Is player instanced housing more of a strain on the server?

[DPZ2]

Instanced housing is available right now, as "Apartments".

And for those who think current housing is barren: you obviously don't belong to an active Free Company. Events do not normally occur outside.

[Angellos]

Dear Yoshi P, if you happen to read this:

I understand that SE wants the community feel when it comes to housing. Coming from other games such as EverQuest II which had instanced housing: I felt a GREAT sense of community there: But I feel no community here whatsoever. Your neighbor having a horribly decorated yard that you have to stare at every day does not make community. I would craft outside of my house for six hours a day, and in six years: Only one person ever stopped to say hello to me. There is no community in any of that. The fact is, the housing is dividing the community more than ever. There are lots of new FCs with the huge influx of players, but NONE of them can get an FC house. Eventually people leave because of it, and the FC dies before it ever had a chance to start.

Roleplay FCs can't purchase houses for their FCs so that they have a constant place to roleplay: Those FCs also die before they ever get a chance to start.

About 80% of our current playerbase can't buy houses because there aren't any left. Houses on Balmung are sold out within TWO MINUTES of new wards being released. Your lotto system is not going to fix any of those fundamental issues.

Housing needs to be instanced. Every player should be able to purchase a home: Even if you make homes cost more gil than they do now. (Maybe 10 million for a small instead of 3 million to cut down on how many people purchase them.) You can even tie ownership of a house into finishing the MSQ if you'd like. No matter how you go about it, housing should be instanced. Then we can freely visit one another's homes, everyone has the opportunity to have one, everyone is happy. As it stands, there aren't even any apartments available on Balmung. You can never upgrade your apartment so that it's bigger, you can't make a workshop with an apartment. You can't garden, you can't have a ship and a submarine. It just isn't the same.

I believe there are only a few fixes for these issues:
1. If apartments fill up, a new section automatically opens.
1a. Apartments need to be upgradeable, and to have workshops.
1b. FCs should get special apartments that are bigger than normal with all the amenities.

2. Just make housing instanced and never run out of plots. Limit houses and partments to one each per account, per server. Fixed.

P.S. For the first time since EverQuest I, I truly believe that you and your Dev team truly care about your fans and this game. I truly feel as though you listen to us, more than any other game team in existence. So please, we understand that you had a vision for housing, but it just isn't working as you intended and the players aren't happy with it at all. We all want to enjoy the wonderful houses that you and your team brought to life.

[Jojoya]

Instanced housing is available right now, as "Apartments".

And for those who think current housing is barren: you obviously don't belong to an active Free Company. Events do not normally occur outside.

Events occurring inside the house instead of outside of the house is why the wards are barren. When you're inside, you're no longer in the ward. You've been relocated to an instance.

I'm part of a fairly active FC. We actually like to hang around the outside of our house to chat over going inside to do it, playing jumping games on the roof, etc. The problem is that we're still at the house. We're not running around populating the ward to make the ward feel like an active place unless someone is excited about their new passenger mount and wants to take people around for a ride. Otherwise, our FC's activity is only at the FC house. Our FC house is active, the ward is not.

Put our FC house in an instance with scenic backdrops for the areas outside the boundaries and it would make no difference to us nor would it make a difference to anyone else who has a house in our ward but never passes by our house to see us there.

I just created an outdoor hot tub for my personal house and have had friends/FC members coming by to check it out. I've spent over 6 hours in the last two days outside of my house chatting with them as they come to see it. Did anyone else wander past my house during those 6 hours? Nope.

Anyone living on the south side of my ward needs to pass by my house to get to the beach if they're doing it on foot. Do I see people passing by on the ordinary days when I'm sitting outside working on my Expert crafting achievements (and I've been working on those achievements 1-2 hours daily for several months)? Nope. Also don't see people hanging on the beach for that matter but even if they were going to the beach, they're more likely to use the aethernet to TP straight there than run/ride past my house.

