House Auto Demo'd when I've entered Recently

[Stephane4985]

They could show you the timer in the timer menu, that way people could make sure their timer is ok.

[ForteNightshade]

They could show you the timer in the timer menu, that way people could make sure their timer is ok.

This would be a good features. Just put it in the housing menu under Estate Settings or something. In virtually every case this topic gets brought up, it's always the person misremembering the demo timer or that one rare case where the guy crafted in his yard but never in his actual house. So making that more viewable would be nice.

[LilimoLimomo]

Regardless of where any notion of blame lies, I'm sorry for you loss, OP; I know from experience that it's frustrating to unexpectedly lose something.

In case it helps anyone in this thread, I've received an auto-demo notice in the past few weeks, and can detail how the system currently works. I received an email with a demolition notice. I logged in, walked into my house, and the instant my interior loaded an in-game pop-up message informed me that my house was no longer scheduled for demolition. Tenants do not get emails, as evidenced by the fact that my spouse didn't get one.

So that's how the system generally works. Can't say if there are any bugs or edge cases, which is always possible. But others have pointed out that if OP wasn't the actual owner and was merely a tenant, they wouldn't have been proactively informed about demolition nor would their presence have reset the timer.

[DrForester]

Housing demolition is a stupid thing anyways. If you have a house and a paid subscription, there should be no worries about losing your housing plot.

Auto demolition should only be used for account that have ended their subscription or been banned.

[Ravenblade1979]

So non fc housing. The owner of the plot has to go in to reset the demo timer. If you were just a tenant then you reset nothing.

[Themarvin]

You need to go inside the house that you own and interact with it, and make sure you are at the right one as well.

[Canadane]

You need to go inside the house that you own and interact with it, and make sure you are at the right one as well.

You don’t need to interact with anything you only need to enter.
And unlike others who will make claims about how it works, I can provide a demonstrative example.

https://youtu.be/rTZv40DHoo4?si=dWQ-qCOC7gZn707x

As you can see, simply entering the building gives you a message about the timer being reset if you close enough to start being warned.

[hynaku]

There are bugs in the auto demo. I remember way back logged out inside my house then login the next day to find it gone. SE just gives auto help response back and never helps you get lost houses back. All you can do is hope to win another plot in the lottery.

[ACE135]

Do any screenshots exist of people being in their house with the timer menu open that still says the house gets demolished? I think that would be the first thing I would do when something like that would happen.
But then that screenshot can't show if the person is in the right house and not in someone else's house.

[Reinha]

Do any screenshots exist of people being in their house with the timer menu open that still says the house gets demolished? I think that would be the first thing I would do when something like that would happen.
But then that screenshot can't show if the person is in the right house and not in someone else's house.

Nope. It's harder to show with screenshots than video but it's theoretically doable. It would require the date, nameplate of the character, proof of being inside the house, proof of being the owner and the timer showing (if it's not been refreshed). The date doesn't show anywhere in game (I think) but the support desk window has recent topics with dates on them. Connecting ownership to going inside the house could be done through the chat log by showing the placard outside + /playtime, and then going in and showing /playtime again. The chat log would show that the player is still in the same ward between showing the placard and entering the house. Example: [1] [2]. Truthfully no one is going to have the foresight to take those kinds of complicated screenshots in advance.

Even just a description of the timer menu before a house got demolished would help point to the kind of bug people could be experiencing. The timer still going whilst inside the house would point to the game not recognizing someone has met the conditions to refresh the timer. Or if the timer was not visible in the menu 1-14 days before a house got demolished it would mean the timer is faster for some people. The latter would be worse in my opinion because there would be nothing you could do as a player to prevent it. With the first kind of error you would at least know that you have 15 days to enter the house again and again until it works.

What makes it hard to pin point a potential problem like this is that the people who get hit are not the ones who are regularly checking their timers. They log in, go in their house and log out. There is no data being gathered prior to most auto-demolish incidents. The bug report forum has threads in the "working as intended" and "insufficient information" sections, but no confirmed instances of this bug happening. Collecting data would also be easier if the timer wasn't invisible for the first 30 days...