What you think...

... how long we will wait for the new wave of angry people? How long until new group of "entitled to everything" people come here and start to complain? ;)

"Entitled" Yeah not being able to fully enjoy all the features of a game you pay to play every month is just how it is. How dare we be upset by a arbitrary limit on the amount of people who can enjoy the housing system in this game

You mean people who failed to get a house? Already seen one post complaining about that.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AkumaHomura

"Entitled" Yeah not being able to fully enjoy all the features of a game you pay to play every month is just how it is. How dare we be upset by a arbitrary limit on the amount of people who can enjoy the housing system in this game

---

Is it arbitrary though? I do wonder.
If they could give everyone a house do you not think it would be in SE's best interest to do so? There has to be legit reasons or that they just don't want to.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by AkumaHomura

"Entitled" Yeah not being able to fully enjoy all the features of a game you pay to play every month is just how it is. How dare we be upset by a arbitrary limit on the amount of people who can enjoy the housing system in this game

---

Yesterday i wrote something on my blog related to housing, so free to check if you want. It comes from a perspective of a player who was disappointed more than once and not only in FF.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ilyrian

Is it arbitrary though? I do wonder.
If they could give everyone a house do you not think it would be in SE's best interest to do so? There has to be legit reasons or that they just don't want to.

---

The "legit" reason is that Yoshi.P and his team seem to believe that wards are a superior system compared to instanced housing (which traditionally makes it much easier to balance supply and demand) but are unable to deal with issues such as supply and demand disparities or server capacity limitations.

So while there was no "arbitrary" decision to limit the supply itself, that supply is limited a result of an "arbitrary" design decision to pursue a particular housing system model. And while I can certainly see where the devs are coming from and even agree that in many aspects wards are superior to instanced housing, I don't think it justifies maintaining a system that just doesn't work well enough for years while also refusing to consider alternative solutions.

You should look on Reddit. So much anger atm lol

Stupid Wards, can't I just hire some carpenters and have one built in the middle of no where like Coerthas? Only one using that land are monsters and I sorta want to get off the grid anyways...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Searban

So while there was no "arbitrary" decision to limit the supply itself, that supply is limited a result of an "arbitrary" design decision to purse a particular housing system model. And while I can certainly see where the devs are coming from and even agree that in many aspects wards are superior to instanced housing, I don't think it justifies maintaining a system that just doesn't work well enough for years while also refusing to consider alternative solutions.

---

Yes, it does seem very shot-sighted of the developers if this is the case.
As for alternative solutions - what are they? Unless wiping the whole thing and starting from scratch is an option, I can't see how housing will ever be available for all.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Searban

The "legit" reason is that Yoshi.P and his team seem to believe that wards are a superior system compared to instanced housing (which traditionally makes it much easier to balance supply and demand) but are unable to deal with issues such as supply and demand disparities or server capacity limitations.

So while there was no "arbitrary" decision to limit the supply itself, that supply is limited a result of an "arbitrary" design decision to purse a particular housing system model. And while I can certainly see where the devs are coming from and even agree that in many aspects wards are superior to instanced housing, I don't think it justifies maintaining a system that just doesn't work well enough for years while also refusing to consider alternative solutions.

---

It is possible to make a ward system with much higher number of wards. See for example LOTRO which has a similar housing system with various neighbourhoods ( = wards) each with a number of houses in them. Difference is that they have a much larger number of wards. Not infinite, but near enough in practice. Main difference is likely that there each ward is treated as an instance, which might lower server load.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rinuko

You should look on Reddit. So much anger atm lol

---

Really? I guess I'm skimming the thread(s) wrong because I'm seeing far more: "I got my house :D :D :D"-esque comments.

I can't even purchase a private house. I meet all the requirements. I wanted a private house, I should be mad but I don't care. I have access to 2 friends plots and our large fc. So I am still good anyway.

Pretty sure it was recolated to. Tried 4 houses all were like this just said nope not worth the hassle cant even tell if a house is being relocated to or locked.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ilyrian

Yes, it does seem very shot-sighted of the developers if this is the case.
As for alternative solutions - what are they? Unless wiping the whole thing and starting from scratch is an option, I can't see how housing will ever be available for all.

---

The one solution that gets tossed around most often is to leave wards as they are and develop instanced housing alongside it, based on the already existing apartments system. The only problem is that we don't really know how much would that help with the servers capacity issue. An issue which, on its own, leaves me a bit perplexed because in more than a decade of playing various MMOs I've never seen a triple-A game this plagued by that particular problem.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MistakeNot

It is possible to make a ward system with much higher number of wards. See for example LOTRO which has a similar housing system with various neighbourhoods ( = wards) each with a number of houses in them. Difference is that they have a much larger number of wards. Not infinite, but near enough in practice. Main difference is likely that there each ward is treated as an instance, which might lower server load.

