Housing Frustrations

[CheshaSolttiri]

I would argue that the game actively rewards people who have housing by featuring rewards for PVE content and official holiday content with housing items. If the developers are going to add indoor and outdoor items for reward in official holiday events then every player should have accessibility to indoor and outdoor furnishing placement. Apartments do not feature outdoor furniture placement.

[Jojoya]

snip

While I agree with the general idea that SE needs to pay more attention to housing. you've got some numbers wrong and you're making some assumptions that you shouldn't.

The game does not have 20 million active players. There have been 20 million accounts created since the game was released. Most of those accounts are no longer active (just as WoW had over 100 million accounts created as of Cataclysm even though the game only had about 10 million active subscribers at the time).

The best guess is that there's a little under 1 million active players right now. Number was higher earlier in the expansion but has dropped a bit now the expansion is more than half over (normal for MMOs).

Even if only 50% of active players would like to own a house, it means we've still got a fairly large shortfall. With Ishgard not being opened until 6.1 and the active player count no doubt increasing again with the new expansion content, there's no way Ishgard housing is going to be sufficient to fill demand if the number of wards in all housing districts remains the same. SE needs to do something else if they're serious about making sure there are enough plots for every player that wants a house.

As for 375,000 players being willing to pay $12.99/mo just to keep a house... are you nuts? This isn't a housing-centric game. There might be that small percentage of players who pay a subscription solely to keep a house but for most of the rest of us, housing is a small part of a much bigger package. If the rest of the package fails to keep us entertained, we're not going to stay subscribed just for our house. Most people are smart enough not to waste money that way.

Also, that $4.8 million a month you mention isn't solely to pay for housing. It pays for a lot of things, some that aren't even directly game related like accounting staff and maintenance staff, insurance and other benefits for employees, etc. Companies do have expenses generated by necessary operations that aren't directly related to creating the products they sell. It's naive to think those numbers are inconsequential in a company with thousands of employees.

Certainly, SE needs to do something to address the lack of supply so every player that wants a house can get one but let's not distort the situation.

[Bladehawk]

It's becoming pretty clear that the current servers cant handle the demands that are being placed on them. (Almost daily emergency maintenance of one server or another).

Back in October Square told us they had planned to have new servers installed for increased housing but that travel restrictions because of Covid had prevented them from moving forward with those plans. Since it seems pretty unlikely that travel restrictions are going to change much anywhere in 2021 i hope Square does whatever they need to do to get those servers up and running sooner rather then later and get us that additional housing they had hoped to give us back in October and at the same time hopefully reduce the server issues they seem to be having lately.

[Arohk]

Come to twintania, we still have like 100 free plots here lul.

[Big_Bap]

Come to twintania, we still have like 100 free plots here lul.

https://i.imgur.com/ww6NOZM.png



///

Back in October Square told us they had planned to have new servers installed for increased housing

They never said anything about housing, get your facts right.

[Payadopa]

Come to twintania, we still have like 100 free plots here lul.

I checked on Spriggan and the Goblet has like 5+ houses in ever. single. ward.

[Jojoya]

I'm glad that a couple of EU worlds still have houses for their players who want one. That's helpful for those on the EU data centers who are willing to pay to transfer worlds so they can have a house while still being able to play with their friends on their current world.

It doesn't help players on the packed NA worlds who would have to quit playing with their friends and deal with latency issues on a different data center just to get a house.

That situation demonstrates one of the flaws of the system. As long as the number of houses per world has to remain the same and the NA and EU regions average twice the population per world that the JP region does, there will never be sufficient housing for every player that wants one.

[Penthea]

I'm glad that a couple of EU worlds still have houses for their players who want one. That's helpful for those on the EU data centers who are willing to pay to transfer worlds so they can have a house while still being able to play with their friends on their current world.

It doesn't help players on the packed NA worlds who would have to quit playing with their friends and deal with latency issues on a different data center just to get a house.

I play on EU and even I'm sick of players pointing NA players to the EU servers. Sacrificing the overall quality of the game due to latency as well as cutting yourself off from your friends is not what I consider to be an acceptable trade for access to any content.

Yea sure data centre visit is coming at some point in the next expansion, but that still doesn't fix the issues with latency, which can be massive depending on your location and your internet connection.

[Bladehawk]

They never said anything about housing, get your facts right.

They did, and I did.

[LogicMouse]

Basically its like buying a house in RL in Colorado lol