Housing abandoned plots, this is needed SE!!! Thank you!

[Aeliott]

This community has to be kidding me.

Yesterday, people cry how abandoned houses should be forfeit

Today, when such a feature is announced to be planned, people cry how it's a bad idea.

<______________________________>"

SE, don't back down this time.

It's not the community, it's just a small subset of people getting vocal now that action is actually on the horizon. I genuinely don't see any reason why people would be opposed to plot relinquishing within a generous time frame. Maybe these people are the lodgers in question, want to quit the game for 18 months then come back for 1 to tend their garden and stop playing again, who knows.

I have to wonder just how foolproof the system will be though. I know of cases of alts that are never played in long-dead FCs, that exist solely to hold houses hostage and have done for an extremely long time now.

[Kayote]

Taking away stuff from players because they are not active anymore is terrible, and doesn`t even fit as a solution, as the words of yoshida himself say, he thinks that is a solution, and is horrible.
All i read there is "Why would we work on our coding or servers if we have this lazy alternative that doesn`t even fix the problem but its ok for a few".

I hope they recosider just like at the first time they did thought of this.

Agree completely. If this was any other game I wouldnt care. However the housing in this game, stupid shitty mess that it is, paying 1+ million gil on a house only to have it taken from you because you take a long break is b/s. The worse part of it is this is all their fault for their incompetent design around the whole issue. Just another of their long list of thin excuses given for the crappy work they did on their server structure and design behind it. Plenty of other games have excellent inventory (WoW), incredible housing (Wildstar) ... yet SE cant manage to even begin to match them.

Honestly im starting to think the only thing theyre really busy with is brainstorming "How can we offer a fix for this through the Mog Station?"

If they do just take away players hard earned housing, they should at least consider refunding them a big portion of the gil they spent on it.

[ckc22]

Taking away stuff from players because they are not active anymore is terrible, and doesn`t even fit as a solution, as the words of yoshida himself say, he thinks that is a solution, and is horrible.

I hope they recosider just like at the first time they did thought of this.

Why should someone who doesn't play the game anymore be able to hold on to an extremely scarce resource. They only reconsidered the first time because of cry babies, hopefully this time they go through with it and stop letting lapsed players keep their current subscribers from enjoying the game.

[Ferr]

This community has to be kidding me.

I find more amusing how this community is defending one of the poorest implementations of perosnal housing ever.

Right, now they can't do anything else and they'll probably have to reclaim those abandoned houses, ok, then do it.
But SE fucked it up badly with personal housing, and players that have to leave for X amount of time (yes, it happens, people have RL stuff and have to leave even for months, for whatever reasons) are going to be screwed for the lies and lazyness (yes, personal housing is lazy, not talking about FC houses) of SE.

They should just instance personal housing. Hell , the interior of the house is instanced, isn't it?
You just can't implement a feature that only a few can obtain. You can get the most expensive thing if you farm/craft enough, you can get the best weapon if you practice enough... but you can't get a house no matter what you do. That is a really poor design beyond belief. I just don't understand how they didn't expect this.... oh wait, they probably did, but didn't give a damn.

They should rework personal housing for instanced content and stop messing. They can do it if they want to.

[Aeliott]

Agree completely. If this was any other game I wouldnt care. However the housing in this game, stupid shitty mess that it is, paying 1+ million gil on a house only to have it taken from you because you take a long break is b/s. The worse part of it is this is all their fault for their incompetent design around the whole issue. Just another of their long list of thin excuses given for the crappy work they did on their server structure and design behind it. Plenty of other games have excellent inventory (WoW), incredible housing (Wildstar) ... yet SE cant manage to even begin to match them.

Honestly im starting to think the only thing theyre really busy with is brainstorming "How can we offer a fix for this through the Mog Station?"

If they do just take away players hard earned housing, they should at least consider refunding them a big portion of the gil they spent on it.

Over a year is quite a long "break" if you ask me. Come on, do you REALLY think they'd make you lose it after just a couple of months or something? And while I'm not the biggest fan of the cash shop there is NOTHING in there that even touches anything like this. The closest thing was the bonding ceremonies on launch but there's so many free time slots it just boils down to if you want to pay for a little extra vanity. Get over yourself.

Yeah the housing system we have isn't thrilling, but that's no excuse to defend being able to keep a plot indefinitely with that hot air.

