Square Enix prosperously ignores the housing issue to promote filling out Servers

[Delphinus]

Its literally is the only thing that makes sense to me, if you dont want to add more plots? thats fine. then allow private plots like the apartment system with tons of room for small houses so players who have lives can enjoy the housing mechanics other than a small room. Its a complete have and have not system which is disgusting.

I seriously dont have any hatred towards the devs directly, its more sheer annoyance with the amount of housing items this game burys you in, it feels like im being taunted. Like the Summer fest thing, the pool. " HERES SOMTHING FUN TO DECORATE YOUR HOUSE for 10% OF THE PLAYER BASE!" I mean wtf!

[Alyanna_Elingval]

Or, it could be that housing doesn't affect a large enough percentage of the player base to devote a large amount of resources to. I'm sure they want server populations to balance out, but when they added new wards the last time I relocated to a larger house in one of the new Wards. After the time when only FCs and relocators were allowed to buy homes, there were only seven plots taken in my ward, seven. Then when it opened up to everyone, it took weeks to fill up. If housing were as important to players as its made out to be sometimes, all the wards would have filled up in days, not weeks. You figure probably two-thirds of the player base don't have houses, but you only see a small number of players at any given time camping a placard. SE probably figures they're a lot of things that affect a much larger percentage of the player base they can devote resources too.

Instanced Housing, revamping apartments, is the cost/benefit there for them to take on these types of projects?

[Kenky]

Here we go again..

Okay! First, SE is not "ignoring the housing issue". They've said time and time again at both FanFests this year and in the Live Letters that they know it's an issue and are working Post-Shadowbringers launch to try and fix said issue. But this takes time, considering the line they have to tread. Given the Dataload burden on Data-centers, grandfathered players not being effected (or punished) by the new systems and such.

Secondly, they're not promoting server fill-out as a solution. They're trying to promote evening out the NA player numbers because we're all clustered on a handful of servers. NA is the only region (that I know of) that has two datacenters. Meaning 16 servers. I wouldn't know factual numbers, but I know on the Crystal Datacenter, Balmung, Mateus and such are still pretty much near at-cap, despite having world-visit and compensation for lowering the server-burden by moving to a less clustered one. All in all trying to help avoid an entire Data-center crash, as I'm sure plenty of NA players remember just how infuriating it was when the entire data-center went down because SOMETHING happened on Balmung because it was cramped to bursting at the seams.

Thirdly, they can't just "add more plots" or change the Apartment systems. The Apartments are meant to be small, affordable spaces for people to try their hand at the Housing System, without having to fork out millions of Gil and fight other players for something you may not know you want to even do. For them to make Apartments bigger, then they would have to make Small Houses bigger by comparison to keep its worth value, then that sadly comes with a domino effect. If they make smalls bigger, then they have to touch mediums and larges to not piss off their more wealthy (or lucky) players. Then we're back to step 1.

Adding more plots will not fix the issue. It'll only make it worse. The Dataload issue (all of your characters data. Everything they've done and I mean EVERYTHING carries around with your character) is the main concern. With more houses, comes more data to put into players back pockets, meaning loading times and teleportation would be more taxing on the server and clog up the metaphorical travel tubes. They have already pointed out that people with high Data values (For example, someone from the Mew FC) spam-teleported around. it could crash a server because of the burden it puts on the server. Purely without even meaning to!

(No hate meant for Mew. Just for examples sake, hope you don't mind)

[LaylaTsarra]

I think upgradeable apartments are coming. They talked about small, medium and large and that they were looking into that. One has to hope that will be a part of this xpac and soon. The current apartments are far from interesting and decent apartments would make lots happy and reduce the demand for actual housing.

Relative to gardens we are getting farms I believe. I wonder if those will be a substitute for housing gardens and allow the user base to grow things they would normally do in a housing garden.

Let hope they address and clarify what is coming and what these will be able to do. 5.1 live letter info is coming on the 15th so lets hope we hear something.

[Jojoya]

I think upgradeable apartments are coming. They talked about small, medium and large and that they were looking into that. One has to hope that will be a part of this xpac and soon. The current apartments are far from interesting and decent apartments would make lots happy and reduce the demand for actual housing.

Relative to gardens we are getting farms I believe. I wonder if those will be a substitute for housing gardens and allow the user base to grow things they would normally do in a housing garden.

