Gardening gated behind Housing is not fun.

Gardening is a rich, complex and very fun activity. As an average player, I just want to be able to garden.

Gardening has previously been gated behind FC Housing. You could garden, if you had an FC House, but then you'd have to vie with diverse motives of an entire FC for what to grow.

So I've been looking forward to the "Personal Housing" patch, as Yoshi said there'd be gardening plots available. What an effing fiasco this is. I won't rehash all the issues. Suffice to say that the opportunity for personal gardening is not available for the majority of average players.

Look SE, all I want is a shack, with three 4x4 garden plots so I can finally enjoy gardening.

Bypass the housing issue by adding community gardens. Let players complete quests to access the community gardens. Make a gil-sink out of it if you want. Just make this content available either by intelligent design or by fixing this laughable nightmare of personal housing implementation.

*** Edits with player suggestions for remedies
1) Instanced apartments in starter cities with balcony to house a garden plot
2) Gardening at Botanist Guild, where players can interact with one another

I agree, but the size of the garden will probably have to be a little smaller. 4x4 garden is like 16 plants, and with 3 thats 48 plants. Even the large houses can only hold 24 slots, there would be no point in owning a large house if an individual can have a larger garden then them. They should at least give a slight benefit to owning a house. Since the smallest house can hold up to 8. An individual should probably get a single garden that can hold up to 8.

I agree with you ZS. The 3 by 4x4 request was hyperbolic, to show how appealing gardening is for me as well as my desire for it. I understand the practical implementation would be much less, and like your suggestion. Regardless, getting gardening into the hands of players, and out from behind the confines of housing would be appreciated.

I also agree with this on the topic of just wanting a shack. I like gardening, but not as much as you do. However, I agree with simply giving me a cabana or shack to call home and a lot of land to do something with like gardening (I want 2 4x4 plots personally) a stable, item creation tables, and enough space to put up trees with hammocks in them so all my friends can chill at my place.

However, I also want a stongbox or vault with a 1000 item storage capacity too.

What they should do is give everyone a free "apartment", in one of the 3 starters cities. Your apartment will be located at your starter city, but can be changed once you reach the other cities. It will be pretty much like the personal rooms now for the FC / or the housing from FFXI. But they should also add a small Terrace that allows you to place 1 garden just like the small houses right now, I didn't like how it was in XI where you had to garden in a dark dingy room. It would also be nice if they allowed us put a stable for our chocobo, so we dont need an FC house to change our birds color. Some of the other amenities like those housing NPCs will probably be excluded, cause it is weird to have some random Merchant staying in your house 24/7.

The current houses will be an extra for those that have the extra money for extra gardens or whatever.

Just a thought:
Would crafting within the inn, and if each person was allowed a small patch of soil within the botanist guild being implemented be something that would everyone would like?

@Bushido_Brown

The Inn idea I don't think they would do since it would make people camp in there for crafting reasons. Just a guess.

However, the gardening at the Botanist Guild as a separate place, but allowed for all players to interact with each other while doing it would be really cool to me.

I remember my first thoughts about the botanist guild when I went and signed up "Cool, we get to garden right here. Very easy to get to and use. Very cool"

However, it wasn't setup that way and its cool, but a really nice idea.

Love the ideas! Thanks all. Updated top of thread with the Apartment Balcony and Botanist Guild suggestions.

If you want to garden they put up the 5m and buy a personal house like the rest of us did. I already made 1m back on my first batch of plants.

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Originally Posted by Zumi

If you want to garden they put up the 5m and buy a personal house like the rest of us did. I already made 1m back on my first batch of plants.

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So you suggest that all players got 5m to buy a personal house? I bought a medium house for 30mill and yes I got 8x8 gardening but this is so rare for the average player like you said about 5mill...

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Originally Posted by Zumi

If you want to garden they put up the 5m and buy a personal house like the rest of us did. I already made 1m back on my first batch of plants.

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More like 10m now since you have to pay the ransom to people holding small houses hostage. Assuming your server is like Hyperion where the smalls were all bought within 6 hours of maint end.

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Originally Posted by SeraviEdalborez

More like 10m now since you have to pay the ransom to people holding small houses hostage. Assuming your server is like Hyperion where the smalls were all bought within 6 hours of maint end.

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...Hours? On Balmung they were gone within minutes. By time I managed to patch the game right after maint they were all taken.

Gardening is no more a gated content then Coil is. Coil requires that you have at least one level 50 battle job and that you have a certain amount of gear, if you do not put this minimum amount of time and effort in, you simply are NOT doing coil.

Gardening is similar. It requires you have at least one gathering or crafting job at level 50 and that you spend a certain amount of time trying to make gil. If you have a level 50 gatherer, even if its not melded, and you use that job effectively, you can make 2-4 mil gil pretty easily. Crafting is even easier to make gil but it requires more economical knowledge, research, and some investments. If you are just gathering "casually," then it will take you longer but that is YOUR choice. Even if you have a job or whatever, your time is not any more valuable than anyone else's, you should NOT be getting the same treatment as those who have put more time into the game. As long as you keep at it and save gil, which is ridiculously easy to do in this game since there's nothing else to spend your gil on, you will slowly but surely get there. This is assuming that there will be enough housing space to go around, which I admit is not a safe assumption. If you're just gonna sit around, expecting housing and gardening to be given to you as entitlements that you're simply not gonna get them or at least do not deserve to.

