Housing restrictions not fair for individuals.

[Tridus]

FC's = Large groups of people that need houses for functions and mechanics they provide that allow them to have basic functions and features of a free company.
Private Housing = Decorations are pretty.

Yeah sure, FC's don't need priority.

The only reason FCs need priority is because SE has screwed up housing so badly that thre's a scarcity problem while they also allowed a speculator market to run for years. This isn't reality, it's not hard to add more capacity to make this problem go away.

Acting like it's the players fault for wanting access to a heavily advertised feature of a premium subscription game is beyond absurd. This is entirely SE's fault from begining to end, and they still haven't addressed it. With this latest round of changes they're just hoping enough people are mollified that the subset of those being shafted is small enough to ignore.

[Tridus]

It IS hard, for various reasons listed in this thread that people seem to just keep ignoring. They cant just wave their hands and make the servers able to handle more.

Actually, they can. Scaling servers out is easier today than it's ever been. I can literally log into a console, push some buttons, and 15 minutes later add a bunch of capacity to my pool. There's a cost to that, but remind me what we're paying for again?

While the houses themselves are instances, the wards are not. They are constant. That means that unlike instances that get unloaded when no ones there, the wards are always up. Constantly running, keeping everything loaded. Keeping track of every lamp post and bench in the ward itself, what all the npc's are doing, as well as keeping track of every single bit of decoration on every housing exterior of every house in the ward. The way they designed it, Wards are very server intensive, and the the servers can only handle so much. Why everyone on here thinks that they can just wave their hands and POOF INSTANT MORE WARDS, i'll never understand.

Yes, I'm aware of how wards work. LotRO did that a decade ago. They had the same problem. They then solved it by saying "if all the wards are full, spin up a new one until that stops happening". Server capacity is cheaper, more powerful, and easier to deploy now than it was then. The lovely thing about instances is that they scale out well: you can add another server to handle a bunch of them without adding a ton of load to what any other server is already doing.

At some point, it ceases to be "woe is me it's technically hard!" and turns into "if they actually wanted to fix the problem, they would put resources into fixing it." Because that's how you fix technical problems. What they're doing is applying band aids and hoping that the number of people being screwed over by their constant failures gets small enough that they can ignore them. And that's a management decision at the end of the day, not a technical one.

But they are addressing it, just not in the way that you want. In order to fully fix the issue they would have the redo the housing system from the ground up, or at the very least they would have to make the wards instanced (which is a huge amount of work in itself, hindered in part by the games ancient code) which would present problems of its own. This would also require a large chunk of dev time, which they would need to be payed for.. their pay comes out of the budget, which is definitely not infinite. So therefore the funds to pay the devs to completely rebuild the housing system from the ground up would mean they can't get paid to work on other content. That means less new content, less QoL updates, etc.

Adding an apartment option that has an exterior balcony (and thus supports gardening and exterior decoration) would solve the problem for a lot of people, and apartments are fully instanced already. Would that take effort? Sure. But actually fixing the problem takes effort.

This is not fixing it. This is the only feature of the game where people are told "nope, we're full, go away" based on nothing except the timing of when you happened to be around. Missed the godawful login queue of 4.1? Too bad, nothing for you. Until that is addressed, the problem isn't fixed.

It IS being addressed. Their housing system is badly designed, But it's what we have. We have to deal with it, and they have to do whatever they can to make it work. They're trying, at the very least.

And this is the adult business world. "Trying" matters less than success and failure do. Since the problem isn't fixed and there's no indication it will be, I'm not going to be handing out participation awards.

So Free Companies (groups of 4-500 people) should get shafted instead? "oh you didn't get one during that mad scrable on a specific day, so too bad, now can't have access to basic functions and mechanics that are required for your free company to grow and be successful."

The needs of an entire free company, the happyness and enjoyment of an ENTIRE GROUP OF PEOPLE is somehow less important than your desire to decorate a house?

