Auto-demolition Feedback / AKA, I'm tired of feeling captive to the housing system

[freakingmayhem]

I am a private housing owner in FFXIV. Like I assume many others would agree, I feel compelled to keep paying subscription fees, even during periods where I am not interested in playing, simply to keep my house. I assume that this is intentionally designed this way to keep me paying my subscription. It is simultaneously unfair to those who are looking for a housing plot.

If you allow your subscription (and thus your housing) to lapse, all of your belongings are sent to the resident caretaker and will be destroyed after 35 days. This system also holds us captive. Even if you decide you want to lose your housing plot, you need to log in within 35 days of demolition to retain your items. So nobody who wants to take a break is going to intentionally go this route.

I'm no game developer, but my opinion of an extremely customer-friendly way of doing this would be if, when your housing is auto-demolished, your entire estate's items and configuration are stored indefinitely, to be placed in a new location in the future when you decide you want housing again (perhaps only within the same district; I don't know the technicalities). If in the future you choose to relocate to a plot of the same size, you are not charged gil. Similarly, or perhaps as a result, using the standard relocation system should probably not be so prohibitively expensive, but that's a topic for another thread.

This is more of a message to the developers than a topic meant for community discussion, but we're not really given a way to provide direct feedback to the developers, so here it is to discuss if it interests you.

[Harmonea]

I'm no game developer, but my opinion of an extremely customer-friendly way of doing this would be if, when your housing is auto-demolished, your entire estate's items and configuration are stored indefinitely, to be placed in a new location in the future when you decide you want housing again.

The issue with this is, looking at it from a database perspective, storing demolished homes' inventories with placement data and such intact would take exactly as much storage as the original house itself. The game is designed to only have so many houses. If they could expand that significantly, they'd add more wards instead. If they could find a way to tie that much data to the character instead of to the plot of land itself as is currently the case, they would likely look into an instanced housing solution with no demolition instead. These homes would possibly only be available if the owner is online, because visiting one would query the character data instead of the plot data.

In the system we have now, they have got to clear out that stored data eventually, because it creates an "extra" house's worth of data, as if you'd relocated to plot 61. And it's not feasible right now for that plot number to go up infinitely as former homeowners quit forever over the course of another decade.

It's difficult to explain if you don't know all the little angles a dev has to think about this from, so I hope this makes sense.

I say this not to tell you "no, this can't happen" but to help you think about where the problems lie and work out the kinks. Tying the furnishing and placement data to the character instead of the plot would be an enormous step toward a better system and would allow for things like infinite-time storage like you suggest.

[Blue_Myu]

The issue with this is, looking at it from a database perspective, storing demolished homes' inventories with placement data and such intact would take exactly as much storage as the original house itself. The game is designed to only have so many houses. If they could expand that significantly, they'd add more wards instead. If they could find a way to tie that much data to the character instead of to the plot of land itself as is currently the case, they would likely look into an instanced housing solution with no demolition instead. These homes would possibly only be available if the owner is online, because visiting one would query the character data instead of the plot data.

In the system we have now, they have got to clear out that stored data eventually, because it creates an "extra" house's worth of data, as if you'd relocated to plot 61. And it's not feasible right now for that plot number to go up infinitely as former homeowners quit forever over the course of another decade.

It's difficult to explain if you don't know all the little angles a dev has to think about this from, so I hope this makes sense.

I say this not to tell you "no, this can't happen" but to help you think about where the problems lie and work out the kinks. Tying the furnishing and placement data to the character instead of the plot would be an enormous step toward a better system and would allow for things like infinite-time storage like you suggest.

Instanced housing would resolve the need to auto demolish in the first place and store data most likely.

That is if the apartments are to go by anyways. There are finite apartments yes, but there are so MANY of them regardless, that you have little problems getting one on a server as populated as Jenova where housing competition is absolutely fierce.

I also do not believe that apartments demolish either, and I can't help but wonder why that is, when they do it for housing (Aside from the obvious "Make room for active players")

[shaiel]

I believe instanced / semi instanced housing is the answer. Similar to apartment system where you don't lose your things. Expanding on the current apartment system is the best way forward to make sure every player can have housing. However apartments right now don't have the same functionality because we don't have gardening plots, just 2 planters. Very big difference in utility and decorating between something like a medium house and a small apartment. I do think auto demolition is fair, because there's not enough housing to go around. I was able to relocate to my dream plot because of auto demolition. The people that used to live there don't play anymore, whereas I log in everyday and tend to my plants & such.

[Kurando]

Apartments are good if you do not play the game much as it will always (unless something major changes) be there for you to go back to, but private housing doesn't allow it because for good reason there just isn't enough demand to go around. Of course this is down to SE, not blaming players or anything, but it might be worth sharing a house with someone who does play more regularly or be in an active FC and is unlikely to lose their property any time soon or invest in an apartment, at least you can use it to store things there

[Jojoya]

I also do not believe that apartments demolish either, and I can't help but wonder why that is, when they do it for housing (Aside from the obvious "Make room for active players")

That's the point of demo - to make a limited quantity feature available to those who are actively playing instead of leaving it in the hands of those who have stopped playing so that feature is effectively unused even though it's still consuming server resources.

Apartments aren't a limited resource in the way houses are because they're fully instanced. Last I heard, even Balmung had plenty of apartments still available for those who wanted one for their character. Plus the dev team has stated it's easy to expand the number of available apartments since they are instanced should there be a need.

[Bright-Flower]

That's the point of demo - to make a limited quantity feature available to those who are actively playing instead of leaving it in the hands of those who have stopped playing so that feature is effectively unused even though it's still consuming server resources.

Apartments aren't a limited resource in the way houses are because they're fully instanced. Last I heard, even Balmung had plenty of apartments still available for those who wanted one for their character. Plus the dev team has stated it's easy to expand the number of available apartments since they are instanced should there be a need.

Yep I had no idea just the other day snagging an apartment for an alt on balmung. Unless you're picky about what ward you want to be in it's easy to get oen.

Houses however are much fewer in number, and have additional features. More interior room. An exterior to decorate. Gardens that serve a gameplay purpose, and for FC housing anyway, you have workships and missions to send airships/submarines on.

[Besame]

If you read my tag on the bottom, you will see the original intent of housing ala the boss. I don't believe anything until I see it in action.