When will you really address the housing availability problem?

[Voltyblast]

I actually like that personal houses have a physical space in an instanced neighborhood. I would not want to see them turned into the equivalent of instanced inn/private chambers. Besides, the space in those small homes are barely reasonable for a single owner (or couple).

I usually make this kind of question for those who want to keep this system: do you want something to work properly or not? I ask because the current system is, no offense here, utter garbage and doesn't satisfy the demand of housing. It just doesn't and there's absolutely nothing positive right now (keyword, right now).
In my case I have a house but I WOULD IMMEDIATELY give it away if I could have a private chamber or some sort of instanced place for myself: it'd be small, yes, but it would be mine and it wouldn't have a time bomb attached on it. I can get a private chambers, yes, but I lose it immediately once I leave, including my money. Might as well be homeless then!

In my opinion however, I'd fix this in a simple, yet logical way: make FC private chambers free. Lots of people will be glad to have a room for themselves, FOR FREE, and would even encourage FC to recruit more people because, let's face it, aside the Diadem (hard) you don't need a FC for anything: raiding is Static-based and only requires a linkshell at worst. Buffs? Passable, but I've played nearly 2 years without a FC and I managed to get my jobs at 50 with ease. Friends? That's usually subjective plus I'm very asocial. Easier to make groups? That's debatable: my best groups were pugs, and my worsts were premades.

So my suggestion is, in the LONG while they fix the housing, make private chambers free in the meantime. I mean 300k might not be a lot for some, but they can be easily lost too. But if the player has nothing to lose while getting a free room, why just not letting them?

[Gyson]

I usually make this kind of question for those who want to keep this system: do you want something to work properly or not? I ask because the current system is, no offense here, utter garbage and doesn't satisfy the demand of housing. It just doesn't and there's absolutely nothing positive right now (keyword, right now).

I don't think there's anything really wrong with housing that can't be fixed by providing more instances of the neighborhoods. However, I do agree FC private chambers should be free, or at least only hit you with a one-time unlock fee per character. That said, even free private chambers at the FC house isn't going to enable access to housing related features (like gardening) for everyone.

[Dree-Elle]

I'd make FC private chambers free.

A noble thought, to be certain. But the game desperately needs what few gilsinks it has; how would you redistribute the 300k cost of the Private Chambers in order to make them free?

[Colorful]

A noble thought, to be certain. But the game desperately needs what few gilsinks it has; how would you redistribute the 300k cost of the Private Chambers in order to make them free?

I don't think it has to be free myself, just a one time purchase unlinked with FCs. Some players move from an FC more than a few times, each and every time you have to rebuy the room, it happens. Some FCs don't have a house, leaving them SOL when their members want to buy rooms, and then some people just don't want to be a part of an FC. If one FC house can support 512 rooms, I see no reason why they can't be implemented in a similar fashion to the inn rooms, maybe even replace them entirely.

[Voltyblast]

A noble thought, to be certain. But the game desperately needs what few gilsinks it has; how would you redistribute the 300k cost of the Private Chambers in order to make them free?

If you need a gilsink, how about giving us proper gilsink? Let me give you a couple and more of good gilsinks that they should and could have added.

Glamours: 5k an item. On rp servers, that's a big gilsink alright.
Chocobo Dye: 20k a color. You can do it for free but, for those like me who don't care enough for spending hours on the food, I would rather buy it instantly.
Decorations: price variable depending on the item. You can craft them for cheap but not everyone has a crafter in their sleeves, and sometimes the items can be expensive
Special Dye: 50k-150k. We can't sell them, so why not allow us to buy with ingame gold? I'm not going to use real money on a dye (unless it's a f2p that is), so this could be a good alternative.
Glamour items (like the taffeta): 1m. You can buy it or craft it or make it yourself. This would also stabilize the insane prices of the glamour items. I think any price would work, just enough to sink. It's debatable though.
Repairs: I never, ever, ever, ever, ever,ever,ever spent more than 1k for repairing my equipment, and I'm a tank. How about adding a zero to that?

I'm sure we can add more sinks to the list. I don't mean these choices as the only choices though: make it optional. Either craft it, work it, or buy it with gold. Lots of gil will sink this way, because right now gil isn't going away (the houses were meant as gilsink, but without any plots to sell, what's there to sink?).

And really...do we need to add a needless fee of 300k for the sake of needlessness? Do we need to make some items overly priced for gilsinking, when some items could be much better on that regard?
But sure, alright: make it double but only a one time purchase, so you can have a free room in every FC. Done.

I don't think there's anything really wrong with housing that can't be fixed by providing more instances of the neighborhoods. However, I do agree FC private chambers should be free, or at least only hit you with a one-time unlock fee per character. That said, even free private chambers at the FC house isn't going to enable access to housing related features (like gardening) for everyone.

One time purchase is perfectly fine in my opinion as well: I'd spend double or triple if it means having a free room in every fc. As it is, the private chambers isn't worth it unless you're super-duper-uber friends with the entire company and don't leave, or it's your own FC with your own housing. I lost nearly 1m in private chambers. Why? Because. Don't have to have a reason: things happen, things go bad or right, and eventually things go bad: my previous fc died out badly, with one of its members being quite upset because she lost over 5m in decorating both her private room and house. That's 5m gone to the toilet and she's quite demoralized to keep playing as well. I suppose it's working as intended?

However...I don't know how you can fix the gardening. Maybe give us terrain vases in the inn room or something? I'm sure they could fix it somehow (if they care enough to fix it, that is) but I suppose the best plan would be to make a player able to keep vases (like 2 or 3) for themselves so they can grow their crops. I know that there's also the ranking issues and the fact that many only join fcs for growing crops or coloring chocobos (hence my gilsink idea up here), so I really don't know how you can really fix this way without some additional detail.