Please, make auto-demolition 90-120 days. It's time.

[AshtonCrowe]

I think it's time for SE to put it's money where it's mouth is with the "Go play other games" talk.

Give us the chance to do that, while letting us return to our gacha-roll system houses we lucked into, taking breaks for content and returning when theres something actually to do in the game.

They will never do this, You'd have more luck getting a toddler to admit they did something wrong w/o using threats / timeouts. So many people would unsub and only resub on the 3rd month. Square Enix loses 40$ per person this way, That adds up quickly.

It's the same reason why they adamantly refuse to address the housing shortage.

Only way it would ever happen is, If you aren't subbed for even 1s your house everything inside immediately goes up for sale.

[hydralus]

Yes, when I bought the house, I knew it would get demolished if I unsubbed and logged out for too long. But when I (and many others I wager) bought the house, I still trusted the dev team to keep making a good game. Even if there were some low points, I still believed they could make a good story and interesting content.

Now, they have delivered the exact opposite. Dawntrail's story was terrible. The role quests were crap. The dungeons and raids have been utterly uninteresting and unappealing. And the graphical "update" actually made every NPC and my WoLs look about a zillion times worse. If ONE of these things were true but everything else was fine, we wouldn't be having this conversation because I'd have *something* to hold onto as a reason to keep paying my sub.

But right now, the only reason I have to keep paying is the house. That's not right. Especially with Yoshi-P doing his, "Go play other games" schtick. How are we meant to do that if they actively punish us for doing it by taking away the housing they've intentionally made scarce?

You asked what the difference was? During the previous expansions, the story, the side content, etc. All of it was simply written better. Did it have its issues? Yeah. But even at its lowest points (i.e. The Gyr Abania half of StB and most of the EW patches), it was still LEAGUES better than the Disney-esque, corporate slop we were given in Dawntrail.

And when you have such a colossal drop in quality, you should expect people's trust to be shaken and for them to maybe want to back off for a little bit until you do something to prove you can actually do better.

But when you refuse to change a system that effectively prevents your most loyal customers from expressing their discontent in the ONLY way that actually leads to real change (i.e. cutting into the bottom line), you only further erode that trust.

Like I said the story thing is whatever. That's like max 2 hours of content which isn't worth a subscription, at least to me. I am surprised that you feel so strongly about the dungeons and raids being uninteresting. Is there anything in particular you'd like to point out in how they're lacking?

[IndraSyngiwyb]

Like I said the story thing is whatever. That's like max 2 hours of content which isn't worth a subscription, at least to me. I am surprised that you feel so strongly about the dungeons and raids being uninteresting. Is there anything in particular you'd like to point out in how they're lacking?

I wouldn't say there's a single thing I could point to. It was more like, as I was going through them I just felt bored. Unengaged. Disinterested. Maybe it's because they were linked to a story that bored me to tears at best and made me blindingly angry at worst.

And maybe the story doesn't matter much to you. I get that. For some people, the story is secondary at best. But for I and others, the story was what made us care about the game. I never got stories in WoW like I got from 14. I never cared about WoW characters like I cared about 14 characters (I sure as hell didn't cry over any WoW characters like I did over Haurchefant). My player character in WoW never felt like she mattered to the story. It felt like she mattered in 14.

Until Dawntrail, where we were basically relegated to the same state as the WoW player character. We were just there. So maybe that's another reason why the dungeons and raids felt so empty to me. I didn't feel like anything I'd done had mattered in this expansion, so I felt no connection to any of the dungeons or raids. I was just IN them, doing things for the sake of doing them.

[Rinoa_353]

I wouldn't say there's a single thing I could point to. It was more like, as I was going through them I just felt bored. Unengaged. Disinterested. Maybe it's because they were linked to a story that bored me to tears at best and made me blindingly angry at worst.

And maybe the story doesn't matter much to you. I get that. For some people, the story is secondary at best. But for I and others, the story was what made us care about the game. I never got stories in WoW like I got from 14. I never cared about WoW characters like I cared about 14 characters (I sure as hell didn't cry over any WoW characters like I did over Haurchefant). My player character in WoW never felt like she mattered to the story. It felt like she mattered in 14.

Until Dawntrail, where we were basically relegated to the same state as the WoW player character. We were just there. So maybe that's another reason why the dungeons and raids felt so empty to me. I didn't feel like anything I'd done had mattered in this expansion, so I felt no connection to any of the dungeons or raids. I was just IN them, doing things for the sake of doing them.

