Housing plots need rent. Sound horrible? Consider these facts:

[Dante_V]

I don't agree with tax system at all. i wouldn't be against a penalty system for the purpose of vacating lots. Everyday your house goes unused by you or your FC you get charged $xx amount of gil for the "upkeep' of that property in your absence. once the cost in penalties exceeds a certain percentage of your housing value the house becomes forfeited and returns to the market.

Also the gil sink theory, while applicable in the economic understanding between rich and poor players doesn't hold much weight in the context of absent players as any money in hands of a player who is absent has zero purchase power and is essentially 100% out of the market unless the player returns at some point.

[Souljacker]

I don't agree with tax system at all. i wouldn't be against a penalty system for the purpose of vacating lots. Everyday your house goes unused by you or your FC you get charged $xx amount of gil for the "upkeep' of that property in your absence. once the cost in penalties exceeds a certain percentage of your housing value the house becomes forfeited and returns to the market.

I just don't even understand this mentality. Why can't we band together to demand what SE originally promised us (separate from FC, more affordable) instead of coming up with these elaborate ways to punish one another for not making housing their number one priority upon every single login? Are we playing a real estate mmo? Or should housing be a fun and entertaining side activity for those who enjoy it?

I just can't see anyone enjoying this content with the level of stress some folks want to add.

[GenJoe]

I just don't even understand this mentality. Why can't we band together to demand what SE originally promised us (separate from FC, more affordable) instead of coming up with these elaborate ways to punish one another for not making housing their number one priority upon every single login? Are we playing a real estate mmo? Or should housing be a fun and entertaining side activity for those who enjoy it?

I just can't see anyone enjoying this content with the level of stress some folks want to add.

Because the way SE decided to implement housing early on, it's not feasible to have 3,4, 5 times the wards we currently have just to satisfy demands.. We're working within a very finite system. If SE could magically come up with a way to add 24 more wards for each city, great.. What would be better is if they could consolidate the wards combine the main and subdivision, then double it to have 120 houses in each ward... We all have ideas on how housing could be better, but fact of the matter is, SE has already admitted that they can't just simply keep on adding more wards, at least not at a rate even remotely close to meeting the demand for housing..

You can blame SE for their shortcomings, it's very real.
But any change to Housing done at this point will be all an afterthought, you can't scrap the system entirely and start over from scratch, which is what doubling/tripling the wards will require.. Even separating FC/personal housing, I think it's too late to do that, they should've just waited to perfect the player housing before rushing it out intermingled with FC houses, but they didn't.. Too late to go back now.

[Souljacker]

Even separating FC/personal housing, I think it's too late to do that, they should've just waited to perfect the player housing before rushing it out intermingled with FC houses, but they didn't.. Too late to go back now.

You know, if ARR and Yoshi-P have taught us anything, it's never too late to scrap what didn't work and build it better than before. I'm holding out a small spark of hope (very small) that perhaps their silence is because they are working something up behind the scenes and all this will be a less than fond memory in a few months.

The level of complexity that this has introduced into the economy is dangerous. They are taking good steps by adjusting the power crafters have. The next step is cutting down the sheer number of reasons folks might want to turn to RMT

[StouterTaru]

They are taking good steps by adjusting the power crafters have. The next step is cutting down the sheer number of reasons folks might want to turn to RMT

I don't see the specialist and scrip systems doing that much to level out the playing field on crafting, and the only other way to reign in crafters is to make everything crafted worthless. The casual crafter can spend 3 months building up subpar gear with scrips to do recipes that have become slow selling and low profit, take that omnicrafters.

They are widening the gap between the dungeon runners and the top raiders, while trying to lower it between the casual crafter and the master crafter. The problem is the top tier raiders and the top tier crafters feed each other early in new content, you can't boost the top raiders without boosting the top crafters.

[GenJoe]

The only way to close the income gap between crafters and the rest of the population is to make crafting more accessible to a wider audience.. No amount of specialization or ease of master crafting will accomplish that.. Some people just don't want to craft, only way to change that is to make crafting completely trivial as a 1-click system and that's not what FF14's crafting system is all about.

You know, if ARR and Yoshi-P have taught us anything, it's never too late to scrap what didn't work and build it better than before.

I like your optimism, but note that 1.0 release of the game was a huge failure over every aspect of the game, it was the consensus among players and developers alike.
Now, this housing issue, it's just one small aspect of the game, very essential to some players, but still one aspect.. I hope SE fixes it too honestly, but I just don't see it happening.

Honestly, if SE could implement some kind of a trailer park-esque system where all houses are inherently instanced, but there are 3 zones (snowy/beachy/urban) that can each hold about 300-400 houses, so it would have to be about the size of Coerthas each but only make 1 copy of this zone, not multiple of the same stuff..

Then SE implements rents to have your instanced house take up an actual plot on these new housing zones, I would love that system.. Then each aetheryte to the house could have a code to be used, for example if you wanted to visit my house, you use the Snowy Housing area teleport and type in #400192, then whoosh you teleport right in front of my house and the number can be attached to my search info or something.. THAT to me, is what my ideal housing situation would be. I just don't see that happening though