Can someone explain to me how wards work?

I mean..
Wards seems to me like they are instanced maps.. So why can't they add like 50-100 more wards? (just shooting numbers..)

People say that it can't be done because it will outweight the servers, and "Instanced private housing" would be better.

I fail to see the difference @_@

Won't the instanced houses weigth the same on the servers?

that's a good question. o.O tbh I never thought lack of instancing was the problem lol. Assuming they intend to add a significant number of houses, that's a loooot of extra storage they gotta try to fit onto already over-crowded servers. But I'll be the first to admit I don't know anything about how it really works. And I doubt many other people coming up with these ideas really know either.

Edit: I think the idea is that if something is instanced, when it is empty it is not using server processing... stuff. It's sitting dormant. Wards, while instanced, will usually have a few people in them at a time, which keeps them running active. While houses themselves often sit empty for extended periods and will therefore not hog as much server space? This is purely my ignorant guess at it mind you.

Going to take a shot in the illuminated dark here: SEs coding is the issue. 2.0 was rushed in order to get it out on time, while still updating 1.0. This created the splendid coding issues a lot of features face today. They manage to Brita a lot.

Yeah, what i'm saying is that often, when a ppl suggest: "add more wards", someone usually reply to him: "it would be too stressfull, better instanced housing".. Well, i fail to see the difference, so i hope those one can explain it to me xD

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Originally Posted by SeriousxSarcasm

Edit: I think the idea is that if something is instanced, when it is empty it is not using server processing... stuff. It's sitting dormant. Wards, while instanced, will usually have a few people in them at a time, which keeps them running active. While houses themselves often sit empty for extended periods and will therefore not hog as much server space? This is purely my ignorant guess at it mind you.

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Yeah, i tought about that too.. if that is the case i'll be total open to move myself to a lonely house on an instanced island xD
As long as i have the marketboard, i don't care about neighbourhood.

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Originally Posted by Garten

Yeah, i tought about that too.. if that is the case i'll be total open to move myself to a lonely house on an instanced island xD
As long as i have the marketboard, i don't care about neighbourhood.

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If they were to make instanced housing, you certainly wouldn't have a marketboard there.

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Originally Posted by Garten

Won't the instanced houses weigth the same on the servers?

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Loading an instanced house is totally different to loading an entire subdivision. Logically speaking the instanced housing -should- be less of a strain on servers than wards, but to introduce instanced housing the devs would have to work on it which means time and money. The ward system is already there. It might actually be more cost effective for them to add wards because while they probably take up more server space, the system already exists. It does need adjustment but that could still mean it's much less work than creating an entirely new housing system.

What I think is going on at SE is that the uproar from Shirogane made them realise that housing is much more desirable to players than they thought, and that the current prerequisites to purchase a plot are too easily abused. Yoshi P already confirmed that new wards in 4.2 will not be a simple case of just adding more wards, but that changes to the system will be made. He didn't go into specifics. For all we know instanced housing is already being addressed but a complex feature like that won't be announced until SE can at least estimate a release date. Furthermore maybe it was not considered a priority until the uproar over Shirogane occurred.

In short, we just have to wait and see just how much SE truly understand the players' interest in housing.

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Originally Posted by Penthea

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In short, we just have to wait and see just how much SE truly understand the players' interest in housing.

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Thanks for that. This is probably the most (or only) helpful explanation I've seen in all the threads lol.

We don't know "how wards work", but we can speculate on how they're implemented and one person's speculation could be completely different from how it's actually implemented. We can speculate on how "instanced housing" vs "instanced wards" could be different.

The difference between "instanced housing" and "instanced wards" (what we have now) is that there would at least be faster server calculation time. For "instanced housing", you'd only have to calculate and update the clients for object positions for the single house and ornamentation, where for "instanced wards" you have to calculate and update object positions for 60 houses (* max yard ornaments). It's an improvement, but you only see the gains when the number of houses & their ornaments (including colors and types of exterior walls and fences) go over a certain threshold. Less things to calculate = faster calculation = less memory used = more cpu time for other calculations. Batching smaller calculations improves performance in any system, this is why threading is preferred for multitasking vs process based multitasking - threads are lightweight; using smaller portions of cpu (a few lines of code or a few hundred lines of code) and memory at any one time vs a large process that runs ALL the process code (millions of lines of code) during it's required calculation time increasing memory usage and cpu usage a TON during that same time frame. As far as long-term storage (hard drives), that's cheap, plentiful and relatively fast so that shouldn't be a problem. The problem comes in loading that into and out of short-term storage (RAM) during the required calculation time frame. Combine that with everything else that needs to load into RAM and you start seeing the performance issues with large housing wards. In the end, we don't know how they handle the instanced wards but assuming that every region and housing is handled by the one server you're on that's a TON of stuff that needs to be in RAM and needs to be calculated and sent to clients to be updated. Another thing that could improve housing is a set of servers dedicated to instanced housing (including instanced wards for housing). However, that's a fairly expensive solution to the housing problem - throw more hardware at it is always more expensive and probably doesn't make financial sense for SE right now (remember they also have to pay for all the data that they transfer to the clients, which in a game this size is easily hundreds of terabytes per month if not petabytes and that's expensive AF). If they're already dedicating servers to housing, they may be using servers with fewer resources to save money or housing as implemented is a really heavyweight subsystem and the only solution there would be to rewrite the subsystem.