Actually fixing the problem would fix it for FCs as well. That's what "fixing it" means. Acting like players are the enemy of FCs getting a house when the real problem is that SE can't figure out how to treat server resources like it's 2018 and not 1996 is not the fault of players who want to have access to features that SE advertises.

You want to make it so that housing is FC only? Fine. Lets do that. Nuke ALL player houses. Now there's tons of space for FCs and every player is on equal footing. That's fair.

[Vidu]

Actually, they can. Scaling servers out is easier today than it's ever been. I can literally log into a console, push some buttons, and 15 minutes later add a bunch of capacity to my pool. There's a cost to that, but remind me what we're paying for again?

How are you more qualified to judge what the servers can and cant do than the actual people working with them?
I get that it might work on other games, but they were probably set up differently - I dont know to much about the technic-issues here, which actually leaves me little choice but to trust the devs. If you're saying "No, they're wrong on that!" you're basically saying they're lying - and I dont see why they should?

They tried something with the housing system, they had an idea in mind - and clearly that didnt work out aus they wanted to. Maybe one could have foreseen that, maybe one should have, but one didnt (honestly, sometimes I wonder if the japanes playerbase is as bad as the EU/NA one when it comes to this issue - or if it worked out for them...). Now we're stuck with this system that they're working on - slowly, but steadly.
Dont you believe the devs would like to have a better solution aswell?
Because if you do believe that you'd also have to believe that they just dont have the ressources for that - its not only time invested in that, if I recall correctly they also had issues with not having enough staff-members to begin with a while back.
And if you dont believe that... what do you believe then? That the devs created this shortage of housing for their own amusment? That Yoshi-P sat in his office at 4.1 release, with streams of different housing areas on the walls, giggeling over people trying to snatch houses?

The housing system is far from ideal, granted - but the solution isnt "Just open more wards!"
Because they cant. What might work elsewhere obviously doesnt work here.
...unless ofc the devs actually do want nothing but an angry playerbase, bad press and the housing-shortage. I doubt that. And thats why I dont doubt that "just opening more wards" doesnt work with their servers.

[Zojha]

(honestly, sometimes I wonder if the japanes playerbase is as bad as the EU/NA one when it comes to this issue - or if it worked out for them...)

Well, in JP, the highest populated realms have a population that's similar to NA/EU's lowest. They will have a LOT less housing issues in general because of that.

Personally, I see the main fault of the devs in putting private housing into the wards in the first place. That is the one mistake they have made that keeps breaking everything and I see the large amount of vacancies on even Balmung as proof of that.

This is the thing they need to fix. They need to provide a decent alternative to the ward system for private housing. And I doubt they can do that in a satisfactory way without setting up an entirely new system, i.e. instanced housing.

[Vidu]

Well, in JP, the highest populated realms have a population that's similar to NA/EU's lowest. They will have a LOT less housing issues in general because of that.
Personally, I see the main fault of the devs in putting private housing into the wards in the first place. That is the one mistake they have made that keeps breaking everything and I see the large amount of vacancies on even Balmung as proof of that.

This is the thing they need to fix. They need to provide a decent alternative to the ward system for private housing. And I doubt they can do that in a satisfactory way without setting up an entirely new system, i.e. instanced housing.

I was more wondering about the attitude on those servers in regard to the whole housing system and the whole housing issue - I know they must have a shortage aswell, but was more curious if they're just crying as we do...

I feel thats only half of the fault - or only one of the mistakes. At first, when they opend the wards for personal houses aswell, it was still more or less fine - there were still open plots for FCs, if they wanted them etc.
What really went wrong is the inflation AND the price of plots going down instead of up - suddenly everyone could afford a house and everyone now felt like they should have one. At some point houses were supposed this real status-symbol. Having personal houses was fine, because to get even a small one, a single person had to put REAL effort into it. But yeah... lower costs and higher amount of gil in everyones pocket created the illusion that everyone was supposed to have a house...

