Turn Housing Demolition on

[KuroMaboroshi]

You know, the war between North Korea and South Korea isn't over either. They are in a perpetual stalemate.

Which means no lives are actively lost and no livelyhoods are threatened, which would make it not reason to suspend demolition. To compare this with the situation in Europe right now is ridiculous. But to give a more accurate comparison: When Crimea was invaded and annexed, housing demolition wasn't suspended either, since it was not an ongoing conflict. It was a cold conflict, kind of like the Korean war at the moment. Problem is, that war now turned hot.

But even if the situations were comparable, which they are not, it is besides the point anyway, since Korea has its own servers, with its own patch cycle, shop, etc., same as China, sectioned off from the rest of the world and their version of the game. Even if you wanted to, with an NA/EU/JP/OCE service account, you can not play the Chinese or Korean versions of the game, or vice versa.
Meanwhile, JP, EU, NA and OCE share a common version of the game, have access to all the DCs and hence are in the same boat when it comes to demolition suspension, since people do play on DCs outside of their home region if they can.
If the Korean war suddenly turned hot as well, then Square would have to look into housing demolition suspension on the Korean version of the game.

Therefore, this arguent...

The precedent Square Enix has set will always beg the question: If SE shut off the auto-demo timer for X, then why not for Y?

...is ridiculous and you know it.

Remove the timer entirely and change the system so all players can have housing going forward.

On this though, I wholeheartedly agree.
People wouldn't make these threads where they graps at straws to argue that people in trouble don't deserve a break if they weren't desperate for other people to lose their houses so they can have a shot at it.

[Jojoya]

Questions of whether there are any good reasons to suspend demolition aside, what do you think the result will be if SE did resume the demolition timer?

Players who are able to play the game but have been taking advantage of the suspension for a break will log back in to reset their demo timers. Their houses won't demo so that doesn't help those trying to buy.

Likely a month will go by before we see the first demolitions for houses owned by those who can't play. Then over the next 3 weeks, there will be a small number of demolitions occurring.

Now wards 1-18 are designated for FC purchase and 19-24 for personal. Also keep in mind that wards 19-21 had a personal purchase moratorium in place when they were first added to the game (Empyreum being an exception, of course) so they lean a little heavily toward FC owned houses compared to most wards outside of Empyreum 1-18. FC owned houses aren't likely to end up being demolished.

You're probably going to see a couple of dozen houses showing up in the FC wards and 6-8 in the personal wards. Those 6-8 will see some heavy entries from the 1500 or so players still attempting to purchase a personal house.

Then the temporary supply will dry back up and you'll be lucky to see even one house appear in a personal ward each lottery period.

Would resuming demolition really have made a difference when that is likely what will happen? We've never had a huge number of houses show up when demolition has resumed. I know some players look back to 2019 when it resumed following suspension for the Gulf Coast hurricanes but that was happening at the same time as the data center reorganization and a lot of the houses that became available were actually because the owner had transferred, not because they had abandoned their house to demolition.

****

On the subject of where wars are occurring, one doesn't have to live in the war region to be affected by it. Military personnel on deployment can be affected. People working for businesses with operations in those areas can be affected. Ordinary people can be affected if supply chains get disrupted.

Demolition wouldn't be necessary in the first place if SE focused on fixing the house supply problem instead of clinging to their romantic ideas of bustling ward neighborhoods that rarely occur in practice.

[Velvet_Lunarfang]

None of which have the same global impact. We are being fair.

It speaks a lot to the amount of people frustrated and the poor structuring of housing that y'all'd love to just act like nothings happening so you can get your virtual house..... but yeah.

The globally impacting , exceedingly dangerous to the entire civilized world conflict continues.. lots of people have more to worry about than their FFXIV house and it's a nice gesture that they don't have to.




.. that makes no sense at all. "If you're going to have to change things because of stuff that happens, never do stuff"?





Well yes, we COULD ignore all the people affected directly and indirectly who have other concerns with their lives and yeah, you and people like you have absolutely no concerns about the war going on... but I would say there are a lot of other people who do.. and as that concern and effect has not stopped, just saying "well I'm tired of waiting and it doesn't affect me so turn it on" is bluntly, selfish as heck.


honestly rather than turning it back on they should just.. rework housing.

