Re-enable Housing Demolition!

[Holy_Shenanigans]

COVID-19 is going to continue affecting everyone for many months, if not years to come. Does this mean that housing demolition is going to be disabled until the Coronavirus crisis has officially ended?

This isn't a viable solution to the housing problem. Adding new wards is only a temporary solution. And it will only benefit current players.

The best solution would be to re-enable housing demolition, and never disable it again. It's an essential part of keeping housing available as an option for new and existing players.

Who supports re-enabling housing demolition?

[LaylaTsarra]

They didn't talk about doing that in the recent letter from the Producer. That doesn't exclude the possibility but I would think they'd have mentioned it in their response.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...8d38461c5ae127

[Gula]

I'm currently out of a home and ability to play XIV due to unforseen circumstances and actually am concerned for my house. So I'm ok with them leaving it off for awhile longer.

And believe it or not, when seeing my actual home engulfed in smoke, I was thinking of my allegan melons.

[Holy_Shenanigans]

I can understand temporarily turning off housing demolition for a month or two when something bad happens. But the Coronavirus is not going away anytime soon. Keeping housing demolition on is punishing existing players harshly.

[Penthea]

I can understand temporarily turning off housing demolition for a month or two when something bad happens. But the Coronavirus is not going away anytime soon. Keeping housing demolition on is punishing existing players harshly.

A month or two? Every time demolition has been paused it has been for several months. And those were for natural disasters (earthquakes, violent weather) that only affected one small part of the world. Covid is a world wide issue. Manage your expectations. It won't be turned off anytime soon.

This isn't a viable solution to the housing problem. Adding new wards is only a temporary solution. And it will only benefit current players.

The housing system is so incredibly flawed that turning demolition back on will mostly only benefit current players anyway. New players won't have enough gil as soon as current players (for very obvious reasons that I hope I don't need to explain!) and depending on what server they're on new players may have close to no hope getting a plot from just demolition. Adding new wards is actually significantly more beneficial than just turning off demolition.

[Holy_Shenanigans]

A month or two? Every time demolition has been paused it has been for several months. And those were for natural disasters (earthquakes, violent weather) that only affected one small part of the world. Covid is a world wide issue. Manage your expectations. It won't be turned off anytime soon.



The housing system is so incredibly flawed that turning demolition back on will mostly only benefit current players anyway. New players won't have enough gil as soon as current players (for very obvious reasons that I hope I don't need to explain!) and depending on what server they're on new players may have close to no hope getting a plot from just demolition. Adding new wards is actually significantly more beneficial than just turning off demolition.

You're wrong. Adding new wards is helpful. I don't disagree with that. But it is only a short term solution. The best long term solution is to re-enable housing demolition, and completely end the practice of disabling it. This will allow housing to continuously become available for purchase, which will be FAR more beneficial, in the long run.

Disabling housing demolition is a nice sentiment, but it harms far more than it helps.

[Penthea]

You're wrong. Adding new wards is helpful. I don't disagree with that. But it is only a short term solution. The best long term solution is to re-enable housing demolition, and completely end the practice of disabling it. This will allow housing to continuously become available for purchase, which will be FAR more beneficial, in the long run.

Demolition is a long term solution that very often gives only a stupidly tiny amount of houses over time. I can't claim to know what it's like on your server because I have never played there, but on many of the servers I have played on even with demolition being on for a very long time it was quite often exceptionally rare to find an unclaimed plot. Especially on servers with a high population.

And I personally have never seen demolition being turned back on result in several ward's worth of houses becoming available. This time SE are adding 24 new wards. That's 1,440 houses on each server. There is no way that turning demolition back on could even remotely compare to that, even across the span of a year. New wards are a better solution than demolition.

The reality is neither adding wards nor demolition are the real answer to housing availability. As long as housing is a limited resource there will constantly be availability issues. What we need is a fully fledged instanced housing system, but sadly that is very unlikely to happen.

[Holy_Shenanigans]

Demolition is a long term solution that very often gives only a stupidly tiny amount of houses over time. The reality is neither adding wards nor demolition are the real answer to housing availability.

I'm happy they are adding wards. And it will help, like you said. But those houses will be bought up entirely within a week. So they should also re-enable housing demolition and never disable it again. TBH, fully instanced housing is what it should have been all along.

[Holy_Shenanigans]

@Penthea, I also think you are massively underestimating how many houses are freed up in a year thanks to demolitions. I would estimate it to be in the scale of thousands per year per server. Demolitions also become more effective, the more wards they add.

[Penthea]

I'm happy they are adding wards. And it will help, like you said. But those houses will be bought up entirely within a week. So they should also re-enable housing demolition and never disable it again. TBH, fully instanced housing is what it should have been all along.

Yea and the fact that they're bought up so quickly shows that we need more wards because the amount we have cannot meet the demand of a large population.

You can't very noticeably decrease the demand with demolition because it does not increase the amount of houses in the game. In addition to this most players hold on to their houses for years. Relying on demolition means sitting around camping aetherytes hoping someone left the server, got bored of the game, had unfortunate life circumstances or got banned.

Furthermore this game has gotten more popular with time so it only makes sense to add more wards with time as well.

I am not saying demolition is useless, because it's not. I got my own house because of demolition. But the fact is adding more wards improves availability issues far more than demolition ever could.

And before anyone says to me "but that's the same with grandfathering and you are against it!" I do agree that it is the same for grandfathering. Adding more houses is a far better solution for all than hoping someone will lose their house. Hell, it's why I want instanced housing above all other solutions! Because it would mean houses for everyone, and not only for those lucky enough to snag something before someone or after someone lost their house.