player housing should be available to everyone.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

FFXIV's housing is so weird...

Mostly, because it and all of its issues revolve around the "Neighbourhood" but, the odd thing about that is... Neighbourhoods are only relevant when you're outside of your house.

Meanwhile, most of the housing stuff is for inside your house. Which is an instanced location, with no windows or any influence from nearby locations at all. Literally, being inside a house is functionally no different to having a customizable Inn room (Only, an inn room doesn't cost several million gil and comes with a free Glamour Dresser, Armoire, Aethestician, Orchestrion, Toy Box, Neverending Story and Retainer Bell of which most are not available for player housing at all).

In addition to this, the social aspect of neighbourhoods are shot in the foot by the "Real space" they take up. So, instead of having everyone sharing a common housing area, so whenever you weren't in your house you were in the same zone as everyone else who is outside of their house, we have each location (Of which there are 4, soon 5) split into like 20 Wards, each split into 2 sub-wards. So, really, outside of your house is only going to be shared by like a handful of people unless you're next to an active FC house.

All for what? So, you can show off how you painted your house and put a couple on knick-knacks on your lawn? (And an Aetheryte Shard so you can access your house by direct teleport instead of via... The Aetheryte crystal in the city where your house is located which functions almost exactly like how instanced housing would...)

It seems really bizarre to not have simply converted to an instanced system at this point. Allowing everyone to obtain a house and to make for actual lively "Neighbourhoods" (Since, one of the main reasons why so many people gather in places like Limsa and Gridania is because, they're not all segregated to "Limsa Instance 1/40" or "Gridania Instance 32/40" everyone just is able to go to a singular common area and thus can see and talk to everyone else)

While I agree with the points you've made in your post, I did feel the need to note that of the "Glamour Dresser, Armoire, Aethestician, Orchestrion, Toy Box, Neverending Story and Retainer Bell", only the Glamour Dresser isn't available to player housing. Houses and Apartments can have all the other features. And the main reason the Glamour Dresser is only available in the inn room and the squadron quarters is because those spaces are never shared with other players. There's apparently something with how the glamour interface is coded that is problematic for more than one player to be in the same space while using the Glamour Dresser at the same time.

[Divinemights]

Instead of having to build a house, they should have static houses that are instanced and available to everyone to buy once they get the money. I never understood why they never did this. (Before you say, "you just want a house cause you cant get one blah blah." I've already owned a house. Stopped playing for a while because rl stuff happened. Im not currently looking for a house nor did I miss out on one. Although I do have an issue with waiting 24-48 hours before I can buy a house.)

Everyone does have access to an in-game estate, it is called the Apartment, please use it

[Dfess]

Everyone does have access to an in-game estate, it is called the Apartment, please use it

Except it's partially in game. Apartments have a cap. So it's still not available to everyone. Even if it was available to everyone, one room isn't enough space to be creative. You will run out of space way before you run out of items. Why not just do away with wards and have the entrance to your home being the aetheryte crystals in major cities? As state before neighborhoods serve no purpose since most of the decorating you do is inside of the house. Also, as stated before, I already owned a house and I am not looking for a new one at the moment. I'm just arguing the housing system is broke and needs fixing. Why isolate 70% of the player base from one of the funnest things to do in this game? (70% may not be a real statistic. Just using it for my argument.)

[AHelpingPaw]

As a player who owns a house and a FC house i would gladly sacrifice them with no refund, if it meant everyone gets an instanced house.

The wards were a cute idea, but realistically, the majority of wards are deserted nearly at all times except for a handful of rp guilds, as most of the action happens inside the houses and not outside.

Despite owning two different houses and having owned one more house on another server in the past, i can count with my fingers how many times have i seen any of my neighbours in all these years since i have gotten them.

I think instanced housing would benefit everyone.

[Penthea]

I think instanced housing would benefit everyone.

What I would love is if players could purchase a little instance as an individual and/or as a fc.

Imagine having a little instance with your own neighbourhood filled with your friends' homes, several of your own homes, or a fc house plus private homes of members. Basically some sort of micro-ward, but the instance would only exist upon purchase so they would be unlimited. I imagine they would be accessed similarly to apartments - you get a list and you can visit other player's or fc's instances (if they're open to visitors) or go into your own.

