Time to Restart Housing Demolition

[Solarra]

Maybe we should be asking for Square to give some incentive to players to relinquish houses they are not using, first.
A lot of people buy houses and lose interest in them over time or they might have other more personal reasons for wanting to let a house go. If they own a medium or a large house, relinquishing means losing a big chunk of gil. I see a lot of houses on my server that don't seem to be used, maybe people are simply taking a break while auto-demolition is suspended, but if some of those houses could be released onto the market, it might help ease the present situation a little.

There are so many things happening in the world right now that starting auto-demoliton seems wrong to me. I'm sure most people who cannot play probably do have more important things to worry about, but I don't think that justifies taking things away from them in-game and making a bad situation even worse.

[Silverbane]

Let's get back on focus here, we're talking about the auto-demolition feature ... It's an easy fix that has been shown to add between 200-1,000 houses per server back to the market for active players to bid on, which goes a long way in dealing with the current squeeze on housing.

I absolutely agree, as is clear from my previous posts.

Frankly, I'd be okay with never turning auto-recycling of housing plots off because of a real-world crisis. As long as they extend the demolition time when the servers are down, on a day-per-day basis, I'm fine with it.

Because even displaced members of the global 1% (i.e., the population from which most the player base is drawn) can find a laptop and an Internet connection, login to the game for 15 minutes, and visit their play-pretend house, if they really want to.

[VerdeLuck]

Maybe we should be asking for Square to give some incentive to players to relinquish houses they are not using, first.
A lot of people buy houses and lose interest in them over time or they might have other more personal reasons for wanting to let a house go. If they own a medium or a large house, relinquishing means losing a big chunk of gil. I see a lot of houses on my server that don't seem to be used, maybe people are simply taking a break while auto-demolition is suspended, but if some of those houses could be released onto the market, it might help ease the present situation a little.

You just described the auto-demolition feature. People who are done with their house, unsub, or don't use it for weeks in a row give up their house and it goes back on the market for someone else to enjoy. There's no exclusive reward needed to entice people, just that they go back to their house every now and then and use it. If you want to keep your house then you can, just stay subscribed, and use your house every couple weeks and you can keep it as long as you want. If you can't be bothered to log in and enter your house for multiple weeks in a row are you really using it?

[JamieRose]

Who is Zepla? O.o

Someone who makes way too much money for being cutesy on teh intrawebz.

You ever hear that song, "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits?

Yeah, that's her.

[Elevin]

I saw that post. On my world there was only 250 houses released. Still a drop in the bucket compared to the number of Lottery entries that were made when Ishgard was opened up. I ran around checking all of the wards in each city while I was looking for a house and was astounded by the number of bids being placed. Some as high as 100-200 on a single plot. I saw one at around 260. While I didn't bother to get an exact tally, I am pretty sure that the total numbers easily exceeded 2000. Again, I reiterate, the only real solution to this problem is to make more and better housing. Your canibalistic attitude will only serve to divert SE's attention from the real solution.

Late to the party, on my world most smalls had 4-5 bids on them. Only the mediums and larges had 10 or more bids.

Even freeing up 200 houses from (ex) players with auto demo is 200 houses available to people actually playing the game. Having a turn over of houses means that people that are genuinely interested in housing and still playing the game may eventually be able to get a house. Especially if/when more wards are added. Having an active turn over with tens of thousands of houses will mean there will always be a supply of housing.

It certainly won't fix the issue on higher populated realms (hence why new realms and DCs are being added) but on lower population realms like mine, it will go a long way to solving the housing crisis.

[Jojoya]

What about all the people that have individual emergencies outside of this war that lose their houses?

I lost my house last time auto-demolition was enabled because my mother was fighting cancer and passed away. At the time, I think it was fair because I was not using the house.

You can't make everyone happy.

I know, I brought that sort of thing up in my longer post detailing my feelings about demolition.

No one should be going into a house purchase blind about the possibility of demolition if they stop playing for any reason. But in the end it's also SE's decision on whether they're going suspend the system or not.

Maybe we should be asking for Square to give some incentive to players to relinquish houses they are not using, first.
A lot of people buy houses and lose interest in them over time or they might have other more personal reasons for wanting to let a house go. If they own a medium or a large house, relinquishing means losing a big chunk of gil. I see a lot of houses on my server that don't seem to be used, maybe people are simply taking a break while auto-demolition is suspended, but if some of those houses could be released onto the market, it might help ease the present situation a little.

There are so many things happening in the world right now that starting auto-demoliton seems wrong to me. I'm sure most people who cannot play probably do have more important things to worry about, but I don't think that justifies taking things away from them in-game and making a bad situation even worse.

Not refunding any of the purchase price made sense back when there were no purchase timers or relocation could bypass it. It was a way to keep resellers from making even more gil.

Now it no longer makes sense. Resellers can only transfer a house via FC control. Changing the system so those relinquishing a plot get the same 80% as those who lose their house to demolition might help. Those who want more than the 80% have the option to transfer to a new world when those are available.

[Battler-Ushiromiya]

What about those Ukrainian citizens that don't have the advantages that a Zepla has? What about other EU residents that have had their livelihoods removed or endangered because of industry and supply line disruptions caused by the war? Do we not care about them

I don't care about them on the NA server, correct. Turn on auto-demo.

They can keep it off on EU servers, but I literally don't care whatsoever just because it's a western country getting invaded.

[BananaSnap]

Real life conflicts don't seem to register so lets not get too many chocobo feathers stuffing that ego and inflating some crazy ideas so the "dream" plots can become available but I doubt you'll be ready to bid on them. I'll take a wild guess that 80% of the Eorzea is ready for SUCH DESTRUCTION. LOL right.

[Batbrat]

Turn housing demolition back on. It's time.

And if the decision has changed, tell everyone upfront and honestly.
Tell us "housing demolition will never come back" so that people who are playing in hopes of getting a house can move onto a different game that offers what SE can no longer offer them.

Furthermore, the people who lost their houses to demolition in the past should be able to get their houses back too, booting out whoever got it when the lost it. Because fair is fair, and their emergencies are just as important as anyone else's emergency. Thank you!

[Darthgummibear]

This entire conversation would be moot if we had instanced housing instead of this stupid ward system.