Remove the FC/Personal housing ward classifications for OCE?

[Shibi]

That was a lot of work I didn't actually ask for nor was it necessary as it's not relevant to my point. You made an assertion that y'all could beat any RMTers to choice plots. I was simply correcting you on that one. If an RMTer wants something, they will likely get it before you do if it's FCFS. That much has been proven over the years.

My assertion was that "RMT won't be advantaged. There is no relocation, and with clicking first there is no guarantee of a S-Tier demo sale." That is still correct, it's not guaranteed. And with > 5400 plots, RMT is such a slim demand that it may as well not exist. Yes, there are 2 or 3 people who collect LB 11/41, but outside them who would buy it, when so many S teir plots are left?


However, we are digressing, the thread argument is that the ward split would be nice to be removed on Materia, and soon enough in the EU servers too. And if it flows the same way, in February or March, on the Dynamis DC too.

Honestly, I don't think we care on new servers. After 6 or 10 split ward lottery rounds, the benefits of removing the split so we can have our housing and FCs together are greater.

[Jojoya]

Placard timer for 10-12 hours, then walk-right-up buy.

RMT won't be advantaged. There is no relocation, and with clicking first there is no guarantee of a S-Tier demo sale. There are enough of us on the housing discords to spot an LB11/41 for sale and then be there at the placard to click and confound any attempt of RMT if it's demolished.

RMT is always advantaged because they don't rely on the same resources that players are limited to using. The housing discords are only as accurate as those players who are willing to manually check and report what they find to them (which could be an hour or two after a plot becomes available). RMT makes use of bots and other third party tools for rapid scanning on a continuing basis.

RMT will locate new available plots almost immediately regardless of whether it's lottery or FCFS with FCFS giving them a major advantage when it comes to purchasing. Even if the purchase timer is in use, they'll go back to using their bots to swarm the placards. It's not a guarantee they'll win the plot but the odds are heavily in their favor.

But getting back more on the original topic:

The new EU worlds showed that SE did learn a little from the Materia opening though I think not enough. When all the wards are opened at once to what's going to be a small eligible population at first, players end up too spread out and no one really benefits from what wards are designed to accomplish. It would have been better to roll out half the wards first with a 50/50 FC/personal split then add in more wards as the initial wards started to fill up. I can understand the possibility that their system design requires all worlds to have the server capacity for the same number of wards but that shouldn't have to mean that all those wards must also be available for purchase on every world. Perhaps SE needs a third purchase method in their system that blocks all purchases (Reserved for Future Use or something similar).

I'm still not convinced that SE is able to implement a mixed purchase type designation for the wards anymore. If they could, I think it would have been mentioned in the update announcement just as they pointed out they're free to switch between lottery and FCFS or FC and personal as they feel there's need. On the other hand, it doesn't mean that they can't add one if they feel it is worth the effort since we know in the past there was no such purchaser restriction.

But I doubt they'll feel it's worth the effort. They've never promised players that they would be able to have their personal house in the same ward with their FC house and they're not likely to change that for the sake of a single data center. Switching most of the wards currently designated as FC to personal would have a similar effect. After a few lottery cycles, they could again be switched so those wards left as FC could become personal and some of the personal go back to FC. It's something they probably should be doing on a regular basis regardless.

edit: just thought of another possible solution though I'm not certain the system would allow it either. Make the main ward FC purchase and the subdivision personal purchase. It's got the convenience of being able to use the aethernet to move within the entire ward if a player wants to go back and forth between their FC house nad personal house.

[Damptoe]

It's not really about having FC member personals in the same ward as the FC house.

It's more that this really sucks to look at and it's like this in most of the FC only wards even on Ravana and Sophia which are the largest servers.



The few new neighbours we've gained in our ward are just 4 member Rank 6 FCs farming submarines since they have unlimited time and plots to set them up.

The only purpose of this suggestion is to hopefully let these wards fill up with at least a few real players.
I doubt there is anything technical holding them back from flipping a configuration value to enable something that was possible for years. If it's simply a change in policy for simplicity sake that's holding them back, then yeah they can flip the FC/Personal allocations more frequently to achieve the same result.

For the time being, I think it makes a lot of sense to just open every ward to any type of purchaser or flip the allocations. It doesn't matter how they achieve it. If the data centre actually grows enough for real competition, then they can switch it back to how it is now.

