With regards to the possible upcoming housing relinquishments. . . . .

[Syrehn]

tbh, don't make it a monthly check, I feel sorry for the people who lets say, have job where they just can't play all the time(Like i've had people in my FC who had military stuff and just couldn't play for a few months)
And lets say someone takes a break for a month, Really? I would like to see how people feel that cough up roughly 70-80-90M for a house and then just get screwed over by that.

Imho, they need to fix the amount of houses though, More houses, limit them 1 per account etc.

I don't think it's likely that it will be a "30 days or you're out" rule; although I could be wrong. We don't know all the particulars for how they're going to implement the decay timer (if it is indeed even a decay timer) on housing. The first time SE tried to do this the community got very riled up because the rules were a bit too strict. I think you had to set foot in the property at least once in less than 30 days. This wasn't a great rule set and hopefully they'll come out with something a bit more realistic; anywhere in the vicinity of 6 months would work. If a player can't log into the game in more than half a year I'm sorry but they shouldn't retain their house.

Many players that agree with the stance of a decay timer own property of various sizes and recognize the necessity of it. Wards are a constantly loaded resource which means they add to server strain. From a business perspective it doesn't make any sense for SE to keep adding more wards while, in the meantime, half of the houses per ward sit vacant. They're essentially paying server fees for players who aren't paying them (subscription fee). This also leads to dead wards.

While I agree that SE needs to look into server upgrades, the steps they are going to implement with their current housing system make total sense. SE has no idea if/when those inactive players will even come back, and as such, no inactive player should be able to indefinitely hold an active resource from active players.

I 100% agree with your stance on 1 per account. However, I'd add that it should be 1 house per account per server that can be shared with alt characters. I know there are several large FC's on Gilgamesh that own half of the wards in Lavender Beds for no reason other than that they had the money to buy them when housing first came out (pretty sure they got flamed on reddit over it). There's another FC in my ward that keeps the house next to them (alt FC) for nothing other than decorating purposes.

I'm sure there are many many alt homes just clogging up all the different wards. Alt houses/alt FC houses shouldn't be a thing and I sincerely wish that in their decay timer process they would backdate and strip all those homes; owning more than one is selfish to other players. The amount of houses that alone would free up would probably surprise people.

EDIT: Before anyone jumps in quoting me saying we need instanced housing... that subject is like beating a dead horse. It is incredibly unlikely that SE will switch away from their current housing model at this stage in the housing game. SE has made it very clear that they're going to continue forward with the current housing system so they're planning to implement steps to help with that model.

[SQBoard]

EDIT: Before anyone jumps in quoting me saying we need instanced housing... that subject is like beating a dead horse. It is incredibly unlikely that SE will switch away from their current housing model at this stage in the housing game. SE has made it very clear that they're going to continue forward with the current housing system so they're planning to implement steps to help with that model.

It is likely a dead horse, but that horse is what SE really needs to fix the housing issue.

If housing is individually instanced like Wildstar's housing, that will take care of the problem of inactive houses taking up server resources. As well as the problem of 1 account owning several houses.

When a house is deemed inactive, they can just make it so the server stops instancing it and free up server bandwidth. However, if it's individualized, they don't need to DELETE the house, just don't load it.

So when the person comes back, all their hardwork is reloaded for them instead of being lost forever. And since the house is saved, they can make the inactivity period to be as low as 7 days and have no customer repurcussions...just reload it on the server when the person comes back.

Also, individual instancing allows for more upgrade options. Instead of a "one and done" approach to buying a house, you can start small and keep saving to upgrade to a larger one the same way Wildstar does it.

SE needs to admit that their original concept for their housing design failed and do a housing 2.0 instead of slapping a problem on top of another problem. Black Desert's housing is even preferable to this game and that game is F2P.

A proper housing system can be done that is scalable to player demand. And if they really are so proud of the FF franchise enough to revamp an entire mmo that failed, they should carry over that sense to every part of their revamped game.

[Syrehn]

It is likely a dead horse, but that horse is what SE really needs to fix the housing issue.

Unless you are a SE programmer you can't say that for certain; none of us have any idea what their infrastructure is. Yoshi provided a response that was quoted in one of these threads about why they don't have instanced housing in relation to the current ward structure. Whether players choose to believe his explanation or not is entirely up to them.

I just would't hold out hope that they're going to change it; the probability of that happening isn't high.

[SQBoard]

Unless you are a SE programmer you can't say that for certain; none of us have any idea what their infrastructure is. Yoshi provided a response that was quoted in one of these threads about why they don't have instanced housing in relation to the current ward structure. Whether players choose to believe his explanation or not is entirely up to them.

I think you're referring to this dev quote:

Finally, I’ve seen a few posts on the forums saying housing would be better if it was instanced like inn rooms are, so I want to point out that instances aren’t saved. Nothing in an inn room needs to be saved; player housing, on the other hand, necessitates personal save data for things like furniture placement and character location. So, it would really amount to adding more land anyway.

That quote was in a discussion of them adding more wards. And he was comparing the difference between an inn room and a housing ward in that the inn rooms have no saved items and if it does, it would be same as adding more wards (land). Not that it was the reason they don't have instanced housing.

And not sure if you read the rest of my post instead of stopping at the first sentence of which you quoted, you would notice that i was talking about "individually instanced" housing.

Right now, they have 30 combined houses per ward (instance) and the problem with that is if there are hypothetically 20 unused houses regardless if it's bought but unused or available for purchase (plots), it still takes up server resources because it needs to be loaded by the server all the same...AND still limits the number of housing items people can add because SE has to account for the possibility of 30 houses having max items whether it happens or not. Not to mention, it limits housing upgrades (small > medium > large) because it's fixed. All you're doing when you upgrade (now or after they add a move option) is shifting your coordinates in a similarly limited fixed map.

