More apartments?

Will we be getting more apartments soon? I just came back after a couple month break, under the impression that there would be enough apartments for every player. I was surprised to find them all full.

Any chance on getting some more added?

They've said they can go up to 500 per building I believe and can add them at will. I'm not sure when they plan on increasing the limits however. Make sure you check each ward and the subdivision for openings. A lot of people miss the subdivisions. If you're attempting to get an apartment in a particular ward then it's going to be a waiting game.

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Originally Posted by Dustytome

If you're attempting to get an apartment in a particular ward then it's going to be a waiting game.

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How is that if there's no demolishion on apartments? Unless someone wants to actively give up theirs, which is highly unlikely.

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Originally Posted by Bebekurenai

How is that if there's no demolishion on apartments? Unless someone wants to actively give up theirs, which is highly unlikely.

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At this point it's more of waiting out Square adding more apartments to the ward. There's a maximum of 500 per ward they've said they can add, with the current limit at 90 per. People do give up apartments now and then due to moving servers, swapping locations and such, but that's rare.

I'm a returning player and was just about to make a thread about this too.

Disappointing, I was really looking forward to apartments :(

Well it's nice to hear they're probably going to add more eventually, but it's disappointing that I missed out again. Just hope I'm able to log in on the day they add more.

SE fails again, and probably will wait until PS3 is dropped before doing anything about housing.

SE hasn't "failed again" - it was weeks before apartments filled up on even the largest servers.

People who were not playing at the time and then return months later and miss out is not a failure on SE's part at all.

If you are not paying a sub and actively playing don't expect to log in months later an expect to be handed everything on a silver platter.

SE can increase the apartments when they wish, so when enough of the newer population require apartments and are levelled and meet the requirements - they will increase it.

Apartments are garbage anyway. They're a complete failure to fix their failure of a housing system - a demonstration of incompetence.

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Originally Posted by Aillith

People who were not playing at the time and then return months later and miss out is not a failure on SE's part at all.

If you are not paying a sub and actively playing don't expect to log in months later an expect to be handed everything on a silver platter.

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I don't believe wanting something as meager as an apartment is being handed everything on a silver platter. And for the record I was paying an active sub, I just couldn't play because of life.

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Originally Posted by ckc22

Apartments are garbage anyway. They're a complete failure to fix their failure of a housing system - a demonstration of incompetence.

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I know they are, but I don't have any housing at the moment and would be happy enough with even an apartment.

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Originally Posted by Aillith

SE hasn't "failed again" - it was weeks before apartments filled up on even the largest servers.

People who were not playing at the time and then return months later and miss out is not a failure on SE's part at all.

If you are not paying a sub and actively playing don't expect to log in months later an expect to be handed everything on a silver platter.

SE can increase the apartments when they wish, so when enough of the newer population require apartments and are levelled and meet the requirements - they will increase it.

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Have been playing during that time, managed to get an appartment before my installation wrecked itself. Have been paying and playing since April, according to what my job allows me to.

I do not want an FC room, because you do not get your furniture back if some FC officer starts to kick people for giggles.

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Originally Posted by Lesan

you do not get your furniture back if some FC officer starts to kick people for giggles.

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If it's something that you can pick up/doesn't break then it goes to the Caretaker NPC and you have 35 days to pick items up (at which point they are lost for good).

But yes I certainly can see your point and there's a lot more safety with SE being your landlord!

They may be waiting until they come to a decision on how to handle Ishgardian housing, or something. It may be possible that they are planning to make them fully into an Apartments-only housing area.

And of course, everyone complaining is from Balmung...

Do you honestly expect SE to add in thousands of unnecessary apartments to solve the problem of one ridiculously over-populated server?

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

And of course, everyone complaining is from Balmung...

Do you honestly expect SE to add in thousands of unnecessary apartments to solve the problem of one ridiculously over-populated server?

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They've already stated they can add up to 410 more apartments per ward so they have it covered, it's just a matter of how fast they react. That said, they had the population numbers long before they started working on this. If they didn't make the solution adjustable per-server that's a design choice Square made and has to deal with.

They're probably waiting for the other servers to fill up more as it's likely they want to make the same change/increase to all servers at the same time and they probably don't want tons of empty apartments on some servers. But this of course is just speculation.

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

And of course, everyone complaining is from Balmung...

Do you honestly expect SE to add in thousands of unnecessary apartments to solve the problem of one ridiculously over-populated server?

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Uh... yes. Because ignoring a large part of your player-base is stupid.

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Originally Posted by ckc22

Uh... yes. Because ignoring a large part of your player-base is stupid.

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Right, so let's have every other server have a wasted 2000 apartments to spare so Sakura Kirito can have an apartment for each of her characters to role play in.

