20/10/2015 09:00 Reclamation of Inactive Housing

[arus2001]

Why exactly should inactive people who go on 6+ months plus feel the need to hold onto a housing unit/plot? Like Katlan said, it punishes those people. If you are inactive 1-3 months at a time, no big whoop, you can re-up no fear of losing house.

The meat and potatoes of it is SE's shitty housing system is biting them in the ass and now the players have to pay the price. Allowing someone to take an idle lot is one thing, but not destroying their house and any/all investment should they not catch the partial refund.

I mean, one of the perks of MMOs is generally knowing that your character and its possessions will always be there, right? This flies in the face of that notion. I brought up D2 because they deleted inactive characters back in the day, which may as well slippery slope into, "Why not do that here, too? They're obviously not playing!" It's just bad customer service for the year 2015 no matter how optional some may deem housing in the long term.

So, aside from that, it also strikes me as the lazy fix. Convert to instancing. Make overflow servers for the idle lots. I don't give a fuck, just don't take this route.

[lilbubbles]

oh noes guys the fancy gil sink i own is about to disappear but i cant commit 30 seconds a quarter to maintain it

People go overseas on deployments and stuff all the time, and they can't always install ffxiv and ENTER their house whenever they want.

The only way they could keep their house and not lose EVERYTHING is to account share which is against the rules, but whatever right?

I don't think anyone is mad about inactive housing going away so much as the requirements to reclaim the gil and items being being strict ALSO. That shit should be waiting for you even if you log back in years later.

[arus2001]

I'd be a bit less zealous about it myself were the game F2P, but a common theme in counterarguments tends to carry that "Fuck the peasants!" air.

[Fhloston]

Yeah I agree deployment, or even falling on hard times and having to un-sub for $ happens. But yeah like you said account sharing is their only option at that point.

House got repo'd. Please look forward to it.

[solracht]

There's plenty of active players who don't rush content

these forums truly are the OF now

[Fhloston]

these forums truly are the OF now

You must've missed posts in the past saying people here (most, not all) are the minority of end gamers, and players that zerg thru content.

[Pruviant]

If you aren't going to play then you don't need a house.

The only reason I can think of that it would be "unfair" is if you were forced to take a break longer than 80 days. If you take breaks on your own because the game is "too boring" or "cleared everything already, nothing to do", then kick rocks already and find another game that suits you. It has been my experience that the same people that are taking extended breaks are the ones bitching about everything anyway. Games are supposed to be fun ... if it's not fun then why are you here?

So, aside from that, it also strikes me as the lazy fix. Convert to instancing. Make overflow servers for the idle lots. I don't give a fuck, just don't take this route.

If only they would make numerous instances of the same housing areas. They could even call them "Wards".

owait....

[arus2001]

Let's not confuse true on-demand instancing with what's basically cloned zones, shall we?

[Alkar]

It's funny how gil is either "useless" or "a reason to come back" depending on the conversation. Could they keep the money and stuff there for a longer period of time? Sure. Is it a big deal? No.
And are we really comparing characters with housing now?

[Hellfury]

There's no ingame method of getting the gil back from the house purchase though is there short of selling the entire FC to some other pc though, is there? Outside of now letting it expire and get 80% I mean?

[Alkar]

There's no ingame method of getting the gil back from the house purchase though is there short of selling the entire FC to some other pc though, is there? Outside of now letting it expire and get 80% I mean?

Right, you can't sell plots.

[Seravi Edalborez]

Personally, I don't give a fuck about losing the house. I only care that they put a time limit on reclaiming the gil / Iguessfurniturebutnotlikeitmatterswithoutahouse. It doesn't encourage me to return "on time", it encourages me to stay away. I don't even care that much about the gil either, just that they put it on a timer instead of letting it hang indefinitely puts a bad taste in my mouth.

You know when kids complain when you take a toy away, even if they weren't playing with it? It's like that. Yes I realize I'm comparing people complaining about this unfavorably to children, including myself.

I'm not about to compare one storage system to another but surely we could cut 1.0 item reclaim (how many people played 1.0 but have never considered coming back to ARR, at this point?) and extend the time period for housing gil reclaim. I mean they discontinued Cracked Materia for whatever reason. Probably not a storage reason, probably just so people couldn't continue to hoard going into HW.

[Kaisha]

How about they just send the gil via system mail? SE can never keep shit simple, they'd rather overcomplicate the process instead of fixing the core issue of there being no actual private housing instancing for players to supplement the public FC wards.

They should do it just for the sake of having another guaranteed avenue of Mogstation income since they could expect every playing player to be a possible customer to sell exclusive/old-event furnishing shit to.

