It is time to turn auto demolition back on

[LanikMueller]

It is time for the auto demolition of houses to be turned back on.

Frankly, IMO it should never be turned off. I understand the reason's why they turn it off, but by attempting to do something nice for people who may be affected with an inability to play, they are screwing over those of us that are still active. ESP if you happen to be on a high population server. And the trend of turning it off has happened with increased frequency. Heck I think its been off for longer that it has been on.

And before one of you suggests that we transfer to some low pop server with plots still for sale thats a great idea... If I wanted to leave all my friends behind. Remember the world visit system isnt live yet, and wont be for awhile. We have waited long enough.

But even with still suspending auto demolish from time to time it is usually left off for far too long. Almost always for half a year. That is too long. Auto demolition has been off for 4 months now in NA. The housing system for this game is a mess, we all know that. When you stop auto demolish you create a bad situation for the people that ARE still active and paying to play the game. You get months of almost no houses opening up for sale, and he ones that rarely do are bought up by people boting the houses waiting out the stupid timer that is universally hated.

Newer fc's are having trouble getting a plot, but 1 person boting can set up at a placard and bot click it for the 18 hours or 13 hours or 26 hours it happens to take to run out. Ive seen more than a small number of times, several people from FC's with no house (including myself and our homeless fc) at a plot that happens to have open'ed, trying to buy it, only for 1 person boting to buy it as a personal plot. Leaving the fc's to continue with little chance or hope of getting a house to finally have a workshop and a place to set an aether wheel stand. Also the standing around for hours not actually playing the game but hopelessly clicking a placard in vain is really not a fun gaming experience.

Whats worse is SE is very aware of all this and is doing nothing about the bot's. Witch emboldens people already boting and drives new people to bot because why not. SE isn't going to do anything about it and its basically the only way to get a new house right now.

Of course if they simply made infinite housing wards all this mess of house flipping, house boting, and negativity would finally end. But until then please turn on the only thing that even gives us a chance at getting a house ever. You are seriously bumming a lot of us out.

[dmcincubus]

.........

[Losara]

Can agree that housing is currently a mess and that SE needs to fix that. Eventually SE will need to implement instanced housing (not just apartments) and I am hoping they do this soon as the housing shortage will only get worse the more popular the game becomes.

Housing zones have felt dead for a long time as there are so many wards/sub-wards and the few people who actively use their houses tend to be split up across these wards rather than in one centralized location. I suspect if the outdoor assets aren't being referenced constantly then there is the possibility of combining wards together and adding more houses per ward e.g. Apartments or removing the need for them completely which would improve the socializing aspect of housing.

Either way something needs to be done with the housing situation, I feel that the cross-world system being introduced is in part a band-aid fix for the current housing situation where SE can refer players to low population servers to purchase houses and give them the perks of high population servers by allowing cross-world visits but having players remain tied to their low population home servers.

The fact that housing has further stagnated due to the auto demolition being turned off only highlights how bad the design of housing really is in Final Fantasy 14. There has to be a better solution than needing auto-demolition in the first place. Why should players be penalized for not playing the game actively?

Can only hope they address housing as for a lot of players its quite an important matter and more important than content such as raiding and PVP.

[LanikMueller]

I agree it is rather crappy that as things stand we need auto demolish. Its not a good thing to lose your house just for inactivity, but at the moment its the only thing that will help active players and fc's in any meaningful way. I know SE likes to use the server storage excuse for why they dont have more or allow for more housing wards or plots. To the average person that can sound like a valid reason. But start talking to someone who actually works in networking and with servers and understands programming and how networking actually works for a game such as this and they will tell that actually it simply is not that much data and it is really a weak excuse. They are ether being cheap, or lazy, maybe both. It is a lie we shouldn't believe any more. This game makes SE a lot of money, and the folks that control that money really do not like investing much of it back into the game. It is sad really.

[worldofneil]

start talking to someone who actually works in networking and with servers and understands programming and how networking actually works for a game such as this and they will tell that actually it simply is not that much data and it is really a weak excuse.

It's nothing to do with the data (I don't think they've ever said that?), it's the resources required in keeping housing active.

Housing wards are zones, always running, always on. As I'm sure you know, each server has 4 housing areas, each with 18 wards and each with 2 parts (main and sub division) so that's 144 different zones. That doesn't sound so bad by itself, but then multiply it by the 66 servers and now you have 9,504 zones. All running, all the time, just for housing.

I have no idea if they shutdown a housing area when it's inactive and then load it back up again when needed, but since my load time is always the same, I don't think they do that. Maybe because there's just one person somewhere in the zone keeping it on or maybe the time/resources required to shutdown/reload isn't worth it. We can only speculate there.

