They will literally make diet animal crossing instead of 100 housing wards.

I mean, yeah, that's it really. It's really just unacceptable to just add new content that taunts the system of true housing ownership without addressing the problem. Not to mention this piecemeal, half baked lottery just engenders player to player ire. Should have been like double ward amount. But...FIVE wards? How do you leave, what, 80 % of your paying player base unable to access content they're paying for. It's essentially customer abuse at this point forcing us to all despise each other for not winning this corporate patchwork abomination of a solution they force on us. Just to string everyone that wasnt a gil min maxer since 1.0 along for a few more months ad infinitum. Server issues? BS , they adapted to the EW influx, their highest traffic ever in a few weeks , but can't figure out how to copy paste 100 wards after nearly a decade of subscribing players? I dont get it and hate this after only being here since end of ShB lol.

The only thing that has me holding on to the tinyest bit of hope is.. The Island is hooked into the housing server..
I'm really hopeing this is beta testing for 7.0 announcement we can put a house on out islanded.. upgradeable from to medium oto large

Sucks that there is 0 uniqueness to the island. Yours is a carbon copy of everyone's. They should have made it more like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley with varied tilesets. This would have added a more unique feeling to your island, but instead it's just another system to Min/Max.

The only convincing argument I've heard for why islands are doable but housing isn't, is that the islands are samey as hell so they don't utilize as many resources as a unique house that has to be "on" and running at every moment's notice.
Do I ........ accept this limitation? Nope. I think at this point the multi billion dollar company can just buy more space to give players more wards. I swear to god people who don't even work there and know as little about SE's situation as you or I have been playing cover for Square for years while they've bungled the housing situation left and right. I think I've heard every excuse in the book for why this 2 billion dollar organization running one of the most successful and profitable MMORPGs of all time can't just acquire more resources to give the players the thing they advertised. Or why, failing that, they can't just listen to their community about its needs for 2 minutes and stop catering to an FC demographic that basically doesn't exist anymore. I swear SE really thinks FCs are like 50 happy people doing submarines together and not just 1 guy and his dozens of alts buying up multiple wards. Then islands come out and on day one are so popular that we can't get into our... houses/apartments. Hinting that they share the same resources. It was such a slap in the face, even if housing and islands don't use the same amount of resources necessarily.

On the topic of islands, people compare it to animal crossing but it's totally lacking in all the charm, customization, and multiplayer fun of animal crossing. Islands represent everything bad about animal crossing. All of the negative things that animal crossing fans put up with, like timegating and the feeling of "not a lot to do while I wait," is just the primary feature of islands, whereas in animal crossing it's the crap you push through to get to the good times. Island sanctuary doesn't have a good time. You just grind until you can unlock a new timegated feature. Then you wait for that feature to appear. It sits there and does nothing. Then you grind some more. That's it. And every milestone or so, they'll toss a new clothing item in to keep people doing it. We could've had so many other things in place of the development time this system took. I don't even want to think about it.

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Originally Posted by KVKV

They will literally make diet animal crossing instead of 100 housing wards.

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Yep, really sad, whelp, next year for me and you maybe (or whenever more wards come out.) Perhaps they could take away the grandfathering of plots away, maybe make it 1 per account overall.

Pipe dream? Yea.

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

Do I ........ accept this limitation? Nope. I think at this point the multi billion dollar company can just buy more space to give players more wards.

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Exactly! FFXIV is now THE leading MMORPG, they need to fix the issue, however it needs to be done. Do it. Or lose players.

Diet animal crossing..?
You mean Tataru's sweatshop simulator?
Because the only similarity to animal crossing it has is that it's on an island. It lacks anything good that made animal crossing fun.

Issues with housing have always been a complaint but have never been properly addressed. Or attempted to be fixed.
It's been a mixed bag of "Just give us instanced housing" to "No to instanced housing bc I like neighborhoods!" and "Housing should stay limited!" for years.

Welcome to the club of unresolved housing issues, we have jackets.

My hope is that Island Sanctuary is a sort of testing ground for adding in better instanced housing system. It wouldn't be the first time they've added in something that turned out to be a beta test for a more developed content system added later.

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Originally Posted by CheshaSolttiri

Exactly! FFXIV is now THE leading MMORPG, they need to fix the issue, however it needs to be done. Do it. Or lose players.

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Lose players to what game?

The housing problems here have been going on almost since the system's introduction because SE doesn't seem to have researched what players want from housing in the first place.

If there was a good game out there similar to FFXIV that had an equal or better housing system without a supply problem, players would have already been quitting. ESO is the closest I can think of to meeting that but the general game play will turn some players off.

RIFT has a great housing system but the rest of the game is mediocre not to mention what had originally been a fairly decent cash shop quickly switched to loot box RNG then started sliding into P2W..

