I mean, isn't that how paying a subscription works? You're paying real life money to rent your character out essentially. When the sub runs out, you're locked out of the game. Bye bye character!
... until you renew your sub, that is
I am confused didn't Yoshida and his team said "We cant give you more housing but we want". When i take this, it translates to "Sorry housing sucks but technical limitations let us give you only this much at a time" and this means they think themselfs housing sucks and they know. What is there to defend ? They dont know how to because SE is adamnt against investing money. Investments seem only to occour in FF14 when things like Raubahn-Savage oder Endwalker login problems happen.
My guess, a very wild guess is Yoshida has not that much to say as he wanted and SE never thought for a second FF14 would be this big and still believes it will drop. Their Handy game department get's a lot of attention soo we know how this will go for all the Pc games.
"... until you renew your sub, that is"? I fail to see the relevancy because when you renew your sub, your character is still there. They don't take your character away forever and make you work to get it back. So no it isn't how paying a subscription works. It's only how housing works.
Honey if you expected me to read all that...my eyes glazed over and rolled so far in their sockets after I read you leveled 12 alts just to get housing in a video game. You must have very few achievements yourself if you have the time to do that. People who actually achieve success don't feel the need to bring it up in casual conversation or flex on random people to feed some unfulfilled need for attention. They already have it. Should probably work on that if you're actually telling the truth.
This is something that has always irked me. I don't have a house but those I know who do sometimes need to take breaks for x or y reason but that would mean losing their plot. Yoshi P even encourages taking a break but oop, you'd lose your home if you stop paying your sub/logging in. I know I'm gonna get hate for this but housing really shouldn't have been implemented in the first place if it meant not everyone would have access to it.
I think it's the old school idea of having a neighbourhood, but the reality is 95%+ of players don't interact with any of their neighbours at all, if they even see them. I always read about the odd person with a few catgirls down the street, but the vast majority that talk about wanting a neighbourhood feeling, admit they almost never actually see their neighbours.