Instanced Wards

[Nepentha]

What happens to an existing FC room? Houses in the FC ward would be basically bigger versions of those. It's also probably why they shouldn't count against the personal house limit....

An FC room is no where near the size and scale of a house. And also costs more to purchase.

[Jojoya]

IIRC the same property number maps to the same size class of house, so you'd just reassign everyone the current numbers, and that works out to the same between the wards... or a similar type of mapping is devised so no one loses a property, and then charge a a couple hundred million gil as a ward "moving" fee with a cooldown timer of like 2 months to relo the FC to discourage frequent moves.

They do not map the same. Take Larges as an example:

Shiro - 7/17, 16/46, 30/60
Lavender Beds - 3/33, 6/36, 28/58
Goblet - 5/35, 15/35, 30/60
Mist - 2/32, 5/35, 15/45

My Mist 60 is a medium. If I were to be automatically moved to Shiro or Goblet 60, I'd be placed in a large (which I do not want - I want a medium). It would at least be a medium still in Lavender Beds.

But then take my FC's large (LB 33). In every other district, that plot number is a small.

Then you still have the issue of even moving small to small is not the same. Where someone might have a small with a good view now, the same number in a different district might be staring into a wall.

If you've got a better idea that still uses wards, I'm all ears.

The current system using wards would be better than yours. Leave it in the individual player's hands instead of giving a FC leader control over what other players get.

Remember that for all you used the term "instanced", the wards would still be nearly the same as existing wards when it comes to consumption of server resources. If one FC member is in the ward, the entire ward has to be loaded and not just that one member's property. If the FC only has 10 miembers, that's at least 19 plots going unused.

The ward system itself is the problem if SE can't keep up with the hardware demands to make it function and work for all players.

Ok, so what about FC rooms?

Who's complaining they can't get a FC room now? No one. They get an apartment instead.

Ok, so how likely are those disputes within the FC now? How many FCs do we have where the leader kicks everyone else out just to keep the house?

Disputes within FCs happen all the time.

And see Awha's response.

I easily could have done it myself when my alt was the only active member of her FC for 5 months and ended up leader through the auto-dethrone. I could have kicked everyone out and had a second house all to myself instead of maintaining the FC until people started returning and eventually handing leadership to a friend who wanted to be running a FC.

There are other players who have come to the forums in a similar position "I'm now leader of a FC with a house because everyone else quit playing, is it okay for me to kick everyone so I can keep the house?"

Very few FCs are more than loose social groups that fall apart as members have their interest change and leave the FC or quit the game. The wrong person getting leader through auto-dethrone or other means can destroy it.

[Themarvin]

Only way to get it fully instanced this way would mean, not customizeable options for decorations and set houses as a pre-built feature... like the Inn rooms... that is the only way stuff like this would be implented, because it would require too much work the other way around and too much waste of good resources into a small niche of the game.

[Almagnus1]

They do not map the same. Take Larges as an example:

Shiro - 7/17, 16/46, 30/60
Lavender Beds - 3/33, 6/36, 28/58
Goblet - 5/35, 15/35, 30/60
Mist - 2/32, 5/35, 15/45

My Mist 60 is a medium. If I were to be automatically moved to Shiro or Goblet 60, I'd be placed in a large (which I do not want - I want a medium). It would at least be a medium still in Lavender Beds.

But then take my FC's large (LB 33). In every other district, that plot number is a small.

Then you still have the issue of even moving small to small is not the same. Where someone might have a small with a good view now, the same number in a different district might be staring into a wall.

May be better to just have the FC do a non-refundable delete/recreate, or give a small window (like a day or two) for a 100% refund if they picked a ward they don't like. If someone's going to be dropping that much gil, making changes painful will force them to think through the decision.

The current system using wards would be better than yours.

Why not have both? If an FC wants to fight for a house, they can do so. But if they can fundraise the half billion (or more) gil it takes to buy the ward, let them.

Who's complaining they can't get a FC room now? No one. They get an apartment instead.

Unless they're on Balmung...

And see Awha's response.

I easily could have done it myself when my alt was the only active member of her FC for 5 months and ended up leader through the auto-dethrone. I could have kicked everyone out and had a second house all to myself instead of maintaining the FC until people started returning and eventually handing leadership to a friend who wanted to be running a FC.

There are other players who have come to the forums in a similar position "I'm now leader of a FC with a house because everyone else quit playing, is it okay for me to kick everyone so I can keep the house?"

Very few FCs are more than loose social groups that fall apart as members have their interest change and leave the FC or quit the game. The wrong person getting leader through auto-dethrone or other means can destroy it.

