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

[EaMett]

If you don't spend time levelling crafters, sure, you're going to miss out on making gil from them - the thing with housing/gardening is that even if you want to do these things, without access to a house, you are unable to do so. Same with the other content - if you don't spend time practicing how to do those things, then there's no way that you're going to be able to complete them. Housing is different.
You keep saying that "Housing is PVP", and this would be fair IF housing were just housing, except it's not. It's a pre-requisite to other content, such as gardening and FC workshops.
Terrible analogy that I saw in another post, but it's almost like having a raid with limited spots, and only a certain amount of people can join it per week. But by doing this raid, it opens up more content that you could profit from. Would people still be like "It's just PVP!" when they don't get a spot in the raid?
PVP is not a prerequisite to enjoy other content - you get your fair shot to take part, and if you don't win, you don't get the trophy/title/mount.

I think this is the going to be the major point of disagreement between us because I think that gating features behind pvp type content is ok. Whether it be housing or any of the gardening/etc. Even your raid example is something the likes of which exists in other games. It just stands out as an outlier in a game like ff14 that is almost integrally PVE even though it's been a perfectly acceptable game design in the past/present.
I'm going to assume some think it's an ok design and others like yourself think something better could be done.

You shouldn't have to ask others, you shouldn't have to FC jump, or beg, and plead. There's a lot of risk involved in handing over what is essentially millions of gil worth of items and praying that they don't screw you out of it / claim the project upon its completion. I've been playing MMOs for -years- and I've seen it time and time again, "friends" screwing eachother over for pixels. This amount of risk shouldn't be mandatory for people wanting to enjoy the game.

There's value in considering the risk of some forced exchanges like this. There are workarounds but it's true that none are really safe, I'll give you that. My point was that it's ok even if people were completely locked out of the features (as stated above) but there were still options in FF14 unlike how it could be in other games with similar design.

I can't say what side the devs are on because they're remained pretty quiet on the whole thing, despite the uproar from many players. Sure, they've snuck out extra wards here and there, but I feel like *hopefully* it's tiding us over until something better comes on the horizon. Getting houses boils down to 2 things: Do you have enough gil? and Are you lucky enough? Atleast with PVP there's some skill involved, but a system that relies on luck and if your placard-spamming bot is fast enough is broken as hell.
You, me, and your friends may have been lucky enough to get houses, but there are countless others that just aren't. Anyone with a real life can't realistically sit at placards spamming for 20+ hours in the hopes that they beat a bot.

The devs were pretty vocal in the past about making housing hard to get and exclusive. They wanted players to get a sense of achievement when owning a house (paraphrasing). Them consistently adding housing to equal ~30% of server population has been an indicator that they've been sticking to their guns.
PVP isn't always about skill, it can be a measure of time spent as well. I think the Ishgard restoration will be another example of this type of PVP (with the rankings). In that sense housing is very much PVP content with a touch of luck added in for good measure.
And like any PVP time based mechanic, people with half a life will lose out to those who've got no life. This is a fact that's almost as old as gaming itself. At least the "luck" factor with housing doesn't completely lock these people out.

As for the "screw you I got mine" attitude, sorry if I wasn't more specific, I'm not accusing you of having this attitude, but it's definitely prevalent on the housing subforums, and that's why I'm so vocal on the matter. Those people would be the first to complain that they couldn't get a house if they didn't have one, but as soon as they've got what they want, suddenly everything is "Working as intended", "people just need to work harder", "Stop being lazy", "You're not MEANT to own this" etc. and it drives me crazy.
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That's fair, I'd try and give people the benefit of the doubt though.