Pushed to quit after 1,860 days subbed

[Penthea]

I'll give you the exact reason for that. When people complain about housing demolition, it usually isn't about the feature itself, it is usually about how they wrongfully lost their house.

The thing is many people in this thread who haven't lost their house are advocating for having the demolition system be more clearly presented in the game. But they still get the hostility over it anyway. I have been super active in this thread and I never lost my house. I enter it several times each day. But despite my personal ease with the system, I can definitely see that it's in dire need of improvement.

The timer being hidden for most of its duration is misleading as hell. Presenting lvl 15 sprouts with information about demolition is crazily poorly timed and utterly irrelevant to them. That we have in-game warnings about selling things to retainers or throwing away items but zero about the game auto deleting things is laughably inconsistent. It's almost as if the whole thing was intentionally designed to be terrible.

OP has little excuse for what happened to him but that doesn't change the fact the information about the housing system is so horribly done. But unfortunately many people would prefer to point at OP and call him irresponsible than consider that there is actually many things very wrong with how the game presents information about demolition.

I guess some people are allergic to criticising SE. Or they like the feeling of superiority.

[Lambdafish]

The timer being hidden for most of its duration is misleading as hell. Presenting lvl 15 sprouts with information about demolition is crazily poorly timed and utterly irrelevant to them. That we have in-game warnings about selling things to retainers or throwing away items but zero about the game auto deleting things is laughably inconsistent. It's almost as if the whole thing was intentionally designed to be terrible.

I actually addressed this in my post (very briefly). Perhaps the system is intentionally designed badly. Think about it, if you got a notification in-game when you logged in that your house was going to be demolished, then the first thing you do would be to fix that. But the very fact is that you were unaware that your house had been abandoned for so long. If it was made easier then the cycle of people not accessing their house for 40 days, getting a notification, then going in once for 40 days, then getting another notification would increase dramatically, and the number of houses being freed up by the system would reduce. What we would have is wards of houses that are not being used because the system is too good. It's just another perspective to think about.

I guess some people are allergic to criticising SE. Or they like the feeling of superiority.

If you are referring to me, my post does have critisim in it. On the flip side, comments like this try to make not being allowed to have debate over a subject seem like a good thing, when it isn't.

[Solarra]

Are people seriously arguing against information being presented more clearly in the game when it comes to demolitions?

Are people really dead set against having furniture stored indefinitely if a house is demolished?

Why?
We pay for this game and it's not one of the cheaper ones. What is so terrible about improved communication and customer service? What on earth do we stand to lose?
Apart from the fun of coming onto the forum to kick someone when they're down, of course.

If you're really happy with the present system and can see benefits in having the demolition timer on a sub-menu and removing virtual items from the game, then you are entitled to your opinion and I'd be very interested in reading it, but I'm not seeing any compelling arguments for keeping things as they are, just a load of spite and snark directed at the OP. Banging on about personal responsibility etc. doesn't justify this game deleting our virtual assets (in some cases while people are still paying a sub) or failing to communicate clearly about demolition.

@Lambadafish - if people step into those houses then they are being used. At least enough to satisfy the rules.
The problem is the ward system doesn't work. We don't have real communities, we don't have bustling, thriving housing areas with their own distinct personalities and we won't have them because the game doesn't give people any reason to interact or hang out in the wards. Yet, this is what we are stuck with, and the demolition system that goes with it.
Making the timer more visible isn't going to change things for most people, I doubt it would have any effect on how lively or not the wards feel, but it might help a few individuals hang on to houses they actually want.

[MomomiMomi]

Are people seriously arguing against information being presented more clearly in the game when it comes to demolitions?

Are people really dead set against having furniture stored indefinitely if a house is demolished?

Why? We pay for this game and it's not one of the cheaper ones. What is so terrible about improved communication and customer service? What on earth do we stand to lose?
Apart from the fun of coming onto the forum to kick someone when they're down, of course.