World events should effect game stuff. It is happening so far away idc. It has nothing to do with us. Lets move on we can't stop because 2 places are fighting boo hoo

[SigmaOZ]

@OP


Auto-demolition should not even exist in-game, did Yoshida not say he would never instate such feature?. Yet he did.


I've been continually subscribed to the game since the release of the PC demo and even though I'm not thinking of taking a break I feel threatened that my property will be demolished if I don't login for a given period of time which I hate.


Auto-demolition should be illegal because it's like forcing a player to subscribe or lose the property, I'm sure that's the primary reason why the feature exists and not to solve the housing scarcity.

[Stormpeaks]

@OP


Auto-demolition should not even exist in-game, did Yoshida not say he would never instate such feature?. Yet he did.


I've been continually subscribed to the game since the release of the PC demo and even though I'm not thinking of taking a break I feel threatened that my property will be demolished if I don't login for a given period of time which I hate.


Auto-demolition should be illegal because it's like forcing a player to subscribe or lose the property, I'm sure that's the primary reason why the feature exists and not to solve the housing scarcity.

So how do we fix the housing problem ? Do we just leave inactive people with their larges and mediums for years on end, even though they'll probably never come back ?

[Avatre]

So how do we fix the housing problem ? Do we just leave inactive people with their larges and mediums for years on end, even though they'll probably never come back ?

Two words:

Instanced Housing

That is the only way to fix it, but unfortunately SE likes the outdated, and dead feeling, neighbourhoods that we currently have. 99% of the time I'm in the housing wards I'm lucky to come across one or two other people, and even then, they are either AFK or teleporting away. This, of course, doesn't include during the lottery purchase/claim periods, since there will almost always be more people going to the empty plots than there will be any other time.

[Jennah]

You'd think they could at least, say, only pause it on the EU servers, and not the NA/JP ones.

[Stormpeaks]

Two words:

Instanced Housing

That is the only way to fix it, but unfortunately SE likes the outdated, and dead feeling, neighbourhoods that we currently have. 99% of the time I'm in the housing wards I'm lucky to come across one or two other people, and even then, they are either AFK or teleporting away. This, of course, doesn't include during the lottery purchase/claim periods, since there will almost always be more people going to the empty plots than there will be any other time.

This is not a solution, instanced housing is terrible. And it would put even more pressure on their already "crumbling" servers anytime there is anything out of the ordinary and a lot of people log in

[novamare]

Auto-demolition allows for a trickle of empty plots over time because some players will leave the game for whatever reason. Given the current housing situation, it's wasteful to leave those abandoned houses empty. And with the new lottery system, I imagine it feels better for homeless players to at least be able to bid on a plot every cycle (or as frequently as possible), even if there's stiff competition, rather than never even have the opportunity to bid because some abandoned plots are still taken.

The original suspension of auto-demolition made sense: it was difficult to even log into the servers. That wasn't the player's fault, it was SE's. (Sure, we can have the discussion about their realistic ability to weather a spike in traffic, considering pandemic-related supply chain issues, but even then, SE's response was primarily reactive rather than proactive.)

The extension of the suspension due to the "current world situation" was extremely gracious on SE's part. They recognized that reinstating auto-demolition at the same time as a portion of their playerbase would be unable to react would be a PR misstep. So they extended it. (And I think that was the right choice!)

But what I'm curious about is this: had the auto-demolish already been reinstated pre-war, would SE really have paused it again? I honestly don't think so. (And I think that would be a dangerous precedent to set, primarily because war and other world events are not SE's fault in the same way the bungling of the Endwalker release was.)

So I'm very sympathetic to those individuals who want to continue their subscriptions but cannot through no fault of their own, but that goes for so many more people than just those affected by the war. And in the meantime, thousands of active players are denied the ability to interact with a core (according to ads) game system.

(And yes, of course, the ideal answer is for SE to fix housing point blank period. But we see how that's going XD)

[Colt47]

This entire time I forgot it was even turned off. I'm not sure why they don't just have a monthly land tax or something that people have to pay to keep the house. The gil inflation is kind of nuts and I think a lot of people would quickly reconsider owning multiple houses if they had to pay a tax on each property they owned.

Seriously though, the only lesson to be learned about housing is that it is kind of a busted system done for PR mostly and the majority of players will never own a house.