What is really happening to house system?

[Satoshin]

Why there are not enough houses for eveyone?

1- Some say it's because each ward takes physical space on hardware(user-side).
2- Others says it's instanced and takes processment on server side.
3- Also it can be space/process on server-side.

Well, i'd say it's 2 because all the processment are server based and the game itself(graphical content) is renderized on user-side.

If it's 2 or 3, people always says SQEX can't afford creating so many wards just that we can enjoy a "side" content.

I need to say that it isn't that expansive for SQEX to build even an dedicated server cluster just to handle housing processment.

I had a few japanese customers that only bought japanese technology, such as Fujitsu.
That's a really expansive technology for small companies, but is it expansive for SQEX?

Well I sold an Fujitsu RX2540 M5 not gonna get into many details, but this is a high performance computing series used in all kind of services providers.
The price in 2021/Jun was 110k U$D with WinServer and backup license. Also with 36 months of support.
This is a scale-out solution that can grow up with the necessities of your bussiness.

So how much CPU does the housing processment takes?
Does a 2010 game takes that much processment that new technologies cant afford?

That's where people say: "It's 35mi players, no server can process that much info!"

First, it's not 35mi players online at the same time. The peak of players on Steam(2022) is 80.580 a day, not counting on other platforms, but we are all on physically separeted datacenters. This numbers is splitted and with what really has on each server, do you think everyone will be connected at the same time on a instanced house/ward?

Second, what SQEX really need is just processing all these instanced areas. We already have NO problems related to instanced dungeons/raids which some of them are bigger than housing wards, even on launch day of Endwalker, I know the 2002 error, but not related to instance crashing, because when someone got kicked out the other players could still continue on the instanced dungeon.

Now you may say "Yeah but 110k USD for a single server isn't that expansive?" Well, since SQEX has 35mi subscribers at 13USD/monthly fee that gives 455mi USD montlhy to SQEX, which by the way had 16,85bi of net income only on dec/2021.
Now think how many servers they can buy with that.

I'm just tired of seeing the community killing itself on comments when we are not getting a real explanation on what is going on with these damn houses.

There are plenty of people begging for SQEX to fix it, we love the game that's why we want to fix it.
Maybe now after finishing a 10 years cicle of true commitment to bring players such a great story, battles and memories, we can focus on fixing what's been a problem for so long.
At least with a transparent explanation and a roadmap to fix it.

[Satoshin]

Instanced houses/wards needs a petition in-game of at least half ward that can be petitioned with gil.
Also after the petition, people needs to apply for lottery system for the plots they want to and also pay with gil.
-This would help SQEX to not oversize the servers and provide them enough time to scale it out if needed.
-This would also help with Gil inflation in the game, which is the primary reason why house has become an content.
-Cons are, you could apply for a petition for a new ward and end up not getting a plot via lottery system, but that's how lottery system works... get another petition and try again.

Keep the auto-demolition, when people loses their house other people can relocate to a more populated ward with a bonus reward.
-That helps with server over-sizing.
-Also incentives players to keep their subs on even if not playing. (Kind of a pain but well, you know...)

Large houses intent to FC but Medium and Small houses to FC and Personal buyers.
-The way the wards are designed with only 3 Large Houses is hard to compete with all personal buyers
-A solution to that is a instanced House with no neighboors that could be accessed through Friend state-teleportation or player search results.
-Also by instanced house I mean, a small piece of the ward that looks like the district that the person would like to live, like this example: https://ibb.co/sR0Dtv7
-This alone Large House could be for an FC or Personal buyer and would also need to be petitioned and bought with same costs as wards.
Cons with petitioned wards, lot of people world try a Medium House and maybe small houses get no applicants.
- We can get higher prices on Medium Houses so people would prefer small houses.

[Oizen]

The truth is they definitely could do Instanced Housing, and the Server excuse has been an excuse for a very long time except during the COVID shipment shortages.

The real answer is simply that they've been investing into this broken system that failed to account for increasing player numbers from ~10 years ago, and now are either too scared of legacy code, or too lazy to do a permanent solution.
They're also probably afraid to piss off the players who have already invested into this broken system, and don't want to figure out how to grandfather them into the new system.

