Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[SweetP]

Have to put this here because I reached the daily post limit. If someone could be so kind as to step in to keep putting down the false celebration and get people to realize that this is very bad news for us and especially for the game's overall health, that would be great.

CELEBRATION!!!!!

[Neira]

EDIT: Have to put this here because I reached the daily post limit. If someone could be so kind as to step in to keep putting down the false celebration and get people to realize that this is very bad news for us and especially for the game's overall health, that would be great.

I've been debating this for I think literal months at this point, sorry. I'll post when and how I can, and I'm still amazed(not really, to be honest) at how naive some people seem to be in thinking that this will change anything other than SE's income, but don't expect the majority to grasp what you're talking about. My only hope at this point is that is backfires in SE's face, when people who are burned out and tired want to quit playing and paying but feel tied to the game, or in a half a year or so when people are still complaining about not having a house because this didn't add any extra housing.

[Ashkendor]

No. Certain people asked for this feature, namely people without homes, who just wanted to have them.

Nah. I've thought this feature was needed for awhile and I own two houses (FC and personal).

Argument 1 Was already beaten here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post3378983

I'm assuming you're talking about this portion of the post and not the alarmist nonsense about hungry wolves:

There are 92,160 houses on all servers, which is nearly synonymous with saying there are now 92,160 subscribers who will always be subscribers to this game. Even if one of them decides to quit, another will take their place and stay just to keep their house. They just ensured they will always maintain a healthy income, nothing more.

That doesn't "beat" my argument at all though because that's the entire point to what I said. I personally stick around for the game itself. I do enjoy housing, but that isn't what keeps my subscription active. If at some point I decide I'm unsubscribing, it will be because either I have quit the game voluntarily or I have run into real life money problems that prevent me from subscribing to the game. Either way, I will lose my house and someone that is still actively subscribing will have the opportunity to have the plot for themselves. Whether that be through me giving it to a friend that's still playing the game or through it getting reclaimed through the system, the key there is that the plot will become available to an active player if I myself become inactive for one reason or another.

Argument 2 Was beaten in post 81, but here's a recap: If they had a plan to solve availability, they wouldn't need this measure at all. The very existence of this measure indicates that they have no plan or intention of solving availability.

All you're really saying here is that since they haven't announced their plan in full, you don't believe that it actually exists. That just means you apparently don't think something exists until it's right in front of you. I mean, believe what you want about being able to take SE's announcements at face value, but that doesn't really win any arguments. Until they say that housing plans they've already said they are working on (including wards in Ishgard, additional wards in the existing housing areas, etc) are scrapped, there's no reason to believe that they are nonexistent.

[Nalien]

And SE benefits from doing this. They benefit because they don't have to spend the money to fix it. They benefit because almost 100k players will be guaranteed to always be subscribed until the bitter end.

This is still a notion I find utterly absurd... Can we actually get a show of hands for people who'll cling to their subscription just to keep their House? I don't think I've seen any... We've already had a fair few people effectively claiming the opposite, that owning a House would in no way guarantee their continued subscription should the game go south...

You seem to think SE has been scheming this whole system together to milk more money out of us (despite something like extra Retainers being far more guilty of that... Why am I the only person outraged by that?), you know what I think? I think this is just a ripple effect from A Realm Reborns launch... You know, the "catastrophic" launch where the developers were woefully unprepared for just how popular their game was... I think when they were planning Housing, they didn't think the game would be this popular... Should they have delayed Housing with that in mind? Perhaps, but that would perhaps have far reaching effects; Would we have Airships right now if they had to scrap their original Housing plan?

Like I've said, they got themselves in a sticky situation... I'm certainly not going to fault them for that though, and I'm certainly not going to act like this is the end of days... I'll admit, solutions like Private Rooms at Inns seem like simple solutions, I'm certainly fond of parroting that solution, but realistically I'll admit it's probably not that simple... Private Rooms are currently locked behind Free Company Housing, that gives them a reasonable idea of how many Rooms there would be (average FC size, number of plots, etc.), and clearly they can handle that many rooms. To add Private Rooms for absolutely everybody, they'd have to be sure the servers can not only handle absolutely everyone having one, but also handle an excess to accommodate what is apparently a growing playerbase, and clearly that isn't the case. You know what doesn't help with that? Wasting server space on plots that have long since been abandoned. Again, this is the first step. Of course they bloody benefit from this, do you think they want to waste server space on plots for players who've quit? With this Housing system, they absolutely need a system that frees up space when people quit, that is what this first step is.

[Gralna]

Fully support this, as a home owner.

[Reaperking386]

We asked for this feature btw...

[Vinestra]

We asked for this feature btw...

No. Certain people asked for this feature, namely people without homes, who just wanted to have them.

[Reaperking386]

No. Certain people asked for this feature, namely people without homes, who just wanted to have them.

I own a medium house.

[SugarPeanut]

Why implement this if they were going to add more wards "as needed" any time soon. Cuz that need has yet to be met for awhile now.

[Sicno]

The only kind of thing I think this may solve is that many housing wards are ghost towns, which is sad for the active players in that neighborhood. This barely does anything to solve the housing problem though. In any case it should certainly have been a longer period.