The housing system in this game NEEDS A COMPLETE GD OVERHALL. Complete stupidity....

[Nix]

You’re making the assumption that none of those features should be limited. Also, exactly how penalizing is it not to have them? And for whom? Fc owners? Members? How hard are the workarounds?

The players who absolutely need housing are few and far between and I guarantee you they found a way to get a house. For everyone else it’s a comfort feature.

Gardening, FC workshops etc, should NOT be limited as they give people advantages to making gil, or acquiring certain rare items. I believe that if people put in the work for something, then they should be rewarded. The workarounds for these two systems in particular would be ridiculous - gain access to a friend's garden and hope that they aren't using it, or drop your FC and join one with a house and HOPE that they let you garden (because some officers like to keep access to gardens to themselves) - neither of these options are good.
If people keep wanting to claim that housing is optional content then they really need to separate these two systems from housing so that housing really is just fluff.

As another poster has said, housing can be a nightmare - on Hyperion, not counting this current couple of weeks while there's a moratorium in effect, but it's virtually impossible for both players and FCs to purchase homes. One home comes up maybe every 2-3 days, which is then heavily camped by legitimate campers, bots, and macro users for the entire duration of the timer. It's not a case of hard work that will win the battle here, just obscene amounts of luck. I did a scout 2 days back and the only houses that could be purchased by players (not FCs) were in the Goblet - 2 smalls with about 5 campers each. All other wards were full to the brim.

In other posts of mine, especially on the housing forums, I have explained that I have a home of my own and one for my FC - hard work was not involved in obtaining either, it was nothing but sheer luck. So I'm here fighting for a better system not as someone who finds it impossible to get a home, but as someone who knows how thoroughly broken the system is. I'm so sick of the "screw you, I got mine" attitude that is so pervasive on these forums.