Given none of these answers would be satisfactory to their player base, so they likely just don't talk about it and keep using the server space excuse.

[hotakako]

The truth is they definitely could do Instanced Housing, and the Server excuse has been an excuse for a very long time except during the COVID shipment shortages.

The real answer is simply that they've been investing into this broken system that failed to account for increasing player numbers from ~10 years ago, and now are either too scared of legacy code, or too lazy to do a permanent solution.
They're also probably afraid to piss off the players who have already invested into this broken system, and don't want to figure out how to grandfather them into the new system.

Given none of these answers would be satisfactory to their player base, so they likely just don't talk about it and keep using the server space excuse.

Same here. I am also standing on the side where I feel that it is due to old legacy codes that is causing potential problems when expanding housing wards.
And it could also be related to why the lottery system "failed" to work correctly.

I hope that SQEX will take this housing lottery bug seriously and make it an imperative to start planning a major overhurl of the housing system.

They did a stats squish for Endwalker, which is likely a huge effort on their end to make sure everything stays balanced.
Just need to hope they do it for housing.

[Avenger]

Apartments are a form of instanced housing, but there's currently no way to place or use outdoor furnishings in them. They could potentially solve this by adding something like an instanced roof garden or garden terrace.

Obviously the technical issues are opaque to us and it might not be practical, as this would basically double the number of instanced apartment rooms and associated storage space, but it might be easier to improve the existing apartment system rather than creating an entirely new system.

[IckeDerTyp]

More Servers! Someone tell Yoshi to meet wid Amazonman

[Finlaena]

With all due respect to Yoshi-P -and I don't mean that facetiously-, he and his crew need to realize that the neighborhood concept they envisioned is unsustainable now. It might have been back when it was implemented, but with the explosion in player growth, abuses of the housing system by shell FCs, and numerous other factors, it's not turning out how they intended.

They need to first make apartments more appealing to prospective in-game homeowners: accent walls like the balcony in the Pendants or the windows in the Inns. "Loft" apartments that are basically Small homes with an upstairs/downstairs or penthouses that are akin to medium houses. Numerous other concepts mentioned by others for that matter.

Then they need to seriously reconsider the divide of wards between FCs and private residences. I kid you not, the Empyrean ward on Ultros my FC is in has only five other FC houses. Five. FC houses.. Meanwhile, all but maybe 3-4 houses are taken in the private residences in the same server. Whoever did the math on dividing them up underestimated the numbers or they were trying to apply the Japan DC housing numbers to the Western ones (EU and NA), I have no clue. At the very least they ought to make it 50/50: Wards 1-12 for FCs and Wards 13-24 for personal use.

I wouldn't be surprised if Island Sanctuary is placed on the backburner for late in the 6.x cycle if not 7.0, because they can't keep putting bandaids on a leaky pipe for much longer now.

[Eilleen]

They probably have all the servers - or the means - they would need to implement an instanced housing system, but they just don't wanna change it I understand that it's cool to have neighbors as we have now, but I can't see it working for everyone. There won't be enough space for all players and housing will still be a rare thing to have access to. The only way I see the housing system working for everyone is by having an instanced housing system. In games like Black Desert and Revelation Online, we can see that housing works pretty well because you can easily have access to a house and there is no such thing as "not having space for more houses".

In addition to that, there are other problems with the housing system that I just can't turn a blind eye. Why when we are inside a house and queue for dungeons we come back outside the house? This is too bad and shouldn't be that way. lol Maybe with instanced houses they would be able to fix that and put the garden and the house together in a single instance.

[Silhouettic]

Question from a non-techy person. Would it work to have upgradeable housing? Like, everyone buys a small and pays to upgrade the existing plot to medium and/or large?

[SasoriMinamino]

I love this game, but the way they've been acting lately is making me really sad. so much neglect, they could put an instance system, or leave the houses as they are and increase the apartments, allowing them to be shared with friends. I still have hope that the agricultural system can compensate for the lack of a vegetable garden in the apartments, that would be an option. And please remove this ridiculous separation of private houses and FCs houses, leave them all together like they used to, you guys are doing a terrible job.