Now That The Game Is Getting A Housing Upgrade, When Are The Extra Wards?

I'm happy for the players that can benefit from this new housing upgrade but I'm one of the unfortunate ones that has not been able to get a house on my current world.

We're in desperate need for more housing wards. Content in the game should not be gatekept due to system limitations, if they are then it is entirely a technology issue. The lack of server space is something that can be easily remedied.

Edit: it seems like I've mixed up the thread title, it was originally "When Are We Getting Extra Wards" but I wanted to change it to "Where Are The Extra Wards" to make it less impersonal but alas I did not fully change the title.

Man, I'd love to at least own a house virtually even if it's not feasable in real life TT

Jokes aside, it'd be nice if they added a few extra wards though I may assume they'll all be full immediately anyways

You mean those new housing wards, which get owned by 1 man FC's?

If only they could allow players to turn one of the landmark spots in the Island Sanctuary into a housing plot... Preferably a large one...

there are servers without houses and there are server with thousands of empty plots

if people would simply transfer from overcrowded to empty worlds, it would solve everything

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Originally Posted by xbahax92

You mean those new housing wards, which get owned by 1 man FC's?

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If someone wishes to buy a house for their FC, they are entirely in their rights to do so. The issue is locking out paying customers from something everyone should have equal opportunities to own.

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

there are servers without houses and there are server with thousands of empty plots

if people would simply transfer from overcrowded to empty worlds, it would solve everything

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I transferred worlds because my friends are on that world. To transfer away will be counter-intuitive. Instead of adding in new empty worlds, they should have expanded the existing ones but that's not the topic for today.

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

there are servers without houses and there are server with thousands of empty plots

if people would simply transfer from overcrowded to empty worlds, it would solve everything

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This doesn't solve anything, it just masks the problem.

It would help if they banned the practice of one person owning dozens of houses, including those covered by that "grandfather clause".

Give the players who own multiple houses on the same character a month to choose one single house they want to keep, and once that time expires, demolish the rest.

As for those using multiple characters, make estate ownership one-per-account-per-region at the very least, and repeat the above on that basis.

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Originally Posted by Underscore

It would help if they banned the practice of one person owning dozens of houses, including those covered by that "grandfather clause".

Give the players who own multiple houses on the same character a month to choose one single house they want to keep, and once that time expires, demolish the rest.

As for those using multiple characters, make estate ownership one-per-account-per-region at the very least, and repeat the above on that basis.

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Sooo... there's a problem with it
First of all, you can not own multiple houses on the same character at all, did you meant on the same account?
If so, say, someone has multiple and put a lot of effort into decorating them and have purchased plenty of items from mog station for them. How do you propose to deal with this issue, just remove items that they bought from them / lock them so that they can not ever use them again? I personally would want refunds in this case, you know.

Instead, how about, just add instanced housing and problem solved?

Part of the issue is that this is disproportionate. You are on Balmung, a world well known to instantly fill up all its housing slots the moment new wards are added. But not all worlds are like that, so SE is just like "well transfer then" as if it's that simple.

I imagine they won't add new wards on Aether/Primal/Crystal until most if not all wards are full on Dynamis, as adding new wards to those older data centers all but guarantees that more people leave Dynamis because its literally only good for having plots, hardly anyone plays there for any other reason (in fact most of the players there are literally just housing alts, they don't play the character otherwise).

But that's probably not going to happen any time soon so long as veteran players refuse to transfer (and there's plenty of reasons not to) and new players keep funneling into A/P/C to avoid being stuck on a "dead" server.

Square-Enix would need to either implement a cross-DC party and duty finder so being on Dynamis isn't agony and maybe more people move there (a feature which could take years to create) or they would need to just give everyone instanced housing, where limited wards only matter to those who care to show off their home (but good luck getting SE to budge on their whole "but neighborhoods" thing).

I am standing in front of Primal, Leviathan, Mist, Zone 15, Plot 58 with 0 bidders.
Do we really need a new ward just to move people off these crowded servers?

Moving DC's is simply not a good idea just to have a house. Only if it's an alt. I wouldn't recommend it.

If you wanted to make World Transfers a solution to housing... They did apparently remove the limit on Gil being transferred, but they'd still need to make World Transfers free and also ensure you get to keep your character's name when transferring to a new World.

They should definitely give out extra wards, if they want to maintain the same housing system. Otherwise, scrapping it for instance housing would be even better.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

But that's probably not going to happen any time soon so long as veteran players refuse to transfer (and there's plenty of reasons not to) and new players keep funneling into A/P/C to avoid being stuck on a "dead" server.

