Player Housing question

So Super quick question. Does anyone truly know why Player housing is so limited? Were they trying to mimic real life situations where there is a housing shortage in a small regions? What is the best way to go look for available plots? It seems the Lavender beds are always taken.

I am just a little sad I am stuck with a tiny apartment because there is no plots to buy a house even though I have the Gil for it. (took the game more seriously in SB so now in SHB I feel like I have the gil to do whatever I want.) Now if I can have a Multi story Condo in my apartment that would a bit better. It being large enough to be a house but functions more like a really expensive condo.

My Ideal housing is just to have a place where I can see my retainers going around my home doing household chores or lunging around.

But first I would just like to have a house to call my own.

Only the developers can say for certain, and they don't seem to like to talk about the topic much.

One would think they could create an infinite amount of instanced housing for people that don't care about having/seeing player-neighbors, but they seem to be dead-set on the ward system. I hope improvements are in the pipeline, but I certainly haven't heard anything about it.

Personally, I refuse to buy an house so long as the inactivity-house-destruction timer is in place.

Initially the player base was significantly smaller and the cost of property was way waaaay higher as it was supposed to be difficult/prestigious to have a house. In addition to the populations exploding on every server across the board, housing prices were lowered to silly levels (back in HW I think?) so now theres too many characters that have the gil/gc rank for a house but not enough houses to go around.

The best way to gun for a house is probably to join one of the housing discords and pay attention to pings when a plot gets vacated so you can camp with the other hopefuls.

I imagine it just has to do with resources and time. It's said a lot about other memory related things too, so I imagine especially the resources to develop the system are compiled on the huge task of adding/entirely reworking other core systems (so in effect having to make two huge systems, and not break everything in the process lol - so not only time consuming and expensive but also scary XD).

They made the system way back when the game was less popular and it was for FC and due to the price it was okay (just a lot of people upset it cost so much), lots of FC without houses back then but some hope they might get one some day in the far future (no player housing). Then at the addition of player housing and reduced prices it was shown that the system was not prepared in the slightest, and the issues with it have been on going since.

I imagine because they already invested resources in a system, that they probably built this system in this way because of other core systems and how they work, and to make an entirely new one requiring many many hours of reworking and adjusting things leading to a lot of time and money.. For something that they're just hoping they can get away with by helping hobble the current system along.

I say hobble because all I can see when I think FFXIV housing is:

• Limited quantity - not everyone gets a house or a house they wanted - missed opportunity because housing can be a huge glue / grounding for players in a long lasting world (this also goes to being unable to hold onto a house if you take a break)
• Limited locations - even if you get a house it might not be in a place you'd have wanted
• Limited themes - because a new zone has to be created each time a new area is added and it's an area that's shared, and a large amount of data generated for the open space if even just one person is there.. you don't get new locations unlike if they allowed you to control your own area (like if you thought Azim Steppe was cool but someone else thought it was lame, its fine because the area was reusing some assets and it's just for you so no sweat off their back)
• Limited size - even if you get a house it might not be in the size you'd have wanted, not only that but the ability to add new size houses and plots and progression potential is greatly if not entirely hampered (since the space is shared and fixed)
• Limited player creativity - because you're sharing outdoors, and the system from in doors and outdoors is similar, you can't place objects at whatever height or scale you'd have wanted
• Limited granular/smooth gradient progression - unlike being able to start out in a small investment and go from there based on your means (inn room->+floor->+balcony->+exterior->etc etc) you have disjointed steps that don't flow together. (Like a easy purchase of a FC room doesn't flow into an apartment purchase which is an entirely separate entity, which doesn't flow into the purchase of a house, and even flow between houses can be disjointed as you have to repurchase and meet certain limitations depending on what you're trying to do)
• Limited presentation and object options - similar to theme but because this place is shared there are certain objects and options that just can't be added (like if they added final zone objects it might cause a lot of spoiler issues in the housing areas, but not so if it was personalized)
• Limited max power - because you share a space the system has to load other people too, reducing your own potential power if it had not had to do that
• Limited feature accessibility - features bound to housing block those who don't have it, beyond just not being able to have a house
• Limited new feature and slowed content additions - because not everyone has one they have to be careful what they add and how often they add it, already FC suffer without one (if everyone could have a house we could have more interesting features added and more often since more would be there to benefit)

All that so a small group of players can see each other's houses and have a neighborhood. . . . I say small because even though I visit housing everyday (except maybe weekends), and the vast majority of people I see on the forums/in-game say, that housing is a ghost town. Often I hear counter to the ghost town comment "if you made events it wouldn't be" but you could do that in a personalized instance too. Worse yet there are many times when people are annoyed at the design of another person's house. So sharing space so you can have a benefit that very few people get and even when they get it not everyone even cares to have it... It hurts. I know some feel it's worth it so.. I don't want to see a dalamud drop on it (for their sake, personally for myself I would lol). . but it just hurts, and so beyond leaving the old system for those who love it (though I don't) I'd like a very nearly dalamud "reborn" on the system. The cost of neighborhoods is not worth it. . imo. Of course its not fair to entirely blame the issues on the fact they were trying to make a neighborhood, I'm sure a lot of it had to do with the resources, time and systems they had available to them at that time and didn't anticipate these issues would happen.

To me housing is first limited job :p before blue mage, and the best salt mine that's been going on for ages haha. And no I don't intend to put my salt pickaxe and hat away lol. I believe with a strong system SE's housing would be the best and even if they cant muster it for FFXIV I hope their next mmo is prepared, because their graphical presentation of zones / objects / and themes they could put in these places are the best (already you can see the system shine with interior decoration, just people limited mostly by # of objects they can use, scale/height, and new objects that might be added).

It is one of the few things (maybe the only, I can't think of anything else right now) that actively makes me disappointed; although, I know at the same time it's not something anyone can snap their fingers to fix. Much worse in that imagine if they put in all the work and money the return isn't that great... that'd be a huge gut punch, and I imagine any order to work on this system "again" would come with serious trepidation, especially if they feel people will just accept their current system and they can spend those resources else where (which for the most part we do lol). Still I'll hope...

The original idea I think they were going for was to have FC's hang out at their house, and have a thriving instance full of neighbors hanging out. This...hasn't worked out the best.

Also something to do with Gardens needing to be in a constantly loaded instance to grow properly, or something.

Alot of the things being brought up can probably be attributed to the "ghosts of 1.0" that they are still struggling to overcome/replace little pieces at a time.

Probably to discourage people from un-subbing periodically.