I agree with that - and I do hope the rumors I've heard about them working on appartments that are having the layout of small, medium or even large houses, are true. That wouldnt solve the garden-issue (but maybe we could get furniture for that, aka: something you can have inside and still crossbreed), but would give everyone who wants to decorate the space to do so. Since we already have appartments and they'd "only" need expanding I could see them do that without tearing down the current system.
But as everything: That needs time - it sucks being asked to be patient, but I doubt theres much more one can do here.
I'm pretty sure neither Yoshi-P nor the devs are happy with this - but if its the best they can do right now... its the best they can do right now.

[Tridus]

How are you more qualified to judge what the servers can and cant do than the actual people working with them?

Anybody who does this stuff for a living is qualified to give an opinion on the technical end of it. How do you know that the reason why they can't is technical ("we can't"), rather than managerial ("we don't want to because it'd cost money")? You don't, that's how. You're assuming it's technical when scaling servers out is dirt easy with current infrastructure. This stuff was hard in 1998. It's not hard in 2018. Making it easy is literally the business pitch behind cloud infrastructure.

I get that it might work on other games, but they were probably set up differently - I dont know to much about the technic-issues here, which actually leaves me little choice but to trust the devs. If you're saying "No, they're wrong on that!" you're basically saying they're lying - and I dont see why they should?

The obvious reason is that telling people "we don't want to invest your subscription money in providing the amount of capacity required to give you all a house" is bad PR. You think the devs are just allowed to say whatever they want without management and PR being involved? That's not how a big company works. If they say "we can't" without saying why, that's an entirely true statement on their part, because the unsaid part is "we can't because management won't give us the budget". Which is not the same as it being technically impossible.

Dont you believe the devs would like to have a better solution aswell?

If they want me to believe that, they could articulate what they're going to do about it over the long term. Silence is not confidence inspiring.

Because if you do believe that you'd also have to believe that they just dont have the ressources for that - its not only time invested in that, if I recall correctly they also had issues with not having enough staff-members to begin with a while back.

If they don't have the resources, whose fault is that? Oh, right... Square-Enix. Their own management is who allocates the resources, and we're customers of that company. If we're getting subpar service because of management decisions, we have every right to be unhappy about it. It doesn't have to be the fault of YoshiP to be the fault of the company we're paying, after all.

And if you dont believe that... what do you believe then? That the devs created this shortage of housing for their own amusment? That Yoshi-P sat in his office at 4.1 release, with streams of different housing areas on the walls, giggeling over people trying to snatch houses?

I believe in Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence."

Of course, in this case, I also think there's some Dilbert-esque PHB involved being stingy with the purse strings.

The housing system is far from ideal, granted - but the solution isnt "Just open more wards!"
Because they cant. What might work elsewhere obviously doesnt work here.
...unless ofc the devs actually do want nothing but an angry playerbase, bad press and the housing-shortage. I doubt that. And thats why I dont doubt that "just opening more wards" doesnt work with their servers.

They just did, so clearly they can. Amazing how an angry backslash in 4.1 suddenly made them able to open more wards... almost as if the problem was solvable when senior management was suitably motivated. You know what that sounds like? A budget problem, not a technical one.

[HoloKraft]

Amazing how an angry backslash suddenly made them able to open more wards..

This statement right here is what crushes the "We Cant" argument, we've seen them do it when the community gets worked up about it. This exact reason is why we have to keep fighting for it, YoshiP obviously needs a good enough reason to pitch to SE they need to spend TIME on the housing system, which might cost them a little money.

Also based on the quality and stability of the rest of the game I highly doubt the code for housing is "Spaghetti Code", Honestly if the community would cut Yoshi some slack and not be in an uproar over waiting a few more weeks for content then we might actually get what we want.

Somehow I feel like people just want to be pissed off anyway though. :/