Suggestion: House Finder

With the release and nearly immediate purchase of every single plot in the new wards (720 plots per server), I think a better system is needed.

So I've come up with an idea that I'd like to suggest to the devs, and since I don't know the best way to get the suggestion to their eyes and ears, I'm posting it here and hoping that amounts to something. (Advice on the best way to submit suggestions is appreciated.)

First off, the general concept itself is really simple. We have a Duty Finder, and a new Raid Finder, we also have Party Finder, there might even be some other Finders I don't know about, but what we need is a House Finder!

That's pretty much the entire idea, I'm sure the devs can figure it out from there, the rest is just the nitty gritty details that's too much for this 1000 character limit. For those interested, though, I've outlined the entire proposal here: http://pastebin.com/Z9S6ygaZ

I don't think that will matter when there's mathematically not enough houses for the amount of players.

The real problem is the amount of features that houses have. If they gave equivalent features to the "mog houses" then I guarantee you the noise would quiet down. For whatever reason, they want the useful and fun features locked to houses and they gave us 2 flowerpots. Meanwhile there isn't enough houses to go around because there's a very vocal minority that have based their entire gaming life on seeing strangers running around a ward so SE will never instance the houses.

The whole thing is silly. So much about the game is so great but SE just can't get this particular feature right.

I like this idea a lot. I also was going to make a comment about it automatically adding wards if all the plots were picked, but you already had added it! Good job, really well thought out.

I also agree with souljacker, they really just need to do "mog houses" or instanced housing. We don't interact with our neighbors as is.
I do agree with the people saying these current wards should be for FC's because honestly, as personal housing, they're super quiet/empty.

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Originally Posted by Crysti

I like this idea a lot. I also was going to make a comment about it automatically adding wards if all the plots were picked, but you already had added it! Good job, really well thought out.

I also agree with souljacker, they really just need to do "mog houses" or instanced housing. We don't interact with our neighbors as is.
I do agree with the people saying these current wards should be for FC's because honestly, as personal housing, they're super quiet/empty.

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I do like having neighbors...I interact with the few I have at my FC house (but I still dont have my own house) but instanced housing may be a more feasible option to server loads and money costs.

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Originally Posted by Avera

I do like having neighbors...I interact with the few I have at my FC house (but I still dont have my own house) but instanced housing may be a more feasible option to server loads and money costs.

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That's why I moreso like the idea of them being FC related... Otherwise its roughly maybe 30-60 people per area, and it's not likely they're all active at the same time, or even inside housing. I've had my own personal house, and they're just so quiet of areas. My FC has neighbors, but again.. quiet :(

I don't know much about apartments, but I hope there's like a common room or something, so it's not just... empty.

I wish I saw neighbors more often. When I do I always interact with them, even making it a point to wander the ward I'm in periodically to see who's out. I craft in my yard a good majority of the time in an effort to have presence. Honestly its much more peaceful waiting for the duty finder in my own ward than in a major city. Still trying to wrap my mind around why people hold on to houses if they are never there. There was a time when the wards were active.

I lean against the idea of instanced housing. It's already semi-instanced through the wards. I like the idea of neighbors, and actually owning something in the 'real world' that people can come and see whenever, even if I'm not online, even if they're strangers. It's a way of 'showing off.' I really look forward to owning a house someday for those reasons alone. Make housing instanced and while I'd still be interested, I'd be less interested. It's why I haven't bought a personal room at my FC's house yet, for one I'm saving the money towards a house, and for two, only people in the FC would ever see it, and only if they choose to see it from a menu inside the house, and even then it's just a room, no outdoors.

I'd really like to see a system that auto-creates wards under specified conditions, such as all the plots are pre-paid, for instance. That's what's really needed.

Maybe a better solution is to prevent players from transferring to full servers causing insufficient housing supplies. You're complaining that all the wards are already full, while I'm sitting over here looking at every new ward completely barren.

Does the game really benefit more from having the majority of players piled into a handful of servers? (legit question. I don't see the logic in not striving for a balanced load.)

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Maybe a better solution is to prevent players from transferring to full servers causing insufficient housing supplies. You're complaining that all the wards are already full, while I'm sitting over here looking at every new ward completely barren.

Does the game really benefit more from having the majority of players piled into a handful of servers? (legit question. I don't see the logic in not striving for a balanced load.)

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The devs may prefer a balanced load, but many of the players want to be with a specific group of others, and those groups happen to be crowding a few servers.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Maybe a better solution is to prevent players from transferring to full servers causing insufficient housing supplies.

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Again, I want neighbors. I want to show off my house to other people even when I'm not online.

How am I supposed to do that on a dead server with an extremely low population?

People play an MMO because of those first two M's, and especially the first one. Massively multiplayer.

I played on Jenova before moving to Balmung, and it felt dead, especially while leveling. If I even saw a single person pass when not in a city, it was a special occasion. That's not the kind of server I want to be on.

And how are you supposed to show off and have neighbors on an overpopulated server without a housing supply?

Proposed idea, preventing players from transferring to full servers, would mean maybe servers like Jenova wouldn't be so low-pop, and eventually you'd be more satisfied. That problem isn't going to magically fix itself.

I'm sure it's technically very challenging to do, but if they can make housing wards to be data center specific instead of world specific, that would solve a lot of problem. You won't have empty wards on slow servers. Lots more supplies of plots for high pop servers, and a chance to mingle with other players on other worlds even!

They'd need to do some work to prevent cross-world trading.

Players are already blocked from transferring to full servers. I had to wait a couple weeks before Balmung was open long enough for me to transfer to it.

The problem is that not enough people play the game to fill multiple servers.

"No, you can't play with other people, it's too crowded, go start your own crowd somewhere else" is not the answer. People will just quit the game rather than play on dead servers. Pretty sure people already do. And then there's even less people playing. And it spirals from there.

Imagine telling a kid that there's 50 people inside the house but there's 2 people outside the house and no, they're not allowed inside to play, they have to go play with the two people outside, they can build their own house. How do you think that kid's going to react? He's not going to want to build a house at all, he'll probably just leave. Now there's 1 less kid outside the house and it's an even worse problem.

Pretty sure that's how we got to this point in the first place. People congregated to where the fun was and everywhere else died off.

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Originally Posted by Thortok2000

Again, I want neighbors. I want to show off my house to other people even when I'm not online.

How am I supposed to do that on a dead server with an extremely low population?

People play an MMO because of those first two M's, and especially the first one. Massively multiplayer.

I played on Jenova before moving to Balmung, and it felt dead, especially while leveling. If I even saw a single person pass when not in a city, it was a special occasion. That's not the kind of server I want to be on.

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Again wards could be for Free Company so you still can show off your FC house, and people that really just want their own house could have it instanced because honestly right now, my ward is almost empty yet no houses available! I have a nice mog house but I did it because I wanted it not to just show it off. At this point, Id rather have it instanced and keep wards for free companies.

While I would accept this compromise if technical limitations are truly an issue, I don't understand why it's even an issue.

Just create more wards, or better yet, a system where wards automatically generate when the previous wards fill up. It's that easy.

I'm also not seeing the difference between 'wards' and 'instancing' from a technical standpoint. Wards ARE instances.

What you're really suggesting is a smaller, individual 'ward' size, down to a single house, which A you have the solve the problem of how do you show off the house and share it with people (does it work like personal rooms in an FC? visitors just pick you from a menu?) and B is it really that much of a difference?

Frankly speaking, a ward probably takes up less space on the server than 60 individual instances would. So technically wards are already better than privatized instances anyway.

Character limit is too restrictive btw. -.-