Re-enable Housing Demolition!

[Penthea]

Nothing that you get back is a severely limited resource.

Which is precisely why losing a house can be a huge hit. Not only does it mean it could be close to impossible to get one again, you also lose at least several million gil's worth of assets. You can even lose assets that cost real money depending on what furniture you had.

The fact that we even need demolition just shows how flawed the housing system is. Literally nothing else in the game works like this because it doesn't need to.

The problem is the lack of houses, not demolition or a lack of it. Demolition wouldn't even be a discussed subject if the game had enough or unlimited houses.

But too many players focus on being angry about a symptom instead of directing their attention to the actual cause, which is why we still have this horrendous system. The last time we got anything resembling positive change was when the community was unified in demanding real change from SE (Shirogane launch). As long as most players are complacent and/or only ask for minor band-aid fixes, that is all we will ever get.

Demolition will be turned on again one day but in the grand scheme of things this will change very little. Why? Because we don't have enough houses. There will always be players unfairly shafted by the system as long as it stays the same.

All of that is clearly stated at time of purchase, just as the timer is clearly stated. My point is that pausing the timer is not an act of altruism. It is a calculated way to motivate subscription payment.

Why can't it be both?

[Seddrinth]

The fact that we even need demolition just shows how flawed the housing system is. Literally nothing else in the game works like this because it doesn't need to.

The problem is the lack of houses, not demolition or a lack of it. Demolition wouldn't even be a discussed subject if the game had enough or unlimited houses.

If you are talking about instanced housing then yeah, no demolition needed for obvious reasons. People who lapse their subcription can always get their instanced house back when they come back to the game. But with current system of wards, you absolutely need housing demolition, even if there weren't a shortage of houses. It would make no sense to have a plot unavailable if the owner's subscription expired, because what if that player never comes back to FF14? That plot should be made available to active players again.

[Penthea]

If you are talking about instanced housing then yeah, no demolition needed for obvious reasons. People who lapse their subcription can always get their instanced house back when they come back to the game. But with current system of wards, you absolutely need housing demolition, even if there weren't a shortage of houses. It would make no sense to have a plot unavailable if the owner's subscription expired, because what if that player never comes back to FF14? That plot should be made available to active players again.

I understand why demolition is in the game and I agree with it to a point. My main issues are (other than the flawed system that needs it) is I feel 45 days is a bit too short, and furniture should be held up until the player redeems them, not destroyed after some time. I think 60 days is more reasonable for demolition. In my time in mmos I found that it wasn't unusual for players to be unable to log in for about a month but it would be very unusual to be more than two. It also would match a subscription package, unlike 45 days which matches none.

But there is a huge difference between allowing players to access something, and taking something away that players own. The world is a crazy place right now, especially in the USA with the wildfires, violent natural disasters, the BLM movement that has resulted in opportunists destroying the livelihood of others...and they of course have the pandemic on top of all that. SE know that a lot of players are not logging in because they physically can't due to circumstances completely out of their control and power to fix, not because they lost interest in the game or just mismanaged their finances. Demolition is intended to take houses away from players who most likely lost interest in the game. Not from players who most likely lost their house due to something like fires consuming vast areas of land.

SE have repeatedly turned off demolition during periods when it is very likely a player cannot log in due to large scale circumstances entirely out of their control, in the past we have seen this happen due to earthquakes and violent weather. And well this time it's happening again. We have the pandemic but as I mentioned already the USA has a lot of other awful large scale things going on as well, which is possibly making demolition pause last longer than originally intended.

So I'm on the fence about all of this. Yes it sucks when there is no demolition, I know it very well because I had no house during one of the times it was turned off. But at the same time I know how horrible I would feel to finally log in after surviving a massive disaster and then finding I lost my home and so many possessions in FFXIV too.

There is no good solution from demolition on or off. Either way people are without a house when they don't deserve to be in that position. We will only see the demolition issue solved when we get a system where it is no longer needed.

[Seddrinth]

I don't think 45 days is too short but I have no problem extending it to 60 days. As far as furniture, we have plenty of time to make preparations. If I know my sub is going to run out, I will clean things up and move important items into my inventory so that if I plan to come back to the game, those items will still be there. I'm going to be honest. I've logged into games after years of not logging in and I've lost items that are hard to obtain. Does it suck? Kinda. But at the end of the day it's still just a game so I don't think we need to exaggerate the importance of in game items. They are just pixels.

[Penthea]

As far as furniture, we have plenty of time to make preparations.

This is only if you know something bad is going to happen and when. You can't predict a lot of the things that made SE decide to pause demolition. The world would be a very different place if we could adequately plan for any sort of disaster to the point that it can't even prevent you from accessing a luxury like a game.

[Jojoya]

and furniture should be held up until the player redeems them, not destroyed after some time.

This appears to be a consequence of how housing is designed. Placed furnishings aren't associated with a player, they're associated with the house plot (how players are able to sell furnishings that normally cannot be traded through tenancy).

Furnishings from a demo'd plot need to be cleared from the Caretaker before the plot can be demolished again or both sets of furnishings would be available to whichever previous owner chose to claim them, or possibly only by the player associated with the most recent demolition.

If the game could assign player ownership to furnishings it could allow for longer retention but that would be a problem for FC houses where the owner is the FC not a player.

It's another situation solved by having an instanced system so no demolition is needed and the player never loses their housing.

[Penthea]

This appears to be a consequence of how housing is designed. Placed furnishings aren't associated with a player, they're associated with the house plot (how players are able to sell furnishings that normally cannot be traded through tenancy).

Furnishings from a demo'd plot need to be cleared from the Caretaker before the plot can be demolished again or both sets of furnishings would be available to whichever previous owner chose to claim them, or possibly only by the player associated with the most recent demolition.

If the game could assign player ownership to furnishings it could allow for longer retention but that would be a problem for FC houses where the owner is the FC not a player.

It's another situation solved by having an instanced system so no demolition is needed and the player never loses their housing.

What could be done is that only players with permission to both add and remove furniture would be able to redeem furniture from the Caretaker. This of course would require SE to continue to log housing options even after the house is gone, but it's not impossible to do given far more complex logging has been achieved in games (though I'm sure some spaghetti code somewhere could make it difficult but I digress). It wouldn't prevent players from taking what they know doesn't belong to them but that's a risk anyway when you're actively sharing furnishing privileges in a house.