Square-Enix would need to either implement a cross-DC party and duty finder so being on Dynamis isn't agony and maybe more people move there

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They vaguely said that the data center issues will be fixed. Which is a bold statement for them to make. However, this is the time they usually implement these things. Heavensward added Cross-World PF in 3.5, Stormblood added World Visit in 4.57, and Shadowbringers would have added DC Travel in probably 5.57 or 5.58 if it wasn't for the game going viral among certain twitch streamers.

So most likely, whatever their solution is - cross-DC PF, cross-DC DF, incentive changes or whatever, will be in one of these .5 patches.

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Originally Posted by Alicie

Sooo... there's a problem with it
First of all, you can not own multiple houses on the same character at all, did you meant on the same account?
If so, say, someone has multiple and put a lot of effort into decorating them and have purchased plenty of items from mog station for them. How do you propose to deal with this issue, just remove items that they bought from them / lock them so that they can not ever use them again? I personally would want refunds in this case, you know.

Instead, how about, just add instanced housing and problem solved?

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You used to be able to buy multiple houses per character. After they changed that, they allowed the people who already owned multiple to keep them. That's how we've got entire wards owned by one person/FC.

If the houses get demolished, they'd get all their furnishings back via the usual vendor. As for the effort spent decorating... that sucks I guess, but they're depriving so many other people of houses that I can't really care too much. Instanced housing would take away the real neighbourhoods that make this system feel so immersive, and WoW's system proves doing that might not even be necessary.

I have a feeling with the new interior system where you can have whatever size you want, possibly including apartments, we will not see any new housing wards.

I don’t know that we’ll see any extra wards added to the current count of 30, though the current UI has room for about 6 more if they decided to do it.

I do think that we’ll get more districts though. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Old Sharlayan in 8.0.

Unless they actually decide to get bold and add an instanced plot option that lets you choose your background scenery… there’s so many places in the world people would like to live but they can’t create districts for all of them. An instanced system could fill that niche.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

This doesn't solve anything, it just masks the problem.

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i couldnt get a house on Odin, so I went to Alpha and got my dream location within a week (as the only person that applied on it)

it is that easy

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Originally Posted by Underscore

You used to be able to buy multiple houses per character. After they changed that, they allowed the people who already owned multiple to keep them. That's how we've got entire wards owned by one person/FC.

If the houses get demolished, they'd get all their furnishings back via the usual vendor. As for the effort spent decorating... that sucks I guess, but they're depriving so many other people of houses that I can't really care too much. Instanced housing would take away the real neighbourhoods that make this system feel so immersive, and WoW's system proves doing that might not even be necessary.

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No no, I'm here talking about real money that were spent on furnishings. Such furnishings, even if returned, will be untradeable and unusable since you can not get house anymore, means people spent real money on their house, paid subscription to keep it possibly for years, you can not just remove it like that at all, that can result in issues up to legal problems.

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Originally Posted by Alicie

Such furnishings, even if returned, will be untradeable and unusable since you can not get house anymore

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You can actually trade untradable housing items, even if in a convoluted way, you need to add someone to your house as a tenant, and then give that person permission to place housing items, should an otherwise untradable housing item be placed that way, then anyone else with permission, not just the person who placed that item, can remove and add it to their inventory, the ability to bypass untradable tag is unique to housing items, and I've done it before, to get some quest-locked paintings I didn't have access to yet.

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Originally Posted by VeyaAkemi

You can actually trade untradable housing items, even if in a convoluted way, you need to add someone to your house as a tenant, and then give that person permission to place housing items, should an otherwise untradable housing item be placed that way, then anyone else with permission, not just the person who placed that item, can remove and add it to their inventory, the ability to bypass untradable tag is unique to housing items, and I've done it before, to get some quest-locked paintings I didn't have access to yet.

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You can, but, good luck finding a buyer, especially without breaching tos and being potentially banned

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Originally Posted by xbahax92

You mean those new housing wards, which get owned by 1 man FC's?

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Fixing this exploit, interior size upgrades, cross DC-wide duty and party finder are more than enough to provide many more housing plots than new wards would.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

Fixing this exploit, interior size upgrades, cross DC-wide duty and party finder are more than enough to provide many more housing plots than new wards would.

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People still want for more wards, regardless - Not the right spot, not the right size available, not in the right housing zone. And all three together, too.

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Originally Posted by Alicie

No no, I'm here talking about real money that were spent on furnishings. Such furnishings, even if returned, will be untradeable and unusable since you can not get house anymore, means people spent real money on their house, paid subscription to keep it possibly for years, you can not just remove it like that at all, that can result in issues up to legal problems.

