Why Removing Houses from inactive is NOT a solution.

[Dyvid]

Well the entire concept was to make a player town, not just personal housing and FC housing. Even if personal housing was instance or you could customize your inn, you still need resources to manage all that data and remember how each little detail of each person. Though it'll have negative feedback, in the grand scheme plot reclamation is going to make this feature better for those who use it and able to add new things since they can clear up ghost towns. It might even open the door for personalize inn rooms down the road.

[Naunet]

in the grand scheme plot reclamation is going to make this feature better for those who use it

Why is it so worth SE's time and money to try and make an experience better for maybe 2% of their player population, when they could make a good experience for 100%?

[Titor]

Exactly what Naunet is saying. Even if every single house in every single ward gets removed and freed for new people, within a few weeks they will be full again and only 1-2% of the playerbase will have a house.

[Dyvid]

Well the entire concept was to make a player town, not just personal housing and FC housing. Even if personal housing was instance or you could customize your inn, you still need resources to manage all that data and remember how each little detail of each person. Though it'll have negative feedback, in the grand scheme plot reclamation is going to make this feature better for those who use it and able to add new things since they can clear up ghost towns. It might even open the door for personalize inn rooms down the road.

Just going to repost this with the key phrase underlined for you. They have to clean up their server in order to even come close to what you wanted. That means reclaiming plots that aren't used.

[Kinseykinz]

Exactly what Naunet is saying. Even if every single house in every single ward gets removed and freed for new people, within a few weeks they will be full again and only 1-2% of the playerbase will have a house.

Here's the thing....what you and Naunet think is ONLY true on very high pop. worlds, like the Legacy World you are residing on. On many other worlds however, housing doesn't sell out within hours...my server only a couple months ago sold out on all plots...and even then, occasionally, you can find one opened up.

So, while on all servers, there'd likely be a rush, depending on how many homes opened up, and depending on server populations, I'd expect several plots to remain available for a while. My server likely won't sell every home right away...and once housing does free up a bit on my server, you'll even see some folk WITH houses, moving and selling them to either move to a more preferred ward and/or to a larger home...this means smaller (and typically cheaper) homes will open up that are easier for 1st time buyers to grab (sounds a little like RL now doesn't it).

And while I have long believed that the very high pop servers should have more housing wards, than the lower pop servers....SE doesn't seem to be of that mindset, maybe in part to encourage people to server transfer (not that it's working obviously).

Still, with this whole 'evict' plan, it'd actually make finding a home on a large pop server EASIER because they'd become free at more /random times and not just at big patches. So suddenly, you won't have to try to fight the log in queues/lag etc on a patch day to maybe, hopefully grab a plot before they all sell out.

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People concerned about losing homes due to inactivity:

I believe one reason SE is implementing the 'house sharing w/ up to 5 friends' feature is to alleviate some of the potential of loss if you NEED to unsub/be inactive for a period that is long enough that'd it'd equate housing loss. Likely the system will be something like they originally intended with FC's and loss of the home 'as long as someone enters the home within x amount of days, the home is considered active' So basically, if you know you need to take and extended absence from the game, invite a couple buddies you KNOW are trustworthy, and who are likely to log in/communicate w/ you if they can no longer log in and they would be enough to 'save' your home for you.

Also, by allowing house sharing (finally!), it'll make it so folk like myself, can easily share a home with my husband and close in game friends and make it so that instead of us ALL wanting to purchase a home, we'll all happily share one home. If even a couple other people in each ward do the same, you effectively get more people in housing without actually needing to increase the amount of available plots etc.

But....judging housing from a Legacy world, is actually, not the best idea. I use to live on Excali...and like the folk of Balmung, if you didn't log in as soon as the patch went live, esp if you wanted a Small home, you were out of luck. But that is actually the exception and not the rule....it took a LONG time for housing to settle on most Mid pop worlds...and some small pop worlds might even still have plots available. The actual real issue is there are simply servers with too many people on them. SE should have from launch, had about 3-4 more Legacy servers to better spread out not only the actual LEGACY playerbase load, but this would have allowed for more room for their friends and family to join as well.

Overall, the housing system on Non Legacy' worlds more or less works (I think there are only 1-2 Non-legacy worlds w/ populations matching those of the Legacy worlds...at least on the NA/EU datacenters)...sure over time, things get sold out and crowded...but if SE removed the abandoned lots and allowed them to be repurchased, that would ALREADY be enough to supply the need/growth of the average server.

