Can we cut the ward system and finally go for instanced

[CheshaSolttiri]

All they need to add are instanced house exteriors and a directory for accessing them. That's really all that is missing for us to get instanced houses. The interiors are already instanced, so those are pretty much ready to go.

This!!!!!! This is 100% the only issue here that is causing problems is the exterior housing. Like give us an instanced area where we can choose The background and have the interior connected to the exterior. I bet they could just increase the interior housing map size to include an exterior and bam, done. How can they instance a whole area like Bozja but not housing zones? Also why the size difference? If they can load mansions sizes as instance, why have all these different sizes? It's adding competition for no reason. If it's server issues, get the servers??? Or subscribe to a cloud based server system (Google, Microsoft, Amazon) to dynamically scale when needed.

[Themarvin]

I've lost 75 houses now. I've had a small for 4 years. SO i know how you feel hun. i truely do.

So lost click fighting on gameplots for 3 years, since then the lottery?

Lost 75 houses medium and up, how can you lose it when the lottery system is new and before you had to clickfight bots?

[Hycinthus]

This!!!!!! This is 100% the only issue here that is causing problems is the exterior housing. Like give us an instanced area where we can choose The background and have the interior connected to the exterior. I bet they could just increase the interior housing map size to include an exterior and bam, done. How can they instance a whole area like Bozja but not housing zones? Also why the size difference? If they can load mansions sizes as instance, why have all these different sizes? It's adding competition for no reason. If it's server issues, get the servers??? Or subscribe to a cloud based server system (Google, Microsoft, Amazon) to dynamically scale when needed.

It’s not easy to get servers. There’s still a global chip semiconductor shortage. They cannot just add servers easily.

[CheshaSolttiri]

There will always be a shortage. Even if it clears up, I doubt they will lower prices, and will start to hold back inventory to inflate prices, why wouldn't they?

[Jojoya]

Not all of us got their home in the lotto - some of us had to compete for months in click off's and could not simply walk up and ask a friend to loan them 3 million gil. You can literally beg for millions of gil now with almost zero effort. I agree a totally RNG system blows - but there are still homes to bid on even after this.

The reality is there is a shortage of supply - I would address the causes of the shortage in the system BEFORE building a entirely new system. Shell FC's in my opinion should not be a thing.

Just because some of us have been around long enough to have suffered under an even worse system isn't justification to make newer players also suffer through a bad system.

The cause of the shortage of supply is SE choosing to use a ward system in the first place. It is not very flexible nor able to adapt to a rapidly growing players base. Instanced housing can.

The best way to fix the supply is to go with a full featured instanced housing system. Other games have done so successfully. They don't have the drama over housing that we have. Any player could get any housing location they wanted through their own effort and merit instead of relying on RNG to maybe gift them with a location they really want.

[Mr_Happy]

Keep it going everyone mega thread style

[Rinoa_353]

I like having neighbors, your best bet is to move to Dynamis since you can at least visit the other NA data centers and get a home there. The new wards on Dynamis have not opened for bidding yet, so you still have time to think about moving and you also have a very good chance to grab a larger plot when I won my large with my bid being the only one in Seraph which is the fullest of the new worlds. Otherwise, instance housing already exist in apartments and FC rooms and to a smaller degree, Island Sanctuary.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

Just because some of us have been around long enough to have suffered under an even worse system isn't justification to make newer players also suffer through a bad system.

The cause of the shortage of supply is SE choosing to use a ward system in the first place. It is not very flexible nor able to adapt to a rapidly growing players base. Instanced housing can.

The best way to fix the supply is to go with a full featured instanced housing system.

I would not claim that "It was harder for me so tough luck" - the reason I bring it up is to clearly identify how I got my home so that folks do not make assumptions - I've been trying to upgrade to a medium unsuccessfully since the lotto came in. C'est la vie.

There is not a shortage of housing in the literal sense - there is a shortage of plum plots of some servers, a shortage of housing on overcrowded servers. I agree the system is not flexible and the overall technical overhead for Instanced housing will be worse then what the engine is currently dealing with. However its not like Square is going to come out and explain how awful their engine is at handling DB queries.

I disagree that the best fix for supply is to go full instanced - its merely rolling over and giving everyone exactly what they want so that they can stop playing when they check off that box and no longer have anything to strive for in that regard. At the same time those that did manage will essentially have their efforts undermined when SE hands over instances to all the people who could not manage to secure the plot they wanted. We need to stop speaking like there are no houses because the reality is that is not true by a long shot. As I pointed out in another thread many of the other games people love to cite have no where NEAR the level of engagement that the FF 14 community has in the housing system; its the reason I refuse to use them as "how to do it" examples - especially given how many are free-to-play. They don't have drama over housing because housing is not something those players care about - its a small facet of the gameplay.

I think the root causes of the loss of housing in the current system need to be looked at rather then building a entirely new system. Fixing the existing problems would probably do it; correctly limiting service accounts to housing limitations will help. accelerating the lotto process and the demo being active will also probably help a great deal. In a perfect world "housing" wards would be a "world" rather then a zone - to alleviate the problem we see with some worlds having fierce competition and others having none. I would also like to see wards treat bids as priority rather then limited. So rather then have a FC only ward; simply have a ward where FC bids are checked before private bids.

[True-to-Caesar]

Those are the Fight Club sub farm wards.

I got my medium in a non-single ward owner. I have seen my neighbors like… 5-6 times in 7 months.

Honestly if the «*server capacity*» is the excuse, add specific wards that will generate duplicates when the last one is full or half filled, accessible with a premium fee. Plenty of people will go for it and it will feed costs the server for it, easily.

[Xylira]

It’s not easy to get servers. There’s still a global chip semiconductor shortage. They cannot just add servers easily.

That's actually why fully instanced housing is better than the current ward system.

The interior of everyone's FF house, apartment, etc, sits as data stored on a server when unused. It doesn't take up server resources for processing and memory until it has to spin up an instance when someone wants to enter. When no one is inside the instance anymore, it can then clear the instance and let the home sit inactive as data again, freeing up server resources.

Housing wards however, are instances that need to remain loaded 24/7, and they're also much larger processing and memory footprint as they need to load significantly more items at once due to all of the exterior housing decorations of all of the homes, and the homes themselves, market board, aetherytes, etc. Every time they add new housing wards, they're having to dedicate more server resources towards keeping more and more housing wards always loaded, which is where that statement about the semiconductor shortage delaying adding more housing came from.

Fully instanced housing doesn't have the same problem as wards. The interior and exterior of homes would just sit as data on a harddrive when inactive, and data storage is still relatively very cheap and easy to come by even with the semiconductor shortage. They could theoretically let every single character have their own instanced home, and it wouldn't stress the servers any more than they currently are, unless everyone tried to be in their home at the same time. Which we've seen similar issues with certain major content patches, i.e. when Island Sanctuaries were released and everyone wanted to try them out, as Island Sanctuaries literally use the same server capacity as housing does. Even then, SE has load balancing in place that will restrict too many instances being opened at the same time.