Thoughts on additional wards

[Pondera]

so, I was reading the news this morning and saw that it is Square Enix' cunning plan to implement more housing wards. This is a definite straight forward solution, but I was running some numbers and am questioning how much it's really going to help.

Right now, there are 12 wards with 30 plots each in 4 areas. That's 1,440 plots. So, if SE managed to, for the sake of argument, double the number of wards in all areas, which is quite a feat, that is 2,880 plots.

According to https://ffxivcensus.com/, on my server alone, there are nearly 250,000 active players, assuming that information is correct. Now, let's assume, again for the sake of argument, that a certain number among them are perfectly content with their apartment dwellings or rooming with their FCs, or are newbies and can't afford it, or are just homeless and don't care. Enough for us to reduce that number by half to 125,000. So, for all the effort that Square Enix is going through to do this, doubling the amount of available housing in this scenario is only going to accomodate 2.304% of the total population on my server alone.

I have no doubts that they have the best of intentions. Square Enix empathizes with us, they respect us, but I don't know if this is gonna work. I don't really have any ideas to the contrary, but I'm open to suggestions!

[hynaku]

For starters they could make large and medium plots only able to be used for fc housing and add bunch more small plots just for private housing. Also make it where can only buy one plot per account on each server and let all your alts on same account share it.

[Unaki]

No there are 2880 plots.

[ReplicaX]

According to https://ffxivcensus.com/, on my server alone, there are nearly 250,000 active players, assuming that information is correct.

The info on the site is correct, your statement is incorrect though.

Siren: total # of All characters = 249,497
Siren: total # of Active characters = 9,937

[HyoMinPark]

Doubling the wards would ideally give roughly 60-65% of active characters eligible to own housing (since you have to be level 50 to buy one) a house, but this doesn't account for Free Companies. And the more the playerbase grows on each server, the more of an issue sticking to Ward housing is going to be.

I would honestly suggest transforming the current 12 wards into FC only housing. Then adding a 13th Ward with plots that are decorated, but each one leads to an unlimited amount of instanced plots, similar to how apartments and FC rooms function. The plots in the 13th Ward would be for personal housing, and could theoretically be unlimited in number like apartments can be. Because the plots would be instanced (yard and interior of the house), and not constantly running like the wards are right now. That alone would take a strain off of the server memory. SE also needs to implement a "one house per server per account" rule to prevent individuals from taking up 16 plots on one account (8 characters, each with 1 personal house and 1 FC house).

The more the game grows, the more limited housing is going to become. Even with people relinquishing plots. Because it is in extremely high demand, and there just isn't enough supply to meet the demand.

[Wade]

"To prevent speculation, we will refrain from releasing information until absolutely necessary" - the epitome of contradiction in a sentence.

[SendohJin]

it's a bad translation, it's supposed to be "speculative buying/selling".

[Saint_Angeles]

For starters they could make large and medium plots only able to be used for fc housing and add bunch more small plots just for private housing.

I legitimately bought a large house for personal housing. Please explain to me why I shouldn't be able to have it.

[Shougun]

Funny to say but the game is too popular for their current system, way too popular. Haha.

If they want housing to be limited for feels then its fine, but I find that really silly and frustrating for multiple reasons. I think housing is a really nice element in games that all would probably enjoy to some extent (not everyone went crazy in FFXI but it was definitely a place to call your own).

Frustrating since the system is limited by itself, so its not really possible to see how many would enjoy housing or how extensive people would like features in it (say if everyone got a starter and upgrade-able plot for free, you might find that housing is a huge content for the game). Definitely could be wrong but I believe if it had a lower barrier more people would take part, and it would encourage SE to add more features and content - it would then become a better content because of it.

Of course I doubt they're just sitting on the issue because it's fun for them to watch people be frustrated. I'm sure it's some significant issue like how the architecture is set up. Or a belief that the content isn't worth that much time, "you say you want a house, but I don't believe you" lol. Personally I think players of a FF/SE game would like housing even more than other MMOs that have excellent systems just because there is a very high visual and nostalgic* element to FF games and so customization is an even bigger/better "end game" for many people, so I hope it isn't that later reason haha. *Allowing players to vaguely create some of their favorite chill spots through the series for example, a chocobo ranch, or what have you.

There are a few extra considerations to add to complicate the matter, also noting ReplicaX's comment, is that you have players who want to own multiple houses (if the system was limitless I think this would be great for the economy) and also FC that don't have a house and should probably have one due to losing out on features. Besides players owning a house per character you can effectively have multiple FC under a single account via legitimate desire and then just shell FCs for houses/to sell to people later, so there is a gray area in there as people will expand themselves to meet the demand to sell later and then also people who are not accounted for that do demand it (FCs).

664,640 houses is a lot of information to pass around though lol (#pulled from total active players on the site brought up in this thread). Perhaps a house per account, and a special memory friendly zone for FC might be able to cut that number down greatly (number of houses, amount of information being managed - it's still a lot though). Those who want another, extra, house perhaps can be put in the mogshop (I'm sure if they added enough customization besides people who want it for personal RP you'd also get people buying areas for group RP, like "inn" "restaurant" and whatever power they put into the system).

[loreleidiangelo]

I legitimately bought a large house for personal housing. Please explain to me why I shouldn't be able to have it.

Statements like that don't work anyway because solo-player FCs are definitely a thing.