Crystarrium and Sharlayan House Wards?

The demand for a house is like night and day, we all want a house, yet would still need to get lucky to even win the house we'd like to own.
There is plenty of houses in W1-9 in Ishgard, yet they're still limited to FCs only and not opened up yet to the players.

Adding 2 new housing areas in Crystarrium and Sharlayan respectively will give players more chances to get a house, and opening W1-9 in Ishgard to everyone would help mitigate this problem.

What could the Crystarrium and Sharlayan housing be called?
"The Crystal Chambers" for Crystarrium.
"The Solar Chambers" for Sharlayan.

I think we also need to look at lore with it.

The crystarium is being built up, and by that its logical the residential area can be close. And unlike the other cities, it has room for expansion. It also enables some nice scenery around it.

Instead of sharlayan, i would prefer radz-at-han as area though. As that feels a lot more like an actual residential city unlike old sharlayan which is dedicated to scholars. And its finaly also an area again that isnt directly coupled to the main city either (just like the 3 main cities also are seperated from their housing).

For names i think the 'the something chambers' is far too generic as name. That just sounds more like an appartment complex rather than a housing area.

Think the focus need to more on fixing houses as it is before adding anymore wards anywhere at all.

It took them like 5+ years to make Ishgard Housing, don't hold your breath.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Themarvin

Think the focus need to more on fixing houses as it is before adding anymore wards anywhere at all.

---

They won’t. I mean look at the history of past 8 years we’ve had housing. Maybe even longer.

Considering the shortage of housing plots SE should make the housing areas everywhere. The Moon and Labyrinthos now have useless living space, same goes for Garlemald, and even Elpys could have some potential as testing area for buildings as creations.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Themarvin

Think the focus need to more on fixing houses as it is before adding anymore wards anywhere at all.

---

The devs likely think housing is working as intended

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sotaris

They won’t. I mean look at the history of past 8 years we’ve had housing. Maybe even longer.

---

Got the double of mount to be placed in housing, they put in apartments as well and quite a bunch of features has been added for housing... now you can have multiple aquariums for an instance.

Too much whining about not enough housing... we need more items for housing and how they work, they need to update the quality of a house, and with it give a reason to you would only 'need' one, but apartments would give same benefits including being able to use one as a FC.

Ah yes, the simple and obvious solution of "just make more."

Judging solely off of excess bids in the final rounds on now-full servers, there's not enough remaining demand to even fill an entire new housing district on many servers, never mind two of them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

Ah yes, the simple and obvious solution of "just make more."

Judging solely off of excess bids in the final rounds on now-full servers, there's not enough remaining demand to even fill an entire new housing district on many servers, never mind two of them.

---

And judging solely off initial bids at the opening of Empyreum, any NA server could easily fill up the entirety of a new housing district with personal homes. Some will easily fill up 2 districts (and still leave a large amount of people without houses)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pablomaldito

And judging solely off initial bids at the opening of Empyreum, any NA server could easily fill up the entirety of a new housing district with personal homes. Some will easily fill up 2 districts (and still leave a large amount of people without houses)

---

Citation needed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pablomaldito

And judging solely off initial bids at the opening of Empyreum, any NA server could easily fill up the entirety of a new housing district with personal homes. Some will easily fill up 2 districts (and still leave a large amount of people without houses)

---

When Empyreum opened, the entries included players who already owned but wanted to relocate. Many of the players without a house then have obtained one by now.

The question is how many bids are we seeing in the recent lotteries. Those are the players still trying to get a house. Unless there's a medium or large available, most entries will be from those without a house as opposed to those trying to relocate.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

Citation needed.

---

There were 360 personal houses available at the launch of Empyreum. In Balmung, I looked through every house and ward towards the end of the entry period. Nothing had lower than 10 bids. Even if we underestimate the bids by assigning just 10 bids per house (and 10 was the low end, not the average), that's already 3600 bids. I didn't look at other worlds as extensively, but in the few wards I looked at, nothing less than 6 bids - and this was earlier than my Balmung sweep.

During the lottery round for the FC to personal ward conversion, I once again surveyed the available houses and this time nothing had fewer than 16 bids with about 180 houses available. That puts us at 2880 bids, which again is an underestimate. I did not check other worlds in this round.