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They can use the furnishings in their one remaining house, can't they? If they don't all fit, they can get an apartment. Or perhaps an FC house.

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Originally Posted by Kaosuko

I'm happy for the players that can benefit from this new housing upgrade but I'm one of the unfortunate ones that has not been able to get a house on my current world.

We're in desperate need for more housing wards. Content in the game should not be gatekept due to system limitations, if they are then it is entirely a technology issue. The lack of server space is something that can be easily remedied.

Edit: it seems like I've mixed up the thread title, it was originally "When Are We Getting Extra Wards" but I wanted to change it to "Where Are The Extra Wards" to make it less impersonal but alas I did not fully change the title.

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Why have just new wards when we can have an entirely new housing zone? There are so many places that could get housing but just don't have it

Where's my Old Sharlayan Housing? Tuliyollal Housing? So many possibilities...

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Originally Posted by CaptainLagbeard

If you wanted to make World Transfers a solution to housing... They did apparently remove the limit on Gil being transferred, but they'd still need to make World Transfers free and also ensure you get to keep your character's name when transferring to a new World.

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Transferring to a preferred world is free. The name thing... I hadn't heard about previously.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

They vaguely said that the data center issues will be fixed. Which is a bold statement for them to make. However, this is the time they usually implement these things. Heavensward added Cross-World PF in 3.5, Stormblood added World Visit in 4.57, and Shadowbringers would have added DC Travel in probably 5.57 or 5.58 if it wasn't for the game going viral among certain twitch streamers.

So most likely, whatever their solution is - cross-DC PF, cross-DC DF, incentive changes or whatever, will be in one of these .5 patches.

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Surprised they even mentioned it, but I'll wait and see what they do first before I get my hopes up.

Admittedly a combination of cross-DC PF along with the interior house size changes MIGHT get some people to finally move out of Aether/Primal/Crystal, but I don't know if it'll be enough to make a huge difference. Personally speaking, there's no incentive big enough to make me go back to Dynamis, and I don't even like visiting it for better MB prices.

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

i couldnt get a house on Odin, so I went to Alpha and got my dream location within a week (as the only person that applied on it)

it is that easy

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You clearly didn't get the point.

I also have my dream plot on Sagittarius very recently (again) in Goblet.. But players on a populated world shouldn't really be required to transfer worlds, especially when that means separating from FC, or in some cases friend groups or making inane compromises like needing to server or DC hop for social interaction and thus hampering their ability to interact with parts of the game, e.g., retainers unspoiled/folklore nodes. They either need to increase wards across the board, or they need to dynamically allocate wards depending on world population.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

You clearly didn't get the point.

I also have my dream plot on Sagittarius very recently (again) in Goblet.. But players on a populated world shouldn't really be required to transfer worlds, especially when that means separating from FC, or in some cases friend groups or making inane compromises like needing to server or DC hop for social interaction and thus hampering their ability to interact with parts of the game, e.g., retainers unspoiled/folklore nodes. They either need to increase wards across the board, or they need to dynamically allocate wards depending on world population.

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95% of fcs in this game are dead anyway. You can always play with friends, thanks to server and data center hopping. You have cross world links shells aswell as fellowships to compensate being in a fc

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

I imagine they won't add new wards on Aether/Primal/Crystal until most if not all wards are full on Dynamis, as adding new wards to those older data centers all but guarantees that more people leave Dynamis because its literally only good for having plots, hardly anyone plays there for any other reason (in fact most of the players there are literally just housing alts, they don't play the character otherwise).

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Even on Dynamis, it's difficult to get a medium or large house now. There are plenty of smalls, though... which illustrates another problem, but that's not what we're discussing here.

I agree with others that instanced housing would solve most if not all problems, but that's not likely to happen while SE is doubling down on their chosen housing model. SE could take some measures to free up a few houses - by allowing access to company workshops outside of housing for example. But this is still a bandaid fix. As long as demand is far higher than supply, nothing will be solved. I wish they'd give some kind of instanced option.

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Originally Posted by Brynne

by allowing access to company workshops outside of housing for example.

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It was planned years ago for them to add company workshops to personal housing on top of FC's, but we haven't heard news of it in recent years so I assume massive backburner due to bigger problems like what happened with viera hats and what not.

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Originally Posted by ServerCollaps

95% of fcs in this game are dead anyway. You can always play with friends, thanks to server and data center hopping. You have cross world links shells aswell as fellowships to compensate being in a fc

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There's no point in arguing with them. Literally the majority of NA is in a mental state of entitlement and what they "should" have/"should" be able to do. The concept of sacrificing and having priorities on a personal level in the game is a foreign concept because they think Square Enix has too much money and can therefore can make a perfect game that solves any and every problem that comes up with no downsides by just throwing money at it.

