You Guys need to UP your housing "fix" attempts.

[Kidria]

Honestly, if it meant taking the bad spaghetti code excuse off the table permanently and some very nice quality of life and other upgrades afterwards... I'd be willing to give them a year to work on it.

Sadly you'd have to be a big majority of the playerbase in all regions to agree, I think.

[Alyanna_Elingval]

^ Pretty sure a lot of it IS bad code. Remember, the basis of the game is built on the old code of the failed 1.0. They're slowly improving (after all, we're getting flight in ARR now) but it's gonna be a while to the massive changes everyone wants unless they're all 100% willing to forgo months, maybe a year+, of regular content.

I'm sure that SE engaged in some shortcuts and quick fixes to get the game up to par after the initial failure, but coding is not the main reason they won't overhaul the system.

Housing is just not a top priority for SE. People are not going to come to this game if they overhaul the system, and people are not going leave the game in large numbers if they don't overhaul it. When I see all these threads, I rarely ever see anyone saying that they're leaving the game due to housing, so it's not even a top priority for them.

So, if overhauling the system is not going to increase the current player base or aid in retaining the current player base, what is SE's incentive to devote a ton of resources to doing it? Especially at the expense of things that may accomplish these things.

What's the return on the investment?

[Jojoya]

What's the return on the investment?

Same as any other content investment - it gives players something to do if they enjoy it and if they have access. The more things a player wants to do, the longer they will remain subbed before taking a break to play other games while waiting for the next patch to release. The longer they are subbed, the more revenue SE gets.

Housing is still important in SE's eyes even if it's not an absolute top priority. Look at the amount of work they've put into housing the last 5 years compared to how much work they've put into content like Grand Companies, which some players would argue should have a greater importance. They've talked in interviews about more changes they would like to make with housing if they can get past technological hurdles (adding alts as tenants, increasing items limits yet again, etc.). We'll eventually be getting new housing in Ishgard.

The problem we're seeing is rather than bringing this expansion's changes to housing at the start of the expansion to give more players access to it, it's coming at the end of the expansion. That doesn't give those players something they want to be doing to do now and that's causing dissatisfaction.

[Alyanna_Elingval]

Same as any other content investment - it gives players something to do if they enjoy it and if they have access. The more things a player wants to do, the longer they will remain subbed before taking a break to play other games while waiting for the next patch to release. The longer they are subbed, the more revenue SE gets.

Housing is still important in SE's eyes even if it's not an absolute top priority. Look at the amount of work they've put into housing the last 5 years compared to how much work they've put into content like Grand Companies, which some players would argue should have a greater importance. They've talked in interviews about more changes they would like to make with housing if they can get past technological hurdles (adding alts as tenants, increasing items limits yet again, etc.). We'll eventually be getting new housing in Ishgard.

The problem we're seeing is rather than bringing this expansion's changes to housing at the start of the expansion to give more players access to it, it's coming at the end of the expansion. That doesn't give those players something they want to be doing to do now and that's causing dissatisfaction.

Bandaids. What people want would require an entirely new or re-worked system, which is not going to.

A) Bring new players to the game

or

B) Retain current players

From a business standpoint that's what you're looking at when you're prioritizing the resources.

You add new wards here and there, and then add a new location with each expansion. But you can spend the resources to add an entirely new location because of the money you got from people buying the expansion, the people who re-subbed after the expansion came out, and any new players that jumped into the game when the expansion came out.

But between the expansions, all you're doing is band-aids to kick the can down the road until the next expansion. That's what you've been seeing. It is not in their interest to completely up and overhaul the system to make it what people are asking for, especially when those resources could be better spent on something that will affect a much larger percentage of the player base.

When I say what's the return on investment, I mean what is the return for creating an instanced housing system, or completely overhauling the apartment system? Huge dedications of resources in multiple areas.

[Klaleara]

Bandaids. What people want would require an entirely new or re-worked system, which is not going to.

A) Bring new players to the game

or

B) Retain current players

From a business standpoint that's what you're looking at when you're prioritizing the resources.

You add new wards here and there, and then add a new location with each expansion. But you can spend the resources to add an entirely new location because of the money you got from people buying the expansion, the people who re-subbed after the expansion came out, and any new players that jumped into the game when the expansion came out.

But between the expansions, all you're doing is band-aids to kick the can down the road until the next expansion. That's what you've been seeing. It is not in their interest to completely up and overhaul the system to make it what people are asking for, especially when those resources could be better spent on something that will affect a much larger percentage of the player base.