They need to sort it out themselves if there's a shortage. Balmung seems to think the devs exist to cater to their every whim and moan, and the sense of entitlement they have is ridiculous.

I just use my apartment as storage for my house and FC stuff. It's just a basic room.

You sure you checked all apartment buildings? I hear theres more possible apartments then the population of balmung

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Originally Posted by Lunaxia

Right, so let's have every other server have a wasted 2000 apartments to spare so Sakura Kirito can have an apartment for each of her characters to role play in.

They need to sort it out themselves if there's a shortage. Balmung seems to think the devs exist to cater to their every whim and moan, and the sense of entitlement they have is ridiculous.

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There are several high-population servers. AKA a lot of paying customers. It would be stupid of SE not to fix things that cause QoL issues for these servers because it's where most of their players play.

Don't be jelly cause you're in the backwoods.

I mean, I'm on Sargatanas, another legacy server, and there are no issues with apartments.

I noticed everyone unable to get one was on Balmung, which explains a lot. I think it's less an issue with the system and more an issue with Balmung's gross overpopulation.

The fact is: Square would rather see Balmung's population spread across other servers. They don't want megaservers like that to exist when other servers are nearly empty.

It's a waste of resources to try and accommodate one massive outlier when they have a dozen other servers that are completely ready to go. They're more interested in trying to balance server populations than encourage Balmung's unprecedented growth.

That's why Balmung isn't open to new characters unless you transfer in. They don't want Balmung filling more. They want other servers to fill out.

My server is crowded one but my apartment at Goblet ward 8 still has 6 rooms left...

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Originally Posted by Pyrali

The fact is: Square would rather see Balmung's population spread across other servers. They don't want megaservers like that to exist when other servers are nearly empty.

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But they don't do anything to fix it... and all the while some servers become more and more backwoods meaning you can't find raid groups, you can't find farm parties for ex, etc. etc. So people are going to go where people actually play.

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Originally Posted by ckc22

people are going to go where people actually play.

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I think that might actually be a bit of a misconception. I'm on Sargatanas which (last time I looked) fell somewhere in the middle for server populations and I never have a problem finding parties to do things, although I will say I also don't do savage either so I appreciate that skews my own experiences.

But what I'm trying to express is that people bundle onto Balmung/Gilgamesh because they seem to be under the illusion that if they aren't there, they won't be able to do things otherwise and I really just don't feel that is true (again this is my experience...)

I have actually created alts on both Balmung and Gilgamesh and again I appreciate my experience is skewed (they're level 1 alts...), the times I've logged them in the party finder didn't seem to be exceptionally busy compared to my own server and nor did I see people all over the place (but then starting cities aren't as popular for level 60 people so...)

Obviously at the other end of the scale we have the servers like Mateus that do sound like they are tiny (I need to create an alt there to experience this myself), I'm just trying to say that the other servers probably aren't as bad as people think...)

Personally I think Square Enix should lock Balmung/Gilgamesh completely for at least a few months, but I'm sure that won't go down well with the people that want to get on there to play with friends and as a business I'm sure SE wants that extra transfer money.

As others have said in the past, free transfers off of Balmung/Gilgamesh (to any other server) would probably be helpful as well, although don't know how many people would actually move since they wanted to be on those servers because they're busy... why would they want to move off...

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Originally Posted by worldofneil

Epic Snippage

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As long as they take money and allow people to 'maintainance sneak' in or transfer in, they are pretty much expected to solve the issues. Fact is, a simple 'No Appartments for Housers' would help a ton. And then double or triple the amount of appartments, together with a 'you must give up your appartment if you want to buy a house'. Ideally, the 'give up' function should put everything inside into storage, instead of turning it to ash.

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Originally Posted by Lesan

As long as they take money and allow people to 'maintainance sneak' in or transfer in, they are pretty much expected to solve the issues. Fact is, a simple 'No Apts for Housers' would help a ton. And then double or triple the amount of apts, together with a 'you must give up your apt if you want to buy a house'. Ideally, the 'give up' function should put everything inside into storage, instead of turning it to ash.

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But the apt thing is pretty much only a problem on Balmung. Why screw the rest of us over when it's just a problem with one ridiculously overpopulated server? I have a house and an apt. Apts don't get demo, so I have an apt in case something comes up and I can't play for awhile. If I lose my house, I will at least still have that when I come back, should that happen.

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But they don't do anything to fix it.

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You can't even get on during maint anymore if I recall. You have to pay to transfer on manually. That's something.

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Originally Posted by Pyrali

You can't even get on during maint anymore if I recall. You have to pay to transfer on manually. That's something.

