The Housing Situation

[HitoYuudai]

the problem with just adding new wards is that it will just create even more ghost towns...
I'd love to have a small house, but I don't want one in a ward where you rarely see anyone..
but that's probably the way SE continues

[Quesse]

the problem with just adding new wards is that it will just create even more ghost towns...
I'd love to have a small house, but I don't want one in a ward where you rarely see anyone..
but that's probably the way SE continues

As a personal house owner I have a few thoughts.

First, I really love being in a neighborhood and would hate to see housing go instanced. Maybe I'm lucky but I have 3 close neighbors and the 4 of us are always at our market board / bell and frequently interact. I almost wish housing was a little more dense so that there would be more opportunity for this type of interaction. I'm in a subdivision so mainly it is Personal housing, not FC. In my FC neighborhood there are always 5-10 people standing around the market board or in nearby yards. It feels really active. I like it.


Second, I am really opposed to how personal housing was handled in general. The cost, the limited plots, and the mixing with FC Housing caught me completely off-guard. I felt like it was the opposite of what Yoshi had been promising all those months. Obviously they planned to do it one way then changed their minds without telling anyone and did it a different way. Even though I have a house I'm really upset about having to pay so much for it and that I can't expect to have friends move in at any time - because there are no S/M plots left. The way this was handled, for a subscription game, was insulting. Everyone is paying an equal amount for a sub and should have an equal chance at the content. Major content shouldn't run out. I was pretty sure, as well, Yoshi said they would continue to add houses but they added a couple wards and subdivisions and stopped there. Why? There has been no information on this.

Third, this issue could have easily been lessened by having more small house plots in the subdivisions. Making them have an equal ratio was a poor decision. There are quite a few large plots left at 40+ million each on my server. You could fit 5 or more small plots in this area.

For the most part housing is well done for what it is and instancing would kill some of the really best parts about it. SE just needs to step up and add more divisions.

[BreathlessTao]

First, I really love being in a neighborhood and would hate to see housing go instanced. Maybe I'm lucky but I have 3 close neighbors and the 4 of us are always at our market board / bell and frequently interact. I almost wish housing was a little more dense so that there would be more opportunity for this type of interaction. I'm in a subdivision so mainly it is Personal housing, not FC. In my FC neighborhood there are always 5-10 people standing around the market board or in nearby yards. It feels really active. I like it.

I really am not convinced about this part. I'd chalk it up to this being server-dependant, but really... If I want busy, at any time, I just go to one of the city states, Coerthas or MD. Lots of people around, at market boards, at NPCs, at Aetherytes - all either idling or crafting or just running about minding their own business. Community? Interaction? Not really. Unless it's within linkshells and/or FCs... I really don't see much of this. And while I've been in an FC and thus spent time in housing areas, I didn't experience anything different either. Point is, I don't think people need an excuse such as "neighbourhoods" to interact and be friendly with each other. But for the sake of it, I'm sure they could keep FC housing in wards as they are now - that could still be there for the neighbourhood atmosphere. And just change/move personal housing to something more viable that doesn't lock out most of the thousands of players on every server.

Second, I am really opposed to how personal housing was handled in general. The cost, the limited plots, and the mixing with FC Housing caught me completely off-guard. I felt like it was the opposite of what Yoshi had been promising all those months. Obviously they planned to do it one way then changed their minds without telling anyone and did it a different way. Even though I have a house I'm really upset about having to pay so much for it and that I can't expect to have friends move in at any time - because there are no S/M plots left. The way this was handled, for a subscription game, was insulting. Everyone is paying an equal amount for a sub and should have an equal chance at the content. Major content shouldn't run out. I was pretty sure, as well, Yoshi said they would continue to add houses but they added a couple wards and subdivisions and stopped there. Why? There has been no information on this.

Major content, which gates game features at that. It can be argued that it's "purely cosmetic", but then it becomes a double-edged sword, like in case of the cash shop. Can be brought up as an argument pro and contra. In any case, the way it was handled did catch most of us off-guard. Many of us felt (still feel?) insulted/fooled by it. Yes. As for adding more wards - Yoshi did say in one of the live letters that for the time they feel they met the demand, so it's put on backburner for now. Obviously something that can very much be argued. (Also, I imagine, with GS getting added and Heavensward around the corner, it really is low priority right now.)

Third, this issue could have easily been lessened by having more small house plots in the subdivisions. Making them have an equal ratio was a poor decision. There are quite a few large plots left at 40+ million each on my server. You could fit 5 or more small plots in this area.

Again, not so sure about that. Some would definitely complain that they have too much money and couldn't spend it on large plots.

On the whole... If anything housing really brings to the surface is the fact that yes, SE very much needs to upgrade its servers and network infrastructure and everything else with that. It's just one of those things (one of, if not the biggest) that makes it painfully evident how much upgrades are needed. And at this point, whoever says "upgrades won't solve everything" is just deluded. Take a look back at the live letters and a look around the forums: count the issues you find that aren't getting fixed or ideas that aren't getting implemented because of "server/infrastructure limitations" and/or a "need to save space/bandwidth". When it's so constantly being brought up, by the devs themselves... not much place for us to argue. Ok, perhaps wouldn't solve absolutely everything, but the list of things upgrades could solve is growing basically with every patch. I can accept that they hadn't expected certain numbers. But it's been one and a half year now, and in some ways, we're barely better than right after launch. Which is simply ridiculous, in 2015, for such a large company, in case of such a title as FF (and for XIV, ARR is already a 2nd run to get things right).

Don't get me wrong, on the whole, the game is awesome and the devs do deserve a lot of praise. But there certain aspects that should be minor details but have outgrown themselves and are jarring, glaring problems for whatever reasons - and the more time passes by, the more disturbing they're gonna be and that much harder to fix.


(Another non-spam post that's restriction annoyed the hell out of the poster for no legit reason.)