It's true that in most cases that take their memory management serious that they know of their upper limits (new systems have rather insane limits and can be adapted further) but I'd also suggest that it's not only possible but equally common in serious "+ potential to grow a lot" scenarios that a team knows they could grow substantially and therefore thought to put the ability to add to those limits (even if it requires parallel systems) or general plans on how to adjust their server structure. So even if they reached their limits they can add to them or are plotting if they need future development costs.
Obviously SE didn't do that.. lol.. but I'm just saying even when you have an idea of your limit that doesn't mean you can't build past it (happens all the time). Therefore SE being upfront about their limits isn't really the issue here, it's that they haven't found a way to add more quickly and clearly undershot the demand (even if they had exact house to player count there would be loads of people wishing for a different size, never mind we didn't count FC in that).
I'm sure you know all that but it appears almost like a truism when saying everything has limits (which I'm sure is not what you were going for, and more going for teaching people about programming). I know you mean well, and are correct that all things have space considered (you program out the space you need, you don't give a name tag on a player 100k characters of space because that's silly), but I guess the point is that people mean "grow these boundaries/figure it out" and that people know that this can be done as they've seen systems that have grown much larger over time (literally, and some are just built big from the start) via both gaming examples and not. At least when a system wasn't designed so rigidly without expectation that it demands growth. I don't think people expect SE to make so many houses available that they become the biggest data center in the world.. so when people say infinite they don't mean "infinite data" but such that they can expand their systems as demand needs be.
Like I said I feel it's clear you know this but I guess felt like saying it because what players are asking for is SE to fix/adjust/create another system as this one is inflexible and misses a lot of opportunity/demand. It's true that inside our house is an instance really (so we "already" have instances), but it becomes irrelevant (imo) to the point of what people are clearly (imo) asking for "make more, make one for /every/ player as we've seen in other games, as we've seen in your own game (FFXI)". I guess there is a element of speaking properly about an issue, and perhaps being more clear on instances could help educate everyone on how these things work but at the end of the day if we boil it all into desires.. I think it's irrelevant if SE uses an instance on their housing currently or not because the real demand is "fix it, I don't care how - just fix it" lol. Like when you go to the doctor for surgery you don't need to know how they knew how to do it all, you just want them to do their job lol. Not to take that comparison too far, I think SE does a lot right, so I'm not saying because I think one thing was done with little foresight that SE has failed as a whole- I love the vast majority of the game, even housing decorations / appearance options, housing system however actually gives me negative feelings (like an involuntary frown).
Also I agree Goblet definitely needs a beautification lol.![]()