---

Oh, I know perfectly well that wards can work well enough in practice. All that I was pointing out is that FFXIV devs seem to be unable to make them work, judging by how much time have passed since housing was first introduced into this game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Madbunny

Yesterday i wrote something on my blog related to housing, so free to check if you want. It comes from a perspective of a player who was disappointed more than once and not only in FF.

---

TLDR for people who don't want to waste their time: it's the usual rambling that boils down to the old times were better and muh right to feel special in a video game.

I'm still scratching my head at how my server (Omega) has so many houses left. Including a handful of larges (1 in Mist, 1 in Lavender Beds and quite a few in Goblet).

I felt for sure they'd all be gone, including the small of which there are hundreds left, within 5 minutes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Madbunny

Yesterday i wrote something on my blog related to housing, so free to check if you want. It comes from a perspective of a player who was disappointed more than once and not only in FF.

---

My hubby and I played WoW from vanilla launch for over 8 yrs, hit SWtOR for almost 5 then Wildstar a while. I missed the creation of housing in WoW but SW wasn't bad and similar game play to here and WoW. Wild Star which is F2P now has the best housing bar none. I just didn't like the elite dungeons so I didn't stay longer. I am less than impressed with housing in FF but it was what drew us here and it's better than nothing.

Tons of smalls left on Hyperion still and its a fairly populated server

Edit: I guess its that new timer system?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by worldofneil

I'm still scratching my head at how my server (Omega) has so many houses left. Including a handful of larges (1 in Mist, 1 in Lavender Beds and quite a few in Goblet).

I felt for sure they'd all be gone, including the small of which there are hundreds left, within 5 minutes.

---

Cactaur wasn't sold out after an hour, and it's a fairly busy server. Only smalls left (mediums were gone in seconds and no larges were available), but quite a few of them. I suppose supply is getting closer to demand now.

If they are adamant to keep wards as they are, then they would be better served by adding instanced housing in addition. Which actually, they already did...with apartments. But they're terrible. I don't get why they don't work on improving the already functioning instanced housing so that their PAYING CUSTOMERS can be happy. I'm sure plenty of people would be just as happy if they could have a larger apartment, access to gardening and maybe if you gave them an instanced backyard. And allow FCs to have apartments with access to workshops.

Simple answer to the problem is right in front of them. Don't know why they won't act on it though. /shrugs

That being said, it seems on most servers many people are able to get housing. In smaller servers like mine, even 3 hours later there are still entire wards empty in some places. I think we're alright now but the larger servers are still struggling.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Searban

The one solution that gets tossed around most often is to leave wards as they are and develop instanced housing alongside it, based on the already existing apartments system. The only problem is that we don't really know how much would that help with the servers capacity issue. An issue which, on its own, leaves me a bit perplexed because in more than a decade of playing various MMOs I've never seen a triple-A game this plagued by that particular problem.

---

YoshiP himself has mused about "large apartments", or condos as I like to call them. Their main advantage is that they're fully instanced. There's a key difference:
- Apartments (and housing interiors) are fully instanced. They're only "live" on the server when someone is using them, and when they're empty they can be shut down and removed from RAM entirely. If your server has a capacity of (made up numbers) 2000 characters logged in at once and a total character pool of 25,000, you only need active capacity for 2000 instanced houses. You could give everyone four houses to be silly, and you STILL only need active capacity for 2000 houses. And that's assuming your entire concurrent login pool are all inside houses. In reality you just need room for instances and don't care a ton if they're apartments or dungeons. This lets you efficiently allocate server resources based on what players are doing, and nets you higher active player capacity for a given set of hardware. Instancing is popular for precisely this reason.

You just need persistent storage (aka: disk/data store) for the data belonging to all the ones that aren't active, and persistent storage is the cheapest thing to acquire more of on the back end.

- Wards (and housing exteriors, as they're in the wards) are treated as zones. That is, they're always active. Ward 6 is always running, even if nobody is in it. That means it's always consuming server RAM and likely a bit of CPU. Adding more wards means consuming more RAM, all the time, no matter if anyone is using it or not. So in this case, more houses means more resource cost, all the time, no matter what people are doing. You can't deallocate this and devote it to dungeons instead the way you can with the instanced housing interiors, it's an ongoing resource cost you have to live with forever.