I have been hearing this from the majority that care about the story felt we were just a side character when we have been the main character since 1.0 on top of the terrible pacing made the DT MSQ poorly received. Most would agree one core strength of this game before DT was us being the main focus of the story, not babysit from the sidelines.

[IndraSyngiwyb]

I have been hearing this from the majority that care about the story felt we were just a side character when we have been the main character since 1.0 on top of the terrible pacing made the DT MSQ poorly received. Most would agree one core strength of this game before DT was us being the main focus of the story, not babysit from the sidelines.

Indeed. And for people for whom the story is the number 1 priority, all the "super cool" patch content in the world isn't gonna win us back. And not only because our character was side-lined. But because the NPCs we know and love were ALSO sidelined and basically ignored. And that was after Square went out of their way to plaster the Scions ALL over DT's trailer. Making it seem like the Scions were gonna play a big role when they didn't do anything.

They even made up a million weak excuses to keep almost all of the Scions from going with us into the final area, while still making us bring Wuk along when she'd already LONG overstayed her welcome. And that was probably the biggest slap in the face for me, personally. (Along with the horrifically bad graphical "upgrade" that makes every CS uncomfortable af to watch as my WoL talks to the plastic-looking NPCs.)

When the devs do things like that, it not only makes me feel disrespected as a customer but also makes me believe they've either lost the ability to write stories in this world or they just don't care enough to try anymore. Either way, I don't want to reward them for their bad decisions but I also don't want to give up on the game entirely and lose my house.

It leaves me and many others stuck in this middle ground of, "But what if things DO get better but I've quit and lost my house? Then I'll probably never get it back." That is NOT a position we should be forced to be stuck in. NO MMO should have a system that requires you to keep paying a sub for fear of losing your in-game housing. It's just indefensibly scummy.

[Nevindaz]

Yep, imagine if you were in a situation that something bad happened to you and you need to be hospitalised or you need to move because of a war/natural cataclysm, etc. and you cant login in 2 or 3 months and not only your house but also your housing items which some are achieve earned and you cant aquire them twice on the same character they're just vanished after 2 months.. I mean It's kinda sad and weird to be punished like that and ngl but I expected that to happen when they changed the system. There are a few solutions (imo), they can choose to change it (except instanced housing), but they need to be harsh a bit with some wardlords who buy all the plots (I've saw a while ago on Empyreum a whole ward mostly occupied by the same person acc or with multiple acc idk).. so they need to manually manage this situation and I think here is also a problem because they dont want or they dont have so many devs to manage everytime this issue and a lottery system is way more convenient for them, les time spent by them and they belive (I guess) It's fine for "now".

[RyoXander]

I think its fine as is until they add more wards. If you don't want to sub, that's fine, but you shouldn't be able to hoard something others could be using while they're actively paying.

It's also incredibly dumb to even consider it from a business stand point. This is single handedly giving people the incentive to stay subscribed.

[Feina]

On the flipside of this, I wish they'd let players voluntarily release their houses in return for the same amount of gil you'd receive from auto-demolishing.

I've known players who've owned Medium or Large plots, then at some point no longer wanted to retain them. But there's no point in demolishing your house for no return of gil, when you can leave it to auto-dem within 40 days...but that's still over a month waiting time for a plot to go back into circulation.

Throw in that auto-dem has been disabled on both EU + NA for some time due to IRL disasters, there's most likely tons of houses which players would've given up by now in return for gil.

[Rinoa_353]

I think its fine as is until they add more wards. If you don't want to sub, that's fine, but you shouldn't be able to hoard something others could be using while they're actively paying.

It's also incredibly dumb to even consider it from a business stand point. This is single handedly giving people the incentive to stay subscribed.

I have been saying that they need to limit you only having one personal and one FC plot per world and I would be ok if it was per data center as well. They should force those that own entire wards to have to give up their plots. I proposed they are given 45 days to choose which plots they will keep and the rest will be demolished and they are refunded the cost of the plot and the construction permit. If they don't choose, then the game randomly chooses the plots to keep and demolish, this would free up thousands of plots owned by a few dozen people. They should also add the FC workshop to personal homes and also allow our alts to share and decorate them including alts from other worlds and data centers since the game already knows it's your account. Then allow us to have rooms for our alts, pretty much turn all personal plots to FC housing so it's all the same across the board. I also want a chest similar to the FC chest you can use so you can share items between your alts from other worlds and data centers even. I have so much housing things I wish I could transfer between my homes in Seraph and Exodus.

[yesnt]

actively paying

You almost got it.
Actively playing.
Which requires active content.
Which we did not get since expansion drop.

Which is the whole point of this thread.