Like I said in the OP, this really isn't a big deal but the way it is now also doesn't make a whole lot of sense on this data centre. This post is just meant as a little nudge towards SE that maybe this allocation isn't necessary anymore.

[Jojoya]

It's not really about having FC member personals in the same ward as the FC house.

It's more that this really sucks to look at and it's like this in most of the FC only wards even on Ravana and Sophia which are the largest servers.



The few new neighbours we've gained in our ward are just 4 member Rank 6 FCs farming submarines since they have unlimited time and plots to set them up.

The only purpose of this suggestion is to hopefully let these wards fill up with at least a few real players.
I doubt there is anything technical holding them back from flipping a configuration value to enable something that was possible for years. If it's simply a change in policy for simplicity sake that's holding them back, then yeah they can flip the FC/Personal allocations more frequently to achieve the same result.

For the time being, I think it makes a lot of sense to just open every ward to any type of purchaser or flip the allocations. It doesn't matter how they achieve it. If the data centre actually grows enough for real competition, then they can switch it back to how it is now.

Like I said in the OP, this really isn't a big deal but the way it is now also doesn't make a whole lot of sense on this data centre. This post is just meant as a little nudge towards SE that maybe this allocation isn't necessary anymore.

But where would those players come from to start filling in some of those plots? I wonder if anyone has numbers on how many new purchases are being made each lottery cycle.

I imagine by now that anyone who wants a house and can afford it has one. If the ward designation was removed or flipped to personal, you might see a few relocate to snag the available mediums I can see but those smalls would take a very long time to fill in because there are just too many houses on the Materia worlds compared to players that want a house.

What you need is for SE to put on a heavy marketing campaign for the holidays to draw in new OCE players to help fill in all the wards instead of just shuffling existing owners around.

[Shibi]

What you need is for SE to put on a heavy marketing campaign for the holidays to draw in new OCE players to help fill in all the wards instead of just shuffling existing owners around.

We have a heavy marketing campaign, and our numbers are filling out nicely, to the point we often have login queues now. But as you know, housing desire is not a 100% thing and it generally takes players quite a while to earn that first 3 million gil.

I mean, fair suck of the sav mate. Please stop trying to so heavily dictate and gatekeep what we desire on our servers, from your perch in North America. It's quite colonial of you.

[DeNada]

I doubt the FC wards would fill up even with the switch to personal wards.

I have an alt on Zurvan with a small FC house. Even after the ward switch to personal ward, there's zero new house owners in my ward, which goes to show that most people who want a personal already got one and they would prefer to stay on an original personal ward (19-22) which is well populated rather than switching to a converted ward even if there's still nicer plots available.

Just putting out there that this is such a non-issue I sincerely doubt SE is paying any attention and will allocate resources to (fix? If it even is an issue at all).

[Jojoya]

We have a heavy marketing campaign, and our numbers are filling out nicely, to the point we often have login queues now. But as you know, housing desire is not a 100% thing and it generally takes players quite a while to earn that first 3 million gil.

I mean, fair suck of the sav mate. Please stop trying to so heavily dictate and gatekeep what we desire on our servers, from your perch in North America. It's quite colonial of you.

Unfortunately for both you and us, SE gets to dictate everything and they're the ones doing the gatekeeping on their terms. Otherwise NA wouldn't be in the mess it's in right now. They would have addressed the growing problems back at the end of Stormblood beyond just reshuffling worlds, which did nothing to address the rapid increase in population from the initial WoW exodus in Feb 2019 and which only got worse with the third one summer 2021.

They're highly unlikely to create special rules just for the OCE servers no matter how much the servers would stand to benefit from them.

Good that you're getting that heavy marketing campaign or does it offend you that SE had already decided it's necessary even before I brought it up?

Good that your numbers are filling nicely. It's been hard to tell from the random comments all over the forums and the last available Lucky Bancho census didn't seem to reflect much of a population increase over the prior one. I've been busy with other characters so haven't had a chance to do more than briefly check my OCE character the last couple of months to see for myself. I don't think any rational person wants the OCE data center to fail regardless of where in the world they live.

If you don't want players who don't live in OCE to be part of a public discussion in a forum open to all English speaking players regardless of where they are located, you probably should take it to an OCE only-forum somewhere.

[Damptoe]

I doubt the FC wards would fill up even with the switch to personal wards.

