The Housing Situation

[Zumi]

Well, instance housing worked just fine in FFXI from what I heard.

Also I don't think it's a storage space issue. FFXI is nearly 10 years old, it's from the era where PCs had 64MiB of RAM and 1GiB hard drives. We have 8GiB of RAM now and multi-TiB hard drives. Technology has improved a ton.

In FFXI the mog house was a room very similar to free company rooms. Its pretty much the same thing we already have.

[Renik]

Not Communism. Dictatorship. Yes, in case you haven't notice, you can play the game only because SE allows you to. They can refuse to provide you service anytime they want, for whatever reason.

The reality is, at least it appears that way, neighborhoods scale very poorly and SE has great difficulty increasing the number of them.

So either,

a) they buy new servers costing millions (something they have stated in the LIVE letter as a last resort) or
b) instance it all and use the neighborhoods for something else.

Reality? you're obviously ignorant and i have been wasting my time trying to explain to you why removing neighborhoods will do nothing, after all, you'll never listen, because you only want to have your house right now, no matter what, or who have to suffer because of it.

Keep using your populism without a bit of knowledge of game development and server infrastructure, you will be only wasting your words, and the time of those who read and agree with you, because you have no idea, just opinion, and a wrong one, the server upgrade is coming, because it's needed at this point, and the problem will be fixed.

[Zfz]

I want instanced housing. The current housing system can stay and get developed more, people who want neighbours can have neighbours. But I want a little hide-out somewhere on a deserted beach all by myself. That is the primary reason for wanting instanced housing. On the other hand, I also enjoy milling around in the FC house with friends and friends of friends who visit occasionally.

Instanced housing and shared housing zones are not mutually exclusive.

People who deny instanced housing because they want a community seems to think there can only be one type of housing. It doesn't have to be. Having both types, just like having the DF and the PF, will get rid of those non-social types from the housing wards, let them go and have their peace in instanced houses. Free up the plots for people who want to interact with neighbours. Free up the plots for tightly knit newlly founded FCs. People who actually spend time in the housing wards.

A loner who gets a house isn't going to be a good neighbour. Having both systems actually helps towards a better community in the housing wards.

[Bishop81]

In FFXI the mog house was a room very similar to free company rooms. Its pretty much the same thing we already have.

Can't place outdoor furnishings though. And you need an FC ...

Reality? you're obviously ignorant and i have been wasting my time trying to explain to you why removing neighborhoods will do nothing, after all, you'll never listen, because you only want to have your house right now, no matter what, or who have to suffer because of it.

Keep using your populism without a bit of knowledge of game development and server infrastructure, you will be only wasting your words, and the time of those who read and agree with you, because you have no idea, just opinion, and a wrong one, the server upgrade is coming, because it's needed at this point, and the problem will be fixed.

I'm sorry, I don't find your arguments persuasive. You blabber on and on with zero backing to your statements - your references to the LIVE letters don't check out either.

And, a neighborhood have a number of items, this number is static with minimal variation, it could take the memory of various houses, but being static means it has to be saved only once per server (i assume, i could even be saved in just one server) the removal of neighborhood can free up memory, but it's not enough to cover even the number of houses an actual subdivision have.

What the heck does this even mean?

"Saved once per server"? The wards are probably hosted on their own servers and there is only one copy of a ward. What the heck are you blabbering about?

Edit:

Based on the LIVE letter you referred me to,

A: Kasuga: At the moment all I can say is that we are looking into it, but we're at the point where Yoshida will make a judgment call.

Yoshida: First, we'll be adding land in patch 2.38, and it will then be possible to purchase personal housing, but the issue of how many plots to add will be under discussion until right up to the last minute. Just the other night we had a meeting which included Kasuga about even more additional plots and what kind of plans they have in order to accommodate them. At the same time we've been looking into whether we can increase the number of plots by juggling our graphic resources. Currently, we're working out all the parameters and then we'll be deciding how to do it and at what time based on the results.

