Nope you didn't add enough plots SE...

[ICountFrom0]

I don't care about making money with it, I just enjoy the concept.

[Jojoya]

I don't care about making money with it, I just enjoy the concept.

Have you asked your free company if you could garden at the FC house? Many FCs give members access on request if the garden plots aren't currently in use for FC purposes.

The concept might be interesting but few players end up enjoying it in practice. It's why you'll find relatively few houses with gardens in use, and most of the time that use is to grow shards for crafting or Krakka Roots. Those can be grown in flower pots, you don't need a house to do it. It's very rare to find a plot set up for crossbreeding.

They did add in enough plots, go an inspect how many houses is unused... not even decorated or anything, and people who only got the house for status symbol.

EDIT:
Move to lesser populated server, bigger chance to get a house, if it is that important to you.

How the owner chooses to use the house doesn't matter. If someone bought a house and there is another player still looking to get one, then there were not enough houses added.

While owning a medium or large house might be seen as a status symbol, I doubt anyone owning a small feels the same way. Most of those unused houses are probably either bought by players who didn't have anything better to do with their gil than buy a house or they're owned by house flippers waiting for a buyer willing to meet their price.

Also, there's no bigger chance to get a house on low pop NA servers than the high pop because all the wards are full on every world. I'm on one of the lower pop worlds. Within an hour of the servers coming up Tuesday, everything was either sold or on a timer because someone relocated. The houses on timers were all gone by Wednesday night.

Being able to get a house in a game shouldn't be dependent on one's ability to ignore sleep, take a day off work, sit at a placard for hours waiting for a hidden timer to end. Players in other MMOs with housing aren't expected to do this. Why should FFXIV players have to?

[TwistedTea]

Being able to get a house in a game shouldn't be dependent on one's ability to ignore sleep, take a day off work, sit at a placard for hours waiting for a hidden timer to end. Players in other MMOs with housing aren't expected to do this. Why should FFXIV players have to?

Amen. It's time to stop excusing SE for this poor access to something which is so basic in other MMORPGs. How many years has it been since housing was first introduced?

It comes down to a supply issue. Which would not have been a problem if SE had gone the fully instanced route for housing like other MMORPGs. Yoshi P studied the failures of Ultima Online's limited housing but still went ahead with limited housing in XIV? It's baffling.

The persistent ward system cannot cope with increasing player populations. Not asking SE to remove the persistent ward system but please at least improve upon apartments to reduce the demand on ward housing.

[Almagnus1]

Amen. It's time to stop excusing SE for this poor access to something which is so basic in other MMORPGs. How many years has it been since housing was first introduced?

It comes down to a supply issue. Which would not have been a problem if SE had gone the fully instanced route for housing like other MMORPGs. Yoshi P studied the failures of Ultima Online's limited housing but still went ahead with limited housing in XIV? It's baffling.

The persistent ward system cannot cope with increasing player populations. Not asking SE to remove the persistent ward system but please at least improve upon apartments to reduce the demand on ward housing.

Wards themselves aren't a bad thing... but I'm really coming around to the "why not both?" things.

That said, I want to avoid a WoW garrison thing where all you do is sit at your house isolated and alone. That sounds a bit too much like RL now for my tastes....

[Jojoya]

That said, I want to avoid a WoW garrison thing where all you do is sit at your house isolated and alone. That sounds a bit too much like RL now for my tastes....

Garrisons were WoW's non-instanced end game content for WoD 6.0 and 6.1. You had a single assault daily (that you still had to pick up from the Garrison) and that was about it when it came to non-instanced content to do outside of the Garrison. Everything else non-instanced was in the garrison. They tried to correct that when Tanaan Jungle released but by then it was too late - players were too used to sitting in their Garrisons, waiting on followers to bring them back thousands of gold from the treasure missions.

Any FFXIV players inclined to do nothing but sit in housing are already doing that, whether they own a house or an apartment. But unlike WoW Garrisons, housing doesn't offer much to do besides decorating and a few minutes of gardening a day (unless someone's an active roleplayer and that's not the "hermit" type of player you seem to be referring to). There's plenty of things to do in open world zones if the player is interested. As long as players have incentive to participate, we're not going to see the problem that WoW had if SE expands instanced housing from the current apartments to something more.

[Penthea]

Wards themselves aren't a bad thing... but I'm really coming around to the "why not both?" things.

That said, I want to avoid a WoW garrison thing where all you do is sit at your house isolated and alone. That sounds a bit too much like RL now for my tastes....

WoW garrisons were not housing (you couldn't even have your own bed) and they were intended to be used and then left behind. There was extremely little customisation to the point that your garrison looked nearly identical to everyone's garrison in your faction, and after the WoD expansion it became irrelevant.

Housing content in FFXIV is significantly more advanced than the WoW garrisons. But what WoW did correctly with them was having them phased so that every player could have their own on every character.

[ICountFrom0]

Have you asked your free company if you could garden at the FC house? Many FCs give members access on request if the garden plots aren't currently in use for FC purposes.

The concept might be interesting but few players end up enjoying it in practice. It's why you'll find relatively few houses with gardens in use, and most of the time that use is to grow shards for crafting or Krakka Roots. Those can be grown in flower pots, you don't need a house to do it. It's very rare to find a plot set up for crossbreeding.

Mine does. But yha, if I could have a small plot, with twice as many gardens, and no house (maybe let me have a few outside planters too), I'd still go for it, over a normal small house.