A housing district hold 1440 houses. That's not enough for the leftover personal bidders on NA servers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

When Empyreum opened, the entries included players who already owned but wanted to relocate. Many of the players without a house then have obtained one by now.

The question is how many bids are we seeing in the recent lotteries. Those are the players still trying to get a house. Unless there's a medium or large available, most entries will be from those without a house as opposed to those trying to relocate.

---

Recent lotteries don't really tell you the true demand because the conditions reduce participation. Not everyone is willing or able to permanently set aside several million gil for a less than 1% chance at getting a house. For someone who doesn't have the gil to spare, that is a huge amount to sacrifice when participating in the lottery has almost the same chance of winning as not participating.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pablomaldito

There were 360 personal houses available at the launch of Empyreum. In Balmung, I looked through every house and ward towards the end of the entry period. Nothing had lower than 10 bids. Even if we underestimate the bids by assigning just 10 bids per house (and 10 was the low end, not the average), that's already 3600 bids. I didn't look at other worlds as extensively, but in the few wards I looked at, nothing less than 6 bids - and this was earlier than my Balmung sweep.

During the lottery round for the FC to personal ward conversion, I once again surveyed the available houses and this time nothing had fewer than 16 bids with about 180 houses available. That puts us at 2880 bids, which again is an underestimate. I did not check other worlds in this round.

A housing district hold 1440 houses. That's not enough for the leftover personal bidders on NA servers.


Recent lotteries don't really tell you the true demand because the conditions reduce participation. Not everyone is willing or able to permanently set aside several million gil for a less than 1% chance at getting a house. For someone who doesn't have the gil to spare, that is a huge amount to sacrifice when participating in the lottery has almost the same chance of winning as not participating.

---

What sacrifice? The lottery is a no risk situation unlike a real life lottery. Either you win, or you get all your gil back.

If the player genuinely needs that gil for other items, they shouldn't be trying to get a house in the first place. They should be getting those other items instead.

If someone isn't entering even though they have the gil, it leaves the impression they don't really want a house. It's just a "nice to have but I can live without it". SE's not about to create a "hard copy" supply of ward houses for those with only a vague interest in a house.

The best way to show SE that more houses are needed is to keep entering regardless of the odds of winning.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

Citation needed.

---

eyeballs needed

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pablomaldito

There were 360 personal houses available at the launch of Empyreum. In Balmung, I looked through every house and ward towards the end of the entry period.

---

Quote:

---

Balmung

---

Balmung is not the standard any such system should be measured against.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

Balmung is not the standard any such system should be measured against.

---

To be honest, there should be no standard at all. Each world is unique in population and what content the players tend to gravitate toward.

SE should be considering how to create a system that best serves the variety, not a standard.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jojoya

To be honest, there should be no standard at all. Each world is unique in population and what content the players tend to gravitate toward.

SE should be considering how to create a system that best serves the variety, not a standard.

---

Ehhhh, I'm not so sure about that. Seems like it would quickly lead to cries of favoritism, on top of the snowball effect that large servers already experience. Large server gets more resources, draws more players, needs more resources... I've been around long enough to hear Balmung calling for Mateus to be stripped of housing because "well they're low pop and not using it anyway."

Much of dev efforts are intended to achieve some semblance of balance, because that's what the hardware is designed for.

Plus, harkening back to a previous point of mine, their intention is not to serve everyone. Treating every server like Balmung would be a massive waste of resources. Treating everything like whatever the low-pop server is these days would obviously see massive outcry. So, they aim middle of the road, a balance between satisfying as many as they can, without blowing the budget. Or, alternatively, spending as little as possible while keeping the vocal outrage to a minimum.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

Ehhhh, I'm not so sure about that. Seems like it would quickly lead to cries of favoritism, on top of the snowball effect that large servers already experience. Large server gets more resources, draws more players, needs more resources... I've been around long enough to hear Balmung calling for Mateus to be stripped of housing because "well they're low pop and not using it anyway."

Much of dev efforts are intended to achieve some semblance of balance, because that's what the hardware is designed for.

Plus, harkening back to a previous point of mine, their intention is not to serve everyone. Treating every server like Balmung would be a massive waste of resources. Treating everything like whatever the low-pop server is these days would obviously see massive outcry. So, they aim middle of the road, a balance between satisfying as many as they can, without blowing the budget. Or, alternatively, spending as little as possible while keeping the vocal outrage to a minimum.

