Housing restrictions not fair for individuals.

[Cinno]

This isn't reality, it's not hard to add more capacity to make this problem go away.

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. 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 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.

This is entirely SE's fault from begining to end, and they still haven't addressed it.

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.

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.

There's no other part of the game that says "oh you didn't get one during that mad scrable on a specific day, so too bad, now have some event rewards that you can't use because they only work on a housing exterior."

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?

[StouterTaru]

FC's= Something a lot of people sell later when houses are sold out, to make money on it. Many FCs have very few members active. Can have a huge amount of income with airships, that individuals do not have access to.

Huge is really overstating it. You can make more with a level 70 mining retainer than 4 airships currently. Fat stacks were had when there was a flashy new mount, but the cash cow has been milked pretty dry currently.

[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.

[Petori]

If they kept the new plots for FCs only I wouldn't have an issue but giving VIP passes to those who already own a personal house so they can upgrade without much competition irks me. They don't even tell when we homeless plebs can buy a house.

So much for fairness and I quote their site:

The following adjustments have been made to provide more players access to housing and its features.

[Odstarva]

Problem is that small plots are a total waste of time, honestly they shouldn't even exist. But don't worry, I plan to sit here and watch as anything worth buying gets snatched up seeing as we have no choice at this point. Again, I don't see how it's so hard to actually add more wards. The only thing they are doing is pissing off the community and turning people off of games like this.

Either you're horrible at decorating, or all your neighbors with small plots haven't a clue what they are doing.

My small plot's the best thing ever, and a small plot is better than no plot. To me it sounds more like you're throwing a tantrum over not getting a home more than anything.
It is absolutely fairer that FCs get priority over medium and big houses.

If they kept the new plots for FCs only I wouldn't have an issue but giving VIP passes to those who already own a personal house so they can upgrade without much competition irks me. They don't even tell when we homeless plebs can buy a house.

So much for fairness and I quote their site:

Players that move are effectively changing nothing when it comes to room available. Their old plots will be open, so I really don't see the issue.

[HyoMinPark]

Problem is that small plots are a total waste of time, honestly they shouldn't even exist.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

Does the current system suck? Absolutely; I will never disagree that the Housing in this game could be better, and I am a firm advocate of Instanced Housing. But for you to just blatantly refuse to even get a small house in a game where not even half the playerbase owns one just because you think you’re better than those “Rank 5 Smalls” (btw, I owned one of those shoddy plots for a year—Ward 3, Plot 14 in the Lavender Beds—and it was beautiful) is absolutely mind-boggling.



On my server, I actually think the majority of large plots went to FCs (at least in the Beds they did from what I saw...few individuals relocated to larger but that was bound to happen), and I’m glad. Shirogane was a war zone and there’s slim pickings left there, but the other three still had several mediums and smalls still available over an hour after the servers went up. Some of the mediums in the Beds and the Mist have some of the best views (and Plot 29/59 in the Beds is the god-tier of small houses...that view of the waterfall right behind the house is breath-taking), and I hope whoever gets them is super happy with their purchase.

[alimdia]

I'm looking at the Ward list and there are lots of personal housing that got purchased this time around both in the old and new wards.

I don't think there's gonna be anything available for the next release if this keeps up.

Edit: I'm stupid, apparently relocating was allowed for some reasoan? So much for this being FC only.

Relocating doesn't reduce the number of plots, so they saw no reason to restrict it, when someone moves they leave behind a plot.

[Maero]

Until they just keep fixing the issue at hand with just adding more wards it will never be fair as many will always miss out including those of us trying to get housing since launch.
And seriously some of you are in fact make it sound more complicated then it actually is to add more wards...
Also how does a individual go off saying they are fixing it? Adding more wards does nodda to fix the issue at hand

[HoloKraft]

Actually, they can. Scaling servers out is easier today than it's ever been.

This is the point people are missing because most people who haven't worked in the field don't understand how it works. There is little to no reason additional wards would put that much strain on their servers, scalability today is generally no longer a pain point.

It would take a considerable amount of effort to get it done but it's not impossible (especially financially). I suspect that they don't want to address the housing problem and slow down on cramming more stuff into the game. Unfortunately were seeing the down side of always having new trials and content, old problems go unsolved for a LONG time before it gets addressed all for the sake of having more content.

After all, those who want personal housing are just "selfish" right? That mentality is the reason why nothing is getting done which is a joke considering how much we're paying.

[Odstarva]

Adding more wards does nodda to fix the issue at hand

Nada. It's spelt Nada.