Housing salt

[Mikki]

Although I find it difficult to believe that SE isn't truly aware, I have to wonder if they don't realize the extent of the issue. The Japanese datacenters have a total of 32 servers vs the 24 in NA data centers. The majority of their servers are sitting around 5k active users, with only 6 servers surpassing 10k users (one of them just barely) and their largest server is Tonberry with 14,668 active users.

NA on the other hand... the majority of servers are sitting between 10 - 15k active users. There are only 7 servers under 10k players and the lowest one is 8,521 active players which is still quite a bit more than the average server on the JP data center. Granted, there are still not enough houses for everyone even on the average JP server. However, I'm sure it must seem like a lot less of an issue on those servers. Consider now that NA has FIVE servers with more users than the most congested server on the JP datacenter, with another coming dangerously close: Balmung having over 20k active users and both Gilgamesh and Leviathan having over 16k users and Cactuar with over 15k and Excalibur at 14,679 and then Behemoth is quite close at 14,076.

I kind of wonder why the NA datacenter has less servers available when there are more active users using it. Not that adding more servers in general would solve the issue, but I'm curious. That being said I think that a combination of instanced housing and the current system would be a great solution. They already touched on it with apartments but the implementation was just way off the mark. They need to be bigger. They need to offer an outdoor space, even if it's just a balcony so people can do gardening. Heck, I was thinking something like the Inn in Kugane. That would be lovely as an apartment if it were bigger and we could actually go outside into that space.

Anyway, just throwing out why they may not think of it as the huge crisis that it is. The perspective is surely much different on the JP datacenter where ~5k people on a server is pretty normal. (Data taken from https://ffxivcensus.com/)

[Final-Fantasy]

This will be another disappointing housing update, 10.000.000 active players (Claim by Square-Enix) across 66 worlds with just, wait for it, 2880 plots per world.

You don't need to be good at math to see an issue. Slight improvement pre update today, and I'm happy I already got Plot 11 lavender beds so it doesn't actually affect me at all, i get to swim right outside my house now! but, its never to late to make changes to this current system surely?

Can we not have something like pre-paid wards, like the retainer service, you pay an extra dollar or more for access to a select plot, not purchasable with gil but say gives you a token for small, medium or large depending on cost/duration or something in between?

[Mikki]

snip

This would be an interesting idea... Add a ward or two or three that require you to pay real life money for access to it. Although I could see those filling up just as fast and if the ward number is unlimited I could see people just putting in for specific plots and ending up with a bunch of empty houses. For example, if they did this in Shirogane you would just see plot 30, 16 and a few others taken and the rest would be empty. Or something.

Plus then there would be the people angry at SE profiting off of their broken system rather than fixing it.

I think the best solution is instanced housing on top of the current wards. This way people who don't care about housing in the wards would have no issue getting a house and it would clear up the wards otherwise for those that want it. And no one would be left out, even if they don't have a home in the wards, at least they'd have SOMETHING. But it needs to be better than the apartments; it needs to be equal with the housing seen in the wards and needs to be available to FCs.

[Mikki]

No, is a bad idea. Stop throwing money to SE to fix the problem.

Um? My post said the idea was interesting but ultimately had issues and I just addressed the fact that people don't think SE should be profiting off it's broken system. My suggested solution (mixed instanced + warded houses) didn't have a single mention of paying SE to do it. Basically I just want apartments to be better is what my solution boiled down to.

If they really care about building a neighbourhood and maintaining activitiy in the housing wards, they should have made it so that every month or so your plot is moved to a ward instance with similar activity. So people who spend a lot of time in their plot will eventually find that their neighbours have became also people who love to spend time in the ward. In a sense, "new neighbours moved in" or "we're moving to a more popular ward" kind of thing.

I see what you're going for but I think it would potentially screw with people who purposely aimed for houses near friends, so I think if they did something like that they should allow you to lock your ward if you have no interest in swapping wards.

[Dalmacus]

Having survived the previous housing wars i am not giving any expectation to it. But it really makes me wonder why the hell such a crappy system can survive for 4 years though...

[Zfz]

I see what you're going for but I think it would potentially screw with people who purposely aimed for houses near friends, so I think if they did something like that they should allow you to lock your ward if you have no interest in swapping wards.

You're right. If building a community is important then being able to live close to friends is important. My idea would be completely against that. Not a good idea after all.

[Chevronone]

Peasants on black friday. Thank Jezus I have a house already.

[Zfz]

If they really care about building a neighbourhood and maintaining activitiy in the housing wards, they should have made it so that every month or so your plot is moved to a ward instance with similar activity. So people who spend a lot of time in their plot will eventually find that their neighbours have became also people who love to spend time in the ward. In a sense, "new neighbours moved in" or "we're moving to a more popular ward" kind of thing.

People who buy the plot just for farming or to resell and neglect their houses will soon find their plot moved into the dead wards, together with all the other plots that are neglected.

You would end up with lower number wards being the most active, and higher number wards mostly just farmland.

With this kind of system, it would be easy to auto-create new wards and auto-delete empty wards, making housing a resource that is automatically scaled, just like how dungeon instances are created dynamically, except housing wards are non-volatile.

In fact, it is even possible to go for a static system and preallocate housing wards so that the number of total plots match the number of active service accounts on the server. If you are "active", such as reaching level cap on at least one job and having an active sub, then you are guaranteed to be able to get a plot, except you may have no say in what size or location it is, but there will be a plot allocated due to you playing on that server actively.

[Pinkie_Pie]

I ain't gonna buy a house but I AM gonna stoke the fires once they are made. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)