Kasuga: The quick answer as to why it's not so simple to add more land is because of the infrastructure. Compared to our initial plans for infrastructure, the current demand for land has far exceeded what was predicted, and in the event that we decide to go forward with the current infrastructure, we would have no choice but to address the issue with software. And if we were to rely on a software solution, it would be difficult to secure the time required to test everything out, further delaying the release of new land.

Yoshida: Of the ideas we have at the moment, we are trying to make the final decision as to which solution is the quickest and would allow for the most land, as well considering the amount of time and resources it will take. Of course there have been those who have suggested spending millions to enhance the servers, but this would be the last resort for our engineers. We're currently looking into exactly how much we can increase the amount of land with our current resources and we'll be doing this right up to the last minute. If it appears that all other avenues have been exhausted, then I'll make the call to beef up the servers. At the very least, we will be increasing land in patch 2.38 and you'll also be able to start purchasing private housing.

It would appear wards are limiting the number of plot at least graphically, i.e. too many plot will kill the framerate; too many things to rendered.

That's what I took from it anyway. What other reasons are there to "juggle graphic resources"?

[Renik]

When we talk about graphic resources, we are talking about memory, a resource is stored data, severs are not supposed to render anything as they are not playing the game.

A server is in charge of processing and storing data, and hosting connections, they don't have to render graphics, a server can run out of memory, a server can experience problems due to massive data to process, or too many connections to host.

A neighborhood is like any other instance on the game, they have a small fixed amount of data, think of it like a giant instanced house in which you can't place furniture, so it takes less memory storage.

So based on this, tell me why neighborhoods are impeding the addition of more land.

[Taliph]

A neighborhood is like any other instance on the game, they have a small fixed amount of data, think of it like a giant instanced house in which you can't place furniture, so it takes less memory storage.

Outdoor furnishings would make this bit untrue... Every other instance in the game cannot be manipulated like wards. Hence graphic resources (clients are a part of this system too)

[Renik]

Unfortunately we don't know if the outdoor furnishings are stored into the ward data, or into the plot data, yes we see the changes in the ward but they are made into the plots. It would take the same amount of storage and processing being instanced or in the wards, unless as i said you make the instance client-side, which is not happening.

[Bishop81]

When we talk about graphic resources, we are talking about memory, a resource is stored data, severs are not supposed to render anything as they are not playing the game.

A server is in charge of processing and storing data, and hosting connections, they don't have to render graphics, a server can run out of memory, a server can experience problems due to massive data to process, or too many connections to host.

A neighborhood is like any other instance on the game, they have a small fixed amount of data, think of it like a giant instanced house in which you can't place furniture, so it takes less memory storage.

So based on this, tell me why neighborhoods are impeding the addition of more land.

Because SE doesn't want the player's frame-rate to fall to single digits when they look in the "wrong" direction.

This limitation has nothing to do with the server. It a matter of ward design for the sake of a good player experience client side - i.e. it's a client limitation.

The existence of more houses doesn't seem to be a problem, displaying the neighborhood with said houses is though - i.e. the neighborhood is holding the houses back; so long as they stick with the neighborhood system, the number of houses they can provide will be greatly constrained.

[Renik]

I get better FPS in housing areas, if they wanted to do that no sense they should get rid of cities, hunts and fates, oh! and shiva. Saying they can't add more wards because it would make our FPS fall is total madness...

[Bishop81]

I get better FPS in housing areas, if they wanted to do that no sense they should get rid of cities, hunts and fates, oh! and shiva. Saying they can't add more wards because it would make our FPS fall is total madness...

>.>

You do realise that they budget every location such that the FPS is acceptable if there is a moderate number of people in the area, right? If it's a FATE with 30 people killing a mob, of course the FPS is to drop. You rarely see such concentrated mobs in a ward, so of course the FPS is good.

Since you didn't read YoshiP's comment in it's entirely, it says "increase the number of plots", i.e. increase the plots within a ward. It has nothing to do with adding more wards - an entirely different issue.

If you have another explanation for YoshiP's "juggling our graphic resources" comment, I would like to hear it. I'm not the one that brought it up, the developers did.