Forcing players to pay to keep housing is unfair.

[CosmicKirby]

You can't focus heavily on housing in this game because there is almost nothing to do with it. The customization is extremely limited. The supply is extremely limited. The "extra" features are time-consuming and monotonous, or only available to people with FC housing. Heck, it's even difficult to decorate what you have because decor is ridiculously expensive. That's like making a crap sandwich and then deciding it's not worth improving the sandwich because nobody is liking it much anyway. The extreme popularity of good housing systems in other games makes it beyond clear that this would be a worthwhile investment of time and money.

So, it's NOT worth doubling down and undergoing a large amount of effort to increase the amount of housing, because the Housing system isn't very 'good' and in your words 'extremely limited.'

And yet, other games, with 'good' housing systems and 'extreme popularity' can't pull numbers anywhere NEAR WoW or FF14's subscriber count.

Animal Crossing has arguably less than either FF14 or any other MMORPG with housing worth noting, and that game outsells them all. Good housing, or more housing, isn't a very worthwhile investment for their time until proven otherwise.

Your own logic here is both circular and self contradictory. Again, is the significant undertaking of adding an infrastructure to support many more or possibly infinite housing, worth it in player interest and subscriber counts? I don't think so, and Square's apparent reluctance to jump and fix the issue seems to indicate they don't think so either. In your own words, Housing is 'a crap sandwich' that's 'not worth improving.'