House Raffling

[Jojoya]

This is simply incorrect. Just outright so.
snip the rest

Your problem is you're assuming that every player wants a house and that SE believes the same thing.

You're wrong. There's a large segment of the player population with no interest in owning house. SE understands that even if you don't. They've been adding housing as the available housing across worlds disappears, not to keep housing at a certain percentage of the player base to force housing PvP.

Pull numbers out of the air all you want but the real story in the number of houses that have been available at times, not the number of total houses versus total players.

If housing was intended to be PvP, there would never have been times the majority of worlds had houses available not just days but months.

Players on JP worlds (outside of Tonberry and a couple of the legacy worlds) never had problems getting a house once the wards were expanded to 12 until this expansion.

Players on NA and EU worlds had no problem getting houses the latter half of HW or in 2018 as long as they weren't on one of the congested worlds. Variety of what was available may not have been great at the end of HW but there was still no problem getting a house if you wanted one. That's how I got my first house. No PvP. No having to buy from a flipper.

There were hundreds of houses available on some NA and EU worlds during 2018 and dozens available on most of the rest. They didn't disappear until other MMOs died or had serious content issues at the start of 2019. Explain why that would be in your PvP housing theory.

I'm guessing you're one of those who only value housing if it's something others can't have which is why you're pushing your PvP theory.

Most players aren't like that, fortunately, and neither is SE.

[EaMett]

Your problem is you're assuming that every player wants a house and that SE believes the same thing.

You're wrong. There's a large segment of the player population with no interest in owning house. SE understands that even if you don't. They've been adding housing as the available housing across worlds disappears, not to keep housing at a certain percentage of the player base to force housing PvP.

Pull numbers out of the air all you want but the real story in the number of houses that have been available at times, not the number of total houses versus total players.

If housing was intended to be PvP, there would never have been times the majority of worlds had houses available not just days but months.

Players on JP worlds (outside of Tonberry and a couple of the legacy worlds) never had problems getting a house once the wards were expanded to 12 until this expansion.

Players on NA and EU worlds had no problem getting houses the latter half of HW or in 2018 as long as they weren't on one of the congested worlds. Variety of what was available may not have been great at the end of HW but there was still no problem getting a house if you wanted one. That's how I got my first house. No PvP. No having to buy from a flipper.

There were hundreds of houses available on some NA and EU worlds during 2018 and dozens available on most of the rest. They didn't disappear until other MMOs died or had serious content issues at the start of 2019. Explain why that would be in your PvP housing theory.

I'm guessing you're one of those who only value housing if it's something others can't have which is why you're pushing your PvP theory.

Most players aren't like that, fortunately, and neither is SE.

SE have mentioned their stance on how they wanted housing to be difficult to get, as stated in my previous comment. But you probably ignored that like you did the numbers I "pulled out of the air".

I JUST showed you that 80% of the player base had little access to housing over the last 4 years. I don't know how much clearer things can be. Yet you keep coming back with phrases like "There were hundreds of houses available on some NA and EU worlds during 2018 and dozens available on most of the rest." with no proof whatsoever. I'm waiting... Go on.

Were there servers where housing was available? Yes some servers did, Goblin in NA was a good example. But again, I have to insist because it really isn't registering with you, for 80% of the player base, this was not the case. Because 80% of the ff14 population resided on higher population servers. And when you build design policies you build them for the players, NOT the servers. If 80% of players are on higher pop servers you upgrade the features for higher population servers.
Again, lets do another round of this because repetition is key. Yes JP servers do ok with housing, that's because currently HALF of those servers don't even count towards that 80% of players. Since the JP servers are so lowly populated compared to the average server. In fact only tonberry has more active players than the average server, ALL other JP servers have bellow average population. Compare that to say NA that has no servers bellow the average population.

When a game company can't balance content for all players, they should balance content for the top 80% of players affected and SE does just that. Keeping the feature within their tolerance levels for those 80%. Especially since the remaining 20% aren't harmed in any way. They just have easier housing access, which incidentally, can help distribute server load if people migrate because of it, so it's win-win-win.

You can keep going on about your fantasy explanation about SE's intentions while ignoring everything I've posted if you want. But if you want to convince anyone you'll need more than just vague anecdotal mentions of plot availability pulled from god knows where and that represented god knows what portion of the game population.
At least I posted most of my sources.