That would have both the perks of instanced housing, as well as the neighbourhood feel of wards. Best of both worlds. It would also not sacrifice having an outdoor area as well.

I know many here feel like their house is in a ghost town but this isn't the case for everyone. My fc house is not only frequently visited by members, some members also have their private homes in the area. So the place we occupy is pretty active. I feel that ghostly wards happen partially because no one really knows any of their neighbours, so they don't interact. If you shared a small housing instance with your friends or fc mates it would feel more alive than sharing a massive ward with strangers.

I don't think we'll ever see anything like this though. Ishgard housing looks like it's going to be more of the same

[AHelpingPaw]

What I would love is if players could purchase a little instance as an individual and/or as a fc.

Imagine having a little instance with your own neighbourhood filled with your friends' homes, several of your own homes, or a fc house plus private homes of members. Basically some sort of micro-ward, but the instance would only exist upon purchase so they would be unlimited. I imagine they would be accessed similarly to apartments - you get a list and you can visit other player's or fc's instances (if they're open to visitors) or go into your own.

That would have both the perks of instanced housing, as well as the neighbourhood feel of wards. Best of both worlds. It would also not sacrifice having an outdoor area as well.

I know many here feel like their house is in a ghost town but this isn't the case for everyone. My fc house is not only frequently visited by members, some members also have their private homes in the area. So the place we occupy is pretty active. I feel that ghostly wards happen partially because no one really knows any of their neighbours, so they don't interact. If you shared a small housing instance with your friends or fc mates it would feel more alive than sharing a massive ward with strangers.

I don't think we'll ever see anything like this though. Ishgard housing looks like it's going to be more of the same

The problem is that once again, this would take a ton of resources to make.
It´s just not feasible, as lovely as it would be.

Any permanent or semi-permanent type of content would.

[Penthea]

The problem is that once again, this would take a ton of resources to make.
It´s just not feasible, as lovely as it would be.

Any permanent or semi-permanent type of content would.

I think that argument could be made for any change to housing, even just the addition of wards to current areas. I'm sure SE would add wards more often if they felt they had the resources to do it without it affecting other content or server stability. But they clearly have priorities elsewhere so we're stuck with what we have and likely stuck with this system forever with little more than band-aid fixes to improve it.

We've had the wards for too long now. SE have made the problem bigger as time passed and it is probably now at the point in which it's more cost effective to keep things more or less as they are, even if they're riddled with flaws.

SE have the means to do something like I suggested. Whether they want to or not is something else altogether. As much as I would love for it to happen, I would be shocked if it did.

[Jojoya]

On top of that, housing is STILL instanced - it's just that we have thirty houses in each instance. So, fundamentally, it's already failed to achieve the dream, even if there were enough wards for everyone to have a house.

They aren't fully instanced. Only house interiors are instanced. The wards themselves are always "on" even if there are no players in them, unlike instances that are only generated when a player is present.

I still think about the Q&A from the EU FanFest where they talked about new technology they were working on that would allow players to see what's happening in non-instanced areas from an instanced area. If they're successful in creating that, it could really change housing for the better and allow instanced houses while retaining the neighborhood feeling.

[DumdogsWorld]

I still think it would be nice if they could add condos.

Instanced like apartments, yet as featured as houses. Complete with fake balcony for small yard, garden, and chocobo stables.

Costs somewhere in-between, too.

[Avidria]

I still think it would be nice if they could add condos.

Instanced like apartments, yet as featured as houses. Complete with fake balcony for small yard, garden, and chocobo stables.

Costs somewhere in-between, too.

There's this tiny flicker of Hope in me that they're planning to do Ishgard housing and maybe do something different with it
Very tiny
Very unlikely
But if they were gonna try something new, that's a prime opportunity to do it

And condos would be great

Tbh I'd ditch my house if I could have a medium apartment/condo instead. It's the furnishing size that's the big problem. I love decorating and the limits in a medium mean I keep having to take things down to add new ones I get... and my storage was at it's limit before I went on a decorating spree with an apartment earlier this week xD so now I've got a fully decorated house with a bunch of stuff in storage, a bunch on a retainer, and a mostly decorated apartment with a bunch in storage there too << and forget outdoor space... there's nowhere near enough even with a house

But I also take breaks from the game and needing to log in every month and a half makes that really hard to totally do :/