Island Sanctuary as a housing solution ?

[Jojoya]

Pretty much every server will have enough housing once Ishgard housing comes out regardless though.

What makes you think that? There's a pretty big gap in population between the lowest population worlds and the highest population worlds but every world will have the same 7,200 houses. Sure, it will be easy to get a house on a JP world that only has 8,000 active players. Not so easy on a NA world with over 20,000 active players.

Demand is not just from individual players wanting a house. There are FCS who also want a house. Those evidently make up 30% of house ownership right now, which would reduce the number available to individual players to about 5,000. Suddenly even the low pop JP worlds may have a shortfall depending on what percentage of players want to own a house.

Then there are the players who play on multiple worlds and have houses on each of those worlds. There are the player who have multiple shells FCs for access to more workshops and gardens. That further reduce the number of houses available for players who do not have a house.

Ishgard housing is not a solution unless SE will be making additional changes to how the ward system works that they have not shared with us.

[Arielen]

What makes you think that? There's a pretty big gap in population between the lowest population worlds and the highest population worlds but every world will have the same 7,200 houses. Sure, it will be easy to get a house on a JP world that only has 8,000 active players. Not so easy on a NA world with over 20,000 active players.

Demand is not just from individual players wanting a house. There are FCS who also want a house. Those evidently make up 30% of house ownership right now, which would reduce the number available to individual players to about 5,000. Suddenly even the low pop JP worlds may have a shortfall depending on what percentage of players want to own a house.

Then there are the players who play on multiple worlds and have houses on each of those worlds. There are the player who have multiple shells FCs for access to more workshops and gardens. That further reduce the number of houses available for players who do not have a house.

Ishgard housing is not a solution unless SE will be making additional changes to how the ward system works that they have not shared with us.

Where are there 20k active players? Because the largest server (Gilgamesh) lists 14.5k, and it's worth noting that 'active' doesn't mean currently playing, it means "characters that have finished 5.0". It's doubtful there are actually 14.5k people currently playing on Gilg.

(5 residential districts * 24 wards) * 60 plots = 7200.

That's literally more plots than the entire active population of Spriggan and Twintania. 7.2k plots is enough for every FC on the vast majority of servers + a large chunk of personals.

[Jojoya]

Where are there 20k active players? Because the largest server (Gilgamesh) lists 14.5k, and it's worth noting that 'active' doesn't mean currently playing, it means "characters that have finished 5.0". It's doubtful there are actually 14.5k people currently playing on Gilg.

(5 residential districts * 24 wards) * 60 plots = 7200.

That's literally more plots than the entire active population of Spriggan and Twintania. 7.2k plots is enough for every FC on the vast majority of servers + a large chunk of personals.

Unofficial census had Gilgamesh at 24k last summer. Player populations do rise and fall over the course of an expansion.

Your math is bad if you think 7200 houses will be enough for 14k players and all the FCs looking for a house, not to mention that the player population will have exploded upwards again by the time Ishgard housing is opened next year thanks to the release of the new expansion.

Not sure why you're bringing up the two worlds with the lowest population in the game. That does nothing to help the highest population worlds. Why should NA players be shortchanged when SE controls the number of worlds per data center and thus the number of houses available to players in those data centers?

Add in enough worlds to NA so we've got the same average populations as the JP data centers and we'd be okay. I don't see SE increasing the number of NA worlds from 24 to 40. Do you?

Set the ward system up so it expands dynamically by need per world and we'd be okay. Considering SE has already said they can't do that, I don't see that happening either.

[Arielen]

Unofficial census had Gilgamesh at 24k last summer. Player populations do rise and fall over the course of an expansion.

Your math is bad if you think 7200 houses will be enough for 14k players and all the FCs looking for a house, not to mention that the player population will have exploded upwards again by the time Ishgard housing is opened next year thanks to the release of the new expansion.

Not sure why you're bringing up the two worlds with the lowest population in the game. That does nothing to help the highest population worlds. Why should NA players be shortchanged when SE controls the number of worlds per data center and thus the number of houses available to players in those data centers?

Add in enough worlds to NA so we've got the same average populations as the JP data centers and we'd be okay. I don't see SE increasing the number of NA worlds from 24 to 40. Do you?

Set the ward system up so it expands dynamically by need per world and we'd be okay. Considering SE has already said they can't do that, I don't see that happening either.

That's 14k characters all-time that have finished 5.0, not that have finished 5.0 and are playing right now. The number of subbed players can be presumed to be much lower than that. According to this, there are only about 813 FCs with 10+ players (sorry, couldn't narrow it down to 4, it's either 1 or 10 lol) with rank 6 or above on Gilgamesh. So if we assume there are 10k people currently subbed and playing on Gilg and that every single one of those FCs is active, yes, that's a house for every FC and a house for 60% of the playerbase once Ishgard comes in. I'd say that's pretty reasonable.

The next issue with housing will probably not be a lack of housing availability, but lack of medium and large homes. And that, there's very little to do for: they probably can't make houses 'upgradeable' to the next size up and adding new wards doesn't change the ratio of smalls vs mediums and larges.

That being said, we do need like 3ish more worlds per American and EU DC anyway. In terms of housing crisis, 8k 'active players' on the smallest servers in the game lead to an excess of housing: so few people there want it that larges get devalued. While this can be attributed to a variety of factors such as baby server with slow market and broke ass players, a lot of people also move there for housing.

Edit:

Those 14k characters include duplicates per account. So that's 14k characters, not 14k individual players.

More edits:

The 24k you cited cannot be possible. Reason being that I'm speaking to the devs of FFXIVCensus on twitter right now, and the current number dates back to April 2020. There have been no updates since. One of the other devs mentioned that they could scan for the minion obtained with the completion of 5.3, but there's no date of estimate for that yet. This is the relevant twitter thread for FFXIVCensus dev responses.

[Feidam]

I really hope they do allow you build houses on the island. The apartment situation is a not a solution imo. No outside to decorate. But with island sanctuary everyone could have That mansion if THEy wanted.

[cr2032]

That, and unless you are in a social FC, or one of the RP ones, or one that puts on plays and the like, housing is *NOT* a primarily social thing. Even if that is the angle, *you can go visit instances easily, since you can already do that for housing*. If they are already allotting more storage space for something as big as an island (however big it is) plus all the "in-depth" stuff, surely it would not be THAT much more to add? I know one issue is how much data the client/server sends back & forth, and I totally understand that from a cost/storage perspective, but it is a bit silly to have advertised content that most players will never have.

[Kaiproberts]

I want a non-instanced house with neighbors, period. They need to dynamically add housing wards; if one ward fills, another gets added and so on. Island Sanctuaries would just split the community even more between the "haves" and "have-nots".

[ItMe]

snip

Hello person who just joined the forums and this is your first post.

[Catstab]

They need to dynamically add housing wards; if one ward fills, another gets added and so on.

1. Not possible, the way it was coded.
2. The super obvious exploit that opens up.

[Jojoya]

I want a non-instanced house with neighbors, period. They need to dynamically add housing wards; if one ward fills, another gets added and so on. Island Sanctuaries would just split the community even more between the "haves" and "have-nots".

And you could still have a non-instanced house with neighbors even if they improve the instanced system. It doesn't have to be one or the other. Wards could remain the "elite" housing for those who want to fight for the prestige factor while instanced housing would be for those who want a space to decorate and don't care about neighbors.