Tell me again why we can't have instanced housing?

[PredatoryCatgirl]

At this point, the reason we don't have instanced housing is because...they don't want instanced housing. The wards are Yoshi-P's baby, and for all the good he's done this game, that is one decision that makes me wonder what the heck he was thinking.

[Shibi]

to assure the 5-15+ million players who want to be able to leave the game and come back 5 years later that their house is still available.

That's disk space, not server space.

Edit: and simplistically doing the calculation on space

128 bits for an instance UUID
128 bits for an object UUID
24 bits for position <X,Y,Z>
24 bits for rotation <I,J,K>
8 bits for dye

32 bytes. Lets triple that to be generous and add 3 more bytes to hold scale too to allow later expansion.

120 bytes per object. 200 objects = 24KB

Let say 3 houses per person as an average... 72KB per person

15,000,000 players is 1,080,000,000KB / 1,080GB or basically 1TB of data split between 3 data centres. Which is a tiny amount of data.

And that's everyone having 3 houses, each holding 3 times the data that would be needed.

500GB for NA, 500GB for EU, 500GB for JP, 500GB for OCE (My PC has more than this)

I've still underestimated? ok, lets triple it again and add 3 x 500GB SAN arrays in each region.

Teir-1 Enterprise solutions are there for this, complete with hot geo-redundant backup.

[Solarra]

I do wonder if the devs might regret introuducing the Island Sanctuary. It looks like they had resources that could have been used for instanced houses and chose to use them for the Sanctuary instead. I certainly can't accept the 'instanced houses are impossible due to limited resources' argument any more. Though in fairness, it's usually people here forwarding that argument and as far as I know, there has been no official statement to that effect.
Even if it is far more limited than a house, the fact that the Island Sanctuary is available to each character, suggests a lot of resources have been devoted to it.

[Greyhawk]

Aside from taking less resources than the bloated ward system, the mere existence of the upcoming island sanctuaries obliterates every argument I've ever heard against instanced housing.

Because of Yoshi-P's pride. Nothing more. The only reason we have the system that we do is because he likes the neighborhood feelings. Nevermind the fact that you can literally enter a ward and see no one - NO ONE - in there but your own character for months at a time. Then, maybe - MAYBE - you will see one person at the market board because it was just convenience while they zoned to their house.

[Zorander01]

I am sorry to say that the Lottery system sucks big time 7 times i tried to get a bloody house 7 times the system gave me the bloody middle finger i am so done. How many years has the game been available and how many years have people wanted house but every time a new patch comes out or major update nothing is being done to expand the system or when it is done it is done sporadically and at a very small scale.

I am sorry but for a game that is this old and still people not able to get a house I find it that it is bad.

when other games that have just come out people can get a house easily.

[Oizen]

Small Indie dev, pls buy our NFTs.

[katthekat]

The problem is that we have instanced housing but a lot of players don't want to use it.

It's hard to tell if SE understands that the reason why most of those players don't want it is because of size and missing features, or if they think it's because players just don't want instanced housing.

I mean, you'd think that they'd be able to see that apartments don't have all the features that can (and should) be present in housing. They are completely aware that there is half a system (several if you count the FC systems) that are UNAVAILABLE to players if they don't have an apartment, along with other features that you can't access with only an apartment.

They also made it clear that haha! You thought Island Sanctuary could've helped with some of that? Nope, different plants.

Maybe I'm expecting too much of them, though. After all they're just a "small indie company" that charges 20 US dollars for single-character cosmetic outfits and has millions of players and how many people were trying to access DC travel a minute again?

Wards are great and all, but at this point, people just want a house. A fully featured house. That allows you to do all the things that houses allow you to do. I want to give my friends my food items, I want a second floor to my house, and I want to be able to use outdoor furniture items like those pretty purple trees. I've put the work in to get my gil. I should have the right to that.

[Avoidy]

I certainly can't accept the 'instanced houses are impossible due to limited resources' argument any more. Though in fairness, it's usually people here forwarding that argument and as far as I know, there has been no official statement to that effect.

It's really common for people in this community to speak with authority about the inner workings of a company they're not a part of, to others who are just as blind on the topic as they are. Sometimes they'll base their conjecture off of some old interview that was loosely translated from Japanese to English, and even then it'll be an old interview so who knows how the situation's changed at this point. It's so tiresome. Like, no offense to those people, but when I ask why we can't have instanced housing I'm not looking for an explanation from ForumBrowser69 who's just as blind as the rest of us. Ideally these threads would put pressure on Square to make an official statement. Of course, that implies they even read these forums, which they probably do not.

[Zorander01]

I also call shenanigans that a 12 year old game with several thousand players that are paying a monthly fee and also don't forget the micro transactions in the optional items store that there is no money to be able to fix the housing issue.

[Angellos]

Except that we know that the current housing is built across multiple servers, and we know that Islands are not going to be 'housing'. From what we've learned (which is very little) you will not be able to put a single housing item on your Island. It isn't built for that purpose. I anticipate something very close to the Garrisons from Warlords of Draenor in World of Warcraft.

So, you can rant and rave all you want, but if you want something like the current housing, it is dependent on limited infrastructure.

A complete change in that architecture will be required to provide everyone with what you wish for as "instanced housing". And that is going to take time and future infrastructure purchases to assure the 5-15+ million players who want to be able to leave the game and come back 5 years later that their house is still available.

You act as though this is impossible, or some huge undertaking that will take years. Instanced housing wouldn't take much more hardware than their current bloated Ward system takes.

Step 1: Bolster the instanced housing servers. (There's been a huge influx in profit due to WoW players joining the game. Don't tell me the money doesn't exist.)
Step 2: Give everyone who currently owns a home a housing voucher for the appropriate sized home.
Step 3: Get rid of all the wards and have just one housing district.
Step 4: Players click on the placard outside of the house to purchase the home.
Step 5: Players click on the placard and 'Go to Your House' to enter. (Or go to someone else's house from a list, like apartments.)

PRO'S:

Massive gil sink for players, which means a much needed time sink that every MMORPG depends upon for player retention.
Devs could introduce special housing on the Mogstation for cash. (Default homes will still be available for just gil) Special homes could be: Amaurot themed, Crystarium themed, Garlemald themed, pirate ships, air ships, The Ragnarok, etc.) This would drive profits through the roof. Huge boon for the company.
You don't have to see your neighbor's ugly walls.
Most wards are devoid of players other than at the market board: You will still have the market board. Nothing changes.

CON'S:
Work by the Devs
Cost of upgrading current hardware. (A cost that is being covered by the huge amount of additional profit being made now with the huge influx of new players.)

There is absolutely ZERO REASON to NOT instance housing. Other multi-player games are coming out all the time. I do not believe for a second that SE can't get additional servers for instanced housing when small indie companies can get their hands on the same hardware. There's still a supply chain shortage, yes: But it's still obtainable.