Why Removing Houses from inactive is NOT a solution.

[BunnyChain]

I've started to check up on plots. Went through 180 of them (Lavender Beds, Ward 1, 8, 3 [1-30], 6 [31-60]) and found 22 more likely to be inactive or 39 less likely to be inactive. If you only take the more likely inactive plots you have about 12%, let's say 10% are inactive - that would make about 144 from the total of 1440 plots. However my sample is somewhat small (12.5%) and there might be a few people who don't play but still pay a subscription.

I've checked a few more wards across the 3 housing areas on my server.

Sample size 90; Goblet, Lavender Beds, Mist; Ward 3 1-30

Likely to be inactive: 14 (Goblet 6, Lavender Beds 5-7, Mist 3-5)
Less likely to be inactive: 4 (2 of those are likely to be dummy characters kept in FCs with housing)

Taking only the more likely inactive characters/FCs into account = 12.6%.
Seems like my estimated number before is likely to be correct. c:

If it's right, you can expect about 181 plots to open up.

[StouterTaru]

If it's right, you can expect about 181 plots to open up.

I dug through the lodestone for the FCs with houses on my server, looked at the membership and previous week/month ranking for about half of the ~600 FCs with houses. About 20% of them had more than 1 member and nobody leveled past 50.

Since that leaves ~850 personal houses, and guessing that the abandon rate is higher for personal houses, I'm betting 25% reclaim rate on my server if they use 90 days, which would be about twice your number.

[Titor]

Sample size 90; Goblet, Lavender Beds, Mist; Ward 3 1-30.

This is extreme extrapolation/data bias. If you only took 1-30 from from ward 3, then yes, you are sampling the most likely to be inactive wards (ward 3 non subdivision is one of the oldest wards, which seems to be your sample)

By sure subscription decay, wards 1-6 non subdivision are most likely to have the largest number of 'inactive' players. Since wards 7-8 and all the subdivisions came out more recently, one would expect the number of inactive players to go down. Plus you did not state your criteria for judging 'inactive'. If you just started observing recently, within the past month, that is not even within the proper time range for housing relinquishment anyway.

Even if your number is correct-- Great! 181 plots open up.

They fill with new active players (probably within the first week!)

Now pretty much all the housing is active players, and everyone knows if they unsubscribe for a bit they lose their house, which means housing owners are going to continue remaining active to keep their house, and fewer will be lost due to inactive relinquishment.

What now!?

[Syrehn]

Now pretty much all the housing is active players, and everyone knows if they unsubscribe for a bit they lose their house, which means housing owners are going to continue remaining active to keep their house, and fewer will be lost due to inactive relinquishment.

We don't actually know yet if the inactivity timer is going to be based off of unsubscribed players; that's pure speculation so far. SE very well might include players who haven't logged into the game (even if they are subbed) for x amount of days as inactive as well.

[Ayerinn]

This is extreme extrapolation/data bias. If you only took 1-30 from from ward 3, then yes, you are sampling the most likely to be inactive wards (ward 3 non subdivision is one of the oldest wards, which seems to be your sample)

Even if your number is correct-- Great! 181 plots open up.

They fill with new active players (probably within the first week!)

Now pretty much all the housing is active players, and everyone knows if they unsubscribe for a bit they lose their house, which means housing owners are going to continue remaining active to keep their house, and fewer will be lost due to inactive relinquishment.

What now!?

new wards are added, that's what. Population of a city increases? You expand housing. changing housing to instanced now would piss people off to no end and I wouldn't blame them.

[Titor]

new wards are added, that's what. Population of a city increases? You expand housing. changing housing to instanced now would piss people off to no end and I wouldn't blame them.

That is what I/we are mostly pushing for. Why would you be so opposed for having warded zones for active players but moving inactive players to instances? It is better to have any house than no house. If the inactives come back they get their house, but in an instance to themselves until a spot opens in a ward. This is not a high server cost since it is just data storage which is really really cheap nowadays.

But it would not be nice to lose your house entirely. Especially if your house is a large on a high population server and costs 90m gil.

[JubjubTubs]

The people opposed simply should just admit that they have a fear and are afraid of leaving the game one day and knowing that 'their' 0101101 items that SE actually owns will be destroyed. Jubs believes not a single one of you against the removal of inactive account houses has any care in the world about what those people who don't play anymore think. It is all personal, it is all selfish... whether it be preserving thy self or a means to yell that their system is better than.

Jubs has made about 8 or so friends from simply walking around Jubs ward during the boom of lowered costs + PS4 release. Friends Jubs wouldn't have made otherwise. Thus getting involved with LSs likely wouldn't have gotten involved with otherwise... and making more friends from those LSs.

Con of instanced housing - You isolate yourself from everyone you don't know and all you have are your close friends. The avenues to make new friends close up while playing, wait for it... a freaking MMO. derpderp

[Titor]

The avenues to make new friends close up while playing, wait for it... a freaking MMO. derpderp

Ok, riddle me this. In my housing ward there are some really trolly/rude people that have caused me to have to keep my house locked since they would constantly troll it. I was trying to be nice, extending welcomes and even gifts to them when they had joined the neighborhood, but they refused to reciprocate or even appreciate the kindness. I really wish that I could move wards, and plan to if they ever allow us to move housing.

I have made plenty of friends due to other resources in game, but my housing 'neighbors' have been quite unpleasant, much to my chagrin.

Would I rather have instanced housing shared with my friends rather than those I am near now? Well, yeah. There are no opportunities for friendships around me in my ward, I tried.

[Nymeria2x]

Jub, if you ever saw the Wildstar housing system you'd see how wrong you are. Wildstar has an instanced system. Every player is given an impressively sized plot with a shack in the middle and a community board at the entrance. The board allowed you to pick 1 of 3 24hr buffs as well as giving you access to your closest neighbors, everyone's house on your friends list or in your guild, allows a separate list for people you designate as favorite neighbors, you also can use the board to shuffle through random plots to visit. The customization is amazing. You can paint items, resize, completely rotate, sink items into the ground or make them float. You can work your way to upgrading your house from the shack to a mansion. They allowed you to pick a node for each gathering class. For houses they had challenge courses you could buy and set up in your yard for other players to come try which drove the community to grow. Housing in Wildstar was superb and SE could really learn from it.