Player Purchase Priorty

[TwistedTea]

SE controls how many worlds there are for players to chose from in a region and the number of worlds controls the housing supply for that region. The current problem is not one that NA players created.

Agreed. Although currently in NA it's mostly because of autodemo freeze and the increase in player populations. The freeze highlights why the persistent ward system is terrible for access to housing.

SE has doubled down on the persistent ward system for years. So not expecting SE to drastically change how the persistent ward system works. But when autodemo resumes, players who prioritize housing should consider transferring to one of the low pop worlds in NA.

[Penthea]

So that's nice for the EU players. They can transfer to whichever of the 2 worlds is in their current data center, get a house and continue to play with their friends without having their game performance change from what it currently is. I'll make certain to point any EU players to those 2 worlds.

It doesn't help the players on the NA worlds. We have no worlds here with houses available. Players would have to transfer to different regions. They would have to give up playing with their friends. They would need to struggle with poor connectivity trying to play through basic content (drove me nuts when I made my EU and JP data center characters last year).

Yea I don't think telling people to move to a different data centre is providing a good solution. Yea sure they can get a house but they also have to leave all their friends behind. There is no cross data centre visit, no cross data centre party invite system, and you can't even hope to bump into your friends from another data centre in DF. Even worse for players who would be going to a data centre for a different region because that can mean noticeable lag, depending on their location and the internet that is available to them. Certainly that would often be the case when dealing with distances as large as North America and Europe.

As an aside I think partially why EU has less population issues is because the population is more evenly distributed due to languages. In NA the majority of people there are North American, which means English is their native language most of the time. In Europe this is not the case due to the large amount of languages spoken there. For example it is well known among EU players that French speaking people tend to play on Moogle and Louisoix. SE said when they were selecting servers to put into Chaos and Light they thought about the language groups the communities made on the EU servers. So what ended up happening is the servers with large French speaking communities ended up in Chaos, and those with large German speaking communities ended up in Light. Basically what I'm saying is due to the nature of how Europe is as a region linguistically speaking, servers naturally get more even population distribution. There are of course some population issues on some servers, some related to housing, but none anywhere near as bad as the likes of Balmung.

Also as far as I'm aware NA has less breathing room than EU and JP when it comes to the amount of servers available for the size of the overall region's player population. So even if there was a more even distribution of population, there would still be a very noticeable shortage of houses.

[TwistedTea]

Yea I don't think telling people to move to a different data centre is providing a good solution. Yea sure they can get a house but they also have to leave all their friends behind. There is no cross data centre visit, no cross data centre party invite system, and you can't even hope to bump into your friends from another data centre in DF.

Even when autodemo was running, many people refused to move off the high pop NA servers to low pop NA servers.

The reality of the situation doesn't look like it's gonna change anytime soon. Hoping for new wards/new NA servers is not very productive given that SE keeps doubling down on the persistent ward system.

If housing is a high priority then NA players need to consider moving to a low pop NA server when autodemo resumes. Otherwise housing is not a priority for them.

[Penthea]

Even when autodemo was running, many people refused to move off the high pop NA servers to low pop NA servers.

I don't really blame them.

For some people it's not worth the cost of a transfer to only get a bit of a better chance to get a house while also leaving a fc behind, or even friends too if the move is to a different data centre. Increasing your odds by a small amount in exchange for leaving your buddies behind isn't what I consider a good trade. And it seems many others don't either.

If housing is a high priority then NA players need to consider moving to a low pop NA server when autodemo resumes. Otherwise housing is not a priority for them.

I don't agree with the sentiment that "if you don't transfer then you clearly don't want a house enough" because saying that conveniently ignores that many things keep players in the game and the servers they're on.

I didn't transfer when I was looking for a house not because I didn't want a house enough, but because I liked my fc enough to stay on Moogle. If I didn't want a house enough I would have given up on getting one after a short time. It took me over a year to get my house.

Also transferring costs real money. I think it's ridiculous that anyone expects players to pay additional real money to only MAYBE get access to certain content, especially when we already pay a sub.

[Seddrinth]

I don't agree with the sentiment that "if you don't transfer then you clearly don't want a house enough" because saying that conveniently ignores that many things keep players in the game and the servers they're on.

I didn't transfer when I was looking for a house not because I didn't want a house enough, but because I liked my fc enough to stay on Moogle. If I didn't want a house enough I would have given up on getting one after a short time. It took me over a year to get my house.

You prioritized your fc over increased possibility to obtain housing. Some players have left their fcs and transferred worlds just for housing. So different players have different priority when it comes to housing.

[Luna-M]

I accepted a long time ago that housing will never be fixed without a complete rework/new game engine/backend codebase

This is why I moved from Ragnarok (legacy and overpopulated server) to Zodiark, which was a low pop server at the time much similar to Spriggan and Twintania housing wise.

Housing was important to me so it was a small price to pay to get a house and here I am with a large for my fc that I run and large personal.

