Overpopulation/Housing Fix

[Hasrat]

There are roughly 500k active players. There isn't enough housing for 30% of that.

My response would be, look at any of the smaller servers. There are probably more "active players" than houses on any of them, yet somehow they're all left with dozens of empty plots. The game doesn't need enough houses for everyone, just enough for most players that want it. And I say most, not all, because probably SE gets more value if there's a bit of competition. Supply and demand and so forth.

Point is, your numbers are meaningless until verified. Spread out players, judge housing market, make decision. Cries of "there isn't enough housing" conflict with all of the empty plots and apartments still available.

I get the argument. I understand the need. But it's hard to justify when the simplest solution to the "housing crisis" is to just move to where there are more houses. I'd be more sympathetic if this were a problem for a majority of servers.

[Penthea]

My response would be, look at any of the smaller servers. There are probably more "active players" than houses on any of them, yet somehow they're all left with dozens of empty plots.

While this is true this doesn't align with OP's suggestion which is to spread the player population evenly across all servers by locking transfers and character creation on certain servers.

I get the argument. I understand the need. But it's hard to justify when the simplest solution to the "housing crisis" is to just move to where there are more houses. I'd be more sympathetic if this were a problem for a majority of servers.

The problem is people want to play with their friends or be on a server that has at least a moderate population so they can find people to be friends with. So naturally if they know a server has a very low population this discourages them to play there, or they will just go to where their friends are. Only players who place housing many leagues above every other aspect of the game would transfer to a dead realm to get a house at the risk of their social needs.

And even if everyone who wanted a house enough simply transferred to a server with empty plots, those plots would fill up fast and we're back to square one.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that you can only take 1 million gil when you transfer, which isn't enough to buy a house. This further discourages transferring just for the sake of housing.

[Hasrat]

I mean, that's the argument every time. "I want to play on a server that isn't dead." Buuut, how do they expect to liven up any other server if they all just flock to the same ones? The more that people just suck it up and rough it out, the more the servers have a chance to bulk up. Take all the transfers to the top 1 or 2 servers over even just the last few months or something, and kick them back to their original start, and how much more lively could those original servers seem? Maybe not a whole lot, I guess, depending on just how frequently transfers happen or whatever. Just seems to me like this would have been less of a problem if everyone weren't so obsessed with a mega server. But my perspective is biased. I wouldn't know where to draw the line between "decently active" and "clearly overpopulated."

As for "the plots would fill up fast and we're back to square one," that's the whole point! When we can say all the plots are gone, then it sounds more reasonable to demand housing expansion. It's like complaining there's no houses just because everyone can't live next to the beach.

The gil limitation restricting buyers, now that's an argument I'd get behind. That's something that could be addressed. I understand the restriction itself, but that's something that could reasonably be argued to devs as something to adjust to make transferring less painful.

[Serendair]

May I ask if there's a list or something where I can tell high populated servers apart from those that are empty? Besides the obvious ones like Balmung etc. Like a ranking of some sorts. I wouldn't mind moving server really if I could take my house with me/rebuy it there.

[Penthea]

I mean, that's the argument every time. "I want to play on a server that isn't dead." Buuut, how do they expect to liven up any other server if they all just flock to the same ones?

Just seems to me like this would have been less of a problem if everyone weren't so obsessed with a mega server. But my perspective is biased. I wouldn't know where to draw the line between "decently active" and "clearly overpopulated."

For a lot of players it isn't about being on a mega server, it's about being on the same server as their friends, it's just more likely to happen on a mega-server due to sheer numbers. If a server is so dead that no one is around it doesn't really feel like a mmo, that is understandably a major turn off for a lot of people. If SE are serious about addressing this issue they should give players free transfers from overly congested servers to low populated servers. That way a group of friends can go together without worrying about irl cash. They should also allow fc transfers, like WoW did, so the fc doesn't lose all its progress.

And on top of that they really need to increase the gil limit. It's a ridiculously low amount. I know a few players who didn't transfer because of this limitation alone. I know it's restricted because they don't want players to crash the server economy, server hop all the time and they want to hinder gil sellers, but this stupidly tiny amount is one of the things keeping dead servers dead.

As for "the plots would fill up fast and we're back to square one," that's the whole point! When we can say all the plots are gone, then it sounds more reasonable to demand housing expansion. It's like complaining there's no houses just because everyone can't live next to the beach.

Considering that the amount of plots per active player is appallingly low, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for more wards or changes to the housing system. Just because they're not all bought out yet doesn't mean there isn't a major problem. The appearance of the severity of the issue is mitigated by issues such as the transfer restrictions I listed before. If the restrictions were kinder to players' wallets online and offline, there would be no plots left.

[Zojha]

May I ask if there's a list or something where I can tell high populated servers apart from those that are empty?

https://ffxivcensus.com/

Scroll down for an overview of "active" players by realm. It's unofficial, because SE doesn't want you to know. The information is taken from the lodestone in a similar way as LuckyBancho does when he does his census, this one is just regularly updated and not in japanese, so it's easier to use, even if less detailed.

As for housing availability: We currently have 2160 plots per server. It'll go up to 2880 with Shirogane. So Mateus won't have any issues any time soon, Zalera and Goblin will probably also be good to go for a while. Excalibur, Cactuar, Behemoth and I'd wager every server with around 5k or more characters will probably have a shortage.

[Besame]

Yeah I agree.

Although I do understand why they have a gil limit (to not crash the economy they're moving into etc) but it being only 1mil? Cmon...

You lose all but 1 mil gil upon transfer?? lmao this is the cheesiest game ever, lolol. I did not know that.

[Elany]

I did say if people started populating these servers rather than congregating to one massiver server, it wouldn't feel dead. Hell, who knows, maybe Zalera would be the new Balmung.

[Acilith]

I think server merges is on the horizon, the Korean servers have already merged and people who's houses were after a certain ward got them auto relinquished .... makes me nervous about my ward 10 house. I'm on Balmung though so I should be ok, who is gonna merge servers into BALMUNG?

Dead servers are awful, expecting people to pay extra money to get a house is ridiculous when they're already situated somewhere. I tried to make an alt on a dead server just for kicks and I couldn't cut it. There was no one to talk to but gil spammers.

[Penthea]

I think server merges is on the horizon, the Korean servers have already merged and people who's houses were after a certain ward got them auto relinquished.

Suddenly changing server to get a house on a low populated server doesn't seem like a good idea at all.