Hurray! Finally saved up 6mil for my personal house!

[Tiggy]

When it comes down to it with the way housing was implemented the only way to get more housing districts is to add more servers which is extremely expensive. This is because they chose not to do instanced housing. At this point I don't think there really is anything they can do aside from..

A) Throwing money at the problem for more servers. Likely not even an option.

B) Rewrite the system for instanced housing districts instead. Also very unlikely due to the work involved to rewrite the system and to modify existing player experiences.

C) Beef up Inn rooms and FC house rooms to be more functional making houses truly luxury items and not necessary items.

Option C is the only one that seems realistic to me. Housing should be like glamour. Optional.

[MageBlack]

When it comes down to it with the way housing was implemented the only way to get more housing districts is to add more servers which is extremely expensive. This is because they chose not to do instanced housing. At this point I don't think there really is anything they can do aside from..

A) Throwing money at the problem for more servers. Likely not even an option.

B) Rewrite the system for instanced housing districts instead. Also very unlikely due to the work involved to rewrite the system and to modify existing player experiences.

C) Beef up Inn rooms and FC house rooms to be more functional making houses truly luxury items and not necessary items.

Option C is the only one that seems realistic to me. Housing should be like glamour. Optional.

I would be OK with C as long as we then had access to stables, gardening and all the other features and, like you said, owning a house is nothing more than a luxury and something to show off. Sorry for such a rant but I'm terribly worried how this will affect future content as it is released, especially if we are getting chocobo racing in patch 2.5 (i dont actually expect it until 3.0 TBH) and I hope, for the sake of availability, the raising feature will be like it was in FFXI where it will be a stable somewhere in Heavensward/Ishgard that we talk to an NPC and then anyone can use it regardless of housing.

[MageBlack]

Also, right now there IS a huge waste of money and resources if things are as posters claim with some servers having so many available plots while others are completely packed.

-we have huge disparages between high population and empty servers. so theoretically there are servers dedicated to housing that are near empty while others are full-

Seems like an awful waste of space.
- Carl Sagan

[Gyson]

When it comes down to it with the way housing was implemented the only way to get more housing districts is to add more servers which is extremely expensive. This is because they chose not to do instanced housing. At this point I don't think there really is anything they can do aside from..

A) Throwing money at the problem for more servers. Likely not even an option.

B) Rewrite the system for instanced housing districts instead. Also very unlikely due to the work involved to rewrite the system and to modify existing player experiences.

C) Beef up Inn rooms and FC house rooms to be more functional making houses truly luxury items and not necessary items.

Option C is the only one that seems realistic to me. Housing should be like glamour. Optional.

Making housing "less required" and "more optional" isn't a solution to the problem. Sure, it's a fix for the players who are only interested in the functionality tied to housing, but (believe it or not) there are players who simply enjoy owning, decorating, and having fun with their virtual homes.

Are we suggesting that providing fun should be optional now? If someone asked me if FFXIV offered housing, my honest response would have to be "Yes, but not really..". The barrier here is supposed to be in-game currency, not availability. If you offer limited housing to the extent that a majority of the player base can't own a house, then it stops being a potentially fun feature and instead turns into a frustratingly flawed design.

It's not the players responsibility to shuffle around from server to server to fix this issue. It's the developers who need to address it. And if it costs more money to fix, then it cost more money - isn't that what we're all paying subscription fees for? Regardless of who got here when, everyone is paying the same subscription fee, and everyone needs to have access to the same services and features provided they meet the necessary requirements - which in the case of personal housing is supposed to be gil and a level requirement, not how long you've been here or how quickly you can snatch up free plots.

The developers dropped the ball here and should be interested in handling housing better. Why oppose the requests to do so?

[Tiggy]

Making housing "less required" and "more optional" isn't a solution to the problem. Sure, it's a fix for the players who are only interested in the functionality tied to housing, but (believe it or not) there are players who simply enjoy owning, decorating, and having fun with their virtual homes.

Are we suggesting that providing fun should be optional now?