Now asking for "instanced housing" as the same as "instanced dungeons" is asking SE to dedicate servers for housing. Do they do that now with "instanced wards"? Are wards instanced like dungeons, raids and trials? Does anyone really know or are we just speculating? Unless you have someone from SE saying "this is how we do it", it's all conjecture and is most likely a worthless suggestion. The only thing that we know "instanced housing" would do is decrease processing time and assuming that the information needed to calculate positioning is only held in memory long enough to update clients would prove useful only by making those calculations lighter weight.

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Originally Posted by Pence

If they were to make instanced housing, you certainly wouldn't have a marketboard there.

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And that would be a waste..

The place in data for houses : same on both side.
Data due to ward : probably not so many (only difference from instance systeme "is ward taken : yes/no => is house built : yes/no" then, all would be same as instanced)

BUT servers are working all ward everytime (or nearly) due to the fact from 60 house, there is all time anyone on each (at least at rush hour)
Instance with instance housing, all house with nobody in area would be "off" waiting anyone coming.


Other reason for instance housing (the best i think!) : Houses size. (And place)
Lets say, need 12k house for a server to everyone to be happy. => 200 ward, so 50 on each Area
2 matters
-people doesnt want 25% to be on shirogane, 25% goblet etc... but (fictiv number) anything like 40/25/20/15 => too much people not enough house in one area... => salty people incoming
-12K houses with wards => 8k small 2k8 medium 1k2 large... What if more than 10% people wants a large and not a medium/small? => salty people
With instance system, we could have anything that allow to adapt the area demand, and each people to choose size (and better, begin with small, and when enough money, convert to medium/large!)

Some people also thinks that instance housing would make easier to add dynamically house.
1) adding ward isnt hard i think... The fact is, they added 1 ward, then 2 wards, then 4 wards from the 2.1 to HW (3.1? forgot exactly when the 9=>12 wards was added) and... NOTHING 'til now. They could add wards on each patch... They didnt. The matter there is not "they can't" but "they don't want" .

2) The systems looks not dynamic. 512 FC member, 128 LS member... why not 100? 500? Most other games dont show such clearly number due to hexadecimal system...
Instance system for quests/dongeon : We clearly saw it with Raubahn Xtrem. Too much people for Raubahn, AND for the lucky people who passed him, no matter after, Each personnal instance for quest get his slots. Not a whole server that "gives" dynamically slots. (btw, it would have made raubahn really faster to do...)
Then, same thing for party instance. We saw the xpert duty full, with at least 5, 15 or sometimes 30 minutes to wait, for tanks, or heal! (and more for DDs) and the same time, other dongeon get no matter to go in. LvL70 dongeon instance = full, BUT some slots for others. Here again, dynamic system should help or even, maybe we wouldnt see any issue...


I really think instance housing would not get dynamic system to add slots. (Else, it remain a possibility, but i think they have to recreate/modify the system for this)


The instance housing at least allow server to not work each plot... and so, easier for them. SO easier for SE to add enough house for all people => this is the first absolute step to get! (the possibility to choose size/area without restriction is a second needed step!)

The difference is largely a technical one.

Wards are non instanced areas that exist in the world regardless of if anyone is in it just like any other PVE content. Adding a new ward is the equivalent of adding a new world map to the server. It must maintain and devote resources to that map the entire time even when nobody is there.

Instances are areas that exist on a different server than the world does and instances only exist when someone is using them. When not in use the data is just stored in a database and ready to be loaded. Instances require much less constant server overhead because they're not always on.

The inside of your house is an instance area, not a world area. Instance housing would mean individual houses held in an instance instead of in the world. Also, as others have said, instance housing would mean fewer items to render which means either faster load times or higher item limits per house, or both. Thats why people are asking for instance housing.

However housing for EVERYONE, whether instance or not, is still something that would place a large burden on the servers. Which is preferable depends on a lot of different variables and it won't be an easy or simple decision for SE to make.