---

I'm not proposing that every server get treated like Balmung. I'm proposing a better use of resources.

Part of the issue with the current housing design is that the housing instance servers are per world instead of a shared resource across a data center like instanced duties are. How can we tell there's a difference? In our HUD settings, we have the ability to select "Display current world name" as part of the server information (the clock) on our HUD.

Go into an instanced housing area (house interior, private chamber, apartment) and the server name continues to appear. Go into an instanced duty and the server name disappears because you're no longer on an instance server supporting a specific world. It's a shared resource across the data center.

So do the same with housing instance servers. Leave the wards tied to a world but have the instanced portion shared across the data center. Most of the Crystal worlds other than Balmung and Mateus still have a large number of vacant apartments. Being tied to a specific world's servers, they aren't much help to players who would happily make use of them if they were available on their home world's servers. Making the housing instance servers data center wide becomes more efficient management of equipment while doing a better job of meeting player needs on all worlds.

I doubt the Balmung/Mateus overflow would fill them all and become a problem for players on the other Crystal worlds, partly because as soon as the new NA worlds become available in (hopefully) November, SE is going to slam most of the existing NA worlds with the Congested status to force new characters to be made on the new worlds. If SE is smart, they'll add additional incentives for players to transfer from Congested worlds to New worlds just as there is a difference when transferring to a Preferred world from a Congested or Standard world (right now there is no difference in bonus going to a New world when origination world is Congested/Standard/Preferred).

One thing it would mean is no more functional Summoning Bells inside of a house. Players would have to use the Summoning Bells in the wards, which isn't a bad thing if players want to see more foot traffic in the wards.

It's not a change that could be implemented that quickly if SE is inclined to do it. I wouldn't expect to see it happen until the 7.x series. But it would help, especially if SE isn't going to give up on their pet wards.

You're right that treating every server the same as one specific server doesn't work. That's why some resources are better shared across a data center than limited to a single world.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hasrat

Citation needed.

---

On Sargatanas this recent lotto cycle there were exactly 4 open personal plots. Each one had upwards of 200 bids. This upcoming lotto cycle there will be even fewer open plersonal plots. Your objection seems to be that new housing zones wouldn't completely fill up. Wouldn't that be nice? People have options of where to move to? In addition to the fact that there are new players in the game literally every single day.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OracleLunaFaye

On Sargatanas this recent lotto cycle there were exactly 4 open personal plots. Each one had upwards of 200 bids. This upcoming lotto cycle there will be even fewer open plersonal plots. Your objection seems to be that new housing zones wouldn't completely fill up. Wouldn't that be nice? People have options of where to move to? In addition to the fact that there are new players in the game literally every single day.

---

Sure, it'd be nice. But it'd also be more expensive. I'm just pointing out the dev rationale. The intention is not to satisfy everyone. The intention at this point is no longer to have more houses available than players wanting them. There will always be a surplus of players wanting houses. The only point when they will consider adding more housing is when that surplus threatens to approach the number of players already with housing.

Per your example, there are less than 1000 players seeking a house on your server, versus the 7,000+ that already have a house. Simple fact is, most of the players that want a house already have one.

Devs aren't going to do something just because "it would be nice." They're not in the business of just spending money if they don't have to.

They should just at this point give everyone Medium / Large houses instead of small and allow interior layout changes so that it'll be less complaint lmao, or just allow instanced to begin with.

Crystarium? No. (It's not on the Source. While we can travel to and from there, we're essentially leaving the first to tend to its own wounds.)

Sharlayan? Possibly. (You just have to be nice to the group that hate you on principle of being a Scion. Alphinauds father and teacher being the only two that are now somewhat warming up to us)

More wards will always be a nice thing. More scenery choices and atmosphere to pick from. But even if those choices would be nice, it won't reliably "fix" the problem. Once again, it'd only delay it. I'm personally of the camp that they should fix the supply issue, rather than continue to add finite chunks and push the problem down the road by a week or so. (given thats how long it used to take for wards to fill up and the complaining to start again)

They could put apartments in Crystarium not sure why have to be tied to a housing ward.