New housing wards for populated servers?

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Originally Posted by Bishop81

They don't seem to have trouble allowing everyone to have their own private chamber. How are wards and houses any different? It's all just data no? A private chamber is effectively a small house/ultra small ward.

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Private chambers are instanced. Meaning one only "exists" when someone actually enters it. Wards exist constantly, much like any of the map zones, like Mor Dhona. Having them "on" persistently requires much more power - and don't forget, chambers are only simple rooms from the inside; wards have inside-house data, outside-house data, and then the actual neighbourhoods themselves. Granted, even with all that, it should not be as huge an issue as it is.

On another note: even moving to a different server is not exactly a solution. I've been pondering moving to another server, because a friend of mine is there. However, I have been saving gil since basically day 1, and now I'm very close to finally being able to buy a medium plot, meaning ~15mil. However, transfer has a 1million gil max restriction. Meaning I either forfeit what I've been working for for one and a half year, or stay on Shiva - where Mist is basically all but sold out, I believe there might be like 2-3 large plots available still, and that's it. Such awesome choices, right?

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Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

Private chambers are instanced. Meaning one only "exists" when someone actually enters it. Wards exist constantly, much like any of the map zones, like Mor Dhona. Having them "on" persistently requires much more power - and don't forget, chambers are only simple rooms from the inside; wards have inside-house data, outside-house data, and then the actual neighbourhoods themselves. Granted, even with all that, it should not be as huge an issue as it is.

On another note: even moving to a different server is not exactly a solution. I've been pondering moving to another server, because a friend of mine is there. However, I have been saving gil since basically day 1, and now I'm very close to finally being able to buy a medium plot, meaning ~15mil. However, transfer has a 1million gil max restriction. Meaning I either forfeit what I've been working for for one and a half year, or stay on Shiva - where Mist is basically all but sold out, I believe there might be like 2-3 large plots available still, and that's it. Such awesome choices, right?

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Ah ... thanks for explanation.

That said, why don't they instance the wards too? No reason to have them "on" all the time. That said, I don't really think the complexity really affects wards much - it's all just data; you can't see into houses anyway.

Either way, this is something that needs to be fixed. Maybe even overhaul the housing system as the current one doesn't seem all that scalable - it took them a 24 hour maintenance (plus heaven knows how much time preparing) to add subdivisions; they can't even add more wards.

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Originally Posted by Bishop81

Ah ... thanks for explanation.

That said, why don't they instance the wards too? No reason to have them "on" all the time. That said, I don't really think the complexity really affects wards much - it's all just data; you can't see into houses anyway.

Either way, this is something that needs to be fixed. Maybe even overhaul the housing system as the current one doesn't seem all that scalable - it took them a 24 hour maintenance (plus heaven knows how much time preparing) to add subdivisions; they can't even add more wards.

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You're welcome~

Why don't they instance wards - or indeed, personal housing as a whole, is the 20mil gil question everyone's been asking. They have given an answer, saying it'd take away the neighbourhood atmosphere they wanted to create. But yeah, all things considered, it doesn't seem to be the best of options. Availability, prices, being mixed with FC housing, and the hardware side of it all - they do kind of highlight how and why it is not good. But yeah, they just went ahead and flipped a switch on the already-available-for-FC plots to be purchasable by single players, because it was probably easier.

And the "it's all just data" argument, OH DEAR MENPHINA. Yes, that is a major issue they are having. Also mind-boggling, on a certain level, because it shouldn't be such a brickwall. But yeah, basically... no body types to reduce data; no butt sliders to reduce data; no "infinite" color palettes to reduce data - and there's a lot more to add to that list. Infrastructure limitations and saving network bandwidth are two of the most frequent excuses why things don't get done in this game. (And I bet my tail it all comes down to the PS3, ultimately, somewhere. Beyond all the apparent symptoms of no money being spent.)

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Originally Posted by Gramul

The ward system was a cool idea, but if the servers aren't capable of giving us the space we need, why did they bother to make it this way?
The limitation dampers it's usefulness for the majority of the players.

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Tend to agree with this.

Housing areas will never be a hangout for majority of players either, seeing a playerless, empty neighbourhood is ....rather pointless, its wasting valuable space imo.

Would have much preferred a rift dimension area/player to design as we see fit....not just a tiny yard and house.
Availability to all would be a must however as limiting due to server issues is an issue that should have been forseen and dealt with before implementation.
I really do hope they add enough space for all to have their home at least ... but I will always always push for the superior option, to make ffxiv the best it can be by taking much from Rift.

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Originally Posted by BreathlessTao

Why don't they instance wards - or indeed, personal housing as a whole, is the 20mil gil question everyone's been asking. They have given an answer, saying it'd take away the neighbourhood atmosphere they wanted to create.

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They actually have and it's because gardens require real time updates, every server tick. If there was instanced homes gardens would not be able to function properly and they would not be able to have them.

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Originally Posted by SarcasmMisser

They actually have and it's because gardens require real time updates, every server tick. If there was instanced homes gardens would not be able to function properly and they would not be able to have them.

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Wait, so gardens are what is screwing things up?

How about wards that don't allow gardens? It's better than having no house at all ...

Probably but it would be functionally no different from FC rooms just larger, its not like you'll be able to see your neighbours or anything it's an instance. I think they should still have an instanced non-fc property in tandem with the current system but a lot of people would probably complain about not getting all the bells and whistles that the joneses do.

