We need a statement from the developers

[CatfishCassie]

She never said otherwise. Nonetheless, FFXIV is often held to similar acclaim yet uses archaic systems and constantly defaults onto the "server" excuse. Forget housing for a moment. WoW has a glamour system that spits on FFXIV. Free to play MMOs like Black Desert, ESO and Wildstar all have immensely better systems. Why is it XIV gets defended when virtually every other MMO does a better job on housing and glamour?

Definitely no one does a better job on Glamour. Black Desert does costumes... full-body, no customization. Most other MMOs do as well. Maybe the costumes look nice, but they're not your combination... your expression. They're something you bought from the cash shop with no ability to use it to uniquely express your character's personality. At best, other MMOs do *as well as* FFXIV... games like Rift have a nearly identical system where you pick individual pieces to show on your character, but even then, that's your character's outfit... you can't have multiple outfits saved for multiple different looks that you can swap between.

As for housing... instanced housing isn't a better system, it's a different system. It has different requirements and different results. ESO's houses look amazing... much better than anything in FFXIV. But they all exist in some pocket dimension that no one will ever see unless they're explicitly invited. FFXIV wanted to do something different. They wanted to create a world that felt like your character lived there, and they've gone to a lot of effort to do so. But they also have the technology to greatly expand the current housing availability, and they continually choose not to. My desktop can hold the data for every asset in every ward on every server... so if they're having issues with stability from adding more wards, someone should be fired over that... either they're not adequately compressing the data so the client can unpack it when they load into the zone, or they just have zero idea what they're doing. Anyone running similar services on a cloud could just spin up or shut down Virtual Machines as-needed. If Amazon was running FFXIV, it'd take them maybe half an hour to change the one UI screen per housing district that matters and test it, and then a couple microseconds to spin up the VMs required to run it.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Definitely no one does a better job on Glamour.

Would you fancy me linking various pictures of glamour logs, which allow people to change outfits on the fly whenever they so choose once they have acquired the outfit once? FFXIV can't even devise a system that allows Paladin and Dark Knight to wear two unique outfits.

As for housing... instanced housing isn't a better system, it's a different system. It has different requirements and different results. ESO's houses look amazing... much better than anything in FFXIV. But they all exist in some pocket dimension that no one will ever see unless they're explicitly invited. FFXIV wanted to do something different. They wanted to create a world that felt like your character lived there, and they've gone to a lot of effort to do so. But they also have the technology to greatly expand the current housing availability, and they continually choose not to. My desktop can hold the data for every asset in every ward on every server... so if they're having issues with stability from adding more wards, someone should be fired over that... either they're not adequately compressing the data so the client can unpack it when they load into the zone, or they just have zero idea what they're doing. Anyone running similar services on a cloud could just spin up or shut down Virtual Machines as-needed. If Amazon was running FFXIV, it'd take them maybe half an hour to change the one UI screen per housing district that matters and test it, and then a couple microseconds to spin up the VMs required to run it.

Balmung is the most populated server in the game by a good mile yet wards are devoid of interaction. The neighbour aspect has long since failed, especially when it only allows less than 20% of the entire active playerbase to play with certain content. Once accounting for FC, that number only dwindles further. You claim they have the technology. If so, then it's utterly incompetency they have yet to implement it. Shirogane was advertised as part of the expansion. No other content is limited to only 720 characters. People continuously suggest instanced housing because it provides a solution for everyone. Like others have said, they could very well leave the current ward system but add instances as an option for those who choose to go that route. Even Apartment could work if they were expanded upon. Increase the size, add a balcony and now you have something moderately comparable. As it stands, this is easily among the worst housing systems in the genre, if only because the vast majority will be excluded from it.

[Tridus]

Definitely no one does a better job on Glamour. Black Desert does costumes... full-body, no customization. Most other MMOs do as well. Maybe the costumes look nice, but they're not your combination... your expression. They're something you bought from the cash shop with no ability to use it to uniquely express your character's personality. At best, other MMOs do *as well as* FFXIV... games like Rift have a nearly identical system where you pick individual pieces to show on your character, but even then, that's your character's outfit... you can't have multiple outfits saved for multiple different looks that you can swap between.

Glamour art and glamour systems are two different things. FFXIV has great glamour options. But the method of putting that on? WoW is years ahead. WoW doesn't make me hold on to old items indefinitely in case I might want to use them in a glamour someday. It simply logs that I had it at some point, and then I can choose it from the list of everything unlocked. Done.

YoshiP talks about inventory size issues all the time. Want to shrink player inventory? Don't make people use an entire retainer to hoard clothes for glamour.

Housing is in the same boat. The housing stuff itself is great. The artificial scarcity is a farce in a subscription game.