In fact, to use your words, until you can do better your fantasy isn't true no matter how much you want to think it is.
Maybe we can revisit this after you post a bit of your research on the matter.

PS: I also find it a little amusing that you'll argue against using plot availability vs active characters as a metric because and I quote "There's a large segment of the player population with no interest in owning house". I mean... For one, you have nothing to back this argument up. But in addition to this, the logic of this statement is pretty loopy.

If in 2016 a large percentage of the active population wasn't interested in housing and 50% plot availability allowed everyone to get a house. Then today with 50% plot availability the situation should be roughly the same and we should have enough plots. Aka you shouldn't be complaining about the system.
Or is it that the population of people with no interest in housing is, contrary to what you said, not large. In which case you were wrong to argue against using plot availability vs active characters as a metric?
Conversely, if that portion of players is large today and housing is still a problem (which you say it is) then you acknowledge that it was also a problem 4 years ago, as I've been saying.
Yes? No? Which is it? What's the narrative here?

[Sairys]

SE have mentioned their stance on how they wanted housing to be difficult to get, as stated in my previous comment. But you probably ignored that like you did the numbers I "pulled out of the air".

An actual quote rather than you just saying such would be more useful. The internet is full of things people repeat that aren't necessarily true.

I JUST showed you that 80% of the player base had little access to housing over the last 4 years. I don't know how much clearer things can be. Yet you keep coming back with phrases like "There were hundreds of houses available on some NA and EU worlds during 2018 and dozens available on most of the rest." with no proof whatsoever. I'm waiting... Go on.

Were there servers where housing was available? Yes some servers did, Goblin in NA was a good example. But again, I have to insist because it really isn't registering with you, for 80% of the player base, this was not the case. Because 80% of the ff14 population resided on higher population servers. And when you build design policies you build them for the players, NOT the servers. If 80% of players are on higher pop servers you upgrade the features for higher population servers.
Again, lets do another round of this because repetition is key. Yes JP servers do ok with housing, that's because currently HALF of those servers don't even count towards that 80% of players. Since the JP servers are so lowly populated compared to the average server. In fact only tonberry has more active players than the average server, ALL other JP servers have bellow average population. Compare that to say NA that has no servers bellow the average population.

Hm, you didn't really though?

Your numbers show an increasing percentage following the Mateus drama along with the rules implemented limit ownership of multiple homes to increase availability as the existing design wasn't working.
The trend would be furthered if the Firmament opens as a full district, (today it would map to 69% using your own numbers). The only real downward movement of the percentages is linked to massive population growth with 4.0/4.1.
Also, there's the other issue with the census site that active is defined by completing the 5.0 storyline and so could include people who haven't played since close to the launch of 5.0 leaving it as a number that can't go down even if half the population of the game unsubbed. It's not unreasonable to suspect the numbers used are inflated which would lead to the trend in availability percentages being higher.

The comments around JP servers more indicate there's a technical limitation, if there wasn't and the devs just wanted to maintain a certain percentage of housing availability they'd add wards where needed even just on a regional level.

You can keep going on about your fantasy explanation about SE's intentions while ignoring everything I've posted if you want. But if you want to convince anyone you'll need more than just vague anecdotal mentions of plot availability pulled from god knows where and that represented god knows what portion of the game population.
At least I posted most of my sources.

The only source I'm seeing is census which, while the only baseline, is flawed in its current implementation and doesn't actually support your stance even with that flaw likely causing inflated numbers?


Also...

• Oct 2014, patch 2.4 > 1440 plots available for an average user count of 3107 per serve(**), 46% availability (no before patch stats as this was the first time housing was open to personals)
• Jun 2016, patch 3.3 > 2160 plots available for an average user count of 4224 per server(*), 51% availability (31% before patch)
• Oct 2017, patch 4.1 > 2880 plots available for an average user count of 10 834 per server(*), 26% availability (20% before patch)
• Feb 2018, patch 4.2 > 4320 plots available for an average user count of 8957 per server(*), 48% availability (32% before patch)
• current > 5760 plots available for an average user count of 10489 per server(*), 54% availability (48% before patch). This patch was sold as compensating for lack of demo timers due to COVID19. So is likely to be outside of normal cycles.

You've skipped over the 5.1 increase and your note on the recent increase is wrong from what I understand. The translation I have is that they were going to add even more but covid is impairing the ability to do so, and the demolition timer note is that it was going to remain stopped.