So the problem is the exceptionally high-population Legacy worlds, which could also be 'fixed' if SE either:
1. Put more wards on those worlds to compensate the boosted playerbase numbers
or.
2. Offered Free Server Transfers to people currently on high-pop worlds to low pop worlds.


But really, it's not doom and gloom for everyone. I know. I've experienced both sides of it.

[Naunet]

Here's the thing....what you and Naunet think is ONLY true on very high pop. worlds, like the Legacy World you are residing on. On many other worlds however, housing doesn't sell out within hours...my server only a couple months ago sold out on all plots...and even then, occasionally, you can find one opened up.

No. It's simple numbers. There are a finite number of housing plots. This number is MUCH smaller than the population on any server. Only a tiny fraction of a server's population will ever get to own a house.

You say that "occasionally" a plot opens up on your server. While that is technically better than the situation on higher pop servers, it is still far worse than what we should have. I mean, I can roll up a character in Rift or WildStar and have a housing plot of my own within a few hours of playing, that I can then customize to my heart's content. The only limit is how much gold I possess (well, and the 1,000 inside/1,000 outside item limit - soon to be 2500!) and I guess my own creativity. This is the kind of system we deserve in FFXIV, an ostensibly high quality, successful MMO.

[Dyvid]

No. It's simple numbers. There are a finite number of housing plots. This number is MUCH smaller than the population on any server. Only a tiny fraction of a server's population will ever get to own a house.

You say that "occasionally" a plot opens up on your server. While that is technically better than the situation on higher pop servers, it is still far worse than what we should have. I mean, I can roll up a character in Rift or WildStar and have a housing plot of my own within a few hours of playing, that I can then customize to my heart's content. The only limit is how much gold I possess (well, and the 1,000 inside/1,000 outside item limit - soon to be 2500!) and I guess my own creativity. This is the kind of system we deserve in FFXIV, an ostensibly high quality, successful MMO.

It's the system we have and the devs are doing everything to squeeze every last ounce of server space for it. I'm not going to pretend to understand the infrastructure of FFXIV or how they run instance. What you are asking for though is complete remodel "Housing" design from the ground up which would completely tear down the old system and require a lot of time to make a new one. Right now we need to focus on short term goals and that's reclaim housing plots. I do think SE should allow players to sell back their plot to a NPC and refund gil to players who lose their house in reclamation.

Long term SE should increase the amount of FC chambers and introduce player apartments that require monthly rent. They also need to fix the BS that FC can own multiple plots. Hopefully with the EU servers coming up this will help spread the wealth and reduce the taxing on current server loads. Which means they can relocate empty space toward housing improvements.

[Naunet]

What you are asking for though is complete remodel "Housing" design from the ground up which would completely tear down the old system and require a lot of time to make a new one.

I am fully aware of this and think it is the only way to actually solve the problems surrounding FFXIV's housing system. The current system will never work to provide everyone with a home.

[Syrehn]

I am fully aware of this and think it is the only way to actually solve the problems surrounding FFXIV's housing system. The current system will never work to provide everyone with a home.

There is a 99.9% probability that SE is going to continue to maintain the current structure no matter how much you're opposed to it or how vocal you are. Regardless of how old the quote was (posted in this thread and another), SE has clearly indicated their path and it's very doubtful they're going to do an about-face at this stage of the game. We don't even know if the entire player base would even go along with an entire housing structure tear-down even if you think it's the best idea. Whether you like their structure or not, or believe the reasons SE posted for why it is how it is or not, is 100% up to you but, IMO, you're fighting a losing battle.

[Dyvid]

There is a 99.9% probability that SE is going to continue to maintain the current structure no matter how much you're opposed to it or how vocal you are. Regardless of how old the quote was (posted in this thread and another), SE has clearly indicated their path and it's very doubtful they're going to do an about-face at this stage of the game. We don't even know if the entire player base would even go along with an entire housing structure tear-down even if you think it's the best idea. Whether you like their structure or not, or believe the reasons SE posted for why it is how it is or not, is 100% up to you but, IMO, you're fighting a losing battle.

This. The best thing you can do right now is accept the system for what it is and make suggest to improve upon that system that works for everyone. One idea I was thinking is give personal home owners the option to turn their house into an Inn by adding a finite amount of personal chambers.