Why are we living in 90s game design when it comes to housing?

[Aerilon]

It seriously baffles my mind that the developers up to this point have not moved in a direction of making housing dynamically scale or completely instanced. Given the structure and design of housing now a dynamically scaling system would benefit everyone.

I would propose the following:

1. When all original 12 wards and subdivisions have be 100% sold - a new ward and subdivision is opened and put up for sale.
2. New wards are created as long as 2 requirements are met - all original wards are 100% sold, and all previous dynamic wards are 100% sold.
3. Should a house plot become available in an existing original ward sales in dynamic wards are halted until the original ward is once again 100% sold.

The developers are have made excuses that they have memory limitations, which is just that excuses. Its 2017 - invest in more server space if you need to - these kinds of dynamic housing systems have existed in games since at least 1995 - examples include Dark Age of Camelot and Lord of the Rings Online.

Yes - development time would be required - yes that would mean less new content in the next patch, but at this point I dont care. MMO research and data by people like Nick Yee (google scholar him some day) have proven time and time again that the largest motivational factor for driving player retention in MMOs are the social aspects of the game - housing is exactly that for groups of player friends and guilds (FCs) and development time and money should be invested into making the housing system work for the community instead of the community trying to work the housing system.

A dynamically growing housing system would solve all the issues at present and would allow higher population servers to have the supply for the demand. The players have wanted it it since 1.0 its a shame that the system was never developed this way in the first place.

We also know the developers can do something similar to this because its exactly what they have done for apartments - which as much as they want them to be considered houses - they never will be until they ad something like a courtyard or a balcony that players can look out from and place outdoor furnishing.

Come on SE - time to step up to the plate and do some modern development.

[Malzian]

-Snip-

One added note to this, you can start this process with a single ward, you don't need more than that to start. One ward to begin with that grows with the population buying houses means you will always have just the right amount of wards for a server, never too few which blocks people on populated servers, and never too many to take up resources on low population servers. And if you have two wards that end up empty you can remove one of them entirely.

Now, there's a small caveat to this... If you do that, all houses must be equal between individuals and equal between FCs. All individuals get the same size house as each other and all FCs get the same size house as other FCs. You can vary your price range based on location in the ward (proximity to market boards and entrances) but that is all. Anything else is unstable or terribly restrictive.

[Aerilon]

I dont think there is any need to make then equal. If an individual gets enough money to purchase a large house they should be able to get one. You have to remember this would not limit houses to 1 per account but would allow every character to own a house so wards would fill and be created and there would always be a large house for an FC to buy 99% of the time.

[Risvertasashi]

Not accurate. In the 90s they added and added wards until they had enough wards for everyone.

[Riardon]

It's such issues that hinder this game's growth. It seems like SE can't keep up with the game's success. They are either lazy/half skilled or the game runs truly on archaic server infrastructure and they are trying to hide with excuses. The Housing ended up a fiasco once again. The demand is so big that those plots (720 in number) gone in 5-10 mins. That means those 12 wards were absolutely nothing. A drop in the ocean. They need to take seriously the matter and invest on better servers or programming whatever the reason for this is. Even cheap F2P mmorpgs have no such issues. I like how they are hyping and advertising Housing a core feature of this game and we are waiting months for this only to be gone in few mins. It's a mess.

[Aerilon]

Not accurate. In the 90s they added and added wards until they had enough wards for everyone.

Did you even read my post - thats my point. Fixing this issue isnt hard. Other games have been doing it for over 20 years now. Why is this so hard for FFXIV and SE?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Did you even read my post - thats my point. Fixing this issue isnt hard. Other games have been doing it for over 20 years now. Why is this so hard for FFXIV and SE?

I think he's being purposely sarcastic; pointing out even games two decades old did it better than FFXIV.

[Kalamon]

As I recall, DAoC never had dynamically generated housing wards. The housing zones were manually expanded by Mythic after plots ran out on the big servers. Despite that, there were still extended periods of time when players were unable to purchase housing on overpopulated servers.

I would also argue that housing in FFXIV serves a different purpose than these other MMOs. In FFXIV outside of FC crafts, it's primarily a status symbol. In DAoC you had to have a house to list items for sale on their Marketboard which made universal access much more of a necessity.

[Aerilon]

As I recall, DAoC never had dynamically generated housing wards. The housing zones were manually expanded by Mythic after plots ran out on the big servers. Despite that, there were still extended periods of time when players were unable to purchase housing on overpopulated servers.

It started out that way then became dynamic - yes. And as a temporary solution to this situation I think having SE just manually add wards would be acceptable on high population servers.

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

In the 80s, you had to have 4 houses to trade in for a hotel. That's why. /sarcasm