Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[FriendlyUncle]

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.)

This is still a bad fix compared to instancing. FFXI had instanced housing in its own way, Mog Houses. Not nearly as large of scale but instanced with customization so everyone could have one. WoW recently added instanced based housing with the war garrisons or whatever they are called. This if anything will keep players who had homes from coming back to the game if they decide to take a break because they will know a house the worked hard for/decorating will be reduced to 80% gil and the loss of rare furnishings.

With player retention the way it is, changes like this are making it easier and easier for players who were on the fence about leaving to just leave. And anyone who says just to leave and play something else, that isn't the answer SE should be looking for. They should want to encourage old players to come back into the game and get that sweet, sweet sub money again as well as creating content that keeps people subbed year long instead of subbing every 3rd month based on the patch cycle to see the new stuff. My fiance and I are caught up in the EU data center migration and at this point if the latency is too bad during peak hours, we will most likely end up quitting and giving the gil from the house to existing FC members. The thought of having to transfer to another data center and lose the money and items we invested, along with the gil transfer cap we just cannot get motivated to go back through all that again.

It's poorly implemented and I think is causing many people to question developer competence seeing them opt for such systems over additional instanced housing. Solracht's solution to housing was probably the best I have seen, physical wards for active communities, inactive moved to instanced for retention. P.S. I stalk your posts on BG. And Cat I was at your panel.

[Syrehn]

This is still a bad fix compared to instancing. FFXI had instanced housing in its own way, Mog Houses. Not nearly as large of scale but instanced with customization so everyone could have one. WoW recently added instanced based housing with the war garrisons or whatever they are called. This if anything will keep players who had homes from coming back to the game if they decide to take a break because they will know a house the worked hard for/decorating will be reduced to 80% gil and the loss of rare furnishings.

I shared a link in my previous post to a thread where I talked about instanced housing but I'll just say it here. As it stands currently instanced housing isn't a be-all end-all solution and isn't necessarily a "fix".

Finally, I’ve seen a few posts on the forums saying housing would be better if it was instanced like inn rooms are, so I want to point out that instances aren't saved. Nothing in an inn room needs to be saved; player housing, on the other hand, necessitates personal save data for things like furniture placement and character location. So, it would really amount to adding more land anyway.

I'd be willing to bet the biggest obstacle that SE is facing with housing is tied to SAN Storage; it's expensive. As seen in the above quote even in an instanced housing model all that data needs to be saved (object placement, character location, etc.). This means that SE would still need to purchase/set-up additional hardware/storage anyway; the same way they do with wards.

Again, just to reaffirm, the above means that more land for more players regardless of ward or instance = more hardware/storage = more cost. All that data has to get processed and saved somewhere.

[FriendlyUncle]

I shared a link in my previous post to a thread where I talked about instanced housing but I'll just say it here. As it stands currently instanced housing isn't a be-all end-all solution and isn't necessarily a "fix".



I'd be willing to bet the biggest obstacle that SE is facing with housing is tied to SAN Storage; it's expensive. As seen in the above quote even in an instanced housing model all that data needs to be saved (object placement, character location, etc.). This means that SE would still need to purchase/set-up additional hardware/storage anyway; the same way they do with wards.

Again, just to reaffirm, the above means that more land for more players regardless of ward or instance = more hardware/storage = more cost. All that data has to get processed and saved somewhere.

This is the same costs as adding new wards, albeit even more resource consuming due to a wards permanent fixture in the world where instanced it does not need to be actively loaded into memory unless in use. And looking at how often housing is actively in use, an instanced solution would be more efficient. A single ward holds how many houses with their external fixtures in a permanent state? Plus all the sub wards. Multiplied by 3 for each of the city states. So yes, they have to lay down some costs for SAN or VSA solutions, or the scrap some of the existing sub wards and use those resources house instanced copies of houses only called when a player enters it, much like how interiors of houses are handled now just for the whole package.

Creation of additional wards is more expensive hardware wise, and more resource intensive on said hardware the single instances, once the player is leaves the instance makes a save of any changes to storage and closes freeing it's resources. As it stands now we currently have 25+ houses of varying sizes and configurations consistently loaded, and then additional instancing for interiors which seems horribly inefficient. Does it look nice, sure? But why not cut the number of wards down, so people who don't care for the look and just want a house can get one. Shift the resources from those retired wards to instancing new player houses, and these 'additional wards' they say they may be adding could be additional hardware for the instances which again could host many more houses with the same hardware.