[Almagnus1]

I accepted a long time ago that housing will never be fixed without a complete rework/new game engine/backend codebase

This is why I moved from Ragnarok (legacy and overpopulated server) to Zodiark, which was a low pop server at the time much similar to Spriggan and Twintania housing wise.

Housing was important to me so it was a small price to pay to get a house and here I am with a large for my fc that I run and large personal.

Those are both EU servers, which indicates your datacenters aren't as populated as the NA ones, whereas each NA datacenter has 8 servers (compared to your six). I would expect that the EU datacenters wouldn't experience the crowding issues that the US has, and that's likely why we're seeing many different (and completely correct for their datacenter) views on this issue. It would be interesting to see the SE demographic information on peak and average player count across all the servers, as I suspect we're looking at a houselayer ratio on the NA servers that's just significantly lower than it is on the EU servers.

[Jojoya]

If housing is a high priority then NA players need to consider moving to a low pop NA server when autodemo resumes. Otherwise housing is not a priority for them.

Does no good when the low pop NA worlds won't have housing anymore than the high pop NA worlds. Resuming demolition isn't going to increase the number of available houses by as much as some want to think.

Some people forget that last year's resumption of demolition on NA worlds coincided with the patch for the data center reorganization. They wrongly attributed all those houses that suddenly appeared during the two week free transfer period as being due to demolition when they really appeared because players were transferring between servers.

The effects of demolition resuming didn't appear until 4 weeks after the free transfer period ended. The number of houses that appeared at that time were minimal (was much less than I had expected). And of course everything was gone before Shadowbringers launched.

When the number of players on the low pop servers is still 2-3 times the number of houses, you're not gaining anything by transferring.

Those are both EU servers, which indicates your datacenters aren't as populated as the NA ones, whereas each NA datacenter has 8 servers (compared to your six). I would expect that the EU datacenters wouldn't experience the crowding issues that the US has, and that's likely why we're seeing many different (and completely correct for their datacenter) views on this issue. It would be interesting to see the SE demographic information on peak and average player count across all the servers, as I suspect we're looking at a houselayer ratio on the NA servers that's just significantly lower than it is on the EU servers.

Back in SB, average population per EU world ended up slightly higher than average population per NA world even if total population for the region was less. That's why SE added to new worlds to EU for ShB launch.

Even with those 2 new worlds, their average population isn't that much lower than ours based on Lucky Bancho's August census (their 22k versus our 24k). Take back Spriggan and Twintania, and their average population would be 26k per world. Then there's JP. Their average is 13k per world. As far as I know, the census is counting characters and not unique players so the actual player numbers would be less. Still the difference is pretty telling unless JP players don't bother making alts the way NA/EU players do.

But JP players definitely prefer being on low pop worlds while a large part of the NA/EU player base demand high pop worlds. Unfortunately for those of us who like the lower pop worlds, SE is paying attention to those who want the higher pop worlds and pushes the overflow onto the low pop worlds, which are no longer low pop. Unless servers get to the point that log-in queues last for 30 min+ on a regular basis instead of 1-3 minutes, I doubt it's going to change.

[Almagnus1]

Back in SB, average population per EU world ended up slightly higher than average population per NA world even if total population for the region was less. That's why SE added to new worlds to EU for ShB launch.

Even with those 2 new worlds, their average population isn't that much lower than ours based on Lucky Bancho's August census (their 22k versus our 24k). Take back Spriggan and Twintania, and their average population would be 26k per world. Then there's JP. Their average is 13k per world. As far as I know, the census is counting characters and not unique players so the actual player numbers would be less. Still the difference is pretty telling unless JP players don't bother making alts the way NA/EU players do.

But JP players definitely prefer being on low pop worlds while a large part of the NA/EU player base demand high pop worlds. Unfortunately for those of us who like the lower pop worlds, SE is paying attention to those who want the higher pop worlds and pushes the overflow onto the low pop worlds, which are no longer low pop. Unless servers get to the point that log-in queues last for 30 min+ on a regular basis instead of 1-3 minutes, I doubt it's going to change.

That's kind the thing... unless the Lodestone is hiding inactive characters... the problem with using the Lodestone is that it's counting every single character that was ever created, including those created through the free trial and have long been abandoned.... which is going to make the numbers be artificially higher... that's why I'd like to see the SE concurrency numbers as that would show us what the real DAU [Daily Active Users] average and peaks were per server, along with MAU [Monthly Active Users] which would give a good indication for sever population. MAU would be useful with figuring out supply issues, while DAU might help give a better idea of how many people you're actually competing against (especially if you can get a breakdown by hour) which ties into best practices around getting a house. While I'd like for SE to make that info public... I kinda doubt they ever will.

[ItMe]

Actually now that I think about how similar LotRO's housing is I'm getting an awkward feeling we might see Premium Wards for real-world £££ some time in the future.

God I hope not...