In Regard to Housing in Patch 4.1

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Originally Posted by skullfishy

Great news, Yoshi-P! Just please don't implement instanced housing. It takes away from the social aspect :(

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It isn't working anyway, besides instanced housing in other MMO's still allow friends, guild and party members to visit your home. I see no reason FFXIV's wouldn't be the same.

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Originally Posted by skullfishy

Great news, Yoshi-P! Just please don't implement instanced housing. It takes away from the social aspect :(

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Why does implementing instanced housing mean we can't get it on top of the housing we already have? Why not have both? Options and choices!

Amazing & thank you

Thank you for a reassuring answer and we appreciate the time and effort.

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Originally Posted by skullfishy

Great news, Yoshi-P! Just please don't implement instanced housing. It takes away from the social aspect :(

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The Shinhone housing wards on Phoenix are almost entirely personal houses, there's not going to be a social aspect as there will be hardly anyone around

Sound Nice , Seem there is round 2 , should start to practice.

My year of crafting may not be in vain, yet! O w O Thank you, Yoshi P!

I am sorry but I will not say thank you. First this problem existed for years and even though we constantly give feedback nothing was ever changed. They should know the problems by now but they still did not change a thing. I will remain utterly skeptic about any changes, especially since they dont even want to talk about them. If we at least know which ideas you have, we could give our opinions about this but again we will get to know about this, a bit before they release housing again, without any chance to change it. So how is that good? This feels nothing more than a PR post to try to lessen the damage that is done and to hope that all those people dont just unsub for now.

Adding more wards will not change anything. This just shows that even after all the hate and rage you will still stick with your limiting system which will never have enough houses for everyone. Even if you double the wards in each district this will not be enough, especially with people still being able to own countless of houses through alts.

You need to change it to 1 personal and 1 FC house per account, give us at least double the wards and maybe even more middle and big ones and on top of that at least try to look into instanced houses. Wards will have simply no great future in a growing game and will just mean that you have to put more and more resources into it, while not everyone will be able to get one which means that with every launch of more districts you will also always anger someone. Why insist on using such a system even though the community gave you more than enough feedback?

Also who thought that it would be good thing to introduce the relocation feature on the same day a patch and a new district comes out? New features can always have unknown bugs and on top of that enough people without houses tried to get one. The logging crashes were hard enough but I am quite sure that a lot of people missed the chance for a house because the feature was not working correctly and just showed an still open plot even though it was already bought..making the people lose their chance to get other houses. And it seems that some FC even lots their old ones thanks to that too. This should have never been introduced together with a new district. And a simple apologize will not bring those FC houses back or will not give people a house that lost their chance thanks to the bug.

Also it seems that you plan to release more of them in a big patch. This again means that lots of people will be logging in on top of those that want a house. Which will probably be another disaster like this one. And on top of that we wont even know the new selling feature. If you are truly going to do the lotteries feature that will also not change a thing because people will still be left out of content that they pay the same sub for than those that get a house and it will still not change anything about the limit of housing itself.

A post was something that should have been coming so I see this as nothing truly positive. We only know that more will come but not how much more and what you will change. So why should people still stay subbed? In the end this can just be exactly like it was the last few times and I am quite sure that people will be done with the game if that will happen, so I really hope that this will have greater changes..yet my hope for a fair and good system is kinda falling..after so many years and still not even a hint of instanced housing.

So my feedback:
-Give us your ideas before you do it so that we can even give you feedback that can still be used for something
-Restrict the houses to one personal and one FC house per account
-Introduce a special point to ban someone for selling houses and make it truly part of the ToS as its own point so people are truly punished for this. (Like the right click feature for bots)
-Give us at least double the wards in each district and maybe two wards just with M and L houses.
-Unlock some wards over the days so more people will have the chance to get on. If you are not at home at that certain time you will never have the chance to even own one. (But write down the times so that people can plan better)
-Maybe truly think about a personal instanced housing system. You can even use apartments as the first step and make them either bigger or let us buy more rooms for our apartment. (Great gil sink) At the same times this means that apartments needs to be so flexible like you promised us at the beginning..so they should not be limited like they are now.

