Hoarding Houses - Sometimes a Depressing Sight (a rant)

[Alien_Gamer]

While I agree that removing houses from players is a potential slippery slope and can be bad for PR, doing nothing has also proven to be a slippery slope and bad for PR. The Shirogane launch was a disaster because of house hoarders and house flippers. SE chose to do nothing about problems they were very aware of for a long time, and it resulted in one of the most anticipated additions becoming one of the most controversial things this game has seen in several years. SE would have saved themselves so much trouble and bad publicity had they been vaguely proactive with the glaring problems housing has had over the years.

Removing things from players is simply something no company should ever do. It is not a potential slippery slope, it IS a slippery slope and one which completely breaks the faith of the players in the company. Once a company does it, there is no reversing the fact that SE can and WILL purposefully remove something you worked hard for and in some cases paid real money for if they so chose. How can any player maintain trust in SE that anything they earn from that point forward will remain theirs? There is simply no upside to such a decision. Its easy to remove houses from grandfathered players but how would you feel if SE removed something of yours? How did Legacy players feel when something of theirs was removed and given to the larger playerbase?


Discussion of removing houses should be a non-starter for everyone. The conversation should be on how to add housing in a way thats fair for everyone.

There is also no question that Shirogane housing was a mess from the beginning. SE also showed they learned from it and with the next housing release put heavy restrictions in place which did allow many others to gain houses. Further, given that most worlds have empty plots, thats an indication that there' isn't a global housing shortage anymore; its just a few worlds that have the issue. Instead the problem is not enough "preferred" housing...but there will never be enough of that.

Players owning several houses was an oversight by SE.

I don't believe thats the case. SE designed characters on an account to be completely separate entities and thus each would be able to participate in everything equally, including housing. I think the error was in SE thinking there wouldn't be a high demand for housing.

I want everyone to keep everything they own, and I want everyone to have a fair shot at getting anything the game has to offer. But SE appear disinclined to alter the housing system to facilitate this...so here I am ranting about hoarders with plots that have been empty for potentially several years, because frankly it's far more likely for SE to tackle that than it is for them to give us a legitimately solid housing system. I don't particularly like advocating for removing anything from anyone, but it's not as if SE are giving us hope of another option. They seem to only want to tweak the current system and not much beyond.

If you actually want everyone to keep what they own, don't advocate for removing houses from grandfathered players. You're contradicting yourself. SE is not far more likely to do this than fix housing, unfortunately for us SE's fix is additional rewards which isn't as helpful as some people want. There is hope for a fix in that there is hope for additional wards. If you don't like additional wards, advocate for something else...something that doesn't take away from other players.

[Penthea]

Removing things from players is simply something no company should ever do. It is not a potential slippery slope, it IS a slippery slope and one which completely breaks the faith of the players in the company. Once a company does it, there is no reversing the fact that SE can and WILL purposefully remove something you worked hard for and in some cases paid real money for if they so chose. How can any player maintain trust in SE that anything they earn from that point forward will remain theirs? There is simply no upside to such a decision.

The difference between the majority of things that players own and housing is that houses are a very limited resource. Furthermore players who own several houses are definitely aware of what they are doing. They know very well that hoarding houses deprives others of houses. You speak of trust in SE, well trust should go both ways and well these hoarders knowingly abused a system and for doing this they are rewarded with being exempt from the new rules. Is this is somehow supposed to make the still homeless players trust SE? Or does the trust of a very greedy minority matter more?

By the way it seems you have forgotten SE already did remove things from players. The demolition system didn't always exist. The first demolition removed a great deal of houses because a lot of players were completely unaware that SE made something that was once under undisputed permanent ownership to be permanent under only certain conditions. Players don't tend to read patch notes when they're on a break. Some got a nasty surprise when they came back to the game. And even though removing player's items is usually a big fat no-no, this particular kind of removal has been mostly well received. Hmm.

How did Legacy players feel when something of theirs was removed and given to the larger playerbase?

That was a bad move but it has little to do with housing. That was all because SE didn't change the name of the new earrings. Newer players having earrings didn't remove the older earrings. No items were removed. The problem lay in the fact that they appeared identical in every way, even in name. Not that the newer player base had access to them. This is an entirely different issue to housing. However it is definitely another example of SE lacking foresight.

If you actually want everyone to keep what they own, don't advocate for removing houses from grandfathered players. You're contradicting yourself.

No it's more that I know that the chances of SE giving us a proper housing system are microscopically small, but the chances of them changing the current system are actually possible. I would prefer no one have anything of theirs removed, but my disgust at the greed of people knowingly hoarding a very limited resource overshadows this. Sorry but I don't have much empathy for people who don't care that they're possibly ruining someone else's fun.

It's all fine and well to preach to me and say I should advocate for a solution that equally benefits all, but I doubt you can give me an example of SE being invested in truly improving the housing system as everything so far has been band-aid after band-aid. I know better than to hope that they will improve housing enough that one person's activity won't affect anyone else's. Every time they did a major "fix" on the housing system it was a result of massive community backlash which was the result of years of waiting for fixes. And these fixes while good are not great and one of the features (the demo email system) has been bugged for several months with no sign of SE addressing it. It's ridiculous.

So please forgive me for thinking it's more likely for SE to remove the perks of being grandfathered, than to actually introduce a solid housing system. If you can give me a spark of hope that SE will actually steer housing in a legitimately better direction...then please do. I don't really enjoy being so bitter about this.