With regards to the possible upcoming housing relinquishments. . . . .

[Syrehn]

As many others have pointed out, no empty plots have been available for months and many people joined long after that occurred.
Here on Sargatanas there are hundreds of level 8 FCs which have NEVER been able to get land due to this issue. Over half of the paltry 1440 existing plots have been scooped up as personal houses, not FC houses.
I hope to god any plots which are reclaimed by SE are sold ONLY to FCs. I also hope they check to make sure the entire FC roster is not comprised solely of BLMs with suspicious naming practices. We have tons of those kind of FC

I wish that they had made FC/Personal Housing separate wards; however I can understand what they were trying to achieve by combining them. If there were separate wards for FC's vs. Personal scenarios would arise where there could be vacant housing in FC wards that just sit and sit (assuming the need for FC houses peak's and slows down). The need for personal housing will likely only ever increase and as this happens players would be locked out from purchasing vacant homes in FC wards; this doesn't fully utilize the server space those wards reside on. Additionally they wanted to build more community based hubs with a mix of personal and FC homes.

I think a HUGE part of the problem with houses is that SE never implemented a 1 house per account per server rule and you have players making alt FC's and alt characters taking up multiple houses in wards.

Right now for example a single player could have 8 characters on the same server, all with personal houses and all with an FC house; that's 16 houses per server that could potentially be consumed by one account.

If they addressed this issue and backdated a "1 Personal and 1 FC" per server rule I think we would see a lot of plots opening up.

[MistyMew]

We get it, you've played other games where it worked in THAT WORLD and are a zelotous advocate of instaced housing.

But that's not the goal in FF14. The Devs want the Ward to be Player Root Towns and Cities where they interact with, assist, and socialize with each other just as neighbors would IRL. And Instanced housing does not meet this vision. So it will never be considered. Ever.

Which is silly because the amount that people do interact and socialize is so minimal...its almost laughable.

Instanced would open up months and months of creativity potential for the players, whereas as it stands now, 1 person may run by your home and not even look your way.

Limiting housing to the 1/10 level it is now isnt worth the 1 person who may run by or be at the lolmb. It was a bad decision on se part, and we have a terribly limited and simpleton housing design because of it, one of the worst I have seen yet.

Granted I do not expect them to change their ways anymore, I expect no improvements in any area of the game, they are far too short sighted to do so, but initially it was huge disappointment to see the wards with extremely small lots, lolcopycat homes, lolcopycat furniture, which takes 2 minutes to furnish since there is 0 creativity for players and 90% of the time, barren.

yeah the "atmosphere" was really worth it /lol (not)

They are happy with a substandard design so there isn't anything I can do about it. I vastly lowered my standards and don't spend much time in the wards past the 1 minute to send out airships, since there's nothing to uniquely create/design...............at all.

[Valaska]

Actually I've been having some nice little run ins and chats in Lamia, back in my old FC a few friends raided other FC's houses and we chatted the people up! Made buddies, silly comments about weird interior decorating and such. Current one I see people running about here and there but haven't gone on any house raids yet.

Making a whole instanced house leads to decay and loss of money, despite this one person who keeps trying to say WildStar is the best game ever making tons of money... Despite its "amazeballs" housing system people leave the game in droves and their team was downsized, sold off equipment etc. SE would have to dedicate a team just make a whole new housing system etc... A mog house system might work though since they have FC rooms but whole exterior houses floating in space... Ehh both tacky and unlikely.

[Naunet]

*eyeroll* Way to blow my statements way out of proportion. And I think it's pretty obvious I don't expect houses floating in space in FFXIV. Don't be absurd just to try and twist my words.

[Valaska]

- Perhaps if one wanted to have their house in their own little instanced world, one would choose solitary instanced housing. Just you alone with your cottage on a beach. Or an Uldahn waterfall.
- If you wanted to live next to your free company friends, everyone would choose a "link" feature that put all your free company's houses in one ward. So all your neighbors are your own friends, along with the actual free company house at the top of the hill to have weekly meetings and work on airship stuff.
- And if you liked the whole neighborhood feel, you would "link randomize" which puts you in a ward with other random players.

That would take so much more work, servers and development time/resources... Interesting idea but not very feasible. You gotta understand this game is not coded the same as others and there are unique issues to this than others.

[Valaska]

*eyeroll* Way to blow my statements way out of proportion. And I think it's pretty obvious I don't expect houses floating in space in FFXIV. Don't be absurd just to try and twist my words.

Which is even harder! Now you want each of these houses to have a backdrop unique to it too...? You're running up server assets girl! Data Data Data! A moghouse system would be the most possible, so take the inn room and make it have customization. Other than that you are racking up those MB's of data.

[SQBoard]

Which is even harder! Now you want each of these houses to have a backdrop unique to it too...? You're running up server assets girl! Data Data Data! A moghouse system would be the most possible, so take the inn room and make it have customization. Other than that you are racking up those MB's of data.

Sorry if this sounds like nitpicking, but backdrops are basically art assets and/or animation which are stored/processed from the client not the server...unless it's patch day when those assets were added to the game for the first time or after reisntalling the game.

Unique backdrops is not that unusual...sort of like a beach, forest or desert backdrop here and would be treated like say a limsa ward with a beach backdrop except with only 1 house instead of 30. But if there's only 1 house, then the max item cap for housing items could be made a lot higher because it doesn't need to compensate for the other 29 house's items.

[Naunet]

Unique backdrops is not that unusual...sort of like a beach, forest or desert backdrop here and would be treated like say a limsa ward with a beach backdrop except with only 1 house instead of 30. But if there's only 1 house, then the max item cap for housing items could be made a lot higher because it doesn't need to compensate for the other 29 house's items.

Indeed. @Valaska: Look at Rift's Dimension system.

Though you still misinterpreted my words. A "unique" backdrop is not necessary. They already have environment assets - the art for the housing zones themselves. Use them. Place invisible walls to certain point around the outside of the house. Bam.

[Valaska]

Indeed. @Valaska: Look at Rift's Dimension system.

Though you still misinterpreted my words. A "unique" backdrop is not necessary. They already have environment assets - the art for the housing zones themselves. Use them. Place invisible walls to certain point around the outside of the house. Bam.

And unless these are stores COMPLETELY client-side and you load them each time from your appdata, they take up server space. Putting them client-side means longer loadtimes and a lot more taken up space in your computer!

[SQBoard]

And unless these are stores COMPLETELY client-side and you load them each time from your appdata, they take up server space. Putting them client-side means longer loadtimes and a lot more taken up space in your computer!

Not sure what you mean. The game servers don't render graphics, that's the client and those files are already on your system unless someone is reinstalling or first time install. That's why you have gigabytes of files in the install folder.