Pushed to quit after 1,860 days subbed

[Penthea]

This needs to be a WARNING prior to clicking "Purchase Land" so nobody is left uninformed.

Given players most times rush when they are buying land, it would be better for the warning to be after the purchase. If it's just before it players will not bother reading it because it would slow them down when buying the plot.

But yes the timing of the information of demolition should be coupled along with the purchase of land. Not when a player is a lvl 15 sprout and barely knows how the game works. Every other tutorial orientated message is displayed upon when a person can interact with the system it's for. Why not demolition too? It makes sense and it's more consistent.

[JunseiKei]

Proooobably stated somewhere here by someone else, but the game does tell you about the auto demolition via the Resident Caretaker (which I thought you had to talk to in order to unlock teleporting there; might have them mixed up with the enthusiast). When you click on "Land Ownership" followed by "What happens if I abandon my estate?" you get the following:



Either way, upon entering the residential area, you get a pop-up explaining the area. In that area, it says to go visit the Residential Caretaker for additional information about housing.

[LalaRu]

Yet Another Campaign Against Demolition Timers.

Today, even rocks knows about the 45 days rule. I too have as estate and I don't need an email to remember I have to be there once in a while. Have your estate demolished and feign surprise is quite odd.

Edit
As long as I know someone doesn't agree my POV above, will add fuel to the fire: when you never arsed to your house once in 45 days, you don't need an house.

[Penthea]

Either way, upon entering the residential area, you get a pop-up explaining the area. In that area, it says to go visit the Residential Caretaker for additional information about housing.

While this is a nice find it still doesn't change that you are given this information when you first enter a residential area since demolition was introduced. For most players these days it's when they're a low lvl sprout and barely know how the game works.

That information is plainly not relevant to a sprout and easily results in being forgotten given said player won't even have the ability to purchase any form of housing until after quite a lot of time has passed. As things are now with this, it's like telling a lvl 15 gatherer how collectables work even though they're nowhere near meeting the requirements to even gather them. The timing of when the information about demolition is presented makes very little sense.

[R-Pete-G]

Considering that the OP actually did agree with my comparison, you're the only one who thinks it was and is ridiculous by your own measure. It was a decent comparison, it may not be the type of comparison that you like, but that doesn't really make it invalid just because you say so or because you personally think its silly.

Sorry, I don't want my comment to be mis-represented (and I'm not trying to fan the disagreement that seems to be raging between you both personally), but I agreed that it wasn't silly to compare it to a real life mortgage because I thought that a proper comparison would actually contradict your stance (and that comparing the auto demolition timer to missing mortgage payments was not an accurate comparison).

[R-Pete-G]

Yet Another Campaign Against Demolition Timers.

Today, even rocks knows about the 45 days rule. I too have as estate and I don't need an email to remember I have to be there once in a while. Have your estate demolished and feign surprise is quite odd.

Edit
As long as I know someone doesn't agree my POV above, will add fuel to the fire: when you never arsed to your house once in 45 days, you don't need an house.

Declaring that everyone knows about demolition timers doesn't make it so, and wilfully ignores the replies here proving that you're mistaken. If I was aware they existed, I wouldn't need an email reminder either.

I agree with you that if you're not arsed to go to your house in 45 days, you probably don't need one. But as the system can't tell the difference between "not arsed" and "wants to, but can't due to extenuating circumstances", it needs to accommodate both possibilities. Currently it doesn't do the latter very well at all.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

I agree with you that if you're not arsed to go to your house in 45 days, you probably don't need one. But as the system can't tell the difference between "not arsed" and "wants to, but can't due to extenuating circumstances", it needs to accommodate both possibilities. Currently it doesn't do the latter very well at all.

It takes all of two seconds to port to your house and walk inside. Why no one would do that to begin with in a 45 day span is beyond me - this isn't even "wanting to but can't", it's "I literally couldn't be arsed to take two seconds to walk into the home that means so much to me it'll make me quit if I lose it".

I agree the demo system shouldn't be necessary, I wish it wasn't.

I agree perhaps there could be more easily-accessible reminders or notifications about the demo timer in-game, instead of needing to sift through housing menus or wait on the magically-disappearing emails from SE about it.

I agree with all these points.