And to everyone else going on about "well what if I have a break"...gosh, it's obviously going to be a reasonable amount of time. 6 months would be a realistic minimum I would think, though 8-12 would also be fair. In fact a year is very generous. And if that timeframe STILL bothers you: if you're going on such ridiculously long "breaks" in the first place why on earth do you even need a house? Like I said earlier in the thread, the investment and work put into obtaining it means nothing if you can't even make the investment to actually play the damn game for even 5 minutes in over a year :P

[Mimoza]

The funny thing is, if you get permanently ban for a reason like bullying players in dungeons, your character won't be deleted and your house will still be here even if you are not able to log in anymore. I saw that happening once to someone, the house is still here, i often go cry in front of the plot because maybe one day i'll be able to buy it if it ever gets released of his previous owner who is gone...

In another topic, i think they should have made different options for private rooms in FC house like if you pay 300k you get the small, 1m you get a room of the size of a medium house and 5m for example a room of the size of the large house. It would have been in my opinion a good fix for the "put private housing in instanced servers" thing. Doing that the "server limitation" excuse wouldn't have worked since every player in a fc with a house can already buy a private room. It would have made the private room system more interesting aswell....

[Seryl199]

Perhaps they could send a token or voucher to help recoup the cost for characters that are displaced, so if they by chance return after an extended period of absence, they don't straight up lose their investment. I think it's a fair first step, as I made a couple million gil just playing through 3.0 casually, so I'm sure there are plenty of players out there that have the necessary funds, but are unable to acquire housing.

[LineageRazor]

This community has to be kidding me.

Yesterday, people cry how abandoned houses should be forfeit

Today, when such a feature is announced to be planned, people cry how it's a bad idea.

You seem to be assuming that it's the same people crying both ways. They aren't. The community isn't a hive mind, some people feel one way, others feel another. You can't please everyone, and so whatever you do, some people are gonna be salty, and quite vocal about their saltiness.

if you're going on such ridiculously long "breaks" in the first place why on earth do you even need a house?

Part of the problem here has to do with the dumb way that they implemented a lot of housing furnishings. While all furnishings are unsellable once placed, many furnishings - particularly the "trophy" furnishings created from rare ingredients from difficult accomplishments - can't even be retrieved without destroying them. My FC has a Leviathan fountain, for example, that we were reluctant to remove when we were redecorating, in spite of the fact that it clashed with the new decor, for the simple reason that we couldn't remove it without destroying it and it had a lot of sentimental value. So, we pretty much just moved it to an out-of-the-way corner and tried to bury it behind other decorations. :P

If someone gets a house, they can use it to display the cool furnishings that they've accumulated over time. If that house is reclaimed by SE, presumably all of those trophies are destroyed. SE ALWAYS wants to bring lapsed members back into the game, and they understand that a player might be discouraged from doing so if they come back and discover that not only is their house gone, but all the awesome stuff they put inside of it. It'd be as if SE removes all your gil if you return to the game after a long absence, only worse. Because of the loss of furnishings, a simple gil reimbursement doesn't automatically make everything hunky dory.

All that said, there ARE ways SE could get around these issues that doesn't involve redesigning housing from the bottom up (which is something they really should do, but probably never will). If SE could arrange some way to save the furnishings, that might mollify folks. Along with the reimbursement, if they actually came back to the game they could rest easy knowing that as soon as they're able to purchase a new house, they can move all their stuff right back into it. That might not be easy, granted, if housing remains as limited a resource as it is now, but it's something; all their hard-earned crap is still there and ready to be placed, once they have someplace to place it.

I'm guessing, though, that SE's solution won't be this elegant. They will take the easy way out; a timer of some kind, I'm guessing six months. If you're unsubscribed for six months, your house goes "poof". Furnishings lost. No gil reimbursement. Just gone. If you're going to be away from the game for a long time and want to keep your house, you will be required to continue paying for your subscription. It's as simple as that. Even if circumstances prevent you from logging into the game for long stretches of time, even something as serious as military deployment is unlikely to be able to stop you from wiring SE money. By this method, if you leave the game and have no intention of returning, then you probably don't care about your house anyway. If you leave the game for a long period of time, but are planning to return and don't want to lose your stuff, you'll have an option available.

[Kayote]

Over a year is quite a long "break" if you ask me. snip

My point is yeah some people quit indefinitely and never come back. Some will though. How many of us quit WoW during expansion X and came back years later? Its a perfectly valid thing to do. Not to mention, things happen. Its not always 'i hate this game'... people get called in for active duty, have to focus on school, new parents, etc...

I understand there is limited space and many players are ready and waiting to buy, but as someone else said earlier, this is a bandaid fix. Its half assed, lazy, and very inconsiderate of SE towards those standing to lose something they invested a lot of time into just to get, not to mention furnish.

[Khalithar]

Snip

You are right real life does happen and there are people forced to take very long breaks from the game, but that doesn't mean they should get hold on to their in game house on the off chance they may came back. One thing I believe we can all agree on though, at the very least whatever plots belonging to players that have been banned should definitely be freed up.