I have an alt on Zurvan with a small FC house. Even after the ward switch to personal ward, there's zero new house owners in my ward, which goes to show that most people who want a personal already got one and they would prefer to stay on an original personal ward (19-22) which is well populated rather than switching to a converted ward even if there's still nicer plots available.

Just putting out there that this is such a non-issue I sincerely doubt SE is paying any attention and will allocate resources to (fix? If it even is an issue at all).

I agree it's a complete non-issue but also seems like such an easy thing for them to change that doesn't require any resources to be allocated to it.

I can see how there'd be no change on Zurvan and maybe Bismarck, but I know on Sephirot, Sophia, and Ravana that the mixed wards have filled up reasonably nicely compared to the first 9 wards. Instead of the number of new personal residents being 0, there will at least be the possibility for someone else to move in whether it's a new buyer or someone relocating to a preferred plot.

Unfortunately for both you and us, SE gets to dictate everything and they're the ones doing the gatekeeping on their terms. Otherwise NA wouldn't be in the mess it's in right now. They would have addressed the growing problems back at the end of Stormblood beyond just reshuffling worlds, which did nothing to address the rapid increase in population from the initial WoW exodus in Feb 2019 and which only got worse with the third one summer 2021.

They're highly unlikely to create special rules just for the OCE servers no matter how much the servers would stand to benefit from them.

This doesn't affect NA at all, so I don't think we need to bother pretending their problems matter when it comes to this topic.

[Shibi]

Unfortunately for both you and us, SE gets to dictate everything and they're the ones doing the gatekeeping on their terms

Thing is Jojo, and what infuriates me about these forums, is so many people take it on themselves to speak for the developers with only their own assumptions and nothing but their guesses to back it up.

They wouldn't be able to remove the classifications...

That's an example of the gatekeeping I am talking about.

It's not your place, it's not anyone's place, to say what they can't do when there's nothing to back it up but your gut feeling. The forum's supposed to be a place where we can ask for things and it's a place we can share facts with the person asking.

You have facts sometimes, and that's good, and i respect you for that knowledge and sharing it when it is factual. But it's not your (or anyone's place) place to say "no!" when there isn't that hard knowledge, that's only on Yoshi.

I hope you understand.

[Jojoya]

Thing is Jojo, and what infuriates me about these forums, is so many people take it on themselves to speak for the developers with only their own assumptions and nothing but their guesses to back it up.



That's an example of the gatekeeping I am talking about.

It's not your place, it's not anyone's place, to say what they can't do when there's nothing to back it up but your gut feeling. The forum's supposed to be a place where we can ask for things and it's a place we can share facts with the person asking.

You have facts sometimes, and that's good, and i respect you for that knowledge and sharing it when it is factual. But it's not your (or anyone's place) place to say "no!" when there isn't that hard knowledge, that's only on Yoshi.

I hope you understand.

One, my statement is not gatekeeping. There is nothing about my statement that is intended to lock players out of content or to give a certain group preferential treatment over others.

Two, you have no proof to back up your claim that the system will allow for wards to be free of the FC/personal designations while I quoted the actual housing announcement stating that they will have the specific designation going forward.

Yes, it says methods of purchasing or availability may vary by world in the future. Try reading what comes directly before that:

Housing areas are divided into plots available for purchase by either free companies or private buyers, and a plot’s usage is restricted accordingly.

No where does it imply that an area could also be allotted for both. It says a plot's usage "will be restricted", not "may be restricted".

Taken together, the "may vary" language indicates that ward 1 on world A may be lottery and personal while ward 1 on world B may be FC and FCFS, not that ward 1 on world C can be a free for all with any type of buyer making a purchase.

I'm going by what SE has told us in their own post on the Lodestone, looking at the specific language they used.. What official statement made by SE are you going by for your position?

Certainily SE dropped the ball when it came to getting housing rolled out to OCE. They should have opened it no later than the end of February instead of forcing OCE players to wait almost 3 months. That would have given you mixed wards at the start and the designations once implemented wouldn't have had such a detrimental effect on ward atmosphere.

Maybe SE will prove me wrong. Maybe the designations will be removed. I don't have anything against them doing it.

But considering their track record, I genuinely do not think that will happen. The best you can hope for is they swap designations so personal house owners can start mixing in what are currently FC wards, and new FCs can start moving into what are currently the personal wards.