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Originally Posted by Voidsent-Uchiha

There's no point in arguing with them. Literally the majority of NA is in a mental state of entitlement and what they "should" have/"should" be able to do. The concept of sacrificing and having priorities on a personal level in the game is a foreign concept because they think Square Enix has too much money and can therefore can make a perfect game that solves any and every problem that comes up with no downsides by just throwing money at it.

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Well SE demands more and more money from us via introducing more and more mog station garbage and we keeping buying all that garbage and giving them money, we don't do it so they can burn it on some garbage singleplayer game that nobody cares about, maybe it's about time that we demand them to shut down a lot of side projects and redirect income produced by FFXIV exclusively back into FFXIV?

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Originally Posted by Voidsent-Uchiha

It was planned years ago for them to add company workshops to personal housing on top of FC's, but we haven't heard news of it in recent years so I assume massive backburner due to bigger problems like what happened with viera hats and what not.

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That's not what I meant. I meant let FCs access their workshop outside of housing - like at Cid's workshop, for example. Then those shell FCs that buy up entire wards wouldn't need to have houses, because all they care about for the most part is farming submarines.

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Originally Posted by Alicie

Well SE demands more and more money from us via introducing more and more mog station garbage and we keeping buying all that garbage and giving them money, we don't do it so they can burn it on some garbage singleplayer game that nobody cares about, maybe it's about time that we demand them to shut down a lot of side projects and redirect income produced by FFXIV exclusively back into FFXIV?

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1) then stop giving them money. because that's how the system works.
2) the vast majority of the money they have, isn't even your money as a customer from ff14. even if ff14 is their biggest cash cow, you have interests from shareholders that outweigh those customers. before you even existed, they were millions in debt to people who have other interests. they don't need you, when they can drop another remake. they don't need you, when they can drop another collab. Yoshi P just doesn't want to go that route because that tells other management that they can afford to not listen to players even more. But they are extremely far from being on their last legs financially. the ff14 community is insignificant, but they've been dealing with a lead that talks to them and wants to care about them instead of just ignoring them entirely for 5-10 years like what other leads from other companies have done where they'll just straight wallet check you to see how important you actually are. you have been falsely put under the assumption that you direct the ship financially, when in reality, you're just a replaceable slave working the oars on the ship. you're not part of the crew. you didn't buy the ship, you come and go. you can just make a suggestion in the sense of, "if you don't want to replace me and go hiring again to make this ship move more, this is what I want". you only have as much power as you have in giant, overwhelming numbers. which is non-existent given the topic. but that's not an easy conversation behind the scenes for Yoshi-P to tell his crew and financial backers, "yeah, they want me to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix problems they created every other year, but also, if we ignore the problem, they won't leave the game, but we should fix it anyway."

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Originally Posted by Brynne

That's not what I meant. I meant let FCs access their workshop outside of housing - like at Cid's workshop, for example. Then those shell FCs that buy up entire wards wouldn't need to have houses, because all they care about for the most part is farming submarines.

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I don't think they'll ever do this as this'll just open up the door for any individual person who uses 3rd party software to using all 160 slots on every service account for submarines as opposed to the restrictions they have due to limited housing. The inflation would ran rampant when you can just gil print on 160 characters and buy a new account and keep infinitely expanding.

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Originally Posted by Voidsent-Uchiha

I don't think they'll ever do this as this'll just open up the door for any individual person who uses 3rd party software to using all 160 slots on every service account for submarines as opposed to the restrictions they have due to limited housing. The inflation would ran rampant when you can just gil print on 160 characters and buy a new account and keep infinitely expanding.

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Well, as I said earlier, it would've only been a bandaid fix anyway. An instanced option for housing is the only solution that would actually address the root problem of demand far exceeding supply.

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Originally Posted by Brynne

Well, as I said earlier, it would've only been a bandaid fix anyway. An instanced option for housing is the only solution that would actually address the root problem of demand far exceeding supply.

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A part of me wonders if the hardware problems with them loading housing items they found out with this update is what shafted the idea of Island Sanctuary being a solution and it ended up being extremely disappointing. I wonder if they knew back then about this problem, and even downscaling it just the current wards instead of every single character wasn't predicted to still be problematic. And then that's when they decided they'd have to try to fix it to some degree because it's hindering too many systems to not be able to load information faster. Maybe in 9.0, the system might be strong enough to make Island Sanctuary what it was supposed to be or lets them upgrade apartments to have similar interiors to houses if we pay more than 500k upfront.