More apartments?

[ckc22]

Right, so let's have every other server have a wasted 2000 apartments to spare so Sakura Kirito can have an apartment for each of her characters to role play in.

They need to sort it out themselves if there's a shortage. Balmung seems to think the devs exist to cater to their every whim and moan, and the sense of entitlement they have is ridiculous.

There are several high-population servers. AKA a lot of paying customers. It would be stupid of SE not to fix things that cause QoL issues for these servers because it's where most of their players play.

Don't be jelly cause you're in the backwoods.

[Pyrali]

I mean, I'm on Sargatanas, another legacy server, and there are no issues with apartments.

I noticed everyone unable to get one was on Balmung, which explains a lot. I think it's less an issue with the system and more an issue with Balmung's gross overpopulation.

The fact is: Square would rather see Balmung's population spread across other servers. They don't want megaservers like that to exist when other servers are nearly empty.

It's a waste of resources to try and accommodate one massive outlier when they have a dozen other servers that are completely ready to go. They're more interested in trying to balance server populations than encourage Balmung's unprecedented growth.

That's why Balmung isn't open to new characters unless you transfer in. They don't want Balmung filling more. They want other servers to fill out.

[Eul]

My server is crowded one but my apartment at Goblet ward 8 still has 6 rooms left...

[ckc22]

The fact is: Square would rather see Balmung's population spread across other servers. They don't want megaservers like that to exist when other servers are nearly empty.

But they don't do anything to fix it... and all the while some servers become more and more backwoods meaning you can't find raid groups, you can't find farm parties for ex, etc. etc. So people are going to go where people actually play.

[worldofneil]

people are going to go where people actually play.

I think that might actually be a bit of a misconception. I'm on Sargatanas which (last time I looked) fell somewhere in the middle for server populations and I never have a problem finding parties to do things, although I will say I also don't do savage either so I appreciate that skews my own experiences.

But what I'm trying to express is that people bundle onto Balmung/Gilgamesh because they seem to be under the illusion that if they aren't there, they won't be able to do things otherwise and I really just don't feel that is true (again this is my experience...)

I have actually created alts on both Balmung and Gilgamesh and again I appreciate my experience is skewed (they're level 1 alts...), the times I've logged them in the party finder didn't seem to be exceptionally busy compared to my own server and nor did I see people all over the place (but then starting cities aren't as popular for level 60 people so...)

Obviously at the other end of the scale we have the servers like Mateus that do sound like they are tiny (I need to create an alt there to experience this myself), I'm just trying to say that the other servers probably aren't as bad as people think...)

Personally I think Square Enix should lock Balmung/Gilgamesh completely for at least a few months, but I'm sure that won't go down well with the people that want to get on there to play with friends and as a business I'm sure SE wants that extra transfer money.

As others have said in the past, free transfers off of Balmung/Gilgamesh (to any other server) would probably be helpful as well, although don't know how many people would actually move since they wanted to be on those servers because they're busy... why would they want to move off...

[Lesan]

Epic Snippage

As long as they take money and allow people to 'maintainance sneak' in or transfer in, they are pretty much expected to solve the issues. Fact is, a simple 'No Appartments for Housers' would help a ton. And then double or triple the amount of appartments, together with a 'you must give up your appartment if you want to buy a house'. Ideally, the 'give up' function should put everything inside into storage, instead of turning it to ash.

[Pyrali]

As long as they take money and allow people to 'maintainance sneak' in or transfer in, they are pretty much expected to solve the issues. Fact is, a simple 'No Apts for Housers' would help a ton. And then double or triple the amount of apts, together with a 'you must give up your apt if you want to buy a house'. Ideally, the 'give up' function should put everything inside into storage, instead of turning it to ash.

But the apt thing is pretty much only a problem on Balmung. Why screw the rest of us over when it's just a problem with one ridiculously overpopulated server? I have a house and an apt. Apts don't get demo, so I have an apt in case something comes up and I can't play for awhile. If I lose my house, I will at least still have that when I come back, should that happen.

But they don't do anything to fix it.

You can't even get on during maint anymore if I recall. You have to pay to transfer on manually. That's something.

[worldofneil]

You can't even get on during maint anymore if I recall. You have to pay to transfer on manually. That's something.

I believe you still can. During the 3.4 maintenance (End of September) I managed to create an alt on both Balmung and Gilgamesh. One of them I created in the minutes before the maintenance started (as people were logging off) and the other as soon as they came back up again.

[Dustytome]

As long as they take money and allow people to 'maintainance sneak' in or transfer in, they are pretty much expected to solve the issues. Fact is, a simple 'No Appartments for Housers' would help a ton. And then double or triple the amount of appartments, together with a 'you must give up your appartment if you want to buy a house'. Ideally, the 'give up' function should put everything inside into storage, instead of turning it to ash.

It would help your current situation a bit, but they don't need to. Square just needs to increase the apartment numbers as they've said they can. Currently they have their maximum apartments per world at 6,480 (90 per ward x 24 wards* x 3 housing areas). They've stated their absolute maxumum (with current wards, requiring manual adjustment it seems) will be 36,000 (500 per ward x 24 wards* x 3 housing areas). You'll just have to wait out their manual adjustment on the per ward allowances.

* Please note than I counted subdivisions as their own ward in the above.

[Niwashi]

People who were not playing at the time and then return months later and miss out is not a failure on SE's part at all.

Of course it is. Apartments aren't some sort of seasonal event to be made available only at certain times. They're supposed to remain always available, with new ones opening up as needed to meet the demand. That was the whole point of apartment complexes supporting over 500 apartments each even though they started with just 90 of them unlocked.

SE can increase the apartments when they wish, so when enough of the newer population require apartments and are levelled and meet the requirements - they will increase it.

Which would be fine if they'd followed through and actually done that, but at least on Balmung, it's already happened, and they didn't. There are people leveled and ready, wanting to buy apartments, but unable to do so.

The system should ideally have been set up to handle the increases automatically, so that the moment the last apartment in a region is bought, the next batch of maybe 50 or so per ward are unlocked. Or if SE decided against automation and chose to make it a manual task to unlock more of their apartments, then they should have been monitoring the usage and as soon as it hit 80% or 90% full, gone in and changed the setting to release more of them. In either case, nobody should have ever seen a situation where they wanted to buy an apartment, but they were all taken. If the feature were actually working, then that situation would be impossible until all 36,000 or 36,864 or whatever it is are taken.

I hear theres more possible apartments then the population of balmung

Maybe there would be if SE would open up the rest of them like they said they were going to.