Right now I'm standing outside my house. A player search tells me that there are a total of 55 players spread among the 48 wards in Mist. All that server space only being used by a handful of players. It's wasteful design.

[tdb]

You don't understand how instanced housing works (or even instancing in general) if you believe that.

At times of high congestion the instance servers have occasionally become overloaded, resulting in wait times for entering an instance. I believe instanced housing would count towards that sort of problems, especially since players would be likely to idle at their houses. keeping the instance reserved.

[Jojoya]

At times of high congestion the instance servers have occasionally become overloaded, resulting in wait times for entering an instance. I believe instanced housing would count towards that sort of problems, especially since players would be likely to idle at their houses. keeping the instance reserved.

If players were inclined to idle at their housing over other areas, it would already be a problem since house interiors and apartments are instanced. There don't seem to be that many players who choose to do so. They prefer to idle in Limsa/Gridania/Ul'dah if they're not doing other content (and most players are doing the content since their time available to play is limited).

One thing we don't know is whether the instance servers that host housing are the same as the instance servers that host solo duties/dungeons/trials/raids though I've gotten the impression from things said by SE over the years that housing instances are on separate servers (I could be totally wrong in that impression). If they are separate, it's not going to impact anything other than someone being able to go to their housing to idle.

[Almagnus1]

With instanced housing its more of a strain on the servers for SE. Potentially everyone and their mom can have a house which would have a yard with things and an inventory plus a house with several floors and an inventory.

The only benefit is for people at home with a potato pc who dont want neighbors because it blow up their pc having to load all the items in the ward.

That assumes that all the houses stay in memory. If the house isn't being used (and SE programmed things correctly), it's going to unload from memory and only exist as static data stored in the database and loaded into memory again once you need it.

[Velisra]

When Ishgard was being restored, I had hoped to see something like this for player housing (and honestly, there's no reason that older wards couldn't be converted to this as well):

Each house in Ishgard is actually a mini instance. When you choose a house, you buy it at the placard, and there are unlimited instances of that particular plot. Once you purchase it, you can decorate the yard as you see fit, and when you get close enough to the plot, you will see your own decorations. You can enter the house just as you do any other housing plot in the game, and your furnishings are there.

At the same time, any other player can purchase that same plot, and it will behave the same way: they've purchased it, decorated the outside, etc. When they roll up to the house, they see their own outdoor furnishings, of course.

The placard acts the same way as the entrance to the apartments does currently, once you've purchased. You can go to your own instanced house, or perhaps visit another by choosing an open one from the list.

In this way, each player can choose their favored location--is it small and cozy, medium with more space, or large to really show the wealth? Is it near the MB and aetheryte? Is it tucked away private in a corner, or have the most awesome view? Each player can have what they want, without camping, bitterness, or the RNG of some lotto system. The ward (note the singular here) would be full of players at all hours, because on the surface, there is only one ward.

The technology already exists in the game for something like this, it seems. You have apartments that are instanced, and you have the game already showing you things (npcs, airships, etc.) that are not visible to other players if they are not on the same quests. Put those things together, and BAM you have a new instanced housing system.

I'm just baffled at this point as to why SE is so bad at this, when they're so good at everything else.

[Almagnus1]

I'm just baffled at this point as to why SE is so bad at this, when they're so good at everything else.

It's cause of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect and they want to keep something going when it's pretty clear the entire system needs a reset and rethink of the rules that govern it.

[Stormfur]

It's cause of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect and they want to keep something going when it's pretty clear the entire system needs a reset and rethink of the rules that govern it.

See also: Feast. FINALLY they're doing something about that. Maybe housing will be next. We can dream.

[Angellos]

At times of high congestion the instance servers have occasionally become overloaded, resulting in wait times for entering an instance. I believe instanced housing would count towards that sort of problems, especially since players would be likely to idle at their houses. keeping the instance reserved.

Obviously SE would have to devote more money to upgrading their instance servers to handle the load. They're upgrading everything as we speak: And more upgrades need to come with the influx of players.