WoW has no housing and is trying to repair its game reputation at the same time Blizzard is trying to repair its business reputation.

Most of the other games out there are also very reliant on cash shops and loot boxes, or emphasize PvP so the PvE is stale at best.

Players can make the snap decision to quit but unless they already have another game they're enjoying, they'll quickly be back because there's really not much in the way of options when it comes to MMOs. SE knows this. Lacking any significant competition at this time, they're not under pressure to fix things though YoshiP does seem to keep pushing at the board to get the funding for improvements to FFXIV to help it sustain its place as a MMO leader.

They just added 480 wards (28k+ plots) at the end of last year with Dynamis, adding wards 25-30 was another 840 wards (50k plots) across NA, and 4 more Dynamis worlds will be another 600 wards (36k plots) likely this year. Or are you arguing for 100 wards per zone per world? Which would come out to total plots almost 3 times the current active level 90 playerbase.

edit: In fact, there are over twice as many plots as level 90 players on Dynamis (and this doesn't include wards 25-30 that will open at a later date.) Come on over, we'd love to see you over here, transfers are still free!

People has been craving for instanced housing... and now we get it, that would mean limitations as well, and it would be a goal for the SE database if they can get rid of 1000s of items from the game, people craved for lottery as well.

If housing get put the Island instead of current system = you can't fill your house with people anymore the way you used to be able to, and decorating would be a limited affair as well, as how it has been seen working in so many other MMO's

SE work in the direction of what the players want... first wanted a fair system to get houses and craved for lottery, we got lottery and yes it is a better system than before, but not SE need to work on the things that is going to hurt a few people to move towards removal of multiple FCs and grandfathering.

I don't understand why after all this time they still refuse to add instanced housing.
If Yoshi likes the wards so much, keep the wards as they are now. Additionally add instanced housing for everyone. Keep the wards, together with all the things we got now, the lottery, the auto-demolishion, etc. for people who want "VIP-housing".
Who wants the neighborhood and is willing to put in the time and effort, let them have it. The rest, who just want a place to call home and a garden to grow some onions, let them have an instanced house.

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Originally Posted by muras4ki

edit: In fact, there are over twice as many plots as level 90 players on Dynamis (and this doesn't include wards 25-30 that will open at a later date.) Come on over, we'd love to see you over here, transfers are still free!

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Before Dynamis was added people explained that they can't move to EU or OCE because having to move to a different world region and time zone is unreasonable. I wonder what the excuse is now. There were a few posts in the salt threads from players saying they'll quit because they lost. At least those people don't seem to be in fcs they'd miss very much, so why not move servers for free?

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Originally Posted by Themarvin

People has been craving for instanced housing... and now we get it, that would mean limitations as well

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You are just speculating here. Please stop and think before you make sweeping statements as if they are facts. The only people who really know how instanced houses would play out are the devs, and they aren't saying anything, which is only sensible as making promises you can't keep is not a good look.

I have no idea if instanced housing would be as severely limited as you suggest but I suspect not because of the following:
Island sanctuary is available to every character (NB not every player, every character)
House interiors, apartments and FC rooms are already instanced
The wards are persistent (always loaded regardless of whether anyone is in them or not), that has to use a lot of resources. They are also totally inflexible, the number of houses is fixed regardless of player numbers on a particular world.

Other games have managed instanced houses just fine including some older ones such as ESO (low furnishing limits but each player can own multiple houses of varying sizes from single rooms right up to Villas with barns, outbuildings, courtyards and terraces).

So, let's not let Square off the hook here. We don't know the technical difficulties they'd face making instanced houses, but we have a system that is far from ideal. As customers, I think that's all we need to be concerned with. It's understandable people are unhappy with the present system but it's not our job to fix it or to say how it can be done.

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

I think I've heard every excuse in the book for why this 2 billion dollar organization running one of the most successful and profitable MMORPGs of all time can't just acquire more resources to give the players the thing they advertised.

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There are valid excuses.

Final Fantasy XIV net sales are at 28.6 billion yen for 3rd quarter 2023 (posted in November of last year), in a company whose entire Digital Entertainment Sector posted 117.1 billion yen in net sales.

The operating income for the entire Digitial Entertainment Sector (profit after expenses) was 24.5 billion yen. (Roughly 190 million US dollars).

Out of the 163.3 billion in net sales, Final Fantasy XIV net sales are just over 17.5% of total sales. The game is not the 'savior of Square Enix' anymore.

It is certainly the most recognizable property, but browser/mobile games made more than double the net sales of the entire MMO division (which includes other properties), at what I understand was a much higher profit-to-expense ratio.

Large 365 billion yen companies reinvest profits to ensure they remain 365 billion yen companies.

