Quote Originally Posted by Melichoir View Post
Instanced housing = Apartments with a front yard.

Rather than tear down the system in place and screw over people who like things as they are, why not spend more time advocating for updating how apartments work?

As an example, create Tiered Apartments you pay for. Tier one - Current Apartment type: 100 Item placement. Tier 2- same size as a current cottage with upstairs and downstairs, 200 item placement. Tier 3 Apartment - Upstairs, downstairs, 300 Item Limit, and a "Balcony" area that can hold 10 outdoor items. Pricepoint could be 500k, 1 Mil, 2.5 Mil.

Same time, youd increase Housing sizing as promised - Cottage is 30/400 item ext/int, Medium is 40/600, and large is 60/800.

This pretty much gets you to solve both problems at the same time. Housing system remains in place with incentive to have a house (more item size + exterior customization + neighborhood) while giving people something that is instanced so if you want one but cant get a cottage, you can get something similar. Im more than confident that given this option, youll clear up 90% of housing complaints as people will just purchase T3 Apartments if they want a cottage like setup.
At this point, XIV's apartments feel little more than a graphical update over XI's moghouse system (which now gives you access to a second story, patio, and a large gardening area). I would even go so far as to say that the gardening option in XI beats XIV. You can have 8 flowerpots, and then you have that large garden instance which gives you access to 3 planters, and 5 gathering nodes.

I feel like SE really needs to look to other games for inspiration on how to approach instanced housing, as updating a system from an almost 20-year old game probably isn't the best. Instanced housing can be so much more than a basic rectangular interior with a small outdoor area.

Now, with that said, XIV is full of limitations on many things, and sadly I doubt SE will ever scrap housing as we know it (although I will always hold out hope). If they want to make apartments a proper housing option, they definitely need to make some updates. My starter list would be:

*Make apartments available to every character that wants one. Yes, some servers may still have some availlable, but many others do not.
*Add an independent garden system that everyone can access or allow garden options to match that of a house
*Add an independent workshop system that everyone can access, or allow this to be accessed via apartments
*Allow tenants to be added