Enough housing to go around for everyone?

[Zukuo]

I know there are a limited number of housing units. except for 1 small detail, we have hundreds of players on each available plot bidding for the same one. Even weeks after the first 2 times.

This is clearly not enough housing to go around. Ive failed to purchase a house 5 times now. Yes I am a bit annoyed at it, but im used to it by now. The problem i see is that with how many people there are trying to buy a house, everyone knows there is a limited amount of housing to go around. This is a waste of time for everyone who has been patiently waiting just to get a house.

Not to mention this will inevitably cause players to participate in RMT. You keep banning and suspending all these accounts for RMT, you want RMT to stop yet with how much pressure id affecting everyone to put their gil on a bid and in a limited time frame. More players are going to do this. This is only one issue.

The fact there are also 18 wards for fcs... theres NO way there are that many fcs on one dang server. Even if there was it is still illogical for fcs to be prioritized over the actual players. I get fc's need housing, but so many players are unhappy with an easy system that can be fixed. Add more wards maybe? Make housing instanced. I doubt players would be too unhappy with a change like this. Personal and private housing should be instanced whereas FC housing should not be. FC housing should be a community experience where a private house should be a private experience.

[Raim]

You are the 5 millionth person to ask for more wards. They would if they physically could.

[justausername]

You are the 5 millionth person to ask for more wards. They would if they physically could.

They need to open the FC wards to private buyers to start with at least, as has also been suggested by 5million people. I am now seeing ads in party finder for people paying people gil to join an FC for 30 days, then they can leave. No doubt to get a house that in the end will belong to a one person FC once the other 3 members are paid their gil and leave. Shell FCs. Exactly the fear many had would happen when they pulled this shiz to start with.

[HuaTuo]

meanwhile on Materia

[LaylaTsarra]

meanwhile on Materia

Only house in my FC ward on Sophia and it's a large. 3 lotteries and I'm still alone. Larges sitting open with no bids for FC's. Maybe I got a neighbor given I haven't checked today's results yet.

[HuaTuo]

haha yeah, I haven't even been to empyrwum FC wards, that screenie is from ward 24 on Bismarck, which is personal housing. My fc house in Mists is the only house in the entire ward also.

[Oizen]

You are the 5 millionth person to ask for more wards. They would if they physically could.

They would if Square Enix would stop investing their earnings from this game into NFTs and reinvest it into this game*

[Zukuo]

They physically can lol. they have money to update their engines. But maybe you didnt read the post? I did mention alternatives. If they can build new worlds and instances, dungeons, raids etc, they can easily make more wards. certainly if wards is as old as 2014... i mean its kind of sad they havent updated at all.

[Zel_Zackarias]

Yoshi-P did actually say in a LL sometime last year (I think it was) that they need more servers. They didn't invest in more servers before the pandemic hit (something they obviously couldn't predict) and then shortages in parts meant they couldn't buy the servers in the bulk they suddenly found themselves needing. He said he tried to offer more money than the servers were worth in an attempt to expedite the process and jump the line, but they were denied. So they're stuck waiting for more servers because they failed to reinvest in more before they really needed them when the game exploded in popularity.

So it is totally on them for not trying to obtain more to have maybe a bit more surplus than they needed at the time, because we might have at bare minimum gotten more wards added (not a real solution but at this point better than the nothing-burger they're feeding us). I brought this server issue up with my brother and he was reminding me that the semi-conductor issue was a problem ramping up several years before the lockdowns and the pandemic hit, but I think it might have still been plausible for SE to obtain more servers back then. Because it's downright impossible in the current market so they're forced to wait their turn in line for their server orders to be filled. They didn't plan ahead and so we got severely congested worlds for log in ques for weeks after 6.0 launched and them putting new server space to expand worlds and spread out populations (as they started in Japan and will be doing to the NA servers next year in the summer) became a priority over allotting server space to making more housing wards.

tl;dr Yoshi-P and SE definitely bungled things by not just investing in extra servers when things weren't so bad before the pandemic. Now, because of a lack of re-investment into the game, we're stuck waiting for them to obtain servers because even offering more money than the things are worth isn't enough to jump their place in line and get them sooner. Also we're all beholden to Yoshi-P's desire to keep everything ward based because he wants a neighborhood feel despite the fact a large number of players, the majority I would argue, want instanced housing and apartment upgrades and because he doesn't like it we're not going to get it.

[Xylira]

Even if they unlocked all of the wards for personal purchases as well, there still wouldn't be nearly enough plots to go around. The problem is the ward system itself, in so far that if they can't add enough wards to give the majority of active players a reasonable chance at owning a home, then it's a flawed system. SE needs to look into alternative methods of comparable forms of housing that are more scalable and accessible, which is why so many people have been asking for fully instanced housing to be added.