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I believe you still can. During the 3.4 maintenance (End of September) I managed to create an alt on both Balmung and Gilgamesh. One of them I created in the minutes before the maintenance started (as people were logging off) and the other as soon as they came back up again.

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Originally Posted by Lesan

As long as they take money and allow people to 'maintainance sneak' in or transfer in, they are pretty much expected to solve the issues. Fact is, a simple 'No Appartments for Housers' would help a ton. And then double or triple the amount of appartments, together with a 'you must give up your appartment if you want to buy a house'. Ideally, the 'give up' function should put everything inside into storage, instead of turning it to ash.

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It would help your current situation a bit, but they don't need to. Square just needs to increase the apartment numbers as they've said they can. Currently they have their maximum apartments per world at 6,480 (90 per ward x 24 wards* x 3 housing areas). They've stated their absolute maxumum (with current wards, requiring manual adjustment it seems) will be 36,000 (500 per ward x 24 wards* x 3 housing areas). You'll just have to wait out their manual adjustment on the per ward allowances.

* Please note than I counted subdivisions as their own ward in the above.

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Originally Posted by Aillith

People who were not playing at the time and then return months later and miss out is not a failure on SE's part at all.

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Of course it is. Apartments aren't some sort of seasonal event to be made available only at certain times. They're supposed to remain always available, with new ones opening up as needed to meet the demand. That was the whole point of apartment complexes supporting over 500 apartments each even though they started with just 90 of them unlocked.

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Originally Posted by Aillith

SE can increase the apartments when they wish, so when enough of the newer population require apartments and are levelled and meet the requirements - they will increase it.

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Which would be fine if they'd followed through and actually done that, but at least on Balmung, it's already happened, and they didn't. There are people leveled and ready, wanting to buy apartments, but unable to do so.

The system should ideally have been set up to handle the increases automatically, so that the moment the last apartment in a region is bought, the next batch of maybe 50 or so per ward are unlocked. Or if SE decided against automation and chose to make it a manual task to unlock more of their apartments, then they should have been monitoring the usage and as soon as it hit 80% or 90% full, gone in and changed the setting to release more of them. In either case, nobody should have ever seen a situation where they wanted to buy an apartment, but they were all taken. If the feature were actually working, then that situation would be impossible until all 36,000 or 36,864 or whatever it is are taken.

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Originally Posted by Powe

I hear theres more possible apartments then the population of balmung

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Maybe there would be if SE would open up the rest of them like they said they were going to.

It's literally only a Balmung problem, because Balmung is an outlier.

How disappointing I truly thought that them saying that they will unlock more if they are sold out meant that they are unlocked as soon as every apartment on the server was bought..but it seems that this is something that they have to do manually and it seems that its no priority for SE to change it..

The last I checked on Balmung (about 2 weeks ago at the start of November) there were still rooms available in some of the sub-divisions in the goblet. They said they wouldn't open up more apartments until all the apartments were all filled up. My guess is that until those apartments fill up you won't be seeing new rooms on Balmung.

Which at this rate will probably be never because nobody wants to live in the goblet.

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Originally Posted by PepperPandemic

The last I checked on Balmung (about 2 weeks ago at the start of November) there were still rooms available in some of the sub-divisions in the goblet. They said they wouldn't open up more apartments until all the apartments were all filled up. My guess is that until those apartments fill up you won't be seeing new rooms on Balmung.

Which at this rate will probably be never because nobody wants to live in the goblet.

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Unless a significant number of people have relinquished their apartments in the mean time (remember - no auto-demolition for apartments!), as of 29th October, all wards and subdivisions across all areas on Balmung were full.

I checked. Repeatedly. Not exactly daily, but point is you can't just go down to Goblet subs and pick up an apartment with no trouble. It's a matter of luck, and this feature was implemented in the hope that luck would no longer be a factor in obtaining access to housing.

It took a good month for Balmung's apartments to fill. Even just doubling availability (120 rooms per building - versus the 510 they're apparently capable of holding - remember, this is the amount a single FC house can hold, too... this is no heavier on the servers than a ward and a half's worth of active FC houses) would probably tide even Balmung over for a very long time, relatively speaking, considering this is a server where Wards 9 through 12 sold out within around 60 minutes.

I just want to know what criteria they're waiting to be met, because it's obviously not "all apartments being full" or even "all apartments being full across a maintenance" (because a sub-patch maint happened while Balmung was full). Waiting would be a lot less frustrating if we knew more about what we're waiting for.

My mentor and i was able to get a apartment. In Mist ward 2 subdivision. He found one open and there was a second one open for me to grab as well.
I figured people transfer off Balmung all the time so I would check daily like we were doing. But yeah when I checked just weds. They were all full.