SE's housing system doesn't favor anybody...

[Moonlite]

snip

Funny you should mention the Korea situation. So at least on Balmung when they launched housing one of the first things people asked, "How will this work when they merge servers?" Guess what it turns out the paid professionals didn't ask themselves that question. From the reports it sounded like they asked the Korean company to hold off till they could make the server population irrelevant, like they have done for us.

It is also why they are so dependent on cross server and instance content. They don't have an answer for server merges that doesn't make them look like complete (word of choice here). You could be on the shittiest population server and still be able to get everything done with enough cross server tools.

Does anyone ask why they have limited resources they don't put harder restrictions on purchasing. Sure we would all complain if owning a house required you to do "Payroll IV" or "Bring your A game" or "In the outfield VII". They have numbers on what people are accomplishing it would be easy for them to balance the amount of players who actually get a house.

Once you have the money, you have the opportunity to compete to get the land you want, or attempt to buy it off someone. Thats it. Beyond that, youre footing is the same as everyone else. Thats why the pragmatic choice is to have a few options in various places.

But if people are so dead set on a location, then given time, someone will sell it to you at marked up pricing.

Actually this is considered a violation and a report able offense. You do know that? Inflated price so someone will move is not a currently endorsed move by the talking heads.

[Solarianna]

So being told I was just "Lucky!" and didnt have a plan is kinda messed.

You can be Lucky and Hard-working at the same time. One is not the other's opposite. I personally wouldn't take "Lucky" as an insult to hard work. Especially not in a sort of content that's currently scarce in terms of supply and demand.

People have called me lucky when I got a private house 1 month after 4.1 hit, in Lavender Beds (which is where I wanted my personal one to be if I'd ever get one). I worked just as much as the next guy towards the possibility and got the necessary resources for if the opportunity ever arised. I didn't take that as an insult to the work I put in, because it was a simple acknowledgement of a simple fact.

In the current system, you can be the hardest working player in the world, and you'll still be left houseless if the stars don't align for you.

But as I said before, all of these issues are fathered by a poor marketing strategy of the Housing content.
It's fine that there's some content that is intentionally limited, or even intentionally scarce. A game needs some content that's not easy to get to, regardless of what it is. But if they intended Housing to be part of that "elitist" content, they should've never advertised/ produced/ delivered it as they did. Never ever.

When you have a patch in which there's new story, new dungeons, new raids, BUT the first thing that e-mails, ads, patch notes, etc., shove in your face about it is the Housing additions (people even got e-mails shoving Housing in their face during patch day, waaaay after everything was gone), then you market yourself into a corner where you have to forcefully turn it to a high-supply content, and will have to deliver. And if you don't deliver, you've got a lot of furious people.

If housing was produced and delivered differently, you could have even less wards than you have now, and it wouldn't be one tenth of the issue that is right now. People who tried to get a house and failed would just simply be "meh, it's a pity, but whatever.". And the ones who succeeded would be just as happy for it as they are now.

But after how they managed this, everyone wants a piece of content for themselves. And rightfully so. And they are furious at how things are being managed on that front. And rightfully so.
And this is coming from someone whose interest in Shirogane was for his FC, and not for himself, as I explained a couple of pages ago.

[Claviusnex]

That's all good and fine...but your assuming (without knowing it) that the platform is a start from scratch system.
Don't work that way...because they have to impliment the changes into an already active system...that likely has "crap" all over the place.

EVE Online faced this issue..they fix one major issue - and broke 10 other issues that they didn't even see coming or predicted...and it chain reaction'd from there.
Do I know what SE has under the hood? No.
It's called - the bigger the game - the more complex the code - the more complex the code - the messier it gets - and its an endless cycle.

Am I saying it can't/won't be done? No.
For all we know they got something in the works.
What I am saying is...don't expect this to be over night...let alone next couple of patches.

As I said it is a major release type of project as far as I'm concerned. If SE had stepped up to the problem a release or two ago we might have been able to hear that it will be fixed in 5.0. I still think it is less to do about money and more to do with dogma and saving face.

I had over 30 years of software development before I retired and still consult. I started my career in mainframe and Unix operating system I/O subsystems (i.e. device support) in the late 70's. I was a company representative to the IETF during the 90's and oversaw multiple areas of our TCP/IP suite architecture and design. I'm also well versed in other communication protocols. I've architected and designed large relational database middleware products still in use in today.

