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

[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.

[Gyson]

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.

...

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/

And, in the end, they're still assumptions piled on top of more assumptions.

First of all, the numbers from the Polygon article you're quoting are from Square Enix's annual report, which released back on March, 2014. Since then the game has undergone several major updates (including new classes) and released on the PS4. In the end we have absolutely no idea what their numbers look like now (nor am I interested in playing the pointless guessing game).

As someone who has worked in game development (particularly MMO development) for a period of time that can be measured in decades, I will simply state this: the best things players can do is pass their wishes onto the developers and then let the developers figure out what exactly is and isn't possible. That's what their job entails. Arm-chair development from the players isn't necessary, nor helpful in most cases (particularly the kind that keeps insisting something is impossible, too complicated, too costly, etc) as it just creates useless noise that makes it difficult to weed through. The old adage regarding the squeaky wheel and grease absolutely applies here, and it doesn't hurt to bring housing woes to the developers attention repeatedly (if that's what it takes). The more they hear about housing the more likely it will be discussed and prioritized.

Communication is absolutely important and not just "appeasement". If something is impossible for the foreseeable future, then that should be made clear so players can consider alternative solutions. Without that information they're just wasting their time (and the developers) with requests that can't go anywhere.

Lastly, reading through this thread it's difficult not to get the impression that some people are tired of reading threads on housing. To those folks my advice is to simply skip them and spend that forum time reading topics that are of an actual interest instead. After all, these threads aren't aimed at you personally, they're aimed at the developers. By all means, share a useful opinion if you have one, but the "this again?" type statements aren't helping anyone.

My two gil.

[MageBlack]

-Snip-

I think you were unfairly busting Tiggys chops about this, he was just trying to provide some examples and references, not necessarily stone cold facts. Also I think he was just trying to work within the parameters of the current systems we have now as it would be quicker, easier, and less costly to tweak rather than scrap and rebuild. Regardles of what system might be preferred, we also have to look at what is feasible given what we currently have to work with.