[Silenka]

The big problem I see with it is the utter hypocrisy displayed by the dev team here. I've heard Yoshi quoted (not sure if true) as saying the game is designed for people to be able to quit when they want and resub when they want. This housing policy flies directly in the face of the setup they laid out as far as casual unsubbing and resubbing goes. And while it may not be a big deal to lose a house for people who choose not to play often, this policy fails to take into account the people who might not be able to play for 45+ days due to whatever reasons they may have (tech, money issues etc.)

It's not a bad idea to free up housing that isn't being used. But the short time on the current policy is absolutely ridiculous. Like everyone else is saying, it just punishes those who are using the intended system of casual unsubbing and will end up driving them away for good. I know I'll be angry if I end up having to unsub for a period of time and ultimately lose both my houses. Plots are rare on Siren now

[Eldelphia]

Plots are rare on Siren but it doesn't help that we have FC's who have maintained houses with 3 alts but the group has jumped to other servers. At least now they may leave them behind cos they can get some gil from it.
I'm glad my group bought when we did, we're in Ward 1 and I have a private small house which I'm hoping to share with a couple of friends. At least that will help take the pressure off a bit too. S E really screwed this up.

[Seravi Edalborez]

The big problem I see with it is the utter hypocrisy displayed by the dev team here. I've heard Yoshi quoted (not sure if true) as saying the game is designed for people to be able to quit when they want and resub when they want. This housing policy flies directly in the face of the setup they laid out as far as casual unsubbing and resubbing goes. And while it may not be a big deal to lose a house for people who choose not to play often, this policy fails to take into account the people who might not be able to play for 45+ days due to whatever reasons they may have (tech, money issues etc.)

Yoshi saying something and then implementing something completely contrary to that statement? Never happened before.

I have some sympathy for the guy if it's not intentional hypocrisy and just something he's forced to do because reasons.

[BaneTheBrawler]

I do agree about the time restriction on the reclaiming stuff; that's silly. The complaints that 45 days was too short of a warning period was what i was making fun of, though.

[layoneil]

It's not a bad idea to free up housing that isn't being used. But the short time on the current policy is absolutely ridiculous...Plots are rare on Siren now

that's the exact reason for the short time though. the more rare plots are the faster people that don't have plots wants the inactive ones freed up.

If you aren't going to play then you don't need a house.

nobody needs a house, i have a personal and an FC one, since they trashed onions with those 3.0 quest i went two months without going to my house.

my biggest gripe is that it's tied to activity and not to subs. if people are paying their subs, they should be able to keep their stuff. someone breaks their arm and can't play for 2 months but still has to log in with one hand just so they don't lose their house even if they are still paying for it, wtf.

[Sho]

The meat and potatoes of it is SE's shitty housing system is biting them in the ass and now the players have to pay the price. Allowing someone to take an idle lot is one thing, but not destroying their house and any/all investment should they not catch the partial refund.

I mean, one of the perks of MMOs is generally knowing that your character and its possessions will always be there, right? This flies in the face of that notion. I brought up D2 because they deleted inactive characters back in the day, which may as well slippery slope into, "Why not do that here, too? They're obviously not playing!" It's just bad customer service for the year 2015 no matter how optional some may deem housing in the long term.

So, aside from that, it also strikes me as the lazy fix. Convert to instancing. Make overflow servers for the idle lots. I don't give a fuck, just don't take this route.

I agree that it is more of a conflict with housing server space (housing is already instanced as Wards; the real question that should be asked is if Housing is separate from the main servers or together). However, this comes with the added problem of housing being just popular enough that they have a fair amount of people complaining (on specific servers) that they can't get a plot of land. To come to this conclusion of demolishing unused land means that they have definitely run a check on everyone who owns a house/plot, and saw who is inactive and for how long (entire FCs being inactive). Considering this, it's not fair or feasible to allow players to hold onto said house/plot of land for an indefinite amount of time, simply because they invested in it when they had a desire to play. They are offering a refund as well (though 80% is shitty, should be 100%) for said investment.

It may seem like BS due to a lack of customization options, lack of more space or what have you, but it's definitely popular part of the game to go down this route. I think what they should really do is spin it off completely on a separate server, similar to how they handed Dynamis in FFXI. I'm sure the logistics of it would be far more complicated than what they have in place, however.

Housing not a big deal to get pissy over IMO. I'd say at least 80 or 90% of you bros would not quit the game with Housing being the main reason.

[Destinye]

I still say they should have slapped in Mog House with 2 floors and a private Island and go to town on adding new features. Since with the exception of floor 2, it did come out prior to XIV's housing so they had time to "port over" that system seeing as the inn room already adds the necessary framework since there's never been a time there were "too many people" using an inn room that you were prevented entry or being able to actually activate it.

And if there was....

No wonder even the chinese disapproved of the game lol.