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

[MsCroc]

Come on, do you REALLY think they'd make you lose it after just a couple of months or something?

It's funny because that's exactly the time frame SE originally proposed for house reclaim. I agree that sixth months would be a reasonable time for reclaim, although I would prefer for there to be no reclaim at all. However, I understand at this point that they just have to go down this route due to how crappy the housing servers are.

But they did originally suggest 2 months. And at this point I'm not optimistic about their housing changes not screwing over people, since that has been pretty much consistent ever since housing was introduced.

[Kayote]

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.

Yes, that and compensate the players who they decide to take the plot from. There is too much of an investment in housing to just take it from them just because SE refuses to bring their tech up to standard.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

People treating houses as a "limited resource" need to understand, they are not diferent from inventory and retainers. Houses are just a big inventory just as equiped gear. All houses are basically an item ID, icon and an asigned slot. Any player with full armory chest uses more server space (and yes THIS uses servers) than a mansion.

If people thinks that is ok to free something a played got just because he is unactive, we could also adress the problem by nuking unactive player retainers and items in said retainers.

The worse part of this all, is the signal people gives to SE by supporting this terrible measure: "Is ok SE, do that we were going to be fine". If this happens, forget about any kind of real solution in the near and far future, SE will just stablish a timer to empty unactive slots, new wards will be implemented maybe each 2 years with horribly high prices that will match what the previous prices were, housing will still be just a far away unachievable dream for the larger part of the player base, the fight between guilds and individuals for the scarce plots will continue... And players which for whatever reason are not active risk to lose something they earned the right to keep.

Besides, everyone here is really hyping the "abandoned plot stuff". Being realistic, not even a 5% of the houses have to be abandoned, emptying that will help as much the problem as using a aid band on a severed head. And in exchange, SE will have all the excuses in the world to not solve the housing problem ever, because "we did what the community wanted, we solved this".

[Syrehn]

Snip...

You're entitled to your opinion and we're entitled to ours. You're not likely going to convince those of us that support decay timers that it's a bad move (and many of us supporters have houses). The fact is that we're stuck with that they gave us. It's VERY unlikely they will demolish this entire system to set-up instanced housing and with their current server limitations, whatever they may be (poor coding, lack of funds for mass amounts of hardware etc.) some sort of decay timer is a viable option. We want active wards not dead ones hosting houses from banned or inactive players.

There might not be hundreds of plots free'd up right off the get go, but there will be some and that will allow active players to utilize this space. If those players go inactive for extended periods someone else gets to use the space; essentially they are recycling space.

[Catwho]

Let's make a distinction here between "inactive" and "unbsubbed." Your sub fee is your rent in this case, or more accurately, your property taxes.

Someone who is paying SE their monthly sub but hasn't had a chance to log in for a few months should not lose their house. They're paying the property taxes and there is clear evidence they plan to return.

Someone who has cancelled their subscription and hasn't logged on for six months is now in arrears on property taxes. What happens in the real world when you fail to pay your taxes? They confiscate your property.

I'd be totally fine with SE taking the land, refunding the price of the plot, and sending all the stuff over to the Housing Enthusiast for retrieval in the small chance the person who hasn't paid a sub in six months returns.

[Syrehn]

Let's make a distinction here between "inactive" and "unbsubbed." Your sub fee is your rent in this case, or more accurately, your property taxes.
Someone who is paying SE their monthly sub but hasn't had a chance to log in for a few months should not lose their house. They're paying the property taxes and there is clear evidence they plan to return.

Someone who has cancelled their subscription and hasn't logged on for six months is now in arrears on property taxes. What happens in the real world when you fail to pay your taxes? They confiscate your property.

I'm on the fence about restricting it to un-subbed players only. The reason being because SE never implemented a limit on how many houses an account could own. So if a scumbag player has 4 alts that are inactive for extended periods of time and they are all house squatting but play their main character (active sub) I don't believe those houses should be held in limbo from other players.

I do agree that if you do lose your house due to inactivity (however they define it) that all your indoor/outdoor deco items should go to the housing enthusiast.

[Pooky]

I agree that someone paying their sub should not lose their home whether they have logged in or not. And unsubbed players shouldn't have everything just gone either just for taking a break. That lowers the incentive to come back someday and that's not a good idea.

I feel that a player who is unsubbed for 3 months in a row or more should have their house and plot taken away, but also get a token or something in the mail letting them rebuy a plot that has fallen to its cheapest value. That would be a good compromise. Any furniture/decorations etc can be destroyed if storing them causes too much server stress.

I don't know if this will solve the issues though. I have no idea how many people on each server want to buy a house, compared to how many potential abandoned plots might open up. Whatever they do, they need to ensure that people who want to buy a house can, specially cause so much content is gated behind housing. At the very least there should be more than enough small plots. If needed, create an extra ward that is nothing but small plots. I am also in favour of someone's suggestion that medium/large houses be limited to FCs only, but I don't know how they can do it now cause there are quite a few individuals who own medium/large houses.

Something has to give though. At the very least, new FCs should be able to buy houses in 3.1, or them hyping Airship traveling and such as a selling point of 3.1 is just taunting.

[StouterTaru]

snip

You seem to think the only resource they are using is server hard drive space. Housing zones are up 24/7, and the houses and exterior furniture is downloaded by everyone going near it.

This would be the same as the equipped gear of a character logged in 100% of the time in an open zone, but I'm not aware of any unsubbed characters who remain logged in 24/7.

5% sounds very low for the abandoned plot number, unless you're talking people who haven't logged in for a year or more (counting welcome back free weekends as logging in).

I went through the first 50 FCs on my server with a house (search feature on lodestone) by alphabetical order. 15 of the 50 had no rank for the previous week or month. One member doing anything that gets FC points gets you ranked. That includes doing a dungeon, doing a FATE, crafting an item, gathering an item, doing a quest, etc.

[Xerius]

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.

Because they bought it with the promise that it would not be taken away from them.

[MageBlack]

not sure if it was already said but they also need to limit the amount of plots a person can own to ONE. Same for FC's