Housing: Square Enix is failing to accomplish what Lord of The Rings Online did in 07

[PirateRyanG]

I can't help but feel square enix wants housing to be limited. It drives subs that are scared of demolition.

I can't imagine Ff14 tech is worse than Lotro which launched in 2007. I mean, I would hope not.

For those who are unaware, LOTRO has instanced wards, just like FF14.

30 houses per ward, each with a unique address.

As each ward sells out, the game generates a new one. This can continue a good amount of time, with thousands of houses being the cap. While some servers did hit their limit, most didn't. This is because there are four different housing groups a cap of thousands. Even FF14 would struggle to cap that out.

Each house interior is a separate instance (just like ff14)

There is kinda an auto demolition, but not. You have to pay a mortgage using in game gold. It takes like 5 mins to get the currency you need, and you can pay something like a year upfront.

So, how can a game from 2007 (which still gets a sizeable number of players, I want to add) get something right, and ff14 comes up so short.

Why are wards not auto generated when new ones sell out?

The only reason is, surely, Squaresoft doesn't want to miss out on those sweet subs from people scared of demo?

Oh, and I wouldn't believe square when they say steam won't let them use non-steam accounts to login, or to buy stuff away from steam on a steam-created account. Other games have done it. I don't get why it is different with squaresoft. Maybe they just want that sweet cash.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I dont think its just solely because of the auto demolish retaining subbed players. If you havent noticed, they've turned that off for almost a year now (and still is I think? Could somebody fact check me this please?)
Its simply because I think the dev team finds the player created neighborhood system on a server where anyone can visit far more appealing.

However no amount of band-aid fixes can truly help the situation because of the limited server space for each one trying to accommodate every single player. Its a very unfair system and of course we all know that by now.

I just think they really either need to introduce personal housing while still retaining the limited ward space as a "premium" thing or even just allowing players to expand their apartments to accommodate more rooms and allow gardening.

[FireMage]

Imagine comparing server space between games that are years apart and also have over an order of magnitude between them in active population, almost as if you were approaching the subject in bad faith...like a troll would

[NekoMataMata]

I dont think its just solely because of the auto demolish retaining subbed players. If you havent noticed, they've turned that off for almost a year now (and still is I think? Could somebody fact check me this please?)

I always wondered about that and I've also guessed that it might be more about company interests instead. They didn't really have a choice but to turn demolitions off when people were struggling to be able to log in. It'd have looked so bad if they didn't.

On the flip side though, I think someone in SE has taken advantage of it and has tried to extend it for the players as long as possible.

[PirateRyanG]

Imagine comparing server space between games that are years apart and also have over an order of magnitude between them in active population, almost as if you were approaching the subject in bad faith...like a troll would

While Lotro is not as large as FF14, it still has around 2,000 players active on most servers at any one time.

The point is more that tech has moved on. If Lotro was able to accomplish this in 2007, it should be even easier for FF14 to accomplish this in the age of scalable server tech, something which Lotro was never able to benefit from.

[Bsrking5]

Housing space wasn't an issue with a smaller player base for FFXIV. LOTRO has a much smaller player base and isn't having having a housing space. Boom fixed, delete like 90% of the players. Where do we start op?

[LianaThorne]

- Housing demolition is still off, has been for over a year now

- We have neighborhoods because Yoshi likes the idea of neighborhood style housing and I wouldn't be shocked if those above Yoshi aren't willing to shell out the money needed to give us instanced or better apartments or endless wards. As frustrating as it might be to hear, they probably have other priorities.

[FireMage]

While Lotro is not as large as FF14, it still has around 2,000 players active on most servers at any one time.

The point is more that tech has moved on. If Lotro was able to accomplish this in 2007, it should be even easier for FF14 to accomplish this in the age of scalable server tech, something which Lotro was never able to benefit from.

I see you basically ignored the point I was making. Trolls will be trolls after all

[FireMage]

Housing space wasn't an issue with a smaller player base for FFXIV. LOTRO has a much smaller player base and isn't having having a housing space. Boom fixed, delete like 90% of the players. Where do we start op?

I have several suggestions

[LianaThorne]

While Lotro is not as large as FF14, it still has around 2,000 players active on most servers at any one time.

The point is more that tech has moved on. If Lotro was able to accomplish this in 2007, it should be even easier for FF14 to accomplish this in the age of scalable server tech, something which Lotro was never able to benefit from.

Debatable on the first one, especially with the legacy servers. I usually only see around 200-300 people active during prime time on Treebeard, Shadowfax is a bit more. Either way, they have houses just sitting there waiting to be taken.

I also don't think introducing paid wards or upkeep is going to help the situation either because you can easily cheese their premium system to have multiple houses in a ward. I literally have five. They also don't auto generate wards.

I fail to see how FF's & LOTROs housing systems are different in general tbh.