If you're really happy with the present system and can see benefits in having the demolition timer on a sub-menu and removing virtual items from the game, then you are entitled to your opinion and I'd be very interested in reading it, but I'm not seeing any compelling arguments for keeping things as they are, just a load of spite and snark directed at the OP. Banging on about personal responsibility etc. doesn't justify this game deleting our virtual assets (in some cases while still paying a sub) or failing to communicate clearly about demolition.

All those things would be wonderful.

The problem (in this thread) is that the entirety of the OP's post hinges on one thing: they weren't aware that housing demolition existed. They actually kind of made a big deal about this, by capitalizing the word "know" and putting asterisks around it. And if they had known, they wouldn't have lost the house, and we wouldn't even have this thread. It honestly sounds like they're trying to shirk responsibility by saying they didn't know.

There are two debates going on, and both sides are generally debating something different and ignoring the other argument. One is about whether it was the OP's fault or not, and the other is about improving the game. One side isn't arguing against improving the game, but they are arguing that not knowing is OP's fault. The other side is arguing that visibility should be improved, and some are even arguing against it being OP's fault.

[ko_]

I find it interesting that you view this as an issue of blame. I don't think it is - it's an issue of incompetence. SE has unnecessarily created a scenario in which people who do not engage with FFXIV to the level of a Google search, are prone to losing their housing. In a game where, as I outlined above, literally everything else provides more in-game feedback to the player. Assigning blame doesn't fix anything; calling for a better design, one that is more consistent with the rest of FFXIV, might. And regardless, again, I point out: this cost someone their house. They're likely an individual who won't return to FFXIV, which harms SE's bottom line. It's not a situation they should be comfortable with.?

He can be offended. Not my issue, but in my eyes thats how it comes across. I can't be sorry if you can't be bothered to type in - HOUSES ON FFXIV- like seriously. I'm typing on controller and I can do it. There is no excuse to not be informed. If you are going to claim to have 1k plus days in this game and claim you are invested in houseing then how can you sit there and not know you have X amount of days to enter your house before it's demoed? EVERYONE knows this. It was on random sites when it was first brought up 3 years ago. It was on the Lodestone.. WE ALL KNEW. I can't buy it. I can't feel sorry for him, again it's not like SE took it or a bug happened. He literally didn't care! This is on HIM. And asking for SE to have a better system is a completely different topic that I agree with. As a homeowner myself - before some one gets some crooked baked idea I'm homeless and jealous :/ - Yes SE needs better systems as this one is cracked and drugged and needs to be sued. I get it. But none of this applies to the OP. We're only taking about it cause he messed up and lost it on his own. Had he put in a little effort NONE of this would've happened. Thats my issue with this thread. He's being babied in my eyes cause instead of going - Dude... next time.. use google.- instead people want to blame SE for what? They did NOTHING in this case. Yes their systems are horrible but none of that matters when the op himself couldn't even bother out a percent of care to even keep his stuff legit. That's like me complaining Sony didn't tell me to not put icecream in my PS4 pro and then I go and do it like a moron and then cry blaming sony cause they don't have a sticker saying - NO ICECREAM- Like what do you think people will say? You think people will agree and tell sony they are wrong? Or do you think people will be like - DUDE... why? - That's all I'm saying. Is there an issue yes. We all know this. But none of the known issues apply here when clearly OP didn't care to take care of anything he had in the first place.

[R-Pete-G]

So wait, you heard stories of homes being lost and you never thought to look further in this? I mean surely if you received emails successfully you would of known your property was up for demolition, if you didn't receive them then you would entered your house to ensure you didn't lose it.

This was afterwards.

[ChocoFeru]

I once got an e-mail when I didn't enter my house for 30 days.

Gotta check your account info and make sure you got the correct e-mail, and check if your mail sends these messages to spamm or something.

Anyways, an in-game notification would be a lot better than an e-mail.

