Housing ReclamationFollow

As long as people are paying for their subscription SE should not take anything away from people who earned it.

SE should not touch something someone bought in the game and worked hard for. It should be up to the person how they want to use their house. By not entering your house no way violates the terms of agreement.

Edited, Oct 22nd 2015 2:53pm by Nashred

I tend to do that too in the FC halls: Verda has her own room set up with a private sleeping area in the back; Waenlona uses The Barracks room in the Dark Embers hall. Verdha sleeps under a picture of Kan-E-Senna and a Twin Adders banner, Waen on the bunk underneath the picture of Merlwyb. Both of them /doze to lay down on the bed before logging.

Now what would be really fun would be if you were still there, asleep, when logging back in again.

Basically similar to banning for whatever reason or none at all. Just because they can doesn't mean it isn't sleazy to do so.

No..but you agreed to it in order to play, so technically they're well within their rights to do what you gave them the go ahead to do. Terms are always a touchy subject, but in the end you're actually just leasing the right to access the game, so you don't own anything.

It can suck at times that's for sure, like it would suck to lose your house and such but 90 days of it not being access..it is kind of a waste of resources. I mean, even more so if you're online and not touched it because overall houses in XIV does nothing for you. Even in one of my time lapse videos I did that was over 2 days I didn't see the owner of my neighbor's house ever go anywhere near it.

I did see her by the Marketboard 80 times though. So in all actuality, it's just freeing space of people who don't want it/no longer play.



Unless they changed the notes since I last read them, the Japanese and German notes both stated 90 days total. 45 inactivity days, 45 days after that for demolishing.

90.

Edited, Oct 22nd 2015 1:16pm by Theonehio

It's 90 days. It takes 45 days for your house to be flagged as inactive, at which point the 45-day timer toward demolition starts.

You're right, this won't completely solve the issue of housing... but it will help. This game has a pretty high turnover rate, and this will open up more units to people who are committed to sticking around. It's way better than doing nothing, and keeping all new players locked out of housing for the rest of the game's life. We're stuck with the housing system we have, and solutions must exist within that system. Wishful thinking and wouldas, couldas & shouldas won't solve anything.

Also, I think you'd have to really search to find people who "want others to lose their houses." I don't think anyone WANTS others to lose their homes. As I just said, though, the reality is that we're stuck with a system that contains a finite number of plots, and it only makes sense that active players should take priority in terms of who can own plots.

What would be cool is a "waiting list" feature where people who put down deposits on homes -- say one quarter of the purchase price -- can be put on a first-come, first-served priority list for homes as they open up. There could be a list for each ward/house size. People who either turn down homes or don't respond when homes become available could get their deposits back; for others, the deposit would go toward the purchase prices.

However, if people are already angsty over simply visiting their homes just once every 90 days, then something like this would probably way too much to handle.

Edited, Oct 22nd 2015 2:00pm by Thayos

Pointing out the obvious BS in your BS.

There's a monumental difference between saying, "I want you to lose your house" as opposed to "I'd rather have nobody lose their homes, but since we have to choose, it makes sense that homes are prioritized for active players."

Speak for yourself all you'd like, but don't put words in other people's mouths.

Look through all of those OF posts, and -- assuming you don't take people out of context -- you won't find too many people, if any, saying, "You deserve to lose your house because you don't play."

Also, this ain't the official forums. Not a single person here has said anything remotely close to "you deserve to lose your home because you don't play." I haven't read any posts from myself, Catwho, Hyrist or others who claim to believe such a thing.

Seriously -- and this goes for everyone -- argue all you'd like... but to make this kind of claim is disrespectful toward people on both sides who are trying to be rational.


Edited, Oct 22nd 2015 4:15pm by Thayos

This is a slide I did at AWA discussing the housing situation during my panel.



If anyone "deserves to lose their house" it's the dead FC that never actually built it that I have circled. Leadership passed to a dude who is a 40 NIN who hasn't logged on in 8 months now.

52 WHM who is the only person left in her FC? I don't think she "deserves" to lose her house. However, that is a valuable medium property, and if she returns prior to reclamation, she could sell the FC and the house for a huge profit. Or she could not log on for the rest of the year and lose it. Either way, I don't think she'll miss it since she may not even be aware she's the leader now.

Edited, Oct 22nd 2015 9:05pm by Catwho

This is where we must absolutely revisit my comment on empathy. You're settling for this half-assed "solution" because you really want to believe SE has done all they could to do the right thing here. You want to prioritize people, thus marginalize, with zero concern for why those who don't make the cut may or may not be subbed. You then take it a step further with the repeated insinuation it's "just" a check-in every so many days when there's every bit an RL price-tag attached. You do not care how much they paid prior, be it in subs/accounts or cash shop purchases. This is not some moral quandary of sacrificing the few for the needs of the many. It's sacrificing a few for fewer still in a problem of SE's own making. Nevermind the flaws in this "solution" I've outlined in earlier posts.

