The Last Resort for Housing and Hoarders

[Sindele]

No, they didn't.

[Alltair]

I think we can all agree a house that isn't being used by their owner should be demolished. The developers agree or else they wouldn't have implemented the demolition feature. And the players agree which can be seen by the lack of sympathy whenever anyone loses their house to a demolition.

The only thing we disagree on is what constitutes as "being used". Right now it's entering your house at least once every 45 days for the game to consider your house still in use and not demolish it. And many players think that's enough.
However the argument can be made that whether the house is being used or not should depend on more than the fact wether you're entering it every 45 days. After all, decorating your house is the main and if we talk about personal housing only purpose of the house. I have to agree if your house just sits empty then it's not really being used.

The difficult part is deciding on the criteria that determine if a house is in use or not. There will always be players that disagree with whatever criteria are chosen, there are even players in disagreement with the current demolition criteria with some arguing it's too harsh and some arguing it's too lenient (like this post).

[Jojoya]

After all, decorating your house is the main and if we talk about personal housing only purpose of the house.

You're straying off into opinion here and that's going to cause disagreement.

SE has never stated what they expect players to do with their housing. It's advertised only as "your own little slice of Eorzea" on the NA publicity site. That would make it seem that the main purpose of housing is to own that slice of Eorzea, not decorating. Someone may want to use their house as a meeting space and undecorated, house interiors look nor that different from the main room of the community center at my childhood neighborhood park. While they of course had folding tables and chairs in storage for use at planned events, our Girl Scout troop would usually just be sitting on the floor in the middle of a room that was empty except for 2 folding tables.

As for decorating being the only purpose for a personal house, you are definitely incorrect. Many get a house for access to gardening. Others get it as a private space to do their crafting (though it could be argued that an apartment would suit that purpose just as well).

SE sets the definition for what constitutes use, whether we agree with their definition or not. Outside of the busybodies who love to stick their noses into other people's business, no one would care how others use their house if everyone had the house they want. It's only because not everyone can get the house of their choice that people go out of their way to find reasons why current owners don't deserve their house and should have it taken away.

[Khryseis_Astra]

SE sets the definition for what constitutes use, whether we agree with their definition or not. Outside of the busybodies who love to stick their noses into other people's business, no one would care how others use their house if everyone had the house they want. It's only because not everyone can get the house of their choice that people go out of their way to find reasons why current owners don't deserve their house and should have it taken away.

Exactly. And like you said I don’t think auto-demo will ever go away entirely. But maybe it could be extended a lot longer, or if we had a good instanced housing system, it could just turn the “unused” house into an instanced house instead of demo when the timer’s up, so nothing is lost. The game has no way of telling whether you’re just on an extended break or if you’ve quit for good, so there has to be something for ward housing to open up if someone isn’t playing anymore.

[Themarvin]

What is there not being enforced in the current ruleset? "You do not have a character on the same World on the same service account that purchased and maintains a free company plot" allows for multiple FC house ownership on the same service account.

If you're referring to players with multiple grandfathered personal houses from prior to 4.2, I doubt that there are that many left to make a noticeable impact if SE removed the grandfather clause (which they won't). It doesn't fix anything.

Continuing to slap more bandaids on the current system does not fix anything. What is needed is a new system that addresses all the concerns that players have had when it comes to obtaining the house of their choice. A new system doesn't even have to replace the existing system. Let them co-exist. It could turn into a good experiment for MMORPGs in general. Which of the systems do players tend to gravitate toward when allowed to choose?

If you are grandfathered, you stand above any other player in the game, and also instead of acting, which SE should... then they should not allow Private Pyle eating donuts in front of everyone that is being punished doing pushups.

[Knot_D]

yeah I know but subs accelerated it, they should be accessible to everyone from the island sanctuary after removing salvage from the game
should also not allow FC to transfer leadership if the FC has a house, they should be bound to the FC leader when it's acquired

Submarines are not accelerates it. Smart botters know that it's not worth to waste their time only to level the submarines.