Let hope they address and clarify what is coming and what these will be able to do. 5.1 live letter info is coming on the 15th so lets hope we hear something.

They've been pretty vague about farms, other than that minions will be tied to them. I wouldn't count on them including intercross gardening for to those without a house. It's one of those things where it's best to wait for SE to give us more specific information than get hopes up that it's what you've been wanting.

[IkaraGreydancer]

Here we go again..

Okay! First, SE is not "ignoring the housing issue". They've said time and time again at both FanFests this year and in the Live Letters that they know it's an issue and are working Post-Shadowbringers launch to try and fix said issue. But this takes time, considering the line they have to tread. Given the Dataload burden on Data-centers, grandfathered players not being effected (or punished) by the new systems and such.

Secondly, they're not promoting server fill-out as a solution. They're trying to promote evening out the NA player numbers because we're all clustered on a handful of servers. NA is the only region (that I know of) that has two datacenters. Meaning 16 servers. I wouldn't know factual numbers, but I know on the Crystal Datacenter, Balmung, Mateus and such are still pretty much near at-cap, despite having world-visit and compensation for lowering the server-burden by moving to a less clustered one. All in all trying to help avoid an entire Data-center crash, as I'm sure plenty of NA players remember just how infuriating it was when the entire data-center went down because SOMETHING happened on Balmung because it was cramped to bursting at the seams.

Thirdly, they can't just "add more plots" or change the Apartment systems. The Apartments are meant to be small, affordable spaces for people to try their hand at the Housing System, without having to fork out millions of Gil and fight other players for something you may not know you want to even do. For them to make Apartments bigger, then they would have to make Small Houses bigger by comparison to keep its worth value, then that sadly comes with a domino effect. If they make smalls bigger, then they have to touch mediums and larges to not piss off their more wealthy (or lucky) players. Then we're back to step 1.

Adding more plots will not fix the issue. It'll only make it worse. The Dataload issue (all of your characters data. Everything they've done and I mean EVERYTHING carries around with your character) is the main concern. With more houses, comes more data to put into players back pockets, meaning loading times and teleportation would be more taxing on the server and clog up the metaphorical travel tubes. They have already pointed out that people with high Data values (For example, someone from the Mew FC) spam-teleported around. it could crash a server because of the burden it puts on the server. Purely without even meaning to!

(No hate meant for Mew. Just for examples sake, hope you don't mind)

Why would they have to increase small house size if apartment size is increased when small houses are still bigger than apartments and have gardens?

[Kenky]

Why would they have to increase small house size if apartment size is increased when small houses are still bigger than apartments and have gardens?

Because if they increase Apartments to a notable degree, that would remove most of the value of the Small independant housing. Why fork out 4M+ gil for a small, when you can get an apartment for 1/10th the cost and is bigger on the inside?

Like I said in the previous post. It's a fine line they have to tread. No "solution" is going to come without some serious thought and SE (hopefully) have learned not to give any definite answers and to test the waters with the occassional drip, not by dumping concrete.

That and most of the new furniture they seem to be adding is predominantly interior stuff. Everything you want from a Small house can be achieved with an apartment (excluding cross-breeding, but I haven't met many that willingly do that beyond just getting Thav. Onions to avoid the weighty cost on the MB).

[Big_Bap]

They have already pointed out that people with high Data values (For example, someone from the Mew FC) spam-teleported around. it could crash a server because of the burden it puts on the server. Purely without even meaning to!

(No hate meant for Mew. Just for examples sake, hope you don't mind)

Not that I disregard your whole post, but characters holding on to these houses carry very little with them (as we use Free Company chests for storage) and rarely teleport. Everything is set up to be time efficient.

Why would they have to increase small house size if apartment size is increased when small houses are still bigger than apartments and have gardens?

You have a lot to learn.

[IkaraGreydancer]

Not that I disregard your whole post, but characters holding on to these houses carry very little with them (as we use Free Company chests for storage) and rarely teleport. Everything is set up to be time efficient.



You have a lot to learn.

Mmm nah I dont think so. I want everyone to be satisfied. Home and apartment owners

[Big_Bap]

Mmm nah I dont think so. I want everyone to be satisfied. Home and apartment owners

Hilarious. House owners are not gonna be satisfied by your proposed changes. You clearly do not understand anything about housing in this game.