Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[Catwho]

I agree, the 45 day timer is too short. In one of the many threads discussing this, we felt that 6 months was ideal and 3 months was reasonable. 45 days means that if a soldier gets deployed overseas for a two month TDY, they're gonna have to have someone else log into their account to keep their house, for example.

[karateorangutang]

I'm surprised they have not coupled a sell back option with this for those that would want to get rid of their personal housing, but didn't want to lose their investment.

[KadajSynthesis]

When I checked the FFXIV page today, I was happy to get some new information on how reclemation will work. But when I read myself into it, all of my euphoria was gone.

So here we are, my girlfriend and I, having a rank 8 fc with a good amount of gil waiting to get handed over to SE in exchange for a ward. Sure, one has to give all those abandoned house owner a chance to come back, but it still feels like an endless amount of time - 90 days. Srsly, we are totally sure that some ppl will just get logged in with their twinks, who are still in some dead fc, just to still have that ward as a backup. And even if they dont read the news belonging to this reclamation thing, they will get 2 mails - more than enough to just think "Oh wow, I will just wait for the final day, sub again (or just login with twink) and then I have another 90 days, but paid only for 1 month (or even for none)." - yep, seems totally fair.
Next thing is: All those dead fcs will get mails from SE. So there might be one clever guy thinking "Wait, my whole fc is not online anymore? Means if I am the one to login first, fc lead will be passed to me and I will have a house and a fc (members will be deleted) all for myself while I have paid like 100 gil for the house. Nice!"
There will be so many ways people can use to avoid that reclemation.

So lets put it this way: We have a completely broken, bloodspilled arm with lots of cuts and all SE can do is give us a small plaster (I am sure it is printed with some minions and/or other stuff you can buy at the Mogry shop) but not before pouring lots of salt onto the arm - in this case with implementing new stuff for houseowners (airship exploration and so on) in the next patches.

Maybe SE should think of listening to the players when it comes up to housing, as I read peoples opinions in here kinda often and most people tell us that there are mmos having a better way of house handling. To be honest, I only played TERA which has no housing system at all (okay, at least if you not belong to the 10 best guilds on server), so I dont know how other mmos handle that, but I read a lot about instanced housing and for me, this feels like the better choice.
One could have like 6-8 different "wallpapers" they can choose from and those define what the landscape around your house looks like. Maybe there will be even the choice to define the size via slider and as bigger it gets, as more expensive it will become.
I dont know, something like this, everything is better than what it is now.
SE wants the neighbourhood to be a place of social interaction? Srsly, whenever I visit those wards, I never see anybody hanging around there - lets face it: Limsa and so one are the places to be if you want to emote, read bs from other chars and what else somebody wants.

I am playing FFXIV since 11/2013 now - but I took a break of like 6 months before HW came out - and there were so many things that Yoshi promised us and that I havent seen yet nor where they mentioned again in any way, that I am okay with being just the dick paying SE for their inability. But with HW things get far worse than I expected. When we came back be decided to start with completely new chars and we worked us back up, not knowing what to expect from an expansion, that "offers so much more than most usual full-price games" - but even if one has lowered his expectations, one gets disappointed again.
2 dungeons to choose from when it comes up to tome farming, 2 primals with one of it just being nonsense to do as the gear you get is obsolete. Alexander seems to be kinda easy too as many players refer to it as "not even worthy to be compared with coils" and so on. Sure, flying mounts are pretty cool, but if thats the only thing one likes, things feel kinda bad.

I dont know what I am hoping for in the future, but I guess it will be even less than what I was hoping for before I read the first things about 3.1. Hey, maybe I will just stand around, watching guys talking about all housing stuff and how good it is and thats it. Thanks SE - for nothing, I guess.

[TheUltimate3]

This is a fun thread.

It is quite literally a "no win" situation for SE (and really SE alone).

This system is not perfect, but considering how plots are handled it is the best they got when dealing with abandoned plots. Yes I (and I assume SE) understand life happens that can keep you away from the game. No, that doesn't mean one can just hold on to limited space for an indefinite amount of time when there are other, active, players who could also want that plot.

They obviously can't just make more plots because if they would we wouldn't be having this discussion. Nor can they just remove the housing wards all together because there are people are active year-round with plots and they shouldn't lose their space.

Really their best bet to at the very least make the most people happy is to just develop an apartment style system. Keep the housing wards as the premium spaces, but develop a welfare housing area that use as little server space as possible (personal rooms, inns, ect). Keep the demolish thing as they have presented, because seriously if you aren't logging in even once for 3 months then you probably don't need a house. The only consideration I have is that this should have been done when housing was released so people would know before hand. But now they do and them the breaks.

[Dree-Elle]

Keep the housing wards as the premium spaces, but develop a housing area that use as little server space as possible.

This would hopefully satisfy all those clamoring for "instanced housing", but also ensure that those of us who actually enjoy being part of a living, breathing, dynamic virtual world have the opportunity to continue doing so.

[FriendlyUncle]

They need to just make housing instanced so we don't have this issue.

Yeah it looks nice to have neighbors or whatever and make it look lively, but all sorts of issues can come up knocking you out for 45 days. Military deployment, extended medical stays, financial loss. I got stuck in a hospital bed for 38 days with a collapsed lung, a three surgeries before I was cleared to leave. Even after that I could hardly even sit up without being drugged out of my mind.

There is no point to have housing in limited quantity, it made sense on a game like Archeage where housing provided a means to an end, materials to craft castles/trade packages/warships. But it offers no advantage in 14, they should just make it an instanced zone, everyone can get a house much like how WildStar handles it.

Another issue that comes up especially with something like this new EU server move. What happens to our houses/FC house if we need to transfer? We have to ditch it AND lose all the gil due to transfer restrictions on currency in place. If they instance the housing the issue goes away. The house is on its own instance and could be accessed from whatever server you find yourself on.

Also Lexia stop white knighting this shit development decision, you shouldn't HAVE to rely on someone else in your family or friend to log onto your game for you while you are crippled or being shot at to avoid losing shit in a game you are currently paying for all because you couldn't get signed in. Its stupid, stop wasting the budget designing content you make obsolete in 3 months (or worse obsolete on launch like Bismarck EX), spend it on the hardware and move the housing to an instance.

Does anyone remember the tales of how player housing would be completely different from FC housing? I do, and we got a lazy implementation yet again. They had the chance to develop and actual fix to the housing issue and instead opted to keep it as a limited resource and just start yanking houses from people potentially because they were UNABLE to sign on. Not because they did not want to. It's like with every patch they actively avoid a logical fix to the issue at hand and decide to go with some half thought out band-aid fix that'll shut people up for a patch or two.