They've done so consistently for this game (new Logical Data Center in North America, new Physical Data Center in Oceania, more systems to produce more housing across the board in all data centers).

You are frustrated that they aren't immediately spending more on the things you want. Since anything that comes from the development team and Producer is considered to be A Promise(tm), I do not find it frustrating that they refuse to provide their plans for the next five years of the game.

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Originally Posted by Solarra

You are just speculating here. Please stop and think before you make sweeping statements as if they are facts. The only people who really know how instanced houses would play out are the devs, and they aren't saying anything, which is only sensible as making promises you can't keep is not a good look.

I have no idea if instanced housing would be as severely limited as you suggest but I suspect not because of the following:
Island sanctuary is available to every character (NB not every player, every character)
House interiors, apartments and FC rooms are already instanced
The wards are persistent (always loaded regardless of whether anyone is in them or not), that has to use a lot of resources. They are also totally inflexible, the number of houses is fixed regardless of player numbers on a particular world.

Other games have managed instanced houses just fine including some older ones such as ESO (low furnishing limits but each player can own multiple houses of varying sizes from single rooms right up to Villas with barns, outbuildings, courtyards and terraces).

So, let's not let Square off the hook here. We don't know the technical difficulties they'd face making instanced houses, but we have a system that is far from ideal. As customers, I think that's all we need to be concerned with. It's understandable people are unhappy with the present system but it's not our job to fix it or to say how it can be done.

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Devil's advocate.

Island sanctuary is not dynamic content - you have 7 or so slots with 3 options vs what housing is; not to mention that when everyone was using island sanctuaries they became unusable and still do from time to time during traffic spikes.
House interiors technically are; however such instances are limited already due to at best I would assume are DB issues because of how the crystal engine handles items. That's one reason why there is a limit to how many folks can actually go into 1 house at a time (and many venues will not permit minions as they count) So just giving everyone their own instance would likely bring that house of cards to a halt.
Also technically the way the engine handles the wards and housing is the same - your house is "persistant" the reason you spawn outside after relog is because the game kicks you out of a home after DC/relog to avoid you trying to reconnect to a asset that might be demo'ed/deleted when you log out.

Other games have down instanced homes; most are FtP now to my understanding because they seem to generally be far less successful so I am not sure citing them as "how to do it right" is such a good idea in my opinion. Someone once suggested housing is not a big reason for FF's success; I disagree with that - however I also think that many people merely want it because they do not got it and in the end would just devour resources and grow bored as they achieve all the endgame goals.

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Originally Posted by Lelila38

I don't understand why after all this time they still refuse to add instanced housing.
If Yoshi likes the wards so much, keep the wards as they are now. Additionally add instanced housing for everyone. Keep the wards, together with all the things we got now, the lottery, the auto-demolishion, etc. for people who want "VIP-housing".
Who wants the neighborhood and is willing to put in the time and effort, let them have it. The rest, who just want a place to call home and a garden to grow some onions, let them have an instanced house.

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They did add instanced housing - apartments. They failed at satisfying housing demand.

What they seem to have a problem understanding is that players don't like apartments because they're simply copies of the small Private Chambers players in FCs already had access to. Players want house sized interiors, not room sized interiors. They want an outdoor area to decorate and relax in as well.

What is needed is for them to improve instanced housing. Make the apartments bigger. Add in some sort of patio area with "fake" scenic views that would allow players to use the outdoor furnishings that are frequent seasonal event rewards. Better yet, make the entire instance an outdoor area where the player can choose to place a house then decorate inside and out using a single combined item limit. If I want to create a simple cottage hidden within a lush forest, I should be able to do that.

Players want a neighborhood? Create larger and more expensive housing instances with item limits that would allow multiple players to share and create their own houses. That could be done in RIFT, where some housing instances had item limits of over 2000 and you could whitelist multiple players to have item placement/removal privileges.

Or create a common area hub with instanced housing entrances scattered around it. The current wards could have worked for that, with the placards acting as the entrance portal just as we interact with the apartment building entrance to get into our apartments. More owners having to pass through a common area to get to their personal housing means more player interaction and more of a neighborhood feeling.

Still don't know why anyone wants to crow Thavnairian Onions when they could be growing Voidrake or Althyk Lavender instead then buy the onions with part of their profits but I guess someone needs to grow them.

With islands being instanced (I think they are). One would think that is an option we could legitimately become a reality.

Now... positioning of a house or maybe several houses would be dependent on how they allow it to happen. I'd like to see an option to open up different parts of the island to park said house. Like large would only have 3-4 spots they could be built at with medium having more options and smaller having a LOT of options with a potential small on top of the highest point (not sure if it would fit, but an idea).

