(05-14-2016, 05:04 PM)Nalette Wrote: I really do wish they'd put a cap on one personal house per account (give it account-wide access, maybe) to alleviate some of that.  Or something. I'm not sure what a good solution would actually be.

(05-15-2016, 02:32 PM)O Wrote: The simplest solution would be to just set the server to automatically spawn a new empty ward if all houses of any one size were already bought in all other wards. Low-pop servers would end up with a small number of wards, high pop servers would have a high number of wards. 

I don't buy the excuse that this can't be done due to PS3, because a PS3 user is still only loading a given ward that they happen to personally be inside of at that time, so having a larger list of wards which exist shouldn't impact anything.

This solution would also gut the flipping market, because unless a person is really dead-set on getting a specific plot, there would always be at least one small, one medium, and one large available at all times. This solution also accommodates multiple houses per account, and even accommodates neighborhooding if players are so inclined (a cluster of friends could wait until a new ward spawns, and then all buy houses that are next to each other). 

I also don't buy the excuse of it costing too much in server infrastructure/database/etc, because the higher pop servers are where all the income is coming from anyway, so... why are we per-capita getting less services than a smaller server?

(05-15-2016, 02:32 PM)Osena Rhen Wrote: The simplest solution would be to just set the server to automatically spawn a new empty ward if all houses of any one size were already bought in all other wards. Low-pop servers would end up with a small number of wards, high pop servers would have a high number of wards. 

I don't buy the excuse that this can't be done due to PS3, because a PS3 user is still only loading a given ward that they happen to personally be inside of at that time, so having a larger list of wards which exist shouldn't impact anything.

This solution would also gut the flipping market, because unless a person is really dead-set on getting a specific plot, there would always be at least one small, one medium, and one large available at all times. This solution also accommodates multiple houses per account, and even accommodates neighborhooding if players are so inclined (a cluster of friends could wait until a new ward spawns, and then all buy houses that are next to each other). 

I also don't buy the excuse of it costing too much in server infrastructure/database/etc, because the higher pop servers are where all the income is coming from anyway, so... why are we per-capita getting less services than a smaller server?

(05-15-2016, 04:55 PM)Setoh Aliapoh Wrote:

(05-15-2016, 02:32 PM)O Wrote: The simplest solution would be to just set the server to automatically spawn a new empty ward if all houses of any one size were already bought in all other wards. Low-pop servers would end up with a small number of wards, high pop servers would have a high number of wards. 

I don't buy the excuse that this can't be done due to PS3, because a PS3 user is still only loading a given ward that they happen to personally be inside of at that time, so having a larger list of wards which exist shouldn't impact anything.

This solution would also gut the flipping market, because unless a person is really dead-set on getting a specific plot, there would always be at least one small, one medium, and one large available at all times. This solution also accommodates multiple houses per account, and even accommodates neighborhooding if players are so inclined (a cluster of friends could wait until a new ward spawns, and then all buy houses that are next to each other). 

I also don't buy the excuse of it costing too much in server infrastructure/database/etc, because the higher pop servers are where all the income is coming from anyway, so... why are we per-capita getting less services than a smaller server?

This, exactly! LOTRO had a similar system, where they'd spawn new wards as the old ones filled up.

There are those who defend the current housing system by arguing that the housing servers can't support more wards (which is, honestly, pretty ridiculous in this day and age). Assuming this is 100% true, you could still get nearly the same benefit by simply pooling *all* the wards in a cross-server pool, and then allocating them to servers as they fill up. Low population servers would end up with a few wards, while high population servers would have quite a bit more. It still wouldn't solve the problem entirely, but it would help mitigate it.

Housing in an MMO isn't rocket science, though. It's a solved problem, in the sense that other games have been able to enable letting anyone who can afford it buy housing.

(05-15-2016, 04:59 PM)McBeef© Wrote:

(05-15-2016, 04:55 PM)Setoh Aliapoh Wrote:

(05-15-2016, 02:32 PM)O Wrote: The simplest solution would be to just set the server to automatically spawn a new empty ward if all houses of any one size were already bought in all other wards. Low-pop servers would end up with a small number of wards, high pop servers would have a high number of wards. 

I don't buy the excuse that this can't be done due to PS3, because a PS3 user is still only loading a given ward that they happen to personally be inside of at that time, so having a larger list of wards which exist shouldn't impact anything.

This solution would also gut the flipping market, because unless a person is really dead-set on getting a specific plot, there would always be at least one small, one medium, and one large available at all times. This solution also accommodates multiple houses per account, and even accommodates neighborhooding if players are so inclined (a cluster of friends could wait until a new ward spawns, and then all buy houses that are next to each other). 

I also don't buy the excuse of it costing too much in server infrastructure/database/etc, because the higher pop servers are where all the income is coming from anyway, so... why are we per-capita getting less services than a smaller server?

This, exactly! LOTRO had a similar system, where they'd spawn new wards as the old ones filled up.

There are those who defend the current housing system by arguing that the housing servers can't support more wards (which is, honestly, pretty ridiculous in this day and age). Assuming this is 100% true, you could still get nearly the same benefit by simply pooling *all* the wards in a cross-server pool, and then allocating them to servers as they fill up. Low population servers would end up with a few wards, while high population servers would have quite a bit more. It still wouldn't solve the problem entirely, but it would help mitigate it.

Housing in an MMO isn't rocket science, though. It's a solved problem, in the sense that other games have been able to enable letting anyone who can afford it buy housing.

Honestly, I'm guessing it's a PS3 issue.

Something like some table somewhere can only hold so much data, and they can't rebuild it. It's why they have weird workarounds like adding sub-divisions instead of just increasing the number of wards. 

I get the feeling they have to like reverse engineer it every time they want to increase the number.