Q: Will there be any maintenance fees or other costs for housing?

[Dzian]

Because they tried it, and realized what a terrible, terrible idea it was to have houses that never expire? People leave the game, and never come back. That's a fact. Preserving their houses is a waste of resources, and leads to housing areas that are empty mausoleums. I'm personally glad to know that the plots around my house will have actual, active players behind them.

Yoshi P also claimed that player housing would be separate from FC housing, and much more affordable. That was another promise that fell through, likely because the resource and development needs were much more than he expected.

Yoshi P had big ideas back in the day, but he was also a lot less experienced back then. His mouth frequently wrote checks that his dev team couldn't cash.

I think the resentment is the way in which they expire generally.

It's really half baked. Tenants for example should reset demo timers. If they use the property even if the owners away for a couple of months for whatever reason. (In the military perhaps)

Or they could have implemented a leasing system instead. Where can use ventures or something to extend plot lease. Again that way if someone's going away for a couple of months there house is safe...

Would have been a much better system and it would still have had the intended effect of releasing abandoned plots...

Might also find less people who own a house they never use and haven't ever considered furnishing

[Arrius]

Reminds me of Dark Age of Camelot housing.
Lots of plots, but the rent was bit of a bummer for many, as it was an mmo that didn't threw money into your face like it is today.

I think it was 2% of the purchase price as a weekly rent, though you could buy tokens through other currencies and 'bank' them into the payment box. Otherwise it would start to siphon the money your vendor NPC has, which you were able to put up to sell your own items.

[Felis]

How come housing isn't fixed yet and why is the situation still different then this quote?

Because the quote is from 2013

[Addicted]

How come housing isn't fixed yet and why is the situation still different then this quote?

Housing in this game is more zombified than Hildibrand's army. It's a completely awful system, one of the worst I've ever seen, exacerbated by the fact this is a pay to play game, but it keeps shambling on with band-aid fix after band-aid fix. They'll fix it the day they make Lords of Verminion something people enjoy doing.

However, I'll give them credit for managing to create a system that holds players subscription's hostage as a solution to a problem they themselves created, that was a genius move.

[Abelfei]

Housing has been "fixed" since 4.3 Move on.

[Final-Fantasy]

The only way to fix it, is to completely remove the current housing system and introduce an instanced area.


Who can be proud to boast "ten million players" and not even be able house 1% of that population.

[Tint]

How come housing isn't fixed yet and why is the situation still different then this quote?

because instead of such other quote from Yoshi-P, wich i am too lazy to search now, where he was promising that personal housing would be totally different from FC housing, they just opened up the FC houses for single persons to buy. but that system was never designed to have enough houses for every player and it never will. and the other thing, the house demolition, was basically requested by the community (and just needed to be done. there were abandoned houses for more than a year in my neighborhood and the owners never came back).

[Hamada]

In fairness, the dev team was fully capable of cashing this particular check: they simply chose to build a system that XIV's back-end was not capable of fully supporting (which was a really stupid choice, one we're still paying for today). What they should have likely done was have fully instanced personal Housing rather than neighborhoods. Recreate the equivalent of Mog Houses from XIV, only expanded to include a plot of land and such. Down the road, they could have implemented neighborhood functionality, with a sort of 'lottery system' players could enroll in to have their house placed within a community for some period of time. This could have spurred decoration contests and a 'Seasonal' sort of feel akin to the Feast, while also requiring significantly less effort on the back-end and enabling them to discard the demolition system. And it would have permitted more flexibility in regards to land usage (for instance, players could have been free to place smaller houses on larger plots, so as to allow for more garden space), and allowed for more outdoor items (a limit of 40 on a Mansion is ridiculous). But, instead, they built a system without any thought paid at all to the inherent limitations of FFXIV. Great success!
Edit / Aside: This isn't simply hindsight speaking. During the requirements analysis and design phase of any sort of content, attention should be paid to what can and cannot be effectively executed from a technical standpoint. I mean, look at all the work that's been done on Housing, and the system is still what you'd call 'adequate' rather than great. Back when it was first released, it was awful, so limited that well over half the player base couldn't even participate. SE should have seen this coming. The fact that they made a decision to go ahead with an approach that their resources literally couldn't support indicates a very flawed, borderline-incompetent planning workflow.

Pretty much, I like to know why housing is still a mess, while forgetting this was ever said. What i expected was the relinquish be a temp thing as they try to figure out more solutions. I get it you do not want people that quit for good to keep a house but 45 days is way too short.

because instead of such other quote from Yoshi-P, wich i am too lazy to search now, where he was promising that personal housing would be totally different from FC housing, they just opened up the FC houses for single persons to buy. but that system was never designed to have enough houses for every player and it never will. and the other thing, the house demolition, was basically requested by the community (and just needed to be done. there were abandoned houses for more than a year in my neighborhood and the owners never came back).

That is their fault for the bad design? Also I do not see that as a good reason to have a bad design on top of a bad design. Sure a year is too much, but 45 days is too little. Also how can you tell if they are abandoned? I am on the most populated server and you rarely see people in the wards. Also that really does not answer my question and that is, why do we still have this poorly made auto demo system with this poorly made housing system after 2 expansions going on 3? With all the mog station money, retainer money, sub money, expansion sales, you can't tell me they do not have enough money to fix this. "never will" why?

[Sotaris]

Things change, who knew.

Housing has been "fixed" since 4.3 Move on.

4.2? We didn't get any housing changes with 4.3?

[KageTokage]

I really wish something could be done about the house hoarders who buy houses just for the sake of owning them and don't so much as put a portable aetheryte on their property to use it as a warp point.

I already know someone on my server is using alt accounts to horde larges this way, and it seemed like they were attempting to level alt characters upon these accounts to snag even more until they announced the whole "One house per account" rule.