Housing post, and survey

Hello everyone! Z’ythe Nuhn of Maetus here

Like most players, I was a bit disappointed with the way the housing situation was handled on FFXIV and like so many other I’ve resigned myself to making a post here on the Reddit about it. I will, however, be posting on the Official Forums as well.

At the end of this post, you will be also seeing a Survey to convey your thoughts on my suggestions and observations. With that out of the way let's discuss how I do think after discussing this with about anyone willing to give me their opinion, we might alleviate the housing crisis.

Potential fixes

Option 1: More wards, and I mean a lot more. The idea of this would be to simply add more wards to the existing properties. However, based on what I’ve been seeing no less than 24 more wards would be able to suffice, that’s a considerable increase. But oh no, what about players who have the money for a large, or a medium plot?
This means that we still would have the problem of scarcity and that alone would cause this plan to likely fail. Players are still going to be angry about this.

Option 2: Redesign the housing size system. Don’t get me wrong, still include small, medium, and large plots. The idea behind this is that the layout would have to be redone, not a small task, but a needed one. All Houses that are currently medium and large would be grandfathered in. All plots, however, would be on larger plots of land, thus making it possible to upgrade their size after a sizeable contribution of gil. This would stop the fighting over plot sizes and instead allow players to determine how big of a house they needed. If you add this with far more wards being added you can alleviate a lot of the issues surrounding it.

Option 3: The Citadel System. I rather like the apartment system in the game, but it begs the question. Why is it limited to just players? What’s stopping us from expanding this system to include common areas, shops, hangout spots for Roleplayers, ect. In addition I would like to see medium and large apartments added and the FC offices added as well. Making a second building, much larger than the first that houses much larger interior plots for Free companies also allowing them to have access to the Balcony system (somewhat instanced outer areas that function as the outdoor area.), and workshops.

Option 4: Instanced housing. The community seems somewhat split on this one, and for good reason, I currently own a new small house and our FC owns the one right in front of it right by the beach in Shirogane; however, even though I’ve made quite a few friends as a result, I’m somewhat torn when I see players sad that they cannot own a house now due to the limited number of plots (The house we own personally is owned by my fiance, I ended up giving my plot to an FC in the Goblet.) Instanced housing could potentially fix this if done right. It’d also allow players to have a home ANYWHERE the devs could desire, it wouldn’t be hard to design a new landscape (not explorable per say) to allow a player a home in Ishguard, Doma, or Ala Mhigo.

Things that I think need to happen.

New plots or areas need to be restricted to players who do not own land on their account currently. This ensures only unhoused players are allowed to purchase land. Allow current players who own more than one to be grandfathered in, however; if they lose their plot on their current character they cannot purchase another one as long as one of their characters owns one.

Gardens need to be moved to 3 plots per property this reduces the advantage that large owners have over small owners in terms of gil making (Gardening is very profitable.)

The new plots need to be locked to FC’s for X amount of time. Many players will not like this idea for the fact of gaining a plot of land for their own personal use, but when I see the average size of an FC compared to a single player I know the needs of the many outweigh the needs of one. This idea could work quite well if paired with option 2. Free companies using this advantage should have a minimum number of players in them, and time that they have existed to gain this advantage (thus preventing abuse of this system)

Post your ideas in the comments below. Please keep all discussion mature.

Survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/F58T7RR

You could have wrote the first sentence requirements then posted and automatically edited it to get the full post in there. That is how a lot of us do it. But I gave you my opinion on this when you showed me the posts earlier on your laptop o.o

just edited it for that

When it comes to option 1, however if they changed the way housing works and made it 1 personal house, and 1 Free Company House (Even though it's communal property, if they went by who is the FC leader at the time, it may fix this issue.) per account and rather than per character, an addition of wards could work. However there would still be a server strain due to the instanced wards having to load in not only all the houses in the neighborhoods but also all of the decorations they have in their yards. But this is yet another matter.

I do like the redesign idea where you start out with a small but the yard could very well compensate for the ability to pay gill to up grade it to a medium and eventually a large. I think a lot would appreciate that because at least then everyone starts out with the same and can upgrade as they pool and or gain the income via it be a personal house or an FC house. However I also know that this would require time, funding and a reward of housing wards. Though if you pair it with the 1 personal house and one FC house per account or per account per server, this could work out well for everyone eventually. It would also take out the entitlement folk feel I think.