As much as I like how the wards look, at this point I'd rather have an instances housing if it gives a better chance at having a home. Also limiting the number of homes to 1 FC and 1 personal, though I'd go by server and not overall account, as I, And I'm sure many more, do have alts on other servers that they also play on extensively that would like to have a house with them as well. Just no 16 houses per server cause of alts.

while im glad that some more housing will be made available, unless you plan to double the currently available wards, i think it'd likely just be better overall to make an entirely new subdivision. that would create 12 new wards. heck, making TWO new subdivisions would pretty much ensure that housing wouldnt be such a massive issue.

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Originally Posted by Kaonis

So basically wait 4 months for a band-aide to a problem that has been complained about for 3 years?

Sorry, but words at this point are meaningless, and people shouldn't be so fast to just say things are ok now. Housing has been an issue since implementation with no real fixes to it, just small band-aides to try and make the issues less bad.

Unless they do instanced housing or do something along the lines of doubling/tripling the amount of wards to accommodate everyone, then I will just assume these are more hollow words on the topic.

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Exactly. the wards, rather, their limitations have been the problem, more of them has never been the true solution.

1 free company and personal house per account. I have seen people make new FC on their alts and buy housing plots. You have 2 players on 1 server together that owned or still owns an entire ward. Implement a system that warns players that own multiple houses that they have a limited amount of time to decide which house they want to keep and then have he system refund all their Gil or a percentage of their Gil from the others houses reclaimed by this system. Fair and just

Thank you so much Yoshida! I can't wait to have another chance to be able to obtain a house for my girlfriend and I in Shirogane. I was one of the unfortunate ones to log in at 6am and get an error code and get kicked out of the launcher, then wait for 1,4000+ people. I look forward to hearing more details on 4.2 housing this Winter.

Thank you very much! It was a huge disappointment when we were not able to find a new large plot for our FC house after having members contribute funds for months preparing for Shirogane.

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Originally Posted by EvinnaReed

I hope there is a restriction on houses per account. That said, I hope it is 1 FC house and 1 personal house per account. That makes it fair so people who bought houses on Goblin like me (when there were BAJILLIONS of empty plots) don't get screwed.

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I've been wanting this and saying it for awhile lol. Also, personally, I'd prefer it if people who are getting an FC house are required to be an FC of at least 5 people or something. Pretty crazy to see all these FC houses with only 1 person owning it. Access to the same house for all your alts. Also, maybe a level requirement or something.

I would love to see housing down in the Gelmorra Ruins

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

We’ve also received considerable feedback as to how they should be added, and we will be making an announcement outlining the number of new wards and how they will be sold after reviewing said feedback.

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If you guys are looking into how Shirogane houses should be sold fairly, do this: set a criteria who can buy plot:

Large plot: only players who have reached lv70 in all jobs can buy
Medium plot: only players who have reached lv70 in all non-combat job and at least 8 combat jobs, can buy
Small plot: only players who have reached lv70 in all DoL jobs and at least 4 combat jobs, can buy

Doing so, it will make sure that only the truly dedicated players can have access to housing, reduce the dilemma of housing abuse by alts. Not only that, it'll enhance the gameplay experience in every way possible in terms of q time, & enhancing the ingame economy, etc. Please consider it.

This recommendation is for Shirogane only, since it's a premium aesthetic zone, for new player looking into housing, the Eorzea housing zone shouldn't have these criteria.

Hi everyone.

I'm very happy to hear this as some of my FC members missed out too. Just in case I decided to check the Japanese post from Yoshi P earlier on this subject and share any missing nuances with my FC so that they have the same understanding as Japanese speakers. I felt there were some important bits of information that were missing in the English post so I decided to share that with the community here too. I hope this answers some of your questions following the annoucement.

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Hello, everyone. This is FFXIV Producer and Director, Naoki Yoshida.

Patch 4.1 saw the introduction of the new residential area, Shirogane, and though we are pleased to see so many players enjoying the housing feature even more, we also received a great deal of feedback regarding lack of plots on congested servers and faults related to housing.

Adding to the fact that a great number of you were interested in either purchasing or relocating to a plot in Shirogane, we failed to prepare sufficient plots for players particularly in high population servers, and I deeply apologize for not being able to meet 100% of everyone’s expectations.

