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

[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

[Titor]

Please no. I am so burned out on crafting things, I was expecting this to be a one time buy deal. I do not feel like crafting more I want to enjoy other aspects of the game x.x

[Pterois]

I would imagine a steady flow of gil from simple game related activities would be needed to make this work because why in the world would i get home from my real job only to grind away on crafting to ensure i don't lose my house? I'm about to unlock my third masterbook II (in prep for the 3 specialist in HW) and ill tell you right now... crafting when you don't really need to do it is fun, but crafting when you HAVE to do it F'in sucks. So unless the rent is ridiculously cheap and is only really used to weed out the ones who don't get on or the game dailys/missions start feeding you gil easily so i can focus on other things then this is just a shower thought with no real traction at all. Oh and just curious OP... do you own a house?

[Nalien]

I think it's a bit late to add a rent system in. If it was launched like that, fine, provided there was an eventual cut off point where you finish paying and just own the place. That would have absolved a lot of the qualms with the ridiculous initial cost, if they had instead spread it out over several installments with failure to pay first adding to the cost and later losing you the plot. Going back and adding that in now would just be a disaster though, I don't play this game to pay virtual rent. It would need an eventual cut off and ability to pay in advance in my opinion, and with that it doesn't solve the shortage of plots very well.

All they need to do is implement a similar system to Free Company leadership; You don't log in for X days, you lose the land. Slap the furniture and some Gil on an NPC for people to pick up, and done. Sure people will complain about losing their house, but if they're not even logging in they really shouldn't have it, they wont even notice until they come back. If they get most of the furniture and some Gil in compensation then everything seems fine to me, perhaps remove that stupid resale restriction on furniture as well.

People who don't play lose their plots, if they want them back, well... People who don't play lose their plots, they could always obtain another plot the same way someone just obtained theirs, it's not like they'd be in the same situation as people who currently want a plot. Ideally though, they'd go "No, I didn't really use it before, so I wont waste time buying another one". SE really shouldn't avoid implementing something like that because people might see the lost land and just quit, those are the kinds of children they should want playing their game, and unlike the whole hardcore/casual argument with regards to subscribers, this wouldn't have a massive impact on subscribers because housing is in short supply anyway.

[Haru]

Clipped

There is no way im paying 250,000g - 500,000g a month just to keep my small plot of land + house you are absurd. What they should do is create an entirely new plot for renters and leave us who paid outright for our homes alone. Let alone how you think new players could afford this ridiculous high price.

[GenJoe]

There is no way im paying 250,000g - 500,000g a month just to keep my small plot of land + house you are absurd

Mmhm, which would mean another open plot for people to buy once you give it up

What they should do is create an entirely new plot for renters and leave us who paid outright for our homes alone. Let alone how you think new players could afford this ridiculous high price.

New and old doesn't matter in terms of purchasing power, it's up to the individual. There are plenty of new players that can afford housing, but can't because all the plots are taken up by people who made a few million gil back in the day and just let the house sit without doing anything with it.

I understand that upkeep will alienate part of the playerbase, but that's the entire premise of the idea, alienate part of the player base that don't care enough to make the extra rent, then it will free up houses.. Couple that with letting people trade houses, it will give home ownership a much needed rotation rather than being stale and owned by the same people forever until SE adds new wards, then a few more people will join the ranks but the idea will still be the same, only a minority of the playerbase who happened to buy the house in time will get to keep it forever and majority of the players don't even have a chance to ever get one.

Ideal solution would be to add more wards, but SE has shown us again and again that they're not capable of just doubling and tripling wards whenever there's demand.
Seriously, 250k or 500k gil sounds like a lot but that's price of a couple of good tier IV materia.

[Nalien]

Ideal solution would be to add more wards, but SE has shown us again and again that they're not capable of just doubling and tripling wards whenever there's demand.

What? The last time they gave us new Wards they did so by doubling the number by adding subdivisions... There is no reason to believe they wont eventually do the same in the future... So what if they can't do it at the drop of the hat? They can and they will, the only real issue with housing is plots owned by people who aren't even playing, but there are much better ways to deal with that than forcing people to pay absurd amounts rent... That would just destroy the enjoyment of housing for the majority because it stops being something fun and starts being Tenant Simulator.

Seriously, 250k or 500k gil sounds like a lot but that's price of a couple of good tier IV materia.

Honestly, to me that doesn't sound like a lot. I've got enough to last me a couple years as it is already, and I could certainly make more easily. I'm against this idea solely because it is simply unfun. Anyone with a house probably wouldn't have a hard time making that amount unless they make Gardening available to absolute everyone and that little economic bubble bursts. This wouldn't really achieve anything with that in mind, only people who aren't playing would lose their plots, but like I said, there are far better ways to go about doing that. Ones which don't sap the fun out of housing.

[Elim]

I understand that upkeep will alienate part of the playerbase.

You mean the majority of the playerbase.

I dunno. To me your idea seems counterintuitive. You wouldn't be opening housing to more of the playerbase, but even less than before.

I personally could pay hefty rent and it wouldn't make me bat an eyelash, but, aside from not liking rent in any shape or form, I'd be completely against paying rent simply so the, more or less, "rich" could be the only ones in the housing areas. lol

Edit: but I'm totally for a system that takes away houses from people who've been unsubbed for long periods of time. Maybe three months of being unsubbed is fair?