There are other ways to get gil besides gathering and crafting but if you are doing thing legit, they are probably the longer routes.

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Originally Posted by Ruddi

So you suggest that all players got 5m to buy a personal house? I bought a medium house for 30mill and yes I got 8x8 gardening but this is so rare for the average player like you said about 5mill...

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Yes, that's exactly what I expect. If the average player don't have 2-4 mil gil then it just means the average player spent almost no time or effort trying to make gil. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a game expecting players to put some time into the game in order to gain access to other contents of the game, not like gardening is even a big game content btw. Like I've already said, other "endgame" content works in a similar way.

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Originally Posted by PenutButter

Gardening is no more a gated content then Coil is.

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There are no limits on how many people on your server can attempt Coil.

There are limits on how many on your server can "attempt" housing.

I'm curious. Are FC leader not letting their members use the gardens?

There's nothing stopping anyone from doing coil. Limited house plots are stopping anyone who wants to garden.

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Originally Posted by Jhanavish

Gardening is a rich, complex and very fun activity.

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I can understand wanting to garden without a house for the items, and I support that, but this I don't understand.

From my experience, I just plant something and wait a few days for it to finish, occasionally putting fishmeal and tending to it like once a day. Not something I'd usually call engaging or fun gameplay. :x

The sad part is, I've run around my housing ward (and some others) every so often and am appalled at the lack of utilization... Chocobo stables with no chocobos in it, hay all over the ground (dirtiest setting), and you guessed it, unused garden patch(es). Been like this for a while for some of them. :(

Also, I'm referring to the homes/wards that have existed for months now. Not the newly bought ones.

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Originally Posted by Lissandra

The sad part is, I've run around my housing ward (and some others) every so often and am appalled at the lack of utilization... Chocobo stables with no chocobos in it, hay all over the ground (dirtiest setting), and you guessed it, unused garden patch(es). Been like this for a while for some of them. :(

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I agree with the unused garden part, but unused stables is a little more understandable. Most people only use it to color their chocobo, and for training, once you train them you can withdraw them out right away. I like taking my chocobo along with me so he get XP when I kill stuff, he is level 10 now, i'm trying to get some onions to feed him, but they are too expensive to buy. Like 1 mil for each one.

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Originally Posted by Lissandra

The sad part is, I've run around my housing ward (and some others) every so often and am appalled at the lack of utilization... Chocobo stables with no chocobos in it, hay all over the ground (dirtiest setting), and you guessed it, unused garden patch(es). Been like this for a while for some of them. :(

Also, I'm referring to the homes/wards that have existed for months now. Not the newly bought ones.

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Well the problem is gardening just isn't that useful unless you are a Culinarian.

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Originally Posted by ZodiacSoldier

I agree with the unused garden part, but unused stables is a little more understandable. Most people only use it to color their chocobo, and for training, once you train them you can withdraw them out right away. I like taking my chocobo along with me so he get XP when I kill stuff, he is level 10 now, i'm trying to get some onions to feed him, but they are too expensive to buy. Like 1 mil for each one.

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That does sound annoying. Are FC not letting you use the gardening to make this stuff?

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Well the problem is gardening just isn't that useful unless you are a Culinarian.

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I can't think of any reason you'd need it for culnarian if you have botany. Maybe I'm missing something?
My FC mainly uses it for chocobo food and Jute (weaver). Also minions.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

Well the problem is gardening just isn't that useful unless you are a Culinarian.

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Chocobo dye fruit.
Krakka roots / misc chocobo feed
Thav Onions.
Broombrush
Jute
Glazenut
Minions

All things that gardening yields that are desirable crossbreeds (or straight in the case of Krakka). None of them are used by CUL. Gardening in and of itself is the worst and least-efficient way for a CUL to get their mats.

I stand corrected but it's still just stuff that is used for housing features and the third time I've asked now, why aren't you able to use the FC garden?

If you're planting crops you may as well also be crossbreeding. Which means taking up an entire bed for one person's project.

When you let just anybody plant, they might do inefficient things like 8 beds of Krakka roots with G1 La Noscea soil, or plant random lowbie vegetables that are extremely easy to gather and do not yield any crossbreeds of any value whatsoever.

This is extremely wasteful use of time-limited resources. This is generally why FCs (that I know of) do not let just anyone use the garden (if anyone even cares about it to begin with). Or worse (if you have it enabled for ranks that have no gardening knowledge), destroying crops that cost weeks or thousands of gil to get, to make room for their little side-project.

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Originally Posted by Dyvid

That does sound annoying. Are FC not letting you use the gardening to make this stuff?

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Our FC actually has an open garden, so people can plant and take anything they want. But I prefer to use the garden in my house just so I have control over it.