Bidding is a terrible bandaid. . .

[Garten]

What i find silly of se Is that they created "Island Sanctuary", an entire new system that nobody was expecting and nobody asked for. They could have created an instanced housing instead, and people could have chosen to go for the wards or for a house in the new system.

[Jojoya]

What i find silly of se Is that they created "Island Sanctuary", an entire new system that nobody was expecting and nobody asked for. They could have created an instanced housing instead, and people could have chosen to go for the wards or for a house in the new system.

Except JP players had been asking for side content with those types of features and it's been expected since it was first teased at the NA FanFest in 2018.

The problem has been players expecting it to be a solution to housing when that was never the intent.

[Siniztor]

Except JP players had been asking for side content with those types of features and it's been expected since it was first teased at the NA FanFest in 2018.

The problem has been players expecting it to be a solution to housing when that was never the intent.

Goes with my theory that JP servers do not have as big a housing issuse

[Jojoya]

Goes with my theory that JP servers do not have as big a housing issuse

We know that the JP servers don't have a big problem with housing. Even when NA filled up, most of the JP servers (with a few exceptions like Tonberry) had dozens if not hundreds of houses available. They didn't end up filling their wards until COVID hit and lockdowns left people with plenty of time stuck at home to play. But JP has the advantage of 32 worlds to spread out their lower overall population compared to NA's 24.

To be fair, NA worlds have probably remained crowded because NA players tend to equate crowded worlds with how good a game is (foolish but people are people). Players were complaining about being on dead NA worlds back in Stormblood despite those worlds still having much larger populations than the JP worlds. SE trying to add new worlds at that time would have led to complaints about how SE was wasting money on creating more dead worlds instead of fixing the dead worlds. But we've now had 2 periods of explosive growth in the NA populations since, forcing SE to finally add new worlds because NA is well past maximum capacity.

The big problem with the ward system is SE apparently is stuck mirroring the number of wards on every world instead of increasing wards dynamically on a per world basis in response to population increases. To meet NA unmet house demand without increasing the number of NA worlds, you'd end up with some empty wards on EU worlds and many empty wards on JP worlds. I doubt the beancounters at SE would be pleased with the money going to waste for those empty wards. So NA, and to a lesser extent EU, end up suffering because JP demand is met so SE sees no need to spend additional money to give their international players a better housing experience.

{insert my usual "this would not be a problem if SE had gone with a fully instanced housing system from the start")

We know the developers all play the game but sometimes I wish they would be playing the game on the NA and EU servers instead of the JP servers so they could see things from our perspective. Both regions have their fairly active JP speaking communities so it's not like they would be isolated completely when it comes to communication with local players.

[Siniztor]

We know that the JP servers don't have a big problem with housing. Even when NA filled up, most of the JP servers (with a few exceptions like Tonberry) had dozens if not hundreds of houses available. They didn't end up filling their wards until COVID hit and lockdowns left people with plenty of time stuck at home to play. But JP has the advantage of 32 worlds to spread out their lower overall population compared to NA's 24.

To be fair, NA worlds have probably remained crowded because NA players tend to equate crowded worlds with how good a game is (foolish but people are people). Players were complaining about being on dead NA worlds back in Stormblood despite those worlds still having much larger populations than the JP worlds. SE trying to add new worlds at that time would have led to complaints about how SE was wasting money on creating more dead worlds instead of fixing the dead worlds. But we've now had 2 periods of explosive growth in the NA populations since, forcing SE to finally add new worlds because NA is well past maximum capacity.

The big problem with the ward system is SE apparently is stuck mirroring the number of wards on every world instead of increasing wards dynamically on a per world basis in response to population increases. To meet NA unmet house demand without increasing the number of NA worlds, you'd end up with some empty wards on EU worlds and many empty wards on JP worlds. I doubt the beancounters at SE would be pleased with the money going to waste for those empty wards. So NA, and to a lesser extent EU, end up suffering because JP demand is met so SE sees no need to spend additional money to give their international players a better housing experience.

{insert my usual "this would not be a problem if SE had gone with a fully instanced housing system from the start")

We know the developers all play the game but sometimes I wish they would be playing the game on the NA and EU servers instead of the JP servers so they could see things from our perspective. Both regions have their fairly active JP speaking communities so it's not like they would be isolated completely when it comes to communication with local players.

Yes i total agree with all this and this part has been brewing in my head thinking that it may be linked and the longer it has gone on im sure about pretty much it is why.. (you said it more elegant then i could ty)...and I love your idea of making the devs move from jp servers to Eu n NA...have them come bid on houses here

[Garten]

Except JP players had been asking for side content with those types of features.

I honestly didn't know about this.. and sometimes i forgot this is a japanese game lol..