But tbh, you're really just highlight flaws in the FC system. You're also highlight why there needs to be criteria which, when met, the FC either releases the house or just gets deleted outright (which releases the house).

That said, both of these cases are highlight why it may be necessary for the FC leader to be able to take the FC house as their own, so if you have someone that's got a dead FC, but doesn't have a personal house, they can claim the house as their own and any work decorating the house isn't lost - similar to how someone stuck in a dead FC may want to raid the storage and FC chest and claim it as their own.

[Jojoya]

May be better to just have the FC do a non-refundable delete/recreate, or give a small window (like a day or two) for a 100% refund if they picked a ward they don't like. If someone's going to be dropping that much gil, making changes painful will force them to think through the decision.

Or better just not to have private FC wards in the first place.

It's another "sounds good on paper but works out terrible in practice" idea.

Why not have both? If an FC wants to fight for a house, they can do so. But if they can fundraise the half billion (or more) gil it takes to buy the ward, let them.

Because then you end up with a bunch of barely occupied wards consuming server resources when those resources could be serving more players. Most FCs don't have more than a dozen or so active members while wards are designed to accommodate 30 different owners.

Do you honestly expect SE to operate 1000+ wards per world when the 96 currently operating already tax their resources?

But tbh, you're really just highlight flaws in the FC system. You're also highlight why there needs to be criteria which, when met, the FC either releases the house or just gets deleted outright (which releases the house).

Every system is going to have flaws because they're created and run by flawed human beings.

SE can't dig deep into creating restrictions on FCs because not every group of players wants their FC to be the same thing. They need to allow flexibility within a system to accommodate those differences to a reasonable degree, and there will always be those who try to exploit things for personal gain.

The flawed housing system can be fixed without even touching the flawed FC system. SE just has to accept that wards are not serving the needs of the expanding player base adequately and focus on improving the instanced system.

I'm probably in the minority on this but I would be 100% okay with losing my current medium if SE deleted the current housing system altogether to replace it with a quality housing system at the level of Wildstar, RIFT, or ESO housing, one that serves every player with an interest in housing equally regardless of local world population instead of one that only serves the lucky on less populated worlds.

Like it or not, there's a very good chance that every NA and EU world will be Balmung by the time Endwalker releases. All those high profile streamers abandoning WoW and coming here are showing players from other games that FFXIV isn't such a terrible "weeb" game after all. SE would be foolish not to capitalize on the one feature this game has that WoW never added despite constant requests from WoW players throughout the game's history - housing.

[Almagnus1]

Do you honestly expect SE to operate 1000+ wards per world when the 96 currently operating already tax their resources?

That's why I'm suggesting the initial price for the ward needs to be set (at minimum) for half a billion gil. Hopefully it will help pull people out of the wards, or give someone that wants to own a ward a way to do that without screwing up the market for the rest of us.

Like it or not, there's a very good chance that every NA and EU world will be Balmung by the time Endwalker releases. All those high profile streamers abandoning WoW and coming here are showing players from other games that FFXIV isn't such a terrible "weeb" game after all. SE would be foolish not to capitalize on the one feature this game has that WoW never added despite constant requests from WoW players throughout the game's history - housing.

With Asmongold hitting Heavensward, and his YouTube content being generally positive and respective for the FFXIV MSQ... he's basically done the one thing a Japanese MMO has had difficulty doing and basically normalized FFXIV for the masses. Asmongold's Heavensward entrance video where Cactaur rolled out the red carpet for him is about the best marketing we can get for this game. Going by https://ffxivcensus.com/ , NA characters account for almost HALF of the overall characters created - so (at minimum) a South American and possibly a fourth North American datacenter are warranted, and the NA housing mess is going to get far worse before it improves - especially since SE is having a very hard time getting the hardware for a datacenter.

Realistically, I'm expecting problems with Endwalker launch that will make Raubahn and Pipin Savage look like a cake walk because we're too successful and the server hardware is too rare.

[Jojoya]

That's why I'm suggesting the initial price for the ward needs to be set (at minimum) for half a billion gil. Hopefully it will help pull people out of the wards, or give someone that wants to own a ward a way to do that without screwing up the market for the rest of us.

It will pull a handful of gil capped individuals out of the wards because they're the only ones that can afford it and they'll get to have an entire ward to themselves.

It does nothing to help FCs or their members. Legitimate FCs rarely have that sort of gil.

It does nothing to give SE the real world resources they need to increase the number of wards so more players can get a house.

It's another idea that needs to die.