No I'm suggesting that core functionality should not be tied to something so limited and hard to get at this stage. It's about helping as many people as possible with as few changes as possible. Putting must have functionality into Personal Rooms and Inns would appease more people than adding a few more wards ever would. Did I say this was a perfect solution? No, its just a way forward that would do a lot of good for both the game and for many individuals by putting currently limited functions (gardens and chocobo raising) into the hands of far more people to play with. This is after all content that many people can't even play with right now and most players haven't. Can you honestly tell me people wouldn't be overwhelmingly happy in the majority with enhanced access to these features that allowed them to avoid the insane restrictions on housing? Until such a time as housing can actually fit the demand nothing that important should be linked to them, and until actually adding that housing is easier than just adding these features to an inn room I will continue to say that it is the better option. The development time required to recode the system or the server costs to add wards are both very unrealistic options or we wouldn't be having this conversation. Simply adding the features in other places (chocbos to porters, planting to flower pots or window beds) would be far simpler and faster and make a lot of people happy immediately. Time is money and the longer they take to fix things like this the more time people have to get frustrated with it. If every problem sat and waited around for only the perfect solution to come along then nothing will happen fast enough. You need to make a cost benefit analysis of your options. I'm not opposed to them adding 200 housing wards and just doing away with the problem. I am however realistic and I know that is not an answer we will get any time soon and until that time we need something else.

I never once made a comment about what is or isn't fun since fun is entirely subjective anyway. Don't put words into my mouth with assumptions about hidden meanings or suggestions. I mean only what I explicitly say. Making the houses entirely for glamour type purposes in no way inhibits your "fun."

[Gyson]

No I'm suggesting that core functionality should not be tied to something so limited and hard to get at this stage. It's about helping as many people as possible with as few changes as possible. Putting must have functionality into Personal Rooms and Inns would appease more people than adding a few more wards ever would. Did I say this was a perfect solution? No, its just a way forward that would do a lot of good for both the game and for many individuals by putting currently limited functions (gardens and chocobo raising) into the hands of far more people to play with. This is after all content that many people can't even play with right now and most players haven't. Can you honestly tell me people wouldn't be overwhelmingly happy in the majority with enhanced access to these features that allowed them to avoid the insane restrictions on housing? Until such a time as housing can actually fit the demand nothing that important should be linked to them, and until actually adding that housing is easier than just adding these features to an inn room I will continue to say that it is the better option. The development time required to recode the system or the server costs to add wards are both very unrealistic options or we wouldn't be having this conversation. Simply adding the features in other places (chocbos to porters, planting to flower pots or window beds) would be far simpler and faster and make a lot of people happy immediately. Time is money and the longer they take to fix things like this the more time people have to get frustrated with it. If every problem sat and waited around for only the perfect solution to come along then nothing will happen fast enough. You need to make a cost benefit analysis of your options. I'm not opposed to them adding 200 housing wards and just doing away with the problem. I am however realistic and I know that is not an answer we will get any time soon and until that time we need something else.

I never once made a comment about what is or isn't fun since fun is entirely subjective anyway. Don't put words into my mouth with assumptions about hidden meanings or suggestions. I mean only what I explicitly say. Making the houses entirely for glamour type purposes in no way inhibits your "fun."

It absolutely does inhibit one's fun if there aren't any small housing plots available to own.

Again, the problem with your proposed solution is that it's only a fix for those players who are just interested in the gameplay elements (i.e chocobo raising, gardening) tied to housing. It does absolutely nothing for the players who simply enjoy owning, decorating, and having fun with virtual homes. And I think you're sorely underestimating how many players the latter applies to. It's one of the reasons housing is such a popular request in MMO gaming (where elements like chocobo raising and gardening don't necessarily exist).

Meanwhile, more housing (a lot more) fixes the problem for everyone - both the people who want to play house, and the people who want to garden and/or train chocobos. That is where the focus should be, not band-aid solutions that only cover part of the problem.

I'd even argue that moving chocobo raising and gardening away from housing will make the housing districts more of a ghost town than they already are (which is an odd problem to have considering the lack of free plots). The developers should be looking into a way to bring more life into the various neighborhoods, not add reasons for people to go elsewhere. I do agree that new "must-have" features shouldn't be added to housing until the problem is fixed. But, if anything, that should equate to lighting some fires under the behinds of some problem solvers rather than never expanding on housing features from here forward.

I'm not sure why the developers aren't choosing to expand the housing. I've not seen them come out and state "server costs" as the issue. The impression I've gotten is that there is still housing available on less populated servers and they're attempting to avoid spreading everyone out too thinly, that they don't won't homes sitting in the middle of divisions filled with empty plots. I can understand and sympathize with that, but at the same time there are more populated servers out there where small housing isn't available. And advising players to transfer servers isn't a reasonable suggestion. Many people are where they are for a reason.