You all seem to forget that they look at the game as a whole when making adjustments and additions and the more sheep that run to Balmung 'cause that's where the kool kids are and abandoning the lower pop servers, that have more free plots then they know what to do with, are only compounding the issue. I don't see SE adding any more housing for 3 or 4 servers when there's like 20 ghost town servers with entire wards completely empty.

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Originally Posted by Altena

It is a little frustrating to hear that the low populated servers have an equal number of wards to the populated ones - wouldn't it have been smarter to give those wards that aren't being used by a low pop server, to a high pop one?

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Why wouldn't every server have equal housing wards, you think you deserve special treatment? "wouldn't it be smarter" to leave the server that doesn't have room for you, instead of trying to take something away from someone you feel doesn't deserve it

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Originally Posted by SarcasmMisser

Probably but it would be functionally no different from FC rooms just larger, its not like you'll be able to see your neighbours or anything it's an instance. I think they should still have an instanced non-fc property in tandem with the current system but a lot of people would probably complain about not getting all the bells and whistles that the joneses do.

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Why wouldn't you be able to see your neighbor?

See this is the thing I don't get. Private chambers allow you to see other people too, they just have to be in the same room as you. If someone wants to crash in your FC room for some reason, they can. There is no technical limitation disallowing that.

How is a ward any different from a private chamber - other than having more things in it? It's just a very big room. (Houses aren't really special in that regard BTW, they are just an "item" that you can click to zone to your house; just like the exit in your FC room zones you to your FC's house.)

This is why I'm puzzled why they have so much trouble adding more wards. (If it's because of the gardens that need constant updating or what not, fine, just disable the new gardens until you find some way to do it without overloading your servers.)

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Originally Posted by Bishop81

snip.

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its because unlike private chambers, which are saved and "shut down" when no one is inside - erased from active server memory - wards are always up and running, because there is never a time that no one is in the ward. more wards, mean more area have to be running at the same time, and their servers cannot currently support 40 or more new wards, and all of the items generated within, on their current system memory. fixing it would require an upgrade of that memory, which in terms of the sizes we are talking about, can cost a couple million extra dollars in total to implement over sixty someodd servers.

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Originally Posted by tocsin

its because unlike private chambers, which are saved and "shut down" when no one is inside - erased from active server memory - wards are always up and running, because there is never a time that no one is in the ward. more wards, mean more area have to be running at the same time, and their servers cannot currently support 40 or more new wards, and all of the items generated within, on their current system memory. fixing it would require an upgrade of that memory, which in terms of the sizes we are talking about, can cost a couple million extra dollars in total to implement over sixty someodd servers.

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So if everyone hangs out in their FC room, the servers will crash? Because all the rooms will have to be up no?

You can see other people in rooms in the same sense that you can see other people in a dungeon, they are all joining the same instance. That instance does not exist as long as no one is in it, and if people see each other it means they are in the same instance. Wards are zoned so they are part of the live game world, and operate completely differently. I don't see whats difficult to understand about it. Gardens are one thing for sure that won't work in an instanced environment, there may be more but I have no idea because I am not a SE employee; only they know. They went to great lengths to explain the problem between 2.38 and 2.4 in laymen but people seem to just completely ignore or forget this and insist that adding more wards is possible. Because players know the servers better than SE does.

They made a conscious design choice to make housing part of the live world rather than an instanced thing and these are the limitations of that. As I said I think they should have an instanced system in tandem but it would be different and trying to make it part of the wards would be asking to fundamentally change the housing system that were originally meant to be a FC only thing.

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Originally Posted by Bishop81

So if everyone hangs out in their FC room, the servers will crash? Because all the rooms will have to be up no?

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yes. absolutely. if everyone tried to go to their fc chambers at the same time, I would bet the entire server would crash before 70% of them even got in.

The trick is, you will never get EVERYONE to enter their fc chambers. not even 90%. IT staffs in all companies take this completely into account. Most IT firms will design a server to run at a maximum of about 80% of full capacity, mainly because there is only a .0001% chance of actual server load breaking this threshold, and that small margin of error allows for sometimes tens of thousands of dollars to be saved.

never will everyone be in, because that would also require all players to be logged on at once, and that is why we have player queues.

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Originally Posted by SarcasmMisser

They actually have and it's because gardens require real time updates, every server tick. If there was instanced homes gardens would not be able to function properly and they would not be able to have them.

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Public gardens. Could add them to current wards, in place of some personal homes, if they decided to transform personal homes into instances.

But out of curiosity - what makes gardens different from, say, retainer ventures? What makes them require continuous real time updates? You send your retainer out - timer starts - you log out - timer finishes in the meantime - log back in - get the loot. Where's the difference in the process of putting a seed in the ground, waiting, harvesting? Yeah, time is longer and it can be tended to in various ways - while the player is logged in. And if weather affects the growth, couldn't the server just keep track of it (doesn't it, anyhow? in a certain way?) and just modify the appropriate data upon the next login/access. I'm really curious because I've not even touched gardening, and even if I have, I can't see the difference in mechanics.



REMOVE CHARACTER LIMIT PLEASE, NO NEED FOR SUCH ADDITIONAL ANNOYANCE. THANK YOU.