Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[Toguro]

These forums and FF14 housing in a nutshell:

Yup And how do vultures live? They watch and watch and when the prize is in sight, they all go in and try to get it. And only a select few get the meal. The others are pushed out and left hungry

[Yeldir]

Yup And how do vultures live? They watch and watch and when the prize is in sight, they all go in and try to get it. And only a select few get the meal. The others are pushed out and left hungry

I hope you're not referring to the poor urchins left hungry on the streets, staring in through frosted windows at all the cakes and pies rotting away, that they cannot have because the fat sods who got there before them might want to have a pastry again someday, maybe - I mean, I hope you're not referring to them as vultures. That'd be pretty gauche - and let me tell you, I'm an expert on the rude and the crude.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person with a house that openly and aggressively defends the idea of housing reclamation. I know that can't be true - I just wish people in my situation were as loud mouthed as the "got mine, you can't have yours!!" crowd.

[Niwashi]

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person with a house that openly and aggressively defends the idea of housing reclamation.

Well, I've got a house and have gone as far as saying a housing reclamation system that was implemented well could be both a good and necessary thing. Of course, that's not exactly defending it since it's coupled with the observation that SE's plan is horribly implemented, the biggest problem with it in fact being that it won't work until they address the underlying problem of a housing system designed to be available to only a tiny portion of their players.

SE needs to fix the real problem. Once there's enough houses available for all the active players, then reclaiming plots from inactive players to ensure those active players can get one would be a great thing. It would also, at that point, ensure that anyone whose house is reclaimed could just replace it when they get back. (Of course, that also assumes they can get all their stuff from the house when they get back, which SE's current plan would destroy instead.)

They need to fix the underlying problem first and then add reclamation of inactive houses. They got it backwards (and then decided to throw away all the furnishings as well, so there's multiple problems here).

[Toguro]

snip

Of course it's different in comparison to real life. The point of that is that unlocking new houses will only allow the "vultures" that were kicked to the side to have a chance to get something.. or else get kicked to the side. The only way to fix it is so no one gets kicked to the side so "vultures" won't exist.

But if we put it in real life terms, if well-to-do people lost their stuff to the poor and hungry people, then the well-to-do people become the poor and hungry people.

Thus more vultures. Just a switch of who's the vulture.

But RL people who are deprived or hungry or suffering cannot be compared to people who don't have a house in this game...

[Yeldir]

...

But RL people who are deprived or hungry or suffering cannot be compared to people who don't have a house in this game...

But comparing them to carrion eating birds is A-OK?

You've got some weird priorities, buddy. (Also hi Crimsonwolf, this is kind of directed at you too, as you're calling me out for the urchin comment but ignoring the even more outlandish carrion birds bit.)

...

4: Combination of 2 and 3. If you create enough houses for the current subscriber base to be have a fair chance of gaining access to housing while increasing ward numbers and sizes as more people sub AND create a reclamation system, you create a system where you only need to create new wards when the game is increasing its sub numbers--and even then only when those numbers maintain for awhile--instead of doing so infinitely, allowing more money to go to things OTHER than server infrastructure.

Number 4 is the only solution that ACTUALLY works, and putting a reclamation system in first is necessary to begin to gauge how many more wards/homes/whatever are actually needed when they get added.

Which we know are going to be added. We've already been promised wards in Ishgard, at the very least.

This last bit is so damned important. Has no one been paying attention to SE's declaration that this is phase 1? They can't just add more lots forever without cleaning up first - they'd create an endless series of resource draining, budget strangling ghost towns. The real problem is that they took this long to get around to it. They shouldn't have listened to the complaints to begin with, and now they know it.

[Crimsonwolf3400]

I hope you're not referring to the poor urchins left hungry on the streets, staring in through frosted windows at all the cakes and pies rotting away, that they cannot have because the fat sods who got there before them might want to have a pastry again someday, maybe - I mean, I hope you're not referring to them as vultures. That'd be pretty gauche - and let me tell you, I'm an expert on the rude and the crude.

The examples of it being the housed rich and the homeless poor should really stop, especially in defense of this decision. The example only applies if there are actually homes available that people can not afford due to their price, and when that was the case, the personal housing prices were the same as FC housing prices despite assurances that they would be more affordable. Half of the home owners I know have less money than those without a home who are waiting. The more appropriate example would be that we're all at the soup kitchen, and some of us are eating while the others are being told there isn't anymore food left. It's not our fault that there isn't enough food to go around, and if we could share it(and will soon be able to), we would.

