Please fix - really poor game design

[Mimilu]

Well that up to the FC if person get kicked out otherwise the room remains intact as long as the FC is around and decides not to kick said player. There are FCs out there that kick players out after 30 days of not logging in, which then your items go to the same 35 day system that housing item reclaim has.

It's not so much for when you get kicked out of the FC but more when you're room is destroyed, which is a byproduct of you, in some fashion, leaving an FC.

[worldofneil]

It's not so much for when you get kicked out of the FC but more when you're room is destroyed, which is a byproduct of you, in some fashion, leaving an FC.

But it's nothing to do with SE why you left the FC.

They send out the housing emails because it's their direct actions which will result in your house being lost. With losing a FC room it's nothing to do with them if/when that happens, they didn't instigate it.

Sure it'd be nice if they emailed at the same time someone got removed from a FC to warn them they only have 35 days to reclaim items etc, but they probably don't want to get involved in what is really an internal matter. Also if they're going to start sending out emails it's one more thing they have to keep doing and doing correctly otherwise people would complain if one didn't work and right now they have no responsibility at all.

[dejiko_san]

I just came back to the game after a 6 month break to find the Free Company I was a part of no longer exists. I quickly joined another and re-purchased private quarters, only to find all my stuff is gone.

This is an extremely poor game design. The amount of time/energy/material and money I spent on items completely went to waste. A player cannot help the fact that Free Companies disband, so why would you ever have the game delete all of those items? It makes no sense. It's bad enough the game charges you over and over for private quarters, another silly design, but deleting the items is a whole new low.

How bout this as an idea: When you think/know you're going to be offline for a certain amount of weeks/months, move everything that you care about (and that you can move) onto a retainer.

The FC house/room will be gone but your objects you saved will still be on your retainer waiting for you.

[Neira]

How bout this as an idea: When you think/know you're going to be offline for a certain amount of weeks/months, move everything that you care about (and that you can move) onto a retainer.

The FC house/room will be gone but your objects you saved will still be on your retainer waiting for you.

[CatfishCassie]

It's all good in theory that we should not be required to come back halfway through a break just to get our stuff back, but the reality is that keeping the data around for all characters like this would bog the servers down more than we think. The Calamity Salvager is merely the cache for the housing system in this case - you have to eventually empty that cache for the game to keep running smoothly, just like a regular computer. The resources SE allocates to FFXIV are finite here & need to be closely maintained.

Housing has basically turned into a whirlpool: it looks great & spectacular, but you have to put forth the effort to stay out of the tunnel once you're in motion (logging in regularly) or else you're gonna get sucked to the bottom and possibly die/get maimed (lose all your stuff due to inactivity).

As a programmer, I can say that if they're spending more than a 20 gigs of total storage on the calamity salvager, they're doing it wrong. The Calamity Salvager only needs to store the character ID and the ID of every item on it. Even if you have 100 million characters that have the maximum number of FC room items (50), that's only *maybe* 21-22 gigabytes of data on their servers, assuming they use a long integer for their ID's, which is way more storage than they need. I can store that on a $12 thumb drive.

[dejiko_san]

I meant for the next time he goes away not to fall into the same situation

[Iagainsti]

. The same goes for having to pay for additional private quarters if your FC drops you or disbands. The game is asking you to take a risk at spending a large amount of gil and not guaranteeing once that money is spent that you will continue to keep what you paid for.

I'm sorry, 300k gil is not a large sum of cash, and SE cannot be blamed that the FC you did decide to bank on lasting folded and you lost your gil investment, #realworld. The system in place makes a lot of sense tbh and doesn't require a fix.

[skeletonfingers]

I'm sorry, 300k gil is not a large sum of cash, and SE cannot be blamed that the FC you did decide to bank on lasting folded and you lost your gil investment, #realworld. The system in place makes a lot of sense tbh and doesn't require a fix.

Towards end-game, no 300 gil is not large. At the time I purchased my housing I do remember it being pretty significant. The deleting of items is what gets me.

All game design should run through 3 checks. (In order of importance)

1. Does it benefit the Player?
2. Does it benefit the Game?
3. Does it benefit the Developer?

Curious to know how you see this game design is benefiting ALL three.

[Nulstat]

You're operating under the assumption that those are the checks that companies use in that order. The reality is that you can develop a game without players - they are the disposable. Will you make money without players? No, of course not... but ultimately, the players are optional. Development is a business, and the business will do what they can to work within their limits for highest profit.

Which means disposing of the data that is unused, so that the data that is being used has a place. While I'm not saying you can't be upset about losing your things, you are paying for the privilege of playing in a creative sandbox - when you stop playing there, or paying to play there, they are no longer obligated to hold your spot and will give it to someone who is paying.

This game has 15 second server backups. That's insane. Even they know it's insane. Your 50 items and their data, no matter how valuable they were to you, were not as valuable as the space they took up.

[Neira]

You're operating under the assumption that those are the checks that companies use in that order. The reality is that you can develop a game without players - they are the disposable.

Do you work at Blizzard/Activision, Capcom, or Electronic Arts? I can't even dispute the point when it's obvious that you're right, and that it's a philosophy SE takes to heart as well.