Time on House removal/reclaming is way to short! (private houseing)

[Dyvid]

People take breaks. Typical MMO hiatus lengths are 1-3 months long, from my observation. That doesn't mean they've quit the game and will never return. They're just taking a break. They deserve to keep all the progress they've had, not come back to find their house pulled and stripped and not even getting back all of their decor.

Chiming in with agreement with the OP. The decay timer is a terrible idea on its own, but 45 days is an awful timer. It needs to be longer.

I'm on break right now, but I still found five minutes tonight to check my Gold Saucer lottery ticket before I started to catch up on my DVR.

[Naunet]

I'm on break right now, but I still found five minutes tonight to check my Gold Saucer lottery ticket before I started to catch up on my DVR.

Breaks do not always mean remaining subscribed. Why stay subscribed if you don't intend to log in for a certain period of time? That's a waste of money.

[Dyvid]

Breaks do not always mean remaining subscribed. Why stay subscribed if you don't intend to log in for a certain period of time? That's a waste of money.

I'm on a 6 month plan but to counter, why should people not playing and not paying keep their house while people who are actively playing and paying not have access. Housing is a limited resource and SE has set priority to those who play and have an active subscription. May not be fair to people who quit for a couple months at a time, but fair to those who actively play and want a house. Beside's, we've had this debate before and SE has decide.

[Ayerinn]

Breaks do not always mean remaining subscribed. Why stay subscribed if you don't intend to log in for a certain period of time? That's a waste of money.

If you rent a movie, do you feel like you have to actively watch it several times a day, every day until you return it to not be a waste of money?

[wentouch]

Should be:

Foreclosure after 45 day period if no use, upon a non-renewal or cancellation of said subscription.


Goal is to make use of a limited allotment rather than to penalize a player. IMO, a player should at least entitled to its rewards and things, while that subscriber is still paying, even if that player is not playing.

Upon renewal, the period is reset to 45.

[Naunet]

Something else that really bothers me about the decay timer...

I feel like SE has taken hostage our ability to vote with our wallets on any other decision. Unsubscribing in a P2P MMO is one of the most powerful messages one can send - aside from posts on the forums - when something is displeasing a consumer. But now players won't be able to do so or risk losing a potentially completely unrelated investment. :/

[KaitlanKela]

Okay, so I'm kinda new. I don't have a personal house nor do I have any desire to buy one in any foreseeable future. I'm not really invested in this one way or another. So, my opinion is very much 'your mileage may vary'.

That said, the key issue is that housing is a limited resource. Whether or not is should be or has to be is a different issue, but this is the hand we've been dealt by SE. Given this, it needs to be treated fundamentally differently from character data, gil, and inventory items, because these are 'unlimited' resources as there will always we ways to earn them ad infinitum. If you quit playing, retaining your character, gil and inventory takes nothing away from any other player. Retaining your house, on the other hand, does take something away from the community.

I don't think time away from the game is a good measure of activity due to various real life issues that come up, so on that point I agree. I think subscription is, and I think that's been mentioned. If you own a personal house that you've spent a lot of time on, is it worth it to you to pay $12.99 a month to keep it stored, even if you're away from the game for whatever reason. If so, you have access to the game's limited resource because you're paying into the game. If not, then you're consuming it, keeping other people who are paying into the community from having it. Also, an inactive subscription cannot be blamed on hardware issues or deployment, because these things do not inhibit your ability to pay, only to play. This system also has the added bonus of being able to liquidate your house for all the gil it's worth and store the items in your inventory in advance, so you don't really 'lose' anything and should you come back you can purchase a new house through the system same as everyone else.

In this system, the player gets to decide. Is my house and its contents worth the monthly subscription fee for my time away? If so, I pay the sub until I come back and make it happen. If I'd rather have the real money, that's reasonable too, and I cut my in-game losses (or mitigate them as best as I can). But the important thing is that it becomes the player's choice, not SE's. Any people still complaining afterwards are basically wanting to have their cake and eat it too, which is unfeasible economically due to the scarcity of the item.

[Zephanoa]

I will say that for service members this is a really crappy situation. That being said, I feel like if you're not playing then why keep the house? It's like hoarding something you don't intend on using like once in a blue moon... I just don't understand that at all. I will agree with those that say that they aren't really addressing the issue by taking the houses back after the time limit. It will help a little bit but honestly they need to just add more zones and improve the zone management.

[Rina_Leonhart]

So question is, can your tenants reset that timer on private houses? Because if not, they should change it so they can. That way people in the military or something else that comes up that makes it so you can't log in for 45 days, can ask friends to make sure they don't lose the house.

[Blitzace]

I don't see the problem. Have a friend login for you? thats so simple. I'm sure we all have a friend here who could do that.
Its simple houses are on high demand. do the math, how many people play on a server on average? How many houses in total?

As i see it now, people who own a house are lucky. If you wanna keep that house? logging in once every 45 days doesn't seem that bad to me.
And Don't make it so tenants can't reset the process... That means 99.9% houses will never get on the free market again.