I also like your Citadel idea, and I'll expand on this in a moment. It would take a rework of apartments and how they work as well, but I also like the apartment system. Although I do see the problem being with apartments as they can't be upgraded in size as they're at least the top floor of a small house size wise I think. I may be wrong. If they had the ability to be upgraded in size, this would help and give people the ability to garden with a balcony option, this may placate some. You should also be allowed to add a tenate or at least your spouse (if anything) if you're married in game. I dunno about you but one of my favorite things to do is hang out in my husband's apartment if for nothing more than he's gotten better at decorating, but for his orchestion list. Gives me nice music to listen do while crafting and such when he's at work. Yet I couldn't go in if he forgot to lock it.

Now back to the Citadel idea. I understand it would be a different building for a Free Company and would give them all access to a room that they could all decorate provided permissions given. It would also give them a place where they could garden as well and have access to an airship and a workshop. This would help immensely but would probably have to be seperate from personal apartments and I'm not real sure how that would work or be implemented as of yet. It may have to be instanced, but I don't know. This would take more thought to work out in my head. (I'm a little distracted right now.)

As far as instanced housing goes, for personal houses I would and could agree with this but can also understand how it would upset folk. Back when we were on Gilgamesh when housing was first implemented, we did have some pretty cool neighbors. Yet these places (the wards) in these times today are rather dead as far as a neighborhood feel goes unless you have a friend or two in the ward that you could go visit. At least if it was instanced (unsure how they'd manage this) like maybe in your set of instances you could also have your friend(s) in the same instance with their houses? This sadly would take more of a toll on the servers and I'm not sure if it could be implemented in a way which it would feasibly work or work well. I understand the want of a feeling of community, yes, but if it's just people around the market board or summoning bells and no communication outside of that; it's really just an eclectic mess of people who don't socialize with one another. So I'm not really sure how they'd go about this section, simple as that. I love that our little house is across from our free company but I've friends there and they can visit me when I don't feel like socializing with the whole of the FC. Some days I have a day where I like to be in my own space with a couple of close friends.

Honestly with my Alts I don't mind owning an FC room or just an apartment, they're a character I don't use too often so they don't need a house or a garden, (Our FC doesn't allow everyone to access the garden for planting and the like depending on if the FC needs cross breeding mats for our Omni crafter to use.) after all, they're just strictly for RP and me to take a walk down memory lane through the story when I'm feeling nostalgic. Their FC rooms or apartments are strictly set up for RP or in most cases of the FC rooms it either becomes a crafting station or a room I donated to the FC as a space for the roleplayers to RP as an extension of the FC house. Think of it as a small room with spaces for like a library added on just in the next room if the FC main house is set up different and doesn't offer a library.

I can agree with Gardens needing to be upped to three plots per property, that would also probably curb the fighting for larger plots if even smalls were equal opportunity. Also all houses should be able to have the same amount of merchants in them too, (I.E: Mender, Item seller, person that sells the dark matters/dyes) I don't know if this has been changed, but it would be beneficial to a personal or an FC plot depending on what they were doing.

As far as the players with multiples being grandfathered in, and not being able to own anymore houses; this I can agree with but would like to make an addition of SE making it so that out of all the plots they own, they can only choose one house to keep and share with their alts. The other houses they owned (after they choose the one they want to keep) will have to be relinquished and where as I don't think they should get anything back for said plots, it may be in SE's best interest to at least reimburse them for what they had to relinquish. This would work if the 1 personal house per account or per account, per server was implemented. And then if they implemted the other idea of being able to upgrade any plot to a bigger one via a revamp of the yards, this would potentially work well.

I also agree to the x amount of time after relinqushing before ability to buy becomes available and that Free companies should at least have the minimum of 4-5 at best since it takes at least 4 to even start an FC to be able to buy a house for their FC.

I would also like to add that tenants on personal houses should be able to reset the demolish timer.

This is all I can think of atm, I may have missed something.

Just an FYI I made a mistake on your survey >.< You should write it as "personal house" when asking if you own a home. As the question was before the "Does your FC own a house?" question I clicked yes because as an FC owner I do own a house but I do not own a personal house.

Again I am going to have to say no to the 'FC Headstart' on plots for a couple of reasons. A single person FC or shell FC is going to take the plot the same way an average person would with the same results.

Also don't punish people simply trying to move their house, they are leaving an open property behind after all.

All plots should be the same size area-wise. You buy the size you want and are able to upgrade on that same plot without moving. This allows for house and outside item expansion as needed. Also, 1 house per account due to the horrible housing design here. If you run a FC then that should not count against your 1 per house. If they take my 1 and only medium house in the beds they will lose 4 accts from my family. That is the only thing that keeps us here.

Thank you all for your responses, everyone. So far almost all results I've seen have been mature and well written.