Reclamation of Inactive Housing announced

[solracht]

I don't usually post here and today did a really good job of reminding me why.

I think something definitely had to be done with abandoned plots/houses, and I'm fine with the idea that people who are active should be the ones with access to limited resources. However, everything about Square-Enix's implementation of this idea on top of the current housing system is outright draconian. Here's why:

• Furniture is destroyed in the process. Those pointing out that Square-Enix allows you to keep "most of your gil and items" seem to be missing the fact that all the rare/fun furniture in this game is destroyed upon removal and thus won't be available at the caretaker at all.
  
  
• There is a very strict time limit on retrieving your gil and items (35 days). As if losing the plot/house you spent hours perfecting wasn't bad enough, if you can't log back in or reactivate within a month you will permanently lose everything you invested into the house.
  
  
• Restoring access to your house takes new gil and time investments. You have to buy another plot (which should now be at its base price), another house (which you weren't refunded for), and then spend time arranging all the furniture again.

If these issues didn't exist then the Reclamation system would be more reasonable, and it'd accomplish a lot more than simply shifting misery around. Something definitely had to be done, but what they announced today is not it.


Ultimately (as others have pointed out) the real problem is housing shouldn't be a limited resource. The wards are cool, and I can fully understand the appeal of owning a little slice of the world, but there should be instanced housing plots in addition to the wards. Just picture the Reclamation system if instanced housing was in place: you would still be able to access your house after losing the physical plot (with no penalty other than losing its physical location in the world). That would actually be the best compromise - "real" housing for active players, instanced housing for everyone else.

What Square-Enix is doing by putting forth this change is letting its players know that this game will never have a "home" for them and that the game doesn't care for their long-term investments. It's a very sad realization.

[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.)

[Syrehn]

As someone who is part of a small "friends only" FC and owns a personal house, I said it in the Housing forum and I'll say it again here: Recycling unused housing from inactive players is a good thing. It's good for individuals/fc's who have been trying to get housing and it's good for SE from a business/financial standpoint. It costs SE money to hold that data and doesn't make sense that they would keep inactive player housing data over active player housing data while at the same time adding more wards.

To everyone that keeps saying instanced housing would be the best solution, it's likely not, and I talked a bit about why here.

Getting back to the inactivity timer... I personally feel that it could have been a bit longer. I would have liked to have seen 60 days vs. 45 days. 45 days feels like an odd number to come up with. Additionally, with this system being implemented, it would be nice to see unretrievable housing items have their restrictions removed; all items should go to the Resident Caretaker. I also think the time that the items stay with the Caretaker should be increased.

With regards to the inactivity timer on Personal Housing, it'd be nice if they'd make amendments to this when they implement house sharing to allow your house mates to reset the inactivity timer. It would suck if you invited your friends to share your house/garden etc. and while you took a break they got the boot while their crops were growing. :/

I think SE should add an option to just sell their house for 80% out right for those who just want to get rid of the house without waiting.

This is actually an interesting idea and would be a neat implementation for some players.

[lynn_]

I think 45 days is a bit short of a time period (idk, personally I think 60 or 90 days would be better) but overall this is a good thing.

[worldofneil]

The bottom line is that 99% of the people in this thread without a house, still won't have one after reclamation due to the insane demand.

The personal house reclamation should be 65 - 75 days.

But by asking for the inactive time to be increased it lowers the chances for people to get a reclaimed house as there will be less of them available as less will be reclaimed.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

Whinners whined enough for a fast solution, SE already has one for them. No solution at all and a justification to never actually come up with a solution.
These changes change nothing. Housing will still be a problem for the many and the whinners now will have a small chance of running for soon-to-be abandoned houses, leaving things... Almost identical as they are now.

But for house owners, these changes mean, literally, none of us can take a break from the game, be it voluntary or accidental, we are now, forced to log in to keep "our progress" (for those of us who consider housing elemental part of our experience and progression) if we don`t we lose it. And thats one hell of a bad way to implement things if you are, instead of solving things, forcing them into your players base.

Well, thanks SE forums, you made it, now you have no housing solution and you have utterly screwed house owners who now, aren`t allowed to be away from the game. /gg

[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.

[Ayerinn]

Well, thanks SE forums, you made it, now you have no housing solution and you have utterly screwed house owners who now, aren`t allowed to be away from the game. /gg

are you seriously blaming the players for bad game design? This is squarely on SE - they should be ponying up dedicated housing servers and adding wards while having a much more lenient reclaim policy (yes, reclaim still needs to exist but the timer is too short imo as I have said previously.)

[Zumi]

I don't like this at all its a nuisance to house owners like myself. This presents a problem for me since I have ocd, now I have to worry about going to my house every single day or I could possibly forget for awhile and lose my house. I play FFXIV every day, however I don't visit my house every day. Now I have to deal with the worry of going into my house every single day just so I can be sure I don't hit 45 days and lose my house. It sort of becomes an annoying chore that now I must visit my house everyday to reset the timer. There will be times where I am like did I visit my house today I don't remember better waste some gil teleporting to my house to make sure.

Instead of visiting my house when I feel like it, or if I want to put out some new furnishing that I got, now I am required to visit my house even when I don't want to.

They should just change it to inactive sub for 45 days you lose your house. If I am paying the sub I shouldn't have to worry about losing my house all the time.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

are you seriously blaming the players for bad game design? This is squarely on SE - they should be ponying up dedicated housing servers and adding wards while having a much more lenient reclaim policy (yes, reclaim still needs to exist but the timer is too short imo as I have said previously.)

In a part yes. Many are still cheering at this "solution". Encouraging SE in his way of "solving" things. Now SE has come up with a solution, and a considerable part of the playerbase so thinks so and is happy about it (wonder if they will still be happy when they realize housing will never be able for them just like now) and if anything happens, SE can "wash their hands" and say, without being mistaken about it: "We did what you asked".

So yeah, im blaming, in part, a noticable part of the playerbase for this.