I called you a sheep not out of some attempt to come off as an internet tough guy, but because you're simply rolling with the status quo and refusing to defend those who can not. "Vote with your wallets!" is a phrase you've no doubt heard before, but the irony here is that people who do so lose the ability to directly tell SE what they're doing wrong. I'm not about to tell anyone to sub back up so they can jump to the OF and voice their discontent about this. Heck, us doing so here is little more than a digital dutch oven. Nonetheless, if no one is telling SE they're ******* up, they're just going to assume everything's gravy, job well done, give themselves a pat on the back, and possibly forget about housing for who knows how long. It just strikes me as hella awkward you can have people not even playing the game caring more about decisions being made for the long-term. Sacrificing the player experience for profit is a lose-lose for the player. You should be mad that people will be losing millions of gil and other associated facets through no direct act of malice toward you or SE. Yet, here you are, happy because SE just kinda did something a couple people might benefit from. Perhaps worst of all, you still think you're getting your money's worth.

I can't really decide if I should call you can an accomplice in these planned robberies through all the inaction or simply remain sad there are people happy it'll take place come patch time. Sad, but not surprised, for how people behave around digitally limited resources was most definitely ingrained to me in XI. And plenty of good people got hosed there, too.

Stepping away from the social aspect and just trying to keep it more in legalese, what we're basically having is a contact changing without the consent of both parties involved. In reality, when things like this happen, or at least one side wants them to, people outside of the desired system often get grandfathered in out of good faith. Should they, of course, seek to change their status, they often have to give up whatever old perks they maintained.

What should happen, since a complete overhaul of the housing system seems out of the question (for now), is that SE instead give anyone the ability to sell their house while those bought prior to the patch are exempt of the countdown forever. Add a couple more wards, of course, but basically any new ownership initiated after that point is subject to the new terms of maintenance. And as Cat noted, free campaigns should probably be striven for to happen every 3 months minimum since patch cycles don't seem to be limited to that period of time itself.

It's still not my desired route, as I absolutely hate establishing the precedent of taking things from honest players in this day and age, but it'd be a compromise better than what they're intending to roll with.

I agree with this, I just wish it applied to everything in the game and not only this. Most of the gameplay is focused on those not playing and potential future customers.

Also it is still a choice that has to be made to begin with because SE refuses to do what is best so it ends up being a choice between bad and horrible. Something that should not be forgotten, but still does not help the current decision and what is preferable out of the options SE is giving players.

Edited, Oct 23rd 2015 9:40am by Belcrono

This is incorrect on multiple levels. Any time you sign a housing lease or rental agreement, most times changes in the contract are often pre-written into the agreement - raises in rent, changes in trash collection companies and policies, etc, are all done without the consent of the leased all the time. Legally, all the land owners need to do is inform the individual of the change.

SE's already covered their bases in this regard in the ToUA like any other good service provider. In this respect no, grandfathering in only really works in rare exceptions that actually prove that the norm is contrary to what you're trying to propagate here.

Not that I wholly agree with SE is doing - I just hate factually inaccurate statements being made to try to make someone's argument.


I don't agree with the grandfathering proposal at this point. The conversation regarding the expiration of housing began with the playerbase and has been a matter of the players pressuring SE to do it for months once they realized new housing wasn't going to be quick. And seeming housing has absolutely zero upkeep cost - I can see the logic of asking members to walk into their house once every couple of months to insure they keep it. Honestly, given the limited housing space, I was long ago surprised they did not create an upkeep system to begin with.

Sadly this is no place for ideals.

It's called an End User License Agreement. That's the contract you agreed to when you signed up for the game. It pretty much allows SE to do whatever they want when it comes to their game including changing the housing rules. Going the legal route is not a winning argument.

It's really a question of customer satisfaction with their policies. And I fully expect the people who have stopped subbing the game to renew and redouble their effort to stop subbing the game when their house is taken away from their lack of subbing to the game. And the die-hard sub-the-game-til-it-closes people will be quite happy they can finally get a house till the next game closing apocalypse.

The only people who we should genuinely be concerned about are those that have a house, and sub to the game, and might not have been prepared to deal with this particular change in rules. But you can still try to sell your house, if it's an FC house perhaps it's as simple as making sure you leave it in an active state, or perhaps you take advantage of the 80% buy-back that's offered if you have to let it go. At least it's better than nothing.

Edited, Oct 23rd 2015 5:56pm by Xoie

Just to cut anyone off if the intent is to try and pick me apart, I didn't jump into the legalese jargon because I think people should be taking SE to court or whatever. The point was more about maintaining good faith, or good customer service, as I've attempted to stress numerous times already. Aside from this not having the impact I think some are hoping for, I will continue to worry about the precedent this establishes for non-subs in XIV or, honestly, any game in general when you have people clinging to "the greater good" of context. Deleting character data/resources might've been a thing back in the day, but I attribute that more to technology not being advanced enough to meet demand. If anything, as tech has improved, such data has probably shrunk relative to growth of other computational demands. Thus, the whole 2015 thing and this being bad.

Agree to disagree, sure, as my mind will never be changed with regard to stripping gains from players. A fair chunk of this has honestly just been continuation of Ye Olde F2P vs. P2P debate where XIV continues to remain an industry minority with questionable success and satisfaction as time has gone on. Is the housing issue just another vestige of related stubbornness? Possibly. So, even if someone may disagree with me, I just hope it forces them to look back at SE and ask if they really are doing what's best for the game or just enough to make people think they are. There's a difference there, the whole "vote with your wallet" thing isn't enough if they aren't.