When will you really address the housing availability problem?

[Gyson]

No ones talking about your limits, we've been talking about the server limits all this time. I would hope a 7 year old game would have alot less processing and memory limits. Its only restrictive limits would hopefully be graphics without an overhaul...

For the record, the housing system in LoTRO is amazing similar to FFXIV's housing, save for the fact that the latter has less of it available. The fact that the artwork in FFXIV is prettier is not relevant. So, no, that LoTRO is a 7 year old game is not an excuse in FFXIV's favor. If anything it makes FFXIV's housing dilemma look all the more ridiculous.

Yes, Yoshida blames it on "limited server resources". These are the same "limited server resources" that prevent us from having more storage space, a problem that amazingly goes away as long as you're willing to pay extra retainer fees each month. And these are the same "limited server resources" that the development team managed to overcome when adding an expansion pack's worth of content to the game.

What the developers never explain is why server resources are "limited". Is it a funding issue? Are they unable to invest enough of our subscription payments back into the game to fix problems like housing, or just unwilling? Your guess is as good as mine, because I can't remember the last time we received a very frank explanation devoid of any PR-spin on precisely why housing has not been fixed yet (or whether it ever will be in a reasonable period of time).

Even if every plot of land goes back on the market, that's only 1,440 houses. 1,440! That's the *absolute best case scenario* for current non-homeowners and it's still not enough houses.. not even close to enough plots to satisfy demand. We'll be right back to where we are now, with a small percentage of active players owning a house and the rest of us being annoyed that we can't.

Understanding that, what's the next stage of this plan? Do they even have a next stage, or is this it? If there is a plan, please share it, because I'm pretty sure most players would like nothing more than to hear that immediately following the first wave of land reclamation in December we'll be receiving a ton of new additional wards as soon as the reclaimed ones fill up.

Otherwise.. what was the point of all this? To make somewhere between 0-1,440 players per server happy and call it done? Because that's a crap plan.

[Mycow8me]

The fact that the artwork in FFXIV is prettier is not relevant. So, no, that LoTRO is a 7 year old game is not an excuse in FFXIV's favor.

Are you kidding? The game was released with that current years technology in mind for processing and resources... Why would it not be an excuse? We may not know the exact numbers but its fairly obvious that a 7 year old game is going to require less resources. Pretty artwork sounds like your taking a strawman stance, its not about "pretty artwork" its about how much memory and resources the "pretty artwork" takes. More graphical games take heftier processing, otherwise we would never have to upgrade video cards, processors, or even ram for that matter, lord knows what the server hardware changes involve. This argument is pointless at any rate.

I'm all for a dev response to overall house dilemma though, I doubt we will see one cause they probably don't even know what direction to go next with it. The dev teams been a lot less talkative about their future plans for anything other than bugfixes or an upcoming patch for a while now. We have learned from liveletters and other conversations that they can change their minds and also not act on what they say they plan to do anyway. Anyone remember free roaming primals... lol.

[Gyson]

Are you kidding? The game was released with that current years technology in mind for processing and resources... Why would it not be an excuse? We may not know the exact numbers but its fairly obvious that a 7 year old game is going to require less resources. Pretty artwork sounds like your taking a strawman stance, its not about "pretty artwork" its about how much memory and resources the "pretty artwork" takes. More graphical games take heftier processing, otherwise we would never have to upgrade video cards, processors, or even ram for that matter, lord knows what the server hardware changes involve. This argument is pointless at any rate.

You seem to be under the (mistaken) impression that the graphical fidelity of a game has an impact on server performance. It doesn't. Do you not understand that all of the visuals are handled client-side? In the case of housing zones, the server is only managing information like which properties are owned, who owns them, the list of objects in those properties, the position and orientation of those objects, etc.

Better/newer or worse/older "art" does not impact performance on the server - whether those objects are made up of 10 polygons or 10 million polygons is irrelevant to the server. It simply relays the information to your client that specific objects are "here" and then it's up to your computer to process that information and render those objects on your screen. Likewise, increasing the number of housing zones matters not to your client, because it's only processing information for your current zone, not all the zones that exist. More housing wards will not impact performance on your home system.

When the developers are talking about server limitations in regards to housing, they are likely referring to the resources required to track all that (non-graphical) data. Those 1440 homes that occupy 60 properties spread across 8 wards in 3 housing districts all have to be tracked, and apparently adding any additional (non-graphical) information will strain the system (much in the same way that tracking more item storage for characters will apparently strain the system).

When you compare that to fact that LoTRO can store information for 30,000 homes that occupy 30 properties spread across 250 wards in 4 housing districts.. well, it's clear the developers over at Turbine did a *much* better job at managing all that information despite the fact that they were dealing with *much* older server hardware.

[Kiara]

Yes, Yoshida blames it on "limited server resources". These are the same "limited server resources" that prevent us from having more storage space, a problem that amazingly goes away as long as you're willing to pay extra retainer fees each month. And these are the same "limited server resources" that the development team managed to overcome when adding an expansion pack's worth of content to the game.

What the developers never explain is why server resources are "limited". Is it a funding issue? Are they unable to invest enough of our subscription payments back into the game to fix problems like housing, or just unwilling? Your guess is as good as mine, because I can't remember the last time we received a very frank explanation devoid of any PR-spin on precisely why housing has not been fixed yet (or whether it ever will be in a reasonable period of time).

Even if every plot of land goes back on the market, that's only 1,440 houses. 1,440! That's the *absolute best case scenario* for current non-homeowners and it's still not enough houses.. not even close to enough plots to satisfy demand. We'll be right back to where we are now, with a small percentage of active players owning a house and the rest of us being annoyed that we can't.

Understanding that, what's the next stage of this plan? Do they even have a next stage, or is this it? If there is a plan, please share it, because I'm pretty sure most players would like nothing more than to hear that immediately following the first wave of land reclamation in December we'll be receiving a ton of new additional wards as soon as the reclaimed ones fill up.

Otherwise.. what was the point of all this? To make somewhere between 0-1,440 players per server happy and call it done? Because that's a crap plan.

To: Dev Team,

Please read Gyson's post above and let us know what's going on. This housing shortage is absurd.

If you think about it, if you had enough houses available for all players, the Housing System would serve as a great *Gameplay / Time Sink / Activity* to keep players busy, building, making furniture, spending time invested in the game for MONTHS (and it would be constant upgrading / changing out decorations, layouts, etc.).

This is a good thing, as it means less stress on the Dev Team to constantly create brand-new other content.

Instead, you create this system and it's WASTED. Only a small % of the player population can own a House with this shortage.

Please fix this soon.