There's 43 other zones in the game, less than one third of number of housing zones (That was a quick count, I may have missed one or two, but I think you get the idea).

Please don't misunderstand, I'm not saying you should be happy about the current system and I do wish that it could dynamically expand to create more zones as needed, but since they're not instanced (all customised/decorated and completely different in each ward), from a technical viewpoint I can see why that doesn't happen.

[LanikMueller]

I myself do not understand how it works, I only know what others who do have said. I once believed along the same lines, but it has been explained to me, by more than 1 person with actual knowledge of how servers, programming, and networking works. People that actually work in IT at server facilities, some at places that host and run other popular games not unlike ffxiv and such that the house wards are not much resources, data, computing resources or hardware required. Number of wards, plots, residential zones isnt the issue, grand scheme the house system as a whole simply does not use much resources, esp if you compare to any other other part of the game. Its not like the house wards are crunching the numbers that say a 24 man raid would in real time. If they were to go infinite housing, some hardware would be needed sure, but its not like for every new ward they must dedicate another whole server rack to it.

If you were to hear this from 1 person who works in this field maybe they are right maybe not. But I have heard from multiple people, who obviously know far more than average folks and they have all said the same thing. And as I understand what they have explained is it truly is not as big an issue as they make it sound. Point is, it isnt a fire breathing dragon, but more of a salamander with anger issues.

[worldofneil]

I myself do not understand how it works, I only know what others who do have said. I once believed along the same lines, but it has been explained to me, by more than 1 person with actual knowledge of how servers, programming, and networking works.

I'm not sure if I should be offended that you instantly disregard if I have my own "actual knowledge of how servers, programming, and networking works", but hey you don't know me so fair enough.

But regardless of that, none of us (including your experts) have any experience of how SE have their servers setup so we're all speculating based on the best information we have available.

I said what I said because technically it makes sense. We can literally see the numbers. As mentioned before there's 9,504 zones and each one of those has to know the location, rotation and colour of around 730 objects (the gardens of 20 smalls, 7 mediums and 3 larges) and if you add in the design/colour of the actual houses that's at least another 60 objects per zone. That's 7,508,160 objects it has to be aware of at all times and if that isn't a memory resource, then I don't know what it is. We don't know exactly how much memory it takes to run each zone and there's always a way to add more hardware/split onto more servers etc, but SE don't want to do that any more than they have to, it's not just the initial purchase, but upkeep as well.

I only replied because you were saying about data being used as an excuse, which I still don't think SE has ever said was the reason. But as for the rest I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

[Penthea]

But even with still suspending auto demolish from time to time it is usually left off for far too long. Almost always for half a year. That is too long. Auto demolition has been off for 4 months now in NA.

Try telling that to people who lost their homes in real life due to natural disasters, which is usually why auto-demolition gets suspended. It can take a couple of months to find a new permanent residence. Considering this, the suspension lasts for a reasonable amount of time.

I don't disagree that the housing system in the game is terrible, because it is. If there were enough houses to meet the demand there would be no need for any sort of automated destruction system. We should all have equal access to housing and should not lose our houses unless we choose to.

But as long as demolition exists I agree with its suspensions and how long they tend to last. It would really suck to finally get a house in FFXIV and to have it taken away from you because you couldn't log in due to a natural disaster that robbed you of electricity or even your home.

We're actually very fortunate that SE is aware of these large scale life changing events and does act upon them. This is of course because they're a japanese company who are well used to the challenges of overcoming natural disasters due to the volcanic activity in Japan. It could be a very different story if the company was based in a different part of the world.

[LanikMueller]

Sir I didnt mean any offence to anyone. And yea I do only know what others have said, and it is true no one knows for sure the systems or hardware that SE is using. Could be im incorrect in what ive been told but it does seem to me like they want to do as bare minimum as they can in regards to the housing. And I must also admit i wasn't really trying to discuss on this as you are correct again that there is speculation as to how it is actually setup. Thread got a little off topic on me, I was only trying to suggest they do something right now with what they already have to assist the active players trying to play now. That the auto demolish be turned back on rather than left off any longer. I realize any major change simply will not happen until at least 5.0 or further beyond.

[Divinemights]

Why are people claiming they are homeless in FF14 in 2019 when there is Apartment in each residential area is beyond me.
I think it is probably better idea for you try to secure plots on the less populated server before World Visit launch instead of portrayed yourself as a villain figure here.
Do you know how nasty you make yourself looks like right now?