[Emstidor]

I actually addressed this in my post (very briefly). Perhaps the system is intentionally designed badly. Think about it, if you got a notification in-game when you logged in that your house was going to be demolished, then the first thing you do would be to fix that. But the very fact is that you were unaware that your house had been abandoned for so long. If it was made easier then the cycle of people not accessing their house for 40 days, getting a notification, then going in once for 40 days, then getting another notification would increase dramatically, and the number of houses being freed up by the system would reduce. What we would have is wards of houses that are not being used because the system is too good. It's just another perspective to think about.

I can't agree with this logic because if SE's goal was to increase the rate of house turnover, then why bother sending e-mails at all? Just task players with being active enough that they'll never naturally run across the timer anyway and call it a day. The fact that they make an effort to notify the player at all leads me to blame the lack of clear and relevant in-game alert to oversight rather than deliberate intent.

[R-Pete-G]

Here we are on page 20, and the discussion is still boiling down to:

- "Because I knew about housing demolition, I cannot possibly fathom that someone else didn't"
- "The only correct way to learn about the game is using these external resources that I declare to be essential"
- "Only doing <content> for <X> days means that you're not enough of a real player to have <content>"
- "If you've ever missed a patch note or Lodestone article, and you don't Google things habitually, you deserve to lose content you've worked for (in only this part of the game, and no other)"

I think it's safe to say that if that's your stance, there's little to convince you how untenable it is. It says nothing for people who take short, frequent breaks from the game and may miss those patch notes / articles in the launcher. It says nothing for people who engage with the housing feature at a much later point, and make the reasonable assumption that the Active Help text - forcing multitudes of information about game systems at you at every turn - would be sufficient to tell you fundamental elements of the housing system.

Regardless, it seems I have opened an old community wound between two sides of this debate, because everyone seems to be focusing on the house demolition. Giddy with outrage that other players don't do what they do, and frothing at the keyboard to pontificate the "right way to play", we're dwelling on something to which I previously said:

Despite thinking that the in-game communication of the auto-demolition procedure is woefully inadequate, which is evidenced by a lot of the replies here, my post here was just to provide that feedback. I am not contesting that my house was demolished. I am not saying that it shouldn't have been demolished, and I'm not saying Squenix is to blame for it being demolished.

...

I am, at most, saying that it's no one's fault it was demolished, but merely a symptom of a system that is poorly communicated in comparison to the expectation set by other game systems, that have an abundance more in-game clarification. It's much easier to miss this than a lot of other, far less significant mechanics, and this seems to be something most people can agree on.

In addition to my feedback about how the auto demolition feature could better be communicated, my main complaint was that the permanent deletion of furnishings after a demolition is disproportionately severe and destructive to a player's hard-earned content. That has nothing to do with how reasonable or unreasonable you consider the triggering of auto demolition to be.


If anyone's still following the main point of this thread (I remain ever the optimist), my most recent feedback from a Squenix GM was that they do not have any logs or records pertaining to the furnishings that are moved from an estate to the resident caretaker NPC. I have to admit, I'm quite surprised by this. Anyone else who's worked in web services or software development knows the value of historical logs. GM teams across the MMO genre are also well-documented for using historical logs of character activity to investigate and prove use of exploits, malicious behaviour, etc.

It does seem like the furnishing deletion timer is more to free up Squenix's responsibility and data capacity than any real justification from a gameplay or community perspective, as auto demolition arguably does.

[Solarra]

There are two debates going on, and both sides are generally debating something different and ignoring the other argument.

Yep, that sums it up.
I guess we all read the OP and took different things from it. I felt the 'personal responsibility' stuff was distracting us from looking at the system and discussing how it could be improved, but I assume those more interested in determining whether the OP or Square was at fault felt people like me were distracting from what they wanted to discuss.
Since who is to blame seems to be the hottest issue, I think I'll bow out.

(I still don't think they should delete anyone's furniture though... no matter how lazy, irresponsible etc they were)