For various reasons that have a lot to do with poor decisions made in 1.0, server budget is a real problem for this game. They're always tight on capacity. Thus, jacking the ward count up to 50 to make the problem go away carries major costs and they don't want to do it. Apartments don't carry the same costs, but again going back to design decisions (this time in 2.0), apartments weren't built to be resizable or to have exterior furnishing/gardening access. So they're currently inferior to houses. Given their current limitations, it makes more sense for them to devote the development budget to making apartments better than it does to pile on tons of wards, because once the bigger apartments exist they will not have to have that large ongoing cost to give every character access to one the way that adding enough wards to do so would, especially on a server like Balmug.

While other games have done this, that ship has largely sailed here. It would be hugely expensive to rework the whole thing now and I doubt we'd ever see it happen. Hence restrictions like 1 house per account, whereas apartments are much more of a free for all. I wouldn't be surprised to see apartment improvements in the future, either. It's the more scaleable of the two systems.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by worldofneil

I'm still scratching my head at how my server (Omega) has so many houses left. Including a handful of larges (1 in Mist, 1 in Lavender Beds and quite a few in Goblet).

I felt for sure they'd all be gone, including the small of which there are hundreds left, within 5 minutes.

---

Maybe demand is finally dying down, people have finally been burned enough to not want to wake up early on a weekday or aren't going to take time off work for a diceroll chance at something in a game? It's been a fairly traditional disappointment for a lot of people, I imagine quite a few are sick of it.

edit: Looking around there are quite a few plots still in the non-shirogane areas, tons in goblet of course. We'll see how much is there after a day or so and people who are done with playing the housing rush get home to see some plots still available.

I hope we'll see one more wave of wards during this expansion cycle, just to 'make sure' we get as many people as possible to a house.

I got mine and I feel lucky as hell I did, but I still have friends who didn't.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by worldofneil

I'm still scratching my head at how my server (Omega) has so many houses left. Including a handful of larges (1 in Mist, 1 in Lavender Beds and quite a few in Goblet).

I felt for sure they'd all be gone, including the small of which there are hundreds left, within 5 minutes.

---

Some of this might be because people have a "dream plot" in mind and won't settle for anything else. Be it a different plot in the same area or a different area.

Anyone that can't get a house at this point what they really mean is they can't get a house they want because at least on my server there are TONS of smalls still available. Especially, in the Goblet. Unless of course you're on an extremely populated server like Balmung. Then I'd imagine everything is gone.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ElazulHP

Anyone that can't get a house at this point what they really mean is they can't get a house they want because at least on my server there are TONS of smalls still available. Especially, in the Goblet.

---

Same situation was hours after launch on Cerberus and maybe still is but didnt check last 2-3 hours. But are you really surprised? Just go check all those topic of people complaining how they cant get a house and you will find a lot of them requesting/expecting to get their dream plot even they didnt have any... I dont want to pull out names but in one of those topics i saw OP complaining and then few pages further he/she comes out with (read between the lines) "i dont want small house... at min. must be medium".
I remember when i got the small house in Goblet (my 1st house) i was so freaking happy even the house was located on most shittiest position you could imagine. But who cares, i finally got a house.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Madbunny

... how long we will wait for the new wave of angry people? How long until new group of "entitled to everything" people come here and start to complain? ;)

---

14 seconds after you made this post.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Madbunny

Same situation was hours after launch on Cerberus and maybe still is but didnt check last 2-3 hours. But are you really surprised? Just go check all those topic of people complaining how they cant get a house and you will find a lot of them requesting/expecting to get their dream plot even they didnt have any... I dont want to pull out names but in one of those topics i saw OP complaining and then few pages further he/she comes out with (read between the lines) "i dont want small house... at min. must be medium".
I remember when i got the small house in Goblet (my 1st house) i was so freaking happy even the house was located on most shittiest position you could imagine. But who cares, i finally got a house.

---

Absolutely this. People will find stuff to complain about no matter what. Yes people pay for a sub. SE is only under the obligation to provide an opportunity for you to get your "dream" plot, camp the damn aetheryte. If people get so angry that it causes you real stress and seething anger perhaps you have larger problems than a virtual house that needs to be addressed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Marcellus_Cassius

Tons of smalls left on Hyperion still and its a fairly populated server

Edit: I guess its that new timer system?

---

Still a lot of smalls left on Hyperion, and lots of them are in the new wards, so likely just people didn't get up for the patch. I'm honestly surprised though. I expected them to sell out this morning.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Genpai

I hope we'll see one more wave of wards during this expansion cycle, just to 'make sure' we get as many people as possible to a house.

I got mine and I feel lucky as hell I did, but I still have friends who didn't.