Also my server's FC only ward still have alot of vacant plots (at least on Lavender Beds) and that thing helps to prove botters don't care with submarines.

[Alltair]

though it could be argued that an apartment would suit that purpose just as well

And that is why I said what I said. Getting a house "just" for chocobo stables or gardening or crafting in piece is just outright dumb as there's apartments that grant you stables and function the exact same as a house stable except at a cheaper price. There's inn's you can go to and many other private/solo instances if you desire to craft in peace, no need to shell millions on a house to do that. If all you wanted to do was gardening it'd be insane to spend the millions just for a personal gardening plot when you can just join an FC for free and access gardening that way, boom you just saved millions.

The only reason you'd want to do all these activities on your own private plot - activities which you can already do much cheaper outside of private plots - is the benefit that comes with it being your own private plot: the ability to decorate it to your own liking.
Hence why I said that decoration is pretty much the only purpose of private housing.

[Ghost_of_Ebina]

And that is why I said what I said. Getting a house "just" for chocobo stables or gardening or crafting in piece is just outright dumb as there's apartments that grant you stables and function the exact same as a house stable except at a cheaper price. There's inn's you can go to and many other private/solo instances if you desire to craft in peace, no need to shell millions on a house to do that. If all you wanted to do was gardening it'd be insane to spend the millions just for a personal gardening plot when you can just join an FC for free and access gardening that way, boom you just saved millions.

The only reason you'd want to do all these activities on your own private plot - activities which you can already do much cheaper outside of private plots - is the benefit that comes with it being your own private plot: the ability to decorate it to your own liking.
Hence why I said that decoration is pretty much the only purpose of private housing.

I own an M-size house with the main reason I can have 19 gardening plots I can use for my own pleasure, so you can call me "dumb." There are such dumb people existing, but the fact remains that there are people who own houses with gardening being the primary reason.

Apartments only allow a measly 2 plots, and what you can grow is limited.
FC-owned plots are not always available for your personal use whenever the heck you want, which is a bother.
Some FCs have the FC owner pretty much using their garden plots on their own, and some FC houses don't have gardening plots so the problem remains.

[Jojoya]

If all you wanted to do was gardening it'd be insane to spend the millions just for a personal gardening plot when you can just join an FC for free and access gardening that way, boom you just saved millions.

You're assuming the FC isn't using their garden patches to grow things like Thavnairian Onions for their members and no one else in the FC would likewise want to use them.

That's not going to work out too well.

If you own a personal house, you don't have to worry about others wanting to use the garden patches. One garden patch can pay for the price of a small plot in less than 2 months depending on what you're growing.

You can make all the assumptions you want about the purpose of a personal house but they're still just your assumptions and others have their own ideas.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

yeah I know but subs accelerated it, they should be accessible to everyone from the island sanctuary after removing salvage from the game
should also not allow FC to transfer leadership if the FC has a house, they should be bound to the FC leader when it's acquired

Subs are extremely ineffective at being RMT, no serious RMTer is using them. You'd need 100's of sub farms in order to match the throughput the actual RMTers can accomplish by farming gil drops from dungeons with bot farms. To think subs 'accelerated' it is a hilariously amusing statement.

Think of it this way - when a set of 4 subs can bring back on average 1mil gil per two days using the 48 hour routes, and the buyers of RMT can order 100's of millions of gil at once, even assuming you had 10 sub farms, it'd still take you 20 days on average to get that gil ready - no buyer is going to wait 20 days, that'd be an absurd request. Even ignoring the fact the subs requiring a several month investment cost whereas bot farms are instant as soon as they use their stolen CC's to buy game codes. No actual RMTer is gonna spend 4-5 months getting submarines up and running just for the possibility of the RMT gil to be linked back to them and having their account nuked in an instant undoing half a year's worth of work.

Also what happens when that FC leader decides they just want to quit the game cold turkey and deletes their character? Transfer to another server? Join a different FC? The entire FC they're a part of is just automatically screwed out of their house by one person? Great solution. *clap*