ready to return and become active in the game once more. The window on reclaiming your furnishings in this instance seems either very arbitrary, or it's Square Enix clawing back some of the inventory space stored against characters that they've admitted they struggle with. And for someone who was still paying their subscription, that feels like a really bad practice.

It's odd that SE went to the trouble of adding a housing storeroom so that we can move our houses, but then don't tie in the housing demolition system to it. A simple solution in your case would be that when a house is demolished, all items are moved to the storeroom, just like you were moving the house and then change the reclamation NPC so that it's an interface to said storeroom.

[R-Pete-G]

It's odd that SE went to the trouble of adding a housing storeroom so that we can move our houses, but then don't tie in the housing demolition system to it. A simple solution in your case would be that when a house is demolished, all items are moved to the storeroom, just like you were moving the house and then change the reclamation NPC so that it's an interface to said storeroom.

Indeed. It's such a practical idea, in fact, that I can't believe this isn't somehow intentional as a way to save on character data.