---

So far this feels more like 3.3 than 4.1, so we might not see more wards this expansion. Especially if they deliver on the upgrading apartment sizes. feels bad for Balmung and their overpopulation problems

The problem some of my FC and LS-mates have been running into is apparently people were buying the cheapened plots and then relocating/relinquishing because some plots were down to almost 2.5M and then you check them 20 minutes later and they were back to 3.1M+ with a purchasing lockout.

And with no indicator as to how long these lockouts are, people have been standing next to placards all day long waiting to see if the land is able to be bought.

Are these random lockouts hours? Days? Weeks? It would be nice to know how long one could reasonably expect to wait.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KeyboardFacerollname

Are these random lockouts hours? Days? Weeks? It would be nice to know how long one could reasonably expect to wait.

---

That is the beauty of random and it would be really bad for SE to come out with the info because people will immediately try to abuse the system. In this way its much harder to guess when some plot will be available for purchase, plus SE can silently change the timers and make it even more difficult to even guess. Something everyone should like because it gives to all the same opportunity, e.g. the plot can be available at noon, 3 in the morning or 5 afternoon. Then anyone who is willing to wait so many hours should rightfully be awarded with the chance to buy the plot ahead of anyone else.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Flashgordon1975

<snipped>

---

Yap, and now we have a fresh example of people greed - check this post (opening post), then next one and the last one. This is what is wrong with the game not SE and game mechanics (at least not the new one).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Madbunny

Yap, and now we have a fresh example of people greed - check this post (opening post), then next one and the last one. This is what is wrong with the game not SE and game mechanics (at least not the new one).

---

What greed? Especially since there are tons of open plots. This goes to show that the squeaky wheels (all the whiners) got all the new houses they wanted and still there are a ton open except on the most populated server(s). There are in fact some left on those. The problem is not as bad as what they made it out to be, there are literally hundreds of houses on my server. Now the crying is about how they did not get the exact plot they wanted. Jesus, enough with the first world problems.

Want SE to fix something? Tell then to fix the ridiculous character limit for forum posts.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Flashgordon1975

Want SE to fix something? Tell then to fix the ridiculous character limit for forum posts.

---

Make a topic and i will immediately be there to up-vote. :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Flashgordon1975

Now the crying is about how they did not get the exact plot they wanted. Jesus, enough with the first world problems.

---

For reasons that have everything to do with a long day at work and sleep deprivation (not related to getting up for housing) this made me laugh way harder than it probably should've lol!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Searban

The "legit" reason is that Yoshi.P and his team seem to believe that wards are a superior system compared to instanced housing (which traditionally makes it much easier to balance supply and demand) but are unable to deal with issues such as supply and demand disparities or server capacity limitations.

So while there was no "arbitrary" decision to limit the supply itself, that supply is limited a result of an "arbitrary" design decision to pursue a particular housing system model. And while I can certainly see where the devs are coming from and even agree that in many aspects wards are superior to instanced housing, I don't think it justifies maintaining a system that just doesn't work well enough for years while also refusing to consider alternative solutions.

---

I'm pretty sure I read that making housing hard to get was by design. Because they wanted players to feel rewarded when they got one. There's also nothing wrong with this design and it's bound to generate some disappointment (like everything difficult to obtain).
The real problem is that SE did not properly evaluate the difficulty level, and walled it behind the randomness of logging in right after a patch.
But yeah if you're complaining about it being hard you're essentially comforting their design (not you personally). If you notice this housing expansion wasn't about personal houses but FC housing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EaMett

I'm pretty sure I read that making housing hard to get was by design. Because they wanted players to feel rewarded when they got one. There's also nothing wrong with this design and it's bound to generate some disappointment (like everything difficult to obtain).
The real problem is that SE did not properly evaluate the difficulty level, and walled it behind the randomness of logging in right after a patch.
But yeah if you're complaining about it being hard you're essentially comforting their design. If you notice this housing expansion wasn't about personal houses but FC housing.

---

"We want to give players a sense of pride and accomplishment"

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MistakeNot

It is possible to make a ward system with much higher number of wards. See for example LOTRO which has a similar housing system with various neighbourhoods ( = wards) each with a number of houses in them. Difference is that they have a much larger number of wards. Not infinite, but near enough in practice. Main difference is likely that there each ward is treated as an instance, which might lower server load.

---

The issue with this games ward system is that; Housing interiors are handled by the housing server while the actual wards or outside area is handled by another server. The wards unlike the housing interiors are constantly running, SE has basically back themselves into a corner and do not wish to come out of it. Each world has 108 housing divisions all running non stop!! From a space stand point you could cram almost of the ARR zones into that space

There's nothing 'entitled' about desiring the ability to participate in a major part of the game. Especially so in the case of role-players who typically make daily use of their houses and do not simply treat it as a novelty.