If they switch to individually instanced housing, already it would use up less server resources because you don't have to load UNSOLD plots until someone actually buys it. You also only have 1 person/group's house to compensate for the number of items you can add instead of 30. And if 20 houses are bought but unused, they can be unloaded to free up server processes and have the added benefit of not aggravated players if they decide to come back since it doesn't need to be deleted.

Relinquishing inactive houses will not stop land baron players who buy houses with intent on reselling. All that would do is make them visit their house once a month or however long the inactivity timer is.

I've already mentioned invidividually instanced housing examples in Wildstar and Black Desert and those aren't even the only ones that have that type of system.

Unless you're saying everybody else is capable of doing this except for SE who seem to be inept in proper mmo scalability design concepts?

I believe Yoshi just wants a neighborhood set up but don't have the infrastructure to handle it. And that is a similar mistake with not instancing the persistant zones. Remember what happened when they launched gold saucer? People getting locked out because the zone was full. It wasn't until Heavensward (almost 2 years later) when SE finally gave into instancing zones (hw ones anyway) to be more scalable to player use.

(Eventhough they couldn't do that properly either with separating teams into separate instances and not have an option to switch back without running in and out of a zone.) But that's another topic for another time.

[Geesus]

I've already mentioned invidividually instanced housing examples in Wildstar and Black Desert and those aren't even the only ones that have that type of system.

What's funny/ironic about this statement to me at least? You mentioned 2 other games that use instance housing almost as if trying to show that SE isn't doing as good a job as the Devs for those games. However, what you may not know is that SE already HAD instanced housing in XI. There's no reason to bring in another game(s) to prove the point. The reason most of us said, "instance" housing would have been the better choice, is because we already KNOW they can do it and wonder WHY the DIDN'T do it! lol Same thing with those of us that played 1.0 at release and wondered why XIV was missing so many basic features when XI was such a success for SE and HAD said features.

Housing was a mess from the day it was released. What we were told we were going to get, affordable yet separate housing from FCs, was not what we got and not truthful. Yup. Been almost 2 years and that STILL irks me. Only because I could have bought a medium plot for 2 mil that I was told I wouldn't NEED to do because that plot was for "FC housing" and I was getting less expensive "personal housing." Now? Now I have NO housing.

[SQBoard]

What's funny/ironic about this statement to me at least? You mentioned 2 other games that use instance housing almost as if trying to show that SE isn't doing as good a job as the Devs for those games. However, what you may not know is that SE already HAD instanced housing in XI. There's no reason to bring in another game(s) to prove the point. The reason most of us said, "instance" housing would have been the better choice, is because we already KNOW they can do it and wonder WHY the DIDN'T do it!

I know about the moghouse. I also know of many other games beside those 3, that's why the last part of what you quoted, i mentioned my 2 examples "aren't the only ones" that used instancing.

But in the case of moghouse, that was implemented 6 years ago. I used Wildstar and Black Desert as examples that even more "recent" games are going for instancing to show it's not an archaic design choice.

As to why FFXIV didn't use it? Who knows. Why didn't they instance outdoor zones to combat overcrowding problems like every other game i know does? It took them almost 2 years before caving in to using instanced outdoor zones (heavensward)

To speculate, i can only think of two reasons why they would go for the current housing set up:

1) Yoshi wants a neighborhood feel. People hanging out in the streets, having social gatherings with their neighbors, taking walks around their neighborhood and waving to their neighbors who might be gardening in their yard etc.

2) Less likely, they want some sort of market PvP land grab scheme where players fight for plots.

I said #2 is less likely because i don't see any other system to accomodate the land grabs such as decay/property destruction or a proper resell function like you would expect with games designed for that such as in ArcheAge.

Only #1 seems more plausible but if that's the case, then it failed (at least in the servers i checked) because i've never seen that type of mass social gatherings happen in the wards. Yes i've seen a few people walking around, seen 2 -4 people hang out by the market board sometimes but no large social gatherings between neighbors. The most is a single fc gathering (though usually done inside the house instead of in the streets). And i've checked since housing (fc) first launched, especially the first 5 months because it took me that long before buying mine and i've been checking/shopping around in that time.

Apart from small isolated incidents, there's been no large social exchanges between neighbors when housing was new and especially now when there's even more inactive houses and numerous houses owned by individual characters instead of large groups (fc).

Does anyone know if the #1 scenario happens a lot or at all with the japanese player community?

I do agree with the housing system seemingly a mess since release. The size of a small (fc house at the time) already seemed off to me. Even the smallest fc of 4 people seems a bit of a stretch for such a small space. (Remember the small house didn't have a basement at that time). And the backpedaling of the devs you mentioned were red flags to me as well.

It seems to me like they rushed housing out the door without fully fleshing out the design ideas and they've been putting one hasty patchwork on top of another ever since. I'm pretty sure personal housing was a rush job where they couldn't deliver on giving housing to the masses so they just jury-rigged the current (fc) housing to accept individual purchases.

[Naunet]

Unless you are a SE programmer you can't say that for certain; none of us have any idea what their infrastructure is.

It has nothing to do with knowing or not knowing SE's infrastructure. Instanced housing is the only way to ensure everyone has a house. It is pure numbers. Any attempt to simply add more wards is never going to be enough. Removing inactive houses is never going to be enough.

Well, unless FFXIV's population drops to be around equal to the number of housing plots, but then the game would have a whole 'nother set of issues.

I still have such an incredibly hard time believing SE is incapable of instanced housing when so many other MMOs have it. Either they are lying, or they are embarrassingly incompetent.