The concentrated login that occurred immediately after the patch 4.1 maintenance increased the stress and load on the servers and as a result, when the relocation feature was simultaneously exectuted by multiple players, this caused a fault on the lock function. For example there have been several dozen reports of rare cases where the relocation could not be completed due to the lock function not being released and again we apologize for the inconvenience caused. This issue will be addressed and fixed in today’s Hot Fix.

Furthermore, in recognition of everyone’s great patronage and in light of the feedback we have received so far, we aim to make additional investments on our infrastructure in time for patch 4.2 and address the fundamental issue of the plot shortages by creating additional wards in Lavender Beds, the Goblet, the Mist, and Shirogane.

We have received various feedback from players worldwide with regard to how they should be added and after we have taken these into consideration, we will make an announcement at a later date, outlining the number of new wards and details such as how they will be sold.

In order to prevent speculative purchases, we will probably refrain from releasing information regarding the plot purchasing feature until the very last minute. We kindly ask for your understanding and patience on this until we can provide you with these details.

I hope you will all continue to enjoy the various new content added in patch 4.1!
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Or Large plots should be FC only plots

Thank you for responding hopefully you can fixed housing system where one user can't buy multiple plots.:cool:

One solution would be this:

(Instance house/or maybe even plot housing)
Have an NPC that sells ghost plots. Meaning paying for a plot that doesn't exist in the game. So long you have the money you can just pay it.
Pros: Zero randomnesses, Zero obstructions and 100% availability so long you have the GIL.

[If instance]
Then once it is paid, you will immediately receive the plot

[If normal plot]
Then once it is paid, you wait for the next "Ghost housing implementation patch day" where Square Enix will launch those houses for people used the NPC to buy the house. That way there will be no oversupply and won't stress the server. You will get it eventually maybe wait for a month or two instead of never getting it. This will also give you (developers) time to put in plots/wards that will balance out demand/supply. Everyone will get a house, so long they can pay for it. That should be the only ceiling of getting the house.

Also, 1 house for personal and 1 for FC. This is key.

I really don't see any way of fixing this issue beyond making it to the point where you can only have 1 house per server / account. If you give everyone the option to have 1 F.C. house AND 1 personal, they'll just use an alt to make an F.C. house to have two. That will still be a major problem on servers where the population matches or exceeds plot availability. 1 per server seems reasonable to me. If you play on multiple servers to do things with friends then why not? But right now it's silly. Looking at Cactuar I know that 2 large houses are owned by known bots, ((Who have been reported multiple times with no consequences)), and that at least one person has a Large, Medium and Small house across 3 characters in the same ward. Ideally I think everyone should be allowed to have housing. Honestly I don't know why it's not instanced. I understand S.E. want that feeling of a neighbourhood, but most people don't hang around outside their houses. It's quite rare that you get that attitude.

Thank you so much for replying and giving us the good news about more wards. My only request is please do more than just a couple of new wards. Ideally at LEAST double the amount.
You candor is appreciated. I look forward to 500 more of Shirogane plot 30/60 :p

We appreciate the time you took to listen to our feedback. It feels great knowing that we listened to, thank you so much, Yoshi.

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

and how they will be sold after reviewing said feedback.

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This is everything.

- allocate certain wards (or subdivisions) for Free Company housing only.
- limit 1 personal and 1 FC house per user account
- allow sharing of personal house across all characters on a single user account
- limit FC house purchases to 4, 8, 24 active players relative to plot size

that's the bare minimum if everything else with the housing system remains the same.

Thank you for the official response Yoshi!

Change apartment to Condominium

The condominium will be a duplex type condo meaning there will be two floors and will be the size of a small house. A balcony can be purchased as an upgrade for gardening.

Put fun into getting a condo, you can add Condominium utility which everyone in that condo unit can share these utilities, these utilities would be:

1) A gym - training dummies for everyone to use
2) A SWIMMING POOL (So people can swim and stuff)
3) Workshop (Where people can use crafting station for a small fee
4) BBQ pit! People can buy food there and be a gather spot for people to chill and meet with her condominium owners!
5) ChocoPark (Carpark) where you can park your chocobo there and do Chocobo stuff
6) Condo transport to people to Exploratory Voyages.