Threads like this one aren't going to stop as long as the developers are making statements about being satisfied with the amount of housing available, as obviously the players aren't satisfied (and for legitimate reasons). It would help if the developers were more open/honest about what precisely the problem is. Useful communication would go a long way here.

[Tiggy]

It would help if the developers were more open/honest about what precisely the problem is. Useful communication would go a long way here.

Communication or not it doesn't change the realities. Recoding the system for instancing would take a ton of work on the order of months or more, and adding new servers takes a ton of money. Based on a number of sources it something around 550k people play this game with active subs and they likely simply can't afford to throw money at it with subs still that low. The game has to use that money to pay the developers salaries, pay for servers, pay for bandwidth, pay for advertising, stockholders etc. All things that take a lot of money and take even more money as the game ages. Servers are very expensive to run. That's the truth. Whether they tell us that or not doesn't change that they likely don't have the money to spare on this problem. You can't ignore the likely hood that money and time is the cause just because they haven't said anything about it. We don't get to sit here in ignorance with hands over our eyes just because they didn't say anything. It's very possible for us to think of the likely scenarios for ourselves with some degree of reason. Like I also said before I'm perfectly content with them adding more housing. I'm just clearly more realistic about the situation than you are and would in the short term be happy with some more simple solutions. You can't expect ONLY a perfect solution for a situation this expensive/complex. It's completely unrealistic. Their resources are limited in terms of developers and cash. So when you say things like "I'm not sure why the developers aren't choosing to expand the housing" it makes me think that you're just blatantly ignoring the obvious answer. Time and money.

Square needs to do something to make the most people possible happy as soon as possible. If that means 400k people are happy they can garden now and 50k people are still made they don't have houses then I'll pick the 400k happy people every day. It's not smart for square as a business decision to only appease a minority of their player base. That would be an awful business decision.

[Gyson]

Communication or not it doesn't change the realities. Recoding the system for instancing would take a ton of work on the order of months or more, and adding new servers takes a ton of money. Based on a number of sources it something around 550k people play this game with active subs and they likely simply can't afford to throw money at it with subs still that low. The game has to use that money to pay the developers salaries, pay for servers, pay for bandwidth, pay for advertising, stockholders etc. All things that take a lot of money and take even more money as the game ages. Servers are very expensive to run. That's the truth. Whether they tell us that or not doesn't change that they likely don't have the money to spare on this problem. You can't ignore the likely hood that money and time is the cause just because they haven't said anything about it. We don't get to sit here in ignorance with hands over our eyes just because they didn't say anything. It's very possible for us to think of the likely scenarios for ourselves with some degree of reason. Like I also said before I'm perfectly content with them adding more housing. I'm just clearly more realistic about the situation than you are and would in the short term be happy with some more simple solutions. You can't expect ONLY a perfect solution for a situation this expensive/complex. It's completely unrealistic. Their resources are limited in terms of developers and cash. So when you say things like "I'm not sure why the developers aren't choosing to expand the housing" it makes me think that you're just blatantly ignoring the obvious answer. Time and money.

Square needs to do something to make the most people possible happy as soon as possible. If that means 400k people are happy they can garden now and 50k people are still made they don't have houses then I'll pick the 400k happy people every day. It's not smart for square as a business decision to only appease a minority of their player base. That would be an awful business decision.

Tiggy, (and perhaps you're aware of this) understand that you're making a whole lot of assumptions in your posts - from costs and time involved, to the number of subscribers funding development, to how much of it is available to go back into development of the game, to the amount of people your proposed solution would make happy, etc.. and all while ignoring the negative consequences your idea will have on housing districts and those players who want less ghost-towns and livelier neighborhoods.

For example, what if your solution only makes 50k people happy and 400k people unhappy (rather than the exact opposite picture you paint)? You're assuming the vast majority simply want access to gardening and chocobo raising, and the rest of housing is meaningless to the masses. I'd rather have instanced garden spaces using the existing garden plot props rather than moving or expanding the entire thing out of housing. Even a public garden space and chocobo stall within the existing neighborhoods would be preferable - attract players to the community areas where they can interact, rather than giving them reasons to hide in a private inn-room.