My small was purchased within hours of a FC upgrading to a medium, months after the smalls sold out, and I beat two other players to it. My subscription hasn't lapsed since launch, I play every day, and I do not agree with this implementation

[Dree-Elle]

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person with a house that openly and aggressively defends the idea of housing reclamation.

Rest assured, you're not.

[Jynx]

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person with a house that openly and aggressively defends the idea of housing reclamation.

It probably seems that way because even people who don't care about the system or may normally defend it understand it's a terrible bandaid that will do litteraly nothing to help the situation. Housing decay is fine but alone it's not going to decrease the population of available houses for players in the long run. One or maybe two waves of house tear downs and we will be back to square one, no space for the people who want it and have the means to attain it besides the availability of plots.

They are wasting their time on this "Solution" when they need to put their heads down and come up with a real solution so that housing is available to every single player in the game as long as they have the means to purchase it. As it stands that would be impossible so they need to rework the system for personal housing from the ground up.

[Waeksyn]

They are wasting their time on this "Solution" when they need to put their heads down and come up with a real solution so that housing is available to every single player in the game as long as they have the means to purchase it. As it stands that would be impossible so they need to rework the system for personal housing from the ground up.

This. Unfortunately, SE has shown a particular stubbornness in not admitting mistakes and throwing band aids at a system that is fundamentally and irrevocably broken. A good example of this was the market ward system in 1.0.

[Krylo]

They are wasting their time on this "Solution" when they need to put their heads down and come up with a real solution so that housing is available to every single player in the game as long as they have the means to purchase it. As it stands that would be impossible so they need to rework the system for personal housing from the ground up.

This is a necessary component of any solution that maintains housing wards.

The options for keeping housing wards are basically four:

1: Leave it like it is, no one can purchase new houses except on the rare occasion someone comes back, at which point they may--for 10-100x the original maximum price. That is to say, leave it unattainable for most everyone.

2: Create more wards. This is a terrible band aid solution on its own, because SE simply doesn't have the server infrastructure to support infinitely increasing wards, which is necessary without reclamation. MMOs have customer churn--how many 1.0 players are still playing now? How about 2.0 players? 2.3 players? People quit, new people join. Over time, healthy populations gain players faster than they lose them--but all MMOs permanently lose players at a relatively constant rate. As players who have houses leave permanently or semi-permanently and new active players come in, SE needs to make new housing. The old players will never lose theirs so as new players come, SE has to make yet more new housing, etc. etc. forever. Even when FFXIV goes into decline and can no longer maintain sub increases, or even equilibrium, SE would still need to keep making new housing as even dying MMOs have new players. Doing this alone would force SE to, likely, turn off the game for days, if not weeks, while completely redesigning their data systems to support it, as well as constantly spending money adding new servers which would mean lay offs on the development team and the game basically turning into 'The Sims: Final Fantasy' where almost all of the budget is dedicated to keeping up with the demands of housing.

3: Reclamation. This is also a terrible band-aid solution on its own, but better than creating more wards. The problem here is that while the game continues to gain more subs over time, the current housing wards will not be enough (if they even are now--which I'd say probably depends on server, on mine? probably not). However, if subs drop or reach an equilibrium, reclamation will create a steady churn of housing that is roughly analogous to the subscriber churn, allowing everyone to have a house once FFXIV reaches a decaying state--which saves SE a lot of money it can try to use to stop any decay. It will also, potentially, create churn between patches and at other times.

4: Combination of 2 and 3. If you create enough houses for the current subscriber base to be have a fair chance of gaining access to housing while increasing ward numbers and sizes as more people sub AND create a reclamation system, you create a system where you only need to create new wards when the game is increasing its sub numbers--and even then only when those numbers maintain for awhile--instead of doing so infinitely, allowing more money to go to things OTHER than server infrastructure.

Number 4 is the only solution that ACTUALLY works, and putting a reclamation system in first is necessary to begin to gauge how many more wards/homes/whatever are actually needed when they get added.

Which we know are going to be added. We've already been promised wards in Ishgard, at the very least.