These will help because you will then eliminate the need for people to get their own house because they can do everything in it!~
PLUS IT IS AN INSTANCE thus helping with the server stress if any.

Hello Yoshida-san. Thank you for delivering this statement and expressing a desire to help fix the housing situation with consideration to player's feedback. It has given a lot of us a glimmer of hope in an otherwise dreadful situation.

I'd like to offer up a suggestion on, not necessarily fixing the housing shortage, but helping with what I think is one of the core problems. Copy pasted below:


"I can definitely understand Yoshi's decision to have housing be exclusive content... but I think this should not extend to certain features that extend to larger aspects of the game, namely: gardening, airships, and workshop access. If they can make it so that individual players and FCs won't miss out on these features even if they can't acquire a house, I think that will help a lot, and then houses can be kept as is as mostly a vanity feature.

Instead of instancing housing, make instanced gardens/airship stations/workshops.

Maybe have players go to the BTN guild in Gridania for gardening. Access a terminal in the airship landings to manage and deploy your airships. Give players access to Cid's workshop for workshop crafting."


Once again, thank you for taking action, and I hope you guys can come to a good solution. Godspeed.

I would like to be able to select which size I want for my house. I mean, size would be not defined automatically, it's the player who choose which he wants.
Of course, the prize goes with the size as now.
I know plots would be resize to support this, but It could resolve some problems (not enough big & medium houses).

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Originally Posted by SendohJin

This is everything.
- limit 1 personal and 1 FC house per user account

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I am inclined to agree, but the question is:

How are they going to handle all of those people who already own 16 plots or 30 plots in one ward division? Like will they refund the houses? What if they are inactive for a while and so forth?

Thank you Yoshi P for willing to look at our feedback and come up with a solution that will hopefully make the masses happy. I do agree that people should have a limit per account. And there should be a way that we can let our alts be tenants

Thanks Yoshi! I knew we could count on you. YOU THE MAN!!!!!

Hello Yoshi P. and FFXIV Devs, As someone who has supported FFXIV since its original launch and one who went to school for Game Development I'd like to take a few dozen minutes out of my day to give some suggestions that I hope you read so that maybe one of them will help you shape the world we all enjoy and love.

1) While the current housing scene is functional as a place where you can display furnishings and hang out with friends, it lacks the feeling that housing would typically have; Community. Far more often than not there is little to no engagement with your fellow residents and neighbors, making the purpose of an entire ward of houses rather than a completely instanced experienced rather unclear at best. With this in mind you would have two options to remedy the issue, either A) Do away with wards and shared area housing and opt for purely instanced based housing, which has the benefit of ensuring that 100% of players would be able to own a house, or B) Make the housing districts feel *alive*. To achieve this would be a somewhat simple task truth be told, and some of the techniques used in this could also make every other city and area feel alive as well. Option B is the option I will expand on as it has great potential and would improve the experience, not destroy it.

With this patch you added swimming to the areas, and along with it you added NPC's that randomly sit around in the water swimming. This is the launch points for this concept. NPC's play a crucial role in making the world of Hydaelyn feel alive. Adding in NPC's within city and sanctuary areas provides a feel of activity and liveliness, but having them stand in one spot while repeating a small loop of animations can create quite the opposite effect. Rather than this, if each NPC had a 24 Eorzea Hour schedule of actions, where they also disappear into buildings from time to time, this would create that aforementioned feeling of life. Add to this interactivity with NPC's, where at set times per Eorzean day they sell exclusive or discounted items, repair gear for a reduced price, affix materia for a reduced price, etc, players will engage with the zone more and travel around the estates for these boons, bumping into one another and perhaps chatting and meeting new friends.

Additionally, there currently lacks much of a point for players to go around to another player's housing and either tend to their crops, feed their chocobos, or simply engage any house that is not their own. The reason for this is that Players do not benefit from these actions in any way whatsoever. By nature the human species has a desire to not waste their own time, and while helping others is a great thing we all strive to do, if we obtain nothing for it then it is disadvantageous to spend time doing it. I would propose then that upon doing beneficial actions for other players, either by tending to or fertilizing other players crops, feeding and training their Chocobo's, or perhaps in new and other unique ways, players would then obtain an amount of tokens based on the action in question (actions that require the player to use items of their own would give a higher yield of tokens). You could then create an exchange system with the NPC's of the zone for exclusive items like I mentioned before, and use these tokens used as the currency (perhaps used for all exchanges between them?).

