Petition for More Wards - ITS ABOUT TIME

[KayRadley]

Being a new player I would love to see housing availability. I recently got to the point where I can actually buy a small plot but there is absolutely nothing available...and it's ludicrous that you have 10 people camping plots as soon as they open. I've played many games and this one has some of the best features of any game I've played, except housing. It's astounding that there's such a want/desire by the community and yet there is nothing done to placate the paying customers.

One word.

Apartment.

[Qinari]

One word.

Apartment.

I'm curious, I've seen people say this and I don't get why it is they think an apartment that is very small, won't allow for gardening, you still have to clean the stables (that might be a perk if the apartment manager did it for you), have to go outside for a summoning bell or use one of few item slots you have for it, and don't have the option to relocate as house owners do, how is that a replacement for a house? Players can still have an apartment and a house, so I'm not quite understanding how one negates the desire for the other.

[Jojoya]

I'm curious, I've seen people say this and I don't get why it is they think an apartment that is very small, won't allow for gardening, you still have to clean the stables (that might be a perk if the apartment manager did it for you), have to go outside for a summoning bell or use one of few item slots you have for it, and don't have the option to relocate as house owners do, how is that a replacement for a house? Players can still have an apartment and a house, so I'm not quite understanding how one negates the desire for the other.

They were responding to a player talking about housing availability, not house availability. Apartments are a form of housing and they are available in decent to large quantities on every world. They at least satisfy part of what people are looking for until such time as they are able to purchase a house.

You can garden in your apartment with flowerpots, which will grow types of seeds than the outside garden plots won't. What you can't do is crossbreed seeds (which very few players with a house continue to do after their first couple of attempts).

I don't understand why you're mentioned the stables and summoning bell as negatives for an apartment. Stables have to be cleaned period. With an apartment, at least everyone with in an apartment in that building can share the responsibiity, not to mention also train other residents' chocobos (can only do that with a personal house if you have a tenant). Summoning Bell is still going to take up an item slot in a house just as much as it takes up a slot in an apartment. The difference is with an apartment, you 're going to be right by the Summoning Bell and Marketboard when you exit. With a house, you may have much farther to travel.

As for relocation, why would you want to relocate something that is going to look almost exactly the same regardless of what district the apartment is in?

You also failed to mention that apartments are significantly cheaper than houses. An apartment is only 500k compared to 3 million or more for a small house since it's unlikely any house on a NA world is going to devalue more than once before it's sold. An apartment is never subject to demolition. The only way you lose it is if you remove every single furnishing that is placed or stored in the apartment, then manually relinquish it from the Estate menu.

Apartments are definitely a good option for someone who wants access to housing while they wait to obtain a house.

[Barraind]

I think what we need in terms of a solution is adding more servers/worlds to the NA datacenters

When we split from 2 datacenters to 3, the best in-theory solution would have been to also add 4 more worlds per cluster (based on JP population ratios), but that would have, in practice, ended up with Aether having 4 more over-populated servers and Crystal / Primal having even emptier ones, unless they had re-balanced the server distribution (the way they did it was basically asking for what happened to happen instead of an even distribution across clusters) to not have 3 of the major raid servers on one cluster and 5 of the 8 smallest servers on another.

Once cross-datacenter party/duty finder is implemented (it was their next big project, but who knows where it stands at this point), that would be less of an issue, but thats probably a year+ off at best.

[KayRadley]

The devs are well aware there is a demand for new plots. Sadly, it's not gonna happen. If COVID can get the release of 5.3 delayed, I wouldn't hold my breath for new plots until the pandemic is contained, at the very earliest.

[Shahi]

It is pretty easy to add more wards. So do it SE!!! I see like 20 ppl camp one plot every time one comes up, and clicking on a placard for hours is just not a fun thing in a game... i usually give up after 2-3 hours but some ppl reaaally want a house so they are staying for 12 hours or more. It's just sad... WE NEED MORE WARDS!

[worldofneil]

It is pretty easy to add more wards. So do it SE!!!

Unfortunately it's not. If it was, I feel sure they would have done it.

Each housing ward is a zone that has to stay running all the time. That's 4 housing areas, 42 wards (21 + subdivsions)... and 68 servers.

That's 11,424 zones that have to run all the time, just to sustain the current housing.

[Gula]

It is pretty easy to add more wards. So do it SE!!!

Do you have a single fact to back that up?

[Jirah]

It’s far too easy to abuse, buy a house start a phony FC buy another house. And never log in

[Sauteed]

Oh @Qinari you can have a summoning bell in your apartment the same as a house. It is a furniture item. The MB's are also right outside of the apartment, many houses are located a fair distance away from them, but there are a few plots right by an mb which is still nice.0/*-/*

When I started playing I wanted a house real bad, but got an apartment in the Goblet and it really did see a lot of use. Even now I still use my apartment and I have an FC house and fc room, an alt with an fc room, and personal house. And I love having access to all of that. I think I deco pretty well, get compliments frequently, but I do more grungy rock and roll club type decos > _ >. I do get a bit upset with the 100 item limits in apartment/fc rooms but, I manage to get just enough in there each time to make it look like I kind of want.