That's why I said "..It would help if the developers were more open/honest about what precisely the problem is. Useful communication would go a long way here..", because then the assumptions (ours included) can stop.

[Tiggy]

Yes, I made some assumption. Some fairly safe ones at that. Like servers being expensive. I assume they are expensive. I do however base this on current industry knowledge that I have. It's a pretty safe assumption that they are indeed expensive. I also assume it will take months to reprogram it for instancing. I base this on the fact I am personaly a programmer and I know how long even "simple" tasks can take. This is hardly a simple task, and while I don't know have innate knowledge of the games architecture I have enough knowledge of the process to know its harder than most people think. (If I had a dollar for everytime someone at work suggested something by saying "well why don't you just..." I'd be doing pretty well) It is possible to make reasonable assumptions and these are reasonable. It's you're inability to make reasonable assumption that is making you such a stickler for "communication." Communication is nothing but appeasement. If they popped up today and said "In six months we are adding 200 wards!" it still wouldn't change anything for 6 months. You still wouldn't have a house. These threads will still exist because people will still be unhappy. Words are cheap and don't mean anything until action is right in front of us. It also ignores the possibility that they are still trying to figure out what they want to do to fix it in the long term while at the same time working on an expansion and releasing patches for the game every 3 months. Them having said nothing so far literally only means that they haven't said anything so far. It isn't an indication they aren't working on solutions and until they have a solution they 100% know will suffice I'd rather they stay quiet about it entirely. That's how you end up with an announcement, and then people angry several months later when details have changed. (I.E. personal housing was supposed to be separate but in the end it wasn't and there was outrage. Had they never said anything about that no one would have known and no outrage would have happened.)

As for server populations yes they are assumptions. However they aren't based on nothing. Specifically you can use this thread that popped up this December that listed the estimated number at 574,440.
http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/commen...eased_another/
They even list their criteria for figuring it out.

Additionally Squaresoft released some numbers this last month to support the numbers listed above. Here is one article about it here. http://arcadesushi.com/square-enixs-...rs-2015-plans/
An exerpt if you will.

“Three major MMO titles - Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn which began operation last August, Dragon Quest 10, which was launched in August 2012, and Final Fantasy 11, which has entered its thirteenth year of operation-maintain nearly 1,000,000 paying subscribers all together, and have established a solid revenue base,” said Square Enix President and Representative Director Yosuke Matsuda.

So for three games they have nearly 1million subs. So FFXIV having an estimated 574,440 members completely fits within squares own announcement. Especially when I consider that FFXI capped at 500k subs several years back and has seen a steep decline since then. It would have to then be my assumption that FFXIV is clearly the bread winner for Square in the MMO space.
*edit* additional info. Using http://www.ffxiah.com/database as tool to determine active FFXI accounts we get 139,045. This is how many people are making active AH transactions. It should be accurate enough for this instance.
For dragon quest we can use the Wiki page for some guidance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest_X According to source 45 for an interview on march 8th they had 300k daily logins. In general the game also sold weakly only reaching a million sales over a year and a half after launch and active sub numbers have likely declined since that article as is common for MMO's as they age. All 3 games combined and 1million seems like a pretty reasonable number given what little data is available to us. Meaning the assumption about FFXIV's sub numbers is probably within the ballpark. 300k + 139045 + 574440 = 1013485. Since I'm already assuming the dragon quest numbers are innacruate and are actually lower that ends up fitting the data rather well.

Also you argue that my numbers are made up. Obviously they are. That's why I use such words as "If" so that its clearly denoted as a what-if situation. A what-if where I said IF that happened then I would be happy. As far as would it make more people happy I posited this question earlier that wasn't responded to.

Can you honestly tell me people wouldn't be overwhelmingly happy in the majority with enhanced access to these features that allowed them to avoid the insane restrictions on housing?

The answer to that should be obvious. People almost always prefer more options.

I'll end it with this. Assumptions aren't necessarily wrong. Especially when they are made using real knowledge of other analogues and with some supporting data. Such assumptions are used every day in many fields to come up with good solutions to problems quickly without perfect data. The world works on such assumptions. There are unreasonable assumptions with no basis in reality and reasonable assumptions based on actual information. I like to this I've been in the later category. It doesn't automatically make what I said wrong either.