How to fix the housing issue

So as we all know housing plots sold within 5 min (shocker) but at this point the Ward system is flawed and really isn't going to be fix by adding more wards as the player base grows so will the strain on the servers and with the way they talk about them servers we are lucky they haven't caught fire.

So what's the answer? Instance housing? That's one way it could be solved and it would open up the whole cross world free company idea in theory players from other worlds could meet at one point, you also have the added benefit of not worrying about server stress from other houses as it would just be one house to focus on and you could make the plot size one size fits all regardless of it being small medium or large.

Yet this does pose a problem doesn't it what to do about the housing wards? I suppose you could just leave them or you could simply remove them but then all that work would go to waste one possible way is to change the wards to private housing only and have all Free company houses in instances but again you still have the problem of supply and demand for private housing.

I fear the only way forward is either add the bear minimum of 100 wards per server (this may not even be possible0 or tearing down the ward system completely and bring in instance housing which plenty of older and new mmos already do or come up with something completely different to fix the problem.

Bottom line is the player base isn't happy and a unhappy player base will only listen to so many excuses for so long before they look else where (1.0 should be a good example) Please at least consider these options and please if anyone else has better ideas post them below as complaining wont solve it but suggestions might.

Yea I rather have instanced housing than like no housing at all could make it sort alike appartments attached to wards too , that way you could still go out to the warded areas like the new swiming areas etc, the only other thing i could think of is a premium sub area kinda like the extra retainer per month ide be willing to pay a tad more as long it isn't like ridiculous just so we can get a large house for my fc but how to price and would people feel about such a system i am not sure.

apts are a joke and not an answer to the housing crisis they need to get rid of them if they think it will appeal to the masses who want a real house, hell its 200k cheaper to join a guild and buy a room there its the same amount of space. FFXIV needs to fix this mess though i might not be against a premium sub area but not at the price a month of game time, 5 bucks maybe but not more. They need more wards or personal instanced housing like they do in SWTOR, wildstar and the likes where you go your plot and you can upgrade at your pleasure.

Could you explain exactly what instanced houses are? I'm not familiar with the concept.

I want a house with a yard that people can cross through, go in, have neighbours, etc. Otherwise, might as well get an apartment or an FC room.

Agree. I believe -at least- every FC should be entitled to a small/med/large instance housing due to these reasons:

1. FC house content
2. House gives ingredients

But how to prevent FC house abuse? (e.g. make X alts, get each to lead an FC, get FC to max level, now you have X company ships/garden that'll produce gazillion of mats and break markets!)

-> Make large instance housing monthly subs just like additional retainer. But not $40 subs, more like $5 small/$7 med/$10 large. This way an average FC only need 10-20 people to donate $0.5-1 per month which is totally affordable. To make it easier maybe use Crysta (people buy Crysta, submit in game for their FC akin to FC chest)

How about current housing?
Keep it! Also keep it free of subs. This will keep the current status of elite homeowners.

This way, we satisfy the need of two groups of people:

1. What I believe is Yoshi-P's original intention (CMIIW?) which is to give players who survived housing savage and purchased Shiro/Goblet/Mist/Lavender a sense of "achievements". Basically these group of people will still be special as their pretty houses are visible/make others awe/jelly, panoramic view/hot springs, and they don't have to pay subs. It -is- difficult to get 60 houses in a ward for your FC, it requires lots of effort, you have to pay attention to housing market, things average players don't do.

(continue below..)

2. Those that only want FC house and content and don't really care about (or can deal with) the fact that no one can visit their house/it's not located near hot springs/market boards. (I'm in this group)

I'm a college student barely making minimum wage and I'm down donating $1-3 per month for my FC.

I mean, SE, come on. There's a lot of $$ business here for such a little effort. Say there are 250 FC without house per server right now, that's like 66 servers x 250FC x $7 med house = extra $115k PER MONTH! You could even extend this to allow indiv. players get one too! Say 2-5k people per server get a med house, that's extra 1-2 MILLION DOLLARS.

That's like getting extra 80k-160k FF14 subscriber ($12/month) I honestly don't understand why SE won't do this!

OR! How about we get balconies in our Apartments so I can garden? *waggles brows* Huh? Huh?!

Two ideas that I've been thinking about.

The first is an instanced housing option could be focused around the FC.

Each FC could spend gil/money(maybe as an additional sub like extra retainers) to get a housing instance. It starts off as just a house, but maybe they can invest in it to expand it into an FC ward with plots that members could purchase (still a similar gil sink).

It'd give an option to ensure that FCs can get access to housing and also offer people a way to have a ward with their fc. So people that want to single player purchase a ward can do so.


The other is to just move all player housing to instances while FC housing takes over the wards again, but with some options to have a neighbourhood which takes those instances and maps them onto ward maps if possible.