Thoughts on additional wards

[Bourne_Endeavor]

you people need to get over it. it used to be that only FC can buy houses... so people started these one man FC.. that's when SE decided it is better to open it up to everyone instead.

if you are on a overly populated server... move.. it's virtual MMO.. please don't be like "but this is my home" and cry about the lack of housing.. ever lived in big city like NYC or Seattle? homeless homies yo.

This is just a silly argument. People have friends and attachments to their servers. They shouldn't be forced to leave because of an awful system that allows one person to own sixteen houses. I have lived in big cities and you know what the only obstacle between you and house ownership is? Money. If you can afford to spend 2-4M on a New York City penthouse apartment, you will find one available. In fact, I can google the housing market in any major city worldwide and find housing. It may be far beyond my budget, but it's available. Such an option doesn't exist in FFXIV hence why people are upset. A friend and I currently have over 100M yet we can't buy a house unless it's from a scalper. A virtual MMO shouldn't have these issues; most don't. FFXIV has among the worst housing systems in the genre because it clings to the neighbourhood concept few people genuinely care about. There's a reason instanced housing is overwhelming popular in other MMOs.

of course you can't even... Balmung =p

I left Balmung and got hit with a lobby error the moment I attempted to log in. Other people on preferred worlds had similar log in errors; with houses gone within 15 minutes. Guess transferring doesn't accomplish anything.

[Welsper59]

I left Balmung and got hit with a lobby error the moment I attempted to log in. Other people on preferred worlds had similar log in errors; with houses gone within 15 minutes. Guess transferring doesn't accomplish anything.

You just haven't transferred hard enough.

[RosaLunaCelestia]

I wish only have Shirogane home style for where my fc is actually is :/

[Singularity]

I wish only have Shirogane home style for where my fc is actually is :/

You can build one of these special exteriors using a company workshop. Makes any house anywhere look Shirogane-ish

[AstroZombie]

Remember whatever number of new wards works for small and medium servers needs to be done to an even higher degree for higher population servers.

We have 2880 houses per server now.

According to census data Balmung (which I am going to use as an example since I live there) has about 22000 active characters, unless I am mis-remembering.

They would need to increase the number of wards by about eight, to a total of 96 wards per area, to ensure each active character has a house.

Now obviously not every active character wants or can afford a house, and a lot are more than happy to just be a tenant- in fact in my, admittedly limited, experience the vast majority of homeowners 'couple up' with their SO or a close friend.

You could probably cut it down to 80 wards and be safe, with everyone who is interested and able to afford housing (including FCs) able to get one. By the time 5.0 launches if it included another new housing area that would provide for the rest of them and then some, in case the transfer embargo is ever lifted.

Now everyone, laugh with me because we all know this isn't going to happen. Looking forward to seeing this same problem again on all the large pop servers come 4.2.

Note: I share a house with my wife, so my horses in this race are tired and few, but it sure would be nice to have a place of residence where our other characters live who aren't paired off.

[Aronys]

This is just a silly argument. People have friends and attachments to their servers.
...
I left Balmung and got hit with a lobby error the moment I attempted to log in. Other people on preferred worlds had similar log in errors; with houses gone within 15 minutes. Guess transferring doesn't accomplish anything.

I also left Balmung and went to a smaller server. In 2 weeks after leaving, both me and my friend who left with me found houses. We didn't have any lobby errors on Tuesday and I could have moved to Shirogane easily, had the money but I prefer Lavender Beds. My friend did move to Shirogane without any issues. We both left some of our friends behind on Balmung, but we still talk to them almost every day via Discord. When SB launched, we didn't have any issues logging in and were doing the new content without issues until we hit Raubahn EX, but that cleared in a few hours and we were able to continue without a hitch. At the same time, our friends were in a very long queue, they had to wait hoooours to actually log in in the first place. Last Tuesday, I logged in almost immediately, while our friends on Balmung again had issues.
Point is, there are servers that don't have these issues. I see you went to Cactuar, which is still a fairly large server, so those issues remained.

[Furiea]

This is just a silly argument. People have friends and attachments to their servers. They shouldn't be forced to leave because of an awful system that allows one person to own sixteen houses. I have lived in big cities and you know what the only obstacle between you and house ownership is? Money. If you can afford to spend 2-4M on a New York City penthouse apartment, you will find one available. In fact, I can google the housing market in any major city worldwide and find housing. It may be far beyond my budget, but it's available. Such an option doesn't exist in FFXIV hence why people are upset. A friend and I currently have over 100M yet we can't buy a house unless it's from a scalper. A virtual MMO shouldn't have these issues; most don't. FFXIV has among the worst housing systems in the genre because it clings to the neighbourhood concept few people genuinely care about. There's a reason instanced housing is overwhelming popular in other MMOs.

you are right.. money... and if you can't offer 999999million gil or $1000 cold hard cash.... what do you do? move out of the server just like how people would move out of expensive big city... to an urban area where they can buy bigger house with less money/effort.... you can always make new firends and that's not even a problem with cross data center friend list, chat, and PT.

you Balmung people just don't get it... it's comical. LOL

my old server couldn't clear Titan EX for nothing... what did I do? move to another server that can.

[Krotoan]

you can always make new firends and that's not even a problem with cross data center friend list, chat, and PT.

you Balmung people just don't get it... it's comical. LOL

my old server couldn't clear Titan EX for nothing... what did I do? move to another server that can.

"lol you can make new friends, it's all about progression or nothing! "

Not everyone will value things with the same weights you do. If people want to hang out with their online friends in the overworld, being on the same server is the only option. The opportunity cost on Balmung for this is that they're subject to high competition for everything. This isn't the players problem though, it's the providers. THEY need to figure out how to deal with this. Offering free relocations and incentives solves this for people with little or no attachments to the server, but the rest? It's on the provider to improve their experience as long as the players are within the mechanics of the game.

Asking for a solution shouldn't be ridiculed. Offer an opposing viewpoint sure, but just laughing at people? Not useful.