[Neira]

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.)

I think you emphasized the wrong part of your post. Change the emphasis around a little, and you're clearly in agreement with me.

[StrejdaTom]

Finally, SE you have my full support, don't back off because of a few people who log in once in a 3 months and want to have their house safe.

[Derio]

Yes no more of people taking 2 month breaks for a patch I guess. They will lose their house. Glad this is finally being implemented.

[Krylo]

The 1.8% number people keep tossing about assumes a few things that are patently untrue.

1: 100% of the player base can even afford housing. What's the percent that can? 10%? 50%? If 1.8% of the playerbase can get homes but only 10% can afford it, for instance, that means we'd 'only' need 5x the current housing to meet needs. If, on the other hand, 50% can afford it, you'd need 25x. And, of course, if only 2% can, well that's only 1.1x the housing needed.

2: 100% of the player base WANTS personal housing. Personal housing isn't that big of a deal. It's a status symbol that does very little for you--many of the people annoyed at the dearth of housing want FC housing so they can participate in airship building/ventures. For most of the player base a personal room is plenty. So what if 1.8% of the player base can have homes, 10% can afford it, and of those 10%, 90% only want FC housing? That means only 1% of the player base would need personal housing. It has a huge effect on demand.

3: That all the housing bought is personal. Feeding into the point above, if the average FC size is, say 20, if even half the 1.8% (.9% of housing) was purchased as FC housing, that effectively provides housing to 18% of the player base, not 1.8%. If the average FC size is 50, that's 45% of the player base. Etc. etc.

4: That nothing else will be done. More housing wards have been announced, as needed. However, removing inactive housing is necessary in order to make this a plausible solution to ever meeting demands. Further, doing this allows them to know how many wards they actually need. How many people are getting just FC housing, how many are getting personal, what percent of the player base actually ends up with access to personal rooms and airships, how much of the player base does each house actually, on average, house, and what percent of the people this doesn't serve could afford a house otherwise, and how often do houses get demolished (i.e. what's the churn rate)? Knowing all of these things will allow Square to know how many more wards they need to add to the game to create healthy housing churn, and an actual market that allows everyone to have a chance at housing while allowing it to maintain its status as something not EVERYONE can own.

It's an important first step to fixing things, and there's no way--short of completely tearing down the current system and rebuilding it from the ground up as something much less robust and social--to fix without doing this.

I'm not sure why there's even any issue with it, unless you have a house and regularly unsubscribe for months on end. In which case, congratulations, you're part of the problem.

[LineageRazor]

This was a much-needed change, and I'm glad SE is finally doing it. It won't completely solve the housing problem, but it's something that was long overdue, nonetheless!

There are people who quit the game, after all, and having their house lie abandoned when others could make use of it is a terrible waste. I'm a little leery at the whole "must access" thing, though for reasons others have stated, such as military personel on deployment who might be happy to maintain their sub but simply have no way to access their hosue until they return home. I hope that SE provides some method for these individuals to keep their house.

Even so, I'm glad to know that my ward will never become a ghost town full of barren homes. Even if my neighbors jump ship, eventually someone new will move in next door!

[Sir_Hermes]

I really don't understand why everyone is so butt hurt. If you enter your house on the last day of a sub, you can unsubscribe for 44 F'ing days, then, if you don't-- you get 80% of your Gil back... Oh no... -.- this should've put this in place day 1 of housing if they were going to go with this archaic form of housing anyways

[Seryl199]

I'd been loyally subbed since 2.0 beta, and only just recently unsubbed for a month, but would have been considered "inactive" for 2 months. I took this break as a palette cleanser, a chance to enjoy other games and really give myself the luxury of sinking time into something other than FFXIV. I've since come back refreshed, but only after a period of inactivity that would have forfeited my house. Had I taken this break around the new reclamation rules, I'd have had to log in on the last day of my sub just to walk into my house, then resubscribe in no later than 44 days to ensure I kept my house. The point of taking a break is to refresh yourself, not to feel the clock ticking down on your virtual estate's demolition.

I'm glad that people have the chance to get housing from others that have legitimately become inactive. I've vouched for reclamation in the past, as a homeowner, but having experienced just how short 45 days is, I don't think it's an appropriate amount of time to consider for demolition.