Make it a GIL sink to build and expand the island with personal housing. I'm still without a plot and very annoyed years later. I just get to use our Med FC location for now. Won't bother with apartment when I can have a room in the FC.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Solarra

You are just speculating here. Please stop and think before you make sweeping statements as if they are facts. The only people who really know how instanced houses would play out are the devs, and they aren't saying anything, which is only sensible as making promises you can't keep is not a good look.

I have no idea if instanced housing would be as severely limited as you suggest but I suspect not because of the following:
Island sanctuary is available to every character (NB not every player, every character)
House interiors, apartments and FC rooms are already instanced
The wards are persistent (always loaded regardless of whether anyone is in them or not), that has to use a lot of resources. They are also totally inflexible, the number of houses is fixed regardless of player numbers on a particular world.

Other games have managed instanced houses just fine including some older ones such as ESO (low furnishing limits but each player can own multiple houses of varying sizes from single rooms right up to Villas with barns, outbuildings, courtyards and terraces).

So, let's not let Square off the hook here. We don't know the technical difficulties they'd face making instanced houses, but we have a system that is far from ideal. As customers, I think that's all we need to be concerned with. It's understandable people are unhappy with the present system but it's not our job to fix it or to say how it can be done.

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You don't seem to understand the amount of resources in the database needed if people are being given totally free in an Island Sanctuary Scenario aka. instanced, they would need to cut corners and not for the better if housing has to become like that.

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Originally Posted by Themarvin

You don't seem to understand the amount of resources in the database needed if people are being given totally free in an Island Sanctuary Scenario aka. instanced, they would need to cut corners and not for the better if housing has to become like that.

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You are right, I don't understand it, I don't work in this field and I do not know the technical limitations. I am simply looking at what we have and comparing it to what other games of a similar age are able to manage.

However, you seem to be arguing as if you do know, but you aren't giving any facts to back up your assertions.
Agreed, Island Sanctuary is limited in customisation, but as i pointed out, there is one for every character (entry sub gives you 8 characters per data centre, standard gives you more). Also, they are planning to allow us to place outdoor furnishings on the island in the future, so the custiomisation is going to be expanded.
Apartments are instanced, house interiors are instanced, FC rooms are instanced. I don't see why an instance that includes a house exterior is somehow impossible. Instanced exteriors would be a lot less resource hungry than adding more wards, yet more wards are what we get along with the instanced Island Sanctuary that nobody asked for.

I don't get it. Why make excuses for Square, a wealthy corporation, like it's some little indie company unable to spare resources or employ the best people? I am sure they could do instanced houses if they wanted to and do them well. Nothing you have said has convinced me otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Solarra

I don't get it. Why make excuses for Square, a wealthy corporation, like it's some little indie company unable to spare resources or employ the best people?

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I see you must have never worked for a wealthy corporation. Most of them are run as a group of small indie companies, who may very well be unable to spare resources or employ the best people.

In the case of the division responsible for FFXIV, they have plenty of money to employ the best people. The problem with that is, well, it's a Japanese company, with an expectation that those they hire speak Japanese, read Japanese, and are willing to live in Japan. That tends to limit the number of 'best people' who can both meet the requirements and want to work in Japan for a Japanese company.

They have plenty of resources to accommodate their current mode of operations. They also have plenty of divisions working on something else.

This game is the most prominent one to the Western audience, but its net sales aren't even close to the amount of the Japanese mobile/browser gaming division. Heck, the Amusement sector of the company makes almost as much as the entire MMORPG division.

In order to remain a wealthy corporation, there is need to constantly expand. MMORPGs are less than 20% of total net sales for the company. You would be correct to surmise that the other 80% is where at least 80% of future development costs are focused.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

You are frustrated that they aren't immediately spending more on the things you want. Since anything that comes from the development team and Producer is considered to be A Promise(tm), I do not find it frustrating that they refuse to provide their plans for the next five years of the game.

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Immediately? People have been asking for instanced housing for years.
Your own data describe how XIV, a single game, makes up nearly a quarter of Square's net sales where their "Entertainment Sector" is concerned. I never called XIV the "savior of Square Enix" in my original post, so I'm not sure why you put that in quotes, but the amount of revenue they rake in from just this game is massive by your own admission. It's weird to me that you'd post the data and then try and downplay it in the very same post.

Imagine being a company and looking at your revenue pie chart, and seeing that nearly a fifth of your total revenue comes from a single source, and then just actively ignoring that source for years when it asks for something fairly standard because it might require a small investment in additional infrastructure. I simply can't accept it, sorry.

And yeah, I'm well aware that the revenue this game generates goes to funding other projects. Spreading risk through diversification is normal. But reinvesting in successful ventures is normal as well, and it just doesn't happen enough for what this game brings in. Genuinely not shocked either way though; square is basically Japanese EA, and like someone else mentioned earlier, they know their players have nowhere to go so they're fine to do the minimum. I just think it's gross is all.