SE, it is time to speak up

[YojimboM]

Adding and maintaining more wards is expensive, and the reason this patch has been otherwise light on content. SE can't simply 'add more'. There *is* instanced housing in the form of apartments, but everyone seems to snub their noses at it for not being as good as the persistent offering. As for "Get rid of it", you're simply being spiteful to those who managed to get a plot. "If I can't have [thing], then nobody else can have [thing]!" is what you're saying.

Also, did this really have to be it's own thread?

I seriously cannot believe that you people keep defending SE over this stuff. They are a multi-billion dollar company. FFXIV is easily one of their highest-drawing games, even among the Final Fantasy IP. And yet they unfailingly offer us the bare minimum. They "upgraded" the servers, but they moved the NA data center to a location that was even more inconvenient and performed worse for easily over half their NA playerbase, for the sake of getting a cheaper deal with NTT, instead of partnering with a US company that would have given them far better performance at an ideal location. It is not "expensive" for them to add or maintain more wards.

Lord of the Rings Online was a game that released housing identical to the wards in FFXIV in 2008, but did it far better by having the server procedurally add more housing wards when the previous ones became full entirely on its own. A game made by a non-AAA developer, with a far, far lower budget, and a hefty number of servers and players, made years before this game was even in concept, did this exact type of housing better on an archaic and, frankly, awful game engine.

There is absolutely no excuse for why anyone here should have to be cut out of getting to have access to content in the game that they pay for because the developers can't be arsed to come up with a solution and just keep blowing it off. This wasn't even an issue of "some people just won't get houses", this was entirely a technical failure on the part of Squenix.

I can accept not getting a house because someone beat me to the plot or just got ahead of me in queue. I cannot and will not accept that I, and hundreds of other people, entirely lost the chance at getting a plot in the first place because their launchers completely failed and stopped functioning or we got booted out of the game by a lobby error while even being able to see the plot we were going for. And that is why this needs to be brought up, talked about, and repaired by the developer.

[hydralus]

I can accept not getting a house because someone beat me to the plot or just got ahead of me in queue. I cannot and will not accept that I, and hundreds of other people, entirely last the chance at getting a plot in the first place because their launchers completely failed and stopped functioning or we got booted out of the game by a lobby error while even being able to see the plot we were going for. And that is why this needs to be brought up, talked about, and repaired by the developer.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the servers worked fine after that initial rush of people all trying to log in, yeah? The company builds their servers to maintain a reasonable number of logins. The first hour after a patch, especially with housing, they are absolutely hammered with packet requests way above the norm.

I don't know what exactly can be done; should they spend money to beef up their servers to handle that 1 hour of concentrated login attempts?

[Moonlite]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the servers worked fine after that initial rush of people all trying to log in, yeah? The company builds their servers to maintain a reasonable number of logins. The first hour after a patch, especially with housing, they are absolutely hammered with packet requests way above the norm.

I don't know what exactly can be done; should they spend money to beef up their servers to handle that 1 hour of concentrated login attempts?

Or you know last time when Balmung had this problem and lots of players asked for SE to put a system in place so housing went live after the patch and not with the servers coming back online. Hmm, how many months did they have to come up with at least a different system then last time? This was not unknown just last time only two or three worlds suffered.

I am not saying a new system would have worked better. But shoveling the same pile of (expletive) doesn't change what it is.

[PharisHanasaki]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the servers worked fine after that initial rush of people all trying to log in, yeah? The company builds their servers to maintain a reasonable number of logins. The first hour after a patch, especially with housing, they are absolutely hammered with packet requests way above the norm.

I don't know what exactly can be done; should they spend money to beef up their servers to handle that 1 hour of concentrated login attempts?

How about not opening house auctions until later in the day, when people have finished patching and logging into the game. Or maybe opening wards in order as they fill themselves, instead of all 12 at once.

[Cylla]

How about not opening house auctions until later in the day, when people have finished patching and logging into the game. Or maybe opening wards in order as they fill themselves, instead of all 12 at once.

I agree with this statement. If their going to keep running housing this way. Put a timer on the wards - say a few hours after the patch is released so the server doesn't get bottled necked by everyone trying to login at once to get a plot. It still not a fix to housing but it'll allow everyone who can get on that day to try for a plot rather then not getting a chance at all because their crappy servers can't handle the login load.

[SendohJin]

I agree with this statement. If their going to keep running housing this way. Put a timer on the wards - say a few hours after the patch is released so the server doesn't get bottled necked by everyone trying to login at once to get a plot. It still not a fix to housing but it'll allow everyone who can get on that day to try for a plot rather then not getting a chance at all because their crappy servers can't handle the login load.

that only shifts the crashing of the log-in servers to the crashing of Kugane and the Housing zones. so many people would camp those areas that those areas would go down.

if you thought Ixion was bad, you haven't seen anything yet.

this suggestion is not a better solution. the problem is the supply is too low for the demand.

[Cylla]

this suggestion is not a better solution. the problem is the supply is too low for the demand.

One, I never said it was a better solution to the problem at hand. In fact and I quote what I said, "It still not a fix to the housing."
Which leads to two, I know it a supply being to low for the demand. But do you see SE doing anything about it? We've been four years into this without a real fix. Add more wards? (which is what they did back before HW) Not a fix. Not to servers like Balmung it isn't and even now the lower pop servers.

What I will agree with is that yea, zones may just crash out.
These wonderful server upgrades that SE did really prove just how much them upgrades really did.

[hydralus]

How about not opening house auctions until later in the day, when people have finished patching and logging into the game. Or maybe opening wards in order as they fill themselves, instead of all 12 at once.

I suppose the complaints then would be about the NPC not loading, people with faster PCs/Videocards having an advantage, and those classes with several movement skills that can dash you ahead. Because I would have loved to have seen a race between the 4k people waiting at that dock.

[YojimboM]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the servers worked fine after that initial rush of people all trying to log in, yeah? The company builds their servers to maintain a reasonable number of logins. The first hour after a patch, especially with housing, they are absolutely hammered with packet requests way above the norm.

I don't know what exactly can be done; should they spend money to beef up their servers to handle that 1 hour of concentrated login attempts?

Open the plots after the servers go up. It's literally as simple as that. Everyone gets a chance to log in and prepare without having to deal with the massive rush that their servers and/or launcher apparently can't handle. Although, frankly, I've never played an MMO where the launcher wouldn't even work due to volume of logins, after playing various other major MMOs during peak expansion release times and the like.

[Welsper59]

I seriously cannot believe that you people keep defending SE over this stuff. They are a multi-billion dollar company. FFXIV is easily one of their highest-drawing games, even among the Final Fantasy IP.

That doesn't mean anything. SE is not a high profile company simply because they only make Final Fantasy games and products. They have many franchises under their belt and are also a publishing and distributing company outside of video games. As such, it's not like a billion dollars is going to be allocated to FFXIV every fiscal year... or ever in the history of the game... any game. Hell, I'd argue even asking for a million more than they normally get is extremely unlikely for no good reason (housing is not a good reason unless you can prove to the board that it will affect their bottomline so greatly at that time).

That said however, it does NOT mean SE can't afford to focus their efforts more to remedy the problem. They can, and honestly should (soon), as the impact of the problem is now building to the point of affecting everyone noticeably and a long period of time has passed with no meaningful improvements since it started. I'm just pointing out that the companies worth often does not mean as much when it comes to these things.