Revisions to Housing Ward Classifications

[LaylaTsarra]

New FC/Private split. Wards 1 to 9 FC and 10 to 18 private coming July 10th.

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...ea1af7ef0cb27b

[UkcsAlias]

I was not expecting them to halve the FC housing areas, thats a positive surprise. It wont solve the main issue, but at least gives some extra opportunities.

[Avoidy]

I was thrilled by this news until I saw "July 10th." By the time this change is implemented, shell FCs will have consumed most of those wards. And I'm sure any last-minute legit FCs that were holding out for mediums just saw this news and crapped themselves, so they'll probably (finally) decide it's time to settle on a small as well. Meanwhile, the relatively newer shell FCs made a couple of weeks ago will hit their 1 month date before the 10th. Individuals will once again be stuck fighting thousands of other players for a dozen empyreum plots.

At this point, I'm curious about what goes into adding new wards and why they don't add them more often. I'd love a current year live letter about housing in general, or just a commitment to improving apartments so people stuck with those won't feel like they're missing out on a lot of functions.

[ballprince]

I know shell fcs aren't against TOS, but I really don't understand why. You literally cannot make an FC to begin with without three people but slightly besides the point.

I'm already seeing the faerie wards filling up like crazy, and I half suspect it is shell fcs. It's really disheartening. Those should have just been personal houses to begin with.

I think it's mainly a hardware issue in regards to wards, hardware they are struggling to obtain.

It's why I really think housing just needs to be redone but it's very unlikely at this point in my eyes as much as I think it needs doing.

[Shibi]

It's just a sugar hit. And as every parent knows, tantrums tie in with those in an endless cycle.

A few houses for 2 rounds - 14 days, then we are right back here again. Nothing will change.

Won't change until SE does something quite dramatic to solve this.

[Oizen]

It's just a sugar hit. And as every parent knows, tantrums tie in with those in an endless cycle.

A few houses for 2 rounds - 14 days, then we are right back here again. Nothing will change.

Won't change until SE does something quite dramatic to solve this.

Well yeah I mean, its cool that they did this but this is hardly a solution to the core issue.

You could argue that they've never even addressed the core issue to begin with.

[Wolfenrir]

Wow thanks, now that almost every personal plot is taken they come to their senses and realize that distribution was idiotic at best, now the gigantic wave of people who did not get a house will focus those and it'll be as hard as it already is, they better come up with new wards or else this won't mean much, but that's just wishful thinking.

[Mrjeje]

Honestly classification doesn't change anything because every sector that is not empyrean is full of individual-owned houses anyways. Maybe if they added new FC only wards with a larger distribution of houses and mansions and leave what's already here to individual buyers there could be some more room to breathe. It would be harder than just copy-pasting 2x the number of wards but looking at the empyrean plots, smalls really aren't popular for FC's. Either that or they just don't like the cold.

At any rate something needs to be done more than just swapping numbers around (not to mention there are losses every time they do it). The fact that the real housing crisis is reflected in the game is almost a sort of sick joke at this point.

[jhollaz]

Sweet! That means currently there are 5 small plots (in Shirogane) open on my server - except that they are probably gonna be taken in the current lottery. There is currently 1 small plot open in Shirogane for personal housing with 151 current bidders and we still have a few more days for more entries. Just making the point there are still a large amount of disappointed people. I've said it before, but in a digital world, I fail to understand why new wards can't be auto created (perhaps after the required number of players sign up to fill it, which shouldn't be an issue).

[GeminiReed]

I've said it before, but in a digital world, I fail to understand why new wards can't be auto created (perhaps after the required number of players sign up to fill it, which shouldn't be an issue).

Square has a data management problem. Players have begged them for years to expand all sorts of capacities (inventory, armoury, glamour, wards etc.) and they've struggled to comply. Based on past comments their underlying code architecture wasn't designed to scale to the current population.

The ward system essentially requires the manifests for all the exterior decorations of every house to be in server memory constantly. It's horribly inefficient which requires far more physical hardware than a comparable instancing system that could offload plots or smaller neighborhoods not in active use.