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

[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.

[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.

[Jojoya]

And static objects don't really cause much of a performance impact.

Wards aren't static objects, though. Much of what we see in a ward isn't controlled by some creature spawn algorithm. It's controlled by player whim.

There are 180 exterior fixtures in a ward division that can be some combination of 183 different fixtures, chosen by players. There are up to 730 outdoor furnishings that can be freely placed and rotated by players chosen from 173 different items. Many of those fixtures and furnishings can be affected by the player's choice of 91 different dyes. Many of the items have collision that need to interact correctly with the player character. All of that can be changed at any time and the server needs to record then relay the information to the local client of any player in the ward. It's really not as simple as some might think.

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.

SE has said that they would like to give us more interior item slots though we don't have confirmation that will happen in 5.3. What I posted above should explain why we're very unlikely to ever see more outdoor slots short of SE giving us a fully instanced house plot instead of just interiors being instanced.

Let's say they're 10K players on a server on average. There are what, about 3,500 houses on a server?

We have 5,040 houses per world right now.

[Klaleara]

Wards aren't static objects, though. Much of what we see in a ward isn't controlled by some creature spawn algorithm. It's controlled by player whim.

Houses are unmoving, non-AI controlled objects. They are static. Some decorations have an animation, but it is still not considered "moving" as it is always in the same spot.

[Jojoya]

Houses are unmoving, non-AI controlled objects. They are static. Some decorations have an animation, but it is still not considered "moving" as it is always in the same spot.

Static - lacking in movement, action, or change, especially in a way viewed as undesirable or uninteresting.

Wards most definitely are not static.

edit: suppose I should add that I'm not trying to state that wards are a greater strain on servers than the open world zone but there are additional things that the servers need to do with respect to housing wards that don't apply to open world zones, just as the reverse is also true. Those servers need to be operating at all times, and that becomes an expense that SE has to pay. Is it worth it when there are rarely more than a couple of players in a ward at a given time compared to the open world zones that usually have a couple of dozen present if not more?