I am well aware of the potential problems of implementing new function into existing code. It is one of the reasons I think any new housing system should be done in parallel to the current ward system. It is also why I think they need to create self contained instanced housing system. The odds of breaking anything are much less when starting off with new code and designing it with an extensible structure in mind. I can determine this without having to know the intimate details of the current ward system. Based on SE's comments I can also make a pretty good guess that the current system is a static one as far as system resources. Developing a dynamic platform for instanced housing would increase flexibility, reduce system management and reduce overall system resources when compared to the current housing system. I also feel, without looking at the code, that a good portion of the actual application code for the dwelling, exterior and client could be reused saving on time and costs. Like any project it will require people who have a deep understanding of the existing product and those that have good understanding of systems and databases to do it right. It would also behoove them to have someone with a good understanding of how the various programming languages work. One thing I've heard more than once from SE is part of their server capacity problems is the duplication of large data areas passed between game functions. Whether it affects the current housing system I don't know but these types of problems can be resolved by programming language selection, changes to the way data is passed, etc. However it does cost money to hire people with this knowledge. Will SE hire the skills they need? Who knows but their history suggests probably not.

[SendohJin]

I still think it is less to do about money and more to do with dogma and saving face.

However it does cost money to hire people with this knowledge. Will SE hire the skills they need? Who knows but their history suggests probably not.

Sounds like money to me.

[Maero]

I had 25 million saved up, took time off and had logged in on time, was in a queue of 1756 and everything was gone by the time i finally got on.
So yes the whole thing was luck for those that managed to get a house, planning had no bearing

[Claviusnex]

Sounds like money to me.

I think money is secondary. Generally if development really believes it needs to do something the money will be found to do it. With 1.0 being such a failure I think there is a lot of reluctance to take any action that gives the appearance of having failed again. Once thinking like that becomes cultural it is very hard to overcome which I think is the primary reason you don't see any real attempt to fix the housing problem.

[Zarabeth]

Isn't it strange that Final Fantasy XI Online from 2002.

Once again I'll say this. FFXI had/has an inn room that can only be accessed in your home town (usually you weren't at the home town for long, and had to pay for teleports to get back there unless you were a WHM or wanted to death-port assuming you left your home point in that town which was rare). There was no outside yard, there was only the one small room. There were no gardens. There were no workshops. You had a room, in which you could place and rearrange furniture which doubled as storage. Storage you could only access in that one room in that one town. Please stop trying to make it sound like we had awesome instanced housing as that was not even remotely the case.

[Skivvy]

Once again I'll say this. FFXI had/has an inn room that can only be accessed in your home town (usually you weren't at the home town for long, and had to pay for teleports to get back there unless you were a WHM or wanted to death-port assuming you left your home point in that town which was rare). There was no outside yard, there was only the one small room. There were no gardens. There were no workshops. You had a room, in which you could place and rearrange furniture which doubled as storage. Storage you could only access in that one room in that one town. Please stop trying to make it sound like we had awesome instanced housing as that was not even remotely the case.

XI housing is obviously dated, but at least use correct facts. Moghouses could be accessed from the major cities (like in XIV), although your furnishings would only appear when in your "home town". There is a patio, there is a 2nd floor, and there is a rather large outside gardening/mining/logging/monster rearing instance attached to it. Best of all, this is available to all characters, not a fraction of the player base.

Now with that said, XI is an old game, so I don't think anyone is shocked that their housing system is outdated. You'd also think it would be quite easy to create a new housing system in a modern MMO that surpassed it on every level. However, here we are in 2017, with a housing system that is insanely limited. As is it now, a huge number of players are currently locked out of gardening/cross-breeding, workshop content, chocobo access, etc.

For a subscription game, and one with XIV's play-style, it's a pretty major failing to not be able to provide housing for all players.

[SendohJin]

XI housing is obviously dated, but at least use correct facts... There is a patio, there is a 2nd floor, and there is a rather large outside gardening/mining/logging/monster rearing instance attached to it. Best of all, this is available to all characters, not a fraction of the player base.

Those things only came when most people already quit. There was no 2nd floor or outside during WotG launch. Correct facts is important but not if you don't understand them. When XIV hits the same population loss that XI did after WotG the servers will be able to handle housing for every active character.

[Tridus]

Those things only came when most people already quit. There was no 2nd floor or outside during WotG launch. Correct facts is important but not if you don't understand them. When XIV hits the same population loss that XI did after WotG the servers will be able to handle housing for every active character.

With what budget to make all those changes? Cut your sub numbers drastically and the development budget is going down, as is the server budget (they can yank some stuff out of the clusters to save money).