When I say what's the return on investment, I mean what is the return for creating an instanced housing system, or completely overhauling the apartment system? Huge dedications of resources in multiple areas.

So what is preventing them from adding an infinite amount of wards? So everyone can get a house.

[LaylaTsarra]

So what is preventing them from adding an infinite amount of wards? So everyone can get a house.

The houses aren't instanced so wards are constantly in play using server resources to render them 24/7. They would need a lot more servers allocated to housing which it appears they're not willing to do.

[Klaleara]

The houses aren't instanced so wards are constantly in play using server resources to render them 24/7. They would need a lot more servers allocated to housing which it appears they're not willing to do.

I feel like that isn't that big of a deal. I don't work on MMO's, but I do work with servers. And static objects don't really cause much of a performance impact. Also, if that was such a big deal, each expansion would cause a huge hit to their profits considering the much larger zones with spawning/moving NPC's. Not like they get much a permanent revenue increase from an expansion, just the initial boom of people coming back, and purchase of the expansion. And the money sink would only grow exponentially as each expansion came out.

[LaylaTsarra]

I don't know they claim adding more item slots to exterior gardens would cause performance issues too so hard to know what to believe. A good friend who does a lot of deco said we're getting more slots in 5.3 so dunno if that is true or not and if it is if it will only apply to interior spaces.

[Alyanna_Elingval]

I feel like that isn't that big of a deal. I don't work on MMO's, but I do work with servers. And static objects don't really cause much of a performance impact. Also, if that was such a big deal, each expansion would cause a huge hit to their profits considering the much larger zones with spawning/moving NPC's. Not like they get much a permanent revenue increase from an expansion, just the initial boom of people coming back, and purchase of the expansion. And the money sink would only grow exponentially as each expansion came out.

Let's say they're 10K players on a server on average. There are what, about 3,500 houses on a server? That means that almost 2/3 of each server on average don't have houses. So, in theory, they would need to triple the capacity. And for what reason?

Let's be honest here. Out of those 6K plus players per server on average who don't have houses, how many is this an actual issue for? A huge pain point in their gameplay experience? Low hundreds maybe. Even more so, how many of these people will stop playing if it doesn't get fixed to their satisfaction? People want them to expend a huge number of resources to overhaul the system for a small percentage of the player base. If thousands of players were beating down their door over this, or leaving the game in droves, we would have a new or overhauled system by now, guaranteed.

They would be better off getting a reign on free companies, to prevent these low level, small, dummy free companies from taking up houses when the new wards are put out. Maybe have a release of wards only for individual buyers, or one with no moratorium on individual players purchasing. A long as the number of houses is finite, they need to fix the core issues before they keep adding wards. Then they won't need to add as many in the future because more houses would be going to the target group, not people gaming the system.

[Kytrin]

Let's say they're 10K players on a server on average. There are what, about 3,500 houses on a server? That means that almost 2/3 of each server on average don't have houses. So, in theory, they would need to triple the capacity. And for what reason?

Let's be honest here. Out of those 6K plus players per server on average who don't have houses, how many is this an actual issue for? A huge pain point in their gameplay experience? Low hundreds maybe. Even more so, how many of these people will stop playing if it doesn't get fixed to their satisfaction? People want them to expend a huge number of resources to overhaul the system for a small percentage of the player base. If thousands of players were beating down their door over this, or leaving the game in droves, we would have a new or overhauled system by now, guaranteed.

They would be better off getting a reign on free companies, to prevent these low level, small, dummy free companies from taking up houses when the new wards are put out. Maybe have a release of wards only for individual buyers, or one with no moratorium on individual players purchasing. A long as the number of houses is finite, they need to fix the core issues before they keep adding wards. Then they won't need to add as many in the future because more houses would be going to the target group, not people gaming the system.

It's a big enough issue that it's literally THE most complained about topic on the housing forums. I've lost track of the number of threads I've seen about housing, wards, number of houses, number of houses on lighter population servers vs. heavy, free companies, the timer, and everything in between. That and slot increases, with the odd furnishing/feature request, is pretty much all anyone talks about. So there's definitely demand there.

I agree they're not going to do a total overhaul of the system at this point though. They've made it very clear that the wards are the route they want to take, presumably because of the whole neighborhood community thing they keep going for with them. I will hold out hope though that they DO revamp apartments into something that satisfies everyone's need for space and such. I'll also hold out hope that eventually they get around to putting house only/workshop stuff out in the world for us. That, by itself, would clear a fair chunk of the problem up I think. I know a lot of those small free companies are people who want workshops/gardens of their own. If they have other means of getting it, then at least some of those plots will open back up.