But in the end, it was still entirely on you for not having even the faintest idea of the demo timer. I also find it extremely hard to believe that even in-game, talking to friends, no mention of a demo timer ever came up whatsoever. That's one of the biggest complaints from this game's community. It is almost impossible to go about your life in the game being blissfully unaware of the fact it exists at all, let alone how long it is.

Also, again - if you can't be bothered to even go into your super-important-omg-I'll-quit-if-I-lose-it house within 45 days, of which you have plenty of time to be doing events and the like, then you do not need that house in the first place.

[Alleo]

What is literally stopping that person from asking someone in-game who owns a house? I mean, other players are fountains of information as well and they're right there too in-game to help you.

The information was already there and readily available and right now we're arguing over an ease of convenience because some people feel that reading for more information outside of the game itself is too much work apparently when, as far as I know of, most people who own housing haven't had a problem taking care of their homes or learning about the process through those other means.

Why should they ask someone who owns a house if they dont even have the idea that there is another system behind it? Why are you so against simply adding more ways to see that such a timer exists ingame ? I can understand if you say that maybe the OP should have looked at their house more often since they did not notice that it was gone until even the items were destroyed but I am honestly confused why you argue for making it easier? What would it change for you if they give you an overview of housing rules when you buy the house? Or give a message with the mogry post or when you log into the game when the timer is going down to a certain day?

You say that its fine because an outside source is there. Yet would you be fine if in other parts of the game you can only for example solve a riddle if you see the hints on some website outside the game? How about putting most of the lore in some books that you need to buy to understand it?

If this was a game that does not hold peoples hand at all then maybe you would have a point but this is a game where even the achievements are now forced on us. Something that is really not important. Yet there should not be a change to receiving housing informations because people should just research it outside the game? For something that might mean that they even could lose exclusive items that are not avaiable again or that they need to pay real money for?

Proooobably stated somewhere here by someone else, but the game does tell you about the auto demolition via the Resident Caretaker (which I thought you had to talk to in order to unlock teleporting there; might have them mixed up with the enthusiast). When you click on "Land Ownership" followed by "What happens if I abandon my estate?" you get the following:



Either way, upon entering the residential area, you get a pop-up explaining the area. In that area, it says to go visit the Residential Caretaker for additional information about housing.

Then maybe they should not state the "what happens if I abandon my estate" but rename it to something more like "Can the estate be taken away?" Because if someone does not plan to abandon their estate, why should they even look at this question? Because the timer is something that is forced. Also you already get a quest to enter the residential area when you are a newbie. So depending on when you finally buy a house this was months/years ago.

In the end they simply could give a pop up before people buy a house or afterwards. And on top of that give some messages ingame when the timer has like 15 days left. And lets not destroy items of people that lost their house. This is probably even worse than losing one because you can simply buy a new one, but you wont be able to get all the items back if they are destroyed.

[Ashiee]

I'm sorry you lost your house and all of your furnishings, that is a real bummer. I personally don't have much of a reason to use my personal in game house outside of patch weeks when new furnishings come out (every 4 months), so I am always paranoid about the auto demo. I keep a google doc and write down when I check my house and try and check it at least ever 2 weeks to once a month.

These would be my suggestions for SE in regards to housing demolition.

1. Make the in game timer more visible - the timer at the moment is buried in the timers menu, a menu that a lot of people don't look at regularly. I suggest making some type of HUD UI element that makes it super apparent that you need to check your house.

2. Save auto-demolished housing items for a longer period of time - 35 days after is way to short of a time to pick up items, that plus the auto demo time is 2 and a half months, not even a patches worth of time. People stop playing due to a various amount of reasons, but many people do come back to the game at expansions generally if they are going to come back. I suggest that they save housing items for 2 years + before permanently deleting them.

[DreamAngel-Ren]

I'm so sorry for the loss of your house

EDIT: SE does need to make some sort of warning message when comes to housing deletion; if the player isn't in the game, then they should at least send an email like they would when a payment for a subscription fee is coming.The reason I think it's necessary is because sometimes life can get in the way and the player may lose track on how long they've been away from the game. When they get the warning that their house is about to be deleted, that would urge them to log in before that happens. The idea I brought up already exists, wasn't aware Xp

Apparently, the GMs didn't succeed on making sure that the email had reached to their customers.