I am aware that based on lore there is little reason for NPC's to be in these housing districts as they are designed to be used by adventurers only, but that does not mean that NPC's can't have jobs that they work there, giving the Adventurers the quality of life that is expected in that area (for instance cleaning the walk ways, tending to the grass and plant life, selling cuisine, etc). If you were to utilize this system I can assure you that players would not only enjoy it, but use it immensely.

2) While I know not the limitations of your current servers I do know that players can load vast maps and effects on their home computers. As the years advance this will only become a more and more true statement. I believe that at this point players can quite easily load the housing areas and have a large amount of RAM, Video Memory, and Processing power to spare. That is why the limit of only 30 houses per ward is somewhat crippling. A residential area in the offline world is expansive and filled with many of the *same kind of house/area allocated per house*. While having three different sizes of house is appealing, I believe that in the current set up it strains the amount of players you can give housing in each ward as well as taking away from a feeling of progression with your house itself. The solution to this is separated into parts, but in this point I only wish to posit that there could and should be more houses per ward, perhaps even double the amount. If that means making a bigger and redesigned map, then so be it.

3) The second part of this then comes to the house sizes and what would happen to current residents if they were to be changed. First and foremost, as is currently the case the player should be buying a *plot of land*, but this should be separate from the size of the house. I would suggest that players are given the option of what size house they'd like to build on the land, which would also mean that *they can always upgrade to a larger house later on when they have more gil*. The sizes of the plots should be slightly larger than medium plots, but smaller than large plots, and all consistent and the same price (5 million gil?). Players would essentially be able to choose between having a large house and small yard, medium house and medium yard, or a small house and a large yard. There would then be gil prices based on the size of the house they desire, equating to the current price of houses in the end. This gives a great amount of customization to the players, customization I believe they would enjoy immensely.

4) With the previous two points in mind there would then arise the problem of the displacement of current residents. One could even call it the Housing Calamity. If in the event the team decided to change to this system, there would be a simply solution. Refund them 100% of their house's price, then allow them to purchase a plot in the same ward they were in before any other purchases are made. This "Reclaiming" period of time could be up to a month, after which the new houses go up for sale to all players. This would allow the new system to be in place while not neglecting nor upsetting the previous residents. Furthermore, it is a well known fact that fake/alt/secondary FC's and Alt characters acquire multiple the houses in the housing districts. To alleviate these issues, making a player only able to own *one house per world server per account* would free up quite a few houses to other players, while *making an FC's house demolish time limit shorter than single player housing as well as making a requirement of at least 10 players in the FC* would make it so that only active FC's with a good amount of members that require a house would be able to have one. As for whether a plot is single player housing or FC housing, I would make a small ammendment to my earlier statement that was intended to provide clarity of the idea, and introduce 10 plots per ward that are exclusive to FC's while the other 50 are single player only. The FC plot would be larger than the single player housing, perhaps by a magnitude of two. This would make sense as an FC is composed of many individuals, whereas single players are own their own or with a few other friends.

5) Even though this would be an improvement on the current housing system, it still leaves many without the opportunity to purchase a home. That is where Ishgard would come in. There's no housing district for Ishgard because they are opposed to outsiders, perhaps less so in recent times yet still enough to not desire a flood of adventurers into their city. But what if they didn't have to? As we all know, not all that far from Ishgard are certain lands that are more unique than most. I talk of course about the Sea of Clouds and Churning Mists, where land floats within the sky. Perhaps if Ishgardeans were to stumble across a large amount of floating rock and shear it into large plot sized land, players could reside on them! Indeed, this would be beneficial to all and form the phased instance housing. Just like apartments there can be a vast amount of these houses, all independent of one another. FC's and single players alike would be able to purchase a floating slab of land to build upon in their respective sizes. You could visit the houses just like apartments to ensure that players in this "district" would be able to accumulate the benefit tokens without traveling to one of the other four housing areas. This would create a way for a vast amount of the player base who miss out on buying or being able to afford a house in other zones an opportunity to still become the proud owner of a place they can call home.

