Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[ElHeggunte]

I'd like a clarification. Does one have to actually enter their house or simply be subscribed to the game to maintain their housing?

They have to enter it too. Which can easily be done by letting someone you trust, like a family member, log you in and move you into the house every once in a while if you're physically unable to do it yourself.

[adn]

They have to enter it too. Which can easily be done by letting someone you trust, like a family member, log you in and move you into the house every once in a while if you're physically unable to do it yourself.

Except that's a ToS violation. I certainly hope you're not expecting people to violate the ToS to maintain a player house.

3.1 Sharing Account Information. You may not share your account or login information (such as your Square Enix ID and password) with anyone except your legal guardian, your minor child, or Square Enix. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account and login information, even from your friends and family. If you violate this provision, you may unexpectedly lose access to your account to a third party without recourse against Square Enix. Square Enix will not be obliged to credit your Square Enix Account with Crysta or other points or awards, which may have been used by a third party as a result of the violation of this clause.


That said, you are correct, as long as your friend/family don't obviously give it away I suppose that would work too.

[adn]

There is! The game can be subscribed to for up to six months at a time, and the account can be set to "recurring payment". No mess, no fuss!

Unless I'm reading incorrectly, maintaining a sub alone doesn't preserve your house. You have to log in and access the house. I'm talking about situations in which that is potentially not feasible for people.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Unless I'm reading incorrectly, maintaining a sub alone doesn't preserve your house. You have to log in and access the house. I'm talking about situations in which that is potentially not feasible for people.

You would be correct. In order to cancel the timer, you must log in and enter your house. FCs could get around this by having another member do that, but individually owned houses mean either you get on or you lose it.

[Kling-Klang]

Cant they just make inns work as instanced housing...

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Cant they just make inns work as instanced housing...

Unlikely, since it would require a full overhaul to allow players to customize it. Because inns render the exact same static environment, it's very easy to load.

[Neira]

I wish people would realize that when you have large housing wards that take a few minutes to run through, from far side to far side, that have can have as few as 30 people in them from all over the world(potentially) with different hours and walks of life... not seeing people does not make the ward "dead". You could have all thirty people online at the same time in the ward and still see no one.

Also, something I've said many times, and will capitalize for emphasis, THIS ISSUE WILL NOT REMOVE ANY HOUSING THAT PEOPLE BOUGHT FOR RESELL. Just in case people have missed that fact or try to bring it up. Just because a plot is actually unused doesn't mean much if a person just bought the house to flip it for a profit. They can still do that, now they just need to log into their alternate characters. They may have to put a house on it to bypass that one rule about property without a home, but what's 500k investment on top of the 5m purchase when you could flip it for 10m+?

Also, to the person who said 1.8% wasn't an accurate number because it didn't include FCs... uh, yeah. That actually works in SE's favor. If we include FCs, the number will go lower, not higher. So yes, it's not taking FCs into account, but if we took FCs into account it would probably be around 1% of the total subscribers that own a personal home. Take the benefit of the doubt on this one.

[Fyce]

Also, to the person who said 1.8% wasn't an accurate number because it didn't include FCs... uh, yeah. That actually works in SE's favor. If we include FCs, the number will go lower, not higher. So yes, it's not taking FCs into account, but if we took FCs into account it would probably be around 1% of the total subscribers that own a personal home. Take the benefit of the doubt on this one.

My FC provides a house to 37 players. So, a single house plot is giving the benefits of housing to 37 people.

Why would you exclude that fact and only take individual housing into account? You are basically saying that only individual houses counts as "housing". It doesn't make any sense.


Besides, these (inaccurate) numbers can very much be used as "so it only impacts a very small part of the community. Meh. Not a big deal."

[Neira]

My FC provides a house to 37 players. So, a single house plot is giving the benefits of housing to 37 people.

Why would you exclude that fact and only take individual housing into account? You are basically saying that only individual houses counts as "housing". It doesn't make any sense.


Besides, these (inaccurate) numbers can very much be used as "so it only impacts a very small part of the community. Meh. Not a big deal."

And my FC has three active players and four personal houses among those three, on top of a FC house. So that's five plots consumed by three people. The reality with statistics is always a lot murkier than the theory behind it. Without access to the knowledge that SE has, we can't say exactly how many people own personal homes, how many own FC homes, and how many without either have money for a home.

However, to the point, I only take personal housing into account because the only numbers we can go by are subscribers and number of homes. It isn't exact by any means, and I'm not trying to pretend it is. However, it does reflect the maximum potential number of homes necessary to give everyone a personal house(5,000,000) and the number of houses currently in the game(92,160), to give us an approximate figure to work with.

Also, since personal housing is the system that has been botched since inception by SE, the system they decided not to actually design and instead just lump it on top of FC housing, and the system that is causing the shortage of homes, I think it is also the best point to address. If they took away every personal house in the game right now, FCs could live happily in the wards without a lack of plots for a very long time I would imagine.

Finally, all three of us have homes that look dead as we're rarely at them and mostly use them for gardening, or not at all in the case of the person who owns two, and I'm the only one that has any potential of quitting and losing it(because I'm tired of SE). Just thought I'd point this out since I'm sure a lot of people will be upset to read that first paragraph, since, in a nutshell, nothing in this change is going to stop three people from legitimately owning five homes, and that's five less plots any of you will be able to use. Go ahead and thank SE, they don't care, they just want your money.

[Catwho]

I wish people would realize that when you have large housing wards that take a few minutes to run through, from far side to far side, that have can have as few as 30 people in them from all over the world(potentially) with different hours and walks of life... not seeing people does not make the ward "dead". You could have all thirty people online at the same time in the ward and still see no one.

Also, something I've said many times, and will capitalize for emphasis, THIS ISSUE WILL NOT REMOVE ANY HOUSING THAT PEOPLE BOUGHT FOR RESELL. Just in case people have missed that fact or try to bring it up. Just because a plot is actually unused doesn't mean much if a person just bought the house to flip it for a profit. They can still do that, now they just need to log into their alternate characters. They may have to put a house on it to bypass that one rule about property without a home, but what's 500k investment on top of the 5m purchase when you could flip it for 10m+?

Also, to the person who said 1.8% wasn't an accurate number because it didn't include FCs... uh, yeah. That actually works in SE's favor. If we include FCs, the number will go lower, not higher. So yes, it's not taking FCs into account, but if we took FCs into account it would probably be around 1% of the total subscribers that own a personal home. Take the benefit of the doubt on this one.

The resale situation doesn't apply to any of the abandoned FC houses in my housing ward. I researched them for my panel at AWA when I discussed this topic. They're all dead FCs. All of them. One with a single member. She might log in to keep the house, or let it get reclaimed and take the money.

Personal houses? Perhaps. But I'm in a main ward and the majority of the abandoned houses are FC houses. (Heck, one is a lot without a house on it at all.)