Quote Originally Posted by Verdan View Post
Cause it doesn't have to be that way.

Lotro, Lord of the rings online, a game that launched a DECADE ago, has ff14 style neighborhoods that auto-generate when they fill up. How this game is doing housing is clearly insane.
Worth noting that LOTRO also has some pretty severe restrictions on housing, namely that you are significantly more limited in the number of items you can place. Items only go in predetermined "hook" locations...
For the exterior, this means 4 exterior items and 1 doormat for small houses, their medium houses get 6 exterior items and 1 doormat, and their big "Kinship" (FC/guild) houses? All of 11 exterior hooks and 1 doormat...and all of those are specific locations on the plot, versus the free-form placement we have in FFXIV (with 20, 30, and 40 exterior slot limits right now). You also don't get to change how the house looks, which is another restriction - what's there is what's there, no changing at all.

Clearly there was a trade-off to be able to have as many houses available as they offer, namely significantly less possibly changing data in a persistent instance. They would not offer the amount of housing districts they do if it worked the same way ours does in terms of decoration and relative freedom, and it's not as simple as "They offer more housing, why can't SE?"

Which ultimately highlights the limitations of both systems, and why instanced house plots, while losing out on the neighborhood feel the current wards have, would offer the best of both worlds and is ultimately the better solution.