6) Finally I come to my last main point. How would players and FC's be purchasing houses? To this I only need say one word, Auctions. If houses were to run on an auctioning system it would give all players a chance to snag their favourite housing plot. It is a simple system to create would make a great deal of players extremely happy, even if only because it allows them a chance rather than having to deal with post patch login issues and losing their chance altogether. Ishgard and Apartments, as well as FC Private Chambers, could still follow an instant purchasing model, as the amount of these available is already vast in size.

Overall I of course do not expect all nor any of these ideas to be implemented, but if any of you on the development team read this I would implore you to consider them and to use them in your creative process to find the ideal way in your own eyes to improve the housing in the game going forward into the years.

Happy Adventuring everyone and may Hydaelyn's light always guide you.

OMG!! Thank you! I'm glad your willing to hear your fans out and work on a resolution! :D

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Originally Posted by Aldotsk

I am inclined to agree, but the question is:

How are they going to handle all of those people who already own 16 plots or 30 plots in one ward division? Like will they refund the houses? What if they are inactive for a while and so forth?

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What if this system started once you logged in? For example tomorrow they implement 1 FC and personal house per account you have 30 days to decide but then let's say you didn't log in before the implemention for say 2 weeks that 30 day timer doesn't start until the next time you log in.

If you have the gil, you should be able to get a house size of your choice, no matter what.

That is the only acceptable outcome.

I agree that the most logical solution is instanced housing. But I also understand that there's a desire for that whole 'neighborhood' feeling. I haven't actually seen that anywhere, but I can see why people want the option.

So, IF the decision is to keep on with things as they are, I would suggest a 3-phase roll out process on new wards.

Phase 1 - Relocations only, and to same size plots only. This has a net loss of zero, you end up with exactly the same open plots after the relocations.

Phase 2 - Relocations only, to different sized plots. This has a net loss of zero total plots, though the number of different sizes will shift.

Phase 3 - New purchases only. No relocations allowed, the new buyers have access to the same number of plots as were open at the beginning of phase 1.

This should keep some of the mad scramble down, gives a bit of a bonus to people who have already owned land, and still allows all the new buyers a crack at the same number of open plots.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

If you have the gil, you should be able to get a house size of your choice, no matter what

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Part 1 - Instance and Ghost housing

(Instance house/or plot housing)
Have an NPC that sells ghost plots. Meaning paying for a plot that doesn't exist in the game. So long you have the money you can just pay it.
Pros: Zero randomnesses and 100% availability so long you have the GIL.

[If instance]
Then once it is paid, you will immediately receive the plot

[If normal plot]
Then once it is paid, you wait for the next "Ghost housing implementation patch day" where Square Enix will launch those houses for people used the NPC to buy the house. That way there will be no oversupply and won't stress the server. You will get it eventually maybe wait for a month or two instead of never getting it. This will also give you (developers) time to put in plots/wards that will balance out demand/supply. Everyone will get a house, so long they can pay for it.

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

If you have the gil, you should be able to get a house size of your choice, no matter what.

That is the only acceptable outcome.

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One hundred times this.

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Originally Posted by Arallell

'neighborhood' feeling

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Change apartment to Condominium

The condominium will be a duplex type condo meaning there will be two floors and will be the size of a small house. A balcony can be purchased as an upgrade for gardening.

Condominium utility which everyone in that condo unit can share these utilities:

1) A gym - training dummies for everyone to use
2) A SWIMMING POOL (So people can swim and stuff)
3) Workshop (Where people can use crafting station for a small fee
4) BBQ pit! People can buy food there and be a gather spot for people to chill and meet with her condominium owners!
5) ChocoPark (Carpark) where you can park your chocobo there and do Chocobo stuff
6) Condo transport to people to Exploratory Voyages.

These will help because you will then eliminate the need for people to get their own house because they can do everything in it!~
PLUS IT IS AN INSTANCE thus helping with the server stress if any.